After setting fire to the prayer room of a mosque in Ohio on September 30th, Randolph Linn of Indiana today pleaded guilty to the crime.

Under the terms of his plea deal, Linn will cut his 40-year jail sentence in half.

The St. Joe resident, who brought several firearms and gas containers with him to the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, told Judge Jack Zouhary he had become "riled up" after watching Fox News.

Linn also said he had been drinking heavily prior to driving his truck to the mosque, consuming as many as 45 beers in seven hours.

When asked by the judge if he knew any Muslim or what Islam is, Linn reportedly said, "No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio."

"I know they don't believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior," he added, to which the judge responded, "there are others who don't believe in Jesus Christ." Linn then retorted: "They're not going around killing us."

"When you went through that door, you did not attack extremists or terrorists," Judge Zouhary said in his concluding remarks. "Instead, you attacked the place where families come to pray... Ironically, it's your own violence that was sinful and evil."

Sentencing has been scheduled for April 16, 2013.

[H/T: HyperVocal, mug shot via WNWO]

At the intersection of celebrity and "weird twitter," there is the personal twitter account of singer Cher.

Her tweets read alternately, like horse_ebooks source material, /aLL CAPS EMAIL FORWARDS FROMM.YOUR AUNT, and the sly jokes of a professional adult woman who is capable of functioning in the real world. Her misspellings she attributes to either passion or dyslexia. Her feed boasts an average of 1000 tweets per day.

Here are 19 of Cher's 20 Best Tweets of 2012. (In order to see #20 which, surely, is still to come, follow @Cher sometime between now and New Years.)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

[Image via AP]

We all despise Westboro Baptist Church — the GOD HATES FIGS (it's "figs" right?) people that drum up publicity by threatening to protest at the sites of America's worst tragedies — but 15-year-old hacker Cosmo the God really hates Westboro Baptist Church. So much so that he's potentially willing to go to jail just so he can take down the Twitter accounts of some of WBC's most prominent figures.

He's also hopelessly addicted to hacking and the fame it brings him, at least if a report by Wired's Mat Honan is true. Honan said today that a source told him that Cosmo — who is currently under strict probation after a prolific string of hacking this year — has taken over the Twitter account of WBC's Fred Phelps Jr., the son of church leader Fred Phelps Sr. Cosmo was sentenced to probation terms earlier this year that forbid him from using the internet without prior consent or supervision until he turns 21 years old.

Phelps Jr.'s account is currently suspended — though Google displays his username as Cosmo — but here's how Cosmo reportedly gained control of it:

Cosmo took over the @WBCFredJR Twitter account via Phelps' Hotmail account, which he gained entry to by forwarding the password-reset phone number on the Hotmail account to the phone number he controlled, according to Wired's source.

This comes on the heels of Cosmo allegedly hacking the Twitter account of WBC spokeswoman Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper and, according to Honan, remotely recording gay porn on her DVR, which is incredibly hilarious. Phelps-Roper seemed to confirm earlier tonight that Phelps Jr.'s account had been compromised.

@wbcfredjr are you back?

— Shirley Phelps-Roper (@DearShirley) December 20, 2012

He is not back, and when he is, we'll see if Cosmo moves onto another account or if he has something bigger in mind. That is, of course, if he isn't in prison first.

[via Wired, image via Getty]

So, there's a Reddit thread today titled, "What is the sexiest thing someone has ever said to you?" and it's exactly as hilarious as you would expect. It's also, predictably, a perfect encapsulation of Reddit's shut-in male user base (and the women brave enough to hack through that cornfield). Here are some highlights:

Reddit uscer SCUBA-Steve-o published this lovely, if banal, anecdote:

SCUBA-Steve-o 790 points 7 hours ago*
"Wow, your penis is beautiful"
It had been called many things, but never that. And she was 6 years older than me, so that somehow made it even better.

Naturally, a handful other Reddit users read "6 years older than me" as just "six years old."

mylegisapenis 947 points 5 hours ago
I read that as "she was 6 years old..."
ಠ_ಠ

DeadNinjax 32 points 6 hours ago
You're not the only one bro.

allyareyouokay 3 points 5 hours ago
ah so did i

duckman273 4 points 3 hours ago
So did I and then I read the next two letters.

Froff-e 1 point 2 hours ago
Me too. I double taked and still read it that way. I should get my eyes checked.

NothingtodohereOGW 318 points 6 hours ago*

Good to know I'm not alone in having a hand fetish. Seriously, I get so aroused and so wet when I see strong veiny hands. Mmmm! And forearms...good god, forearms with bulging veins and plenty of hair...so sexy!

So, naturally, some dude quickly uploaded a photo of his hands.

bigkbull 295 points 5 hours ago
Please, try to contain yourself:


Bonus: callused

Can't wait for the marriage thread.

boxybroker 385 points 5 hours ago*
the guy who taught me that i am in fact a squirter/multipler... I honestly think he was trying to make me pass out sometimes (he succeeded once) just from fingering me. One particular night I'd orgasmed I don't know how many times, I was spent. I turned around and gasped out, "I'm good! I can't! I can't cum anymore!" I was all waving him off me trying to lay down.
He leaned over my shoulder, grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear, "Yes you can." and pushed me back down again.
I came again immediately. He was so fucking cocky it was ridiculous. And he always knew if I really had another one left in me or not.

Which led to a flock of male users frothing for tips on how to sexually pleasure a woman. Boxybroker did try and help out, god bless her.

climberslacker 163 points 2 hours ago
So if I were to want to become this guy...How?

caveman_chubs 15 points 3 hours ago
I stopped after the first bullet point. DAMN MY FAT STUBBY FINGERS!!!!

cbaquol 8 points 3 hours ago
given the lack of skill with women redditors generally have, this comment deserves way more than 15 up votes. if i could give more, i would, but after one i guess im spent

Futureastrosomthing 6 points 3 hours ago
your fuckin amazin thanx for the info

CaptHerpDerp 133 points 6 hours ago
I used to work as a server in a restaurant. My ex would come in frequently to eat (and get brownie points, of course). One time, she could tell I was having a pretty rough night, so she left me an unusually big tip, and wrote "I expect a bigger tip from you, when you get home! ;)" on a napkin. Despite the bad shift, that still forced me to hit the men's room for a "readjustment."

[via Reddit, image via Shutterstock]

One way in which to keep guns out of the hands of people that shouldn't have them is to make sure that gun stores stop thieves, especially ones that brazenly walk into a store, take a gun off the rack and walk out. Or, at the very least — like, the absolute least there's ever been — gun stores should realize that a gun has been stolen in the first place. A gun store in East Windsor, Conn. failed miserably at both of these tasks earlier this week, and consequently was raided by the feds tonight. Oh, in a poetic coincidence, the store sold one of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.

Yes, Riverview Gun Sales was swarmed tonight because a 26-year-old named Jordan Marsh, pictured above STEALING A RIFLE, was found to have a 50-caliber AR-15 with a scope in his possession at the Hartford Hilton on Saturday. Marsh did not pay for the gun — he took it off the rack and walked out of the store without anyone realizing it. Marsh reportedly has a history of mental illnesses and police believe he was planning to carry out an attack "similar" to that of Adam Lanza

The entire incident is completely mystifying before you even read the part where this has happened at the same store multiple times, including by the same suspect.

Police said Riverview Gun Sales had no idea the AR-15 Marsh stole was missing. Management at the store didn't know about 11 guns that Marsh had allegedly stolen last year until they were notified by detectives.

Inventory control issues at Riverview Gun Sales have occurred before. In 2007, state police raided a Somers home and found a bunch of stolen guns from the store.

So, there you have it. In East Windsor, Conn., the rifles are under the care of almost literally the least responsible man in the city. But don't worry — he told reporters that he feels terrible that one of his guns was used in the Sandy Hook massacre. Feel better now?

[via WFSB 3, image via WFSB]

Tonight, House speaker John Boehner wanted to force the hand of Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership by bringing his bill to solve the fiscal cliff — titled Plan B — to a vote. There was only one problem: he couldn't even get enough Republican support for the bill to make a vote worthwhile. That rendered Boehener essentially powerless, and it led to the walking Creamsicle from Ohio saying the Serenity Prayer on the House floor:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

According to Politico, Boehner nearly cried as well, but it's possible that he was just thinking of a golden retriever fetching a tennis ball at the time. The rest of the GOP openly disobeying Boehner is good news for people who think it's hilarious when John Boehner fails, but it's also bad news for people hoping to see the fiscal cliff problem solved (a Venn diagram that may be completely overlapping at this point).

Boehner's grandstanding means that Congress will go into recess with no solution and less than two weeks until a combination of tax raises and spending cuts threatens to shoot the U.S. economy into the abyss. Congress is reportedly going to be on 48-hour notice to return to Washington in order to get a resolution hammered out, which is a process that will now likely be relished by Obama and Harry Reid.

Boehner, on the other hand, might want to have a copy of the Bible handy.

[via Politico, image via Getty]

On the one hand, you might say Dan Bob's trust fall failed to achieve its goal, but, on the other hand, you might say it achieved its goal perfectly by teaching him that you can't trust anyone.

[Reddit]

Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, the dynamic screenwriting duo behind Superbad and Pineapple Express, reunite just in time for the End of Days to pen a post-apocalyptic comedy vehicle for their buddies.

James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, and Rogen play themselves in This Is the End, which revolves around — you guessed it — the end of the world.

A brief synopsis follows:

After a series of cataclysmic events ravage Los Angeles, six friends must face the true meaning of friendship and redemption as the world ends around them.

Also starring in this cameo-palooza is Jason Segel, Michael Cera, David Krumholtz, Paul Rudd, Mindy Kaling, Martin Starr, Emma Watson, Kevin Hart, and Aziz Ansari.

A release date has been scheduled for June 14th, 2013.

[video via JoBlo]

During an open-air concert in Santiago, Chile, on Wednesday, Madonna got a bit testy with a fan who decided to visit flavor country in the middle of her set.

After sensing some cigarette smoke wafting in her direction, Madge immediately put on her mom pants and instructed the smokers to stop.

When that failed, she tried to put the offending audience members in a time out: "If you're going to smoke cigarettes, I'm not doing a show."

Things quickly became heated when Madonna realized that her schoolmarm-esque chiding was getting her nowhere.

"All right? Are we going to play that game? I'm not kidding. I can't sing if you smoke," the "Human Nature" singer fumed. Trying desperately to speak their language, she added: "Entiendes?"

Finally, her line of sight met the perpetrator but, shockingly, they continued to puff away with abandon. "You're looking right at me and smoking cigarettes, like I'm a stupid fucking idiot," the flabbergasted 54-year-old exclaimed.

TMZ reports that cigarette standoff was ultimately resolved, and Madonna carried on with the concert and the smoker was never heard from again.

[video via TMZ]

When Al Alverson of Texas came home to find the FedEx package he was expecting to receive that day missing, he immediately went to his surveillance camera footage to see if it had been stolen.

Sure enough, it had. But the identity of the person perpetrating the crime left Alverson in shock.

"I said, ‘oh my god,' it is the UPS guy," he told KHOU 11.

In the footage, Alverson saw the driver walk up to his Harris County home, drop off a package, and then return minutes later to pick up the parcel left by FedEx earlier in the day.

It contained an iPad mini, which Alverson says he purchased for his daughter as a Christmas gift.

Alverson phoned UPS for assistance, but said they had been giving him "the run around" until he put the CCTV footage on YouTube for the world to see. Suddenly, they became "very helpful," and even "promised they would get me a replacement iPad today," Alverson said.

As for the employee, UPS says he was a seasonal worker helping out full-time drivers make their rounds during the holidays. He was promptly terminated, and was arrested yesterday on suspicion of theft.

Alverson later decided not to press charges after the driver returned the package he stole.

[H/T: Reddit, video via YouTube]

A mother in Australia was stunned to find several highly venomous snakes slithering around inside her bedroom wardrobe after they hatched from eggs brought into the Queensland home by her son a few weeks earlier.

3-year-old Kyle Cumming had apparently used a plastic container given to him by his mother, Donna Sim, to collect the eggs after he spotted them near the family home in Townsville.

Sim says she had forgotten all about it by the time she stumbled upon the container in her closet, only to find it was now infested with Eastern brown snake hatchlings — the second most venomous snake in the world.

"Any venomous snake, as soon as it hatches, has all the apparatus to deliver venom because the first thing they have to do is catch and kill prey - it's a perfect replica of an adult snake," snake expert Steve Wilson of the Queensland Museum told ABC News.

While the snakelets' teeth were likely too small to break the child's skin, according to a rep from the North Queensland Wildlife Care, Wilson says if Kyle would have found the snakes before Sim, "there's a real chance that he may have been very seriously harmed or killed by them."

Luckily, this story ends happily with the snakes being released into the wild. "If they hadn't been found they would have been doomed - doomed and entombed," said Wilson.

[photo via North Queensland Wildlife Care]

A British mother says her Christmas was ruined by one very unlikely scrooge: Santa Claus.

Wendy Kennett of Oxfordshire says she took her kids, aged 6, 7, and 10, to see Santa at a local garden center in the village of Nuneham Courtenay, so they could sit on his lap.

he experience cost the family £5.99 (~$9.70) per child, and was not satisfactory in the least.

Right off the bat, Santa met the children's claim that they had been good by retorting, "Well there are bad people in the world and bad things happen, like what happened to those children in America."

He then started to brief them on the tragic events that transpired last week in Newtown, Connecticut, before their father, Steven, abruptly cut him off.

But Bad Santa wasn't nearly through: According to Kennett, the man then sent her two girls away so he could "have a word with their brother." Santa then leaned over and whispered in the boy's ear, causing him to bust into tears.

He later informed his mother that Santa told him he wasn't real, "it's just you and dad."

A complaint to the garden center's management initially went unheeded, but Notcutts later released a statement saying it has "accepted the customers' version of events and have dismissed the Santa, apologised and refunded the family."

The Kennetts and their children also received complimentary passes to Winter Wonderland in London.

Sadly, the childhood trauma tour wasn't quite over for the Kennett kids.

At a nearby restaurant, the Mr. and Mrs. Kennett tried to cheer their offspring up by asking a balloon artist to sculpt them some poodles.

However, when the kids told him about having written to Santa, the twister responded that it was "a waste of time" and that he was best friends with Santa having gone skiing with him last week and knows for a fact that "he doesn't bother reading letters because he has got better things to do."

The family was offered a complimentary meal for the trouble, but the children had lost their appetite and Kennetts decided it was best just to go home.

[H/T: Arbroath, photo via Oxford Mail]

North Korean officials have arrested an American citizen, though they have not yet stated what crime the man commit.

A Reuters report says the man, Kenneth Bae, who is Korean-American, traveled to North Korea last month; it is unclear when exactly he was arrested. It has been reported Bae was traveling with a tour group, either as the group's operator or as a traveler, that helps foreign tourists and investors get into the reclusive nation.

State-run KCNA news agency reported: "In the process of investigation, evidence proving that he committed a crime against the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] was revealed. He admitted his crime." To editorialize slightly, that North Korea calls itself a "democratic people's republic" is and always has been a freaking joke.

While Bae's alleged crime is still unclear, South Korean newspaper Kookmin Ilbo claims he was carrying a computer hard drive with footage of North Korea executing "defectors and dissidents" on it. Were that to get out, it would certainly be embarrassing for the country; though the notion that North Korea perpetrates extreme violence against those who speak out against it is hardly new. Bae could be sentenced to five to 10 years of hard labor for "hostile acts against the state."

The U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, and the Swedish embassy acts on the U.S.' behalf in the country. Officials from the Swedish embassy have reportedly met with Bae.

Americans have been arrested in North Korea before. Most notably Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling in 2009. Eventually Bill Clinton traveled to the country in order to ensure their release.

However, at this time relations between the U.S. and North Korea are especially strained, after North Korea launched something into orbit on Dec. 12. A move both the U.S. and the U.N. have condemned.

[Image via AP]

The NRA's news conference Friday morning had one unexpected visitor: a protestor with a big pink sign.

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre was proposing his organization's solution to recent incidences of gun violence in Connecticut, Oregon, Wisconsin and Colorado: put an armed police officer in every school by the end of the year. While he was speaking, a man stood up with a sign reading "NRA killing our kids" directly in front of LaPierre's podium.

He was quickly forced out of the room, while screaming, "we should not arm teachers ... we've got to stop the violence ... we've got to stop the killing in our schools, stop the killing in our streets, the NRA is killing our children."

The protestor was from Code Pink, a self-described "women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement."

If you were counting down to "Gangnam Style"'s one billionth YouTube view on the site BillionCount.com, you might have been a little confused at what happened when the counter hit 1,000,000,000: it turned into a porn site: the "Xpress Cougar Dating Club." "When it was getting closer to 1 billion views I figured I had to do something with it," the site's creator told us.

BillionCount.com, a site set up solely to provide an approximate countdown to the exact moment at which "Gangnam Style" would hit one billion views, had been shared several thousand times on Facebook and Twitter by 10:26 a.m. — the moment when it estimated that the video had surpassed a billion. It now redirects to the self-proclaimed "#1 Sex Dating Site" on the internet, as many people noticed:

The site is registered to a Eugene Hartley of Los Angeles. I emailed him to see what the story was. "To be honest it was just a serious project in the beginning, and at the end I wanted to promote Bitcoin [the independent digital currency] through it," he wrote back. "[I] couldn't find a real good way to do so. When it was getting closer to 1 billion views I figured I had to do something with it but wasn't really sure what." So he made a choice that webmasters have been making since time immemorial: "It was either let the site die off, or try to get some money through promoting dating sites."

And what better way to close out the year in the internet, really? A failed attempt at attaching a bitcoin promotion to the year's biggest viral video, now just a bunch of "adult dating site" ads.

On December 21, 1912, the New York Times published a profile of "The Perfect Girl": a size 14 wannabe-vegetable farmer who loved beefsteak and, by her own admission, literally did not know what fear was:

"She has never taken a drink of tea or coffee in her life, and keeps regular hours. She says she has never been ill and doesn't know what fear is."

Like all bullshitters who aspire to become artisanal farmers she was from Brooklyn.

Elsie Scheel was a student at Cornell when it was discovered that her measurements (5'7", 171 lbs; 34.6 inch chest, 30.3 inch waist, and 40.4 inch hips) were "remarkably similar" to those of the Venus de Milo.

You can see a portrait and artist's rendering of her nude form here, if you're kinky.

[Scheel's story was first mentioned by the Bowery Boys NYC history podcast, then picked up by Gothamist // Image via NYT]

And now it's dead...almost. Last night's episode of Jersey Shore found the show's guido/guidette family packing up and moving out of Seaside Heights, NJ, for good. The girls cried, Vinny got an itchy eye and the entire goodbye scene was full of euphemism, as many acknowledged how the show changed their lives without specifically being able to say that. Insert Snooki "Waaaaah!"

Jersey Shore ended up cheating itself out of covering the way its subjects dealt with their fame and how the show interfered with their ability to be their normal weird selves. (Extras weren't allowed to so much as acknowledge their recognition of the cast.) Their lives changed, but the show was static and the result was waning interest — about 2 million people watched last week's premiere, a number on par with the first season's early episodes (before it was a bona fide phenomenon) and a far cry from the nearly 9 million people who tuned into the premiere of the show's fourth season (in Florence, Italy). Naysayers decried paying attention to these patently uninteresting people and in the end, that sentiment was hard to argue with. It's almost hard to believe that this thing was the cultural force it was.

But not everyone is headed toward the same shelf as "The Macarena" and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire just yet. A new season of Snooki & JWwow will debut early next year, as will the talk show The Show with Vinny. So if you aren't sick of them yet, there is still time. (But really, if you aren't sick of them yet, who are you?)

The National Rifle Association today held its first press conference since last week's deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the takeaway was clear: We need more guns.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

He went on to call for an armed police officer to be stationed in "every single school" across America to prevent further mass shootings, as critics tried to point out that armed law enforcement officials might not be the panacea the NRA thinks it is.

But before they could finish their sentence, the counterargument made itself as news broke of a mass shooting event in Pennsylvania with multiple casualties, including state troopers.

According to local reports out of Blair County, at least four people were killed and five more were injured in a shooting spree near Altoona. The gunman is said to be among the dead, and at least two state troopers were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

WPXI's Courtney Brennan says she was told by emergency officials that the shooting suspect "was 'mobile' at one point and went up and down a rural road and shot victims."

No additional information is available at this time, but a spokeswoman told the Altoona Mirror it was "a relatively large crime scene."

Meanwhile, back at the NRA press conference, LaPierre was blaming anything and everything for the Sandy Hook massacre except guns.

UPDATE: The shooter has been identified as 26-year-old Jeffrey Lee Michael of Hollidaysburg, PA.

According to the Altoona Mirror, for reasons yet unknown, Michael shot and killed 58-year-old Kimberly A. Scott of Duncansville while she was hanging Christmas decorations at the Juniata Valley Gospel Church.

He then left the scene and went to a nearby residence where he shot and killed another person. Michael then got in his pickup truck and drove off, eventually crashing into another vehicle. He exited his truck and shot the driver of the second car, killing him.

Following a separate head-on collision with a state trooper who was injured in the crash, Michael began shooting at responding troopers and was subsequently shot and killed. In the exchange, one trooper was wounded after being struck by a bullet in his wrist, and another trooper sustained injuries from broken glass.

A motive for the shooting spree has yet to be revealed.

[tweet via @AltoonaMirrorPA]

With our profuse apologies, we now present to you, in no particular order, the 50 least important writers of 2012. Enjoy, or not.

Katie Roiphe
A classic wide-eyed bourgeois Brooklynite, Roiphe has managed to spin her own utterly pedestrian thoughts and experiences into a self-mythology in which she is only despised by those who cannot appreciate her bold, daring choices. In fact, she's just rude. But hey, she's living proof that even Ivy league-educated children of famous parents can one day get a good review in the NYT.
Less important than: Single mothers who do not write for Slate.

Frank Bruni
Living proof that the literary talents that make someone a passable restaurant critic do not, in fact, mean that that person has the depth of thought necessary to be a good opinion columnist. The good news, however, is that Frank Bruni now has a global platform for his musings, whimsy, and what-nots—he thinks Hollywood is fun, the Olympics are dramatic, and politics sure can be dirty. Tell your grandmother.
Less important than: Jackie Harvey
[Photo: Getty]

Dr. Keith Ablow
Fox News' resident medical "expert"/alarmist homophobe. Ablow has become famous for using absurd pseudo-science to try and, amongst other things, convince parents they can ruin their sons' gender identity by allowing them to like the color pink.
Less important than: Dr. Phil, who is, it should be said, also a bald quack.

Aaron Sorkin
Listen, if you haven't already figured out Aaron Sorkin's stance on everything (People don't have mature conversations anymore, the internet has no dignity, conservatives would be cooler if they were actually liberal, bitches be crazy, etc.), there's no hope for you. He can't lay out any more explicitly than he does in The Newsroom, his ongoing attempt to rewrite history as he wish it would have been handled. If all those expository monologues set to Coldplay haven't clued you into the fact that Sorkin likes pushing his inner thoughts on the world at the expense of coherent plots or distinct characters, then by all means, keep on watching.
Less important than: The comment section at MSNBC. What will those crazy RepubliCAN'Ts do next?!
[Photo: Getty]

Chuck Klosterman
"[He] has a mop of ironically uncombed, dyed-yellow hair and thick-rimmed glasses that look like they were placed on the ass as a frat prank, like a wig and sunglasses thrown on an old jack-o-lantern. All of which might lend Klosterman some pathos if he didn't brag so much about his heterosexual conquests and quasi-cynical manipulation of scores of alleged girlfriends. More disturbing are his obsessions with teen and pre-teen pop culture, as exemplified
by a creepy essay on Saved by the Bell." - Mark Ames. Klosterman is the embodiment of writer-as-character, and, worse, of the idea that mixing exaggerated intellectualism with shitty pop culture subjects will produce something brilliant. It won't. It will produce a waste of time. And if you don't care about Klosterman's opinions of Saved by the Bell, you sure don't give a fuck what he thinks about ethics.
Less important than: Nickelback.
[Photo: AP]

Lynn Hoppes
Lynn Hoppes is ESPN's Wikipedia-lifting flack disguised as a writer who preens for the likes of the Jonas Brothers, and that is not even the most damning thing that can be said about Lynn Hoppes. The most damning thing that can be said about Lynn Hoppes is that he has a self-styled mullet.
Less important than: Your desk bobblehead, which at least has personality.
[Photo via]

Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom is an award-winning fabricator. Please refer to the final paragraph here for the most thorough destruction of Mitch Albom, award-winning fabricator.
Less important than: Mike Lupica, who isn't important at all.
[Photo: AP]

James Franco
Literally the most important writer ever to exist within space and time (and beyond those things), James Franco has been included on this list in error, due to incompetence on the part of a less-skilled writer. Those wishing to experience orgasm for the first time should check out the free-form journal he maintains for the Huffington Post— a record of one man's genius and the ways in which it enriches the lives of many. (A recent example, in which the Reverend Dr. James Franco speaks supportively of his film students: "I hope they know that what they accomplished is fairly unprecedented and hasn't been done by any group of students at any film school. At least as far as I know, and I teach at a bunch of them.") He recently suffered a crushing blow at the International Awards for Blogst Blogging in Blogs, when he took home second place in the race for "Best Entertainment Blog by an Individual or God," leading many to doubt the validity of the competition.
Less important than: A mature 7th grader's LiveJournal.
[Photo: AP]

Ben Domenech
Conservative pundit Ben Domenech was a blogger for the Washington Post for three days in 2006 before he was fired for plagiarism. Now he runs a monthly email newsletter called The Transom, for which people who must not know how to use a web browser actually give him money to access idiotic right-wing musings you can find for free in the comments section of a Yahoo! News article. Such as: Mitt Romney won't release his taxes because he overpaid them.
Less important than: Jonah Lehrer
[Photo via]

Sheila Heti
Canadian selfist Sheila Heti's most recent novel, How Should a Person Be?, was rejected by no less than six American publishers before Henry Holt picked it up in June. There is a very good reason for this. A person should be interested in things outside of themselves.
Less important than: Lena Dunham circa 2010.
[Photo via]

Malcolm Gladwell
In a year where his journalism-as-TED-talk-pitch imitator Jonah Lehrer got all the headlines, and where his internet friendship with doofy 90210 recapper Bill Simmons meant he was more widely-read than ever, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell sealed his irrelevance by becoming that least important of all things: a Deadspin commenter.
Less important than: An actual, literal, blink of your eyes.
[Photo: Getty]

Chris Jones
Perpetually aggreived Esquire writer Chris Jones' semen tastes like battery acid to his wife and he has only won two lousy National Magazine awards and he took his blog off the internet in a huff after a Deadspin intern made fun of him on Tumblr.
Less important than: Every magazine writer who did not throw a tantrum about the outcome of the National Magazine Awards.
[Photo via]

Robert Caro
One trick pony! Does anyone care about what Robert Caro has to say about whether women are funnier than men, or why it feels like there's a mass shooting every Wednesday, or the inexorable fracturing of what we used to know as "the culture" into a million digital tranches, or What's Wrong With Brooklyn, or how to properly dress a Thanksgiving turkey? No. One dead president does not an important writer make. Diversify, Robert.
Less important than: Two-trick ponies.
[Photo: Getty]

The Staff of Mediaite
When Dan Abrams' Mediaititititie.com launched, there were high hopes for it to become a "good old days of Gawker" type of media-focused insider news site. Instead, it has developed into a site mostly filled with extremely literal recaps of cable news segments, mixed with weirdly right-wing political media screeds. A dark set of choices for any young writer trying to make a name for themselves: keep knocking out Sean Hannity recaps, or make a lateral move in the company to... GossipCop.com.
Less important than: Poynter.org without Romenesko.

Verlyn Klinkenborg
Verlyn is awarded a plum weekend space on the editorial pages of the New York Times, a newspaper representing a metropolis of millions. Instead of writing about poverty, or politics, or any other issue affecting any human reader of the newspaper, he writes about his lawn, or mud, or hay, or some other benign aspect of life on his farm that does not do a god damn thing for anyone except Verlyn Klinkenborg. Will Verlyn Klinkenborg expand his repertoire in 2013, to grass, and sticks, and manure? The chances seem good.
Less important than: A strand of fresh-cut hay, sweet to the horse's lips, its breath clouding the crisp winter air, blah blah blah.
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Georgina Bloomberg
Georgina, the adult daughter of billionaire NYC mayor Mike "Power Personified" Bloomberg, is considered the wild one in the family for attending NYU rather than an Ivy League school. She's written two novels, both about rich daughters of billionaires who enjoy horse-jumping, exactly like herself. Were she to never write anything again, think of how many trees could be saved. Several, at least.
Less important than: Any other novelist in the five boroughs.
[Photo: Getty]

Andy Borowitz
Have you ever said to yourself, "The Onion's whole fake-news bit is funny, but I'm looking for something a lot less dark and a lot more obvious. Ideally, I'd like something that would flatter my MOR-liberal political persuasion, and also comes in a daily email for maximum forward-to-all-your-nieces-and-nephews possibilities"? Congratulations, you probably work for The New Yorker, which hired Borowitz in July in order to alienate the last of the Shouts & Murmurs apologists.
Less important than: Whoever is writing Shouts & Murmurs on any given week.
[Photo: Getty]

Matthew Boyle
One would think it'd be impossible, as a journalist, to move from the Daily Caller to a position of less importance. But Matthew Boyle, the conservative journalist, showed up all the doubters this year by moving from the Daily Caller to "enlist in Andrew Breitbart's war" as a writer for Breitbart.com. Godspeed, Matthew. Never stop tweeting.
Less important than: Matthew Boyle, when he was a Daily Caller journalist

Matt Stopera
BuzzFeed senior editor Matt Stopera has developed a keen sense for the internet's lowest common denominator as the site's star list-maker. His lists, like "60 Moments that Gave Me Chills During Seattle's First Day of Marriage Equality, and "13 Simple Steps To Get You Through a Rough Day" chop up reality into an inoffensive meme slop that your relatives can smear all over your Facebook wall. When all human knowledge exists in list form in ten years, blame Stopera.
Less important than: A three-day-old Tumblr meme.
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Stephen Marche
In 2012, many unimportant writers fretted about social media in unimportant essays, but novelist Stephen Marche's Atlantic essay, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" was the least important of all. His essay is a parade of trite observations on social media ("a connection is not the same thing as a bond;" "the more connected we become, the lonelier we are") padded out up with meandering explorations of inconclusive studies. Marche's essay ultimately sheds light only on how dumb his question is.
Less important than: A "like" on The Official Fig Newtons Facebook page.
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Louise Gluck
Former Poet Laureate Louise Gluck is one of America's most important living poets, which makes her one of America's least important writers. Seriously, who reads poetry?
Less important than: An obscure experimental fiction writer.
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Jeff Jarvis
This guy somehow parlayed a stint editing Entertainment Weekly into a reputation as a futuristic media thinker. How? No one really remembers. But while he's never been a great role model for getting things right, he has been a great role model for "How to convince clueless corporate media types to pay you money to give them advice worse than the advice that they could get for free by reading blogs." We salute you, Jeff Jarvis, you hustler.
Less important than: Fake Jeff Jarvis.
[Photo: Getty]

Gavin McInnes
Once considered to be a wild and edgy proto-hipster in the early days of VICE, McInnes' slow and sad descent into adulthood saw him doing anything he imagined would grab attention, including lots of ironic-not-ironic racism and getting himself beat up. This year, he published a book with the subtitle, "From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood." Aw.
Less important than: The good that died young.

Ryan Holiday
What do you call someone who brazenly lies to the press in order to get attention? A lying dick, right? Not according to former American Apparel PR guy Ryan Holiday, who in 2012 repackaged years of being a lying dick into a book in which he reveals the secret to becoming what he calls a "media manipulator." And the secret is: Be a lying dick.
Less important than: All the PR people who do not lie and then write self-glorifying books about it.

Ezra Klein
The persistently inoffensive Washington Post wunderkind mainstream liberals won't shut up about. Klein should write about financial policy and only financial policy, because when he veers out of that he often whiffs it. Remember when he made an "It Gets Better" video about being a dork and not, you know, being a gay person institutionally excluded from society? Woof.
Less important than: He thinks.
[Photo: Getty]

Jonah Goldberg
National Review hack and "world's laziest thinker" who bragged about his completely meaningless "Pulitzer nominations" (no actual Pulitzers yet, though). Noted chicken hawk. Big baby.
Less important than: William F. Buckley's left nut.
[Photo: Getty]

Thomas Sowell
You may know this decrepit black conservative from his latest in a long line of columns hinting at the fact that he's completely given up even trying, including "Buy People Conservative Books for Christmas" and "Hotels Suck."
Less important than: A very angry child with opinions about what to eat for dinner.
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Dean Chambers of Unskewed Polls
In an election year when obsession with statistics and daily tracking polls reached record heights, it too a special kind of unimportance — a rare brand of irrelevancy — to set up a polling shop whose method involves taking someone else's numbers, and then just moving them around until they feel right. Dean Chambers — so uninmportant that he got famous when Rick Perry tweeted about him.
Less important than: math skills.

Matthew Inman, author of webcomic The Oatmeal
Inman, a former internet marketer, uses his skill at pinpointing the lower common denominator to write unreadable Seinfeldian "observational humor" and stomach-turning Hallmark-esque treacle, and then throw tantrums when anyone has the temerity to point out that he clears a million dollars a year writing shitty webcomics. If you're looking for something to hang on your wall that tells your visitors "I Have Never Had an Original or Interesting Thought in My Life," you should check out his posters.
Less important than: the filling and nutritious hot breakfast oatmeal.
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The Journalists on the Rihanna Plane
In November, several dozen journalists and "journalists" accompanied popstar Rihanna on a seven-day, seven-country, seven-concert tour around the world. While initially happy and doing a lot of good journalism about how Rihanna gave them diamonds and champagne, by the latter half of the trip, everyone on board the plane was mad that the excursion was not as cool as they thought it was going to be. (A chief complaint was that they were not getting any stories to turn into their editors. Unclear what huge stories they were expecting to break on the plane in the first place. SPOTTED: RIHANNA STILL ON PLANE.) Through cryptic tweets and anonymous blog posts, the journalists portrayed themselves as the modern day versions of workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Following the trip's conclusion, everyone took a stand for integrity by returning the diamonds Rihanna had given them — just kidding!
Less important than: The brave men and women who lost their lives aboard the SS #Breezy.

Peggy Noonan
A columnist, yes, an American columnist, a good American, and a columnist, in the newspaper, Peggy Noonan, a writer. Who has no earthly idea what she is talking about any more.
Less important than: Ronald Reagan's corpse.
[Photo: Getty]

Dan Barry
Sickeningly mawkish New York Times sentimentalist Barry travels this great land of ours filling column after column with the most trite, weepy retellings of misty Americana known to mankind. He is the Thomas Kinkade of newspaper essayists. As dependable as that old Chevy your dad would drive down to his job at the mill, every day, back when times were different than they are now—different, and better.
Less important than:
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Thomas Friedman
Remarkably, Friedman has managed to become America's most influential columnist even though he just rewrites one single column over and over again: "As I traveled from the airport in some war-torn country to meet a highly unrepresentative rich and influential man there, my taxi driver mumbled some platitude which I will now expand on to the tune of 800 words. Ipads, hyperconnected cloud computing, and other buzzwords." Who is dumber: Friedman himself, or the many powerful and influential businesspersons who hang on his every vacuous proclamation? It's a tie.
Less important than: Anyone who's ever been quoted in a Thomas Friedman column, particularly the taxi drivers.
[Photo: Getty]

Rick Reilly
The sad trend of aging male sportswriters is best defined by recurring dad joke Rick Reilly: he put in his time (23 years) as a wonderful reporter for Sports Illustrated, and then jumped for the money ESPN dangled over his balding head in 2008. He now earns something like $3 million a year by regularly embarrassing himself in print and on camera and desperately lunging for Twitter scoops that he doesn't deserve.
Less important than: Your dad.
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David Denby
The bad New Yorker movie critic. (Not to be confused with Anthony Lane, the good New Yorker movie critic.) Hates humor and good movies. Sourpuss, spoilsport, reliable indicator of the opposite of correct judgment. Notable embodiment of the fact that the writing profession, like life, is not fair.
Less important than:The TV Guide channel.
[Photo: Getty]

Freddie de Boer
Freddie de Boer, a graduate student in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University, writes for the New Inquiry and operates a blog named after a Camus story. He is lefter than you, and he doesn't hang out with other bloggers like you do, so he hasn't been corrupted like you. He is honored to be on this list, and his inclusion here likely proves some point of his.
Less important than: Keith Gessen.

Michael Wolff
This creepy silver-eyed ghoul dined out for years on the fact that he ran a failed start-up. He closed that chapter of his career, and now he's dining out on the fact that he wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch two years ago. Michael Wolff would like to be Rupert Murdoch's Robert Caro, but he blew his wad in one book, and now the only time people pay attention to him is when there's a Rupert Murdoch story and he writes some arch observation based on his two-year-old reporting.
Less important than: Tina Brown's personal assistant.

Andrea Peyser
New York's most sex-obsessed tabloid xenophobe, Peyser is said to be a reasonably intelligent journalist who's smart enough to be in on her own joke, pumping out lowest-common-denominator hatred several times a week to rile up the Post's least astute readers. If true, that just makes her worse. Taking Peyser at face value, we can dismiss her as a run of the mill bigot; if she's smart enough to know better, she's actually morally reprehensible. (We take her much too seriously.)
Less important than: Hot lesbian teachers.

Jay Mariotti
Here is the condensed story of the last three years of Jay Mariotti's sad career:

• 1. August 2010: Jay Mariotti assaults his girlfriend in public. In September, he pleads no contest to a single count of misdemeanor domestic violence; six other charges are dropped.
• 2. May 2011: Jay Mariotti, jackass, is charged with felony stalking and assaulting the same woman.
• 3. September 2011: Jay Mariotti pleads no contest again and promptly writes and promotes an e-book to tell "his side" of the story. (Jay Mariotti is, at this point, unemployed.) In the book, Jay Mariotti suggests that he was the victim in his abusive relationship.
  For a better understanding of Jay Mariotti's sad career, please visit A.J. Daulerio's opus on the matter.
• 
  Less important than: A.J. Daulerio.

  A.J. Daulerio
  At some point the Gawker editor's whole "reckless drug-fueled wild-eyed self-immolation" bit has to actually go somewhere, or boredom sets in. We keep waiting for Hunter S. Amblerman's grand finale—the trip to Egypt seemed like an opportune moment for a blaze of glory—but he just keeps writing about whom he finds in his bed.
  Less important than: Tommy Craggs.

  Emma Carmichael
  Gawker "managing editor" (fake job title), Juggalo, and noted stock photo model Emma Carmichael's days consist of her writing lengthy "think pieces" on momentarily hot rappers, and then telling everyone else what to do. Why does Emma think she's so special? Probably because she is from Vermont—just like staff writer Adrian Chen, who receives all sorts of special treatment. "The Vermont Club," as the well-known hometown bias is called in the rest of the media. Point is, how the hell does someone from Vermont know about good hip-hop? They can't, which is why Emma loves shitty rappers.
  Less important than: Iggy Azalea, who is already in her 14th minute.

  John Cook
  Misogynist anti-Semite John Cook did everything he could to take down Lena Dunham and the state of Israel in 2012. And yet Dunham sold a book for $3.7 million and Israel signed a ceasefire with Hamas while John Cook blogged about Parenthood on Slate.com.
  Less important than: Allison Williams
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  Hamilton Nolan
  Written in the style of the internet's most-hated fitness column, I of the Tiger: You know when you're at your laptop in some coffee shop in Brooklyn, and you look over and you see this dude with a buzzcut and some stupid T-shirt with some stupid rappity rap group name on it, and he's sitting there, at his laptop, literally flexing his muscles as he types? That dude is Hamilton Nolan. You know what that dude's good at? Flexing. That's it. Oh no, you say. That dude can write. He can write some words, that dude. Let me tell you something: Hamilton Nolan doesn't know jack about writing words. Hamilton Nolan just sits there popping muscle drugs or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days, and he waits until he gets ‘roid ragey enough about some bullshit Thought Catalog or XO Jane post, and then he just flexes. I'm not kidding, brother. He just sits at his laptop and flexes. And everyone goes to his columns and is like, that Hamilton Nolan, what a great media critic, what a great fitness expert, what a great guy! I'll tell you something about Hamilton Nolan that just might surprise you: Hamilton Nolan is a Thought Catalog writer on muscle milk. Now squat-thrust, bitch.
  Less important than: Thomas Friedman's mustache.

  Neetzan Zimmerman
  A chronicler of social upheavals, Neetzan Zimmerman broke many of the year's most disturbing stories at Gawker, including Dozer the Dog and Love Bug the Kangaroo Engage in Some Seriously Adorable Interspecies Smooching, Relaxed Cat Sitting Like People is Surely a Harbinger of the Catpocalypse, and Bouncy Tiger Cub Lets Tiny Chihuahua Be King of the House - For Now. Early signs indicate that Zimmerman will become a factorial in 2013 meaning that all post titles written by Neetzan! Zimmerman will contain the product of all previous post titles.
  Less important than: A metaphor for something.
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  Camille Dodero
  A writer who washed up here from the crumbling wreck that is the Village Voice, Dodero specializes in naked and drug-addled Juggalos and skeevy "revenge porn" pornographers, making her a perfect fit for her new job at the Gawker cock-shot factory.
  Less important than: Hunter Moore

  Adrian Chen
  The Gawker staffer who fattens Nick Denton's Cayman Islands accounts by befriending pathetic trolls and malicious hackers in order to ascertain information about and ruin the lives of other pathetic trolls and malicious hackers. Do not trust this man.
  Less important than: Julian "Dox the World" Assange

  Caity Weaver
  Despite never having had a "real job" in her (short) life, this youthful Gawker staffer feels herself qualified to dole out advice to people with actual problems. (If you do have a real job, watch out—she'll do her best to get you fired.) She treats everything as a big joke, up to and including death. Her bizarre fascination with imagined "haters" is a predictable reaction to the inferiority complex she's developed from an upbringing in one of America's dreariest urban hellholes.
  Less important than: The Philadelphia Streets Department's Sanitation division's online "FAQ" section.
  [Photo: Getty]

  Max Read
  Gawker staff writer Max Read writes exclusively about white people being racist. Here are some people he identified as being racist in 2012: Matt Drudge, Girls staff writer Lesley Arfin, George Zimmerman's defenders. Hmmm... why is Max Read so obsessed with white people being racist?
  Less important than: The financially, culturally and economically crippled Klu Klux Klan.

  Rich Juzwiak
  Gawker's chief vacation correspondent, Rich Juzwiak's beat consists of planning elaborate vacations for himself and then writing about them on a cocktail napkin as an afterthought. In 2012, Juzwiak published over 950 pages of internal documents shedding light on some of Mitt Romney's tax evading loop-de-loops, I mean went to Fire Island, unmasked ViolentAcrez "the biggest troll on the web," I mean went to Disney World, and curated a series of moving firsthand accounts from real Americans struggling with unemployment, I mean went shopping with Honey Boo Boo.
  Less important than: Second runner up, "Outfit of Choice," 10-12 age division, Li'l Mizz Rockstar Child Beauty Pageant.

  Cord Jefferson
  Gawker's laid-back LA bureau chief likes to write at length with great nuance and thoughtfulness on complicated, contentious issues, which would be great if OH MY GOD IS HE DEFENDING PEDOPHILES HERE? IT SOUNDS LIKE HE'S DEFENDING PEDOPHILES, JUST LOOK AT THE HEADLINE. Can we really trust this guy? Not to mention he's apparently too good for food or t-shirts. Sitting out in California, eating air, shirtless. Is this the man you want around your children?
  Less important than: NYC, greatest city in the world.

The best part about this "sequel" to Abbott and Costello's classic "Who's on First" routine starring Jimmy Fallon, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, and A.D. Miles, is how great it is.

The worst part about the "sequel" to Abbott and Costello's classic "Who's on First" routine starring Jimmy Fallon, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, and A.D. Miles is how many people probably don't know it's a sequel.

[video via LNwJF]