When I saw this…
…I immediately thought of these:
The closest image I could find to “brandishing a gun while on a hoverboard”.
The lesson to be learned from this completely preventable tragedy in the Orlando area is that if you’re playing videogames and suddenly find a gun under your convicted felon dad’s bed, don’t take it and ride around on a hoverboard because you might accidentally and fatally shoot your 13-year-old cousin in the head when you lose your balance and fall off. As an added bonus, you’ll land your dad in the clink again: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon carries a mandatory minimum sentence.
Thankfully, a less tragic version of this story played itself out in St. Petersburg.
Photo of the actual house in St. Pete with a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas heads-up display laid over it.
It turns out that in the dark, everything looks like PlayStation 2.
In the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you start the game with very little money in a rough neighborhood. That’s not a problem once you realize that there are a number of free weapons hidden in the area around your house, including brass knuckles, a shovel, a pistol, and even a mini submachine gun. The video below shows where you can find these goodies:
It turns out that not only do many parts of Florida look like the scenes in Grand Theft Auto; they’ve even got the free hidden weapons! Yesterday in St. Petersburg, a 4 year-old boy was playing with a cat, which ran under his house. The boy chased after the cat and found a revolver with several rounds in it, and like any newbie Grand Theft Auto player, he fired a round as part of checking out his newly-found booty. Luckily he fired into the ground and no one was hurt.
A happy ending like this calls for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ “Mission Accomplished” theme:
Unfortunately, a more tragic version of this story played itself out this weekend in Orlando.
Today’s officially referred to as Washington’s Birthday by the U.S. Federal Government, and the traditional date is February 22nd. But in 1971, in an attempt to provide more three-day holidays to the proles, they signed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act into law, moved the holiday to the third Monday in February, and expanded it to include anyone who’s occupied the Oval Office, whether that person was among the greats like ol’ Wooden Teeth and Honest Abe, or the not-so-greats, like Warren G. Harding or Bush the Lesser. How this change is viewed — as a way of honoring the office and not just a single mortal who held the position, or another example of the “everyone gets a trophy” culture — is left as an exercise for the reader.
It’s also Canadian Flag Day, a day during which we Canadians celebrate a flag that many vexillologists give an “A” grade and when sewn on your backpack announces to the world that you are not an asshole. I still have the hat pictured in the photo above, and it’s still imbued with Steve Ballmer’s crystallized sweat. Microsoft fans, I start the bidding at $10,000 (real U.S. Dollars, and not Canadian Snow Pesos, of course). Do I have an offer?
To both countries I call home, I leave with this final thought:
Click the graphic to see it at full size.
(Here’s a quick intro in case you’ve never heard of the conspiracy nuts known as the “9/11 truth movement”.)
Need a Star Wars-themed Valentine’s Day card? Point your browser at reb-chan’s Tumblr, where you’ll find some of the most adorable cards in the galaxy. I love Poe Dameron’s pun, which I saved for the very last.
io9 have a couple of nice ones, too…
Poe’s Law is in full effect! “patriotpony1986’s” posting is from 2012, but fear not, ladies! The odds are pretty good that he’s still available today. I couldn’t find any sign online that he’d finished his book, however.
Updates
- This exploded on Twitter, so I’ve edited the screen capture to obscure his face and whereabouts, because while the profile is fake, the photo is real (once again, I cite Poe’s Law). Everyone deserves an Internet Redemption.
- Is it even possible to be a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Ayn Rand’s works at the same time? Even knowing that Rand was a fan of the 1970s TV series Charlie’s Angels, I’m having trouble imagining how Bronyism and Objectivism fit together.