Donald Trump has reportedly spent $1 million researching a potential presidential run in 2016. Perhaps he should have used that money to buy a new wig instead.

Now that Amanda Bynes has finished randomly lashing out at Rihanna, she's moved on to her next, probably more deserving target: the NYPD. Monday morning, Bynes took to Twitter to announce her plans to sue the NYPD, her apartment complex, and possibly (the rant is difficult to understand) the hospital in which she was mentally evaluated after being arrested Thursday night.

I'm suing NYPD for illegally entering my apartment, lying about drugs on me and lying about me tampering with non existent drug paraphernalia, then I'm suing for being put into a mental hospital against my will, then locked up overnight for coming home after a facial and working out with my trainer like the good girl that I am... I'm also suing my apartment complex for lying about me smoking in my building. I'm free forever! You can't lock up an innocent person!

She also mentioned that it's impossible for her to have been drunk or stoned because she's “allergic to drugs and alcohol.” This sort of matches her "it was a vase, not a bong" defense on Friday.

The announcement comes two days after Bynes accused the NYPD of sexually assault, though Bynes failed to mention the sexual harassment in this most recent Twitter rant.

In addition to the lawsuit, Bynes also announced plans to get some plastic surgery — "I'm getting in shape and getting a nose job!" — as well as her next career move:

I'm looking forward to a long and wonderful career as a singer/rapper!

And at least one rapper expressed support for Bynes this morning.

@amandabynes when people hate and the media lies……. That means you popping #FlockaFacts

— Waka Flocka Flame (@WakaFlockaBSM) May 27, 2013

[via TMZ]

To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com

Earlier this month, before the first game of the Canadian Hockey League's Memorial Cup, singer Alexis Normand joined a long list of people who have brutalized the U.S. national anthem in front of a large, tense crowd.

Normand, who's Canadian, tripped up on "through the perilous fight." She's not the first. Is this a particularly tricky part of the anthem? Where do singers generally go off the rails?

To throw some science at this, we watched a bunch of YouTube videos (n=26) to find the exact lyric where unfortunate singers first fucked up the song. (You can find those videos in the annotations to the top image.) While the actual tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is famously difficult to carry–it covers an octave and a half–we focused on true flubs, so the terrible but lyrically accurate renditions of Carl Lewis, Kat Deluna, Roseanne Barr, and others got a pass.

As it turns out, pretty much anything in the first half of the anthem is fuckupable, although only one poor guy (in the very worst rendition we could find) screwed up the first line. If you made it to "And the rockets' red glare" you were in great shape, and if you got as far as "That our flag was still there" you were in the clear (with another horrible exception, shown above). The danger zone seems to be a pair of lines in the middle: O'er the ramparts we watched / Were so gallantly streaming?

These lines are tough for a few reasons. First, as everyone learns in Intro Psych, it's harder to remember stuff that's in the middle of a sequence than it is to remember stuff at the beginning or end. Second, the structure of this whole section is poetically jumbled (easier to understand: "Whose broad stripes and bright stars / were so gallantly streaming / through the perilous fight / o'er the ramparts we watched?") Finally, Google Ngram tells us that o'er, rampart, and gallant themselves have kind of fallen out of favor since this poem was written in 1814, more so than any other words in the anthem. Words that Americans haven't used much in the last two centuries can be tricky to remember.

These factors combined, you have yourself a perfect storm for blowing a culturally-significant song in front of thousands of spectators. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you'd better hope Maurice Cheeks has your back.

Thanks to Joe MacLeod for the idea.

Happy Memorial Day! The United States is the only rich country that doesn't guarantee paid vacation days or holidays to its workers.

According to Pennsylvania State Police, on Saturday a 16-year-old stabbed his 17-year-old girlfriend to death as the two were in the middle of an argument. When the teenager returned home, bloodied and crying, he reportedly confessed to his mom.

As NBC Philadelphia reports, the crime took place Saturday night at roughly 8:30 p.m. along a hiking trail near Skippack Township, a suburb of Philadelphia. Juliane Siller, 17, and her boyfriend, Tristan Stahley, 16, were walking on the trail when they got into an argument, reportedly over an accusation that Siller was going out too much.

The argument escalated and police say Stahley stabbed Siller in the throat, killing her, and dragged her body off the trail and into the woods.

Stahley then walked home, where his mother noticed he had been crying and had blood on his legs. She asked if he was okay. He responded that he wasn't and proceeded to tell her what he'd done. When she asked if he was joking, he told her he wasn't, and he began crying hysterically. As Stahley waited outside, his mother called police.

Before police arrived, Stahley's father found his son outside with another knife to his neck, threatening suicide. The father tackled Stahley, eventually wrestling away the knife but not before being cut on his face and hands.

Police arrived not long after and arrested Stahley. He was charged with first degree murder, third degree murder, and possession of a weapon.

According to his mother, Stahley was on anti-depressant medications and had recently been treated for a drug addiction. The 17-year-old Siller was a high school senior and was set to graduate on June 12. The two had dated for roughly nine months.

"This whole incident is just a tragic case, said Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele. "You have a young woman whose life was taken from her and a 16-year-old who faces potential life in prison for his actions."

[Image via NBC Philadelphia]

To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's press secretary and assistant press secretary both quit on Monday. Their resignations came four days after Ford fired his chief of staff.

A man making “unusual statements” attempted to open an airplane door today during a flight from Alaska to Portland, Oregon. Passengers eventually subdued the man, who authorities said weighed 220 pounds, using shoelaces and seat-belt extensions

Once the plane landed in Portland, FBI agents arrested Alexander Michael Herrera, 23, on a charge of interfering with a flight crew.

The incident began as the Alaska Airlines flight made its descent into Portland. Passengers and airline employees told authorities that Herrera made several strange statements before attempting to open an exit row door.

One passenger, Ryan Oelrich, told ABC News he awoke from a nap to “loud hissing noise” and “lots of screaming.

"My first thought was that the plane must be going down, but then I heard someone screaming to stop him, take him down," he said. "I looked behind me and in the exit row was a very large gentleman who was attempting to open the exit row door."

Passengers seated near Herrera responded quickly and soon had the man pinned to the ground.

Witness Henry Pignataro told KGW-TV that a woman seated next to Herrera asked for help.

"I put him in a choke hold and brought him down to the ground," Pignataro said.

Once he was under control, Herrera was seated and “surrounded by big guys.” Somewhat amazingly, the plane landed only nine minutes behind schedule.

[Associated Press/ABC News]

A newborn baby in Jinhua, China is in stable condition after being cut from a small section of sewer pipe—where it had been trapped after its mother apparently flushed it down the toilet. Watch out; the video's a little graphic.

Weighing five pounds, and still attached to the placenta, the two-day-old baby was found by the building's landlord, who was examining the toilet after an apartment-dweller—said to be the infant's mother—complained of "weird noises" in the pipe, Sky News reports. Firefighters removed the section of pipe in which the baby was stuck, and took it to the hospital, where over the course of several hours doctors carefully extracted the infant.

The mother had hidden the pregnancy, and admitted that the baby was hers when questioned; it's unclear whether she dumped the baby, or if the birth was unexpected:

"We need further investigations to find out if she had any malicious intentions" before deciding whether the mother would be charged, [a policeman] added.

According to the officer: "The baby is very healthy now and can be released from the hospital."

But the mother was in a serious condition due to complications from the delivery, he added.

Those who enjoy slow-motion disasters have spent years watching the travails of the gallant United States Postal Service, which is kind of like FedEx if it was run by the Three Stooges. Just how existentially challenged is our nation's mail service?

The LA Times has an overview of the USPS's grim situation today. First, the bad news:

The Postal Service lost $1.9 billion between January and March, and $15.9 billion last year. The 238-year-old institution loses $25 million each day, and has reached its borrowing limit with the federal Treasury. Daily mail delivery could be threatened within a year, officials say.

That's pretty bad! That's very bad. That's extremely bad. Negative $16 billion dollars per year is not the kind of "alpha" performance that professional managers generally seek out. The other bad news: every time the USPS tries to actually fix something to stop losing so much money, like by ending Saturday mail delivery, Congress, which is composed of petulant stamp collectors who cannot do arithmetic, stops them. So it seems quite likely that our elected representatives will steer the USPS directly into the mouth of a volcano and let it start burning before any useful reforms come about.

But there is somewhat good news as well! A significant part of the postal service's debt is due to the passage of a 2006 law that required it to "start pre-funding the health benefits of future retirees 50 years in advance," to the tune of more than $5 billion per year. Changing this funding mandate could go a long way to making the USPS far more financially sound.

Along with ending Saturday delivery, ending curbside delivery, closing all the fucking post offices in places like, I don't know, "Elmont, North Dakota," which are used only to deliver hardtack to moose trackers, raising the price of stamps by several dollars, and replacing mailmen with robots (that steal wallets).

[LAT. Photo: AP]

A family in Nanjing, China, was left embarrassed and apologetic after their 15-year-old son was found to have defaced an ancient Egyptian relic with the phrase "Ding Jinhao was here."

A photo of the 3,500-year-old Luxor temple relic and the teenager's contribution was posted by another tourist to the Chinese social networking site Weibo last Friday.

It sparked significant outrage, which led to a massive "human flesh search" for the boy's identity.

He was eventually tracked down to a middle school in the Jiangsu Province capital, and reporters soon arrived in droves to interview the boy's family.

In a statement published by China Daily, Ding's parents said they wished to apologize to the Egyptian people on their son's behalf, as well as "to people who have paid attention to this case across China."

Speaking with Modern Express, the parents said they had failed to "properly educate their child" and asked they he be given another chance.

Many aren't quite ready to forgive, but at least one person, a Tourism Management professor at Fudan University, is sticking up for the parents.

"It's not only the boy, there are other tourists that leave graffiti on relics," Gu Xiaoming is quoted as saying.

Indeed, the problem has apparently become widespread enough for the Chinese government to enact a Tourism Law granting travel agencies the authority to punish violations of "social ethics."

As for the defaced relief, efforts to restore it have been met with some success.

[photo via Weibo]

Beyoncé's show in Copenhagen last night was momentarily interrupted when her body proved too bootylicious for one fresh fan who proceeded to slap her on her behind.

During the part of her performance that involves fan interaction, one overzealous Bey Army member got a bit too interactive, and decided to smack the singer on her backside.

"I will have you escorted out right now, all right?" Beyoncé can be heard responding.

According to NME, however, the offender was allowed to stay.

[H/T: ONTD]

You like coffee? Yeah, I used to like coffee. I'm kind of over that now. I've evolved past that. I've advanced into tea. Tea is kind of the new "thing," for me and my 300 million closest friends, the citizens of the United States of America.

The good thing about this, obviously, is that maybe at some point in our natural lives we'll get to stop hearing about everyone's personal preferred variety of coffee bean and method for making coffee. The downside is that instead we'll be hearing about their preferred fucking tea. Which is, if anything, even worse than coffee, because it lacks the utilitarian element of hypercaffeination that enables coffee to maintain its populist appeal even as it is assailed by cultural snobbery.

The fact is, though, tea is pretty god damn popular these days, as Maureen Morrisson reports:

Among specialty retailers like Starbucks, servings of hot tea rose 18% for the year ended February 2013, compared with a year earlier... In supermarkets, ready-to-drink tea has been booming for some time; during the past six years, it has grown 58%... 7.7% of tea flavors were named sweet tea last year, up from 3.6% in 2010.

Add that all up, and you get... tea. People like tea for some reason. What is it about tea that has suddenly grabbed America's imagination? Who knows, perhaps it's the flavoring that it adds to the taste of plain water. Or the smell. "We now intend to do for tea what we have done for coffee,” says the CEO of Starbucks. Well, that's just great. Blah blah blah tea. Craft beer, coffee, tea, a few decades down the road it'll be something else that everybody has to be seen drinking. True Blood or whatever. It's flavored water, people, deal with it, no need to make a huge production.

Tea is composed of atoms— just like you and me.

[Ad Age. Photo: ienjoysushi/ Flickr]

The Subway diet. The cabbage soup diet. The junk food diet. From Atkins to the Zone, there is an array of diets to help people slim down. Have you heard of the masturbation diet? You know, the one in which you drop pounds by playing with yourself furiously.

According to Nikkan Spa, a 28 year-old with the alias "Yuichi Ito" was able to lose nearly 9 pounds in two months, simply through watching his diet and flogging his log between three and five times a day. (Supposedly, Ito's record was seven times in a single day.)

While in high school, Ito played baseball, but gained weight after he graduated. The 5 foot 5 inch Ito ballooned to 167 pounds, which would be considered overweight by Japanese standards. Ito decided that a good way to drop the excess pounds was to cut calories and have more sex. With himself.

"I read online that pleasuring oneself was the same as running 200 meters," said Ito. "Without a girlfriend, the only way I could become thin was through masturbation!"

(Well, he could've taken up walking, jogging, swimming, or even played Wii Fit or Dance Dance Revolution. But Ito chose to play with his magic wand, so whatever!)

Nikkan Spa, a men's publication with rather salacious content, also featured other unusual diets in its latest issue, such as a "karaoke diet", a junk food diet, and a diet centered around the Korean alcoholic beverage makgeolli. None of the diets, including the fapping one, seem widespread in Japan, so don't assume that they are. They're not!

Interestingly, Nikkan Spa had a doctor chime in as to whether or not each diet was healthy. Drinking makgeolli to lose weight wasn't recommended—neither was the snack food diet. The karaoke diet, however, got much higher marks. What about the masturbation diet?

"The issue with the effectiveness of this diet is that while you are exhausting your body, you are not consuming calories by using physical strength," said Satoshi Yoshijima, a dermatologist and doctor of internal medicine in Tokyo. Dr. Yoshijima also added that excess self-stimulation can adversely impact hormone levels.

Besides, who wants to risk going blind or hairy palms, just to drop nine pounds? Not worth it!

オナニーダイエットで4kg減！に医者も苦笑 [Nikkan Spa]

Photo: sunabesyou | Shutterstock

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Prehistoric fertility god and former CNN host Larry King is bringing his current show, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, to Russia Today, and adding another show, Politics With Larry King, to the Kremlin-funded cable news and YouTube channel. "I would rather ask questions to people in positions of power, instead of speaking on their behalf," King says in the promo spot.

Here are some other things King has said, courtesy Radio Free Europe:

"I can't explain it. I had an affinity with him. You try to get that with a lot of guests, but I really had it with [Putin]," King said. "He has 'it,' whatever 'it' is." [...]

"You know, there are certain people that come into your life that you like," King said. "They change a room. They have a certain magnetism." He also noted that "power is an aphrodisiac." [...]

King professed not to know about such things, saying that "I'm not into the politics in Russia."

RT—the favored news channel for those who want to challenge American media hegemony by aligning themselves with autocrats and conspiracy theorists—is funded by the Russian government, over which Putin presides, and was founded by two Putin aides. According to journalists at the channel, direct criticism of Putin is forbidden. But, ah, what is there to criticize?

The tornado apocalypse of 2013 is expected to continue today.

Seeking a job? Who better to turn to for advice than mustachioed simpleton Thomas Friedman, reliable font of platitudinous excreta? Why, Thomas Friedman knows just who to talk to about this...

One of the best ways to understand the changing labor market is to talk to the co-founders of HireArt (www.hireart.com): Eleonora Sharef, 27, a veteran of McKinsey; and Nick Sedlet, 28, a math whiz who left Goldman Sachs...

The way HireArt works, explained Sharef (who was my daughter’s college roommate)

Thomas Friedman's insights on the issue of the changing American job market can be summarized as follows: "I'll ask my daughter's college roommate." Here is an actual and accurate summary of the remainder of Friedman's column: "said Sharef, adding... said Sharef... Added Sharef... So what does she advise? Sharef pointed to... said Sharef..." [Where you see ellipses, there are quotes or summaries of quotes from Sharef.]

Thomas Friedman is not just some lazy hack who only quotes cab drivers. He's a lazy hack who also quotes his daughter's college roommate.

[NYT. Photo: AP]

Denise Garrido managed to hold on to her Miss Universe Canada title for a solid 24 hours before officials yanked it away. It seems she was crowned by mistake.

"My heart sank. I was so sad," Garrido said of learning that a typo was to blame for the mix-up — and that she had actually come in fourth, not first.

It seems a mistake was made when the judges' handwritten scores were being inputted into a computer, and the real winner was Riza Santos, who was previously the third runner-up.

Miss Universe Canada spokesman Andrew Lopez said an independent third party typically handles the scores, but being unavailable for Saturday's event led officials to pin the task on a pageant employee.

A third-party audit conducted after the fact found the error and notified Miss Universe Canada.

One 2013 pageant contestant complained that the "typo fiasco" has tainted the entire competition.

"How we do we know that everything else wasn’t wrong?" Marwa Ishow told the Toronto Star. "The whole pageant seems like it was staged."

As for Garrido, she will receive a consolation prize in the form of a few appearances alongside the real Miss Universe Canada, but is too old per competition rules to compete again.

"I will always have the memory of being the 24-hour queen," she said.

[photos via Miss Universe, Twitter]

Remember Josh Weed, the Mormon blogger who came out last year as a gay man who's been happily married to a woman for 10 years? He and his wife Lolly told more of their story last night on VH1's I'm Married to A... last night. Josh and Lolly's love bears endless dissection for the questions it raises (specifically those that meet at the uncomfortable intersection of sexuality and agency).

It's interesting that they feel ostracized equally by their church and by gays, who think Josh has no claim on the gay label (even though given his life path, he could obviously float by without ever acknowledging it). The Weeds ultimately ring legit to me — they aren't interested in advocating but in sharing their story, they never suggest anyone try out their complex agreement and they preach a message of love and acceptance.

But what ultimately makes their story so consumable is that around the corner of every warmly delivered explanation is another question — early in this clip, they discuss their sex life (which they have always maintained in this great). At the end of it, Lolly admits, "I gave up that carnality of just lust, but I feel like what I got in return was much better and definitely more worthwhile."

When a 73-year-old man with dementia went missing from his Limington, Maine, home, the news team at local ABC affiliate WMTW did their part by traveling to the region to report on his disappearance.

Happily, they were also able to report on his reappearance — after finding him themselves.

Around 6:30 AM, shortly after reporter Norm Karkos delivered a live update, Robert McDonough, who had been missing for 14 hours, approached the crew and identified himself.

"Well sometimes timing is everything," Karkos told anchors Erin Ovalle and Shannon Moss. "And good news, and a happy ending. The gentleman behind us, you’re looking at, that is Robert McDonough."

According to Karkos, McDonough did appear to have injured hand, but was otherwise in good condition.

[video via WMTW-TV]

Philly comic John McKeever of the sketch comedy group Bird Text (The Real Househusbands of Philadelphia) directs his funny friends in a side project skit about how heterosexuality came to be.

There is absolutely nothing more to add so just watch.

[video via Iron Potato]