This Week's Bad News in a Thousand Words or Less

Photo of newscasters that aren't Rick Paulas via

Hey, who remembers Dogmageddon, the weekly round-up of news about organized religions ruining the world? Anyone? Crickets? Anyways, that was fun, but it was nothing more than a listing of the worst people in the world doing the worst things because “my invisible friend is better than yours.” It was more depressing than the last few minutes of Requiem for a Dream. Diving into the planet's emotional hellmouth every week grates on a guy (there's a reason you only watch Requiem for a Dream once), so after a short sabbatical, I'm back. Except this time, instead of examining religion, I’ll be recapping the news, which means an even wider swath of terrible people doing terrible things for no reason. Let’s look at all the terrible events that happened this week, shall we?

Photo of Republicans acting smug via

This week, many people updated their Facebook statuses about the Great Big Government Shutdown. Plenty of folks wrote clever quips along the lines of “My two-year-old's been whining a lot lately, and I asked him where he learned it from, and he said he learned it from congress!” Fun stuff, all around. I'm going to miss those statuses. What I'm not going to miss is the government's nonsensical in-fighting getting in the way of things like the Mighty Boosh performing live in Los Angeles.  In any case, the GOP's attempt to hold the American people hostage until the President took back that whole “giving folks universal healthcare” proposal predictably flamed out. The whole mess should probably be summed up in future digital high school text books with a link to this Mr. Show sketch and a caption reading “Bob Odenkirk as GOP.” Now that it's over, the time is nigh for political blogs to decide who “won” and “lost” the battle and for everyone to realize Ted Cruz is a jerk on the wrong side of history and start putting together poster-board collages of every sad, vaguely farty John Boehner face they can find. Hooray!

A screenshot of the government's malfunctioning health care site

If you’re late to the party, the whole shutdown debacle happened because the House was divided about whether or not Obamacare should be “forced” onto the American people. The program was supposed to start on October 1, but its roll-out has had the same success and flawlessness as a Britney Spears performance—meaning, it hasn't been successful or flawless at all. There have been bugs. Lots of them. And there still are. (I can attest to this myself. I tried to sign up and found myself stuck in a static warp that made me long for Geocities.) The whole thing was so bad, congressional members started to take a close look at who paid who for this htmlemon. The GOP, of course, was calling for the Democrats' heads. But that was a “look over here!” distraction tactic they were using to make people forget the Republicans were on the ass-end of the aforementioned shutdown. You should ignore those tactics, but also be kind of concerned that our elected officials can't get their servers in order.

Photo of a previous Banksy mural in New York via

This week, Banksy was in the middle of his month-long residency in New York. Predictably, this made people lose their minds. Mayor Bloomberg worried about property value; a hooded hater tagged a Banksy with his own nonsensical scrawl, causing a near-riot to break out; and everyone else thought they had visual proof of Banksy's identity. Essentially, Banksy caused the city-wide chaos the Joker dreamed about, and he did it with a couple of spray paint cans. Well played, Banksy.

Photo of Glenn Greenwald doing good deeds via

I’m about to interrupt this recap of depressing news to give you some good news. Glenn Greenwald has decided to parlay the fame and journalism credentials he earned from the NSA story into a new independent media organization funded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. The project does not yet have a name, and Glenn has yet to announce which high-profile journalists he will woo away from other publications, but odds are the site won't be a heap of link-baiting and opinions from unqualified celebrities like Jenny “Vaccines Give Babies Autism” McCarthy.

Overdramatic photo of a meteorite via

And now back to our previously scheduled bad news! Guess what? The sky started to fall. No, really. One of the most dangerous asteroids on record buzzed by Earth again, divers recovered a chunk of the meteorite that exploded over Russia earlier this year, and on top of all this, scientists announced the galaxy’s largest star is dying. So if you're having a tough day, just remember, it will all be over soon. Have a good weekend!

@RickPaulas

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