Huh. I guess we were right?

Defense Secretary: Mr. President, we have a situation developing in the Middle East.
President Trump: Do you like what I’ve done with the Oval Office? Incredible, right? Have you ever seen anything like this?
Defense Secretary: Mr. President, there’s a matter that…
President Trump: I show this place to very few people. Presidents, Kings… and they walk in, they look around, and they really can’t believe what they’re seeing.
Defense Secretary: It’s very nice, Mr. President, sir, but there’s a situation in Libya needs your attention. It seems that…
President Trump: Get to the point, get to the point.
Defense Secretary: We have fears that Muammar Gaddafi will begin exterminating those involved in…
President Trump: You don’t like him very much, though, do you? Be honest.
Defense Secretary: Excuse me?
President Trump: Gaddafi. You’ve never been a big fan.
Defense Secretary: Mr. President, I don’t think my personal feelings about….
President Trump: Tell the truth!
Defense Secretary: Well, I don’t know that his particular approach to the current crisis is one that…
President Trump: Wow. You are a talker, do you know that? Could you please get to the point?
Defense Secretary: I’m just saying that I wouldn’t necessarily endorse his particular…
President Trump: That’s it! Look, I love you, but you never shut up. You really don’t.
Defense Secretary: Mr. President, sir, you asked me if…
President Trump: I’m sorry, I hate to do this, but… You’re fired.
Defense Secretary: Sir, I was only answering…
President Trump: Enough! Now get out of my office.
Defense Secretary: Mr. President, sir! You asked me…
President Trump: Get out of here! Out!
Defense Secretary: Mr. President! I only…
President Trump: Out! Goodbye!
The Defense Secretary exits.
President Trump: Wow. I love him, but what a chatterbox.
Chief of Staff Ivanka Trump: He really took that badly.
President Trump: Well, I had to do it. I had to.
Chief of Staff Ivanka Trump: You did.
President Trump: He left me no choice.
Chief of Staff Ivanka Trump: That’s true.
President Trump: I am running a great, great country. Who’s next?

Heather Havrilesky is the author of Disaster Preparedness, a memoir published by Riverhead Books in January 2011. She was Salon.com’s TV critic for seven years and cocreated Suck.com’s Filler before that. She has dispensed misguided advice at the rabbit blog since 2001.

Photo by Michele Sandberg via Wikimedia Commons.

I’m starting to get the sense that no one’s sure if the new (posthumous, unfinished) David Foster Wallace book is “funny” or not.

You know what would help solve the fake “deadlock” that may shut down the government at midnight? If Planned Parenthood could save money by not having to go state by state to defend legal abortion in courts from Arizona to Ohio to Missouri to Connecticut to Iowa. Since their public policy expenditures are something like $55 million, and Planned Parenthood’s government contracts and grants are only something like $363 million, none of which is used to pay for abortion services, they could get closer to not needing your government money if half the states in the country would stop pushing stupid laws. (Though the best part is, Planned Parenthood and its fellow litigants often get their legal bills paid, since they frequently win their cases against these stupid laws.) Also, everyone needs to stop saying that “abortion” is what is leading to the government shutdown, since the federal government is not allowed to provide funds for abortions. Really, the Republicans in actuality just don’t want you to get your sexually transmitted diseases treated.

What is up with science? Why is it so fickle? First we learn that wine helps you not get cancer: now, wine and its friends conspire to give you cancer, at a rate of two or more drinks a day. (So: any amount of drinking after your two lunch-time drinks.) I’m sure that the Daily Mail is explaining this research study accurately, given just how good they are at not being wildly dramatic about science.

Also, fun footnote: apparently 41% of men in Lushcrime Island consume more than 12.5 ounces of alcoholic beverages each and every day, if my metric conversion is correct, when they are not glassing or rioting in football stadiums. Or, rather, whilst they are rioting and glassing.

This is not confidence-inspiring in the slightest: “Nato refuses to apologise for an air strike that hit anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya, saying it had not been aware rebels had tanks.”

Amy Jean Porter has some nice prints for sale. And also you can preorder her book, Of Lamb, right now

!

“Studio executives considered casting Bette Midler and Eddie Murphy as the leads in Driving Miss Daisy.” I’ll be up all night thinking about that!

USA Today… is adopting a pageview-bonus system for writers! (Tardy! This probably means they’ll be putting up a metered paywall system in five years.) Hysteria about pageview bonus pay was at its height a few years ago, when everyone realized it would encourage a rush to the bottom, as writers chased pageviews for crappy little scads of cash thrown at them by their corporate owners, and, actually, that is pretty much where a sizable chunk of the online media world now finds itself, culturally speaking: at the bottom, lips to the drain. (No one listens to Cassandra, etc.)

The rumbles and teases of pilot season are the worst. Like “awards season,” pilot season basically goes on for half the year now. It’s too much for the heart to bear! That we’re allegedly going to see “17th Precinct,” which is, uh, “a police procedural set in a world where magic exists,” and which stars basically 9/10ths of the cast of “Battlestar Galactica,” AND, AND? A show starring Jason Isaacs? I could just die. Both of these please! (I love Jason Isaacs way too much.) I basically feel like David After Dentist* right now. But we know what’ll end up with: NCICSI: Milwaukee, or whatever. (But not the Jason Isaacs show! That’ll go on TV and it’ll be on for foreeeverrrrrr.)