Today I learned about bear attacks and robot wolves.

It’s still better than the mainstream news.

I was going to adult today and actually read some of the news. I was going to try really hard to understand why such weird things are happening without immediately defaulting to, “These people are so stupid they may actually forget to breathe one day,” which would be the only decent thing they ever accomplished.

Four seconds into being an open-minded adult, I screwed up and read an article about Mike “Masturbate With Your Son” Johnson speaking on how the $174,000 a year paid to representatives ‘hasn’t kept up with inflation.’

SHUT. UP.

Let’s do my least favorite thing: math.

Congress is in session 147 days a year. If they’re making $174k a year, that breaks down to roughly $1,183.000 each work day. It also affords them more than half a year off to pursue other methods of work that doesn’t involve insider stock trading.

True talk: ICU nurses don’t make $2k a day. Hell, some of the best-looking dancers at the Cheta III probably don’t pull in $2k a day. The only regular folks I know making $2k a day are doing it in a highly illegal manner, or they’re doctors/lawyers/actuaries/corporate shitbags.

The representatives who can’t begin to afford their lifestyles of the rich and famous without padding the coffers with illegally gotten stock gains are big sad that anyone would attempt to keep them from trading stock they have influence over.

Mike (MWYS) Johnson had the absolute gall to stand up in front of God and everybody and tell Americans currently making a $7.25/hr minimum wage that two grand a day isn’t enough money for what they do.

By the by, it takes someone making $7.25/hr two hundred and seventy-five hours (almost seven 40-hour weeks of work) to earn what a congressional representative makes in one day.

Let me reiterate: SHUT. UP. MIKE. Just shut up. Shut all the way up and then shut up some more, you insipid little troll.

Needless to say, that concluded my foray through mainstream news and adulting, because my blood pressure shot up to ‘holy shit over oh no’ levels just thinking about the absurdity and bald-faced goonery of allowing people who make laws that influence the stock market to invest in the same stock market they manipulate. It’s a no-brainer and defending it by poor-mouthing the poor is base, unkind, and obtuse in the most reprehensible way.

So I went to odd news, like I always do, and learned something about Japan that I did not know.

Yay me.

Japan apparently has a bear problem.

Climate change is real, kids. The bears are telling Japan it’s real by coming down from the wilderness where they used to hang out and eat acorns, into populated areas. It’s real because their acorns aren’t growing (climate change) and they’re starving to death, and they need some snackies, FFS.

With numbers like 50,000 bear sightings on an island the size of Montana there are bound to be mauling and attacks on humans, and there have been hundreds recently. Duh.

Japan did what Japan does. They used technology and a rubber mask that would scare a demon out of a possessed person in the assembly of a robot wolf used to deter hungry bears.

It’s really very on-brand for Japan to create a monster to solve a problem. - Picture from Digital Trends

Apparently, the robot wolf isn’t new. It was designed for farmers to keep wild boars and other intrusive animals out of farmland. Tech people didn’t think it was anything more than an oddity that would fall to the wayside, especially at $4k a unit. Little did they know the bears were going to change everything.

For four thousand dollars you can purchase the most terrifying-looking thing I can imagine seeing in my yard, beyond a bear noshing on a human arm. The robot wolf has glowing infrared eyes and belts out everything from human voices to mechanical sounds to scare off unwanted pests, and make unaware humans drop dead from a stroke, or at the very least, poop their pants upon seeing it.

The company can’t make them fast enough for Japanese consumers. (There’s a stock tip for ya’.)

So if you’re planning a trip to Japan, skip the acorn-scented soap and take bear spray instead.

Follow me for more avoidance of the decline of human civilization via weird news. Until next time, watch out for bears and don’t forget to turn it up just because you’re Frail and Bedazzled. We’re gonna make it, even if it takes robot wolves.