Intimidating bob of hair Anna Wintour may have canceled Miley Cyrus's upcoming Vogue cover because of the young chanteuse's performance at the Video Music Awards. The 20-year-old, who only wanted the world to google "twerk" on a Monday morning in August, was photographed for the cover of the December issue of Vogue.

Was it Cyrus's arrhythmic gyrating that disappointed Wintour's sensibilities? Or her luminescent flesh-colored vinyl bikini? The pedestrian foam accessory she sported on her hand? That tongue? Did Cyrus's use of gigantic stuffed teddy bears as social commentary repulse Wintour's curatorial vision?

The Daily Mail reports that a source says "the whole thing" repelled Vogue's famously twerk-averse editor-in-chief. According to the source, "Anna found the whole thing distasteful. She decided, based on Miley's performance, to take the cover in a different direction."

The Daily Mail's interpretation is that before the little-watched Very Miley Awards, Wintour was "eager to champion her as a new fashion icon." How quickly the mighty can fall, butts in the air.

[images via Getty]

A SWAT team killed one of the oldest men in America yesterday after the 107-year-old man wouldn't stop shooting at police officers who were responding to a domestic disturbance call at his house.

Monroe Isadore, proud centenarian and a resident of Pine Bluff, Arkansas (aka "the most dangerous little town in America"), allegedly displayed a gun to two residents of the house. When officers identified themselves, Isadore began shooting through a bedroom door at them — as he did his best Clint Eastwood, one imagines.

A SWAT team was called, and when attempts at negotiations failed, they filled the room with gas, "breached the door to the bedroom and threw a distraction device into the bedroom." When Isadore continued to shoot, the SWAT team fired back, killing him. No officers were harmed in the shootout.

[image via Shutterstock]

Many people identified with Cheryl Strayed after reading her fantastic memoir, Wild. The author told NPR that one woman felt particularly connected to her; this reader "was just halfway into chapter one when she said she sat bolt upright in bed and realized that we had the same father."

Though Strayed doesn't name her father in her memoir, her half-sister recognized him by the description and emailed Strayed earlier this summer. Strayed's long-lost sibling had checked out the memoir from a public library while searching for books on travel. The worn hiking-boot on the cover appealed to her.

Strayed, who also wrote Tiny Beautiful Things and the column Dear Sugar, knew she had a long-lost half-sister and had made some vague attempts to discover her sibling in the past.

"As shocked as I was to be reading that email," the writer said to NPR's Rachel Martin, "I also had this feeling that I knew that was coming. I knew that someday life would turn on itself and I would be standing there facing this woman who shares my father… the human experience is full of serendipity and surprise and situations taking a turn that you didn't expect."

The two haven't met yet, but are emailing each other. More details about this developing memoir-fodder are over at NPR.

[image via Cheryl Strayed]

AP reports that rebels linked to al-Qaeda have taken control of Maaloula, a Christian community 26 miles northeast of Damascus, earlier today. This development is increasing concerns among Syrians and religious minorities about the presence of Islamic extremists in the Syrian rebel movement.

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari finished his five-year term today, making him the first democratically elected leader in the country to complete a full term.

The 58-year-old, whose wife, two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was brutally assassinated in 2007, stepped down today and his successor, Mamnoon Hussain, will be sworn in Monday.

Zardari apparently filmed an interview, airing tomorrow on local Pakistani channel Geo TV, in which he smokes an electronic cigarette, feeds his cat and talks about amendments he made to the country's constitution.

Although Zardari has earned the distinction of being the first to serve a full term, Pakistan's presidential office is "largely ceremonial" and the New York Times has detailed many of his missteps.

He faced a hostile judiciary, led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who constantly challenged his authority. Relations with the powerful military also remained tenuous, falling to their lowest point soon after the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. A purported letter written to the American government asking for help to avert a possible military coup led to the removal of Husain Haqqani, a close Zardari ally and ambassador to Washington. Mr. Zardari himself survived a nervous breakdown and spent several days in Dubai, undergoing medical treatment.

[image via AP]

There was a rollicking madcap case of mistaken identity in the gardens of Buckingham Palace this Wednesday as British police officers mistook Prince Andrew for an intruder.

The guard reports that no weapons were drawn during the confrontation, though the Sunday Express published the scintillating headline: "WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Prince Andrew held at gunpoint in Buckingham Palace terror." Perhaps recounting the script from a film of their imagining, they wrote that the Prince was told, "put your hands up and get on the ground."

According to the police statement, two officers approached Prince Andrew at 6 p.m. on Wednesday in order "to verify his identity." In the report, they mention, "the man was satisfactorily identified."

The Prince is a Duke and the Queen's second son. He has an apartment and an office in Buckingham Palace. It is his cherished homestead, his place of work, and the location of his birth.

"It's fair to say that to describe the Duke as unhappy and the two officers as highly embarrassed is the biggest understatement of the century," said a source.

The police were most likely on edge, as a man was arrested two days earlier inside the palace on suspicion of burglary.

Prince Andrew says he's "grateful" for the apology from the officers. The Duke said that the police certainly have a difficult job, keeping the palace gardens free from sneak-thieves and ne'er-do-wells. He was very understanding that sometimes they "get it wrong." Everyone is only human, thought Prince Andrew, even humans who try to arrest you in your home.

You order a Caesar salad at your humble local steakhouse, or crummy chain Italian joint, or nightmarish, kitsch-bedecked, "Signature Bourbonzola Glaze®"-slinging pan-American shithole—They hire cute bartenders! you're now insisting, not a little bit defensively, as if that is not even sadder than going for the food—and you receive a familiar plate of romaine lettuce and croutons, tossed in this sorta mildly, agreeably, unassumingly garlic powder- and Parmesan-flavored white dressing. It tastes good, or anyway the croutons are pleasingly crunchy and do a good job of absorbing your friggin' Bud Light Platinum, and the rest of it stays the hell out of the way and is easily forgotten, and that's OK, and life is OK, and tucking your T-shirt into your khaki Bermuda shorts is OK, and being OK with things just being OK is also OK, OK? OK. Did you remember to DVR America's Funniest Home Videos? Oh man great, because AFV is totally OK.

The problem with this picture, as anyone can see, is the shirt-tucking, which is terminal and incurable. The lesser problem, though, is the Caesar salad—or rather, the milquetoast pretender cheating its way across your bored palate and into your bored stomach under the banner of Caesar salad—and this can be fixed. Easily! The cause of the problem is pain—namely, your Caesar salad is not causing you enough of it—and you are going to remedy this, ecstatically, with garlic. And some other stuff.

Here's the thing. We're encouraged, foodwise, to pay attention to contrast and balance: a little bit of salt to balance out intense sweetness, a little bit of acid to balance out a lot of rich fat, a bleach-haired goober with sunglasses on the back of his head hustling Donkey Sauce-drowned garbage-food on two different cable channels every nine minutes to balance out any confidence you had that success in life accrues to the deserving, and so on. Well, dammit, that's where the Caesar salad comes in, or where it should come in: drop-kicking you in the mouth to balance out all the other nice and inoffensive foods that just want to pat you on the tummy and comfort you to sleep.

Yeah, yeah, a Caesar salad ought to taste good, too—but, not the familiar, boring kind of good. The scary, wild-eyed, frightening kind of good! The knife-fight-by-burning-garbage-light kind of good! The mad-endorphin-rush-that-makes-transgressing-against-your-prudently-evolved-biological-limits-feel-strangely-pleasurable kind of good! This is where your average Caesar salad gets it wrong. Not in its specific ingredients (there are enough varieties of Caesar salad out there that, beyond a few core elements—romaine lettuce, croutons, sharp cheese, garlic, some form of emulsified egg—carping about tradition or orthodoxy or that's not a real Caesar salad, man is just laughably ridiculous), but in its character: unassuming, inoffensive, boring. Wrong.

Someday you are going to be dead and all out of opportunities to have your face karate-chopped off by a salad. Don't squander the ones you still possess. Seize one of them today! Right now! Dammit!

To start, preheat your oven to 400 degrees, so that you can make croutons. Yes, it's true that you can buy pre-made croutons in cardboard canisters or sealed plastic bags at your local supermarket—but, is it not also true that croutons are kind of a cool, versatile thing to know how to make for yourself? And is it not also true that overcoming your reliance on pre-packaged corporate foodstuffs is a good thing? And, finally, is it not also also true that, without instructions for making croutons, this internet food column would consist only of, like, three total steps, depending on where it goes from here, and be even more flagrantly ridiculous?

Make croutons. Hack a loaf of crusty bread into cubes (or rectangular prisms or parallelepipeds or whatever—we're gonna call 'em cubes for simplicity's sake); French bread is good for this, as is a baguette (which is also French); pane toscano, from Italy, makes a wonderfully crunchy crouton, in some bizarro dimension in which anything short of a grainy video of your loved ones being held hostage in exchange for a loaf of pane toscano would be sufficient to convince you to go hunting for one. Sandwich bread is fine, too.

Whatever you use, make your bread-cubes nice and big—give them, say, an inch or more in at least two of their three dimensions—so that they'll be easier to wrangle with a fork, and more attractive and appetizing in your finished product. Toss the bread-cubes with some extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper; bake 'em for, oh, 12 to 15 minutes; then set them aside to cool. There. Croutons. You can turn the oven off now.

(A note, here. You can make your croutons well in advance of the rest of these steps, if doing so is convenient for you. Store them in a sealed plastic bag in your pantry for a week, or hell, freeze 'em and keep 'em for half a year. In addition to their crunchy deliciousness, this is the virtue of croutons: They keep a hell of a lot better than regular bread.)

(OK, two notes. [Shut up.] Play around with crouton-making for other salads or soups or whatever. You can customize your croutons to match different dishes by changing the seasoning combination before they go in the oven. Spicy croutons are particularly fun: add some crushed red pepper or ground cayenne to the bread-cubes when you toss them with the oil. These go great with tomato soup. You're glad for this second note now, aren't you? No? Go to hell.)

While your croutons are baking, or while they're cooling, or the next day, or really whenever the hell—what am I, your social secretary?—make Caesar salad dressing. For this, pop the lid off your blender or food processor and chuck in, oh, four or five or six good-sized raw garlic cloves (stripped out of their papery skins, of course). But wait! you're frantically interpretive-dancing—that's too much raw garlic! Why yes, yes it is. Far too much raw garlic ... to not taste violent and frightening and exhilarating and incredible. The raw garlic in your Caesar salad dressing will make the hair on your head curl and straighten and curl and straighten in rapid, terrifying succession as you eat it, and you will moan and roll your eyes wildly and suck down great, desperate gulps of cool air and wag your flailing, burning tongue and look like some kind of orgasmic Gorgon from hell, and man, lemme tell you, that is gonna be hot, not least because your breath will be actual, literal fire for several days afterward, no matter how many times you gargle Listerine.

Lots of raw garlic. All the raw garlic.

Have at the garlic with your blender or food processor for a minute or two, pausing as necessary to scrape down the sides of your contraption to keep all the garlic within reach of the blades, until the stuff is pretty well powderized. (Note: Yes, you can do this with a knife, too—either by mincing the garlic, or by pounding and crushing it until it is pastelike—but, since a blender or food processor is the fastest and most convenient way to combine all the ingredients, you may as well use it to chop your garlic.) Now, to this, add a big tablespoon of dijon mustard, maybe a hearty scoop or two of mayonnaise (more on this in a second, you fucking anti-mayo ninnies), a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice, maybe a splash or two of Worcestershire sauce, lots and lots of freshly ground black pepper, and yes, goddammit, a good half-dozen or more anchovy fillets, along with a furtive splash of the gloriously fishy oil in which they were packed. Blend—or, uh, food-process?—this stuff until it's smooth.

Let's take a moment to discuss the mayonnaise, here. In its original formulation, Caesar salad dressing is made with raw egg yolks, which is a wonderfully indulgent idea, because egg yolks are the friggin' best. The problem there, of course, is that there's the whole separating-the-egg-whites thing, which is annoying, or anyway more annoying than not doing that, so you might as well use mayonnaise—unless you are a trembling mayo-scared weenie, in which case you can swap the mayonnaise out altogether in favor of twice as much mayonnaise, you fucking baby. Let's move on.

Taste this blended or food-processed stuff on the tip of a spoon. The first thing you'll notice is the way all the sharp, punchy raw garlic and dijon mustard cause your tongue to dissolve into a puddle of viscous pink tongue-goo and run down the back of your throat. The next thing you'll notice, though, is that—because there are no actual hard-and-fast measurements in that paragraph up there—holy hell, this nascent dressing is all out of whack. This is where you adjust to your own tastes—but, please, do it in good faith, willya? Don't dilute the flavors of this shit with nine gallons of mayonnaise until it retains just the faintest vanishing hint of raw garlickiness.

The idea, here, is to make some Caesar salad dressing that is bracingly, invigoratingly intense; that walks right up to the boundary between fun-punchy and I-need-a-doctor-here-punchy. To make you feel alive, dammit! To make you feel something, for once! To throw the rest of your wan, gray life into sharp, brilliant, blazing technicolor, so that you can feel extra bad about it! If the dressing is fucked up at this point, if it is over on the wrong side of that border, then walk it back to the good side. But only just. If, in the end, when you sit down to eat your finished salad, it does not rearrange your face, it will have been a waste of your rapidly and silently dwindling time.

OK, so you've gotten the dressing back over on the right side of things. Now, adding it in a light drizzle, blend in some extra-virgin olive oil. Maybe a quarter or a third of a cup? Enough so that the mixture smells noticeably of olives and looks glossy. There's your Caesar salad dressing. It is wondrous and diabolical and scary. Stop making the sign of the Evil Eye at it, no, seriously you are making it upset.

The rest is pretty straightforward. Chop some romaine lettuce into reasonably fork-sized bits and assemble your salad. That means tossing the chopped lettuce with the croutons and a big generous glop, or two, or nine, of your amazing, breath-destroying Caesar salad dressing. Also, toss in some freshly grated Pecorino cheese, here. Typically and traditionally, Caesar salad dressing is made with Parmesan, but you're going to use Parmesan's sharper, punchier, stinkier, less-reputable cousin, because unlike Parmesan it can stand up next to all that garlic and the anchovies and the dijon without seeming like an effete interloper passing as quickly as possible through the room on his way to a fucking croquet picnic or some shit.

Now, that's one hell of an intense, spotlight-hogging salad, as it is. If you want to add some cooked protein to it so that you can feel better about calling it a main course, that's fine, but choose a mild, light, unobtrusive protein—grilled chicken breast, grilled shrimp, pan-seared sea scallops, you get the idea—that isn't going to compete unflatteringly with the dressing. In any event, your Caesar salad is prepared. Time to eat it. If you dare.

Serve your Caesar salad with lots and lots of white wine, and maybe that light, unobtrusive protein, plus a thick downy towel for mopping the sweat off your brow and soaking up the flood of agonized and ecstatic tears that will be hosing out of your eyes by the third bite. Eat. Pay attention to how your senses leap to wild attention as you do; how your palate flushes and roars to life under the onslaught of all that searing piquant garlic, the fishy anchovy, the tart dijon and spicy black pepper; how the rich fat in the dressing mediates this clash and makes a crazed but exciting dance out of it; how holy shit this food is fucking killing you, burning you alive, and your head is a whole dragon and God is it wonderful please don't let it stop. And the witnesses will say that you died exactly as you lived: shrieking to the heavens and sobbing and frantically dunking your tongue in a box of baking soda, and happy.

The Foodspin archive: Chicken thighs | Popeye's biscuits | Salad | Candy corn Oreos | Chili | Red Bull Total Zero | French toast | Sriracha | Halloween candy | Emergency food | Nachos |Meatloaf | Thanksgiving side dishes | MacGyver Thanksgiving | Eating strategies | Leftovers | Mac and cheese | Weird Santa candies | Pot roast | Bean dip | Shrimp linguine | Go-Gurt | Chicken soup | Lobster tails | Pulled pork | Pasta with anchovies | Sausage and peppers | Bacon, eggs, and toast | Indoor steak | Cool Ranch Doritos Tacos | Chicken breasts | Baked Ziti | Quiche | Pimento cheese sandwich | Potato salad | Popeyes Rip'n Chick'n|Crab cakes | Mother's Day brunch | Cheeseburgers | Uncrustables | Peach cobbler | Alfredo sauce | Kebabs | Soft-shell crabs | Ruffles Ultimate | Omelet | Pesto | Poached eggs | Bivalves | Ribs

Albert Burneko is an eating enthusiast and father of two. His work can be found destroying everything of value in his crumbling home. Peevishly correct his foolishness at albertburneko@gmail.com, or publicly and succinctly on Twitter @albertburneko. You can find lots more Foodspin at foodspin.deadspin.com.

Image by Sam Woolley.

The National Security Agency is able to access most data on all major smartphones, according to reporting from the German news weekly Der Spiegel. Dedicate a SnapChat to them.

The Hamptons have everything: drunk hipsters, passive-aggressive run ins with Gwyneth Paltrow, and, if you play your cards right, Justin Bieber sliding out of his car's sunroof to threaten you. But now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we know that you're nobody in the Hamptons unless you have a giant inflatable swan gliding around your gunite pool.

And in case you were wondering how the swans became THE debate of the summer, the Journal has. Got. You. Covered.

Noting that the plastic fowls have gained "tacit approval" because of their "simple color scheme," the investigation reveals that many owners appreciate both the aesthetics of the bewinged romantic creatures (did you know that swans mate for life?), as well as their factory-manufactured egalitarian virtues.

"I've seen swans in 15-foot above-ground pools and swans in the backyards of $5 million homes," says [Swan sales representative] Keiran Glackin. "The swan looks more graceful... If it was floating in a pond, you could see other swans floating up to it saying, 'Hey, how are you doin'?' "

"Rich people buy them because they don't ruin the ambience," says Bryan Graybill, a Hamptons real-estate developer. The resident of a tony East Hampton home, he inherited a swan last summer from his A-list renter, Natalie Massenet, founder of the fashion site Net-A-Porter.

"From the road we saw these enormous inflatable swans," recalls Ms. Julius. "I said, 'Forget the fried clams, it's all about the swans.' " They bought two, and when their house was photographed that summer for a local magazine, a swan was pictured gliding nonchalantly in their pool.

But swans aren't all fun and games.

"I told my husband we needed some kind of bird," Dede Reynolds, the lead singer of the band Tiny Hearts, told the Journal. "[But] It took us a very long time to blow up and four hours to deflate."

One celebrity interior designer even avowed to start killing off swans, à la Larry David or whoever killed a swan at Buckingham Palace (someone should check this guy's alibi).

"They're everywhere. It's swan hell in the Hamptons," says the interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber, who has worked on homes for Vogue's Anna Wintour, actor Michael Douglas as well as Iman and David Bowie. "Somebody needs to get out a sharp penknife and start liberating us."

[image via Shutterstock]

Iowa is giving gun permits to people who are legally or completely blind that will let these residents acquire guns and carry these firearms in public. Officials from Polk Country report that at least three people who can't legally drive and weren't able to read the application forms have been given permits to carry firearms.

Iowa law enforcement officers and advocates for the disabled are in disagreement about whether it is a good, safe, or well-considered idea to allow the visually disabled to carry weapons. The executive director of Disability Rights Iowa says that preventing blind residents from obtaining a weapons permit would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. A local sheriff has demonstrated that blind people can be taught to shoot guns.

Private gun ownership by visually disabled Iowans has been around for some time, though granting these residents the right to carry guns in public has only become possible due to gun permit changes that were enacted in Iowa in 2011.

Many states have indirect requirements that could disqualify the visually impaired, though they don't automatically prevent them from obtaining weapons permits. In Missouri and Minnesota applicants must be able to shoot and hit a target in a test; Illinois offers a similar training test. South Carolina requires proof of vision for a firearms permit. Wisconsin, similar to Iowa, has no visual requirement for gun permit applications. Iowa's required training can be completed online and doesn't involve a shooting test.

There is a provision in Iowa's law that would let a sheriff deny a gun permit if there was provable cause that the applicant is likely to employ the weapon in a way that could harm endanger herself or others.

[Des Moines Register, image via Elnur, Shutterstock]

Members of the International Olympics Committee convened today to vote on which new sport would be allowed into the Summer Games. Wrestling beat out squash, baseball and softball. I like to think that they announced the decision by blowing five interlocking white smoke rings.

A research study indicates that e-cigarettes can help smokers quit or at least smoke fewer cigarettes overall. The eternally uncool, "world-changing" electronic wands are about as helpful as nicotine patches. E-cigarettes are cigarette-shaped pipes that give the user a nicotine mist. Here's a demonstration.

This is the first major research study that has indicated that e-cigarettes can benefit smokers. Published in the Lancet medical journal, the study involved 657 smokers who were given either e-cigarettes, nicotine patches, or placebo e-cigarettes (with no nicotine) for thirteen weeks. Only 5.7 percent of the participants quit smoking, with a slightly higher rate among e-cigarette category (though it wasn't statistically significant). The team did find that 57 percent of group using e-cigarettes smoked half as many cigarettes as they used to (41 percent of those using nicotine patches decreased their intake by half).

E-cigarettes have been a cause for concern among health officials in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that e-cigarettes are addictive and likely to be harmful. The Food and Drug Administration said it was likely that they contain carcinogens. The CDC along with the FDA reported last week that high school students using e-cigarettes have doubled, to 10 percent. Over 20 percent of adults in the U.S. have tried them as well.

Though health officials and experts no doubt will continue to have concerns over the helpfulness of e-cigarettes, this study is the first to indicate possible benefits.

[image via Miriam Doerr, Shutterstock]

A server at a Red Lobster in Tennessee posted this photograph of a receipt left from her customers with a special, racist note written in the total portion.

Ehh... no. [Via Copyranter]

Earlier today, Lady Gaga graced the stage of Good Morning America to perform a Wizard of Oz-styled spin on "Applause," complete with several costume changes. (This era, she's really intent on wowing us with how many times she can change her costumes in one song, and I will admit that it is a nice distraction from the actual song.) During some down time, she supposedly talked to her attending "Little Monsters" about part-time rapper, full-time Twitter troll Azealia Banks. Banks was once rumored to appear on Gaga's upcoming ARTPOP album. Banks also recently attacked Gaga on Twitter for adopting and advocating a mermaid-inspired style, as Banks has also done. "Hey! No fair! You stole my mermaid style!" is an argument an actual 22-year-old woman made to another grown woman.

We don't hear the fame scholar/art artist say Banks' name in the video above, originally posted to the Instagram account of by Little Monster/diva enthusiast Dillon Jaden. (His Twitter bio reads: "Loved By Many, Hated By Many More, But Beyoncé Sang To Me. I Ain't Got No Worries.") The caption, however, identifies Gaga's subject as Banks, as does this tweet:

Gaga was talking soooo low. But she was shading the hell out of Azealia. Shade she deserves.

— That Bitch. (@DillonJaden) September 9, 2013

In the video, we hear Gaga say, "She's got a bad attitude," to a chorus of sycophantic agreement (Gaga loves her Monsters for loving her and they love her back for loving them for loving her). Gaga is telling us what we already know, and the best part of the video is the fans' comments that follow. "Gaga, we been knowing that, that's why we don't want her on there," is one. "She broke," is another.

Per the comments of the Instagram video above, Gaga specifically asked that her fans not film her. Haha, this will teach her to get close enough to stroke those who stroke her ego. (No it won't.)

Banks responded, of course, because if she stopped responding, she would no longer be heard and no longer exist. She, too, lives for the applause, it's just that her definition of it is less conventional than Gaga's.

Lady gaga looks so nervous and scared here lol, she's like "don't record this" hahaaaa: http://t.co/KWxe2nYh08

— AZEALIA BANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) September 9, 2013

Later, she tweeted this:

"A relationship is like a fart... If you push too hard you might end up with shit!"

— AZEALIA BANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) September 9, 2013

Everyone's doing such great work.

Update: After this post, the video was removed from Dillon Jaden's Instagram account, so we uploaded it.

Finally, tomorrow, after months of vaguely trying to follow the New York City mayoral race, millions of New Yorkers will enter ballot booths and choose their parties' mayoral candidates. Bill de Blasio? Christine Quinn? John Catsimatidis? We want Gawker readers to tell us all who we should absolutely not, under no circumstances, ever vote for, and why.

We're stuck with more candidates to not vote for than ever before, and scores of reasons not to vote for them. Four years ago, our own Alex Pareene wrote an endorsement (Gawker's only?): "Don't Vote for Bloomberg." Here, in 2013, is your chance to do the same thing.

Below this post, we'd like Gawker readers to outline short anti-endorsements of their most-hated candidates—across all races, for all positions, both Republican and Democrat, ballot-line and write-in candidates alike. We especially want to hear why you hate the non-marquee candidates running for the offices no one really knows about: If you really hate your former neighbor who's running for public advocate, tell us why!

If we get good reponses, we'll post some of the non-endorsements to the front page today and tomorrow—and you will know that your years of typing words into a text field have finally effected Real Change.

Guidelines

1. Follow this format. To keep it easy and organized, put your endorsements in this format.

Who: The name of the bad candidate
What: The office he or she should not win.
Why: Explain, in bullet points, the reasons that people should vote against this candidate.
Disclosure: What in the city do you live, what do you do, and how long have you lived here?

2. Please don't leave direct comments on this article. If you have something you want to say that can't be said in the format above, attach it to a relevant anti-endorsement.

3. Keep it short and direct.

Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the U.S. strike on Syria he's advocating would be "unbelievably small," which is exactly the kind of half-cocked waffling that's come to define this entire affair.

Deric Lostutter, the 26-year-old Kentucky rapper who spearheaded Anonymous' campaign to bring attention to the Steubenville rape case, hasn't had an easy time since he was raided by the FBI and came out as the hacktivist KYAnonymous. His longtime girlfriend dumped him this summer, and he was fired from a job at Amazon after they learned of his Anonymous hacktivism. Now, he reveals he's been battling with alcoholism, entering rehab this weekend after a harrowing visit to the ER.

On Saturday, Lostutter posted a note on the KYAnonyous Facebook page announcing he'd checked into the Ridge behavioral health center (all sic):

My condition has stabelized enough for me to write this press release.

Al jazeera america and myself conducted an interview in my city this morning followed by a lunch. At lunch i began to feel like someone was standing on my chest and numb. their producer aaron earndst took me to the hospital where ny heart rate entered "svt" at 160 beats per minute.

Dealing with alchahol as my cure for stress surrounding the case against me, and the death of my best friend, and recent breakup has taken a toll on my health. The doctor has not only told me if i continue to drink, i will die, but has also admitted me to a psychiatric hospital to help me kick the habit that im not strong enough to do myself.

Lostutter only spent one night in rehab, checking out on Sunday against medical advice, because he had to go to work today at his new I.T. job. Reached by phone as he was about to head off to work today, Lostutter said that in recent weeks he'd been drinking hard every day to deal with the stress of the FBI investigation into his activities as KYAnonymous, and his newfound public profile.

"Basically with all the stress and stuff I'm going through, I've been having a lot of anxiety and I'm allergic to the anxiety medicine," he said. "The only thing that's worked is alcohol. I've been drinking more and more."

Lostutter has also been engaged in increasingly erratic Twitter flame wars with detractors who complain he's used his reputation for monetary gain. Lostutter pins his belligerence on tweeting while drunk and says he's trying to be more diplomatic in the future.

"I apologize for my harsh words and random actions from the past couple months," Lostutter wrote on Facebook. "Dealing with constant attacks has take ln a toll on me and caused me to become different than the positive person i was. I slippped up and im sorry. I have to get through this to survive""

Losutter's lawyer, Tor Ekeland, confirmed Lostutter's story and said his client is focused on cleaning up. Though he left rehab, Lostutter's entering Alcoholics Anonymous.

"I'm hoping that what happened this weekend is a moment of clarity," Ekeland said. "I think he made a big step by admitting he has a problem. I just hope he's going to be quiet and reflective for a bit, you don't just change these behaviors overnight."

The FBI raid in April brought enormous, sympathetic international attention and tens of thousands of dollars in donations to Lostutter, but he has yet to be charged for any crimes related to the Anonymous Steubenville campaign. (Ekeland told me he believes the government is still building a case against him and an indictment is forthcoming.) Lostutter told me he wants to return to a somewhat normal life—but it's clear his past as KYAnonymous will continue to haunt him even if he never sets foot in a court room.

"I'm just trying to live life and work," he said. "And try to be normal again."

A few days ago, one time-abundant Tumblr user (is there any other sort?) taught his followers a trick designed to instantly transform over-sized gym shorts into stylish cocktail dresses.

Being in the sweet spot at the intersection of strange, stupid, smart, and sassy, the Internet naturally took to the idea, and the post quickly racked up nearly 350,000 notes.

Soon enough, the fashion trend spread to other parts of the social web, and many began pulling out their baggy trunks to try the tip for themselves.

Not surprisingly, the results are priceless:

[H/T: The Daily Dot]

A distressed Yale senior emails Gawker:

I’d like to remain anonymous, but I also want to let you know about something going on at Yale. It appears that the administration paid to have all the squirrels on campus killed over the summer.

There are no squirrels left at Yale.

As students have begun to realize the genocide that has taken place, they are rising up, enraged and disgusted. Numerous student publications are racing to uncover the scandal, but so far there has been no official statement. Continued fury and uprising is expected.

According to the Yale Daily News, the New Haven’s campus’s squirrel population has menaced Yalies for years, often climbing into their dorm rooms and stealing their Au Bon Pain leftovers. However, neither Yale’s Facilities staff nor New Haven’s Parks Department were able to confirm any mass squirrel murders. (Each referred Gawker to the other.) Yet among Yale’s peers the mistreatment of squirrels is hardly unprecedented: Harvard kids have been known to torment squirrels with peanuts attached to strings, and in 2005 a Princeton student lit one on fire as part of a fraternity prank.

[Image via Shutterstock]