Marcela’s weekly digest: 1st November

Hi, I’m Marcela: I’m a comedian, I live Brooklyn, and I really like to tell people how to feel about the news. After wowing zoomers all over on TikTok by giving them news with a sense of humour and anarchy, I decided to start a weekly Sunday newsletter to share my feelings about more news. 

My weekly newsletter has evolved into this beautiful Tuesday weekly news column for shado which also covers international news. I hope the newsletter keeps you informed and makes you laugh a little. We live in hell and I believe humour helps keep this place a little bit cooler.

Last week I took a much-needed break to perform at a comedy show in Lake Placid but I’m back with my thoughts on ExxonMobil’s record profits, a woman unleashing bees on cops, the US government asking for a country to take the lead in invading Haiti, and the UK foreign minister telling the LGBTQIA+ fans visiting Qatar for the World Cup to respect the host nation’s criminalisation of LGBTQIA+ people. 

Onto the news…

News that made me spitball ideas

ExxonMobil broke its third quarter profit of 17 billion US dollars this quarter by bringing in 20 billion USD in profit, proving once again that what’s good for Exxon is bad for us and the planet. 

We know fossil fuels are bad for the planet, so can we please start treating Exxon and other oil companies’ profits as losses instead of profits? 

I don’t know how this would work exactly but I’m imagining for every one dollar oil companies make, an oil executive loses their private jet. Once we are done with private jets we can move on to the mansions. Then the clothes. I’m just spitballing here. Feel free to share your ideas if you have better ones. 

All ideas are welcome – except for ideas to nicely ask oil companies to share their profits like the Sith Lord in a suit, Joe Biden, asked. No Joe, I don’t want profits derived from terraforming the planet to kill us all! I want the terraforming to end now. (By terraforming, I mean global climate catastrophe caused by global climate change.)

Also Joe Biden: you are the president. Why are you asking corporations to play nice? Is it because you really work for corporations and you don’t want to make your employers angry by taking away their money? Tell the truth, Joe!

Sorry, I digress. Sometimes Joe just makes me so angry I forget what I’m talking about. Let’s get back to Exxon.

Exxon’s CFO claims the high profits are a result of “strong volume performance, including record refining volumes, rigorous cost control and higher natural gas realizations”. Stop lying, Exxon! We know you made all that money by gouging the price of gas so much people cry while filling up their gas tank, like gas is an onion.

The question is: who is going to stop Exxon and other oil companies from destroying the planet while making a lot of us cry? 

The answer is not Joe Biden. The answer is us.

News that made me come up with a superhero name for someone

One thing the Hampden County’s Sheriff Department in Massachusetts was not expecting was local heroRorie Wood who released a swarm of bees to prevent the police from evicting someone. 

As a vegan I would have previously never considered beekeeping as a hobby, but I’m willing to reconsider this now. 

According to Buzzfeed News, Rorie has been “charged with seven counts felony assault and one count of misdemeanor battery”, which is just not how you treat heroes.

They are not treating Rorie like the hero she is because Rorie is not like other superheroes. Rorie wears a beekeeper’s outfit instead of a cape and she doesn’t work with the police. Unlike Batman, Rorie knows the police are the real villains. 

We should call Rorie the Beewoman, defender of the tenants – because making people homeless is a true act of villainy that should be at least met with a swarm of bees. 

I know some of you are thinking. But Marcela, what if the bees hurt the deputies? To which I answer, then maybe the deputies should not be making people homeless. I’m actually happy to report that one of the deputies was stung.  

I’m too tired of people asking us to meet state violence with kindness. Do you think the sheriff’s office was going to kindly ask the person they were making homeless to leave peacefully if the person being evicted fought for their right to housing? Absolutely not.

So maybe next time a landlord calls the Hampden County Sheriff to evict someone, the sheriff’s office will hesitate because they’ll wonder whether Beewoman and her sidekicks are waiting for them.

News that made me call the United States government a gang

Ariel Henry, the unelected prime minister of Haiti, has requested a foreign intervention to “end” gang violence in the country and the United States of America is raising its hand to help like an eager student who did all the reading and wants everyone to know about it.

The United States government, the current chief invader of Haiti, has asked for a “country to lead” the invasion of Haiti like a teacher looking for a substitute teacher to replace them for a class they know they have no business teaching. 

The irony of a gang leading the charge to invade another country to stop gang violence is not lost on me or the people of Haiti. Yes, I’m referring to the US government as a gang because it is. 

Haitians immediately denounced Ariel Henry’s call for other countries to invade Haiti because every single time the United States, the United Nations, and other Western countries have come to “help”, things have gotten worse. This is because when they say “help” the United States and the United Nations mean to colonise and spread cholera. 

It’s like when I say I’m here to help bake cookies. I’m really here to eat all the cookie dough, and make sure only two cookies make it to the oven. Except I don’t put cholera in the cookies like the United Nations did to the water in Haiti in 2000. 

I also don’t forcefully occupy the kitchen for 19 years like the United States occupied Haiti. So I should still be invited to cookie baking parties, but the United States, the UN, and Western governments should not be invited to anything involving “saving” Haiti. 

Haitians are more than capable of saving themselves. They saved themselves from the French and were punished for it by the same countries who are now claiming to want to help them.. The United States government took control of Haiti’s treasury and forced Haiti to pay reparations to France for daring to free themselves from French control.

So instead of asking countries to take the lead in invading Haiti, maybe the United States should start helping Haiti by asking France to give the stolen money back. I don’t expect that to happen soon because the thing about gangs is that they like to wear matching outfits as much as they don’t like to give up their stolen goods.

News that made me try to be clever

James Cleverly, the UK Foreign Minister, made a not-so-clever remark in telling LGBTQIA+ fans visiting Qatar for the World Cup to respect Qatar’s criminalisation of their existence. 

It’s illegal to be LGBTQIA+ in Qatar and the UK wants UK football fans to respect Qatar’s violation of basic human rights because men kicking around a ball is more important than humans like me existing safely.

The UK rightfully called out Putin for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and human rights. I guess Cleverly and the UK are okay with human rights violations as long as the country doing the violating is their friend?

But then again maybe Cleverly is saying this because he knows, much like Qatar, the UK also doesn’t care about human rights. 

Maybe Cleverly is thinking, well who are we, prominent colonisers who continue to pillage other country’s resources, to speak out against human rights violations in another country? Maybe Cleverly is thinking, uh-oh, if we talk about other people’s human rights violations people will start talking about ours.

I’m just kidding. I don’t think Cleverly is thinking either of these things because that would mean he has a conscience. I was just trying to be clever even though my last name is not Cleverly. 

Cleverly is thinking: the World Cup makes a lot of money. And as long as there is money to be made, governments who pretend to care about human rights will throw away human rights like I just threw away my mouldy potatoes which I bought to make my own tater tots but waited too long and the potatoes went bad.

That’s it for the news, see ya next week, 

Marcela