What's happening, Trash Pandas? Welcome to The Trash Report. My name is Elinor Jones. Hey, don't you think it's bullshit that leap year is also the presidential election year? These years feel too long already! Petition to move it to an odd-numbered year where we might feel lightened by an extra day rather than stomped on and smushed down by the additional 24 hours. We gotta make this catch on. Those daylight savings freaks finally have lawmakers on their side. Let's make this the next calendaring cause du jour! Move Leap Year to a Boring Year—spread the word!

Now, onto the trash.

Making Women History

That section title makes it sound like I want to make the existence of women into history. Like how "let's make cancer history" means they're trying to eradicate cancer. To be clear: I don't want to eradicate women. I meant it like, making more history for women, in March, which is Women's History Month. You get it. Anyway, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is a woman making history as the first Indian-American Republican female candidate to lose so many states in such a short amount of time to an unemployed Florida man. But kudos to Haley for this week securing endorsements from Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, the same two geniuses who didn't think that the conservative Supreme Court Justices nominated by Trump would overturn Roe v. Wade. 

First Lady Jill Biden has become uncharacteristically fierce in recent days as she talked about how awful Trump was/would be for women, saying that he "spent a lifetime tearing us down." True! I fuckin' hate that guy! That said, she claims that voting for her husband will advance women's causes, seemingly forgetting that her husband is the president now and has been for the last three years during which women's causes have been... not great. The Biden campaign strategy is basically "don't forget that it could get worse."

Women's History Month Factoid of the Week!

Did you know that Betsy Ross didn't make the first flag? She made some flags, just not the first one. You may release that factoid from your mental catalog of women's history. There are more impressive women to learn about:

Bitch Had Her Money. What Else Do You Want?

Rihanna just played her first concert in several years, and it was a private show at the wedding of an Indian billionaire's son, for which she was paid $6 million dollars. And people are giving her shit about it because some have claimed the performance was lackluster, but didn't we all have an awakening about how liberating it is to do the bare minimum at work? If it's cute for us, it is also cute for Rihanna. Other guests at the event included Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Ivanka Trump, and Mark Zuckerberg. No word on how much each of them were paid, but it had to be something, right? 

Now that it's established that it's cute when we're lazy and Rihanna's lazy, let's also clarify that it's not cute when Queen Camilla does it? She barely even has a job. 

Gotham Eyes

Singer Billie Eilish was recently on a podcast where she admitted 1) her song "Ocean Eyes" was written about Cillian Murphy, and 2) she once had a dream about Christian Bale that convinced her to dump her boyfriend. And like, it was seeing Christian Bale in Newsies at a young age that made me sure I was attracted to men, so I fully understand his influence. Anyway, more like Christian Bail, amirite? 

In other "um, what?" news, Hailey Bieber and her husband Justin Bieber have been in the news after a weird tweet from Hailey's dad, a lesser Baldwin brother, seemed to imply that the pair was in trouble, which they have denied. Okay, weird, but whatever, right? No! Not whatever! Because I am fully convinced that the father Baldwin's tweet was simply a ploy to distract the media from realizing what his other daughter, Alaia Baldwin, was doing, which was GETTING ARRESTED FOR THROWING A USED TAMPON AT A BARTENDER WHILE GETTING KICKED OUT OF A CLUB FOR BEING TOO HAMMERED AND FOR BARFING IN THE EMPLOYEE BATHROOM. Never been so happy for a ploy to have failed.

Dynamic Pricing? Never Heard of Her

Wendy's walked back its plan to start using a dynamic pricing model for its menu after being widely ridiculed, and then pretended like they never said that that's what they were going to do. While I agree that dynamic pricing in food (and everything) is very stupid, I really wanted to see this in action first! Because I know with every fiber of my being that some TikTok girlies would have made it their mission to game the system and we'd have gotten dozens of detailed tutorials on how to get a cheeseburger and like four Frostees and a baked potato (do they still sell those?) for like 16 cents, but only if you go at 9:30 on a Thursday morning, and we should have had that, goddammit.  

Local Trash

Chefs at the Oregon coast recently competed Chopped-style using only shelf-stable ingredients in order to raise awareness about disaster preparedness. Dishes included a pudding parfait with crushed hazelnuts, crackers and tinned oysters, and a beautifully plated pile of smashed garbanzo beans with corn and black beans. The experiment was for thinking about how to cook during a catastrophic emergency like an earthquake or tsunami, but it could also inform how we prepare for a run-of-the-mill emergency, like being stoned and hungry, but too lazy to go to the store. 

 Did you know that Blazers tickets are ridiculously cheap right now? I can afford to be a basketball fan again! For real, I'm going to a game this week for the first time in probably 16 years. Be prepared for this to become my whole personality. I bought myself a Blazers hat! I bought my dog a Blazers shirt! I think it's cool how Jerami Grant spells his name, and no one can tell me otherwise! 

Wow, time to stop writing this column and start saving up for the weekend, because while seats at the Moda Center now go for a dollar, I'm pretty sure beers there still cost $35. I hope that you enjoy this first week of March. Do something nice for a woman in your life, even (and especially!) if that woman is you.

Historically,