Hellooooo, Trash Pandas! I'm so glad to see you. "But Elinor," you say, "you can't see me. You are in my internet." Oh, am I? Do you know for a fact I'm not outside your window right now, gleefully watching you read? I didn't think so! I'm a Trash Panda, too, and creepin' around outside is how we all got into this mess. Now, are you ready for some gossip? I can tell by that little smile (that I can see, because I'm watching you) that the answer is yes. 🦝

Gunited States of America

It sure has been a bad week for good guys with guns! But mostly it's been bad for the innocent people they shot with their guns. Jeez, it's almost as if giving everybody crippling paranoia about (exaggerated) rampant crime and then also giving them deadly weapons was a bad call. Think about this if you ever feel compelled to complain about the FedEx or Amazon delivery person hurling a package at your front door and then bolting away instead of knocking. I think we'll have to update the "knock, knock" joke setup for our unprecedented times. Like, knock knock. Who's there? Nobody. Nobody who? Literally nobody. The jokes won't be funny, but perhaps our children need to learn that knocking on doors isn't funny. 

Fellow shooter Alec Baldwin has resumed production of his film Rust after it was shut down last year because he shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Charges against Baldwin were just dropped—a coincidence, I'm sure. Who is so desperate for an Alec Baldwin western that they can forget that filming it got a woman killed? I feel like this one could go unfinished. Besides, Baldwin's film career peaked with Beetlejuice and trying to top that is pointless. Throughout the accidental murder ordeal, Baldwin has stressed his gratitude for his wife, Hillary, and you can tell it's sincere by this pap walk:

"Build the wall! - Oprah

I bet you wouldn't think of Oprah being pro-wall, but now she is. Except this wall she favors isn't on the Southern border of the United States, but rather, it surrounds her extremely fancy Montecito home. The area has been impacted by flooding and landslides in recent years and Winfrey's new collection of boulders aims to keep her property safe. but it comes at the expense of all of her neighbors. There's even some concern that the boulders won't withstand an extreme event, meaning that instead of dealing with a regular landslide, her neighbors will get a landslide filled with cascading giant fucking boulders. Like, you get a boulder, and YOU get a boulder, and YOU get a boulder! Isn't it neat to watch the ultra-rich infrastructure their way out of climate change's wrath? It's almost as if they've never had to worry about the ecological harm done by their private jets, because they always knew they can just wall off their property when mountains start to melt. 

Elonbarrassmusk

Failed child submarine manufacturer Elon Musk kind of followed through on his threat to take away the blue checkmarks from people who aren't subscribed to Twitter Blue. Unsurprisingly, the implementation has been shitty and confusing and embarrassing:

I've never had a blue checkmark so I don't care at all!*

Not satisfied with spending billions on an implosion, last week Musk also spent billions on an explosion: his Space X's rocket Starship blew up shortly after takeoff. Musk and his team of sad boys tried to say that simply getting it off the launchpad counts as a victory, but if this were true I feel like they wouldn't have announced a plan to land Starship several thousand miles away. Though not acknowledged publicly, Musk's true victory was that his ex Grimes was there and they congratulated the team. I kind of wonder if Musk had blown up the rocket first and gotten Grimes's attention that way, he maybe wouldn't have also blown up Twitter, but I guess we'll never know.  

Speaking of space things, a satellite is gently falling back to Earth, and NASA says that the danger to any human is low. Specifically, odds are 1 in 2,647. That number doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so I looked up the odds of other things happening, in order to place it appropriately in my fear index. The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million, and the odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are 1 in 247 million, and since I believe wholeheartedly that both of those things are going to happen to me, I guess it's safe to assume that I will also be crushed by a satellite. Hopefully it happens after I'm rich—maybe I can build one of those Oprah walls to protect myself.

For My 19th Birthday, I Got a Union Card and a Moisture-Wicking Coat

(The above is a reference to the classic Bruce Springsteen song "The River" and if that didn't land with you, I'd like you to make some changes in your life, like, yesterday. The problem is not that I'm old.) The other day I mentioned in Good Morning, News that outdoor store REI announced that it planned to close its NW Portland location due to theft, or maybe because it had "outgrown its space," depending on which bullet point from the press release you wanna underscore. However, our friends at Oregon Business shared that the employees of this very REI were in early stages of organizing their union. Not a good look, REI! I mean, gore tex isn't generally a good look on anyone, but it's especially uncute when it's styled with union-busting. 

Has this column seemed extra dark? I feel like it has, and I'm sorry about that. I promise to start shopping for good news stories for next week. In the meantime, since we can't knock on strangers' doors, let's think of other nice things we can do for our neighbors:

Thank you for reading, and for not shooting anyone.

Allergically,

*I care deeply. If I didn't, I wouldn't write about Twitter so much. My personal life is very normal and nice, but I'm a bitch who lives for drama, and Elon is cringe but his idiot platform scratches an itch. Trust me, I hate me, too.