Valentines Day is the actual worst. Its not just bad for single people who get their singleness rubbed into their face for a day/weekend. Its also kind of miserable for people in relationships or the quasi-what-are-we-even?-relationships. Even the most chill betches have been known to get their hopes up for Valentines Day only to be sorely disappointed by their significant other when the 14th rolls around. Heres what to do to not make yourself pathetic and sad this year. Ew. Instagram isnt realSomeone probably really boring and wise once said Comparison is the thief of joy. Most of the time, comparison should bring you joy because your fucking awesome life looks pretty, well, fucking awesome compared to the lives of all the other basics out there. On Valentines Day though, just dont hang out on social media unless you have the greatest day of all time and need to show off. That probably wont happen, though. Your boyfriend is probably not going to bring you six-dozen roses or a Cartier Love bracelet. What he gives you is probably special in its own way, and you can never fault a guy for trying, but his acts of affection wont stack up to that Tumblr and Instagram nonsense. Dont think youre getting engagedIf youve been in a seriously relationship for a while, dont think Valentines Day is THE DAY youre getting engaged. I can think of nothing more pathetic than a V Day engagement, well, maybe other than a Christmas Day engagement. Gross. You should be praying your boyfriend is more original and less of a hack than that. Keep it low-keyDont overwhelm yourself trying to make your entire day look like a sentimental love-fest that could make Nicholas Sparks jealous. Also, dont be a fucking idiot and spend a bunch of money on shit you cant afford in order to make yourself look or feel loved. If you arent feeling the love without the stupid holiday madness, maybe its time to reevaluate your relationship. Best advice: Care very little about what happens on Valentines Day and you wont be disappointed if it doesnt stack up to your wildest dreams. Also, remember to care about what actually does happen. If a dude goes out of his way to make you feel special, thats pretty impressive by itself. Say thank you. Do what you loveMy motto for Valentines Day is similar to that of birthdays, if youre doing what you love, you probz wont be disappointed. If you dont like going to a prix fixe meal and eating by candlelight, dont fucking think you need to do that because Jessica in accounting thinks thats the only way to go. If you think hiking and drinking beer with your lover is the best, do that. If you think brunch and a solid hookup sesh is great, do that. Dont do something you hate because it will look cool on Instagram. Just do you. Thats the betch way/best way. source http://allofbeer.com/how-to-manage-your-valentines-day-expectations/ from http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-to-manage-your-valentines-day.html
0 Comments
Washington (CNN)Few reporters know deposed FBI Director James Comey as well — or have been covering him as long — as CNN’s Eric Lichtblau. Lichtblau, a new CNN’er after spending 15 years at The New York Times, has been reporting on Comey for more than a decade — all the way back to the infamous 2004 hospital confrontation between Comey and then Bush chief of staff Andy Card and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Cillizza: The big question is when/whether Comey will testify before Congress about his meetings and interactions with Trump — among other things. What’s your read on that?
Lichtblau: He’ll almost certainly testify, and it should be one for the history books: Newly exiled FBI director pitted against the president who fired him. Add backdrop of Russian election influence. Cue the grainy Watergate photos of Sam Ervin and Howard Baker. And remember Comey has always had quite a flare for drama, as we saw exactly 10 years ago when he testified in the Senate about his famous hospital-room showdown with George W. Bush’s White House aides at John Ashcroft’s bedside. We could get a hearing in the next few weeks, if not sooner, and my guess is that Comey will insist it happen in public, not behind closed doors.
Cillizza: Knowing what you know of Comey, what do you think the likelihood is that he told Trump, on three separate occasions, that the President was not under investigation?
Lichtblau: Close to zero. Trump made this claim in his first interview after the firing, but from the people I’ve spoken with, it’s almost impossible to think that Comey would have given the President such an assurance even once, much less three times. We’ve seen people around Comey push back on other elements of his January dinner with Trump, saying that the President demanded Comey’s “loyalty,” and Comey himself is particularly anxious to refute the claim that he told the President he was essentially out of the woods in the Russia investigation.
So how does the public judge who’s telling the truth about what the two men said? That’s where the President’s insinuation via Twitter that there were “tapes” comes into play. A recording of the dinner, if it actually exists, would help settle the question of who’s telling the truth and would be anxiously sought by congressional investigators.
Cillizza: Trump and his allies made much of the idea that Comey wasn’t well liked by the rank and file within the FBI. What was/is the main criticism of Comey within the bureau and how widespread is it?
Lichtblau: There are certainly factions within the FBI’s 13,000 agents who don’t like the job Comey did after he became director in 2013. Some agents think he went too easy on Hillary Clinton in the email investigation by not recommending criminal charges against her. Then there are others who think he led the FBI too deeply into the political muck in the email case — both in his remarkable press conference last July and again in re-examining the case just 11 days before the election.
Comey still no doubt has support inside the bureau — wide support, according to his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, who is now acting director — but it’s difficult to measure whether he has more friends or foes inside the FBI without commissioning a Gallup poll of the agents, which is about as likely at this point as a Trump-Comey beer summit. One area where there seems to be wide consensus inside the FBI, though, is the way in which Comey was fired — via a letter delivered to the bureau. Comey learned the news on TV during a trip to LA, and there’s near-universal outrage among agents over what they see as shabby treatment.
Cillizza: What’s Comey’s next move? Does he go back into the private sector? Retire? Go on TV?
Lichtblau: I don’t see him as a talking head on TV, at least not right away. A book deal might be possible, but most likely, he would go back to the private sector, where he spent eight quiet years after he left the Bush administration in 2005 first as a lawyer at Lockheed Martin, the big defense contractor, and then at Bridgewater, the hedge fund giant. That helped him amass a net worth of about $11 million, according to this financial disclosure statement in 2013. He and his wife have six children, and his paycheck in the private sector would certainly dwarf his $183,000 government salary at the FBI, which could drive a return to Wall Street or the defense industry.
Cillizza: Finish this sentence (with the understanding this is just for fun and nothing more than an educated guess): “The next FBI director will be _________.” Now, explain.
Lichtblau: The conventional pick would probably be Mike Rogers, who was both an FBI agent and a congressman who led the intelligence committee — and who has the backing of the FBI agents union, for good measure. But Trump, of course, has always loved bucking convention, and that could lead him to a dark-horse candidate — maybe a Ray Kelly, the former New York Police Department chief. Kelly has that tough-guy New Yorker bravado that Trump loves, and when he was a candidate, Trump spoke glowingly of the “stop and frisk” policy at the NYPD under Kelly, which a court struck down as unconstitutional. And he would likely be a Trump loyalist — whether he or the President wants to admit it.
source http://allofbeer.com/heres-what-james-comey-will-do-next/ from http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/04/heres-what-james-comey-will-do-next.html You would think that every pop culture creation would come about one of two ways: as the result either of sudden inspiration from a creative genius, or of a laborious corporate process involving dozens of designs and focus groups. But in reality, famous creators have ideas the same way the rest of us do: via random thoughts, laziness, or last-minute desperation. For example … #6. G.I. Joe‘s Snake Eyes Was Created To Save PaintSnake Eyes, the silent ninja commando from the G.I. Joe series, has been a fan favorite ever since his debut, because children love characters who wear cool helmets and never say anything. And hell, look at him! Eat your parentless heart out, Batman. But Snake Eyes’ popularity is made all the more remarkable by the fact he only exists because a toy company was too cheap and lazy to paint a damn action figure. And somewhere, a young Quentin Tarantino gets the idea for The Gimp … G.I. Joe started as a comic, but it wasn’t long before toy company Hasbro’s profit senses started tingling, and they began to belch out action figures in a stream of screaming plastic vomit. But soon, the toys would come first, then were inserted into the comic as characters — they were simply a bunch of generic soldier designs painted different colors and hastily given names and backstories, because children don’t give a shit. The most impressive thing about Hasbro’s G.I. Joe line was their dedication to maximizing their profit margins, and nowhere is this more evident than the design for Snake Eyes. To save money, they didn’t even paint the toy. It was churned out entirely in the same shade of black as the plastic that came out of the vat. Their explanation? Oh, he’s a ninja or something. Because all ninjas carry MAC-11s and wear mini-satchels. Amazingly, in spite of the fact his creation took less effort and imagination than putting a cape on a potato, Snake Eyes went on to become one of the most beloved characters in the Joe franchise. “He’s so dark and mysterious!” Sure, kids. Oh, and look, here’s his “invisible motorcycle”! Vroom! #5. Batman’s Harley Quinn Was Created For A Throwaway Joke That Was Never UsedMost fans know that Harley Quinn, one of the most popular characters in the Batman universe, did not originate in the comics. Her first appearance was in Batman: The Animated Series, in one of the rare examples of an adaptation that donates a character to the source material, sort of like how Norman Reedus was created for The Walking Dead TV show and gradually began to appear in other movies. But in case you think that Harley Quinn was brought about by some stroke of creative genius, think again. Her creators never had anything significant in mind for her. She was made solely because the show’s writers needed the Joker to have a female henchman in order to make one gag in a single episode make sense. And then they didn’t even wind up using the joke. Or her original design, thankfully. Quinn’s first appearance in the series came in the 1992 episode “Joker’s Favor.” The idea was that the Joker would make an attempt on Commissioner Gordon’s life at his birthday party by having a girl with a gun jump out of a giant cake, effectively ruining the Commissioner’s big day. Harley Quinn was created to be the person in the cake. You may recognize this as the same role Erika Eleniak played in Under Siege. ’92 was a big year for faux-pastry eroticism. But while the episode was already in production, the writers decided that it would be funnier to have the Joker himself pop out of the cake rather than some ditzy dame, so they changed the script to make that happen. Rather than go to the trouble of removing Harley Quinn completely, since they’d already written her into the script and everything, they diminished her role to that of a background member of Joker’s gang, fully intending to never use the character again. To everyone’s surprise, viewers loved Harley Quinn, so the writers brought her back for future episodes, and her popularity grew to the point that DC comics made her part of the official Batman canon. Granted, the official Batman canon also includes Batman turning into a weretiger and the Joker becoming an Iranian diplomat, but still. #4. Shredder From Ninja Turtles Was Inspired By A Cheese GraterThe Shredder, the eternal nemesis of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is a scowling Japanese man dressed in spiked metal armor like Road Warrior Hawk and/or Animal. As best we can tell, he never takes this armor off, even when he’s just hanging around the Technodrome in between battles. When you think about it, there’s nothing about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that doesn’t sound like it was inspired by a late night of pizza and beer. Every aspect of the original comic created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird can be boiled down to a conversation that begins with “Hey man, wouldn’t it be funny if …” Lots of beer. The Shredder is no exception. According to Eastman, the inspiration for the character came to him one night when he was washing the dishes. There’s no word on how astronomically high he probably was at the time, but while washing one of those flat cheese graters with a handle, he gripped it like a wrist guard and remarked to Laird about how cool it would be for a character to wear them as part of a costume. Considering how much pizza cheese that suit could generate, it’s a better design for an ally of the turtles. “We could call him the Grater,” Eastman suggested. Luckily, Laird was either less stoned or generally more level-headed, and came up with “the Shredder” instead, which sounds more like a villainous ninja and less like an irritating shift supervisor. The two then went ahead and wrote a villain into their comic who wore cheese graters all over his body, and a pop culture legend / impossible-to-find action figure was born. #3. Pac Man’s Inspiration Came From A PizzaBack when video games were first invented, brainstorming meetings resembled an insane game of Mescaline Libs — which is like Mad Libs, only played with 100 percent more mescaline. “A plumber who gains strength from mushrooms and dodges barrels thrown at him by a gorilla at a construction site? Sure, why not? Kids’ll buy any goddamn thing we tell them to.” Any random object that a programmer saw in their day-to-day life could become the central component of a video game pitch, and Pac Man started in that exact way. Back in the ’80s, Namco employee Toru Iwatani sat down to eat a delicious pizza. Upon removing the first slice, Iwatani remarked on how much the rest of the pizza now looked like a face with an open mouth. Anyone else would brush off this casual thought with the realization that sometimes stuff kind of looks like other stuff, but Iwatani’s mind started racing about the potential for a video game in which a pizza runs around a maze eating dots (see “mescaline,” above). Don’t let anyone ever tell you that all life’s problems can’t be solved with pizza. Quickly, this spark of inspiration ran through the usual hamster wheel of increasing absurdity until it became the story of a sentient pizza man eating his way through a maze while being pursued by vengeful ghosts. Iwatani pitched the idea as “Pakkuman” — “Pakku” being the Japanese onomatopoeia sound for eating. When the game was brought to the west, it became “Puck Man” (because “Chomp Man” would’ve sounded ridiculous and we are a nation of sober adults) and eventually “Pac Man.” And so, one of the most iconic characters in video game history was born — insofar as Pac Man can be called a “character.” #2. Teen Titans‘ Wonder Girl Came About Because The Writer Never Bothered To Read Wonder WomanBack in the 1960s, DC writer Bob Haney noticed that basically every major superhero on the company’s roster had a teenage sidekick, and thought it would be interesting to have them all team up. The idea became Teen Titans, and it initially starred Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad, who somehow had neither drowned nor been swallowed by a whale at this point. However, Haney eventually decided to rope in the rest of the Justice League’s abandoned plus-ones, including Wonder Woman’s lesser-known sidekick Wonder Girl. It’s in Robin’s contract that he always gets to be the most scantily-dressed team member. But Haney apparently didn’t actually read the comics that featured Wonder Girl. Otherwise, he would have realized that she wasn’t a sidekick at all. Wonder Girl was Wonder Woman back when she was a teenager. This would be like drafting a team of Back To The Future characters and treating old Marty and young Marty as two separate people. See, in the ’50s, DC put Wonder Woman in a bunch of bizarre paradoxical time-travel adventures in which she teamed up with two younger versions of herself (one as a teenager and one as a baby) and her mother, and they fought dragons and swordfish, because these are comic books and not gold-leafed tomes of literature. Remember what we said about the early video game industry? Double that for Silver Age comics. Haney evidently only glanced the covers of these issues, because he couldn’t be expected to read a comic about a bunch of women. Consequently, he wrote Wonder Girl into the Teen Titans as a completely separate character. Infant Wonder Woman (named Wonder Tot, because comic books excel at being comic books) missed out on a Teen Titans membership card for some reason. Well, maybe if Wonder Tot had stuck the goddamn landing … However, fans of Wonder Woman quickly pointed out this bizarre blunder, and DC was forced to hastily retcon Wonder Girl’s backstory. It turns out that this Wonder Girl is a different person after all — a girl named Donna Troy who developed Amazonian powers and decided to take on the mantle. Because in comics, there’s no corner out of which you cannot write yourself. #1. Where The Wild Things Are Was Created Because The Author Had Trouble Drawing HorsesOrdinarily, if you pitch a children’s book about a little boy getting stranded on an island filled with gigantic, grotesque monsters, international law requires you to phone Roald Dahl and ask for his permission first. Also, your mind’s eye will probably conjure up an image that is more H.P. Lovecraft than Richard Scarry. Author Maurice Sendak turned this concept into the beloved children’s book Where The Wild Things Are — which, incidentally, is full of illustrations that look like H.P. Lovecraft and Richard Scarry got into a fierce doodling war on the same cocktail napkin. Lovecraft won. But in Sendak’s original vision for the book, the titular “wild things” weren’t monsters at all; they were horses. He originally pitched the idea to his editor as Where The Wild Horses Are, and was given the green light to write and illustrate it. Unfortunately, several months into the project, it became increasingly obvious that Sendak couldn’t draw a fucking horse if it were the ransom of the Universe. Eventually, his editor stopped tearing her hair out and asked “Maurice, what can you draw?” The answer was, obviously, horrific inhuman monstrosities. They decided that was going to have to do, considering the amount of money they had already pumped into the project, and Sendak was given the go-ahead to draw whatever the hell popped into his mind, changing the title to Where The Wild Things Are, because “things” could be anything. Including repressed family trauma. The idea of trying to endear a platoon of nightmare creatures to children could have been a disaster, but it became one of the most enduring classics of children’s literature, and one of the most successful last-minute audibles in history. source http://allofbeer.com/6-shockingly-dumb-reasons-people-invented-famous-characters/ from http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/04/6-shockingly-dumb-reasons-people.html Israeli PM appears in court in defamation case over claims his wife expelled him from official motorcade during furious argument Israels prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has appeared in court to deny a claim that his wife, Sara, expelled him from an official motorcade during a furious argument in 2015, endangering his security arrangements. The claims and counterclaims emerged during a high-profile defamation case that has brought together two of Israels longest-running political soap operas the battle between the countrys prime minister and its media, and claims about his wifes allegedly volatile behaviour. The libel case, in which the couple are claiming $76,000 (66,500) in damages, concerns a gossipy Facebook post by Igal Sarna, a prominent journalist at the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The post purported to describe a row between the Netanyahus that allegedly took place in a night-time motorcade of four cars between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Netanyahus deny the events described occurred. The case, and the Netanyahus appearance in court, comes as the prime minister is embroiled in several police investigations that have led to a slew of allegations being published in the Israeli media, including reports of gifts such as champagne, jewellery and cigars the couple are said to have received from wealthy benefactors. Netanyahu, who strongly denies any wrongdoing, insists the investigations will all come to nothing, because there is nothing. Meanwhile, he has taken to launching broadsides against the journalists behind some of the stories. Sarnas Facebook post appears small beer in comparison with some of the recent allegations against Netanyahu, but the couple have forged ahead with the case, accusing their long-time critic of a disgusting, cynical, low, mean-spirited attack intended to embarrass them publicly by means of ugly and false reports. Sarna told the court he had made the allegations in good faith based on several sources, adding that the incident bore features similar or identical to known episodes in the Netanyahus family life. Taking the stand on Tuesday, Netanyahu insisted the fight was fiction that never occurred and never could have happened. The hearing, which had been postponed several times at Netanyahus request, dramatised the bad blood between Netanyahu and many Israeli journalists. Referring to that theme in her evidence on Tuesday, Sara Netanyahu accused the media of fighting a 20-year crusade against her husband through her. To her knowledge, she had never in those years argued with her husband in an official car in the presence of a security detail, she said. Taking aim at Sarna in particular, she accused him of being inhuman in his treatment of her family. Sarna conceded in court that there were aspects of the story of which he was not entirely sure. I hadnt known whether Sara threw Bibi out of car, he told the court to laughter, using Netanyahus nickname. Or if he left of his own accord. Asked why he had posted on Facebook rather than offering the story to his paper, Sarna said it was because he believed it was small. For his part, the prime minister accused Sarna of throwing a biblical size flood of lies at me. Anyone who knows anything about convoy security knows that something like [the fight described] could not happen, Netanyahu told the court. In response, Sarnas lawyer accused the Netanyahus of suing not because the details in the Facebook post were false, but because they had been stung by a series of critical columns by the journalist. Netanyahu replied that they had sued over the post because this was super false. Asked whether he followed Sarnas Facebook posts, Netanyahu shot back: Its hard to follow so much crazy, surreal slander. I have other business to attend to. I cant even dedicate a moment of my time to this deluge. Sarnas claims appear to have touched a particular nerve in the Netanyahus, not least Sara, who has been buffeted by allegations of her behaviour in the prime ministers official residence. Last year a former housekeeper was awarded damages after a court found she had abused him and subjected him to irrational demands. Summing up the verdict in that case the judge ruled: The court had before it many testimonies indicating that the conditions of employment in the residence were harmful due to the behaviour of Mrs Netanyahu and her attitude to the employees. Those included exaggerated demands, insults, humiliation and outbursts of anger. The case continues. source http://allofbeer.com/netanyahu-hits-out-at-libellous-report-his-wife-threw-him-out-of-car/ from http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/04/netanyahu-hits-out-at-libellous-report.html Babies basically live the life of luxury. People wait on them hand and foot, cook for them, clean them, and let them sleep for a majority of the day. Plus, they get to be pushed around outside while just chilling in a stroller. But how do parents know if that stroller is really all that it’s cracked up to be? They take a giant replica out for a spin, despite how ridiculous it might look.
via: Contours Baby
via: Contours Baby
via: Contours Baby
via: Contours Baby
Via: Bored Panda source http://allofbeer.com/would-you-test-drive-one-of-these-giant-strollers/ from http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/04/would-you-test-drive-one-of-these-giant.html That vague progressivism is now a better way to sell beer than, say, hot chicks in bikinis, reflects shifting societal attitudes for which Heineken gets no credit Brands are not your friends. I know Im not the first person to say this, but it bears repeating. They dont care about social justice. They exist solely to sell you crap you probably dont need. Still, this hasnt stopped the liberal internet from wetting its collective pants over a recent feel-good political ad for Heineken beer. Created by Agency Publicis London, the ad features three pairs of British people, most likely actors, who hold disparate political views. A man who doesnt believe trans identity is legitimate is paired with a woman who favors transgender rights and is later revealed to be transgender herself. A man who doesnt believe in climate change is paired with one who does. A man who describes himself as a member of the new right and an enemy of feminism but notably does not cop to being racist is paired with a young, black feminist. After meeting in an empty warehouse, each pair performs a team-building exercise of sorts: building a bar. Blissfully unaware that their partners hold beliefs they think are insane (some correctly), they form a friendly bond. Once the bars are completed, their views are revealed to one another and theyre given the choice to GTFO or talk it out over a nice, frosty Heineken. And what do you know, they all stay. The new right dude even says smash the patriarchy and the transphobe refers to the trans woman as a girl. So much progress in such a short time! The tagline: Heineken: open your world. Liberal bloggers wasted no time in proclaiming this the antidote to that Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad. Heinekens new ad gets totally political, and its surprisingly great, crowed Upworthy. Heineken shows Pepsi the right way to make a politically charged ad, proclaimed Mashable, seeming to forget that there isnt one. Some will rightly be offended by the idea that the trans woman and the (presumably) cis woman, respectively, were asked to have friendly conversations with men who refused to acknowledge their basic human rights at least, not until they drank Heinekens magical anti-bigotry elixir. Of course, politics are not just a matter of individual enlightenment or lack thereof. Theyre about underlying social forces, which means empathy and dialogue can only take us so far, as can bonds forged before you knew someones political views. (Ask anyone whose family was torn apart by the 2016 election.) This ad doesnt exist to solve the worlds problems, but to make you buy a product by causing you to associate whatever warm fuzzies it elicits in you with its particular brand of carbonated yeast water. Have you learned nothing from Mad Men? That this ad was deemed good by most people just means it does a better job than other ads of hiding that fact. At least the Pepsi ad prompted people to join together in mockery of its clumsy attempts at co-opting resistance movements. If you hated the Pepsi ad but liked this one, what you are basically saying is, I want to be pandered to more effectively. Like all companies, Heineken is an amoral entity that treats human beings as expendable assets who exist purely to have their labor power exploited for the purposes of enriching its shareholders. Not because it is evil, but because it is incentivized to do so by our current economic system. Despite what green or woke brands may tell you, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. That vague progressivism is now a better way to sell beer than, say, hot chicks in bikinis, is a reflection of shifting societal attitudes for which Heineken can take no credit. If focus groups said theyd sell more beer by bringing back the hot chicks, theyd run all the red lights on the way to the Playboy mansion. Its advertisings raison dtre. The one thing I will grant Heineken is that alcohol lowers peoples inhibitions, which could lead to civil conversation about hot button issues. But unfortunately, given the realities of the world in which we live, such a booze-drenched meeting of the minds is just as likely to end in a fist fight.
source http://allofbeer.com/hate-the-pepsi-ad-but-love-the-heineken-one-youve-been-duped-jamie-peck/ from http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/04/hate-pepsi-ad-but-love-heineken-one.html |