From the Desk of…
Anyone here ever heard of stretching? My God, does that feel good. It’s cooled down enough that I switched over to my winter sheets, and the extra warmth and weight has had me curled up since the weekend. Thankfully, nothing has happened since then that’s worth talking about.
…Oh? What’s that? I promised two weeks of review last week? F—Okay.
President Joseph Robinette “Diamond Joe” “Dark Brandon” Biden managed to deliver on yet another campaign promise by having student loan repayments start again. I’m sure top Democratic strategists are hard at work preparing to tell me how it’s good, actually. Their next great idea will probably just happen to be part of the 2024 campaign plank, how interesting.
Amid a strange standoff about if the government was going to keep operating, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm in one of the Congressional office buildings? The whole thing has been very odd, and I’m not sure what the game plan was. That’s assuming there was a gameplan, since he’s swearing that he thought it would… open the door? I just don’t know that I buy that, but… sure, man.
Then, while all that was happening, Senator Dianne Feinstein died. All the ghoulish jokes are already old hat. You saw them and either laughed or grimaced.
Anyway, the government is still functioning, despite the best efforts of most national Republicans. Of course, this failure to stop governance caused no small amount of consternation, and as such Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) moved to kick McCarthy out of the Speaker’s chair. This… passed, marking a first in US politics. As such, the three main Republican candidates for the speakership are now Rep. Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who “accidentally” spoke at a white nationalist convention once; Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who literally just got fired from the job in a national first; and… Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who vice-chairs the Freedom Caucus and who is a very close ally of former president Donald John Trump and who helped Ohio State cover up sexual abuse and who is… one of my most personally reviled figures in local, state, and national politics. Should he become Speaker, I might fully become The Joker. And I thought Boehner had me heated!
Ohio has yet again redrawn its congressional maps, and they’re bad. That didn’t stop them from getting unanimously passed though. The two Democrats on the commission gave their support to “take the process out of the hands of the current commission.” Russo and Antonio might get their wish, since the 2024 anti-gerrymandering amendment proposal has been approved by the attorney general. More to come!
Keeping it local, Ohio Dems rising star and former Cincinnati councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, the bright-eyed new kid who once challenged Ted Strickland in a senate primary in the salad days of 2016, has been sentenced to sixteen months in prison for, get this, crimes. It turns out that public corruption is illegal! You can’t just, like, take bribes! Who knew? Like I have said since the probes have been drumming people out in Cleveland and Cincy over the past couple years, “for the love of God, when will they probe Columbus?” We are begging to be probed.
Oh, and you’ve probably heard by now that we’ve got something of a standoff over the State Board of Education. You see, Governor Mike DeWine thinks that the Ohio Department of Education should become the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and that many of its duties should be managed by gubernatorial appointees, whereas the members of the State Board of Elections are currently publicly elected. Why would a Republican governor want direct control over the Department of Education? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Could be as simple as amassing power and taking it away from the people. Could be more sinister. Could be more petty. It is what it is though. Can’t wait to see the collateral damage from even just the fight, since most of the functions of the State Board are paralyzed in legal battles now. Cool!
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has been charged with many cases of fraud and being a liar because he took the donor info from people whom he suckered into supporting his campaign and then did identity theft. I can’t imagine giving my credit card information to a conman and then getting conned. I’d feel just wretched. Couldn’t be me though.
And one New Jersey man welcomed his local police to the jungle when he intentionally crashed into the station while blasting Guns N’ Roses.
The Brain Dump
ahhhhhh the 5G aurgh i can feel it activating my motricity neurons mmmmmm oh i have the hunger for brains now they were all so right ooh i should've listened to all the facebook uncles
they canceled the zombification because too many people found out about it
just saw the most stereotypical ghost-like behavior outside. good night
where are they selling the WOKE candy for halloween this year, target?
i wear my sunglasses at night i wear my sunglasses at night so i can so i can drive with my astigmatism
Okay, so Friday night is the first autumnal night of the year, a cool brisk wind rustling leaves, the sort of night Ray Bradbury would write about in Something Wicked This Way Comes. My desk looks out a window into the street below. I’m typing away at something, and movement catches my eye. Out there, for whatever reason, there’s a scrap of white fabric, probably about a 2-foot square. The wind has picked it up, and it’s just dancing back and forth about ten feet off the ground, back and forth, whirling and whirling in the night air. And I just watched it as it moved on down its way and eventually out of my sight. What the hell kind of thing is that to see in October?
At the Movies
Sorry if they’re too spooky. Also, I bracketed out the time gaps between re-reviews.
The Exorcist III (1990), dir. William Peter Blatty ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Moments where it is very strong... moments where it goes cornball. Some good audio design... some bad audio cues and zooms. Mixed bag. Need to seek out the 2017 director's cut.
[one month later]
Watched the Director's Cut. Undeniably better but I do see how it's lacking that oomph for the producers. Getting Miller in on reshoots was probably smart... adding the exorcism was too much. Yeah, I dunno how to fix this one. Maybe have the guts to actually kill Julie? Maybe better build to and dramatize the interior struggle for power that Karras and Gemini were having at the end there? Maybe a final dream sequence with a Miller cameo? Hmm. Yeah, dunno.
Dracula (1931), dir. Todd Browning ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
If I were Count Dracula, I would have simply asked my agent to "show me the Carfax."
[three years later]
love when I go to Castle Dracula and then the man meets me and goes "I am Dracula" just to drive the point home
[one and a half years later]
if I were traveling for work and a local was like "no, there are vampires there," I would simply go home. I'm not paid for this
now if I were going on vacation...
X (2022), dir. Ti West ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
it's about time someone put the porn back in splatter porn
[twenty days later]
I want Mia Goth to [bonk bonk bonk, this review is arrested]
[one year later]
sometimes they make 'em like they used to
Lots of other stuff going on lately! It’s a good month for movies.
One Picture
Alright, I’ll let it speak for itself and then say more after the jump. Here’s the Meowlot if you haven’t seen it. Vote on or before 11/7. By the time you’re reading this, I’ve already voted.
In closing,
Alright. Some of those might have raised an eyebrow. That’s fine. Some of the people above are near and dear to my heart, people whom I would endorse wholeheartedly in any endeavor. Some of them are fellow travelers whose hearts are in the right place, even if sometimes… sometimes, they get the answers quite wrong, in my opinion. Some of them are purely strategic decisions. I’m sorry, but if it’s a binary choice between someone who was supporting the fascist powergrab during the August special election and someone who wasn’t, well… I can live with pulling the lever against fascism. Of course, one must remember that antifascism cannot begin and end within the voting booth, and I personally feel that the fight against those forces is too great to abandon any tool against it, as bourgeois as the democracy the system perpetuates may be. The two state issues should be obvious to all that I’m for them, and the levies… well, the library levy is a simple matter. The school levy… Yes, I believe that Columbus City Schools is an administrative boondoggle that needs higher standards of accountability, but I don’t believe that reducing its funding is the mechanism by which that accountability should be brought to bear. We can start by electing better people to serve on the school board. There’s far too many school board races for me to weigh in on, but as a general rule, do the opposite of what Moms for Liberty says. It’s difficult enough to get things done without the puppets of Klanned Karenhood gumming up the works to yell about which comic books are woke or to give a seig heil to the superintendent. Oh, and vote for any liquor ordinance and Sunday sales thing that comes up.
Until next time, let us move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.