Joshuah Bearman

Cynical-C, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Haters

As a journalist of minor note, my articles sometimes appear on websites that actually get traffic. Nowadays, those websites often allow comments. And those comments remind me why there ought to be no internet. There's a reason why human expression has been restricted for most of human history -- to filter out the haters. Then again, when you open the flood gates, you get errant genius like this Amazon product review or this missed connection post on Craig's List. Like Blair said: You take the good, You take the bad, And something else, And there you have the Facts of Life. Or maybe Blair never said that. But it rings true, in life, and on the Ol' InfoTubes.

But still those haters make you mad, right? Don't despair; I have an answer: Tranches! That's right. Just like in global finance. Worked well for them, right?

Here's how it works: just collect all the deranged, misspelled, wild-eyed, flaming crazy interbabble, put it one place, and all toxic effect is neutralized. Especially when you realize that haters always come out of the woodwork, even giving 1-star reviews to The Godfather, the Rolling Stones, and even The Diary of Anne Frank. This is the mission of Cynical-C, a blog wherein is collected a hilarious series of 1-star reviews and attending nonsense commentaries about the great masterworks of our time. The Odyssey? "900 pages too long." Spinal Tap? "Don’t buy this trash! Just wait until Limp Bizkit (the greatest band ever!) makes a documentary on their wild and crazy and cool antics!" The Godfather? "As boring as a trip to the doctor’s. No good violence, no hot sex scenes, and furthermore, it stereotypes Italians. The only decent movie in this series is The Godfather III." The Wizard of Oz? "If anyone holds a gun to your head and forces you to see it, pull the trigger."

See? Tranching! Just throw all the crap together and it becomes harmless and funny. Case closed. I like the internet again. 

Just What We Need

Twitter functionality inside your actual brain.

I'm Not Exactly Sure Why Street Gangs Need Business Cards

Do the Almighty Freaks run into the Insane Unknowns at a midwestern regional gang conference and trade info so they can get together work on some projects? "Great meeting you in that afternoon workshop yesterday," says Ca$her to Chewdog, "Let's get together and talk about that project so we can capitalize on our synergistic opportunities!" Such a conference should probably invite our old friend the business card guru as a guest speaker, because all their cards look like like this:

These cards, if you haven't seen them already, come from a collection of business cards issued, as it were, by Chicago gangs in the 70s. At which time, apparently, gang names still had more in common with the 19th century Five Points-era Dead Rabbits. 70s-era Chicago was roamed by The Stooge Brothers, the Almighty Furies, Thee Almighty Hell's Devils, Thee Almight Shurz People. A lot of words, a lot of almighties. I like The Stoned Yarders. Says all you need to know, right? Even the members' names are of another time. The Stooge Brothers --

 

-- sound like a friendlier Little Rascals. Smuckers? Unicorn? Bubbles? Giggles? Sweet Pea? And it is nice to know that The Stooge Brothers make sure to endorse Michael's love for Bridget.

And it looks like some of the Bishops' members got left out, or joined late, and had to be added like write-in candidates:

And is this really a gang?

But the most kudos go to these guys, who keep it simple:

Wouldn't You Know, As Soon As You Name A Robot Adam

It starts thinking. Not only is Adam a robot, he is a robot scientist, a geneticist with a minor in evolutionary biology who is looking for genes that code for a certain type of protein. Moreover, once they turned the thing on it made a discovery. If that sounds like the machine that some day in the future the last rag tag and of humans will dust off to discover the prototype of the mechanized killers that roam the earth, then you have not seen Terminator Salvation, which spent two hours trying to prove that the real worry about the post-Skynet future is that the human dialogue will be more robotically deadly than any machine.

A Reader Responds!

According to LTI reader Ryan, the portrait of this magnificently-coiffed family is not photoshopped, no matter what Ronni says. The proof? Another, better family photo has surfaced:

 

What My Old Columbia Housing Apartment Looked Like in 1609

That little highlighted box, or part thereof, in the corner of 119th street between Morningside and Amsterdam. Or it will be 400 years from then, then being the time conjured by this image. Or rather this digital visualization, which was created by the Manhatta Project, a years-long datalogical reconstruction of what the island looked like when Henry Hudson showed up. The recovered natural history -- surprising fact 1: Manhattan was a diverse patchwork of many ecosystems with rich and abundant wildlife -- has been compiled in book form, but the website too is very nifty. Interactive maps! Sliding overlays! Hours of fun for anyone who has lived in New York.

Props from Mother Jones

They like Master Legend. Who doesn't? He is a man for our time. Although MoJo points out, via io9, that there is a grave and gathering threat to the real life superhero world, in the form of real life supervillains. Some guy is out for Shadowhare, it seems. Not sure I'd be too worried; there have been supposed supervillains before. Haven't amounted to much yet. Plus, all they have to do is come face to face with ML in a dark alley and guess what -- it will be an all night tour of Fist City!

Just in Time for Land of the Lost

Chaka's family sits down to pose for a photograph:

Jokes aside, this is quite a sight to behold. Then again, I'm a sucker for the hair, which is why I have been called "too close" to Billy Mitchell.

Ronni thinks this is clearly photoshopped. "No child has that much hair," she says. "And everyone in the comments thinks this family is so magical -- birds of a feather and all that. 'See?' they say, 'There's a partner for everyone.' And: 'How nice that they found each other.'" I agree with the commenters. The hair is all real and so is the fate that brought it together.

First 100 Days on Facebook

So this is way late, but here goes anyhow.

Josh: Check it out this is funny.
Peter: Funny, yes, but the Atlantic did the same thing last month.
Josh: Yeah, well, that may be but the Partisan Review did it like in 1953.
Peter: And Benjamin Franklin in a special edition of Poor Richard's in 1759.
Josh: Don't forget that special pull out in the 1520 edition of Gutenberg's Catholicon.
Peter: Oh sure and the gnostic incanabula too. The gnostics loved Facebook. But only in coptic. 

Whale Sex

With Isabella Rossellini.

Once I Tried It On, That's When the Magic Happened

Every great product deserves a great review.

puppychaun

Who Knew That Christian Bale Was in "Elf"?

Or maybe it was Elf 2, the more dramatic prequel origin story which opens in pre-war Shanghai just as the Japanese attack.

So This is How Society Rewards Genius?

Penis puppeteer arrested.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Think About Poodles Again

More extreme grooming emerges from the depths.

A fishy!:

A buffalo:

And, for the elegant-minded enthusiast, a nice vineyard:

And then there's this creature, spotted on the street by my friend Max. His/her name is pumpkin, even though she does not look like any kind of winter squash. Pumpkin would not last long at a creative grooming competition:

Bad Monkey

File under: WTF?

The Girlfriend Experience

Has the very appropriate Metacritic rating of 69!

Did I Say Crusade?

What I meant was...Holy War! Shockingly (or not, I suppose), it turns out that as the War in Iraq was unfolding, the Defense Department decided to adorn its intelligence updates with pictures of war machines overlaid with Bible verses. Ephesians, Isiah, etc. -- you know, the light stuff, like: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Speaking of bombshells, these images are all from an explosive GQ article about the legacy of Rumsfeld, which is appropriately titled And He Shall Be Judged.

More Things Monkeys Can Do

It's chimps, actually, and they can beat human college students in memory tests. Watch your pin numbers!

And while you're at it, don't let them get a hold of these new mind-controlled wheelchairs.

OK, OK, I Get it! Keyboard Cat!

Steven: You haven't seen this shit?
Me: What?
Steven: It's been going around recently. It's just like funny videos, and then at the end there's this cat starts playing an electric piano.
Me: What song?
Steven: Some little ditty. With like clap sounds and stuff.
Me: I don't get it.
Steven: It's hard to explain. I think the cat video was another viral and then people put it on other ones like a weird commentary. You'll get hooked, believe me. We haven't gotten any work done since this thing showed up. It's sweeping the internet.
Me: So it's the properties of robust hybrids, but in YouTube videos?
Steven: I'm not sure what you're saying, but yes!
Me: I'll have to see some.
Steven: I'll send you some links.
Me: OK
Steven: Get ready for a Grade A mind explosion.

And, my favorite, Jesus is Christmas!!!:

I've Always Wondered Where The Black Hats

Get their black hats. Same place as Gay Talese. Homburgs, fedoras, no creases, creases -- Bruno Lacorazza is a name you can trust. Hasidic hats even get hasidic-ish style names: yeshivish (generic fedora) and shtreimel (fancy and furry)!

Who Put A Spy Cam In My Shower?

Can't get enough Cheney-bashing

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff calls the former VP a "Sith Lord" and then takes him to the mat:

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.

There was absolutely no policy priority attributed to al-Qa'ida by the Cheney-Bush administration in the months before 9/11. Counterterrorism czar Dick Clarke's position was downgraded, al-Qa'ida was put in the background so as to emphasize Iraq, and the policy priorities were lowering taxes, abrogating the ABM Treaty and building ballistic missile defenses.

Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11--much touted by Cheney--is due almost entirely to the nation's having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to "the Cheney method of interrogation."

Those troops have kept al-Qa'ida at bay, killed many of them, and certainly "fixed" them, as we say in military jargon. Plus, sadly enough, those 200,000 troops present a far more lucrative and close proximity target for al-Qa'ida than the United States homeland.

Testimony to that fact is clear: almost 5,000 American troops have died, more Americans than died on 9/11. Of course, they are the type of Americans for whom Cheney hasn't much use as he declared rather dramatically when he achieved no less than five draft deferments during the Vietnam War.

Third--and here comes the blistering fact--when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

And p.s.: if, as Cheney says, torture is so effective can we just use it on him to finally get the truth about what extralegal shadowy tactics he authorized in our name?

Punyverse is a funny title

But what kind of jackass takes a cheap shot and calls Richard Bey's choice of red wine "purple swill"? I like Matt Haber, but why you gotta kick a man when he's down is all I'm saying.

As One of Four Proud Fathers

Of a studio based romantic comedy, I am very much enjoying this McSweeney's RomCom exploration.

Turns Out Jeffrey Goldberg is Funny!

On the cover of this month's Atlantic: "Why I Fired My Broker," a meandering and highly entertaining personal essay that concludes that the brokers don't know anything anyhow and if they did they wouldn't care about helping Jeffrey Godlberg or the rest of us monetary mortals. From a scene at a Fifth Avenue soiree, the party of a friend, the friend being a multi-millionaire and his friends also being multi-millionaires, all of whom had gathered in these times of economic distress to talk about charity:

...I thought, This is Bill Ackman standing before me. He’s a great investor. Maybe he can give me some advice.

So this is what came out of my mouth: “What do you tell the ordinary mortal—say, the person who works in the press that you talked about—what do you say to the person who has $20,000, $50,000, $100,000, or $200,000, maybe, parked somewhere doing nothing? What is your advice right now for that person?”

I looked around. The wizards in the room were having difficulty calculating figures of such humble size. I had thought $200,000 sounded like a large and unembarrassing number. But the room reacted as if I had asked, “Bill, I have 75 cents in my pocket. Do you think I should buy Twizzlers or a big red gumball?

Then comes the more important question:

“What’s the percentage chance we’re going to move to a barter economy?” I asked.

“I think it’s small,” Ackman said.

“Small”? I had been hoping for “Zero.” “Zero” would have been a fine answer, and not because I have nothing to barter except for a stack of old SmartMoney magazines, but “Zero” because, by the time my 12-year-old turns 18, I would like to be able to use my portfolio of stocks and bonds as a flotation device, and not as kindling.

Turns out the best advice Goldberg gets is from a sentimental survivalist:

THE WAY I SEE IT, it’s all a con game,” Cody Lundin was saying. “What I mean is that Wall Street has always been an illusion. Now it’s an illusion that’s crumbling. Wall Street is like someone who’s having heart trouble. It’s in constant need of resuscitation, but after a while, it just doesn’t work anymore. People think that Bernard Madoff was unique, that he was an illusion, but he’s just an extension of the same illusion, the same con game. This is one of the reasons I don’t like to have any debt. When you have debt, you become part of this illusion, and sometimes you get trapped by it.”

We were standing outside in a foot of snow in the mountains above Prescott, Arizona. Lundin was arguing so cogently against the American culture of easy credit, in tones far more thoughtful than one hears on cable television, that I forgot for a moment that he wasn’t wearing shoes, or socks. He was standing in the snow barefoot. Also, in shorts.

“It’s all about regulating core body temperature.” For long hikes in the snow, he wears three pairs of socks, without shoes. He suggested I try this.

Other things Lundin asked me to try include making fire with sticks, eating mice—“a free source of protein in survival scenarios”—and living without electricity for a week to “see where it hurts.” Lundin himself eats mice and rats he traps at his off-the-grid passive-solar house in the wilderness, because “why waste free protein?”

Lundin is a freak; twin blond braids fall from his bandanna-covered head, giving him the appearance of a stoner Viking.

Zing! Lundin's doesn't just tee up some funny turns of phrase but also provides more perspective on finances, as a veil of illusion, which winds up having a deeper effect on Goldberg than you might imagine.

Ultimately, that's the point of the piece, which could have also been called The Tao of the Dow. If you don't worry about getting Fifth Avenue rich, you don't need to worry about financial advice. And if you don't have to worry about financial advice, you'll be happier. It makes the same point you might find in a business-minded story on individual investiong, but through storytelling. Nice work. More please.

Note to Wall Street: Don't Player Hate on Pixar

As I the release date for Pixar's latest movie, "Up," inches closer, the more annoyed I get thinking about this  NY Times article from a couple weeks back, in which the commercial viability of Pixar is questioned because "Up" might not be the cash cow that Finding Nemo was. Never before in human history have commerce and artistic intentions been so successfully combined than at Pixar, and yet still we have to hear what some asshole analyst on Wall Street thinks Pixar should be doing? The article also seems to include some factual innaccuracies. For example:

Pixar’s last two films, “Wall-E” and “Ratatouille,” have been the studio’s two worst performers, delivering sales of $224 million and $216 million respectively, according to Box Office Mojo, a tracking service.

First, let's just put this into relative perspective. If by "worst performers" one means hugely successful blockbusters, then OK, I guess you're right. But, more importantly, those two films are not the worst performers. The article oddly ignores those films' foreign sales, also reported by Box Office Mojo. Both were huge internationally, making their total takes bigger than The Incredibles, Cars, Toy Story, or Monsters, Inc. -- the last two of which are later cited in the article as franchise powerhouses with future sequels that present an upside for Pixar. Huh? And by the way: on domestic box office alone, both Ratatouille and Wall-E were bigger than the original Toy Story.

And yet we have to hear from one Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, who downgraded Disney shares to sell because he's skeptical of “Up.” Greenfields informs us, via the New York Times article: "We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character.” He also doesn't like the lack of a female lead. So let's see...we're supposed to accept the analysis of some self-appointed Wall Street deity who has descended from his throne to assign value to something he doesn't really understand based on guesswork? Right. That has really worked out well so far.

Dawidoff and Dyson

So I just got around to reading the epic and epically controversial Nicholas Dawidoff NY Times Magazine profile of long-time legendary physicist and fairly recent climate change heretic, Freeman Dyson. Observation number 1: I'm sure glad I didn't grow up in England in the 1930s, where small childrens' faces were apparently rubbed with sandpaper. As for the science part, I see what the fuss is about. Mostly. Dyson does slander James Hansen, who gets little chance to respond. Dawidoff was not trying to give a special voice to a climate change skeptic, but he had to navigate a tricky path here. If he really wanted to present the compelling tale of a brilliant but wild heretic against the establishment, an interesting dynamic to be sure, Dawidoff should have made sure there was space to really dig in to the arguments. Dyson says (with no evidence) Hansen is an opportunist. Hansen says Dyson doesn't know what he's talking about it. That's the central axis of the story, such at it is concieved, and it gets very little attention and almost no detail.

Nut aside, the story is an entertaining mini-biography of an inveterate contrarian. That point was surely made, but perhaps not strongly enough. Dyson's innovative thinking also makes him a technofuturist whose  more fantasticalideas have had more traction in the world of science fiction than science. Dyson's calculations about how climate change will enable a green future for all the planet, for example, might be better contextualized for the readers if they were to also realize this is the same guy who thought we could build an army of biological robots that could colonize asteroids and harvest their resources for us. Or something like that. You get the idea. Nifty. But not exactly practical. And when Dawidoff mentions Dysonian ideas like the Orion project, it is not fully explained that this is a cool idea that was basically impossible.

Another approach to the story altogether, I might dare to suggest, might have been to ignore the sensational, news-peg hot button issue of the day and take a step back to think about the role of Dyson's style of unorthodox thinking in science. Sure, maybe he is out of his depth in atmospheric science. Doesn't mean he can't throw ideas out there, no matter how odd. (Although, one might point out that when he notes how Greenlanders are now proud of their ability to grow cabbage, Dyson is veering into the rhetorical territory usually reserved for true nuts like Inhofe.) What kind of effect does it have in the consensus community when there is a brilliant critic? Get all Gladwell on that shit! Maybe there is some dynamic between synthesizers and specialists to be extrapolated from Dyson's career. Or as Dyson (sort of) put it, what is different about the frogs toiling in the mud and birds surveying from the sky? It seems that a profile of a guy like Dyson offers the opportunity to look at how science can be both challenged and advanced by contrarianism. It likely would have been more interesting. And more fitting for a profile of a well-known contrarian scientist nearing legacy time. To instead turn Dyson into a spokesman for climate change skepticism, it seems to me, does the most disservice not to science but to Dyson himself.

Gross National Happiness

I recall seeing a cross cultural, global study on happiness (by New Scientist, I have discovered upon tracking it down) according to which Nigeria is the happiest place on earth. A surprising result, you might say, since Nigeria is an autocratic state with regional and ethnic tensions and a megalopolis capital, Lagos, in which millions of people live in slums. But it wasn't an outlier; next happiest on the list was Mexico.

An artifact of methodology, perhaps? I haven't seen the survey for assessing happiness and satisfaction, but I am not surprised by any of it. I'm inclined to think that if you don't like the methodology, then you're not on the happy list. It's a matter of perspective; we're less happy because we've come to believe that happiness depends on certain things. Those things don't make us happier, it turns out. (Happiness in Western Europe and North American has not increased in 60 years, despite an increase in wealth, incomes, etc.) If you want to be socioplitical about it, chalk it up to the postwar consumer industrial complex, a la One Dimensional Man, or just the malaise of modern life if you prefer existential anomie. Either way, one thing is for certain: some of the biggestm genuine smiles I have ever seen were on AIDS orphans running around in tattered clothers on an island in Lake Victoria. I don't exactly understand it, but seeing that is something that will shake up your idea of what it means to be happy.

New in quantifiable happiness news is the Kingdom of Bhutan, which recently implemented a national system that requires all government programs must be evaluated in terms of "Gross National Happiness." This means computing GNH indexes, which means some arcane formulas with as many as 72 variables. All constitutionally mandated, by the way. A tough proposition, but go get 'em! There are probably only a few places in the world where the government would mandate measuring and improving happiness, one of them being a small buddhist mountain kingdom where the monarch unilaterally stepped down AGAINST the wishes of his loving subjects. Interesting to note: that monarch was also the man who allowed television into Bhutan ten years ago, making it the last place on earth to be so connected. And the article hints that a systematic measure of happiness might uncover the cultural changes experienced when an isolated buddhist society exposes itself to television and the rest of the world. Seems like a natural experiment! Some enterprising social scientists should set up shop there for a longitudinal study and see how the Bhutanese kids' advancing awareness of 50 Cent changes the formulas' numbers.

A Sneak Preview of Coming Genius

My pal Stephen Elliott, prolific author, political organizer, newly minted editor, and general force of nature, has a new book coming out and he wants to give you a chance to read it early! Don't delay. There aren't that many advance copies. Early birds will get the worm. And by worm, I mean a memoir/true crime courtroom drama that involves murder and sex!

You're Gonna Love My Nuts!

Why We Need Activist Judges To Follow International Precedent

Beyond the news peg of this story, which is that a German court intervened against the compound married name Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim-Kunz-Hallstein, the article also notes that "Germany takes a highly regimented approach to naming." All children’s names must be approved by local authorities, and "there is a reference work, the International Handbook of Forenames, to guide them." This is what we need! So that, like our German friends, we can restore order to the proliferation of goofy names. You know the ones. I introduce a motion to have such a handbook here, and offer an ammendment such that this book can never contain the names Keenan, Arrow, Lacee, and of course, Trig, Willow, Piper, et al. All yays? Motion accepted!

Kittens, Inspired by Kittens!

I think this is what is sounds like in Ronni and Marina's heads when they see super and judy.

Box Kitty

Every day is Friday for me! Please to enjoy little friend Maru:

I'm going to go out on a limb here

And say that an "interactive Holocaust memorial" built by a church in Fresno with reconstructed crematoria is just plain weird: 

Built by Cornerstone Church in Fresno, the Holocaust Experience will guide visitors through scenes of 12 major events that took place between 1933 and 1945. The scenes span from the rise of Adolf Hitler to Kristallnacht, or "the Night of Broken Glass," when nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire across Germany, to Hitler's decision to execute genocide as "the final solution to the Jewish question."

...Using nearly 100 actors from the church, which is housed in a historic Fresno theater, the Holocaust Experience begins at an induction center, complete with Nazi soldiers stationed at guard towers.

Visitors then view a documentary showing how Hitler rose to power and move through a series of scenes, including a depiction of the Warsaw Ghetto that features actual video footage and a reconstructed prison train car featuring the recorded account of a Jewish rabbi who at age 8 rode one of the trains to Auschwitz.

The exhibit also includes scenes depicting the gas chambers and ovens where mass murders and cremations took place, as well as a timeline of the Holocaust that adorns a long hallway. The exhibit ends in an auditorium displaying a memorial and a video with survivors' testimonies.

This Is Just Plain Neat-O

Someone Needs to Save the Chron

Just so that David Perlman can do a Pulitzer-winning series on the senescence, during which he will discover the secret Methusela syrum, inject it in himself, and live long enough to be a science reporter for another 78 years!

I See Nerd People

The Sixth Sense, Minority Report-style.

Picture from a yahoo news swine flu story

I think we always knew this is what the apocalypse would look like.

Being Frank With Bea Arthur

Jeff Kwong spotted this picture of me on the street with Laurie Ochoa and Jonathan Gold:

This is a special moment captured. Reason #1: It was my first time at Let's Be Frank. That grass-fed bratwurst with sweet grilled onions is no joke. Don't bother with mustard, or even sauerkraut; the special, seemingly proprietary sweet peppers are the trick. Reason #2: Jonathan and I, as you can see in the picture, are having some technological interfacing in which we are comparing the relative functionality between New York Times applications on the iPhone and Blackberry. (iPhone wins; Jonathan is dazzled.) As we discuss the marvels and miseries of handheld news connectivity, we receive the first solemn news that our beloved Bea Arther is no longer with us. (Or rather, I receive the news first, since I am the one with an iPhone.)

"Bea Arthur died," I said.

"You will always remember where you were when Bea Arthur died," Jonathan said.

He was joking. But I really do like Bea Arthur, and not just because she ran the Mos Eisley cantina in the Star Wars christmas special. And anyhow, the irony is that thanks to this picture I really will remember where I was when Bea Arthur died.

Tamiflu for Texas

So I guess the hopeful President of the future Lone Star Republic decided to hold off his plans for independence until after the government kicks in 37,430 doses worth of federal oppression.

Lolworld

Confused by the internet? Deanna Warren is here to help!

And in the role of a lifetime...

All you need to know is that this is real:

Would it be so wrong if our kid was a dwarf?

But here's the more important question, posed by the makers of Tiptoes: Listen people, we're making art here -- are you with us?

And the world owes them a debt of gratitude. Thanks to them, the entirety of Tiptoes is just a click away... 

Peepin-and-a-creepin

So the slow motion infrared videos of bat flight is nifty. But even niftier is the bat walking. What's better than walking? Vampire bat walking. Or stalking, rather, which looks like so:

I was wondering why my dealer's number goes straight to voicemail

Looks like she got busted.

Although it's nice to know that beneath the sordid bindles, Ol Grube was still remembering the fallen towers.