Do not adjust your screens. You are not imagining things. I did not, in fact, publish a newsletter last week. There’s no big story there. Each week, as I’m reading news and social media, I bookmark things I want to write about or things that make me angry and there just wasn’t that much for me to say last week. Not so for this week, so let’s get to it!
1. The Buccos of Suckitude sure do suck … itude
The only thing that made me angry and wanting to write last week was the state of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club, so I quickly wrote an open letter to Bob Nutting and sent it to the Post-Gazette, which published it the next day as an Op-Ed. Here’s the link if you missed it. And here’s a snippet:
Have you maintained an institution that can be trusted with Clemente’s legacy? His name? Is your team a worthy home for his story? Is he safe with you? When you put your head down at night, that’s the question I wish you’d ask yourself — is Roberto Clemente safe with you?
I don’t think he is.
“When I put on my uniform, I feel I am the proudest man on earth.”
Are you proud?
Are you proud of the constant “rebuilding?” Like Route 28 construction, at some point it’s not really rebuilding, is it? At some point, it’s just construction cone-pimpled purgatory.
It was a cathartic thing to write, even though, yes, you don’t have to tell me … it won’t change anything. But what good are we if we don’t at least TRY and try honestly and try with raw emotion?
So I tried. I feel better. Nothing will change.
2. Good morrow, wench. Might I interest thee in a spot of treason?
Let’s talk about Riley June Williams.
Riley. June. Williams. Who the hell is Riley June Williams? Well, I’ve included her middle name so you know she’s either a hipster author, an indie artist, or a crime-ing criminal.
It’s criminal. Criminal is the correct answer.
Riley June Williams is the name of the Mechanicsburg, PA woman who not only did very insurrection-y things, but she also stole the Speaker of the House’s laptop during her crime-ing. Not, like, the Speaker of the PA House of Representatives. I’m telling you she straight-up saw a laptop in Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol Building office and said to herself, “There’s doing a crime and then there’s DOING A CRIME.” And she chose the uppercase version of that and absconded* with said laptop.
That’s what we parents call “Not making Good Choices.”
There’s more:
According to one witness, described as a former romantic partner of Williams, the accused "intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service."
So we have insurrection, theft, and for good measure, a little bit of light treason, as they say. She’s been on house arrest since her actual arrest:
The judge ordered that Williams would only be able to leave home for work, court proceedings, and a handful of approved outings.
“A handful of approved outings.” So, I assume that’s like doctor appointments and funerals, right? No.
A Mechanicsburg woman accused of stealing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop during the Jan. 6 riots will be permitted to leave house arrest to visit the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire…
Okay. Here’s the thing. You can argue she should be allowed to go to have a little fun while she’s on house arrest awaiting trial for INSURRECTION AND LIGHT TREASON. Fine. Make your argument. But my gosh, she’s allowed to go to a Renaissance Fair for eight hours to blow off some steam while hundreds of thousands of alleged non-violent offenders sit in jail cells for months on end in America awaiting their own trials?
Those with marijuana offenses are not getting out of jail to attend fairs and festivals and concerts. Yes, I’m pro the decriminalization of marijuana and for bail reform because I’m a tree-hugging liberal for whose soul you should pray fervently. But beyond that, the inequality here is kind of staggering, regardless of which side you fall on. Brock Turner got six months in jail for violent rape (all rape is an act of violence, in my opinion, but his was particularly so); Crystal Mason was given five years in jail for voting on a provisional ballot (her vote wasn’t even counted) not realizing her previous tax felony conviction forbade her from voting (again, such a dumb law).
It’s all ridiculous and arbitrary and this treasonous dead-eyed thief is going to throw her hair into braids and drink some fake mead and dance around in the mud all “Prithee, sir, I be parched!” as if she didn’t take part in the actual attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.
What an exceedingly stupid time to be an American.
*I need to tell you that once, back when I was in love with Hallmark Christmas romance movies, I watched one the whole way through and loved it and it was about a prince of some mythical country called something like Blovimuckia and a commoner, and I was wrapped in my blanket burrito when in the last scene that prince said to that commoner, “You have absconded with my heart.” When I tell you I unfurled my blanket burrito and started to question my whole life at the very gall to write that horrible treacly sentence into the script as if anyone would ever say it in real life. If you ever say to me, “You have absconded with my heart,” I will throw you off the Clemente Bridge and go for waffles without a care in the world. Good riddance to stupid you.
3. Sigh.
Let’s check in on the Oz/Fetterm--
No, wait! Come back!
First, let’s put some absolute truths out there.
John Fetterman, as long as he stays healthy, will be the next United States senator from Pennsylvania. Dr. New Jersey’s odds are insurmountable.**
John Fetterman has finally stopped using 700 emojis in every single tweet. This pleases me.
Dr. New Jersey’s entire campaign is an ill-prepared, underwater, outmatched amateur outfit that should be put out of its misery before I die of secondhand embarrassment for how very very bad they are at this.
You remember this video because I talked about this video way back in April when it was first posted because I am nothing if not ON. TOP. OF. SHIT.***:
Well, thanks to a few choice recent retweets of the video, it went viral and you best believe the Fetterman campaign went full-scale point-and-laugh on it because Dr. A Broccoli called a veggie tray … crudite. (There’s an accent in there somewhere. You figure it out. I’m an American English-speaker and we don’t believe in accent marks even when we steal your words. Facade. Fiance. Cliche. Deal with ït.)
To say the Fetterman social media team beat the dead crudite horse even deader is an understatement. They beat it to dust and then to evaporation and then they continued to beat the ground where it once stood. Crudite. Crudite. Crudite.
But the Oz campaign’s response to this beating was … poor.
In an exclusive statement as part of Insider's investigation into Oz, the doctor's campaign jabbed back. "If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn't have had a major stroke and wouldn't be in the position of having to lie about it constantly," Rachel Tripp, Oz's senior communications advisor, said.
Oh. Honey. Rachel. No. You didn’t make Good Choices, Rachel.
Stroke-shaming. Whew. So listen. I had a health issue that many of you know about. Unexplained to this day. Double carotid dissections that when they were finally discovered had blocked both my arteries, one at 50 percent and the other at 55-60 percent. My risk of stroke was very very real for quite a long time and I’m only alive because I spent 14 hours in the Allegheny General Hospital ER while they ran a bunch of tests trying to figure out why I was hearing a helicopter in my head for months until I thought I would lose my mind. I am healthy. Of the correct weight. I exercise. I eat well despite all my jokes about cookies. But at any time, I could have been very very very unlucky and very very dead. Strokes are nothing to joke about. Ever. And that the Oz campaign went there— Oz. Who is a DOCTOR? I can’t even wrap my head around someone being this bad at their job.
Oh. Wait. Yes I can.
BOOOOOM! Don’t applaud; throw cookies.
**If I’m wrong, I’ll kiss a pigeon
*** I’m getting that on a pillow
4. Is that a taser in your bikini or…
A Pittsburgh woman was bitten by a shark in waist-high water in Pittsburgh’s pilgrimage city of Myrtle Beach.
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Two swimmers survived being bitten by sharks this week at South Carolina’s most popular beach.
Both people were attacked in Myrtle Beach on Monday with one suffering a serious injury to the forearm and the second a more glancing bite to the leg, police told media outlets.
I already eye the ocean with a wary “please don’t kill me or a loved one today” sense of respect, and to me, being in waist-high water should mean at worst a jellyfish sting. Not SHAKING AN ACTUAL SHARK OFF OF YOUR ARM FLESH.
“I just felt something, I guess, bite me and there was a shark on my arm,” Sites said.
I assumed it was a little bite, right? Waist-deep water. How much damage could a shark that size do? Turns out, hecka!
Karren Sites of Pittsburgh needed hundreds of stitches.
HUND. DREDS.
I fell and scraped my knee while running to my neighbor’s house the other week because I’m twelve years old, and that shit HURT. Hundreds of stitches? I’m going to start swimming in the ocean with a taser. I’m sure my science is solid and I won’t kill myself and everyone near me with one point two one gigawatts of electricity.
Worst case, we all die. But at least the shark dies too. Game set match.
5. And finally …
A few things. First, my Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen project to map the still existing artifacts of Pittsburgh’s demolished structures while providing historical pictures of those artifacts in their original iterations is going great. I have 34 complete records of various artifacts, which is a good enough start to get the mapping side of things going. This is where I’ll need to pull in people who know the more tech side of this project while I stand around them saying things like “widget” and “motherboard” and “visual basic.” This is just your reminder to let me know if you see or think of any artifacts I might not know about.
Second, I’m heading to visit NASA this weekend for the Artemis launch where I’ll get to see some behind-the-scenes stuff and meet and hear from the NASA people who work on the Artemis mission, and then I’ll get to watch the launch, provided the weather cooperates. I’m so excited. Next week’s newsletter might drop Wednesday or Thursday, depending on when I get back home and what I want to say about my time there.
If you’re angry I called Doctor Oz out for stroke-shaming or that I’m a liberal or that I’m funnier than you, or if you’re a shark truther, or a moon-landing truther, or a flat-earth truther or a TASER USE IN WATER WILL KILL YOU-truther, here’s the number to call …
Don’t believe the fine print. I swear it’s free. Let it all out. For hours.
See you next week! Unless I stowaway a ride ‘round the moon. It’s okay. If they catch me, I’ll just be put on house arrest and they’ll let me out every Friday to go to Chuck E. Cheese or some shit like that.