I don't know how the first weeks of 2016 have treated you, but some of us are feeling a little overwhelmed. Some of us need to spend some time relaxing at home, watching some movies and eating some popcorn we've spiced up with heart-shaped seasoning (aren't stock photos strange).

And, hey, even if you're doing great this year, watching a movie is a pretty easy/delightful way to support local business. Here's a list of the most rented DVDs from last week at Casa Video:

1. Spectre

Stories in the Garden is back to celebrate Tucson’s recent UNESCO designation as a Creative City of gastronomy. In light of that, you can join like-minded local food folks at UA Community Garden (1400 E. Mable St.) for an evening of poems and stories all about food culture.

The event will feature both a potluck (bring something to share) and a open mic-style exchange of food-centric performances. If you wish to contribute with one of your written works, plan to come to the event, which begins at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 21, a bit early to sign up. 

Here's a great tip for folks who want to look like generous parents in their friends' eyes without spending a dime. Go into your children's room and take away a few of their most expensive toys. Then when Christmas rolls around, wrap up the toys and give them back to your kids. Be sure to put a picture of the "gifts" on the annual Christmas card you send out to impress your friends.

Where did I get this great idea, you may ask. From Governor Ducey and Republican legislators, of course. Look at the JTED funding bill just passed by the lege and signed by the governor. Last year, they took away $30 million dollars in JTED funding. This year they gave back $29 million. And they want us to believe this shows they support education. Look at Proposition 123. In 2009, they took away more than $300 million a year in education funding. Now they want to give 70 percent of it back, mostly from money that already belongs to the students. And Ducey expects to be congratulated for his generosity.

When I saw the battle between Arizona's Senate and House Republicans over bragging rights for restoring the JTED funding, I almost ignored it. Typical election year posturing, I thought, nothing to see here. But this fight was unusually heated. When the Senate made a correction to the House bill, which made it a Senate bill, the House Republicans were apoplectic. "We want the credit! We demand the credit!" they screamed. So near they end of SB 1525, they added a section saying, "Restoring funding to JTEDs and implementing accountability measures to the programs was an important priority of members of the Arizona House of Representatives." And they took what is, so far as I know, the unprecedented step of putting the names of its 56 supporters in the bill—which, I should add, includes the names of Democrats as well as Republicans.

Why so much fuss about getting the primary credit for restoring JTED funds? Isn't it enough to say you voted for it? Apparently not. The Arizona voters have said education is a top priority, and they're even willing to raise taxes to increase funding. A survey of CEOs indicates they think our education system is one of the main stumbling blocks to economic growth, more important than taxes and regulations. The only thing that's more important to Republicans than appearing pro education is not spending any more on education than they absolutely have to. So they're hit on a solution. Take credit for adding JTED funding when in fact you're simply restoring the money you cut, less a million dollars. Take credit for adding $3.5 billion over ten years to education funding, when in fact you're following a court order to restore voter-mandated money to education, less 30 percent, and using money that doesn't come out of the state budget. When Ducey pats himself on the back for Proposition 123, he's always sure to add, "And we didn't raise taxes to do it." That's the point: pretend to spend more money on education but be sure not to add a penny in state taxes.

Afrikweer is the brainchild of Bev Tumelo and Javetta Laster. Initially conceived of as a photo project, it has grown into a uniting force for people of African descent in Tucson who identify somewhere on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

Tumelo and Laster met three years ago when Laster moved to Tucson from New York. Laster had only planned to stay in Tucson for a few months, but she fell in love with the desert. Sticking around, for Laster, meant contributing.

“If a place is somewhere you can really take root, then you should also do things to uplift and give back to the community that’s helped you,” she says.

Two Icelandic sheepherding brothers who haven’t spoken in four decades face tragedy when their neighboring herds become infected and must be slaughtered.

Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjonsson) and Kiddi (Theódór Júlíusson) have developed a rivalry over the years, with Kiddi winning local “best sheep” competitions. A jealous Gummi reports that his brother’s sheep might be ill, and the report rings true. Veterinarians recommend that all of the sheep in their valley be destroyed, wreaking havoc on their lives. Gummi comes up with a strange plan to salvage some of the herd, forcing Kiddi to join him on a mission to save the sheep.

Writer-director Grimur Hakonarson’s hauntingly beautiful movie is a fine testament to sibling rivalry. We never really find out what has caused the brotherly rift, and we don’t really need to know. The two actors (forgive me…I just don’t want to retype those names) are excellent as the brothers, two men who love sheep so much they put them before family.

Rams is an exquisitely made film, and was somehow snubbed for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award nomination. Voters truly missed the boat on this one. 

The South Dakota Legislature passed a bill Tuesday that would require students at public schools to use restrooms based on their “chromosomes and anatomy” at birth, meaning transgender youth would be prohibited from using a bathroom of the gender they identify with.

If the governor signs the measure into law, South Dakota would become the first state in the nation to issue a statute of this kind. 

This is "a bill that targets vulnerable transgender students for discrimination and could cost the state millions of dollars in federal education funding. Lawmakers heard from South Dakota parents, teachers, students, school counselors, clergy, and mental health professionals who wrote emails, and traveled to Pierre from all corners of the state to testify and   demonstrate the ways in which this bill does real harm to transgender students," said a prepared statement from Heather Smith, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota. "The only people to testify in support of this harmful, discriminatory bill were lobbyists—not one South Dakota citizen testified to the necessity of this bill. And that’s because it’s not necessary and we don’t need discrimination codified. South Dakota stands to lose."

"It begs the question: do our state politicians truly represent the people of South Dakota, or do they represent outsider lobbyists and interest groups. Governor [Dennis] Daugaard should listen to his actual constituents and veto this bill and send a strong message that discrimination isn’t a South Dakota value and there’s simply no place for it in our schools, community, and state.”

After a false start with the character of Wade Wilson in 2009’s uneven yet unjustly maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds gets another chance at superhero-albeit unorthodox superhero-stardom. This time he scores big in this twisted film from first time director Tim Miller.

Deadpool establishes its weirdness with scathing opening credits that poke fun at Reynolds’s stint as Green Lantern and all aspects the film’s production. It then becomes a consistently funny tragi-comedy involving Wade, a recently smitten mercenary who comes down with terminal cancer, dimming the lights on his future with girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He submits himself into an experiment that leaves him disfigured yet superhuman, bent on revenge against the criminal who made him this way.

Reynolds finally gets a really good movie to match his charms, and Deadpool gets the nasty film the character beckons for.

The film gets an R-rating for many reasons, and there really was no other way to make a Deadpool film. It needed to be depraved, and it is. T.J. Miller provides nice comic support as a weary bar owner, and a couple of X-Men do show up in a way that is full on hilarious. A sequel is already in the works, and this is a very good thing. 

To prepare for my visit to the Bill Buckmaster Show Wednesday, I listened to Gov. Ducey talking with Buckmaster Tuesday, then listened a second time on the show's website, taking notes. Here are some of the things Ducey said, along with what lies hidden an inch behind his words.

Buckmaster asked Ducey about the upcoming vote to restore most of the JTED funding. Ducey said he was ready to sign the finished bill because "I'm supportive of JTED." In fact, Ducey pushed for the $30 million cut to JTED in the last budget, which doesn't sound very supportive. He explained the cut to Buckmaster by saying he faced a billion dollar deficit and had to make difficult decisions, but added in a classic moment of political doublespeak that he protected K-12 education in the budget. You're not protecting K-12 education when you make cuts to JTED which would have decimated the program if they weren't reversed.

As for being "supportive of JTED," in fact, Ducey proposed $30 million for JTED spread over three years, $10 million a year, for this year's budget. The money would have been used as matching funds to grants from businesses for programs they thought would help train future employees. By most accounts, his proposal would have effectively ended JTED. It was only when Republicans joined with Democrats and created a veto-proof majority for a bill reinstating JTED funds that Ducey discovered how much he supported the program.

In another statement emphasizing his support for education, Ducey said, "We're putting $106 million additional into K-12 education." In fact, half of what Ducey is taking credit for is mandatory funding based on inflation and an increase in student population. That's stay-even money, not an increase.

Next, Ducey moved on to more of his ritual back patting, praising himself for the money that will flow to schools if voters approve Proposition 123—money that's 70 percent of what the state owes the schools based on a proposition approved by voters in 2000 along with a current court order. He went all soft and squishy about school leadership as he talked about those wonderful principals and superintendents who will decide how to spend the Prop 123 money. According to Ducey, they should "have the flexibility to use the additional dollars . . . to make the decisions that are best for that school." Let it go into technology or salaries or classroom supplies or ELL, Ducey said. It's all fine with him.

The New York Times' Fernanda Santos wrote today about the ongoing attacks by a group of UA students against the Islamic Center of Tucson.

Santos begins her story with a Syrian refugee who, when leaving the mosque after Friday Prayer, had two cans of beer thrown toward her. 

On another night at the mosque, Ahmed Meiloud, a Ph.D. candidate from Mauritania who is also the Islamic Center's president, was leaving the building when someone yelled from a passing car, "Terrorist, go back to where you came from!"

It's embarrassing and sad to read a distorted depiction of Tucson, a place that's so welcoming and open-minded, based on some of the ignorant residents attending the university—who are likely not even natives to the Old Pueblo. They remind me of the snow birds who temporarily move to Tucson a few months out of the year and do nothing but taint this beautiful desert with anger.

And, of course, it is people like myself who feel the most embarrassed about this type of national coverage of Tucson. Because, if you ask these kids, well, they don't give a damn. A world does not exist outside their boundaries made of tailgates, college sports and booty shorts.

Santos writes:

The diverse congregation of the Islamic Center—a squat copper-domed complex just outside the University of Arizona's sprawling campus here—has endured mocking, taunts and attacks of vandalism ever since hundreds of students moved into a pair of private high-rise apartment towers next door three years ago. In at least one instance, a shower of crushed peanuts rained down on the mosque; more typically, cans and bottles are flung from apartment balconies, usually on the popular party nights of Friday and Saturday.

"Yes, there are students, usually drunken students, but these attacks aren't random," Mr. Meiloud said. "We are the target."

Here are two new pieces of information about how ridiculous voter ID laws are, except as a way to suppress votes, and how effective they are in keeping the wrong kind of people Democrat-leaning minorities from voting.

The first comes from the hyperactive and hyper-intense John Oliver, who on his first show back nails the voter ID question in 15 fact-and-joke-filled minutes. (The link is to youtube, so you can watch it even if you don't have HBO.) One of Oliver's salient points: Voter ID laws are only concerned with one way votes can illegally be added to the count: voter impersonation. That solves a nonexistent problem. Statistically, the number of people who either illegally sign up to vote or pretend to be someone else at the polling booth approaches zero. Republican yelling and screaming about the hordes of people committing fraud and their contention that the only way to stop it is with a picture ID is an attempt to camouflage the read purpose of the laws: to keep predominantly Democratic voters away from the polls.

The second is a study out of UC San Diego which concludes that voter ID laws are successful in suppressing votes among minority groups who tend to lean Democratic.

The analysis shows that strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections. . . . [W]e find that strict voter identification laws do, in fact, substantially alter the makeup of who votes and ultimately do skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right. These laws significantly impact the representativeness of the vote and the fairness of democracy.

Before looking at the study, I wasn't aware that the country managed to do without laws requiring identification to vote until 2008. I'll let you decide whether Obama's 2008 election was a contributing factor or a coincidence.

The study says that Latino and Black turnout is significantly lower in states with voter ID than states without it.

The models reveal substantial drops in turnout for minorities under strict voter ID laws. In the general elections, the model predicts Latino turnout was 10.3 points lower in states with photo ID than in states without strict photo ID regulations, all else equal. For multi-racial Americans, turnout was 12.8 points lower under strict photo ID laws. These effects were almost as large in primary elections. Here, a strict photo ID law could be expected to depress Latino turnout by 6.3 points and Black turnout by 1.6 points. Given the already low turnout of most of these groups across the country, these declines are all the more noteworthy.

Voter ID had little effect on the turnout of white and Asian voters.