Because daddy famously loves McDonald’s and he’s hoping that if he shows sufficient brand loyalty that eventually daddy will love him.

The sheer amount of untreated generational trauma in this photo is astounding. I can only imagine how much less fucked up the world would be if more rich fathers could be bothered to actually raise and love their kids.

Castle of Not

Cursed castle. Everything within it can only be defined by what it is not.

[Players meet the beautiful princess.]

“A hideous prince does not stand before you.”

[Players find a chest of gold.]

“You have not found a rotten sack full of live crabs.”

Sounds like something that would need to be secured by the Antimemetics Division.

Pretty straightforward misunderstanding.

And Paula Abdul did the choreography for the dancing girls!

Know what I love about Rockwell? The hands. Artists always talk about how hard it is to draw hands. Rockwell, that dude could draw hands, and he knew it. He drew hands in this picture, through the doorway, when there was absolutely no need to, because he could. And if you look at a bunch of his pictures, he doesn’t just draw hands, he draws hands doing complicated things, making complex gestures, gripping fiddly little objects, he draws old people with wrinkled skin and funky joints on their hands… he was goddamn good at drawing hands and he was not shy about showing off his hand-drawing talent.

People calling him an illustrator and not an artist are just jealous of his hands.

Edit:

Hands:

(Assuming that “no consequence” also means that I won’t die on the trip…)

• Witness the Tunguska impact.

• See a Beatles show when they were just some small time dudes playing in a crummy club.

• Visit the Great Exhibition of 1851 and go inside the Crystal Palace

Or if you’re in for a trashy good time, The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger!

“Sewing dissent against Sauron”

I think we can all agree that, as a team, collectively, the Istari did a great job!

–Saruman the White

MORP

I voted Uncommitted in the primary so that Biden and the Democrats would get a count of how many people took the issue seriously. Primaries are a great place for message votes.

I also donated, volunteered, and voted for the Biden and then Harris campaigns, and didn’t hold back any support in public. I had no illusions about how bad it would (now will) be with Trump in the Whitehouse.

Trump Admin: Cap interest rates at 10%, but also we repeal the thirteenth amendment.

Democrats: No! What is wrong with you?!

Republicans: DEMONRATS WON’T WORK WITH US TO CAP INTEREST RATES AND ALSO THEY DRINK SMOOTHIES MADE OF BABIES!

Republican Voting Base: [Thunderous applause. 90% voter turnout. 99% voter loyalty.]

Everyone Else: I dunno, both parties seem the same. [Sub-50% voter turnout. Interfactional backstabbing intensifies.]

The Wyoming Rule would only increase the size of the house to 574, still a totally manageable number.

There was a Tom Clancy novel, either Sum of All Fears or Red Storm Rising, where the president and cabinet were a bunch of stupid fuckups that kept on making bad decisions taking us closer to World War 3.

Put on some halfway decent headphones and try out the virtual barbershop.

There are people who, disturbed by “big government” today and its tendency to curb the advantages they might gain if their competitiveness were allowed free flow, demand “less govern- ment.” Alas, there is no such thing as less government, merely changes in government. If the libertarians had their way, the distant bureaucracy would vanish and the local bully would be in charge. Personally, I prefer the distant bureaucracy, which may not find me, over the local bully, who certainly will. And all historical precedent shows a change to localism to be for the worse.

—Isaac Asimov, Nice Guys Finish First, collected in The Sun Shines Bright, 1981

For all the people saying “This is it. We’re done. It’s all over.”: It can get so much worse. Screwed is a matter of degree. One can get more screwed, or one can try to get less screwed.