Good Luck to Katy Perry in Outer Space
Bye
TREACHER’S NOTE: A tornado went over my house the other night. Thank goodness it didn’t touch down in my neighborhood — there’s been one death and several injuries reported in central Indiana — but the winds knocked out my home internet. It’s still intermittent, over 40 hours later, and I am very grouchy about it. Such is my devotion to you, dear reader, that I’m literally braving the storm to bring you today’s newsletter.
You’re welcome!
I don’t know what’s news and what’s entertainment anymore. There doesn’t seem to be any difference. So I guess this qualifies?
Katy Perry is vowing to “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut” when she goes into space as part of Blue Origin’s all-female crewed mission.
The pop star, 40, will be joining CBS News’ Gayle King, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn for the 31st mission launch the Amazon founder’s New Shepard rocket.
I’m all in favor of sending Katy Perry into space. I’m not so wild about letting her come back.
Alright, that’s all I’ve got on that one.
It’s a good time to be a small-government pro-tariff Republican, I guess?
All this tariff stuff seems like a bad idea to me, friends. Hope I’m wrong, though! Either way, I’ll get blamed for my lack of faith. After all, Trump is incapable of error, and paying more for everything every day is only bad when the sitting president never left the Democratic Party.
When Trump is right, like he is on immigration, I have no problem saying so. That does not oblige me to say he’s right when I believe he’s wrong. But go ahead and yell at me, I guess. Or express your disappointment, that’s a good one too.
When I heard there was another Naked Gun movie in the works without any involvement from ZAZ, I was very skeptical. After watching the first trailer, I’m only slightly skeptical:
Okay, I’m on board now.
Believe it or not, Liam Neeson is the correct age to be Leslie Nielsen’s kid. And it turns out to be the setup for a great O.J. Simpson joke. Which is smart. The whole awkward O.J. situation was the first thing everybody thought about when the sequel was announced, and now it’s the movie’s first big laugh.
Is it tasteless? Well… yeah. It’s a Naked Gun flick!
I can’t even remember the last comedy I wanted to see in a movie theater. And I like that it’s a sequel, not a reboot or a soft reboot or a “requel” or any of that crap. We’ll see if they can match the chaotic, anything-goes energy of the original movies, but they’re off to a good start.
If only Norm Macdonald were still here for this glorious moment!
I first heard of the band Sap about a year ago, and I liked them because they sounded exactly like Nirvana. Now they’re branching out a bit, and they sound like Nirvana crossed with Stone Temple Pilots. I can think of worse things.
Alright, that’s the best I can do for today. Maybe next time my internet will be back up for more than 5 minutes at a stretch. Thanks a lot, Xfinity!
I don’t know how this will sound in your head as you are reading it but I am saying it softly as I type it. No yelling involved. I’m not in favor of tariffs but I understand the need for them. We lost manufacturing capabilities because of our obsession with cheap disposable goods. If we are so reliant on China and other Asian and south east Asian countries for everything from clothes, steel, medicine, home appliances, etc. what happens in the long run if China pulls the trigger (just about literally) and cuts us off? I don’t want to pay more (my rent just got jacked up again) but if we do not get factories established here and create meaningful jobs now, then we never will. For the last several decades we have watched great American industries disappear- furniture, fabric, all kinds. We have lost our blue collar class and the opportunities people used to have to get a good job and learn a skill on the job and be able to keep it because the factory wasn’t going anywhere. It supported the town and its people and provided goods that Americans wanted. I would love to be able to buy clothes that fit right, shirts that aren’t see through or falling apart after two or three washings. American made meant something and I’d be happy to pay and not have to keep purchasing the same item over and over because I got the cheap version. If tariffs can get us there I’m willing to tough it out.
Astronauts: a six-woman crew, and only one has any kind of experience. Either space travel has become so safe and so routine that one astronaut can babysit five tourists; or virtue-signaling now outweighs safety considerations. Maybe both: I'm certain this mission will not expand the frontiers of science -- just go up, make a couple of orbits, and splash back down. All for bragging rights and positive PR, which Bezos needs and which the MSM will gladly give him as the anti-Musk. Have a safe trip, but don't expect me to care.
Tariffs: I have absolutely no brain for economics, so I have no idea what will happen. So far, the threat of tariffs seems to have nudged various countries into cooperating with us, and inspired some companies to bring manufacturing to the US. That seems good. Will it make a difference? Beats me. As for actual tariffs, yes, they might cause some prices to rise (though, I read somewhere the other day, the tariff is imposed on the wholesale price for finished goods, and the commodity price for raw materials, so in some cases the retail price might not be affected much). But as Sandi points out, it should make domestic manufacturing more competitive, and could re-shore some important industries. Might, maybe. I don't believe Trump is never wrong, but I think he's been right often enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, what are the odds that Pelosi, Schumer, Sanders, et. al. are right?