He knows what 'misspeak' means, right?

Yeah, misspoke. I don’t even think he know what-huh? Who? Sorry, Rick Santorum, whom you might remember as the garbage human who suggested on Sunday that instead of protesting the lawmakers' criminal levels of not doing anything about gun violence in the wake of America's now monthly mass shootings, they could just learn CPR.

"Ok, thirty compressions and then breathe into here...but...but how is
this supposed to help in a shooting? Do we shield ourselves from the hail
of assault rifle fire with the dummy? Or do we use it as a decoy?"

-Some kid, with a valid question

"It's all a big misunderstanding. I'm a
Republican, I'm not supposed to be
held accountable for things I say."

Which...I mean, CPR? Are you goddamn kidding me? No, he's not. He is however walking it back, or at least trying to. Today in an interview with Chris Cuomo he said he misspoke:

"The fact of the matter is I did misspeak in using the term CPR. I think Sanjay Gupta's job here at CNN is probably safe being the medical commentator on things."

-Rick Santorum, hoping

we're all idiots

"Oh don't go dragging us into this..."

-an indignant weasel

The fact of the matter is that Rick Santorum is an asshat. And Sanjay Gupta by the by, is CNN's medical correspondent, so here the former Senator is making a funny joke about how he doesn't know what CPR is, and therefore isn’t a threat to Gupta’s job. Ha. Which, if true-and no, of course it's not true, it's just him trying to weasel out of that thing he said. But if it were true, if Rick Santorum honestly doesn't know what CPR is, why was he referring to it in the first place? And how did he get to become a Senator? Or graduate hight school?

Pictured: The look on Chris Cuomo's
face as Santorum asked us all to look
on the bright side...of school shootings.

Cuomo then asked the logical follow up: "What did you mean?"

"Well it obscured the much larger point. The larger point is that what we've seen from all of these mass shootings, is that the things that have come out-the positive things that have come out of these mass shootings are organizations and people who have actually focused on what we can do on our individual schools and community to actually prevent these, these types of things..."

-Rick Santorum, tap dancing

So no, he didn't misspeak. Misspeaking is saying heighth when you meant height or when you order a venti when you wanted a grande.

"Oh...I'm sorry, did I say venti caramel latté? Because I meant kids
should learn CPR instead of speaking out against our country's
preposterously lax gun laws that put their lives at constant risk."

Yes, it would be that difficult. In fact,
the effort would probably kill him.

What he was doing was trying to score some political points with his base by going after some kids who have done more good in two months than he has in his entire homophobic, anti-choice, gun-loving career. The headline here is 'Rick Santorum walks back CPR comment' but really, shouldn't it be 'Rick Santorum said a shitty thing and then lied about it?' Would it have been that difficult to say something like: 'Hey, that CPR comment was pretty stupid, sorry everybody, I'll try to be a person next time?" Like, for real.

I mean, just from a cynical politics perspective, how bad is he at his job when he's going after survivors of a school shooting? Like, I know he's not in office right now, but did he think he'd come away from this looking good?

"Honestly I just stumble from one sickeningly insensitive comment
to the next hoping someone might invite me on to their show."

-Former Senator and

also-ran, Rick Santorum

Golf-cation!

Your tax dollars at work here folks...

Hey, guess what the President is doing right now? If you said having his KFC-stuffed, popular-vote losing septuagenarian ass driven around his private golf course you'd be wrong. That was earlier today. Right now I'd imagine he's lying on a sofa somewhere, dozing with the television on in the background. I'm guessing there's some drool running down his chin and he's probably still clutching a greasy cheeseburger wrapper in one leathery hand. I don't know. I'm just painting a picture here.

"World War III? Why should I worry
about that? I'm like a hundred..."

-John Bolton, garbage human

What I do know is that he fled our nation's capitol yesterday after a busy day of appointing a rabid foam-lunatic his national security adviser and then announcing that people with gender dysphoria are too much trouble to let serve in the military. Add to that the way he had to sign that funding bill even though he didn't get that racist border wall he promised the racists that voted for him he'd build. Uh...racistly. I mean, all that's got to take a lot out of an unqualified gameshow host.

Pictured: More people showing up
to say what a shit job he's doing than
came to watch him get sworn in.

But the best part is that he's going on another golf-cation-is that a thing rich people say? Like, a vacation but with golf? Golf-cation? No? Anyway, the best part is that he's playing golf while hundreds of thousands of students are marching on Washington and other cities around the world to protest Trump and lawmakers and what can only be described as their sexual relationship with the gun lobby and their failure to rein in gun violence. I say best part because the President running away to Florida to golf while all this is happening is just everything wrong with this administration.

Above: thousands turning out to yell
at the street where Trump might pass by,
but didn't. That's how sick of him we are.

One could argue that he's not running from the protestors, but that the rally just happens to coincide with one of his incredibly frequent golf trips. But one would be wrong. Because earlier today impromptu crowds of protesters lined up along the usual golf-course to Mar-a-Lago route the President takes to tell the President what they think of him. They were disappointed however as the motorcade took a different, longer route so the President wouldn't have to look on the dissatisfied rabble and could instead enjoy his vacation the rabble is paying for.

Ok, but will today change anything? I hope so. Like, not Trump, he's gonna ride his policy of recklessly aggressive narcism and twitter-trolling like Slip Pickins on the bomb either to his own political ruin or some kind of civilization ending cataclysm. Whichever requires less physical effort on his part. But surely some lawmakers will look out on a crowd this large and, if not come to reason, then come to the conclusion that holy shit, these kids will be old enough to vote, and soon, and maybe now's a good time to act like grown-ups.

Also, I hope that it sinks in for the GOP (and some Democrats, but you know,
mostly Republicans), that they're looking at a generation that's just waiting
for them to die off so they can finally fix this shitshow they've left them with.  

A veritable hadoken of inclusiveness!

Oh don't you shake your fist at me
animatronic Goro, you know I'm right.

I don't want make broad statements like 'video games make terrible movie and TV adaptations,' but video games make terrible movie and TV adaptations. Pretty much all of them. In fact, I don't think I've seen a good one. Varying degrees of mediocracy yes, but not good. And I don't think it's so much a problem with video games necessarily, but rather with the fans. Yup, it's on us. Either the filmmaker is too faithful to the source material and you get something like Mortal Kombat which serviced the shit out of its fanbase, but was an unwatchable mess by anyone else.

Here, let this image bore its way into your
 nightmares for the rest of your life.

Or you get something like Super Mario Bros. which for some reason was about Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo running around a cheaper version of the set from Blade Runner shooting lizard people with a Super Scope 6. Also Dennis Hopper played King Koopa. You know, the fire breathing turtle dragon from the game? Yeah, except in the movie it was just Dennis Hopper in a suit. I...I mean, how did they screw this up so badly? In 1993 we would have paid to watch ninety minutes of footage from the game. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

You can even put Michael Fassbender in an
adaptation of a poplar game with a good
story and it's still a disaster. So who knows?

Anyway, games are interactive experiences first, narratives second, if at all. And sure, sometimes games have pretty good stories. Stories that can work as movies or whatever, it's just that filmmakers usually skip those and try to adapt games that are popular rather than ones that lend themselves to a different medium. And that's what makes the upcoming live-action TV series based on Street Fight II particularly vexing. It doesn't have a story, it's twenty-five years past its peak popularity, and this is the third attempt to adapt it.

Third! And that's just counting the live-action tries. Yeah, there were two Street Fighter movies, the one with Jean-Claude van Damme, which you might remember and one called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li which you absolutely do not remember. Here, check out the final shot from the van Damme movie:

"Yes, that's the shot we want to go out on. You know, because it leaves
the door open for a sequel. Like, is it the end? Or just the beginning?"

-Director Steve E. deSouza, shortly 

before being escorted off the lot

I mean, for real, look at this...

What's that old expression? Third time's the charm? Because I think we're going to have to retire that old expression. For those unfamiliar, the game, the movie and now the television series, tell the story of an international martial arts contest that also will somehow take down a super-powered dictator. How? Don't worry about it. The point is fighters from all over the world, ofter with ridiculous hair, compete in best two out of three brawls. For the winner? Glory. For the loser? Insert coin.

An engaging TV universe? What a novel
concept that literally everyone in the film and
television industries are imitating right now.

So you can see the game is just bursting with rich narrative possibilities. According to the producer:

"A particular strength of Street Fighter is the wide range of ethnically diverse characters and powerful women featured in the game...It will allow is to build an inclusive and engaging TV universe."

-Mark Gordon, President of Entertainment One 

on-wait, has he played the game?

I'm uh...huh...Look, I am one hundred percent behind bringing more inclusive and diverse casting to television, but we're talking about Street Fighter, right? Diverse, yes, but maybe not in the way Gordon hopes. I mean, the fighter from Brazil is a green electric monkey monster, Cammy's victory pose is her awkwardly turning to give the player a better look at her martial arts thong and Dhalsim...holy shit, Dhalsim...

India's fighter, Dhalsim, seen here wearing a necklace of human skulls,
taught a generation that yoga was the art of fire-breathing and teleportation.

Today in delicate sensibilities:

Yeah, but he's right, like, Mark Amodei really does need to get off his fucking ass and do something. But you're probably wondering 'who's right about who getting off his fucking ass and doing something about what?' I'll explain: Noah Christensen is right, Congressman Mark Amodei's is the ass in question, and doing something, please God anything about gun violence in America is the request.

Above: Mark Amodei's response, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

These kids can't be old enough
to vote soon enough.

Let me clarify: last week during the walkouts that were happening all across the country in response to the lack of action on the part of everyone in Congress in regards to gun violence in the wake of the most recent school shooting-wait sorry, not the most recent, we had one yesterday, so the second to most recent school shooting-wait sorry, wrong again, there's been like 11 incidents since Parkland involving guns being fired in schools. Eleven. Holy shit America-where was I going with this? Oh, right, during the walkouts...

Pictured: The U.S. Congress, seen here
not doing jack shit about how ridiculously
easy it is to get one's hands on assault rifles.

...Noah Christensen, a student at Robert McQueen Highschool in Reno Nevada, called his congressperson, Mark Amodei. Amodei was busy congressing I suppose, but a staffer answered so Christensen talked to him saying:

"I believe bump stocks should be banned, the minimum age should be raised, and Congress people not already asking should get off their fucking asses and do something about gun control."

-Noah Christensen, not being wrong

Ok, democracy accomplished, right? Well, not so fast. Later that day, he was called into the principal's office and handed a big, fat suspension. Yup, that staffer that took his call? He called the school to complain and got him suspended.

Suspended for vulgar language? That's a thing?
How are all teens not suspended all the time?

Sorry to keep harping on this point, but
seriously, this is the effective range of
the arms the 2nd Amendment refers to.

Mark Amide's staff narced on an eleventh grader for using 'vulgar language.' Wait, narced? Do kids still say narc? I don't know, it's just that tattled seems a little too toddler-y...but whatever. The point is that this high school kid who, by virtue of going to public school in America-with our batshit interpretation of the Second Amendment-is daily put at actual risk of getting murdered with military-grade assault weapons bought off a folding table at a gun show, was suspended for offending the delicate sensibilities of some congressional staffer. 

Boo. Booooooo, right? Specifically Christensen was suspended for using the phrase 'fucking asses.' Which he admits was probably a bad move telling reporters: "I understand that's not maybe the wording I should have used."

True, he should have said that Representative Amodei and the rest of
Congress, ok, mostly Republicans, should stop rimming the gun lobby long
enough to take real action on assault rifles because kids are literally dying. 

Mark Amodei for Congress: The
Candidate who won't demand capital
punishment for teens who swear!

But whatever, he was telling his congressperson how he feels because this is America and we have a First Amendment as well as a second. Needless to say the ACLU is all over this shit. Like, all over it, demanding an apology from Amodei, which he refused saying: "We had a lot of students call in, none used the kind of vocabulary he did. We didn't say we want him sent to jail or tarred and feathered." So that was pretty magnanimous of him. Not demanding legal action or mob justice for an eleventh grader who said 'fuck.' 

The good news is that the ACLU isn't going to let this stand. They're accusing the Congressman's office of retaliating against Christensen and trying to curtail his exercise of free speech, and they're like a dog with a bone, so this isn't over. They're also trying to get his record wiped clean since the suspension might harm his chances of getting into college, but if I were Noah Christensen I'd be putting this in my application. Instant acceptance letter. 

"Extracurricular activities? Telling my tool of a Representative
to get off his worthless, NRA-loving ass and fucking do his job."

-Noah Christensen, writing

his own ticket in life

Nobody cares what Phillip Hamilton thinks...

No, different Philip Hamilton. The one
we're going to talk about is kind of a dick.

Say, you know what's some bullshit? This. If you didn't click, and let's be real here, you didn't click, I'll explain. A newspaper, ok, the newspaper in Olton, Texas runs, as many newspapers do, obituaries. And last month, when a woman called Brenda Light died, her family sent in her obituary so that the paper could, you know, print it. What they didn't expect was that the paper's owner and local Baptist minister (that'll come in handy later) Phillip Hamilton would edit it . Because Jesus. Yeah, Light's son sent this: "Those left to cherish her memories include her son, Barry Giles, and his husband, John Gambol of Dallas." Now guess which part Phillip Hamilton took it upon himself to cut? 

If you said the reference to Giles' husband and partner of thirty-one years, you'd be correct. And Phillip Hamilton would be an asshole. I mean, lookit this:

"What? I said those left 'include her son.' I didn't
say he wasn't a godless sodomonite..."

-Noted garbage person,

Phillip Hamilton

"Oh don't you go dragging me into this.
You made your own bed dirtbag..."

-Hamilton's surprisingly 

salty conscience

Hamilton, when asked whatthefuck? replied:

"It is my religious conviction that a male cannot have a husband. It is also my belief that to publish anything contrary to God's Word on this issue would be to publish something in the newspaper that is not true...The newspapers decision to edit the obituary is both ethical and lawful...I could not in good conscience identify Mr. Gambill as the husband of Mr. Giles."

-Phillip Hamilton, 

apparently unclear on

the definition of 'ethical'

Sorry, this kind of stuff just pisses me
 off. Not all of you have stupid accents...
just the jerks. Huh? I know it's the same
acce-look, I'm trying to meet you halfway.

And this is where all those religious protection acts fall to shit. I mean, nobody wants anyone to have to risk eternal damnation for say, baking a gay wedding cake or working on a gay car (remember that guy?), but if you're going to run a business in the world, you're going to have to be prepared for customers whose lives don't line up with your personal belief system. This is America, you can't refuse service because you don't like someone's sexual orientation any more than you can refuse service on the basis or race or because you don't like their stupid Texas accent. 

"Look, I guess this all boils down to don't be 
jerks to one another. Think you can handle that?"

-Jesus, apparently asking too much

Leaving aside whether this was 'ethical' (it's not) or 'lawful' (who knows? I mean, Texas...) Brenda Light's family didn't pay Phillip Hamilton's paper to publish whatever he wants in accordance with his own religious worldview, they paid him to memorialize her. Which he didn't do. And then he laid out some horseshit about how her grieving son's husband isn't really his husband. They don't go to his church, this wasn't a tithe. This is business and you don't get to have it both ways. Either you're a baptist minister or you're a newspaper. You're a business or you're not.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you're so rabid-foam crazy about Leviticus that you can't keep your hands off someone's mom's obit, maybe you're in the wrong line of work. 

"Ok everybody, if you'll turn to page three of your copy of the Olton
Enterprise, you'll see an editorial, written by me, about how Jesus
wants you to vote for Debbie Long, Republican for County Clerk."

-Phillip Hamilton, noted newspaper

publisher and mouthpiece of the almighty

So do they love Nazis or just hate Democrats?

Because I'm a little unclear on this point. Look, I don't want to tell the Tennessee State Legislature how to state legislate, but holy shit people, I mean, holy shit.

Pictured: literal fucking Nazis.

"It's-<bang> It's about denouncing white
<bang> supremacists <bang, bang> For real?"

-Clemmons, between gavel bangs

What am I talking about? This. No, you have to click. We've been through this-you know what? Fine. I'll explain.The Tennessee State Legislature couldn't even get it together enough to have a discussion about a resolution to declare white supremacist groups terrorist organizations. Yeah. Representative John Ray Clemmons wrote a resolution and brought a motion to have it discussed and was met with the committee chair’s gavel bangs the awkward silence of four white Republicans who didn't want to even talk about it.

"A resolution to...uh...neo-Nazis...
uh...terrorists...hey, is it hot in here?"

-Every Republican in the room

Again, holy shit. Here's what they didn't even agree to discuss:

 "[W]e urge law enforcement to recognize these white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups as terrorist organizations and to pursue the criminal elements of these domestic terrorist organizations in the same manner and with the same fervor used to protect the United States from other manifestations of terrorism."

'Are you kidding me?' I'm sure you just said aloud. And no, I'm not kidding you.

"I mean, c'mon, what are we doing here?"

-White Jesus

When asked by reporters why in the name of white Jesus he didn't even want to talk about denouncing white supremacist groups, Republican Bob Ramsey said it was because

"We have no expertise on it. How can we determine these groups are terrorists? We don't know the federal guidelines on terrorism."

-Bob Ramsey, wait 

for it, Republican

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and hands out anti-semetic flyers in the parking lot of Staples, it's probably a Nazi duck.

Pictured: A Nazi duck...wow, the internet really does have everything.

"Yeah, and while we're on the topic, maybe
 stop saying 'chinaman?’ It's embarrassing."

-some grandkid

He insists the sticking point for him was classifying these groups as terrorist organizations, and not the 'intent or philosophy of the resolution,' but if that were true and not the blatant horseshit it smacks of, then why not at least discuss it? I mean, first of all, since when does a Tennessee Republican give a shit about federal guidelines? Secondly, I know he's like seventy and conservative, but he still has internet access. I mean, why doesn't he look it up, or get one of his grandkids to do it? And while they're at it, they can explain how racist he's being by not even discussing the resolution.

Pictured: Ryan Williams, Tennessee
Republican and Alfred E. Neuman cosplayer

But whatever, this whole things is Clemmons' fault, at least according to House Republican Caucus Chair, Ryan Williams who knows what it takes to be a great legislator:

"Part of being a great legislator is knowing your bill, knowing the committee that it's going through, working the vote and asking for a motion and a second before you get there. That's what great policy making is. It's pretty simple."

-Ryan Williams, 

Republi'splaining

Actually no, we probably shouldn't
be making assumptions about Republicans
and their ability to make good choices...

Look, I don't live in Tennessee, I don't know any of these people involved here, and I certainly can't say I'm qualified to tell anyone else what makes a great legislator, but is Williams not aware that Clemmons was asking that they consider a bill about condemning white supremacists? How well does he need to know the committee? Shouldn't he be able to assume that everyone on the committee is con-white supremacists? Even if they are Republicans? Williams is right, it should be pretty simple, it's just that...shouldn't Clemmons have been able to assume that everyone is anti-Nazi?

I mean seriously, it kind of leaves one to draw the unsettling conclusion that either they are cool with white supremacists, or that they hate Democrats so much that they won't even discuss one of the few things thing we're all supposed to agree on.

Nobody's asking them to get behind the estate tax or to
sign Nancy Pelosi's birthday card. All they had to do was come
down on the side of Nazis are bad. Should be a no-brainer.

When they're rich, it's eccentricity.

The only difference between this guy and
Elon Musk is $20.5 billion which is...uh...sorry
I can't remember what-wow...billion. With a 'b'...

So I'm not saying that Elon Musk is wrong about colonizing Mars but I would like to point out that if he were some guy on the street with say a sandwich board and some badly xeroxed pamphlets, instead of being a billionaire speaking at SXSW (pronounced skzzsswi, I assume) we would probably dismiss him as a nutter. I suppose wealth hath its privileges too. Anyway, Musk appeared at this year's South by Southwest conference to talk up his space plans and to haltingly predict doom for human civilization-well, not predict but, well here, click this first.

I'm confused, are we talking castles and
jousts, or just rampant ignorance and wealth
inequity? Because we might be there...

"If you know that, if you know there's likely to be, well you don't know, but there's likely to be another dark ages-which is seems like there probably will be at some point. I'm not predicting that we're about to enter another dark ages, but there's some probability we will, particularly if there's a third world war."

-Elon Musk, entrepreneur, industrialist, 

harbinger of doom, or...well, not doom, 

you don't know...but likely doom

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm just
suggesting that Isaac Asimov's estate
should probably be taking to a lawyer.

Then after not predicting the collapse of civilization, but really, totally predicting the collapse of civilization, he went on to make the case for sending humans to Mars as sort of 'a back-up your data' bulwark against armageddon:

"Um, then we want to make sure there's enough of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring civilization back and perhaps shorten the length of the dark ages."

-Elon Musk, going full Seldon

Ok, so I can't argue with the wisdom of the Seldon plan, but does any one else have a problem with Elon Musk running the whole thing?

Personally, I see the extinction of country
as one of the perks of a new dark age.

It's not so much that I have a problem with Elon Musk personally, it's more rich people in general. Like, it's cool that he's using his vast, preposterous wealth to advance the cause of science, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the cause of science being up to any one person. Sure, he could build his own back up civilization on Mars, but it would be his civilization.What if say, he hated country music and didn't include it in the vault on his space colony. I mean, he'd be correct to hate country music, but should that really be his call? 

Well, it's his space colony...you might point out. True, but only because he's crazy rich and he's only crazy rich because we, as a culture, let him be. As in, we haven't grabbed our pitchforks and torches and bashed in his front gate which we probably could have after he launched that roadster into space.

Pictured: a $200,000 car launched into space with a $90 million rocket.
But even more impressive is the fact that in the back ground you can even
see a planet where wealth disparity makes shit like this possible.

"No seriously though,
taxes are for poor people."

-Jeff Bezos 

Speaking of pitchforks and torches, Musk isn't the only rich to buy his way loose of the surly bonds of Earth. Jeff Bezos, whose company Amazon apparently falls into a tax bracket so high they don't have to pay anything, is also planning to boldly go where no symbol of everything wrong with unfettered capitalism has gone before. He reaffirmed his company's plan to take some of the ridiculous cash reserves he made by strangling the life-blood out of America's retail economy and explore the endless reaches of outer space. And presumably once there, continue to not pay taxes. 

How many Duckbergians were living in
abject poverty while this asshole swam
around in a seven story bin full of gold?

So two things freak me out here: First, that it's possible in our civilization for someone to control this much wealth. Like, I don't care how smart or successful you are, nobody should be this rich. And second that our space program is so poorly funded that anyone with a few billion dollars can decide the fate of human kind and by extension, country music. Look, I don't want to tell these titans of industry-wait-is it industry when you just use money to make more money? Anyway, I don't want to tell them what to do with their embarrassing wealth but...wait, no, that's a lie, I do want to tell them what to do with their embarrassing wealth. 

Sure, no one can deny the appeal of the frozen, radiation-soaked hellscape of Mars, but what if Elon Musk put some research money into a zero-emission car most of us could afford instead of shooting one that costs more than the average American home into space? Or if Jeff Bezos just paid his goddamn taxes? Admittedly these aren't sexy ideas, and no one's going to want me to talk at SXSW, but they might keep this planet livable a while longer. 

"Yeah, but...Mars...is awesome."

-Some colonist, moments before being struck 

by a $200,000 roadster falling from orbit