I’d intended to talk about how I was doing post-COVID vaccine, but then Warnock & Ossoff did their old parishoner/boss John Lewis proud and Donald Trump instigated the Stupid Putsch and here we are.

So I was more than a bit mad yesterday when I heard that Fox News was trying to act like it was BLM and antifa that were invading the Capitol and doing violence¹ and wondered what I can do. There’s regular, organized campaigns against their advertisers, but the real money they make is in the fees they charge cable providers for the privilege of carrying their programming, whether anybody watches it or not. And you can’t unbundle and get rid of single channels, everybody knows that.

But I tried anyway, and what the hell? It worked. And I told the world to do the same and hopefully a few zillion people are calling up their cable companies and asking for Fox/Fox Business/OANN/Newsmax/The Blaze/etc to not get any more of their money. And even if the cable companies won’t do that (cf: Comcast continues to be the worst), they’re hearing from a bunch of people who are upset as hell about the propaganda networks (key phrase I used: I will not have any of my money used for the material support of terrorism) and will hopefully use that as justification to negotiate those carriage fees down.

I mean, the cable companies don’t want to pay that money to Fox/etc, they want to keep it. And yes, the cable industry as a whole is terrible, but if they can take a dime or two from Fox (et al) for every one of their subscribers for every month going forward? That’s a hell of a lot more money than any ad campaign you could get yanked off the air. Murdoch is supposed to have cut ties with Trump as it is, time for him to feel some financial sting rather than just walk away.

So I started typing while I was cradling the phone to my ear² and talking with “James” (surely not his real name, which I do not begrudge him) and he listened very politely and I said that if he couldn’t that I’d like him to pass the word to his superiors and he found a way to do it. No bundle changes, just Fox and its ilk will not arrive in my house any longer, and my share of the fees is withheld. I thanked him, and said I hoped he got a lot of similar calls. Weirdly, although the cable industry is verifiably the worst, I’ve always had good dealings with Cablevision/Optimum.

I have no idea if it’ll work at scale, but it was tremendously satisfying — and likely more productive than the time I spent yelling at Rudy Giuliani³ on Twitter.

I also spent time today calling my Senators and Congressman (had to go with their local district offices — when you call, convey to the staffer taking the message your profound relief that they/their colleagues weren’t hurt after yesterday’s disgrace) to warn them not to trust anything electrical or electronic that was left behind in their offices and oh yeah to impeach that motherfucker again, to send the architects of insurrection the fuck out of Congress (lookin’ at you, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz; and what’s your deal anyway, Ted? Afraid you would lose the Most Hated By Your Cowokers trophy to Josh?), to bring down some scrupulously fair but motherfucking consequences on Y’all Qaeda and Vanilla Isis, and to fix the injustices of the last 4 years, not to mention the last 400.

So that’s why comments are off for the next while here at Fleen. I thought it prudent, even though the MAGA chuds seem to leave me alone. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get back to comics at some point, but we’ll take it day by day. Take care of yourselves, friendos, there’s more than just COVID out there that wants to wreck everything, and it’s going to be a long-haul project to repair all the damage.

And get the shot when it’s offered. My arm still hurts, but it’s a damn sight better than COVID.

Spam of the day:

which the conventional graphic symbols are executed. drafts of literary works

Something in the Master Spam Wordsalad Generator Algorithm is really hung up on the idea of manuscripts right now. 90% of what I’m getting reads like this.

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¹ It was a pretty damn lily-white crowd and they were plainly the fa that antifa does us the favor of fighting. Plus they all keep doing incredibly stupid shit like posting video of themselves or giving on the record interviews bragging about doing crimes. Bunch a’ real brain geniuses there.

² Awkwardness, anger, and multitasking are to blame for the typos in my tweets. Swear.

³ I dream of the day I can call him a craven shitstain to his face, but for now it’ll have to be via the internet. All the same, if he spends even a fraction of a second with his eyeballs having to process my visceral hatred of him, if I take even a little bit of his hauteur away, it’ll have been 47 seconds well spent.