I blame Trump’s America for making me so mean.

It seems Assad is talking trash about Trumpty Numpty’s governing abilities.

This is worse than watching the Battle of the Blackwater. Rather than just “one pack of assholes attacking another pack of assholes, but with nice people stuck on both sides,” it’s one walking toxic gas cloud taunting another walking toxic gas cloud.

There are limits to using “asshole” as an insult. An asshole is necessary for the survival and good health of a body.

The criticisms would be apt coming from someone who isn’t already massacring his own people.

So now I feel like the solution to this feud is to put both Trump and Assad alone together in a room with a day’s worth of food and water, and then lock the door. At the end of a week, we open the door and see who’s still alive. The survivor gets a cabin in the mountains with full utilities and regular food deliveries, but only the most rudimentary communication devices. Like, he can call 911, he can call the power company, but he can’t get in touch with his goon squad. And he can’t have a pet. He can have houseplants. He can’t be trusted not to abuse a pet.

Start thinking of humiliating Twitter names…NOW.

All my Throner peeps: I have entered into a friendly Twitter bet with a certain Brynden BFish of Wars and Politics of ASOIAF fame, concerning the likelihood of Lady Stoneheart making an appearance in Season 6. If she does show up, he gets to choose my Twitter name for a week. If she doesn’t, I choose a Twitter name for him.

@BryndenBFish I'd actually like to meet you on that bet? What sort of shameful Internet act?

— CRAFTSWOMAN FOR LIZ WARREN'S ANTIFA BUDDIES 🌿 (@alysonmiers) March 30, 2016

So, everyone who’s been reading my anti-LSH snark and rubbing your hands together in glee at the prospect of my humiliation: start thinking of ridiculous Twitter names for me, and go consult with BFish when the time comes. I’m depending on y’all to ring that SHAME bell on me.

Now, at the same time, BFish is also involved in a similar bet with Manu concerning Cleganebowl, so I wonder what happens if I’m right about LSH and Manu is right about Cleganebowl. Of course, I’m in agreement with BFish about Cleganebowl, so if he loses that bet, then I’m also wrong, so I guess Manu chooses his Twitter name before I do.

If we get LSH and also Cleganebowl, I think I should shave my head and post a video on YouTube. That level of wrongness calls for hardcore humiliation.

And if I’m wrong about Brienne becoming Sansa’s protector (I still maintain a tiny margin of possibility that they get super close to each other for a scene at the beginning and it still doesn’t happen), then I think the pain of being wrong about that is consequence enough.

Either way, y’all should be hoping I end up being totally wrong about something big in Season 6, because if we get through an entire season of me being correct in essentials…I’m gonna be such an asshole. Nobody will enjoy being around me, and I won’t even care.

 

Link

Today on Twitter, Brynden BFish is having us play a little game:

https://twitter.com/BryndenBFish/status/708346698591031299

And this is my contribution:

@BryndenBFish Brienne I: "Do you think Lady Sansa will remember him?" she asked Jaime as they buried her little squire.

— CRAFTSWOMAN FOR LIZ WARREN'S ANTIFA BUDDIES 🌿 (@alysonmiers) March 11, 2016

Oh, yeah, I went there.

This exchange followed:

@GameOverRos @BryndenBFish pic.twitter.com/FML0bDnJGM

— CRAFTSWOMAN FOR LIZ WARREN'S ANTIFA BUDDIES 🌿 (@alysonmiers) March 11, 2016

@GameOverRos pic.twitter.com/FifScUIPST

— CRAFTSWOMAN FOR LIZ WARREN'S ANTIFA BUDDIES 🌿 (@alysonmiers) March 11, 2016

Novelists are sadistic, manipulative assholes.

 

2016 Author Silliness

Okay, here’s a resolution I can make for myself: in 2016, I will mock the online-writers-culture tendency to throw around questionably-attributed quotes from dead writers, at every opportunity. Y’all consider yourselves warned.

I’m not maintaining that website anymore, but the sentiment still applies. 

Game of Snark: I’m still an asshole.

Saw this on Twitter just now:

https://twitter.com/Thrones_Memes/status/682216512623624192

The replies are fucking FULL of people protesting that Stannis isn’t really dead.

Okay, folks, here’s the thing: if Brienne managed to redirect her sword at the last split second and NOT kill Stannis, his survival is honest-to-fucking-Pete the best-kept secret in Game of Thrones filming history. HBO has done a better job of hiding his survival than they’ve done of hiding pretty much everything else related to next year’s season. Filming is all over, and Stephen Dillane has not been seen anywhere near the production. I don’t think they even had him show up long enough to play a corpse. Probably because you can’t get a live actor to play a headless body.

But ultimately, if you’re still thinking, at this stage, that Stannis lives, then I don’t know what’ll convince you otherwise. I’m not even optimistic that you’ll accept the Rightful King is really fucking dead if we get a clear shot of Brienne digging a grave in the wolfswood and burying his decapitated body. Even if they actually show us the body in S6, will that be enough?

So now I’m wondering: what sort of S6 are the Stannis Lives contingent picturing? Starting from the premise of Stannis being alive, what do your predictions look like? What sort of ideas do you fill into the gaps between the events we’ve gathered from filming leaks? How tangled and torturous do your explanations get when the filming leaks don’t leave room for Stannis to be alive and present and making decisions? How much of the available info do you have to explain away?

 

Kalahari Bushmen, Han Chinese, Carthaginians and Aztecs

It’s basically impossible for anyone to make an argument continuing to exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage without embarrassing themself anymore. Today I show you this vicious BURN from Ishaan Tharoor on Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who complains:

…the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?

As Tharoor goes on to show us, the randomly chosen four cultures (I will be charitable and assume he just listed whatever cultures came to mind without any research) are hardly exemplars of the procreative, monogamous, heterosexist culture Justice Roberts thinks we should be trying to maintain. At least he didn’t mention Ancient Greece.

That out of the way, I will answer each of Roberts’s questions in turn, with all the consideration and nuance his concerns deserve. In order of appearance:

…the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States

More than half the states had discriminatory, unfair laws on marriage. They can fucking deal with it.

and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia

Society is not going to fall apart because we civil marriage to another small percentage of the population. No, it really won’t. We’ll be okay. Several countries have had marriage equality for a number of years, and their people aren’t facing a degradation in their quality of life. Several states in the US instituted marriage equality years ago (some of us even by popular vote!) and we’re still doing just fine. Humanity might destroy itself by fucking up the planet with carbon emissions and ocean acidification, but same-sex marriage is not the bringer of Doomsday.

Just who do we think we are?

We are the newest member of Team Fabulous! Rainbow is the new black, muthafucka!

In Which Clarence Thomas Embarrasses Himself

For today’s SCOTUS decision on the legality of same-sex marriage, all four of the dissenting judges wrote separate opinions. Seems they’re all trying to out-bullshit each other.

You’ve probably heard about Scalia, running around and Scalia-ing all over the place. He is certainly colorful, and I welcome him to walk around downtown DC with a bag over his head.

Right now, I’m going to deal with Clarence Thomas, whose dissent is certainly…special.

There are plenty of places to find this shit, but right now my source is Ophelia Benson, sharing selected highlights:

Human dignity has long been understood in this country
to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.

The corollary of that principle is that human dignity
cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not
lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity)
because the government allowed them to be enslaved.
Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity
because the government confined them. And those denied
governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity
because the government denies them those benefits. The
government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it
away.

He’s telling us that this Nation (with a capital N) was founded on a vision in which “human dignity” is a meaningless concept. Those who use dictionary definitions as arguments in bestowing and withholding rights to certain groups of people should be disturbed by Justice Thomas’s non-definition of human dignity. He’s arguing, almost in as many words, that people still have dignity when the government treats us like crap, so we have no right to complain when the government treats us like crap.

I mean, but, but…slaves were not deprived of dignity? Really? You think that’s an acceptable thing to say while arguing against marriage equality?

I am holding up my middle finger at the camera and staring in exhausted disbelief. This picture was taken years ago. My hair was longer at the time.

GO HOME, CLARENCE THOMAS. YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT.

Where can they escape Team Fabulous?

I will now take suggestions for countries that Americans can move to if they don’t want to live in a country where same-sex couples have the right to civil marriage. Canada is out, as they’ve been on Team Fabulous since 2005. Australia is a possibility for the moment, but I don’t think they’ll be safe there for very long. Suggested countries should preferably be English-speaking, though if our bigot refugees can’t talk to anyone, that won’t really pose a problem for the locals.

Up is down! Black is white! Dogs and cats, living together!

Everyone knows that when same-sex couples have the same access to the rights of marriage as heterosexuals, everything good and wholesome falls apart like toilet paper in a hurricane. Of course, we’ve had marriage equality for years now in several states, including mine, and the Great Divorce Apocalypse hasn’t happened in any of those states, but now that we have joined Team Fabulous as an entire nation, we all know the floodgates are about to open up.

(I just called a bunch of my married hetero friends to ask if they were packing their bags to abandon their spouses now that the SCOTUS put us on Team Fabulous. They said no.)

So, if you have a tale of a formerly blissful, stable heterosexual marriage suddenly disappearing in a puff of dust due to the expansion of marriage equality, post your tale in the comments section on this post. And I will drink your tears.