Wednesday, January 29, 2020

 For whatever reason, yesterday took a lot out of me. And just because I haven't really gotten much feedback off it, I'm linking to my love letter to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy again. You can't stop me.



  In one of these useless coincidences that fill up that book, Twitter smarty-pants Arthur Chu kicked off a discussion on HHGTTG and compared it, favorably I might add, to the cartoon Rick & Morty. I can sort of see where he's coming from, though I've never watched enough of the cartoon to really say. I didn't have access to it when it first blew up and didn't get around to seeing any of it until about a year after the whole Szechuan sauce business, which might be the most embarrassing thing white people have done recently that doesn't involve racism.

 In any event, it was enough to turn me against looking for the show and I didn't until I went to visit one of my Better Angels last year. Her husband is a big, big cartoon head, and for as long as I've known him, he's gone above and beyond the call of duty in cataloging his favorite toons. Naturally, in this day of digital recording and online streaming, he has access to a boatload of Rick & Morty, and my Angel (his wife) who's always slightly amazed at my haphazard approach to modern pop culture, decided it was time to educate me.

 It was... okay. I can see why, for example, my brother and my friend digs it, but I can also see why the type of doorknob that considers himself an intellectual elite because he gets some (maybe not all, but definitely some) of the jokes in a 30-minute cartoon where the main protagonist is a drunken sociopath who abuses his grandson. But I see where the comparison to HHGTTG makes at least some sense.

 In that same vein, though, Rick & Morty could be easily compared to Family Guy in its portrayal of a horribly dysfunctional family, which of course takes its cues from The Simpsons. I think one truism with these sort of sitcom cartoons, even fantastic ones like Rick & Morty which is still a family drama at its heart, is that the longer they go one, the more awful everyone has to be to keep the jokes rolling in.

 I haven't watched either Family Guy or The Simpsons in years, going on a decade at least, partly because they've run through their jokes so thoroughly that every single character on the show has had at least one spotlight episode showcasing why they should be driven out to the wilds and shot in the head for the good of humanity. Rick & Morty just cut to the chase, far as I can tell.

 Okay, that's enough of that. Let's take a look at the News. Well, Impeachment seems to be wallowing in a mudhole and sticking around longer than the Trump people probably want it to. I imagine that's the goal Pelosi, Schumer, et al., were going for. Get the president, and more importantly, the Republicans stuck defending an unequivocally guilty party for long enough time that it sticks around with the voters until election time.

 The passion the Cult has for their Blind Idiot God doesn't necessarily transfer cleanly to the rest of the GOP. We saw in the last elections where Trump's attempt to give Republican candidates a slight bump had little or no effect. We've also seen how the slightest deviation from what Trump wants will get them to turn on a pol like a pack of feral cats, and Trump himself will lead the charge.

 Long-time paleocon thug John Bolton is the most recent example, as the White House has issued a formal threat to keep him from publishing his upcoming book. He turned in a copy to the White House for clearance and they're saying it looks like it has too much "classified information" in it and "could be a threat to national security". Others have said the brouhaha surrounding the book, published or not, could bog down into months of legal to-and-fro, which would stretch out Impeachment past what Trump and the GOP really would prefer.

 Again, this strikes me as part of the plan for the Democrats. Impeachment hasn't been a serious threat since Clinton, but the GOP has tied itself inexorably to Trump. His fortunes are their fortunes. The Congress critters are more vulnerable due to the basic structure of elections, so sticking with him can loose them votes with the home folks. And if they turn on Trump, he'll sic his slavering minions after them and they'll eat them alive at the ballot box. So, we'll see.

 A new addition to the count. Another prisoner in a Mississippi prison died yesterday, bringing to complete total up to 13. At the Kemper-Neshoba Regional Correctional Facility in De Kalb - about two hours due south of here - 28-year-old Limarion Reaves collapsed after talking to a relative on the telephone. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died. This comes after our Spam-born governor Tate Reeves promised to shut down the most notorious wing of Parchman State Prison, where most of the deaths have occurred, Unit 29. Still no word on whether he'll take another look at Willie Nash's unfair and cruel 12-year sentence for having a cell phone when the jailer never told him he couldn't. Hope springs eternal, though.

 That's enough for tonight, I think. The Funk still has a grip on me, as does the Sleep, and I've still not found a promising writing gig. Right now, I don't care. Maybe tomorrow.