I spy an Archie Digest reprinting A 1987 story where Much dad’s young cousin — Souphead (???)– has purchased a box of random crappy comics. So, Highest reads off the titles — “Ninja Worm, Bob the Android” —

And stop right there. There is blank space before “Android”, indicative of an erasure. So what word have the editors of Archie Comics removed from the original 1987 title? ” Anorexic”. Now objectionable in the 2010s, lest kids reading this pick up on the harmful effects of Androids’ frail body images. The thing is inasmuch as this is a parody, it is a takeoff of the glut of adjective laden ripoff which came in the result of the surprise sensational success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The humor is flattened into nonexistence — why, I do not believe I woulda even remembered the title “Bob the Android” as I did “Bob the Anorexic Android” which, when I saw in 1992 I naturally thought — “Why, that is a title I want to read!”

We are now at an interesting point where rap and hip hop performers are dropping Trump out of their old songs, a shifted signifier that represents something else than he did in the 1990s and 2000s — forgetting for a moment that this is after his race baiting with the Central Park 5, but I guess such items things multiply in the 2010s and are less ameliorated by the signifier of meaningless golf games. The puzzling thing here is the replacement of Tiger Woods who … Um… I suppose to fit into something approaching the original meaning with Trump should have a new verse put in regarding Tiger World’s taste in White Blonde women?

I know there was a hubub A few years’ back when rightwing Internet noted that Canada’s broadcast of Home Alone 2 had edited out Trump’s appearance — and they were having none of it with the response that this editing for time had been shown prior to 2015. Trump’s showing was a contractual stipulation for use of his property, superfluous additions to movies with filmmakers grinning and baring it — Trump’s appearance then signalling nothing but his own ego — harmless enough, if you were a rich guy with property filmmakers needed to film you would insert yourself in batches of movies, wouldn’t you?

Trying to see the future as allusions to Trump get knocked out lest we get kids asking “Mom, what was Trump?” — and returning to the editorial shifts of Archie Comics as they edit around changing cultural mores and lines getting shifted to more safety —

A curious trio of alterations.  Highest in terms of arbitrariness, the decision to fully cover Melody’s midriff — arbitrary in the sense that the digest this is reprinted in has reprinted stories where girls are in much the same dress.  I suppose the difference may be that they aren’t objectified — which simply means we don’t see the Tex Avery cartoon buffoonery reaction.  The second change makes some sense — the word “stimulating” by a hither come Melody is changed to “satisfying” — stimulating too attached to a suggestion of increased sex drive.  The third change has “Go suck a lemon, you dumb rich kid” changed to “Go suck a lemon!  You’re the pits, rich kid!”.  In both cases, confounding as it is coming out of the mouth of a rich kid — the management coming in with monopolistic practices to squash a little kid’s lemonade stand whose scheme was undone by Melody wearing a skimpy outfit — but you can’t be too mean about it and use the direct insult ” dumb rich kid”.  Or maybe the editor thought that “You’re the pits” makes for a play on words as… do lemons have pits? Or it is a reticence to use the word “suck”.

Trump is changed to Tiger, though we gots some photos of the two together.   It begs a question of how much association is needed before the erasure needs to get pulled out.  I am wondering if Archie Comics has any likenesses of Billy Bush for Access Hollywood that they will just have to on the fly change one further degree away from any suggestion of inference.

Your “aw” Biden story of the day.

On their first overseas trip since her husband Joe became president, U.S. First Lady Jill Biden had a simple message for the world emblazoned across the back of her jacket: “LOVE”.

“Well, I think that we’re bringing love from America,” said Biden of her black blazer with the word etched in large print on the back.

Last we checked in the realm of sentimental symbolism Joseph was handing her a dandelion. Not being a romantic, I scratched my head on that one — aren’t dandelions considered weeds?

Lest the article drop historical perspective — we gots this.

Jill Biden is not the first U.S. president’s wife to use a jacket to convey a message. Donald Trump’s wife Melania donned a coat with the words “I really don’t care, do u?” for a visit to a Texas shelter housing migrant children in 2018.

In a game of political inches based off of automatic partisan hatred*, and where the grand branding of “Transformational New FDR'” branding attempts crashes against the limitations of 50 – 50 Congresses and the electoral vantage of that which brung him here — a hodge podge of weary anti Trump anti Bernie sanity establishment seekers —

And I fail to understand Tom Perriello’s point on Joe Manchin. Man chin is not Per risk low is working off of his own damned principles — and that par for the course lightning rod role someone like Joseph Lieberman once played to spare someone like Senator Hillary Clinton.

But we can huddle into culture war debris and sticking messages of “love” on the back of jackets.

Come to think of it, Melanie Trump’s jacket message served the same branding symbolism purpose — a post modern “It’s all a game” meta narrative.

• on what is false and real equivalence in partisan attitudes toward Obama and Biden on one hand Trump on the other — the “economic up / down” feeling is a real equivalence; the “shaking foundation of democracy” is a false equivalence.

So. Trump, reportedly, believed that the Democrats were always on the cusp of dumping Joseph Biden and replacing him with Hillary Clinton or Michele Obama. I suspect projection on two fronts — a Clinton and Obama obsession and scheming of such politicos mixed with an understanding of “how things work” based on that brief time period when some Republicans were aiming to dump him and go with Pence after the Access Hollywood tape came to light.

He also buys into a cocksure Biden’s unpalatable — ironically undone by Trump in not “really” going after him lest the Democrats and either Clinton or Obama having time to pull the switch. Of course, now we are in the realm of what suspect is post hoc rationalizing and excuse making. It is even probable it would not matter if Trump let slip the wars of “sleepy Joe” “senile!!!” — impressions baked into the cake as Biden kept his “basement strategy”.

Curious strategum in Missouri from a Gun toting Marine Democratic Senate hopeful.

Democrat Lucas Kunce, who is running for an open Senate seat in Missouri, released a campaign ad Wednesday mocking one of his opponents, Republican Mark McCloskey, who drew national outrage last summer when he and his wife pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their St. Louis mansion.

In the video, Kunce cocks a firearm, appears to aim it at something, and then says: “You know what? Forget it. I don’t have to do this type of thing… Stunts like that, those are for those clowns on the other side, like that ‘Mansion Man’ Mark McCloskey.”

Kunce ― a former Marine who; declared his candidacy in March then challenges his opponent to apologize to the people he “threatened with deadly force.” He offers to give McCloskey a “U.S. Marine-led weapons training class” in return.

Have your cake and eat it too: I got a gun; I use it responsibly. The trouble is we saw this gambit from a Democratic Senate hopeful in Missouri in 2016. He lost — could not sway past the “avote for him is a vote for gun grabber Schumer and company” line.

Vladimir Putin trolling us all.

Putin reiterated that Russia rejects accusations of interfering in U.S. presidential elections, and he spoke critically of the U.S. response to the Capitol attack, which took place as Congress prepared to certify that Biden had defeated then-President Donald Trump in November.

“They weren’t just a crowd of robbers and rioters. Those people had come with political demands,” he said.

The political demands being opposite to any democratic process.

At Summer Camp when I was maybe 9, maybe 10. It was the last day’s breakfast time, and I was feeling tired in the morning. I reached into the duffel bag and put on whatever sweatpants I grabbed. Sometime right after breakfast I came to a sudden realization with a hole in the bum of my pants — I was actually wearing an oversized sweatshirt as pants. I had to run off — squickly knotting my “pants” up — to the camp cabin, not noticed and without getting the counselor’s permission — to quickly change my pants.

I hear the story of Trump and a gasp heard round the world — “OMG! Is Trump wearing pants backwards?” No, and it is that kind of tale I have become sick of hearing. From this is born the phrase “living rent free in your mind”. But, had it been the case — well, I suppose such stuff happens sometimes and one can relate.

Sign of a Return to Normalcy:  The self checkout line at the chain Supermarket is no longer half closed.  I stood there out of habit waiting, not knowing that the every other closed arrangement was kaput, and startled by the cashier saying “you now– they’re all open.”. Huh.  It is a weird feeling,trying to figure out — am I less than six feet from the fellow customer right now?

Sign of a We’re Not There Yet.  I see plastered on a park bulletin a promotion for a usually annual mass bike ride. It tells me ” Remember your face mask”.  Bah.  Maybe I have a mildest of medical ailment in needing to breathe and seeing these do impair the process of breathing a tad but I never understood some smugsters’ claim of masks being of no (not minimal, mind you, but no — none whatsoever) impairment, so proceed with public policy according to such understanding — can go ahead and extend mask mandates for five years.  The issue here is simply that I cannot engage in any strenuous exercise with a mask — leave that to non strenuous.  Still, maybe this does equal a smaller gathering of traffic blockers. (No Naked Bike Ride Event.)

“When the elections become about the elections themselves” is the phrase Bill Maher throws out here, in the “slow moving coup” across multiple elections, on to the problem of the day — next time, in 2024, there’s not going to be that Brad Raffensperger guy — it will be those “Stop the Steal” people —

— I suppose Donald Trump has his sights on a more immediate coup, apparently taken to an August reinstatement.  Times are bizarre enough — the Arizona “recount”, finding new grounds to find suspicious ballots — looks liable to come to its preordained outcome of ” Trump won, bamboo ballots from China corrupted the results” — and I see comments on the bottom half of the Internet about how nervous the liberal elites are getting on the Asizona audit and its shovelling of these bamboo ballots from China —

And the 2024 Republican nomination is Trump’s for the taking.  Or, supposedly, he is about to face prosecution and prison.  A conspiracist’s viewpoint — or possible ameteur Trump psycho-analysis — may be that Trump wants back in in August to deal away that problem.