Hello, there is a new survey out telling us EVERYTHING about the proud freshman class of Harvard. What are they like, these young, sexually frustrated leaders?

The Harvard Crimson brings us the results of the Harvard Freshman Survey, the most eagerly awaited survey of the American class war. Let's get right to the fuckin':

Only 35 percent of the Class of 2017 had sex before coming to Harvard, according to a survey of incoming freshmen conducted by The Crimson last month... Forty percent of private school students said they lost their virginity before Harvard, compared to 33 percent of public school students, 18 percent of charter school students, and one of six homeschooled students.

"Homeschool student having sex with mom" joke.

Other key statistics:

-Zero percent of Mormon freshmen have had sex.

-40% of freshman have never had a drink.

-"Less than one percent said they had tried cocaine, and less than two percent said they had done mushrooms. Less than three percent reported having tried ecstasy."

-21% have parents in the "over $500K" income bracket.

-The number of reported rapes at Harvard has "nearly doubled in the last year."

It won't be long before these sheltered, wealthy scamps with insane levels of pent-up sexual frustration are in charge of us all.

[The Crimson. Photo: Flickr]

It was fun having a Nazi supervillain as pope, but it wasn't very good for the Catholic Church brand. The new pope, Francis, is working hard at giving the papacy a nicer public image. If you're bummed out about a relationship, for example, he'll call you and talk you through it.

Pope Francis—who in reality is a 76-year-old Argentine church bureaucrat named Jorge Mario Bergoglio—is getting a reputation for saying relatively nonjudgmental things to random Catholics. He reportedly told a gay man in France that homosexuality is nothing for people to get worked up about, and a sad engineering student apparently got a friendly papal "buck up" after writing to the Vatican with worries about ever finding a job in Italy's terrible economy. Even gay priests and atheists get shout-outs from the friendly pope, who says it really isn't his business to judge.

The latest recipient of an encouraging telephone call from Pope Francis is Anna Romano, a 35-year-old who got dumped by her boyfriend after he got her pregnant and told her to get an abortion. She basically wrote a Santa Claus letter to the Vatican and was surprised to get a call back from a nice old fellow claiming to be Pope Francis. He discouraged her from getting an abortion, as you would expect from a Catholic guy, but he also promised to baptize her bastard child if her local pastor refused. This is one baby that won't automatically go to Hell because his parents aren't legally married!

Although Francis is chief executive the world's richest organization, he did not offer Romano an apartment in the Vatican or a couple of hundred thousand Euros to raise the child to college age.

[Photo via Getty Images.]

Everybody hates Ryan Seacrest; Breaking Bad's alternate storylines will paralyze you with fear; Nikki Finke still hates The Wrap; but Mark Gordon hates ICM more.

• What do cold, damp football fans hate more than a 33 minute lightning delay? Ryan Seacrest, apparently. The highlighted host was mercilessly booed during last night's NFL season opener pregame show. [Deadline]
• “Go fuck yourself and your inaccurate website.” - badass bitch Nikki Finke to The Wrap writer Sara Morris, when asked for comments on her negotiations with Jay Penske. [The Wrap]
• Breaking Bad set a Guinness World Record as the highest-rated TV series of all time. It's only a matter of time before the price of Sudafed has soared through the roof. [THR]
• One scene that didn't help Breaking Bad set a world record? An unnamed drug kingpin telling someone to pick a number. And then slamming a chisel into that vertebrae. [EW] (that's the website AND how I feel about this scene)
• Things are quickly going from bad to worse for ICM. Their only solid remaining departments, TV and Motion Picture Lit, just lost mega-producer client Mark Gordon, the man behind Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and Ray Donovan, because some agent sent a script to all their crappy producers at the same time Mark got it. [Deadline]

Breakdowns is a daily roundup of all the news that wasn't interesting enough to deserve two paragraphs.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman says of the possibility of another financial crisis like the one in 2008, "The probability of it happening again in our lifetime is as close to zero as I could imagine." James Gorman is only 55 years old.

A Texas man with an admitted aversion to snakes was unpleasantly surprised when he encountered an unexpected serpent slithering out of the toilet while he was attempting to drain his own snake inside the bathroom of a San Antonio Starbucks.

"I looked down and looked at the toilet and I see this snake laying across the toilet," Bruce Ahlswede told KSAT News.

After confirming the Texas rat snake was indeed an urban legend come to life and not a rubber gag left behind by some half-caf-no-foam-soy-macchiato-sipping joker, he informed the staff.

"I said hey, you know you've got a snake in your bathroom and she's kind of freaking out," Ahlswede recalled. "So we went back in and watched it as it slithered back and around and down underneath the rim of the bowl and right inside."

A photo posted by Ahlswede's wife to her Facebook page shows the snake wrapping itself around the toilet shortly before disappearing.

South Texas Herpetology Association agents who were called to the scene were unable to catch the artisan critter, but flagged the store as safe just the same.

Starbucks released a statement saying "there were no further safety concerns," but Ahlswede said he planned to "take a closer look and definitely lift the seat" from now on, just in case.

[H/T: Eater, screengrab via Facebook, KSAT]

Just imagine the scene: news breaks that one of the most influential figures in the history of technology is having an affair with an underling. But instead of choosing one of the many photos Amanda Rosenberg herself uploaded, People magazine apparently seizes the first snap of a woman in Google Glass it can find.

I'm sure a lot of people would love to appear in a celeb magazine, but not incorrectly outed as Google co-founder Sergey Brin's lover. Even that sentence was hard to write! The issue, on newsstands now, uses a cropped version of this scene from paparazzi goldmine Splash News:

But the Splash shot isn't of anyone famous—it's essentially a stock photo of a bicycling woman sporting a face computer. Here's how Splash describes the photo in its database:

Reference: SPL570337_001

Headline: Google Glasses spotted on the streets of New York City

Date of Picture: 06/29/2013

See the set: SPL570337

Usage: World Rights

C

aption: *NO NEW YORK DAILY NEWS OR NEW YORK POST*

EXCLUSIVE / NO NYC PAPERS SALES

A lady seen wearing the soon to be released google glasses whilst riding on her citibike in Ne

w York City, USA.

Pictured: Google Glasses

Ref: SPL570337 290613

Picture by: Dave Spencer / Splash News

"Zen" is far more than the sound that a ninja's throwing star makes as it whistles past your ear. Contrary to popular belief, the role of ninjas in Zen is minor, at most. What is Zen really about? Koans. What are koans? Oh ho.

The koan: "Mokusen's Hand"

Mokusen Hiki was living in a temple in the province of Tamba. One of his adherents complained of the stinginess of his wife.

Mokusen visited the adherent's wife and showed her his clenched fist before her face. "What do you mean by that?" asked the surprised woman.

"Suppose my fist were always like that. What would you call it?" he asked. "Deformed," replied the woman.

Then he opened his hand flat in her face and asked: "Suppose it were always like that. What then?" "Another kind of deformity," said the wife.

"If you understand that much," finished Mokusen, "you are a good wife." Then he left.

After his visit, this wife helped her husband to distribute as well as to save.

The enlightenment: Shortly afterwards, Mokusen Hiki was removed from the Society of Professional Zen for making physical threats towards women. He went on to found a short-lived newsletter on amateur woodworking. The back issues of that newsletter are all that remain of him today.

This has been "Zen Koans Explained." A horse?

[Photo: Shutterstock]

This is the third and final installment of @Seinfeld2000's original novel The Apple Store. In part two, Jary, Garge, Elane and Kragdar hit rock bottom. Jary, reduced to prop comedy, accidentally set Keny Banya on fire during his act and was fired from "Carot Top Present: The Originel King's Of Prop Comady Tour." He still managed to have sex with beautiful actress Amanda Seyfrede, but it was of small comfort. Kragdar got a gun. Evil Kenyan President Bary Obame smacked his head on the ground. And Garge found, and was rejected, by the love of his life: Lena Dunam.

JARY AND ELANE

When Jary swing open the door, first thing he see is Elane planking on his couch. ICYMI, "planking" is a modarn trend where you lie totaly flat on something like a plank of wood thats how it get the name "planking." Its hilarieus bc, like, wtf? Human's arent plank of wood! Hehe.

So ya, Jary come and and Elane planking but it turned out she was actualy taking a nap, but shes so anxiety by the recent event's that her body became legit stiff like a plank of pine wood. Jary asked Elane to take care of his apertment for him during hes on the "Carot Top Present: The Originel King's Of Prop Comady Tour". But he told Elane the tour would continue for much longer than now, so he realy startle Elane when he come in. She think this is a home invasien. She spring to life, reach in to her fake Alexandar Wang purse and grab her very real peper spray, rush rite up to Jary and start spraying him in the face and dosent stop until shes emptyed the whoale botle of peper spray rite into his eyes.

Jary wriathe on the floor in extreme agany. "What the H are you doing Elane, it's me, Jary!!!"

Elane go and put on her glases. Keep in mind she's in her 50's. Her eye site isn't what it use to be. As soon as she put on her glases she see its Jary. Shes so hapy to see him.

"Jary!" she exclame. If this was an epsode of 'Seindfeld' on TV, this is when the studieo audience berst into aplaud because this is the first time we seen these two characters together since this book started!

"Lanney!!" Jary say, wiping the peper spray from his eye. They hug and Jary instinctively put his tongue in her mouth.

"No no no Jary," Elane say, wagging her finger left to rite. "We used to dateing but not any more. Thats not apropriete now. We are just platonic friend now, which is rare for man and woman, so lets try to respect it and not cross that line k?"

"K," Jary say.

Dispite her unbridle enthusiasem to reunite with Jary, as the hard glare of a nasent New York City day begin to cast an elongateing rhombus of lite across the creaking hard wood floor of Jarys apertment, so the memory of yesterday come surfecing back into Elanes mind. She start to crying.

In 1998, when Senfeld was canceled by N.B.C. for low rateings, Jary would not have been afected by this display of emotien at all. Like the clasic Jim Carey movie "The Grintch," Jarys heart was three sizes to small. But as Nietche once said, "The develepment of the soul come thru human sufering." And the past 15 years, it has humbled Jary. It has made his consence sprout like a wild orchid in a Gobi dessert of uncaring.

Jary hug Elane tenderly. Jary hasnt seen Elane this sad since Bary Obame stole the presedency from Mit Romney, which was Mit Romneys God-given rite as a citizen who ACTUALY was born in Amercia, in 2012.

"What hapened Elane," he say. Jary sooth Elane. He masage her shoulder. And this time its not for the expres purpese of using her body for sex (even though he have full erect). Real talk? Hes fully turned on rite now but instead of trying to make a "move" Jary just deposet this moment into the afluence of his spank bank, wait for it to colect interest, and make a with drawl later when hes by himself in the shower.

Elane tell Jary about every thing that happened to her in the last bit. Im not gonna transcribe the whole conversatien because you already know what happened. But to sumarize, she tell him about geting fired by Buzz Feed.com, and about Daved Pady cheating on her with Marykate and Ashlie Olsen twin's. Now Elane tell Jary about how she has no relatienship, no money, and how she's been living off of Pro Biotic yogert sample's that they have been giving out outside of Jary's apertment.

This remind her. Its brekfest time. Elane reach into her perse and pull out a Pro Biotic yogert sample. She start to eat it and feel the straw berry kiwi flaver flow over her taste bud's in a wave of sustenence.

"Can I have one," Jary say.

"Sory, I only have like three left," Elane is like. "I need these for the whoale day."

"OK no wory's," Jary say. He go to his fridge, which is empty except for a botle of dijon musterd that expired in August 2011. He grab a plastic spoon from his drawre (or how ever you spell it) and dig in. "Well, Ive actualy had some tough time's recently myself."

Then Jary relay the story of the catestrophic comady tour. He tell about seting Keny Banya on fire. He even tell about haveing sex intercorse with Amanda Seyfrede. He tell about the hitch hikeing. Some time's he have to speak more loud to combat the volume of his ocasienel stomech groan's.

Even though Elanes not a comedien, she manage to say what everyone is thinking: "We are in need of money."

For a moment Jary and Elane they stand together and bask in the glow of this pure truth.

Then Elane remember shes been colecting Jarys mail. "Maybe theres a check in your mail, you can deposite it and we can get food," Elane say.

"Good idea," Jary go as he tear into his mail like a rabid ferret.

First one is junk mail. Second thing is a post card from his frend Garge. Theres a picture of Tay Zondaye on the front and on the back it say in Garges barely legebel hand writing "BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, I'LL BE OUT OF PRISEN. I MISS YOU AND ALSO ELANE AND KRAGDAR. LETS REUNITE ASAP. MY NEW CELL PHONE NUMBER IS 555-GARGE. PLS CALL ME OR SEND ME TEXT MESAGE. SINSERELY, YOUR B.F.F. SINCE WE WERE CHILDHOOD, GARGE."

"Hey! Garge is got relese from prisen!" Jary say to Elane.

"Thats totaly swaged out!" Elane say, once againe temperarily forgeting their wories again due to the power of freind ship.

When Jary open the third enveloape his heart sink. Its a very oficial looking leter from Jackie Childe's (Jonny Cocrane parady black lawyer) law firm. Keny Banya is suing Jary for his medecle expenses for the burn treatment, plastic surgery. The amount they want is $217 000. Jary heart just sink. He just hold the leter up to Elane.

"I dont have this kind of money," he say, and take another spoon full of expired dijon musterd. "I dont have any money."

"What are we gona do?" Elane go.

"I dont know, Lanney."

Sudenly, as if by response, Jary feel his Samsung Galaxy S4 vibraite in his GAP 1969 skinny jean's. He pull it out. Its a text mesege from Kragdar.

"Meet me at the restrant we always used to go to. 2:00 pm," the text mesege from Kragdar say.

Jary text back just 1 letter, but that letter say it all: "K."

BARY OBAME

Bary Husane Obame sit at the head of dinner tabel in the White House. To his left is his wife, Michele Obame. Seated at the rite are his dauters, Malia and Sashe "Frere Jones" Obame. And he dosent recognize any of them. Just to remind you, when we last saw Obame, he hit his head prety bad in the Ovel Ofice and now he basicly doesn't remember anything.

"So, wait a minute," he say, even more slower than usual. "I'm the presedent of U.S.A.? Your fucking with me rite?"

"Please watch your language in front of your two impresionable young daugter's, and yes," Michele Obame say. "You are Barack Obame. You are the presedent. I know, its wierd. Basicly you used social media to take advantege of the disenfranchised and entitled milenial generatien to dupe your way into office."

"Whoa thats awesome!" Bary Obame say and then he stare off into the distence. "What is this?" he say, holding up a utensel.

Michele Obame SMH and her daugters all exchange concerned glance's. "Thats a fork, Bary."

"Mom," say Malia Obame, "why dont you go get the photo albem of dad when he was a small boy, maybe it will jossel his memery."

"Good idea," Michele Obame say. "I guess thats why we call you the smart one," she go, and cast a look of disapoint at Sashe Obame. Then she go upstares and return a minute later with the photo albem in her hand's. She clump down the photo albem in fromt of her husbend and turn it open to the first page. It show a picture of a five year old Obame playing in front of straw hut.

"See honny," go Michele Obame swetely. "Here you are in Kenya, the contry in Africa where you lived until 1987 before you came to Amereca ilegaly and paid the mafia $500 to manafacture for you a fake berth certificate and pasport."

Obame furow his brow with confusien. "Wait a secend, I dont realy know anything about the U.S. constetutien and even if I did, I prob wouldent adheare to it... but if Im from Kenya, dosent that disqualefy me from being presedent?"

Michele Obame give him a wink and hold her index finger up to her mouthe. "Shhh." Then the whoale family LOL, theyre face's iluminated by the red glow of candelabra encrust with diamend skull's carved into it resting in the center of the tabel providing the only lite in the room.

Five minute's later when the Obame family laughter finaly subside, Michele Obame have another idea. She get on the phoane which your hard-earn tax dollers pay for and call the direct line to the Lincoln bedroome in the White House.

"Hello?" Michele say into the telephone. "Sory to interupt your love making, but could you guy's come down to the dining room please? Thanks."

Shortly later, Jay-z and Beyance appear in the room.

"Yo yo yo yo yo Obame, whats going on," Jay-z say to Obame.

"Bary, this is your B.F.F. Jay-z. You dont make a singel politicle decisien with out him. Some times you go frolfing — golf with a frisbie — and you let him be presedent for a day. Thats how Amereca decided to pull the troop's out of Iraq even though we were totaly winning." (She say "winning" like the way that Charlie Sheen say it).

Beyance say, "Come on dont you know us? Every morning at 7 am we smoke a huge marajuane reefer together on the White House lawn, where you grow an entiare crop of marajuane, and then you put on your presedent outfit and make decisiens that will afect the lives of over 300 milien Americen's."

Bary Obame still drawing a blank. He shrug and shake his head simulteneous.

Michele Obame tell Jay-z and Beyance "OK homey's thanks for trying, you can go back to the Lincoln bedroome where you have an open invetation to come and go as you please for the remainder of Obame presedency."

Michele have one more idea. "OK Bary, come with me." He follow the woman who is saying she is his wife to a book shelf and she start to pull on one of the book's.

"You want me to read a book?" he say, kind of freaking out now. "I may not remember anything but one thing I do know is that I never learned to read."

"No no don't worry," Michele say, and she pull the book to 90-degree's and the whoale book shelf slide to the left like in Batman Dark Night Rises when Morgen Freemen do it, and reveale a coridor that lead to a pasageway. Michele lead Bary Obame downstares to a room full of blinking panel's and lites and lever's and switches.

"This is your faverite room in the whoale White House, Bary. But its very importent that—"

"Yay! Arcade!!!" Bary Obame say. "I love video game's!!!"

Sudenly Obame rush over to a panel and start to punching buton's and twisting crank's and pulling lever's. "What happen's if I do this?"

Michele Obame say “no dont do that Bary!" But its to late. She go over and read a monitor. "You just fired a nuclular misile at Helsinki. You just destroyed the largest city in Fin Land."

Bary Obame feel kinda bad. "Maybe we should tell peopel that I am unfit for to being presedent,":he say.

Michele look down at her custom made Chanel blouse and the diamend bracelettes that adorn her powerful arms. She think of every thing she would lose if Obame have to stop being presedent.

"Dont do that Bary," say Michele with dark smile. "You mite be Bary 'Insane' Obame now, but you only have 3 year's left in the White House. You can just practice being a normel."

They go back upstares and go to the bathrome together.

"Repeate after me," Michele go. "I am Bary Husane Obame. I am presedent. I dident hit my head in the Ovel Ofice and forget every thing. I am normel. I have a rite to be presedent."

Bary Obame look at her uncertain but then say it: "I am Bary Husane Obame. I am presedent. I dident hit my head in the Ovel Ofice and forget every thing. I am normel. I have a rite to be presedent."

It sound shaky at first, but after he say 100 time's, honestly? It sound naturel.

Obame swich of the lite, go to bed, and prepare for just another reguler day as presedent of Amereca.

JARY, GARGE, ELANE AND KRAGDAR

"Four water's please," Jary order.

Jary, Garge, Elane and Kragdar are siting in the restraunt where they always use to go in the 1990's. Their sitting in the same booth that they always use to sit together in for the first time in 15 year's.

The water's arive, and the waitres say, "OK guy's what would you like to eat."

"Nothing for me please," Jary say.

"Yeah ditto for me too, I'm good," Elane say.

"I would also like to have nothing please," Garge say.

"I will have a refill for my glass of water please," Kragdar say.

The waitress walk away. Everyone look's at each other and then laugh. The laugh it feel so cathartic. It break the ice and sudenly the mood feel like old times. They may not have money now to aford food, but they still have each other. And forget what Maslow's "heirarchey of needs" say: some time's freindship is more important than nutrient's.

For the next hour, they all sip on their water's and exchange story's about what they've been up to. Garge talk about finding the best toilete in Riker's Islend prisen. Elane tell how she finaly got her revenge on Gladis Mayo from the Cinco De Mayo mayan fashien clothing store by finding out where she lived and burning down her home. Jary talk about how he derailed an epsoad of Saterday Nite Live by standing on stage and yelling the c-word (cunt) during a skech staring Justin Timbrelake and get life time ban from N.B.C. And Kragdar just blart out "I tried sex with a dog!" Every one kind of ignore that one.

But they also talk about how their all down and out. How they all need money. Garge has no chance of ever geting a normal job again because of his extensev criminel record but he also need's at least $100 000 to impres Lena Dunam. That's nothing, Jary need's over $200 000 to pay for Keny Banya's medicle bill's. Elane is living off of pro biotec yogert samples. Kragdar homeless.

"See, this is why I wanted us to meet," Kragdar go. "In the 1990's we were booming Jary, booming!" he say, in the way that @SeinfeldToday write every character's dialogue, just make them repeate a word. That substitute for joke bc @SeinfeldToday dont acutaly know how to write joke's. "But in 2008 the recesion hit and it realy threw us off course. Now look at us. Were pathetic. Pathetic, Jary! Pathetic! Pathetic! Jary, we're pathetic!" (1,729 RTs)

Garge is getting upset. "Yeah, so. What is your point Kragdar? I dont see how we are going to get money."

Kragdar say. "But I do. Three word's: 5th Avenue Apple Store."

Elane go, "We're going to work at the 5th Avenue Apple Store?"

"No Elane," Kragdar say. "We are going to rob the 5th Avenue Apple Store."

If they had ordered any food, this is the point when Garge would say "check please." But they only drank water, so Garge just get up to leave. At least he start to.

"Now where are you going, Garge?" Kragdar ask.

"Well I'm not going back to prisen," Garge fire back.

Kragdar say: "You know who go to prisen Garge? People who get caught. We are not going to get caught."

Garge: "Oh yeah? How is that?"

Kragdar: "Because we're going to wear mask's."

"It still sound too risky," Garge say.

"Do you want to have relatienship with Lena Dunam, or no?" Kragdar go.

Garge then say, "...Yeah."

"Then this is the only way to do it."

Garge think for a moment. This go against his instict. But if every instinct he ever had in his whole life is wrong, then the oposite must be rite. "OK, I'm in."

Elane raise her hand. "One questien. How are we going to rob Apple Store. We dont have any gun."

"That's where your wrong," Kragdar say. And he lift his shirt like a character in the hit H.B.O. TV serie's The Wire to reveale the AK 47 tucked into the waiste band of his drop croch harem pant's. "Gidyap."

"I cant beleve Im going along with this!" Jary say in his trade mark whine. But he know's that at this point he has nothing to lose. Jary not afraid of death.

The whole gang all put theyre hand's together one on top of the other and go "wwwwwwhooooo!" They have a pact.

And for the rest of the nite they sit in the restaurant and they plan. They plan, Jary. Plan.

Its close to midnite when they finish. When they get up theyre exausted but also prety stoked for tomorow. The moment feel biter sweete. This could either work like a charm, or it could blow up in theyre face. Either way, theres no turning back. Tomorow they will meet at 11:00 am in the morning sharp at the corner of 5th Avenue and East 59th strete.

They all leave the restarant, so distracted by this plan that they dont notice Jarys long time nemasis Newmen was siting in the next booth over the whoale time.

Newmen shovel like 10 french frys in his mouth at once.

Newmen grin.

THE APPLE STORE

"If your having any doubts about this, I want you to voice them now," Kragdar begin. "Because if even 1 percent of you is not completely comited to what were about to do here, then go home, go back to your parent's house in Queen's, go back to your disgusting sex dungean in the East Vilage where uve been living since you were 22, go back to Wiliemsberg and continue to subsiste on Activia yogert samples."

With his singel long white dread lock rolling down his back, Kragdar now raise his voice as he look from Jary to Elane to Garge. "You hear me If your not all in, then just walk away. Walk the fuck away right now."

Kragdar pause. It's exactly 11:02 a.m. in the morning a.m. Every one except is dresed in the same uniform: puffy sherts (Jarys idea) and velvet sweat pant's (Garges idea). A gentel gust blow from neigbering Centrel Park thru the dewy May air. Jary, Elane, Garge and Kragdar feel the coolness of the lite wind againste their persperatien glazed forehead's.

Kragdar nod. He reach into his promotionel G.I. Joe: Retaliatien duffel bag. He produce three pink balleclava's with a litle unicorns stich into the top and pass two out to Jary and Garge and put the fourth one on his head. Next he pull out three water gun's painted black and distribute them. And then he finaly get his AK 47. He take one last deep breath of New York City air, it smell like the swete friction betwene life and death. The all pull the balleclava’s down over theyre sweaty faces.

Its go time.

Kragdar load the clip in his rifel.

"Gidyap."

With the adrenel thump of blood pounding in they’re ears, they run up to the cristaline glass cube that house the 5th Aveneu Apple Store and rush through the door’s. They run down stares.

“EVERY BODY GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” Kragdar comand with his AK 47 pointed to the heaven’s. Every one the whole store — business men, tourists, staf member's — do what he say. He storm up to the "Genieus Bar" and reach behind it, puling one cowering Apple store employe up by his blue teeshirt with the Apple logo on it. "OPEN UP THE FUCKING CASH REGESTERS, NOW NOW NOW!" He swing over and look at the rest of the staff. "DONT ANY OF YOU GENIEUSES TRY TO BE HERO'S!"

While Kragdar empty the cash regester's into his promotionel G.I. Joe: Retaliatien duffel bag, Jary and Garge and Elane work the room. Waving theyre black painted water gun's they each fill garbege bag's with Apple Store custemer's wallets and purse's. Jary spot Mrs. Chote who he once stole rye bread from. "GIMME YOURE FUCKING PURSE RITE NOW YOU OLD BAG!" When Jary take her purse she go's flying into a wall of Beat's By Docter Dre headphones. "Thats a shame," Jary say.

With every one's bags bersting with money, its time to go.

"ALRITE, THAT'S IT FOR US, THANK YOU VERY MUCH EVERY BODY!" Garge call out. He know when to leave on a highnote. And the gang all rush back up the stares.

But when they rush out the door's what they see stop them dead in theyre track's: the whole Apple store is surounded by NYPD. There must be 50 polices with theyre guns pointed at Jary, Elane, Garge and Kragdar.

"FREEZE!" a police bark thru a megephone. "DROP YOUR WEAPENS!"

Garge, Elane and Jary do it.

Jary whisper to the rest of the gang, "How did they get here so fast?" But then he notice a United State's Post Ofice mail truck parked on the other side of 5th Avenue with a familier face watching them with satisfyed smile.

"Newmen," Jary go while clench his fist.

Meanwhile, Kragdar still have his AK 47 pointed up. “YOU TOO, DREADLOCK! DROP THE GUN!”

"Your going to have to pry this gun out of my cold dead hand's!" Kragdar yell back and he blast it in the air with a defening ratle. His eye's pop out manaicaly.

"GIDYAP MOTHER FUCKERS! GIDY THE FUCK AP!"

The entire police force start to riddling Kragdar with bulets. His body twerk as hundreds of bulets pass thru him. Stray bulets hit the Apple store cube. It shatter spectaculerly. Sparkling shard's of glass fly every which way as the pane's come loose from the frame work of the cube and pop into a milien shimering fragements.

Kragdar fall forward, landing into an expandeing pool of his own blood with a splash.

Kragdar is dead.

There is a moment when nothing happen's. Elane break the sileance. "Well I guess were all going back to prisen."

Sudenly a silver Lamborgini Veneno, which is like the SICKEST car ever (seriesly, google it) zoom up from out of no where at 200 mile's per hour, takeing out five NYPD police officers and come to a screch in front of Jary, Elane and Garge.

The scissor door's of the Lamborgini fly up. Inside is Daved Pady. "Get in," he say in his monatone.

Jary, Elane and Garge throw the bag's into the Lamborgini Veneno and hop in. Daved Pady spin out as a hail of NYPD bulets hit the autembole.

Elane ask Pady, "how did you get this vehicel?"

Pady squint as he press his foot down on the gas pedel. "You dont spend your whole life working with cars without geting a few automoteive perk's" he go. "I told you I'd be there for you."

And their off in flash with at least 20 police car's in hot persuit.

Pady ignoare the trafic lites as he gun it south down 5th Avenue, the tres of centrel park whiping past on the rite hand side. Police chopper's (helecopter's) fly low overhead.

"Take the Lincon Tunnel, we'll go to New Jersey," Jary yell.

Daved Pady's Globel Positioning System (GPS) tell him there's constructien at 5th Avenue and 53nd street. The wheel's of the Lamborgini Veneno scream as Pady make a sharp rite turn on 54rd at almost seven time's the Manhatan speed limit. The stearing wheele spin wildly as Pady lose control of the car and drive it derectly into the mezanine of the Moma (Museme of Modarn Art).

Jary, Garge, Elane and Daved Pady emerge from the Lamborgini Veneno like sad clown's from the SICKEST clown car ever.

They put there hands up as the NYPD close in and cuff them, and tell them they have the rite to remane silent.

BARY OBAME

Bary Obame, Neo-Nazi socielist dictater of Amereca, sit at the tabel and eat his lunch.

While hard working citizen's of this great natien for exampel Jo the Plumber eating there soggy ham n mayo sandwich's, a man with the middel name "Husane" enjoy a delux menu prepare by his personel chef's Anthany Bordaine and Japenese sushi legend Jiro: first corse, caviar, second corse, foie grah, third corse, sushi made with the most expenseve blue fin tuna import direct from Tokeyo, and finaly desert, bluebery and primrose gelato with edeble gold leaf flake's. As he wash it all down with a glass Veuve Clico champane, Obame sudenly remember, oh yeah, hes the leader of the free world and maybe he should check the new's and stay up on the curent event's.

He click on his Sony KDL-55HX853 TV which is larger than most peopel's homes and CNN News Room come on. An atractive woman in a brite red jacket is report about some disaster that happen in Greenland.

"Boring!" Obame say at TV.

As if she hear him, the ancher go: "We turn now to breaking news come out of New York City where a group of senier citizen's have atempted to rob the Apple Store on 5th Aveneue."

CNN News Room then show image of the Apple Store. Its all shatered.

Obame kind of start to giggel. "Look's like they realy smashed it good!" The presedent of the United State's say out loud.

Then they show an imege of Kragdar during the stand off before he get shot.

"Oh man! Look at that guy! He has one long white dread lock! Umm, I think I want to be that guy's freind please!"

The CNN journelism woman continue: "This man has been identafied as Cosmopolis Kragmar. Police say that he is the ring leader of this atempted robery operatien. He was shot on site after not coaperateing with police authorety's."

Obame's smile turn up side down.

"What the hell?? They shot him? But that guy was awesome!" he say.

Then CNN show the car chase. The reporter contineue: "As New York police were about to aprahend the other three suspect's in this case, a fourth man in a SICK Lamborgini Veneno just pulled up on the scene out of no where like a silver bullet sent from the future, picked up the three surviveing suspect's, and embarked on a short police chase before losing controle of the vehicel and crashing it in to the Museam of Modarn Art."

As CNN show this what the reporter (Olivia Munn) describe, Obame is glued to the screne. Not literaly glued. Its an expresion. Anyway, he feel like hes not even watching real life. It look's like some thing from a film adaptatien of the populer video game Grand Theft Autos.

"OK," Obame go. "This is oficialy the best thing ever."

Now CNN showing Jary, Elane, Garge and Daved Pady geting arrested and being taken in to police custady. "With the exceptien of the driver of the vehecle, Daved Pady, the suspect's all have criminel record's."

"They arested those guy's?" Obame say. "But theyre amazing!"

Honestly, the presedent is prety pissed about this. Then he get an idea. He pick's up the solid gold phone resting on a solid platinem tabel next to him.

"Hello? Yes, its Barack Husane Obame, thats rite, the presedent," he go into the phone using the deciseve voice he practice in the bathrome mirror. "Set up a press confarance. Imediately."

One hour later, the presedent is standing in the White House press room before a full house of journelist's and reporter's.

Obame flash his milien doller grin. It lite up the room like fourth of July fire work's. It cause at least three feamale reporter's in atendence to quietley have orgasems. But then Obame grin vanish and the mood turn sombre.

"Im Barak Obame. I am Presedent of the United State's," he start his speech. "Look. Today we witnesed a tragedy. Four proud New Yorker's with nothing to lose tried to rob the Apple Store on 5th Avanue in Manhatten. They were not sucesful. One of these would-be robers, a man with a very fresh style, one long white dread lock, he got killed today. He will never live to see if his 'boys can swim.' And his three friend's, Jary, Garge, and Elane, and Elane's long time on-againe off againe boy freind Daved Pady, they curently are sitting in a prisen cell. And for what. All because they atempted to pull off a daring caper involveing a high spede chase in the coolest car Ive ever seen in my life. Was the plan ill-conceved? Sure. Was it reckless? Absolutly. But today's insident speak's to a double standerd that has exist in Amereca for far too long.

"This is a countrey that applaud's danger. We love televisien show's that astound us with push the limit's of the human threshold for pain and endurence like Jackass and Fear Facter. For the love of God — or in my case, the love of Allah — this natien has released five Die Hard movies when three would have suffice! And we clap at the end of all the Ocean Eleven film's. We as a peopel have proven time and time againe our undyeing lust for spill's, thrill's and chill's, and our insatieable therst for blood, carnage and high-octaine explosiens. It is woven into the fabric of our culture. It is writen indellibly into the rubrick of Amereca's entertainment complex. But when some one enact's this vielence in real life, what do we do? We condenm. We shut them away in to our alredy over crowded prisen system.

"Well today five Amerecans put on one hell of a show, and theyre geting punished for it. Today Im puting a stop to that. Thats not how its going to work in Obame's Amereca. Thats why Im signing into law 'The Cool Tricks And Awesome Stunts Act' efective rite now. It allow peopel who atempt the type of bold hiest we saw today to go free. And as the first motien of 'The Cool Tricks And Awesome Stunts Act', I am issueing a full presedentiel pardon to Jary, Elane, Garge, and Daved Pady."

He stop for a moment and once againe flash that Bary Obame grin.

"Oh and P.S.? They can keep the money they took. As far as Bary Obame is concern, they earn it. Its ritefuly theres."

Moment's later, in the back room of dirty New York presinct, an NYPD lieutenent slide's open the door of the cell that hold Jary, Garge, Elane and Daved Pady.

"Today is you're lucky day," he say with begrudge, "Your free to go."

ONE YEARS LATER

Its one of those perfect Hamptens day's you always hear about.

Garge bite into a jucey Hampten tomatoe. He feel the red juice trickel down his chin and land on he's traditionel Thai tuxedo.

"I wonder why the tomatoe never took off as a hand-frute," Garge muse.

"Maybe now is not the time to be eating tomatoe, Garge," Jary quip, standing next to Garge at the alter. Its just like old time's. Except one small difarence, Garge about to get maried.

Sudenly the cherch start to playing a dub step remix of "Here Come's The Bride" as Lena Dunam start walking up the aisel. She look breath-taking in her white weding dress desine for her personaly by the Kragdar of the fashien world, Jon Galiano. Lena Dunam's dad, Holywood mogle Judd Apetow he give her away. Its a glorieous and festive ocasien.

The ceremoney go off without a hich. And beceause they sent out event invetatien's through Face Book, there was no chance of Garge's fiansay or however its spelled Lena Dunam geting poisened. Lena Dunam she's very careful about this.

The weding receptien is a star studed affair. The entire cast of the hit H.B.O. series "Girls" is there. Randemly, NBA basket ball player Steve Nash is there. But hes not alowed to bring any of his freinds due to the strict "No black peopel" policy in efect. Oprah get turned away at the door.

Even Keny Banya is there. He walk into the weding looking SO good. Keny Banya aproach Jary.

"Hey Jary!" Keny Banya say. "With the money you paid for my medecle expenses for the seveare burn's, I went to the best plastic surgen in New York City. Hes the best, Jary, the BEST. He made me look 10 year's younger. I look like Im 50 now. 50 years old, Jary. 50. The best."

"Thats great Keny," Jary reply with during rolling his eye's. But then he warm smile and give Keny Banya that genre of hand shake where you shake the person's hand's with two hands around there hand.

The weding DJ, Diplo, put on the Nikki Minaj song "Moment For Life," and every one hit the dance floor. Time seem to move now in slow motien.

Jary see Elane on the dance floor doing her signeture dance with the thumbs and the litle kicks. She look beauteful in a sleek Alexandar Wang leathre dress fresh off the Paris run way.

Jary go up to Elane and he put his arm around Elanes waiste and press her close.

"Elane," he go, looking deep in to her eye's. "As i traveled across Amereca, I had a chance to reflect on my life. And I came to the realizashe that Ive spent most of it going thru women the way that a person with the flu go thru klenex: rapidly and in high voleume. And then I throw them in the trashcan after i have defiled them. But now that Ive 'goten jiggy' with over 40000 women, i realize that I have had a sickness. Its like Ive been trying to 'blow my nose' my whole life to recover. But that is not the way to get over the flu."

As the violin's swell as Nikki Minaj voice sing "I wish that I could have this moment for life," Jary get on one knee.

"Elane, will you be the vacine that cure the flu in my heart, forever? Will you marry me?"

Elane start to crying tear's of joy. She hasnt cryed this hard since Billy Mays the Oxy Clean guy died.

"Yes!" she go. "Yes Jary. I will marry you."

And as they all dance under the seting Hampten sun, for a fleteing moment, they realy do have this moment for life.

For the first time in a long time, they dont have to wish.

Sent from my iPhone

[Illustration by Sam Woolley]

Not that there's a particularly intelligent reason to get the face of a person you've never met tattooed on your butt, but even as crappy reasons go, this one is truly asinine.

It all started when Joey Jordan came across an ongoing art project called Selfless Portraits.

The project itself it kinda neat: "Strangers across the world drawing each other's Facebook profile pics."

Inspired, Jordan decided to contribute to the project, but not by, say, drawing a strangers Facebook profile pic.

No, Jordan decided to have someone else draw a stranger's Facebook profile pic. Permanently. On his butt.

"Not only did I want to be a part of this movement that's happening, but I wanted to be an important part," Jordan inexplicably explains in a short NSFW video documenting the process of getting a completely random person's face etched forever on his ass-skin.

"Feeling connected, not only to your friends and your community, but to people on the other side of the world is something that is so important," he continues. "Once in a while I can catch a glimpse of my ass in the mirror, I'm gonna remember 'hey, there's Amarildo! Here's this thing I did."

[H/T: Uproxx]

Nick Taranto — Harvard/Dartmouth alum, former Goldman banker, Marine infantry officer, and current CEO of cooking startup Plated.com — writes in The Huffington Post today that he met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this one time, back in 2008, on a trip with his Harvard MBA friends. Holy fucking shit! Assad was awesome. DUDE.

We started off friendly, asking about development goals, banking reforms, gross domestic product, international trade, and his family. Bashar talked about democracy, raising three children, missing London. We then started playing rough.

“How can you in good conscience preside over a brutal intelligence apparatus?”

“What was your involvement in the murder of Raafik Hariri in Beirut?”

“Why do you support Hezbollah?”

"What is your relationship with Iran?"

We were not friendly. We were downright confrontational. And he responded to every question with measured, well-reasoned, very convincing answers. He was straight up amazing.

BUT THEN...

There was no way of knowing that he would launch SCUD missiles, and chemical weapons, at his own people. There was no way of knowing that he would torture hundreds of thousands more, many of them children.

And so ends this particular specimen of HuffPo clickbait.

We were duped by a monster.

[I Met Bashar Al Assad. He Was Pretty Cool. // Image via Twitter]

The following profile originally appeared in the March 2011 issue of Vogue magazine.

Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department’s Web site says, “the Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.” It’s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark. Asma’s husband, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a startling 97 percent of the vote. In Syria, power is hereditary. The country’s alliances are murky. How close are they to Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah? There are souvenir Hezbollah ashtrays in the souk, and you can spot the Hamas leadership racing through the bar of the Four Seasons. Its number-one enmity is clear: Israel. But that might not always be the case. The United States has just posted its first ambassador there since 2005, Robert Ford.

Iraq is next door, Iran not far away. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, is 90 minutes by car from Damascus. Jordan is south, and next to it the region that Syrian maps label Palestine. There are nearly one million refugees from Iraq in Syria, and another half-million displaced Palestinians.

“It’s a tough neighborhood,” admits Asma al-Assad.

It’s also a neighborhood intoxicatingly close to the dawn of civilization, where agriculture began some 10,000 years ago, where the wheel, writing, and musical notation were invented. Out in the desert are the magical remains of Palmyra, Apamea, and Ebla. In the National Museum you see small 4,000-year-old panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl that is echoed in the new mother-of-pearl furniture for sale in the souk. Christian Louboutin comes to buy the damask silk brocade they’ve been making here since the Middle Ages for his shoes and bags, and has incidentally purchased a small palace in Aleppo, which, like Damascus, has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years.

The first lady works out of a small white building in a hilly, modern residential neighborhood called Muhajireen, where houses and apartments are crammed together and neighbors peer and wave from balconies. The first impression of Asma al-Assad is movement—a determined swath cut through space with a flash of red soles. Dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace. No watch, no jewelry apart from Chanel agates around her neck, not even a wedding ring, but fingernails lacquered a dark blue-green. She’s breezy, conspiratorial, and fun. Her accent is English but not plummy. Despite what must be a killer IQ, she sometimes uses urban shorthand: “I was, like. . . .”

Asma Akhras was born in London in 1975, the eldest child and only daughter of a Syrian Harley Street cardiologist and his diplomat wife, both Sunni Muslims. They spoke Arabic at home. She grew up in Ealing, went to Queen’s College, and spent holidays with family in Syria. “I’ve dealt with the sense that people don’t expect Syria to be normal. I’d show my London friends my holiday snaps and they’d be—‘Where did you say you went?’ ”

She studied computer science at university, then went into banking. “It wasn’t a typical path for women,” she says, “but I had it all mapped out.” By the spring of 2000, she was closing a big biotech deal at JP Morgan in London and about to take up an MBA at Harvard. She started dating a family friend: the second son of president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar, who’d cut short his ophthalmology studies in London in 1994 and returned to Syria after his older brother, Basil, heir apparent to power, died in a car crash. They had known each other forever, but a ten-year age difference meant that nothing registered—until it did.

“I was always very serious at work, and suddenly I started to take weekends, or disappear, and people just couldn’t figure it out,” explains the first lady. “What do you say—‘I’m dating the son of a president’? You just don’t say that. Then he became president, so I tried to keep it low-key. Suddenly I was turning up in Syria every month, saying, ‘Granny, I miss you so much!’ I quit in October because by then we knew that we were going to get married at some stage. I couldn’t say why I was leaving. My boss thought I was having a nervous breakdown because nobody quits two months before bonus after closing a really big deal. He wouldn’t accept my resignation. I was, like, ‘Please, really, I just want to get out, I’ve had enough,’ and he was ‘Don’t worry, take time off, it happens to the best of us.’ ” She left without her bonus in November and married Bashar al-Assad in December.

“What I’ve been able to take away from banking was the transferable skills—the analytical thinking, understanding the business side of running a company—to run an NGO or to try and oversee a project.” She runs her office like a business, chairs meeting after meeting, starts work many days at six, never breaks for lunch, and runs home to her children at four. “It’s my time with them, and I get them fresh, unedited—I love that. I really do.” Her staff are used to eating when they can. “I have a rechargeable battery,” she says.

The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls “active citizenship.” “It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.”
In 2005 she founded Massar, built around a series of discovery centers where children and young adults from five to 21 engage in creative, informal approaches to civic responsibility. Massar’s mobile Green Team has touched 200,000 kids across Syria since 2005. The organization is privately funded through donations. The Syria Trust for Development, formed in 2007, oversees Massar as well as her first NGO, the rural micro-credit association FIRDOS, and SHABAB, which exists to give young people business skills they need for the future.

And then there’s her cultural mission: “People tend to see Syria as artifacts and history,” she says. “For us it’s about the accumulation of cultures, traditions, values, customs. It’s the difference between hardware and software: the artifacts are the hardware, but the software makes all the difference—the customs and the spirit of openness. We have to make sure that we don’t lose that. . . . ” Here she gives an apologetic grin. “You have to excuse me, but I’m a banker—that brand essence.”

That brand essence includes the distant past. There are 500,000 important ancient works of art hidden in storage; Asma al-Assad has brought in the Louvre to create a network of museums and cultural attractions across Syria, and asked Italian experts to help create a database of the 5,000 archaeological sites in the desert. “Culture,” she says, “is like a financial asset. We have an abundance of it, thousands of years of history, but we can’t afford to be complacent.”

In December, Asma al-Assad was in Paris to discuss her alliance with the Louvre. She dazzled a tough French audience at the International Diplomatic Institute, speaking without notes. “I’m not trying to disguise culture as anything more than it is,” she said, “and if I sound like I’m talking politics, it’s because we live in a politicized region, a politicized time, and we are affected by that.”

The French ambassador to Syria, Eric Chevallier, was there: “She managed to get people to consider the possibilities of a country that’s modernizing itself, that stands for a tolerant secularism in a powder-keg region, with extremists and radicals pushing in from all sides—and the driving force for that rests largely on the shoulders of one couple. I hope they’ll make the right choices for their country and the region. ”

Damascus evokes a dusty version of a Mediterranean hill town in an Eastern-bloc country. The courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque at night looks exactly like St. Mark’s square in Venice. When I first arrive, I’m met on the tarmac by a minder, who gives me a bouquet of white roses and lends me a Syrian cell phone; the head minder, a high-profile American PR, joins us the next day. The first lady’s office has provided drivers, so I shop and see sights in a bubble of comfort and hospitality. On the rare occasions I am out alone, a random series of men in leather jackets seems to be keeping close tabs on what I am doing and where I am headed.

“I like things I can touch. I like to get out and meet people and do things,” the first lady says as we set off for a meeting in a museum and a visit to an orphanage. “As a banker, you have to be so focused on the job at hand that you lose the experience of the world around you. My husband gave me back something I had lost.”

She slips behind the wheel of a plain SUV, a walkie-talkie and her cell thrown between the front seats and a Syrian-silk Louboutin tote on top. She does what the locals do—swerves to avoid crazy men who run across busy freeways, misses her turn, checks your seat belt, points out sights, and then can’t find a parking space. When a traffic cop pulls her over at a roundabout, she lowers the tinted window and dips her head with a playful smile. The cop’s eyes go from slits to saucers.

Her younger brother Feras, a surgeon who moved to Syria to start a private health-care group, says, “Her intelligence is both intellectual and emotional, and she’s a master at harmonizing when, and how much, to use of each one.”

In the Saint Paul orphanage, maintained by the Melkite–Greek Catholic patriarchate and run by the Basilian sisters of Aleppo, Asma sits at a long table with the children. Two little boys in new glasses and thick sweaters are called Yussuf. She asks them what kind of music they like. “Sad music,” says one. In the room where she’s had some twelve computers installed, the first lady tells a nun, “I hope you’re letting the younger children in here go crazy on the computers.” The nun winces: “The children are afraid to learn in case they don’t have access to computers when they leave here,” she says.

In the courtyard by the wall down which Saint Paul escaped in a basket 2,000 years ago, an old tree bears gigantic yellow fruit I have never seen before. Citrons. Cédrats in French.

Back in the car, I ask what religion the orphans are. “It’s not relevant,” says Asma al-Assad. “Let me try to explain it to you. That church is a part of my heritage because it’s a Syrian church. The Umayyad Mosque is the third-most-important holy Muslim site, but within the mosque is the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. We all kneel in the mosque in front of the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. That’s how religions live together in Syria—a way that I have never seen anywhere else in the world. We live side by side, and have historically. All the religions and cultures that have passed through these lands—the Armenians, Islam, Christianity, the Umayyads, the Ottomans—make up who I am.”

“Does that include the Jews?” I ask.

“And the Jews,” she answers. “There is a very big Jewish quarter in old Damascus.”

The Jewish quarter of Damascus spans a few abandoned blocks in the old city that emptied out in 1992, when most of the Syrian Jews left. Their houses are sealed up and have not been touched, because, as people like to tell you, Syrians don’t touch the property of others. The broken glass and sagging upper floors tell a story you don’t understand—are the owners coming back to claim them one day?

The presidential family lives surrounded by neighbors in a modern apartment in Malki. On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, Asma al-Assad opens the door herself in jeans and old suede stiletto boots, hair in a ponytail, the word happiness spelled out across the back of her T-shirt. At the bottom of the stairs stands the off-duty president in jeans—tall, long-necked, blue-eyed. A precise man who takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer, he says he was attracted to studying eye surgery “because it’s very precise, it’s almost never an emergency, and there is very little blood.”

The old al-Assad family apartment was remade into a child-friendly triple-decker playroom loft surrounded by immense windows on three sides. With neither shades nor curtains, it’s a fishbowl. Asma al-Assad likes to say, “You’re safe because you are surrounded by people who will keep you safe.” Neighbors peer in, drop by, visit, comment on the furniture. The president doesn’t mind: “This curiosity is good: They come to see you, they learn more about you. You don’t isolate yourself.”

There’s a decorated Christmas tree. Seven-year-old Zein watches Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on the president’s iMac; her brother Karim, six, builds a shark out of Legos; and nine-year-old Hafez tries out his new electric violin. All three go to a Montessori school.

Asma al-Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch. The household is run on wildly democratic principles. “We all vote on what we want, and where,” she says. The chandelier over the dining table is made of cut-up comic books. “They outvoted us three to two on that.”

A grid is drawn on a blackboard, with ticks for each member of the family. “We were having trouble with politeness, so we made a chart: ticks for when they spoke as they should, and a cross if they didn’t.” There’s a cross next to Asma’s name. “I shouted,” she confesses. “I can’t talk about empowering young people, encouraging them to be creative and take responsibility, if I’m not like that with my own children.”

“The first challenge for us was, Who’s going to define our lives, us or the position?” says the president. “We wanted to live our identity honestly.”

They announced their marriage in January 2001, after the ceremony, which they kept private. There was deliberately no photograph of Asma. “The British media picked that up as: Now she’s moved into the presidential palace, never to be seen again!” says Asma, laughing.

They had a reason: “She spent three months incognito,” says the president. “Before I had any official engagement,” says the first lady, “I went to 300 villages, every governorate, hospitals, farms, schools, factories, you name it—I saw everything to find out where I could be effective. A lot of the time I was somebody’s ‘assistant’ carrying the bag, doing this and that, taking notes. Nobody asked me if I was the first lady; they had no idea.”

“That way,” adds the president, “she started her NGO before she was ever seen in public as my wife. Then she started to teach people that an NGO is not a charity.”

Neither of them believes in charity for the sake of charity. “We have the Iraqi refugees,” says the president. “Everybody is talking about it as a political problem or as welfare, charity. I say it’s neither—it’s about cultural philosophy. We have to help them. That’s why the first thing I did is to allow the Iraqis to go into schools. If they don’t have an education, they will go back as a bomb, in every way: terrorism, extremism, drug dealers, crime. If I have a secular and balanced neighbor, I will be safe.”

When Angelina Jolie came with Brad Pitt for the United Nations in 2009, she was impressed by the first lady’s efforts to encourage empowerment among Iraqi and Palestinian refugees but alarmed by the Assads’ idea of safety.

“My husband was driving us all to lunch,” says Asma al-Assad, “and out of the corner of my eye I could see Brad Pitt was fidgeting. I turned around and asked, ‘Is anything wrong?’ ”

“Where’s your security?” asked Pitt.

“So I started teasing him—‘See that old woman on the street? That’s one of them! And that old guy crossing the road?

That’s the other one!’ ” They both laugh.

The president joins in the punch line: “Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to come and get some training!”

After lunch, Asma al-Assad drives to the airport, where a Falcon 900 is waiting to take her to Massar in Latakia, on the coast. When she lands, she jumps behind the wheel of another SUV waiting on the tarmac. This is the kind of surprise visit she specializes in, but she has no idea how many kids will turn up at the community center on a rainy Friday.

As it turns out, it’s full. Since the first musical notation was discovered nearby, at Ugarit, the immaculate Massar center in Latakia is built around music. Local kids are jamming in a sound booth; a group of refugee Palestinian girls is playing instruments. Others play chess on wall-mounted computers. These kids have started online blood banks, run marathons to raise money for dialysis machines, and are working on ways to rid Latakia of plastic bags. Apart from a few girls in scarves, you can’t tell Muslims from Christians.

Asma al-Assad stands to watch a laborious debate about how—and whether—to standardize the Arabic spelling of the word Syria. Then she throws out a curve ball. “I’ve been advised that we have to close down this center so as to open another one somewhere else,” she says. Kids’ mouths drop open. Some repress tears. Others are furious. One boy chooses altruism: “That’s OK. We know how to do it now; we’ll help them.”

Then the first lady announces, “That wasn’t true. I just wanted to see how much you care about Massar.”

As the pilot expertly avoids sheet lightning above the snow-flecked desert on the way back, she explains, “There was a little bit of formality in what they were saying to me; it wasn’t real. Tricks like this help—they became alive, they became passionate. We need to get past formalities if we are going to get anything done.”

Two nights later it’s the annual Christmas concert by the children of Al-Farah Choir, run by the Syrian Catholic Father Elias Zahlawi. Just before it begins, Bashar and Asma al-Assad slip down the aisle and take the two empty seats in the front row. People clap, and some call out his nickname:

Two hundred children dressed variously as elves, reindeers, or candy canes share the stage with members of the national orchestra, who are done up as elves. The show becomes a full-on songfest, with the elves and reindeer and candy canes giving their all to “Hallelujah” and “Joy to the World.” The carols slide into a more serpentine rhythm, an Arabic rap group takes over, and then it’s back to Broadway mode. The president whispers, “All of these styles belong to our culture. This is how you fight extremism—through art.”

Brass bells are handed out. Now we’re all singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” 1,331 audience members shaking their bells, singing, crying, and laughing.

“This is the diversity you want to see in the Middle East,” says the president, ringing his bell. “This is how you can have peace!”

The Wall Street Journal was shamed into a disclosure today, one week after it published an influential Syria op-ed without sharing that the author has ties to an advocacy group that "subcontracts with the U.S. and British governments to provide aid to the Syrian opposition."

Now that's what I call a volcano.

Chinese state media is reporting that a horrifying attack at a zoo in Guiyang has resulted in a small child having at least one of his testicles torn off by a monkey.

According to local reports, the 8-month-old boy's mother was changing his diaper inside the Guiyang Qianling Wildlife Park, when one of the zoo's monkeys suddenly pounced on the child and ripped off a chunk of his genitals.

Qianling Park is known for allowing its substantial monkey population to roam free.

Signs posted by the park's management warn guests not to feed the animals, but officials believe the monkey may have mistaken the boy's private parts for food.

CCTV says another visitor successfully retrieved the baby's severed testicle, but that the monkey quickly snatched it from his hand and ate it before it could be tackled.

Though doctors said the child's injuries are not life-threatening, they expressed concern that his reproductive abilities may have been irreparably damaged.

A different Chinese zoo was mocked last month for trying to pass off a dog as a full-size African lion. This incident, of course, is much, much worse.

[H/T: NewsBreaker]

Discovery Health's Secret Sex Lives: Swingers is the show for people who wish Wife Swap featured actual wife-swapping. The four-part reality show premieres Saturday and profiles a handful of Atlanta-based male-female couples who indulge in "the lifestyle," which is shorthand for the practice of sharing sex partners with likeminded couples.

This show is the lusty counterpart to Showtime's lovey Polyamory: Married and Dating. People on both series spout their scene-specific jargon (check the clip above for definitions of "soft swap," "full swap," and "unicorns") while sharing their lives in a tangle of courage and exhibitionism. In one scene, we see Dana and her terrifically named fiancé Loveless gushing about all kinds of poles and swings they could install in a house they're interested in buying. The real estate agent showing them around sighs, "OK, so I see you guys are into all kinds of toys!" She looks like she wants to crawl out of her skin.

That agent is a stand-in for the general public. The subjects of Swingers have so much to explain and unpack and scandalize with. There is much variation within the documented phenomenon that Swingers never feels gratuitous, no matter how explicit its subject matter turns. As with polyamory, the equally racy and complicated nature of swinging makes the reality TV medium perfectly suited for this subject.

Reality TV is a catalog of the frivolous things people do to conjure drama, but swinging strikes me as among the most rewarding of these things — at least you get a side of sex to go with your grief. Rebecca was raised Southern Baptist and openly wrestles with her swinging guilt (a discussion on her lifestyle with a pastor at the end of the premiere predictably does nothing to alleviate this). However, she says that swinging makes her feel "sexy, desirable, naughty." We see her and her fiance Chris making out with a couple in public after dining with them. Later in the episode, Rebecca informs us that they will not be swinging on their wedding night, and Chris says he's OK with this as long as they leave open the possibility during their honeymoon. "OK, I just changed my mind, we’re not swinging on the honeymoon," says Rebecca.

Women run this show. On Swingers, they are the ones who do the declining while the men live in a default mode of approval. The extremely attractive Jaymee has just given birth and her insecurity with her body means she isn't up for swinging when we meet her. That doesn't stop her husband Everett from trying. He meets a hot girl he wants to fuck in law school, tells Jaymee about it, she says she isn't yet ready, and so he asks her a few days later. "You just brought this up a couple of days ago," says Jaymee. "Yeah, it’s been a couple of days. You’ve had time to think about it," says Everett's dick, I mean Everett.

People regularly say hilarious things on this show. During a mixer, Chris (Rebecca's fiance) asks Jaymee what her favorite sexual position is. "Ones with hot guys," she says, shading him. Part of what makes this show so fascinating is that it presents social situations in which declining sex is not as easy as, "I'm married," since that is no boundary to these people. Watching the more selective members of the cast, like Jaymee, wriggle out of propositions while not killing the party vibe is delightfully cringey.

Jaymee seems generally defensive. "The biggest misconception about the swinger lifestyle is that we’re hooking up with people day and night, or that I used to be a stripper or something," she explains. In contrast, most of her castmates take advantage of the relaxation (or the illusion of such) that the swinging lifestyle fosters. Bryan tells Jaymee's husband Everett, "Your wife’s lookin’ smoking hot tonight. Nice ass!" In an interview, Bryan elaborates, "It’s great to have that freedom to say to another man, ‘Hey, your wife’s got a hot ass,’ or ‘She’s got a really nice chest,’ or whatever you might say, ‘cause in regular life, that might get a fist in your face." A man has found his outlet, and with Secret Sex Lives: Swingers, so has his way of life.

Less than a month after winning a special U.S. Senate primary election in New Jersey, Newark Mayor Cory Booker is cutting ties with his miserable failure of a startup, Waywire, a company he founded last year whose purpose is unclear at best. You may remember Waywire—whose scandals are detailed below—as the outfit that put a rich little boy on its advisory board and may have used Booker's influence to raise more than $1 million for its murky mission. Waywire also lost its CEO last month.

Earlier today, Good Morning America ran its interview with Shellie Zimmerman, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of George Zimmerman. During it, she explained why she recently filed for divorce: "I have been married to a person for almost seven years, and I don't think I ever knew him at all."

She says being acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin made Zimmerman feel invincible, and that he's making some "reckless decisions." Whether one of these decisions was the dick move by any standard and beyond whatever suspicion and/or proof of guilt that was Zimmerman's tour of the factory of the gun manufacturer that made the PF-9 pistol he used to kill Martin, Shellie did not say.

Shellie did say, though, "I have a selfish husband, and I think George is all about George." George Zimmerman's attorney declined to comment.

I couldn't even begin to rank which of the facts presented in this post is the least surprising.

On August 17, Hyon Song-wol, a North Korean pop star who was widely rumored to be a long-term paramour of man-boy dictator Kim Jong-un, was allegedly arrested on charges of pornography with 11 others. Three days later, a firing squad reportedly executed the group in front of their family members.

"They were accused of videotaping themselves having sex and selling the videos," a source told South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo.

Now a video is circulating of Hyon Song-wol dancing to Elvis Presley's "Aloha Oe" that unidentified Internet ghosts are suggesting might be responsible for her death. This seems unlikely, given the only credible source here is the anonymous person who uploaded the clip to Chinese hosting service Youku, but then again, this is North Korea, so.

[Business Insider]

Jennifer Lopez will pushing herself in a challenging role in Jason Blum's new thriller The Boy Next Door.

Just kidding! She'll be playing a MILF who seduces her teenage next door neighbor. Given that Lopez's current boyfriend Casper Smart is just 19 years shy of his soccer mom (or football mom, given this photo?), this shouldn't be a stretch at all.

Some other people direct and produce, and it's a thriller or whatever. At this point J.Lo and her cougar queen ways are just punking us all.

Even with all that twerkin', the kids are alright: "The number of babies born to teenagers [in 2012] was about 305,000, less than half the peak of nearly 645,000 in 1970, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."