Global Comment

Where the world thinks out loud

#WednesdayWisdom: An exhaustive but by no means complete list of people to blame for Saturn’s dying rings

A moody and dramatic image of saturn

You may have heard that Saturn is losing its rings at a catastrophic rate — but have you also heard about the upcoming heat death of the universe? The science on the latter is a bit less concrete, but either way, one thing is clear: Bad things are happening.

They are happening on all levels, both on your mundane, “why can’t I change the language on my Playstation account, what is this barbarism” level and on the grand, cosmic level.

As the sentient wig we refer to as Mr. President has taught us, when bad things are happening, the important thing is to blame someone else.

I personally have a very hard time believing that Saturn’s rings are being destroyed and the universe is losing heat — or whatever it’s actually doing — due to random factors we have absolutely no control over. Modern culture tells me I should have control over everything, after all, whether it’s my precise shade of blonde or my ability to make a fictional character on the screen choose one cereal over another.

So here is everyone and everything I want to scream at as I contemplate the world, the solar system, and the universe as it all falls apart:

Jacob Wohl

I know what you’re thinking. “Natalia, this kid is so incompetent he uses his mom’s phone number for his conspiracy needs, why even pay attention to him.”

But then again, it’s always better to be underestimated than overestimated. Incompetence can be a brilliant disguise. Just think of how dumb wobbegong sharks look — and how dumb “wobbegong” sounds as a name for a marine predator — until they attack.

And honestly, with people like Jacob Wohl in it, do you really think the universe wants to stick around?

Stephen Miller’s spray-on hair

According to very many religious texts, the end of the world comes about as the result of too much sin and abomination.

I frankly don’t know what’s more abominable than a guy who helps craft a policy on torturing migrant families at the border and then deigns to appear with spray-on hair in public as his encore.

People who get upset about “gymtimidation” if you make a tiny bit of noise while you work out

You know what? Sometimes, the culture of protecting everyone’s feelings at all costs really does go too far, and by that I mostly mean the culture of protecting the feelings of insecure dudes at the gym. The other day, I really pushed myself on an abduction machine, and gave a little sigh when I was done, only to have the guy on one of the machines next to me snap that I was “being rude” and “breaking [his] concentration.”

You’d think I’d screamed out a spontaneous orgasm, but no, it was a single sigh. I don’t know what was going on with the dude — maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe he’s a loser who has never heard a woman breathe heavily (lol) and was thus horrified by the experience — but have we all forgotten that we occupy physical bodies and that bodies tend to produce some noise when we push them to their limits?

I mean, are we disembodied spirits or do we have gym memberships for a reason? Honestly, does he want me to just go ahead and fart extremely loudly next time I run into him, because I have half a mind to eat some beans and get right on that… ?!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Stupid people misunderstand the physical world, and that is just pathetic and will obviously be the physical world’s undoing one of these days.

Jack Dorsey

Look, I like Twitter as much as the next bitchy journalist, but here I am, officially living in the Year of Our Lord 2019, and I still don’t understand what his extremely self-conscious retreat to a genocidal regime was about, and I am even more concerned about the recent revelation that he tried to have Azealia Banks make him an anti-ISIS amulet out of his beard hair.

I understand the news cycle is unrelenting, but can we please just fucking rewind to the beard hair thing for a second.

Maybe, just maybe, what’s really going on is that Dorsey isn’t having the right kind of amulets made. Maybe the goal should be a bit bigger than just ISIS (remember Carl Sagan’s speech about how we’re all living on a blue dot and that’s why our earthly cares are pathetic? Yeah).

Maybe, Jack, you should stop being so goddamn selfish and make an amulet that will protect us all — from yourself included.

Idiots who need to shut down the government of the most powerful country in the world in order to build a stupid wall that would make said country look weaker than ever

Look, this article isn’t really about the rings of Saturn or the universe’s potential demise.

I just want to scream at some folks.

If you think a dumb wall is going to make us safe — you don’t know much about history (honestly, look up at how ambitious wall projects tend to fare over time, you anti-intellectual buffoon). Or how things work in general. All you want is a tiny bit of symbolism, because you are afraid of our myriad of domestic problems and instead of wanting to deal with them head on and affect real change, you want to blame it on random poor foreigners like the coward that you are.

And next to cowardice like that, I’d just like to say that I accept the fact that Saturn is going its own way. Change is the nature of the game. You do you, Saturn. You do you.

 Photo: Jason Major