Hello, my babies, and welcome back to the Trash Report! It's your girl, Elinor Jones, blissfully full of nog and rest. Happy belated war on Christmas to every last one of you. I know, I knowâI've been coasting off reruns the past couple of weeks, but I've missed you very much so let's make like Xtina and get dirrty.
Excellence (and Not) Among Former Presidents
On Friday Trump posted the following to Truth Social: "Where are you? When are you coming to the âCenter of the Universe,â Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Yearâs Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT,â It seems pretty obvious that this was supposed to have been a text message to Elon Musk, but Trump is a very old man with an already limited and quickly dwindling grasp of technology, so instead he shared it as a public post. One might wonder: if he could so easily accidentally post something so dumb, what's to stop him from tweeting top secret information meant to stay in a highly encrypted messaging platform? And one might imagine the response to be: probably nothing! And this man is about to be in charge again, of a bunch of stuff, and there isn't anything any of us can do about that now. Since I haven't written this column in a bit I wanted to start us off with some level-setting. We will get jokey, but we still start from a place of deep depression and desperation. We all on the same page? Okay, let's move on.
In other former president news, Jimmy Carter passed away yesterday at the ripe old age of 100. Everybody in the club pour out some peanuts for our boy Jimmy tonight, and put on a sweater like nobody's watching. President Biden shared a statement on Carter's passing, referring to Carter as his "dear friend" and like, yes, I buy that, they are basically peers as they are not that far apart in age! Get thisâJoe Biden and Jimmy Carter are as close in age as George Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney. Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter could have gotten married and we wouldn't have found it icky, that's how close in age they are. That's how close in age our current sitting president is with a president who stopped being president 40 years ago who has since died of old age.
Jimmy Carter spent the final decades of his life working in service, and his organization Habitat for Humanity has built 5,000 houses in over 14 countries. Kinda makes Barack Obama and his little lists seem a bit less impressive, huh?
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Stars: They're Just Like UsâBad at Gifts
In a recent interview with the BBC, Prince William shared that he once totally air-balled at Christmas by gifting his then-girlfriend Kate Middleton a pair of binoculars for Christmas. Nor should she! A future king does not purchase his future queen binoculars! Queens don't need to see at a great distance. They have people for that. If he was buying her binoculars, it was as good as saying "you might need these some day like when it's my coronation and someone else is gonna be queen." Prince William said "She's never let me forget that" and I like to imagine she pulls them out after two glasses of wine to focus in on his bald-ass head like "hang on, if I zoom in some more I might see something, ha ha ha."Â
Speaking of the English, Great British Baking Show breakout star Dylan Bachelet revealed what he stole from the tent this past season (in addition to our hearts) and it's a digital baking thermometer. Which is extremely boring! But I gotta hand it to the New York Times, they could put this man's photo on top of any article and I will click through. I don't give a shit about thermometers, but I want to know what Dylan is up to. I have no intention whatsoever of objectifying this young man, and I don't mean this in a weird way, but I want there to be a GBBO animated spinoff where he solves a series of Scooby Doo-esque mysteries, if that makes sense????? Â
Stars: They're Just Like UsâHorny for Mariah Carey
The reigning queen of Christmas Mariah Carey held a series of concerts in Brooklyn for the holiday, and Rihanna fangirled as any of us rightly would. But Rihanna also had the nerve and the access to get Mariah to sign her boob with a Sharpie. You know how sometimes when people get autographs from famous people, they'll get that autograph tattooed permanently on their body? I don't think Rihanna would get Mariah's autograph tattooed onto her boob, but I do believe that a certain brand of pop culture obsessive will get a tattoo of this moment when Mariah autographed Rihanna's boob. Will it be that person? Who's to say. Â
Itâs a cold and itâs a broken âcowabungaâ
â Irrationally Calm (@direbeard.bsky.social) December 20, 2024 at 5:25 PM
Local Trash
Did anybody else's family get absolutely annihilated by illness in the past couple of weeks? My kid and I were knocked the fuck out by the flu. Like, three days in a row of 102 degree temperatures, including on Christmas day. We had to cancel many holiday plans and it sucked ass. It turns out that Oregon is tied with Louisiana right now for "fluiest," so yay us. If you haven't gotten a flu shot yet, please do me a Christmas solid by getting one immediately.Â
In other local news, I chatted with Mercury alum Megan Burbank for an article at our sister paper The Stranger about the hell that is getting an IUD. (Not for everyone! But definitely for me.) As we enter our second Trump era, I really recommend that you get as informed as possible about all the ways you can prevent unwanted pregnancies. There are tons (for now) and a lot of them are pretty painless. (And if you've got a functioning wiener but don't want kids and you're rubbing your head like "as an ally, it is so hard for me to see how hard this is for women," I hope you're looking into getting a vasectomy, which is a quick procedure for which you will be given fun drugs.)
And that is a wrap on 2024, darling trash pandas. My new year's resolution for this year was to become famous, which didn't really happen although I have felt the love from all of you and I think that's good enough for me. (I told my daughter I have fans and she insisted I do not. "I don't feel like you'd be popular," she said devastatingly.) I cherish all of you and I hope that you cherish somebody cute this week.
Auld Lang Synely,
