Enjoy your BILLY bookcases and HEMNES coffee tables, because IKEA is using one percent of the world's wood every year to make them. But apparently one in ten Europeans are conceived in an IKEA bed every year. So, you know, the circle of life: the IKEA giveth and the IKEA taketh away.

Excessive drinking costs the American economy more than $220 billion a year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is enough to really make you need a drink.

The fine folks over at the Atlantic have calculated this out to costing the economy about $1.90 a drink. Seventy-two percent of that $220 billion loss — around $160 billion — comes from lost productivity at work (oh, you thought you could handle it on a weeknight? Riiiight.)

But don't blame yourselves, America, you tired, weak, hungover masses, yearning to be free of your headaches. About 15 percent of the binge-drinking public is responsible for around 75 percent of the total economic costs of drinking.

[via, image via Shutterstock]

A Lower East Side firefighter was arrested Friday after he mugged an off-duty cop and tried to steal his gun.

The brawl began when fireman Angel Valerio left a Queens T.G.I. Friday's with three of his friends and encountered his nemesis — soon-to-be victim — cop. Words were exchanged, but things escalated quickly when one of Valerio's friends punched the cop in the face.

The cop apparently identified himself as such and tried to walk away, but Valerio and his friends, who had boozed it up at Friday's, because, Friday's, followed him down the street, hit him, and tried to steal the cop's backpack and gun.

The cop managed to run away and was hospitalized with bruises and scratches, while Valerio was tracked down — BY THE VERY AGENCY HE TRIED TO DEFEAT — and arrested for attempted robbery, assault, and attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He faces up to seven years in prison. The cop, meanwhile, faces an eternity of being made fun of for getting beat up by a fireman.

[NYDN, photo via Shutterstock]

In Polish, worshippers often use an honorific when referring to God. Pan Bóg. Mr. God.

As in, Mr. God, please give us health and happiness. Please grant us peace, Mr. God. Please let my basketball team win, just this once, so our parents will take us out to dinner to celebrate, Mr. God. I’m having the potato skins.

Though most faith traditions technically consider God as sexless and genderless, I have trouble thinking of God that way. We anthropomorphize everything. We think in terms of the human, and in terms of the body. And when we think that way, more often than not, we think of a man. A white man.

Our Father, we say. Lord God, heavenly king, we say.

I learned about God from my Polish grandmother, Baba Antoinette. Jezus z Maryja, she’d shout when the Minnesota Vikings threw an interception, when our dog Sam almost knocked her over running through the house. Horse-face, she’d call the dog.

I can’t picture God with a horse-face. If I actively try to imagine God as a horse, I can only picture Gandalf’s horse Shadowfax, lord of all horses in Lord of the Rings, white as the wizard’s beard, white as mayonnaise.

There was something godly about Sam the day he jumped off the roof of my uncle’s house, sent up a cloud of dirt around him like a halo, and bounced back up, shaking himself clean. Yes, I think, God is a mutt throwing himself down for the feeling in the gut.

Himself, I said. Itself, themself, I didn’t say.

St. Paul says that, in Christ, there is neither male nor female. He goes on to command wives to be obedient to their husbands.

I say I’m anti-racist, say hiphop, say feminist, say genderqueer. I go on to treat everything like it belongs to me. Spatial privilege on the bus, in the coffee shop, in the classroom. I think everybody should listen to me, I think my opinion matters always and everywhere. I think I’m the center of the goddamned universe.

If the universe is ever-expanding, and I try to track that expansion, the location from which I try to track that expansion causes that location to be the center of the universe. Technically.

One time, I got pulled over by a cop. I’d been speeding, my taillight was busted, and my driver’s license had been expired for a while. I got off with a warning.

One time, the owner of a comic book store caught me and my (white) friends stealing from him. He gave us that cold disapproving headshake and we felt it in our bones. We got off with a warning.

(White is always in parentheses.)

One time, in high school, I gave a speech in class criticizing teachers, those power-drunken bastards. Mrs. Johnson gave me a suspension slip for swearing, and then recommended I take Advanced Placement English next term. I think you’re just not being challenged enough, she said. Thank God for Mrs. Johnson, but what if I’d been a black boy?

At the same high school, my senior year, one of the administrators yelled at me to stop running in the cafeteria. I didn’t hear her. Another suspension.

Since the murder of Trayvon Martin, I’ve been reading articles about the “rules” black mothers often teach their black sons to survive in America. “Never run in public. Never run with anything in your hands” is a rule that splayed me open. I can’t even imagine. Trayvon was on the phone with a friend before he was murdered, and he told her, as George Zimmerman pursued him, that he was consciously not running away so that he didn’t look like a criminal.

Mr. God, please deliver us from this shit.

Baba Antoinette taught me about God by doing her best impression. She was a trafficker during Prohibition. She owned a bar in Northeast Minneapolis. She didn’t leave her husband despite his numerous offenses. She humbled herself, choosing the Czechoslovakia team on the Nintendo hockey game we played so I could be Poland.

In my imagination, God is a white, bearded man, and I can’t love him the way I love my Grandma. I wish I could make God walk using a walker with cut-open tennis balls on the feet. I wish I could make God teach me about loyalty and outrage, pierogies and Christmas cookies. I wish God was not an absentee father.

When I was born, my dad’s ex-wife convinced him that my mom was lying, that I was not his. My mother took me to my grandma’s house, sat in the alleyway for half an hour, trying to steel herself. She brought me inside, swaddled in a hand-me-down blanket, and Baba, having looked at me once, said, omnisciently, Yes, that’s obviously Jerry’s son.

Our Father, we say. I could be Poland, I said.

Before I was born, the doctors said I was a girl. My mom was going to name me Elizabeth. Elizabeth Grassman.

Because I am Michael and not Elizabeth, I am more or less safe wherever I go. Because I am a Mlekoday, I am in love with the smell of beer.

Growing up in the bars my parents worked at, I learned the scent of beer spilled on the bar-floor. Now I walk by a frat house the morning after a party and I’m a kid again, rocking out to my Mariah Carey cassette tape unaware while my mom curses everybody who doesn’t tip her.

Now I walk drunkenly home from the bars at 2 a.m. in Bloomington, Indiana, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in Manhattan, Kansas, in Brooklyn, New York, and I am Michael Mlekoday, and this is my street, always, and the shadows and the streetlights and the rundown buildings all recognize me. The bushes and the alleyways recognize me. The walnut trees bow when I pass. I don’t look over my shoulder. I wear my hood up and don’t worry I look suspicious, don’t worry it limits my vision. I have never once felt a stranger’s hands on me on this walk. I have never had a mantra to keep me safe after dark, never had rules to help me survive. Though I am aware of these facts right now, no doubt I will forget them by tonight. I don’t even have to be aware of whether or not I am aware of my surroundings.

That’s the only way I can recognize my privilege, usually: via negativa. A negative is an image we need to reverse before it becomes reality. The futurist Alvin Toffler says that the new literacy is the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn.

I think God queers everything.

I don’t know if that’s true. Behold, I make all things new.

Before I was born, the doctors said I was a girl.

Most faith traditions technically consider God to be sexless and genderless,

but I have trouble. I say I’m anti-racist, say hiphop, say feminist, say genderqueer.

Now I walk drunkenly home from the bars at 2 a.m. Jezus z Maryja.

If the universe is ever-expanding. White as mayonnaise.

“Never run in public.” God as a horse.

Please deliver.

Michael Mlekoday is the author of The Dead Eat Everything (Kent State University Press, 2013), a collection of poems. Mlekoday serves as Poetry Editor of Indiana Review, is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and has work published or forthcoming in Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, Hayden's Ferry Review, Sycamore Review, and other journals.

It's not news when someone isn't somewhere, but Facebook's top celebrity author sure convinced the internet otherwise: Sheryl Sandberg has thousands buzzing about the fact that she was not aboard a crashed plane today, despite zero initial reports that she ever was.

At a time when many plane passengers are injured (or dead)—and news confusion is bouncing around—it's the epitome of crassness to use disaster as publicity, a public broadcast to her 1.2 million Facebook followers and beyond. It's also a testament to just how corporately beloved Sandberg is that she can pointlessly insert herself into a national news story via Facebook status—that she did not board the wrecked flight out of South Korea, choosing an alternate ticket so that she could use bonus miles—and not receive any backlash. Fawners are happy to be relieved about something they weren't ever worried about to begin with. Everyone adores the myth figure of the frugal exec, I suppose.

It would've made sense for Sandberg to correct any public rumors about her non-existent seat on the plane (or share the message only with friends), as Facebook's value as a publicly traded company rests heavily on her role as COO. It'd be responsible. But there was never even a whisper that she was in any danger until she forced the topic—conveniently, right at the tail end of an overseas publicity tour for Lean In. All of the top Google News results for the non-story of Sandberg's non-escape prominently mention her book.

In other news, Twitter creator Jack Dorsey is posting Vines from Texas, so it's probably safe to say that he has not been arrested as part of the Egyptian coup.

Art collector Charles Saatchi — who was caught on camera choking his wife, Nigella Lawson — now says that he is divorcing her for not defending his reputation.

An airborne fungal disease without a cure, coccidioidomycosis — also known as valley fever or cocci — is affecting more people than ever in the Southwest, where more than 20,000 cases have been reported this year.

The disease is contracted through microscopic spores in soil that lodge in the lungs and can spread to affect the bones, skin, eyes, or brain. Although valley fever doesn't impact everyone who is exposed to it, there is still no cure or vaccine, and about 160 people die from complications each year. Every patient experiences different symptoms, but those infected tend to lose weight and strength rapidly. Many patients lose the ability to live independently.

Doctors believe the uptick in cases is tied to climate changes, with cases increasing when dry weather follows rainfall. The majority of cases originate in California and Arizona, but the total number is unknown — some states, like Texas, do not have mandatory reporting. However, the increase in infections is serious enough that last week a federal judge ordered 2,600 inmates out of prisons in the San Joaquin Valley, where 535 of 640 inmate cocci cases were reported. According to the Times, yearly inmate costs for hospitalization for cocci amounts to more than $23 million.

Valley fever also appears to have a more adverse impact on African-Americans. According to an Arizona study, African-Americans have a 25 percent risk of developing complications, compared to only 6 percent of whites.

[NYT, image via Shutterstock]

Yesterday's crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was a clear tragedy, with two deaths and upwards of 180 injured. After the initial work of battling the blaze that followed and triaging the passengers, though, the next phase begins – the investigation. Here's what we know so far.

• The plane, a Boeing 777 manufactured in 2006, originated in Shanghai with a stop in Seoul before heading to its final destination of San Francisco International Airport.
• Two Chinese girls aged 16 died in the crash, and have been tentatively identified as Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia. There are still conflicting reports on exactly how many were injured and the extent of their injuries.
• The NTSB, FBI, the FAA, and all relevant government agencies are still investigating the cause, and haven't ruled anything out yet. That includes criminal activity, terrorism, mechanical failure, and, of course, human error. This contradicts an earlier FBI statement that said it didn't appear to be terrorism.
• The CEO of Asiana Airlines, Yoon Young-Doo, has ruled out mechanical failure, something that was suspected because of a similar incident in 2008, and has offered his initial apologies.

• The "black box" data recorders, which record both telemetry data and conversations in the cockpit, have been recovered and are on their way to Washington for further examination.
• Numerous eyewitnesses have said that the plane appeared to be approaching lower than is normal for an approach at SFO, and heard the plane's engines accelerate hard just before impact.
• There was no warning from the crew before impact, and they were "not expecting" the events, according to a passenger.
• The plane appeared to strike the tail or the landing gear upon the seawall at the edge of the runway, before bouncing heavily and coming to a stop just off the runway, and the tail impact seems to be supported by early photos of the incident.
• The jet subsequently caught fire, and a number of the passengers have suffered burn injuries.

• Despite concerns about the glide path guidance system at SFO, numerous reports have quoted experts saying that under clear conditions with good weather the system is unnecessary.

I am incredibly reluctant to assign blame in an incident like this, though with mechanical failure ruled out by the company it doesn't seem like there are many other options besides a failure on some part of human input. Usually, we learn from these incidents in some way, but hopefully we'll learn something more than a reminder of the fallibility of even those we trust with our lives.

Of course, we'll update you as we have more information.

UPDATE: The NTSB has recovered both the Cockpit Voice Recorder, as well as the Flight Data Recorder, also known as the "black boxes," according to NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman. So far, it is known that CVR recorded that:

• The flight was cleared for visual approach to Runway 28-Left, and this was confirmed by the crew.
• The aircraft was configured for approach, with flaps set at 30 degrees, with the gear down and a target airspeed set for 137 knots.
• The approach proceeded normally throughout the descent, with no discussion of aircraft anomalies or concerns.

• A call from one of the crew members to increase speed was made approximately seven seconds prior to impact. The sound of the stick shaker, indicating a stall, sounds approximately four seconds before impact. A call for a go-around, or an aborted landing, was heard at one and a half seconds prior to impact.

The FDR recorded that:

• During the approach, the engine throttles were set at idle.
• Airspeed was "significantly below" the target airspeed of 137 knots, and "we're not talking about just a few knots."
• The throttles were advanced prior to impact, and the engines responded normally.

The NTSB is a few days away from making a determination whether or not the crash was caused by pilot error.

UPDATE #2: Asiana Airlines now says that the pilot who was attempting to land the Boeing 777 was in training, and this was his first flight to SFO at the controls of that specific type of plane, according to Reuters:

"It was Lee Kang-kook's maiden flight to the airport with the jet... He was in training. Even a veteran gets training (for a new jet)," a spokeswoman for Asiana Airlines said on Monday.

Lee had previously flown planes such as the Boeing 747 into SFO, and had over 9,000 hours of flight experience over his career. His co-pilot, Lee Jeong-min, had over 12,000 total career hours of flight experience, including over 3,000 in the 777.

Images via Getty

A solar-powered flight made history last night when it successfully landed at JFK airport, capping off a cross-country trip. The Solar Impulse first took off from San Francisco in May and stopped in Phoenix, Dallas, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and D.C. along the way to New York.

The ATF's failed "Fast and Furious" operation has reared its ugly head again, this time in the form of a high-powered rifle used to murder a police chief in Jalisco, a state deep in central Mexico.

According to the LA Times, the semi-automatic rifle used to kill police chief Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company in Arizona, where 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo purchased it in 2010. Montelongo was later arrested, but only after he bought at least 109 firearms during the botched operation. Astorga's bodyguard was also killed, and his wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.

Fast and Furious was supposed to be a sting operation that would sell weapons to Mexican cartels and then track them, but ATF officials almost immediately lost track of the weapons, which have turned up at crime scenes across the US and Mexico ever since.

More than 200 people have been killed in Mexico with Fast and Furious weapons, and a US Border Patrol Agent was killed with one in Phoenix in 2010. ATF officials declined to comment to the LA Times about the newest firearm to surface.

[LAT, image via AP]

This has been a terrible weekend for travel. Seriously, just stay inside. Don't go anywhere. Wait until Mercury is unretrograded, or whatever. Pack a bug-out bag. Is that what the kids are calling them these days?

In addition to all the drunken driving and yesterday's plane crash that killed two people, two trains derailed this weekend.

The first, a 73-car tanker carrying oil, derailed and exploded across a small Canadian town early Saturday morning. At least five people are dead and another 40 are missing. Two of the cars that exploded are still on fire.

According to reports, the train was parked and its brakes may have failed, sending the tanker careening down a hill where it derailed and exploded in the center of a popular area packed with bars in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic.

Bar patrons were forced to "run for their lives" through walls of fire and exploding fire balls. Firefighters are still trying to put out the blaze, which destroyed at least 30 buildings.

Another train in Russia derailed this morning on its way to Sochi, the future Olympic site. At least 70 passengers were injured, but no fatalities were reported.

[image via Youtube]

Well, you can always count on death and taxes. James Gandolfini's $70 million estate is a "tax nightmare" that could end up netting the IRS more than $30 million.

You gotta fight for your right to party!

A Brooklyn City Council member is trying to propose legislation that would require anyone trying to have a no-sleep-til-Brooklyn rager with more than 40 people notify police and their community board at least three days in advance.

Council member Jumaane Williams also wants to create fines for "house clubs," where homeowners advertise on social media, and charge cover at the door and for drinks.

Williams announced his plans at a press conference earlier this week, saying that the proposed regulations were in response to a recent shooting. A man, apparently denied entry to a party in East Brooklyn, opened fire on about 60 guests, hitting at least eight.

“All we said is we have to inform the precinct and inform the community aboard. You wouldn’t have to ask for approval. You wouldn’t have to ask for permission,” Williams said.

Gothamist reports that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly had no comment on the proposal, but told reporters that the NYPD does monitor some of the large parties, which have topped more than 200 people in East Flatbush.

In somewhat related news, it appears that several Brooklyn City Council members are in some pretty serious debt — Williams and two other members apparently owe a few hundred thousand dollars each.

BETTER. CALL. SAUL. According to Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, a Saul Goodman-centric spinoff is going "full speed ahead." No half-measures, Gilligan, okay?

Liz Cheney wants to be in the Senate, and she wants to be in the Senate now. So much so that's she's thinking of challenging her not-not-evil father's old fishing buddy, Michael B. Enzi, which could start a Republican "civil war."

(Side note - hunting or fishing with Dick Cheney seems like a guaranteed way to ensure something bad happens to you, kind of like watching that VHS in The Ring.)

Enzi, who just won a seat on the Senate Financial Committee, has said that he's not ready to retire. Cheney challenging him would bring about “the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming,” Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, told the New York Times.

Enzi, who plays well with Democrats and avoids political talk shows because "their goal is to get guests to beat up on their colleagues," is generally well-liked among his constituents.

“I know of no one who doesn’t want Mike Enzi to run for the Senate again,” former Wyoming House speaker Douglas W. Chamberlain told the Times.

Although Cheney hasn't announced anything, she's been traveling across the state, attending events, trotting out her parents, posting Wyoming-centric photos, and referring to Wyoming as "God's country". Enzi says Cheney told him she was thinking about running, but that he'd expect Dick Cheney to give him a courtesy call before she actually announces.

But even if Enzi does retire, not everyone in the Republican Party wants to see another Cheney in politics. Representative Cynthia M. Lummis, an at-large Republican congresswoman for Wyoming, has said publically she would support Enzi if he ran again, and would run for the Senate if he retired.

[NYT, image via AP]

After White House Down and After Earth, The Lone Ranger became the third big-budget blockbuster to bomb this summer, bringing in just $48.9 million over the five-day July 4^th weekend. Despicable Me 2 debuted at number one, nearly tripling The Lone Ranger's numbers with an estimated five-day gross of $142 million.

Not willing to let Anthony Weiner have all the fun, Eliot Spitzer has announced plans to run for comptroller of New York City.

This is a weird one: a veteran American Airlines flight attendant accused by her colleagues of smuggling a pet rat onto an international flight in her underwear has filed a lawsuit against the airline, claiming the accusations have resulted increased customs screenings and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Two American Airlines employees made the rat-smuggling allegations against Louann Giambattista, 55, in 2012. According to the lawsuit, one of the accusers, a pilot, told airline officials “he saw a bulge in [her] pocket” that looked like a “live pet” as he helped her exit a van during a layover. A flight attendant on another flight “believed [Giambattista] fed her pet rats” during at least one flight.

Giambattista denied both allegations, saying that the flight attendant saw her “eating a dinner roll out of a cup,” not feeding her pet rat, reportedly named “Willard.”

Regardless, the accusatory flight attendant notified immigration authorities of the possible rat sighting after the flight landing in Florida. Immigration officers then searched Giambattista's bags. Despite not finding any rats, Giambattista said the officials flagged her passport, which forced her to undergo stops and searches each time she passed through customs. She was also threatened with strip searches, according to the lawsuit.

“There was no reason for it,” Giambattista said of why she was targeted. “People say, ‘There must have been a reason,’ but there is none.”

Giambattista's attorney admits his client is an animal lover who owns dogs, gerbils, hamsters, and, at one time, a pet rat.

“Everybody has pets — she has her pets at home, not at work,” attorney Stephen Morelli told the New York Post. “She’s not a nut. They’re making her out to be a nut.”

“She’s got a lot of different pets,” he added. “She had the rat — it died.”

Giambattista is seeking unspecified damages from American Airlines, who told the Post they would respond to the claims in court.

[via Daily Intelligencer/New York Post/Image via Shutterstock]

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

Teresa Heinz Kerry, US Secretary of State John Kerry's wife, was flown to a Boston hospital Sunday evening after falling ill while in Nantucket. Kerry has been stabilized but remains in critical condition.

A group of six Indonesian men were attacked by several tigers on Thursday, forcing five of the men to climb a tree, where they've remained since. The sixth man was mauled to death as he attempted to join his partners in the tree. Help for the trapped men reportedly won't arrive until sometime Wednesday.

The tiger attack occurred after the men, searching for wood to make a rare incense in the Gunung Leuser jungle, set traps for deer for food and, in the process, inadvertently killed a tiger cub. According to Indonesian police, the dying tiger cub attracted fully grown Sumatran tigers, who proceeded to attack the men, catching and killing one, a 28-year-old named David. The surviving five took refuge in a nearby tree.

The trapped men used their cell phones to call local villagers, who rushed to the scene only to retreat after spotting the prowling tigers. A 30-person search team called in on Saturday should reach the men by Wednesday.

"It might need two or three days to walk on foot to the depths of the jungle,” Police chief Dicky Sondani told the BBC. "If the tigers remain under the tree, we may have to shoot or sedate them to rescue the five people.”

The Sumatran tigers are an endangered species, with as few as 350 remaining in the wild.

[BBC/Image via Shutterstock]

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