0. Oscar Ramblings: 2026 Nominated live-action shorts

• The Singer: starts off slow and then really takes off. Great flic, paints some great characters without being obvious.
• Butcher's Stain: promising story that doesn't deliver. Sets up a victim and an answer but then drops it all without resolution.
• Dorothy's friend: engaging character study, insightful reveal for the life of an elderly near shut-in. A welcome break as Dorothy's world slowly closes in around her. Could have done without a couple of extra characters - in_person and alluded to - that salt the wound.
• Jane Austen's Period drama: a little silly
• Two People Exchanging Saliva: interesting premise but falls short in leaving inconsistencies in the character development and signficant gaps in the story line. How - and why - does the penultimate scene lead to the final scene?

I. The Department of Efficiency

In Washington, the mood remains festive as the "Department of Government Efficiency" continues its quest to turn the federal budget into a haiku. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have reportedly begun eyeing the very air we breathe for potential "redundancies." After a week of "stripping away regulations because they didn’t exist in the era of the musket," the team has successfully de-regulated the concept of gravity, citing its lack of explicit mention in the Federalist Papers. Analysts suggest that by Friday, the speed of light may be reduced to a more "business-friendly" pace.

II. The Copperless Coast

Residents of Long Beach and the greater Los Angeles area have discovered a new way to practice mindfulness: standing in total darkness. As "copper theft reaches infrastructure emergency" levels, the city has begun retrofitting streetlights with aluminum, a metal so unappealing that even the most desperate thieves find it insulting. At "Century Villages at Cabrillo," the local "CityHeART Resource Hub" is reportedly considering a curriculum on how to navigate the 6th Street Bridge using only sonar and sheer willpower. It is, perhaps, the only city in America where the local scrap yard has a more rigorous vetting process than a Supreme Court nomination.

III. The Commodity Waltz

Global markets are currently enjoying what experts call the "Great Oil Glut" of 2026. With "Brent crude expected to average $58 a barrel," the average American can now afford to fill their tank and still have enough left over to buy a single, medium-sized organic avocado. Meanwhile, the "AI investment boom" has turned copper into the new gold, which is unfortunate for the aforementioned streetlights. Investors are pivoting to "safe havens," which currently include gold bars, Swiss real estate, and canned beans stored in a bunker in New Zealand. The World Bank predicts a "broad decline in prices," which is economist-speak for "the collapse will be very orderly."

IV. The Musket Standard

A new legal theory is sweeping the nation’s courts, suggesting that "reasoning should only apply to those technologies that existed in the era of the single shot musket." This has created some logistical hurdles for the Silicon Valley set. If a "killing machine" cannot be loaded via a ramrod and ignited by a piece of flint, its constitutional status is officially "complicated." Legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation are reportedly working on a version of the iPhone that communicates solely via smoke signals and highly trained pigeons, ensuring that our digital privacy is as robust as it was in 1791. We can only wonder what the future holds, provided the future doesn't require electricity.