Muted Commercials

Corporations do franchise-wide updates of their interior and exterior design. One day you’re at the McDonalds and it’s primary colors clownland, the next day it’s classy hipster color swatches and the M is italicized. Usually they do not advertise the redesign overtly, they just slip it into the background of a commercial or whatever.

Domino’s Pizza isn’t so restrained. They have a series of commercials now talking about how cool their new look is. Anyhow, I ALWAYS mute commercials, so I miss some information and it can occasionally have amusing results. One time I saw a commercial for I think heart medicine? and without the sound it seemed like the family’s children transformed into happy healthy pet dogs. And just now I saw this one about the redesign at Domino’s.

First they show all this Made-in-Amurrica imagery like a truck commercial. There’s perfectly manicured farmland, white men in overalls, someone using a machine that shoots beautiful sparks. They transitioned from an image of a barn to somebody furiously digging a hole inside, which was a bit bizarre. “This is where real Americans stash the bodies,” you know?

So, time for the big reveal. This is what it looks like inside the fresh look new Domino’s pizza. Everyone’s happy, customers and employees alike. What does it look like? A cool barnhole? No, a payday check establishment with bulletproof windows. So, kinda like it already did, but with lovely commercial lighting. Congratulations.

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Signal Boost: Fuck Marvel Nazis

Via someone who calls herself “drachentöter” on tumblr, regarding the recent “nazis were meant to win WWII” reveal in some recent shit-ass Marvel comics by shit-ass nazi fetishist / “civility advocate” Nick Spencer:

it’s exhausting to keep seeing people talk about marvel’s hydra problem as an issue of them just being tone-deaf or obtuse or clueless, this “boys will be boys” mild eyeroll attitude to the entire conversation that so vastly downplays just how fucking evil these people are

do you honestly think that the CEO of marvel who is an outspoken trump supporter and pumped millions of money into the trump campaign doesn’t know what he’s doing by pushing the nazi faction into the limelight of his comics?

turning captain america, the literal symbol for american nationalism and patriotism, into a supporter of hydra and therefore a nazi, is not a writing accident. it is deliberate.

their latest little ~fuck up~ of asking comic stores to re-brand their stores and work uniforms with hydra logos, is not just a PR gaffe. it’s deliberate.

their continuous campaign to make nazis into a faction readers are supposed to find exciting, supposed to align themselves with, supposed to wear on their shirts like a uniform, is not an accident in the kind of political climate we’re in right now. it’s deliberate.

i don’t care that hydra is fictional, this isn’t like the empire in star wars or w/e where it’s just about some sort of vague fascism aesthetic. hydra were always explicitly n a z i s, since their very conception, have always been called nazis by marvel, have always stood for nazi values. and now marvel is trying to make them cool again. and it’s not a fucking accident.

stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. stop talking about this like it’s something that can be fixed with civil conversation and a stern finger wagging.

nazis and anyone who defends them don’t deserve that much consideration from anybody. just, yknow, a friendly psa from your neighbourhood romani jew.

Oh, did I spoil that plot for anyone here? Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to not spend money on the shit-ass comics now, or just enjoy your nazi wank a little less. Shucks.

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The Pain of Being a Man

A quote attributed to meme star Dr. Samuel Johnson by a Reverend Percival Stockdale, popularized by Hunter S. Thompson and often internet misattributed to Dr. Seuss: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” Ugh, this paragraph was annoying to write.

What is the pain of being a man? Let’s automatically discard the old time sexism as irrelevant. The pain, then, of being human?

For me (surely different from Johnson), the pain is in that we are the first (and almost certainly last) species to arise on this planet with the ability to see what we’re doing wrong, see ourselves hurtling toward extinction, and be completely fucking powerless to do anything about it. It’s more depressing than the cosmically depressing things, such as life being meaningless and doomed by an indifferent Universe.

We should, with our powers of thought, be able to start a dynasty of thinking beings that lasts at least a few billion years into the future. As it stands? We’ll be lucky to escape the next few hundred years. Massively cheated by our collective incompetence. We are constitutionally incapable of escaping our animal ignorance and greed. The ability of some individuals to get past that? Somehow amounts to nothing, every fight, every time.

I’m of a mind to keep fighting for what’s right, even in the face of defeat. Don’t let the Cheetos of the world think we’re all on the same page, we’re all ready to dickride him into that bad night. To whatever extent we can make The Man sad, that’s the only satisfaction I’m expecting out of the fight.

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War, All Day Every Day, Until We Are Gone

Largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped was shat out on Afghanistan, because Syria somehow. There is nothing we can possibly do to rise to the level of the threat against the human species that Trump and his fuckhead legions represent, which makes it a good time to consult your reasons for fighting in the face of certain defeat, like those French Resistance folks. More accurately, like the German resistance to Hitler. All those lovely dead people.

So war, all day every day, against those who kill thousands at a time for fun and profit, against those who poison the biosphere and condemn our species to earn pennies on their stocks, against those who exploit hatred of every class of “other” to make Amurrican jackoffs vote against their own interest in every fucking way, every fucking time. A war where maybe the second worst outcome is the extinction of our species.

I say second worst because I consider the eternal reich of racist sexist dominionist eugenicist queer-killers to be a skosh worse than death. Probably not going to last forever because it may already be too late to prevent global warming from killing us off in a thousand different ways. So I guess that’s going to be my point of hope for the moment.

Anyhow, long live the fighters. G’night!

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Anyone Watching Agents of Shield?

Just got caught up today. I think Madame Hydra was pretty cool, the whole creepy What If? scenario is giving some opportunities for thoughtful writing about psychology, philosophy, and ethics. Not as simplistic as that sort of thing could be, which is good, because in the past fifty years we’ve had hella different shows using the same Mirror Mirror setup. I admit it’s a fun premise, but also fun to see it being handled with maturity instead of slapping goatees on fools.

Expect SPOILERS in the comments, if anyone does comment.

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Islamophobia: Still Real

It’s a perennial debate in the atheistical community, and a snoozer.  Many of us are total patsies for the man, gleefully feeding the xenophobia that got The Fascist Orange elected.  I’m only making this post to add balance to a fleeting list of text that shall be subsumed beneath the tides of internet.  It’s not even worth discussing any more, honestly.  No one is changing their mind, are they?
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Happy Down with Cis Day!

It’s the second annual International Down with Cis Day, and I wanted to make cool art for it, but all I got for you is this rough draft. It’s the thought that counts!

original art by great american satan

This is an image in a cartouche style. The base is a front view of that infamous cryptid the “Down with Cis Bus.” Above that we see a ambiguously gendered person in girly accessories and a hockey mask, fists crossed, and a banner reading, “Go for the face all you want… You can’t stop the brutalization.” In front of that, we see the letters DWC.

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Is Atheism or Religiosity Innate?

Is atheism or religiosity innate? I don’t know.

I’ve thought about this from time to time. This time it was inspired by a comment someone made here about asexuality that I realized was similar to an atheist experience, and as asexuality is an innate characteristic, could atheism be as well? Another time I thought about it briefly and dismissed it without further consideration, it was popular science nonsense about a region of the brain supposedly there to make faith happen – a “god lobe” or whatever they called it.

What would it mean for one’s status with regards to god belief, for it to be innate? To me, it would mean that the belief or lack thereof, once set by development (natural inclination + environment), would be something we cannot truly change about ourselves. That belief isn’t something we can have a choice about, and that debating the matter is just about completely pointless.

I act as if that’s true already. You don’t see me arguing directly with theists here, not that they ever come around. Now, is that a good way to be? The argument is often made that the debate isn’t to convert your opponent, but to give undecided bystanders something to chew on. And where would someone with flexible god belief fit into this concept? Call ’em demitheistic?

This path of inquiry could get wildly offensive, I suspect. It’s my Friday tomorrow (today?), and the work week turns my brains into mush. Not thinking of all the ramifications, I’m sure.

As I see it from mush PoV, feels for and against:

For: Anecdotally, it really feels like I have no control over what I believe, strongly feels like any attempt to “choose faith” would be a toxic act of self-abuse, a time for buzzing cognitive dissonance that couldn’t last long. When you look at someone like Stephen Colbert “choosing” Catholicism – well aware of all the towering unbeatable arguments against it, it’s easy to imagine he’s just innately religious – that it was the path of least resistance for him.

Against: God belief seems hella unnatural, at face value. I mean, it’s natural insofar as you can see the mechanisms that underpin it: pattern recognition gone haywire, fear of death making a denial of that reality tempting, and so on. But the concept of god just seems like an artifice that had to be contrived and communicated socially, not something that would arise out of a brain naturally. Then again, something something, bicameral mind theory, bleh bleh.

I have to be at work in seven hours. You get this post as is. Good day!

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Have a go at it, if you like. What do you think?

I’ve Seen the Light Yet Again…

April brings an important holiday or two. You know to
Pay extra attention at the beginning, work on your
Rational thought and skepticism. Also, it brings us
International Down with Cis Day. But you know what?
Listen. I’ve advocated for DwC Day before, wrongly.

For all this time I’ve believed that it was impossible,
Oppressing a privileged group from minority status.
Older now, I realize this is a mistake. Reverse racism
Lives, and heterophobia and cisphobia are real things.
Surely if I can see the light, you can to. #ALM, amen.

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