America so enjoyed its two-decade war in Afghanistan that it has now installed the Taliban as our Supreme Court.

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UGA football legend (and gameshow-host Donald Trump's best "see-I'm-not-racist-I-have-a-black-friend" friend) Herschel Walker won the Georgia Republican party primary for U.S. Senate with over 801,000 votes (68%). He literally won every single county in the state. He trounced his closest opponent, Gary Black (13%), who has been the state Agriculture Commissioner for the past 11 years! If I was writing headlines, this would read: Football Culture Trumps Agriculture.*

Now Walker will head into the general election to face sitting senator Raphael Warnock. So far Walker — who it should be noted has a net worth upwards of $29 million yet has sent me, a UGA football season ticket holder, at least 7 letters asking for campaign contributions — has refused to describe any specifics of his platform (other than "Teamwork good" and "Democrats evil") or debate any of his Republican rivals, instead relying purely on the goodwill garnered in college in the 1980s. And it's easy to see why he's so reluctant to speak up. When asked on friendly Fox News what he would do to prevent future mass murder of elementary school students like the 19 who died this week in Texas — Walker's home state for the past decade, right up until he decided to run for Senator of Georgia — he said this:

You know, Cain killed Abel and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men/women that's looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? And we can stop that that way.

Yes, poor Abel would still be alive today if Adam had only kept his eyes on TikTok instead of Eve's fig leaf.

Besides, Cain killed Abel with a rock, the Daniel Defense DDM4® V7® AR15 with Improved Flash Suppressor rifle of its day. No one would ever try to ban rocks, so why would you want to ban 30-round magazine automatic rifles? (According to Christian dogma, the rock was given to Cain by The Devil, which I'm sure Walker would insist in no way reflects on for-profit gun manufacturers selling military-designed long guns to 18-year-old civilians.)

Sadly, I think there's every chance that bible-thumping, gun lobby-supporting, social media-spying Walker will win a seat in the U.S. Senate on nostalgic name recognition alone. And if that is the case, Georgians will be getting exactly the representation in government they deserve. That's democracy in action, folks!

* While Trump did indeed endorse Walker, it's not like Black wasn't trying his damnedest to earn his evil overlord's favor too, including refusing to admit that Biden is the lawfully elected president of the United States. Trump's endorsement in this race means far less than Walker's 82 touchdowns as a Georgia Bulldog.

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Nineteen children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting by a single 18-year-old in an elementary school in Texas today.

It would be nice if someone did something to make this sort of thing stop happening, but in American that could only mean closing elementary schools.

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advertisement from The Red And Black, November 23, 1945

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All has been quiet on the Great Deer Uprising front for the past year. You might think that means the war is over, but you'd be wrong. The deer have just been preoccupied building WMDs.

From The New York Times:

Scientists have identified a new, highly mutated version of the coronavirus in whitetailed deer in southwestern Ontario, one that might have been evolving in animals since late 2020.

They also found a similar viral sequence in one person in the area who had close contact with deer, the first evidence of possible deer-to-human transmission of the virus.

The 1925 Geneva Convention specifically bans biological weapons in warfare, but deer never signed the damn thing!

He is wearing this mask for his protection, not yours!

Hey, humanity. If we can't start pulling together, those hooved bastards are going to take us out. And the worst part is I'll be dead and unable to say "I told you so."

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Think your headlines are bad? At least you don't live in Gotham City.

Batman #120, December 1958

They saved the elephant, but Batman had to be put down.

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Maybe. But the real question is can I fuck them?

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Welcome to the 16th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month, now with 166% more disease!

A year ago, I looked upon the approaching college football season with trepidation and wrote

I get that the players want to play. As a fan, I want to watch. But just because we *want* football doesn't mean we're in a position to have it. If you're old enough and smart enough to go to college, you're old enough not to let your wants hurt you. If getting this pandemic under control, if ensuring that we break the chain of infections to protect ourselves, our families, and our neighbors means we have to stay in our homes (or dorms) and forego one football season, we should do that, even if we don't want to. Any other behavior is just irresponsible.

Oh, how naive I was in my youth. Let me show you how much things have changed in the state of Georgia in one year. This is August 2020:

And this is where we are in August 2021:

source: worldometers.info

A year-to-year gain of +7,000 cases on a graph that is still climbing! To get numbers like that, you have to be actively trying!

Just like in 2020, I bought UGA football season tickets in the early spring under the assumption that this whole pandemic thing might be under control by fall. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Granted, some things have changed in a year. In theory, the players have all been vaccinated (right?), so they should be safe enough (from COVID if not brain damage). But can the same be said for the fans? There's a non-zero overlap between the group of people who love to watch live football and the group of people who would rather kill children than wear a strip of cloth over their faces.

I'm fully vaccinated and have been since May, but vaccination is no guarantee that I can't get the virus. (If you like to be depressed, Google "breakthrough cases" and "vaccine efficacy decline".) Since we have yet to see any sign that this latest pandemic surge is ready to turn any corners, it looks like I'll be missing out on another season.

I guess I should have spent that ticket money on a new, larger television. I may be in my bunker for a long time yet to come.

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Disappointment is a side effect of expectations.

I liked Executive Producer Mike Richards as Jeopardy! MC. I thought he was among the best of the "guest hosts" who have been substituting for the late, great Alex Trebek. I wanted Richards to have the job permanently.

But Richards (or his bosses) made a mistake. When they told the general public that the new host would be "one of the guest hosts," that set the expectation in the minds of the public that the job would go to the host they personally liked best. Hence the widespread disappointment from LeVar Burton's legion of well-earned fans when the least known (but best connected — and probably also the cheapest) of all the temporary hosts got the gig.

Thus the door was opened for the inevitable amateur yellow journalists digging up every negative thing Richards has done or said in his 46 years on the planet. Sadly, not everyone can be as perfect a person as Alex Trebek.

If any of Richards' innumerable sins (mostly misogyny & bad jokes) is truly unpardonable, it was that as Executive Producer he had the inside track on selecting and auditioning hosts. Even if he didn't have the final say himself, he should have known that when you're in the race, you can't also be the referee. Americans expect their game shows to be fair, and they're always disappointed when they aren't.

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Every Batman fan worth his salt knows "The Joker's Comedy of Errors!", better known as "The Joker's Boner" story. Originally presented in Batman #66, Aug/Sep 1951, it can be summed up in one panel:

This is but one of 6 "boner" newspaper headlines in this story.

If you haven't read the story or you struggle with context clues, you might find it helpful to know that my trusty 1977 Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged defines "boner" thusly:

bōn´ẽr, n. a stupid or silly blunder. [Slang.]

As Batman #66 proves, newspaper editors love boners. Which brings us to the point of today's post.

In order to fill column space As a public service, The Newnan Times-Herald newspaper reprints food inspection reports from county restaurants. It's usually a lot of repeated warnings that store managers aren't checking the mold levels in their ice machines. (Come on, guys! It's right there in the Georgia Department of Public Health Rules and Regulations, Chapter 511-6-1-.05-7-b-5-iv-II!)

This month, in honor of Independence Day, the paper rewarded loyal readers by giving our local hot dog stand a boner of its own:

Oysters really are an aphrodisiac!

For the record, the restaurant calls itself "The Half Shell Oyster Bar & Hot Dog Shop." Rumor has it their menu was selected because the city wouldn't let them install an oven in their original location downtown, so they chose items they could cook with steam. (Welcome to Newnan!)

I've never had the oysters, but the chili dogs *are* pretty exciting.

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