Are you desperate for the perfect book? Having trouble choosing between the Tao Te Ching or Who Moved My Cheese? Can't figure out whether Siddartha or Lipstick Jungle will be better suited for your emotional development? There is hope. For a small fee! Of $30/hour.

Ami With an I recently spotted the above flyer advertising the services of Lucy Sun, a self-declared "book therapist" operating out of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Book therapist, you say? What in Dante's Inferno is a book therapist?

We wrote to Lucy Sun to find out. "Think of 'book therapy' as a mash-up between traditional therapy and the wise souls at your local bookstore," she explained over email. "Let's say you would like to get better at setting boundaries with a needy friend while still maintaining the friendship. Together, we would talk about your situation, find the right book to read, and work together to make a practical plan to apply the lessons of the book to your specific situation." As your book therapist, she will even read the title along with you. "I'll be your coach as you read the book, pushing you to actually apply what you've read to make real improvements in your life."

'Book therapist' is a title Sun conceived. A business strategy consultant by trade, she doesn't have a formal education in literature or therapy. She majored in Economics at Columbia University (where she points out that "the Core Curriculum is notoriously lit-heavy"), tutored high-school students in literature and poetry, and maintains a highly active Goodreads profile she sends to prospective clients. (Her 246 completed works range from Jurassic Park to Oedipus Rex to Middlesex; on her wish list is Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You to Be Rich.)

"While I don’t have a traditional background in therapy, I am passionate and experienced when it comes to helping people make changes and unlock their potential," Sun reasoned. "I'm also told by many of my friends that I’m very helpful when it comes to talking out a bothersome issue."

Not everyone is convinced this is a legitimate service. A Tumblr user named Alex wrote Sun, received a reply similar to ours, and concluded, "This is such horse shit."

"Is it crazy that I think this is a brilliant idea?" countered Alice Kaltman a/k/a Mermaid Wannabe. "I'm a social worker/psychotherapist in private practice for over 20 years."

In any case, there seems to be a little something off with the bookshelf on the flyer. Anyone know of a good shelf therapist we could recommend? Pays $60 an hour.

[h/t Amiwithani.tumblr.com via Jami Attenberg's Tumblr]

When you have children of your own, you realize for the first time what your own parents went through, things you couldn't possibly have understood when you were a child—and really are better off not having understood, because the knowledge would have been debilitating. There's the abyssal terror at having brought a fragile, trusting life into a world of hurtfulness and destruction, for instance. Not far behind that is the problem of packing lunch.

Lunch just showed up, if you brought your lunch, in a paper bag or that lenticular-paneled lunchbox that tilted from AFC helmets on a red background to the NFC on blue. Yet that food comes from somewhere. Where it comes from is from you, the parent, at the same time you are also rustling up breakfast and finding not-too-mismatched little socks and trying to get yourself a cup of something to wake up on. Every single weekday. It is your homework. As with any homework assignment, parents are sometimes tempted to get too involved and start overachieving their way into trouble. Here is a particularly sad Metafilter thread-starter:

My son's lunch on his first day of 3rd grade was: tofu pieces that he'd cut up into parallelograms, and that he'd doused in sriracha (he loves sriracha); some cut up melon that he likes; some white rice that he asked for; and a chocolate cookie that I snuck into the lunchbox. I pack a lot of non-elementary-school-standard stuff. Little cups of red or black beans, vegetables, fruits, hummous wraps, ...

He's pretty okay with eating these things. I'll qualify that a little: He's unhappy if things look soggy. He'd prefer lunchables (which his mom often packs) and he wishes he could get meat sometimes (which his mom also packs. I'm vegetarian and prefer not to; we have separate households.) The biggest thing going on, though, is embarrassment, and that's what this question is about.

He told me he *hid* the lunch under the table, because he didn't want to be picked on.

Obviously there are some deeper troubles in this case than "lunch," per se. But lunch is dragged into the mess, because lunch is perceived as a little parcel of home, served up in the middle of the school day (or at 10 a.m., because the cafeteria can't handle the current enrollment). So this suffering person gets advice like this: "[P]ut a lot more effort and decor into his lunches so they become the coolest lunches in school."

Do not put more effort into the lunches. The trick, as with all homework, is to find the minimal way to meet the requirement and get it over with. We rely on leftovers, mostly. Run them through the microwave, shovel them into a thermos, toss that into the lunchbox with a fork and a napkin and you're all—wait, he hated what we had for dinner last night. Maybe there are some leftovers surviving from two nights ago? Even the easier way out has its complications.

It would be sane and logical to assume that if the child really needs to eat, the child will eat. This ought to be true. But some schools nowadays, in the relentless pursuit of achievement-oriented busywork, have reduced recess to whatever fraction of lunchtime remains after the eating is over. In a zero-sum game between the lunchbox and the playground, the lunchbox loses.

The easiest way out, in theory and sometimes in practice, would be cafeteria lunch. If you have the magical combination of a good school cafeteria and a child who will reliably eat there—rather than coming out of school angry-hungry every day—you have triumphed and may move on to the other problems of school, such as the actual homework, or the multiple-page parent-volunteer sign-up sheet.

If your children are unreliable eaters, though, you have remember to keep the food flowing yourself. There is no way, given their capricious yet growing appetites, to be sure whether what was an ample dinner last time will survive this time. How many ears of corn does it take to feed a family of four with two small boys? Somewhere between three and seven, usually. Figure on a pound and a half of fish, unless it's two pounds or two and a half. Two cans of chickpeas will make enough hummus, except the one who started the whole hummus thing now refuses to eat a bite of it. Eh, just get halal cart and McNuggets for dinner—nope, no leftovers that way. And if you eat leftovers for dinner, the whole supply chain gets broken.

Then comes the morning improvisation/negotiation session: How about a, um ... cheese sandwich? Salami? Bacon, lettuce, and hang on, do we have lettuce? Hey, isn't it pizza day in the cafeteria? I bet it is. Wouldn't you like to get some pizza? Pizza!

Always keep some carrots in the fridge for this moment, ready for one to be peeled and chopped into a handful of carrot sticks. No lunchbox can be truly inadequate if it has carrot sticks in it. (This is strictly a spiritual ritual, like burning sage; the carrot sticks will come home intact.)

Eventually, the children will get old enough to help with the grocery shopping and make their own lunches, or to sneak out of school and get their own McNuggets. This will correspond to the prime years of lunch arbitrage, when their food intake will consist entirely of the food that other people's parents have supplied, which they have swapped for their own. Or a new social norm will sweep through the school and everyone will want cafeteria food because everyone else does.

Till that time comes, remember that your real representative in the eyes of the school is not that little midday (or late-morning) parcel of home in the lunchbox, but the walking, talking person who carries it around. Genuine dialogue, from preschool:

Principal (at the door, making conversation): "What did you have for breakfast?"

Child (matter-of-factly): "Cookies."

They were homemade cookies, though. A year later, in kindergarten, the same child's teacher took us aside for a word about his lunches. We were, she said, packing him too much food.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Tina Brown's Women in the World Foundation hastily gave away a $650,000 grant last evening, just hours before the New York Post went live with a story about how the charity doesn't really do shit.

As part of its legal obligation to house the homeless, New York City "is paying to keep a record 2,684 households in apartments costing $3,000 a month." It costs just as much to house families in homeless shelters, but the shelters are full.

Drake has a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. He thinks he's people!

Luckily, owner Ben Lucier has found a foolproof method for getting his dog to come running: Loading up the ol' raccoon soundboard and playing a recording of a raccoon in distress.

Sure, it's all fun and games. Until Drake's conditioned response becomes extinguished due to the habitual absence of a unconditioned stimulus and you're actually mauled by a distressed raccoon.

[H/T: Reddit]

NextMovie just released this infographic of the 15 wealthiest movie directors, and with the exception of Lana Wachowski (who is part of a directing team with her brother Andy Wachowski), every single director is a male. With the exception of Tyler Perry, every single director is white. Your move, Hollywood.

In 2011, TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington was fired from his own website for reasons including flagrant conflicts of interest over his newly hatched VC firm, CrunchFund. But he never really left. For every year since his firing, Arrington's used the TechCrunch Disrupt conference to help his wallet.

The Disrupt event brand, which now spans both coasts of the U.S. and a European spinoff, is of course as much a business venture as a publicity machine—tickets are thousands of dollars a head, and prominent sponsors like IBM, Microsoft, and Sequoia Capital all clamor to make their logo seen by attendees. Blogging sure isn't a lucrative operation, but charging people a king's ransom for an opportunity to pitch bloggers on your startup idea sure is—and the marquee attraction, even after his exceptionally ugly exit, is Mike Arrington. Even if AOL isn't paying Arrington handsomely to show up—we've heard it go both ways—he's getting a wrapped gift: for the past three years, he's had the privilege of judging Disrupt's best startup competition in San Francisco. The flagship event. And for the past three years, one of Arrington's personal investments has won the competition; fool me thrice, shame on this whole fucking sham conference, really.

In 2011, just a week after news of Arrington's ouster broke, he was at Disrupt to pick its champion. The winner was "Shaker," a comically bad concept that aimed to make cartoonish "virtual chat rooms" out of your Facebook friend list. Today, it's a complete dud, which shouldn't have surprised anyone two years ago—but Arrington had invested in the idea through CrunchFund, and it was given first place. Just to make sure he had his bases covered, the runner-up was also a CrunchFund project.

In 2012, the winner, selected by a panel starring Arrington, was "YourMechanic." The startup entered the conference with a $1.8 million investment round already under its belt that included CrunchFund.

And then this week, because everything is better in trios, Michael Arrington did it again: for the third year in a row, a company he is financially invested in was the winner in a competition he helped judge.

When I asked TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotisis about the conflict, she didn't seem concerned: "Arrington disclosed his Layer investment and informally recused himself from judging that specific startup onstage." But he didn't recuse himself from the competition altogether, as even the most rudimentary MOOC Ethics 101 class would demand. Ask TechCrunch, and they'll shrug it off as just another occupational hazard of doing anything on Silicon Valley's amoral money pond: "There are quite a few seed investment vehicles in the Valley, with multiple LPs, including Arrington. Due to the intertwined nature of investor relationships, it's inevitable that judge conflicts will arise." Tsotsis added that "Regalii, a Y Combinator startup and one of this year's finalists, had a clear conflict in judges David Lee and Chris Dixon, through SV Angel and Start Fund." As if adding extra conflicts of interest would somehow balance the whole shoddy tower instead of toppling it.

It's "inevitable" that massive financial conflicts will taint the entirety of a competition if you keep inviting compromised investors to judge year after year. It's "inevitable" that Mike Arrington, infamous for his bullying and bellicosity, will keep wrangle winners that benefit himself if he's invited to do so, over and over. Given that past Disrupt champs have gone on to cash checks—Qwiki won in 2010, picked up an investment from Arrington after, never gathered much of a following, and was recently purchased by Yahoo!—it's "inevitable" that startups will keep lining up every year for a chance to charm Mike. It's a perpetual favor machine.

We can only hope that it's also inevitable that Disrupt reforms or comes to a shameful conclusion. Not every silly idea will get picked up during a Marissa Mayer shopping trip, like Qwiki. For the rest of the contenders, Disrupt might become a scarlet letter—so obviously distorted by impartial judging as to lose clout. A dishonor, or a joke, at best.

Or, TechCrunch can do the almost-impossible: stand up to Michael Arrington, for once. It's entirely feasible to run a competition that doesn't juice the investments of one man, no matter how much he terrorizes you to the contrary.

Surprise, surprise. The first man convicted of paying Maine Zumba madam Alexis Wright for sex is also a staunch (and married) advocate of Christian family values who donated $1,000 to an anti-gay marriage group last fall.

On Thursday, after a two day trial, Donald Fortin, 59, was found guilty of “engaging a prostitute" and was ordered to pay a $500 fine plus $110 in court fees. Of the 68 Johns charged with the same crime, Fortin was the second to take his case to trial; the first was acquitted due to lack of evidence, but Fortin wasn't so lucky — during his trial, prosecutors showed Skype screenshots of him having sex with Wright.

Fortin's involvement with "family values" causes were first reported last fall. According to state records, in October 2012 — roughly one year after he paid for sex with Wright — Fortin donated $1,000 to Protect Maine Marriage, a “Christians for Traditional Marriage” organization that fought the 2012 legislation that eventually legalized gay marriage in Maine. Through his company, Diamond Developments of Maine, LLC, Fortin also donated $350 to Garret Mason, a conservative state Senator opposed to gay marriage. Fortin Construction Inc, another company owned by Fortin, bills itself as a "A Christian Family Owned Company" online.

Wright, the Zumba madam, is serving a 10-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to 14 prostitution charges and six other misdemeanors in March.

[Image via]

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

Blue Caprice (opening this week in New York) is not a biopic. It's based on the events leading up to the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks, and takes its title from the car the real-life killers used, but—director Alexandre Moors warned me when I talked to him and star Isaiah Washington earlier this week—it's really an interpretation, and not a faithful recreation.

"Usually when people do real life events [on film], they fully engage; they fully embrace it," he explained. "Here it was such a toxic matter. For me, it's important to keep a distance. We did the research. All the facts are real. But it's an interpretation... I really boiled it down and tried to retain only the part that was interesting for what I had to say. I was trying to turn the film into something minimal and an analogy that would be more timeless."

If Moors had merely recreated the events that played out in the Washington, D.C., area for three weeks in October 2002, Blue Caprice could've easily been a horror film. The secretive, stalking rampage of John Allen Muhammad and his protégé, minor Lee Boyd Malvo, which left 10 dead and three injured, felt enough like a slasher flick as it was. You wouldn't need to change much to make a terrifying movie.

Morris chose to go in a different direction. "We all knew how it ended, but I thought it was more interesting to explore how it started," Morris told me, comparing Blue Caprice to Michael Haneke's 2009 film The White Ribbon. "You watch [Ribbon], and it's a horrible depiction of humanity. It's really gripping. At the end of the film, you realize we're in 1933 and you realize all those people are future Nazis. All of a sudden World War II makes sense."

Blue Caprice is a drama, a thoughtful and blue-collar beautiful meditation on what makes a man a murderer. We watch the Washington's John, forcibly estranged from his wife and children, spiral out of control and develop a Manson-esque philosophy on using terrorism to wake up the world. He mentors Lee, teaching the teen how to shoot, fight, and kill. Moors' guiding hand is gentle and the performances—in particular Isaiah Washington (as John), Tequan Richmond (as Lee), and, weirdly enough, Joey Lauren Adams (as John's friend's wife)—are uniformly excellent. It may not make perfect sense of the murders of ten random and innocent people, but it certainly pushes us closer to an understanding of the killing spree.

"John is somebody who lives day to day in a mental hell and endless pain," Moors told me, carefully distinguishing the character from the real man who was executed in 2009. "My heart was bleeding for him during the shoot. That's the question that this movie asks: What if empathy was a necessary chemical element that we're missing in America? Can we dare to have empathy for a murderer? It's not excusing them, but are we able to feel their pain? I had a Catholic upbringing, but it really struck me [during a Blue Caprice screening] in D.C., with all of those victims that were moved. They were forced to feel for their murders. It felt like a religious experience. It felt like a reconciliation. It's a movie about love and that's the terrifying thing—you have to try to understand and feel for these people, even though they eventually become monsters."

Reconciliation is a familiar concept for the movie's star. Washington has worked very little since being fired from Grey's Anatomy in 2007, after news hit that he called his then-closeted co-star T.R. Knight a "faggot" on set. Washington denied the allegation (and still does), most notably when he said, "I never called T.R. a faggot" on camera backstage at the Golden Globes, a statement reignited the controversy—and led to his dismissal.

Talking to Washington, I got the feeling that he will never, ever again say the word "faggot." He referenced the incident three times, opting for "that word" instead, as the media has since trained him to do. He also referred to T.R. as his "brother."

He was boisterous during our conversation (he high-fived Moors for the White Ribbon reference). He didn't seem resentful, or scared to discuss the episode that might've cost him his career. I wondered out loud if he was ever resentful about what he says was a misreported distortion of what actually happened behind the scenes.

"Yeah, dude, I talk about it in my book," he told me. "You go from making $2 million a year to $250,000 a year. It takes years to downsize. Yeah, I was upset. It didn't just hit me. It hit my wife. It hit my three kids. So now I'm upset because I feel like you're hurting my family. Why? I'm asking why and I'm forgiving. As opposed to being upset I'm saying forgiveness: they know not what they do. It wasn't about fighting. What am I defending? This is not the truth."

It was a tricky moment. The context with which he was initially accused of using the word "faggot," was terrible and homophobic. But the firestorm resulting from him merely using the word as a word to explain what he says he didn't do seemed oversensistive at best.

Either way, it seems clear that regardless of what happened, the entire episode was a good thing for gay-rights discourse. People were talking about how to handle one celebrity calling another celebrity a "faggot." It was an important moment in pop culture at a time that seems, in retrospect, infinitely less enlightened (at the time, same-sex marriage was legal in only one state, for example).

I asked Washington if he had enough perspective to appreciate the incident for its usefulness, even at his expense. He told me he did, in the tangent-heavy, somewhat circuitous explanation that I'm printing below with just minor edits:

"I had the same discussion with my [gay] friend," started Washington. "Unfortunately he's ill. His partner passed away. I used to tell people, 'Stop saying same-sex marriage,' for people who are freaked out by it or don't get it or don't live in New York. Say 'civil liberties.' Not civil rights, civil liberties. Everyone should be able to take care of the remains of their loved ones, and have the right to love, and be humane. That's where I've always been, that's where I am now. That's a conversation that's part of my next film, that's when we're really gonna have this conversation in [the gay-themed] Blackbird, because I'm working with [the openly gay] Patrik-Ian Polk [creator of Logo's Noah's Arc]. I'm purposely producing that film so that we can take a step forward and really take a look at people have been enlarged and grown. Let's be real, on the record, off the record: You're gonna always need a brother to ride if you need a villain. I look at [the T.R. Knight incident] as a contribution to a dialogue that needed to be had, and for everybody to check themselves. Gay, straight or otherwise: that's not a cool word, period. If that's what it took, I've said to myself, to my universe, that yet again I was in service. I want to continue to be of service. [Blue Caprice's examination of] fire arms in America—that's not topical? Youth going berserk—that's not topical? I want to contribute to these dialogues even when they're uncomfortable."

It certainly says something about the state of Hollywood today that a three minute ad produced at a fraction of the cost of most movies is more moving and poignant than almost anything the big studios have to offer.

The Thai telecommunications conglomerate True is getting rave reviews worldwide for its latest spot, "Giving," which tells the story of a man unexpectedly rewarded for a lifetime of good deeds he performed without expecting anything in return.

TrueMove too says it "believes in the power of giving without expecting a return."

Which would probably be more meaningful if they were to, say, give away their services and devices for free. Which they are not.

But what the company lacks in commitment to its own philosophy, it more than makes up for in inspirational advertising.

[H/T: Daily Picks and Flicks]

How did the National Security Administration sell Congress on its controversial spying program? Apparently by building a replica of the U.S.S. Enterprise bridge and letting lawmakers sit in the big chair and "play Picard." (Update: Added a picture.)

As Foreign Policy's profile of the NSA's general Keith Alexander explains:

When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a "whoosh" sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather "captain's chair" in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

"Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard," says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.

Alexander wowed members of Congress with his eye-popping command center. And he took time to sit with them in their offices and explain the intricacies of modern technology in simple, plain-spoken language. He demonstrated a command of the subject without intimidating those who had none.

Read the whole fascinating profile over at Foreign Policy. [via BoingBoing]

Update: I found what appears to be a picture of the Information Dominance Center, although I'm not sure if this is the version that was designed to look like the Enterprise. Here it is, via DBI Architects:

Lindsay Lohan’s mother-but-really-I-look-more-like-her-sister-don’t-you-think Dina was arrested for drunk driving in Long Island last night. TMZ says cops recorded her blood alcohol level at more than twice the legal limit. Lindsay is rumored to be living with a sober coach in Manhattan.

Air travelers visiting United Airlines' website yesterday afternoon discovered, much to their pleasant surprise, that plane tickets were incredibly cheap. In fact, they were practically free.

What happened was, someone at United accidentally flagged certain trips as costing zero dollars, and customers who purchased their tickets in the two hours it allegedly took the airline to fix the problem only had to pay a few extra dollars in security and airport fees.

"People were buying tickets all over the place," Facecompare.com chief executive Rick Seaney told CNN. "Guys were buying 12 and 15 of these things from Washington, D.C. and Honolulu."

When the dust settled on the pricey glitch, United was left with the question of whether or not to honor the tickets that were sold during the inadvertent fire sale.

And about an hour ago United announced it would go ahead and allow the sales to go through as is.

"We’ve reviewed the error that occurred yesterday and based on these specific circumstances, we will honor the tickets," the airline tweeted.

It remains unclear how many tickets United gave away yesterday or how much the "mistake fares" will end up costing the company.

[tweet via @United]

"A police report says jail guards were surprised by the brazenness of a man accused of walking into a jail in downtown Las Vegas with an aluminum baseball bat and attacking corrections officers."

On August 25, 2013, 104 lbs of meat named Miley Cyrus broke into America’s televisions and performed the frightfully perverted and most highly sinful Dance of the Seven Veils. In a rage, 150 U.S. citizens wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to protest the emergence of Cyrus’ butt in so many places it did not belong (on top of singer Robin Thicke; inside a pair of rubber panties; exposed to the humid summer night, etc.).

With the help of a couple Freedom of Information Act requests, Deadspin and The Smoking Gun acquired the full set of feverish complaints. We’ve culled a few of our very favorite lines and present them now as a series of inspirational image macros, perfect for sharing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Weibo, Vkontakte, iTunes (?), or even just as paper print-outs you distribute among your colleagues.

We call the collection: "Teen Dream; America's Nightmare."

(All spelling mistakes preserved from the originals.)

[Deadspin // The Smoking Gun // Images via Getty, AP]

In case you were worried that married life would crimp Sir Patrick Stewart's inimitable style, fear not.

As this photo of himself and Sir Ian McKellen hanging out with a clearly overwhelmed Elmo in Times Square proves, Sir Pat is still very much the same bowler-hat-wearing man-about-town he's always been.

Patrick and McKellen are currently co-starring in not one, but two Broadway plays at the Cort Theaters on W 48th St. Good luck getting tickets.

[photo via @SirPatStew]

Conservative California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who is thought by some to be a closeted gay man, recently regaled listeners of California's KPCC radio station with a story about the time he got drunk and arm wrestled Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sample quote: "His muscles are just unbelievable."

It was the 1990s and Putin, who at that time was billing himself as the "deputy mayor of St. Petersburg," according to Rohrabacher, was in Washington D.C. on business. In a moment of diplomatic whimsy, Rohrabacher invited the visiting Russian politician and some of his colleagues to play a game of touch football, after which everyone decamped to a nearby pub. That's when things got really fun, as the Washington Post explains:

"So we went out and played touch football. And Scooter Libby was one of the players, and a bunch of my right-wing friends were there. And so we all went over to this pub afterwards, the Irish Times pub."

"We were having a little bit too much to drink, I guess. But anyways, we started arguing about who won the Cold War, etc. And so we decided to settle it like men do when they’ve had too much to drink in the pub. And so we got down to these arm wrestling matches. And I ended up being paired up with Putin. And he’s a little guy, but boy I tell you, he put me down in a millisecond. He is tough. … His muscles are just unbelievable."

Put him down in a millisecond. Pathetic. Is this the kind of weak-armed leadership we want in Washington? I bet this congressman doesn't even lift. Also, "Dana"? Isn't that a lady's name?

The last America heard from Rohrabacher, he was saying he'd like to make sure "white trash" wasn't taking advantage of federal welfare programs. You know white trash; they're the white people too unsophisticated to get drunk and arm rassle in stupid Irish bars.

[Image via AP]

Gizmodo The Best Non-Alcoholic Beer | io9 Watch 32 discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes | Lifehacker How Can I Turn Off "Seen By" Messages in Facebook Chat? | Deadspin This Skip Bayless Profile May Make You Feel Sorry For Skip Bayless

Microsoft has pulled a series of ads making fun of the new iPhone for being sucky and not-at-all-funny.

The series, "A Fly on the Wall in Cupertino," is supposed to depict Apple Employees mocking the products during a meeting with a Steve Jobs-esque figure. Microsoft published the series online yesterday, but pulled them after only a few hours.

Here are some of most groan-worthy lines:

Sorry we're late, my iWatch had to go back to R & D.

Did we have to make the new iPhones out of plastic to save money? Yeah bro.

Because think about it, everybody loves gold. Pirates. Leprechauns. This dude. (Points to picture of shirtless man on a beach.)

“The video was intended to be a light-hearted poke at our friends from Cupertino. But it was off the mark, and we’ve decided to pull it down,” Microsoft representatives said in a statement.

The drinking water of a Louisiana parish has been found to contain a brain-eating amoeba that can be fatal if it goes up your nose.

Last month, a four-year-old boy in Louisiana died after playing on a slip-n-slide in St. Bernard Parish. The amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, was also connected to the death of a Florida boy this summer.

Officials are telling residents that the water is safe to drink, but you must make sure not to let it up your nose. They have told residents that it will be weeks before the danger has passed, as low levels of chlorine in the system have let the bacteria thrive. Chlorine kills the amoeba, Assistant Louisiana Health Secretary J.T. Lane told residents.

The organism travels up your nose and multiplies, eating your brain and slowly killing you. Early symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting and a stiff neck, according to the CDC. Then the illness gets serious — later symptoms include confusion, seizures, hallucination, and eventual death within one to twelve days.

The fatality rate is almost 99 percent, however, Kali Hardig, a 12-year-old Arkansas girl, survived infection after she contracted the amoeba at a local water park. She was given an experimental drug that saved her life, only after her mother noticed early on that her daughter didn't have just the common cold.

[image via Shutterstock]