Flying the Stars and Stripes upside down is a distress call. And at least in my neck of the woods, authorities will respond to it; on occasion the students at high schools tasked with hoisting the flag in the morning will sometimes attach it upside down, and police or fire show up to ask what’s wrong.

The closest it came to being used as a slur in the US is to accuse someone of clumsiness. We never called people suffering from nervous system diseases “spastics.” Don’t put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby.

“Spastic” and even “spaz” is used in the US but isn’t considered an ablest slur here. My understanding is the British used it as a slur for cerebral palsy or parkinson’s disease patients, where in the US it simply means an uncoordinated jerky motion and/or clumsiness. Let’s not mince words, the United States of America is perfectly capable of generating slurs; but this one isn’t ours.

And the act of traveling on said highway was…surfing. For some reason. The 90’s were stupid, and I’m from there.

Syke. Or psych. Early 90’s kid slang, had a definition akin to just kidding or fooled you but more mean spirited. Said to mark the previous statement as intended purely to mess with the listener’s mind or psych them out. Similar in spirit to ending a sarcastically spoken sentence with “NOT!” though distinct.

“Yeah man, you can drive my car. Psych! You’re not touching my ride.”

The more I type about it, the less “psych” looks like a valid English word.

Limey detected. That’s a Bri’ish thing.

It wasn’t a TV show, it was a commercial. For acrylic nails.

So I was like 5, this would have been in 1991 or so, there was a commercial on daytime television among the blue star ointment and dirt devil vacuums for some brand of acrylic nails that were easy to put on and take off, and they contrasted this against the “other brand” that showed a woman peeling it off and it had this stringy yellow goo underneath. I didn’t understand what fake nails were, so I thought it was just a woman casually tearing her fingernail off.

To this day I compulsively trim my nails very short, I cannot stand the thought of bending my fingernails back.

Why do I remember that specific visual from that episode and basically nothing else? The…mall was in the pinball machine?

There was the episode with Gilbert Gottfried who was a radio announcer, there was an episode about a ghost monster thing in the pool that the kid turned orange with chemicals…some 30 year old neurons are firing over here folks, and they ain’t firing that bright.

21st century satire is a pissy little bitch, ain’t it?

Never assume reasonableness when businessman will suffice.

My understanding was it was for getting the game out on early access by a certain date, which they were going to hit, which is why they were unceremoniously and illegally fired.

As much as I like Subnautica, I’m not buying Subnautica 2 if Krafton stands a chance at seeing any of the revenue. I might be the only human capable of voting with my wallet, and I’m going to use this power.

I’m American, I strongly believe in collateral damage, I will willingly make the children of the Unknown Worlds Entertainment staff go hungry. That’s the choice Unknown Worlds’ higher-ups made going into business with shifty Asian shit-for-fucks promising executive bonuses bigger than the gross revenue of anything their studio has made.

Subnautica was Unknown Worlds Entertainment’s biggest seller. I don’t have exact sales figures but Wikipedia says “over 5 million copies.” Assuming every copy sold at the full retail price of $30, that’s a gross revenue of $150 million. Below Zero sold for the same price and probably fewer copies, so the entire Subnautica franchise has grossed an estimated $300 million total. They have other games which are small potatoes compared to Subnautica. So, you’re the CEO of Unknown Worlds, you know your games pull about $150 million gross each. What kind of smoke do the Koreans blow up your ass to convince you your next game is going to do so well they’ll be able to cover $250 million in bonuses while still covering rent, bills and normal wages?

I think I can answer that: movies that form a cult tend to land with a demographic, often one it wasn’t originally sold to. Clue, for example. Didn’t really land with its intended audience of baby boomers in the mid-80’s in large part due to the “one of three endings” theater gimmick. The movie found its audience with young millennials on Comedy Central, especially in its repaired “all three endings” format which increased the runtime and kept the frenetic farcical energy in the last act up longer.

What demographic was going to form a cult around Mom And Dad Save The World? It’s a movie by and about boomers, targeting the Gen X stupidity fad. Clue was ahead of its time, MADSTW is precisely OF its time. It’s not what the secret cabal of gay theater kids always wanted like Rocky Horror Picture Show. And MADSTW is unfortunately competent, so the “so bad it’s good” MST3K/Red Letter Media crowd won’t touch it. That and Jeffrey Jones has been canceled so there’s a bunch of people who won’t watch it out of principle now. So there’s no group this movie will land with.

By that logic we’re going to have to burn down Beetlejuice and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Battletech is basically all of that except gay. I’m trying to think of any gay characters in Battletech…Rhonda Snord? Maybe a couple of the clanners?

Katherine Steiner-Davion (Victor’s crazy sister; not her grandmother, Actual Katrina Steiner) might be considered aromantic…or a psychopath, which I think is an overriding factor.

I wonder if it’s more illegal to be gay in the Draconis Combine or in the Capellan Confederation.

There’s a “rumored” lesbian love affair between Heather Durant and Terens Amaris which results in house Amaris ruling over the Rim Worlds Republic, teeing up her great x5 grandson Stefan to essentially ruin civilization forever. So that’s…kind of canon.

A poor imitation. That’s clearly none pizza with up beef, not left beef.

Diabolical, isn’t it?

Violence. You want a revolution, you’re gonna have to kill some people.

I do love how they did Bohemian Rhapsody, and got around having muppets sing “mama, just killed a man. Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he’s dead” by having Animal repeatedly yell “MAMA!”

Mom And Dad Save The World (1992)

Stars Terri Garr and Jeffrey Jones as the Nelsons, an ordinary set of suburban boomer parents who routinely go on vacations/car trips. On such a trip, they are abducted station wagon and all by Emporer Todd (played by Jon Lovitz) of planet Spengo, a desert planet inhabited by a species of dog headed if male, fish headed if female creatures, and humanoid idiots. Ridiculousness ensues.

It bombed at the box office and is poorly reviewed but I had fun with it.