This week's episode of Girls is one of the most enjoyable television episodes ever, especially if you're a cokehead. The writers of this television program about young girls in Brooklyn decided to treat cocaine usage in a very adult-type way. The drug is just portrayed as a devilish, incoherent muse. There are no concerns about unstoppable nosebleeds, flukey heart attacks, or its illegality. Disregard the plot point to how Hannah goes about procuring coke (from her downstairs neighbor, Laird, beanie-wearing junkie) and coke's downsides are minimal. Instead, it focuses mainly on the yayo's ability to consummate relationships with truth.

The primary focus is on Hannah, Elijah, and Marnie, and the inevitable great reveal that Elijah and Marnie had unremarkable couch-sex the night of the party. Hannah finds out this information while high on cocaine for the very first time in life after she gets a freelance writing assignment from a women's publication called JazzHate edited by a woman named Jamie who tells Hannah to call her "Jame," which makes one wonder why they just didn't call the site "OXJame." The show's dig—if you can call at that—is that the site's fictional editrix believes true creative genius can only be mined through oversharing. Jame suggests some story ideas for Hannah to tackle for $200 a pop. "How about you have a threesome?" or "Just do a bunch of cocaine all night and write about it" because the road to $200 payment for struggling female writers goes through Bret Easton Ellis' vagina. Jame points to a wall inside her office. Above one circle it says, "this is your comfort zone" and outside of it to the far left is a small black dot that says, "this is where the magic happens." Hannah has decided that a threesome is not where the magic happens. Cocaine is where the magic happens. Wise choice.

Once Hannah has gotten "the scary part over with" (procurement) she and Elijah decide to start snorting lines during daylight hours because this is an assignment which requires the utmost vulnerability to your own self-destruction. Here come the nonsensical ideas from their brain and out their mouths, rattled off with intensity and zest for the power of those ideas. Elijah insists that Hannah start to write down all their lofty life goals about raising show dogs and wanting to visit a prison. This should be chronicled because the cocaine-fueled writing experience is meaningless unless you paint it inside a cave. Hannah agrees and scampers into her room looking for a pen and paper. Elijah stops her and scolds her for thinking so small. Write it on the wall, man, write it on the wall, ON.THe. WaLl.

ROCK.

Hannah begins to scrawl "Raise Show Dogs" in black magic marker across the pink wall above her bed in beautiful Danny Torrance-like penmanship.

I first saw this scene as over-exaggerated for effect, done to accentuate the triviality of cocaine's artistic inspiration and then remembered that one time I decided to paint the wall in my room in a similar state of mind. (This was waaay back sometime between 2002 and last Friday night, mind you, but whatever.) There was blue paint. There was orange paint. I then dipped the roller into the blue paint first and leapt off the bed, paint dripping while flying to make sure I landed sponge-out as I smacked myself against the wall. This shit looked wicked. Then I did it one more time with the orange. Then I finger-painted some vertical lines because that's what it needed. But you know what else would just make these colors jump off this fucking wall? Metrocards. Like, a zillion of them all pasted on the right side of the blue-orange streak stains.

I managed to Scotch-tape five Metrocards on the wall before I figured out that I would need a lot more coke to finish this project. Instead I went out that night and just left the wall that way until I moved out of the apartment two years later. But Magic Happened that night and then I was hired by Gawker Media and now look at me? XO, A.J.

Meanwhile, back to fiction. This episode also focuses on Marnie, who's still hot-pantsing her way through a hostess job until something better comes along. The Something Better in this episode is Booth Jonathan, the pint-sized alpha artist from season one whose attempts at seduction through rape-staring and pheromone-coated facial scruff caused uptight Marnie to run to the bathroom to pleasure herself via ravenous bean-flicking. This time, however, the run-in produces an actual sexual encounter between the two of them back at Booth Jonathan's super-awesome loft space. Booth knows he's got Marnie's libido begging for mercy and he goes in for the killshot. We see an odd, obelisk-type contraption made of televisions. It's his masterpiece at this very moment. He opens a small door at the bottom of the TV tower and invites Marnie to step inside. She hesitates, but then again, YOLO. "Don't lock me in!" He locks her in.

Inside the masterpiece all the multiple TV screens show flashing images of maggots crawling and dead animals decomposing, the types of imagery you'd find in baby's first Trent Reznor video. Only the sounds being pumped through the TV towers are not NIN but the easygoing alterna-radio strummy-strum of "Barely Breathing" by Duncan Sheik. Booth leaves her in there just long enough to make her scared but not long enough to make her too angry to be DTF right after she comes out. Marnie acts freaked out and gets all "What the fuck!" in his face and then Booth gives her a hug. She hugs back. "You're amazing!" she says. From there, their next scene together will show Booth on top of Marnie as she's facedown on his big bed as he squeezes her wrists and vigorously pumps her like she's a pretty corpse. This is a sex position Booth Jonathan probably learned from the Tantric Pussy Annihilation Methods class he took during a weeklong pick-up artist seminar. Thrust, thrust, guhhhh, magic. Still, Marnie's in love with this chaos because she's stupid.

Back to Hannah and Elijah who have escaped their apartment with lots of cocaine left and have managed to make it to a nightclub. Here we see how the dull, rusty batteries of their lives have been jump-started by Brooklyn's finest rat laxative amphetamine spice. Now they're gorgeous superheroes ready to dance themselves clean. Hannah goes first, as quixotic movements brought her to the dance floor. Elijah is still up top on the rail, watching below, talking nonsense to no one until he realizes Hannah is gone. Elijah looks down, finally, and there is Hannah dancing, dancing, dancing, yay, Hannah, hi! They finally reunite on the dance floor, Hannah has switched shirts with a man who was wearing a mesh tanktop and her breasts are exposed, finally, because there is never a party like a tit-showing party and those tit-showing parties tend not to cease. Then they want more cocaine because that's what makes cocaine so fun.

When Hannah and Elijah hit the stalls for their cocaine refuel session they decide to dice-up chunky lines on the toilet lid like seasoned first-timers always do. But it's still a social drug to them and they love shouting at each other up close. Here comes the portion of the experience where everyone projectile vomits sentiment all over each other: "I love you!" "NO I LOVE YOU!" "WE'RE SO GOOD!" WE ARE!" That.

It's okay to state the status of your BFF-ness to a person with whom you're sharing a super-intense drug experience because too much information is never enough. Yet, somehow, cocaine always manages to push it too far.

"I FUCKED MARNIE!" Elijah reveals, so happy to get that off his chest as he cuts more lines.

Oh no. Hannah didn't hear it the first time but she did and out comes the rage.

The night is ruined. The night can only be saved if they confront Marnie right this second. Hannah finds out via text that Marnie is at Booth Jonathan's and LET'S GO ELIJAH NOW. But first, let's stop at the local 24-hour pharma-dega and get some stuff we don't need and do need, like water, perhaps. Hannah and Elijah have another confrontation about why he fucked Marnie. Hannah kisses him. "When did you have jerky?" Elijah says. No Boner Yes Homo. But wait: Hannah's distracted by her downstairs neighbor, Laird, the junkie who gave her this blow and started all this. "Are you following us?" Hannah yells at Laird. Of course he is. He's a lonely junkie, you see. Anyway, bring Laird along to Booth Jonathan's so he doesn't feel ashamed and stops sobbing in the juice aisle.

They arrive at Booth's super-awesome loft and Marnie is not happy to see them. Laird goes one direction in the loft, Elijah heads another way, and Hannah is right in front of Marnie, ready to kill Marnie with the truth, anger engaged. Hannah rambles and rambles and Marnie tries to take her at face-value, ducking-and-moving the whole time until Hannah turns her voice's volume up to 12 while her eyes go big and wide to finish this once and for all:

"THAT IS WHAT MAKES YOU A BAD FRIEND!"

Hannah wins. She's already presented enough factual accuracy to prove this point to Marnie not through the petty snipes found in typical girl-on-girl disagreements, but with a surgically precise counterpoint to force her best friend to prove otherwise. Marnie can't. She felt awful before Hannah knew all this but now she's been gutted. As she sits there wrapped in a blanket at Booth Jonathan's countertop the hollowness creeps in so just walk away from this reality over to another room in the apartment because these tears are coming from a different place.

Hannah's still on coke, though, so you're next Elijah:

"AND YOU ARE MOVING OUT!"

Elijah bites back at first and says he didn't even come/cum after he fucked Marnie but then it dawns on him as well that the maniac in front of him is making too much sense to ignore. Remarkably, this is the type of super-power cocaine brings out of those who try it for the first time. It's amazing how much sense you can make so loudly without any real effort or fear of consequence. Hannah's RIGHT, right now. But at some point, if she doesn't quit while ahead, she'll start to engage in arguments much more meaningless with cokehead friends. This is my favorite:

"YOU ARE A COKEHEAD!" [snorts line]

"FUCK YOU! YOU ARE CRAZY!" [snorts line]

"BUT YOU ARE! A COKEHEAD!" [snorts line]

"YEAH WELL IF I AM WHAT ARE YOU, HUH?!"[snorts line]

"NO I AM NOT A COKEHEAD!" [scrapes plate for last line]

"YEAH OKAY! GOOD LUCK SCRAPING THAT PLATE!" [Licks and eats empty baggie which contained cocaine]

"FUCK YOU! Hey can we still get more this late? Your guy deliver?" [sits down, stares into space]

"HAHAHA YEAH WHATEVER. Let me just check." [texts dealer]

Fin.

Hannah summons Laird, because he's the only non-asshole human being left in this apartment right now. They go back to their apartment complex. They shake hands goodnight. Then Hannah, still on coke, does the old let's-make-out-if-you-want-to handshake but realizes that Laird won't take the hint. She kisses him on the mouth. He stands there like a junkie and asks permission to kiss back.

"Sure, "she says, "But it's just for tonight [kiss] and it's for work." Out comes her tongue.

Image by Jim Cooke

The Montreal-based design school where the ultra-viral baby-snatching eagle hoax video was created says it plans to use the money it made from YouTube ads to fund scholarships for "deserving students."

The video, created by students at the National Animation and Design Center, managed to rack up millions of views before it was revealed to be fake by the students who created it.

Now, the school hopes to buy back some goodwill by using the profit generated by the video's 41 million views and counting to pay off a few tuitions.

"[The proceeds] will likely be divided into several scholarships aimed at recognizing excellence in our undergrad students," school spokesperson Claude Arsenault told Mashable.

The exact amount earned through Google AdSense wasn't available for release as the check has yet to be cut. But school officials say the experience of others leads them to believe it will be a substantial sum.

"Knowing that we helped get the school on the map - it's a good feeling," video co-creator Normand Archambault, told the Montreal Gazette.

Not surprisingly, he and his two fellow hoaxers each received an A for the project.

[video via YouTube]

Former Real Housewife of New York Kelly Killoren Bensimon is off to get herself a degree from business school. The New York Post reports Bensimon will be taking classes online to get an MBA in business and finance at Northeastern University in Boston.

Bensimon appeared on the Real Housewives of New York until 2011, when she was fired. Since then, she's been living on a cloud and surviving on a diet of lollipops and dandelions. But, oh man, business school. Here we go.

Kelly, is it better to have decisionable data or a set strategic direction?

"Why do we have to be all flowers and lollipops? Why can't it be like fighting but we are actually learning? That's called back-door education."

Kelly, how would you predict market trends will affect oil futures in the coming quarter?

"Mostly I'm just like 'Huh? What?' And then I look like I'm an airhead because I'm not engaging in stuff that I don't understand.

Kelly, you need to drop out because you are failing all your classes.

"Systematic bullying is never okay."

Yeah, there's no way this ends well.

Two new breeds of dirty old dogs have been added to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show before the organization's February competition while, for the one hundred thirty sixth straight year, humans on walking on hands and knees remain banned from competing.

This year's n00bs are the treeing walker coonhound, which insists it is not racist, and the russell terrier, whose name contains no potentially offensive slur but who you can tell doesn't like Dutch people.

The treeing walker is a good boy, he's a very good boy, such a good boy he is, yes he is. He possesses what the American Kennel Club describes as "superb...treeing ability" (the ability to be a tree, I guess?) and is identified as "intelligent, confident, and sociable" #divadog.

He also can can FUCKING TALK, which, no wonder they decided to let him in:

It has a clear, ringing bugle voice.

According to the United Kennel Club, treeing walkers descended from criminals — specifically "a stolen dog from Tennessee of unknown origin," (probably a rat or something); it would seem the club's background checks aren't as thorough as they used to be.

The russell terrier, the AKC explains, is considered the "ultimate working earth terrier" due to its lil peanut stature (10" to 12" tall) and weird rack ("unique chest.") This breed grew up in bags:

Their origin dates back to the 1800's in England where they were utilized for fox hunting and carried horseback in terrier bags.

New dog breeds are considered for the show every year based on their popularity across the U.S. and compelling personal narratives.

[Westminster h/t Gothamist / // Image via Getty]

A highly alarming video that surfaced online over the weekend has the entire Internet seething with rage.

In the video, a crying toddler can be seen being held in place by a woman alleged to be his mother while a tattoo artist inks the child's arm.

Despite managing to rile nearly everyone who views it, the footage lacks a significant amount of context.

According to a number of unreliable sources, the video was filmed in Havana, Cuba, and the child being tattooed is three years old.

A Dominican news site claims the video originated on Facebook, and the people involved are followers of the infamous Growing In Grace International Ministry.

The child is allegedly being branded with the mark of the cult: 666.

Whatever the background, many are in agreement that tattooing a child that young constitutes child abuse irrespective of culture.

[video via YouTube]

Last Friday, an injured dolphin swam into Brooklyn's filthy Gowanus Canal, where it became stuck and later died; the ordeal was equal parts captivating and disturbing, and inspired at least one moving tribute. Now comes word that the dolphin probably wasn't killed by anything man-made, news that will hopefully let us all rest a bit better. According to the Riverhead Foundation's Kimberly Durham, who performed a necropsy on the animal, the dolphin likely died from natural causes and not one of the thousands of pollutants in the canal:

"There's a lot of people saying that they believe it was the contaminants [that killed the dolphin]," Durham said. "The necropsy doesn't support that. It supports a very compromised individual that happened to find itself at that location."

According to Durham, the dolphin died from a combination of old age (he was 25-30 years old) and poor health (he had ulcerations and parasites in its stomach and suffered from kidney stones, which apparently are a rare affliction for dolphins). Durham described the 7-foot, 340-pound dolphin was "skinny" and said that he hadn't eaten recently; she also said he was "heavily compromised" and "destined to beach itself." All of which is to say: it was just nature being cruel nature. But why did we care so much? Durham also had an answer for that:

When it's happening right then, and you can watch it on TV, that's when people get upset," Durham said. "It's not something people see every day. It's very hard to watch something like that."

[Image via AP]

From their "What Would Django Do?" campaign to their ill-fated (and shooting-filled) Gun Appreciation Day to idiotic NRA commercials, pro-gun activists have been on an impressive roll. But it's been a few days since their last PR disaster – surely they've done something stupid recently, right? Correct. During a legislative hearing Monday in at the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford, protesters heckled the father of a six-year-old killed at Sandy Hook elementary.

When Neil Heslin, who was holding a picture of his deceased son, Jesse Lewis, during his testimony, asked the state senate why Bushmaster-type assault rifles should be legal, several gun enthusiasts in the audience reportedly shouted him down, yelling "The Second Amendment!"

So just to repeat: the father of a six-year-old boy who died six weeks ago asked a question about the weapon that killed his son, and the the gun activists attending the testimony decided to heckle him.

Heslin, to his credit, was unfazed by the protesters. "There are a lot of things that should be changed to prevent what happened," he said.

"That wasn't just a killing, it was a massacre," said Heslin, who recalled dropping off his son at Sandy Hook Elementary School shortly before Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults. "I just hope some good can come out of this."

[Image via AP]

A photo posted yesterday on Justin Bieber's official fan page appears to show the recently embachelored teenybopper pop star getting a bit too familiar with one of his fans during a meet and greet in Miami.

The circumstances leading up to this curiously candid shot remain unclear, but some with apparent knowledge of the incident claim the Belieber asked to be groped, and Bieber obliged.

Others say Bieber was aiming for a hug and missed. A third theory asserts that this photo is a fake, though being posted on Bieber's official fan page likely rules that out.

Whatever the truth, it certainly appears to gel with some of Bieber's recently reported antics.

Like that time he was photographed smoking a wacky-looking cigarette at a party; and that time he was accused of spitting in a woman's water bottle at the gym; or how about that time when he keeps walking around without his shirt on.

I guess it's time to face facts: Our Bieber is no longer a boy — he's just another asshole adult.

[photo via ONTD]

Don't you just hate it when you're a long-distance bus driver in Chile and you accidentally forget that hardcore porn you were enjoying earlier in the coach's video tray and then press play thinking it's You've Got Mail or something and then passengers start giggling and you have no idea why until some spoilsport points it out to you and you're embarrassed as shit?

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

[H/T: Reddit, video via YouTube]

Last night, on the eve of the release of her Remembering Whitney book, Whitney Houston's mother Cissy sat down with and croaked at Oprah Winfrey for a very special episode of Oprah's Next Chapter. Crankily honest, Cissy discussed the longstanding rumor that Whitney was involved in a romantic relationship with her best friend and one-time executive assistant Robyn Crawford. In the book, Cissy alludes to Whitney "experiment[ing]" with this friendship. She told Oprah that she just didn't like Robyn. "She just spoke too much…disrespectful sometimes," she explained. But the real brutality came as a result of Oprah asking Cissy if it would have bothered her if Whitney were gay.

"Absolutely," said Cissy.

Oprah seemed incredulous and asked, "It would have bothered you?" Cissy confirmed, yes, it would have bothered her if her daughter were gay with an, "Mmmm hmmm."

"You would not have liked that?" asked Oprah again — while clearly unvarnished, that's still a shitty thing to say about your dead daughter. "Not at all," said Cissy.

"Not at all," continued Oprah. "You wouldn't have condoned it, or...?" Nope. Not in a box, not with a fox. Not with a squirrel and certainly not with a girl, Cissy Houston would not have liked that one bit.

Cissy also discussed not being happy about her daughter's relationship with Bobby Brown, or the reality show that her granddaughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, son Gary Houston and daughter-in-law Pat Houston did last year, The Houstons: On Our Own. She said "some of" that series exploited Whitney's death, but claimed that her book didn't because it was written to tell the world about how her daughter really was.

Cissy admitted that Bobbi Kristina "very well could be" headed down the wrong path, and her son Michael admitted that he's the first one who ever got Whitney high on freebased cocaine. Real uplifting hour of television all around.

Taco Bell kicked off the year by teasing its Facebook fans with a photo of a taco alongside a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos over the caption "anything could happen in 2013" — the wink being that Cool Ranch-flavored Doritos Locos Tacos were in the offing.

While it's still possible that other things might happen in 2013, one thing is definitely happening: Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos.

Speaking with CBS This Morning, um, this morning, Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed confirmed that the highly anticipated follow up to the company's uber-successful Nacho Cheese-flavored Doritos Locos Taco would be rolled out very soon.

Doritos Locos Tacos isn't just a popular menu item — it's Taco Bell's most popular menu item since the company was founded in 1962.

Over 200 million units were sold in the product's first seven months alone.

And Taco Bell doesn't plan to stop at Cool Ranch flavor neither. According to insider reports, the chain is currently testing a chile-lime flavored Flamas Doritos shell with the hopes of launching a mix-and-match variety pack in the near future.

[photo via Facebook]

Sure, everyone chuckled this week about the Dallas Police Department not having a fucking clue what "molly" is. But were we being too harsh on Dallas whites? Because even in America's greatest metropolis, some whites are just now discovering what blunts are.

New York Post columnist John Crudele, a white man, would like to inform his readers of a troubling new development in the illicit world of Inner City Kids With Their Drugs and How They're Taking the Drugs These Days, We Hear. Prepare to "ring the alarm" (street slang for "be surprised"):

Take an unlit cigar, point it top down and roll it between your thumb and forefinger until tobacco starts falling out. There's now space in the wrapper for your favorite illicit substance.

I, for one, am shocked that a family newspaper like the New York Post would allow this "gonzo" journalist to spout of the latest underground drug-taking tactics right in the first paragraph of his newspaper column which is read, I surmise, exclusively by dim children. And there's more:

I'm not suggesting you smoke anything illegal. But you should know about one of the hottest trends in New York City - so hot that it is sparking a boom in the cheap cigar business... Today's pot smokers, it seems, are too lazy to roll their own joints.

In John Crudele's day (June 13, 1967), pot smokers had drive and initiative. They would roll their own joints first thing in the morning, before they'd even had a cup of coffee, even if they had to use spittle-drenched toilet paper to do so. That sort of "DIY" ethic has apparently deteriorated to paltry levels in today's Inner City Drug Youth, who can barely muster the energy to roll a cheap cigar betwixt their ejaculate-stained fingertips. It's a god damn shame, is what it is.

Convenience isn't the only reason cigars are being used as the "delivery system" for marijuana and other drugs.

Potheads are also lighting up cigar sales because their cigar "joints" don't give off that pungent, sickly sweet smell that makes the people around them snicker, roll their eyes and maybe call the cops.

John Crudele seems to know an awful lot about the smell of illegal marijuana. Combined with his intimate knowledge of this latest trend in marijuana "delivery system" (street slang for "blunts") and... well, it just makes you wonder.

But since this is the financial section, the point of this column is this: NYC's mainstream cigar sellers - tobacconists - and the state are being hurt by the booming sales of what one expert calls "inner-city cigars."

Mark Goldman, who once owned cigar wholesaler House of Oxford, tells me "sales of inner-city cigars are way up." [...]

There are no statistics on statewide cigar sales.

Sales of black people gutter drug "delivery system"—no, wait, that sounds a bit harsh. Sales of Hip-Hopping marijuana phallus—hmm, no, too "slangy." Sales of, shall we say, inner-city cigars are booming, due to this trend of "blunt smoking," which is a new trend. A guy who used to own a cigar business told me so. That said, there are no statistics that would actually prove things one way or another. But look around you: inner-city cigars, everywhere you look. How long before this new "delivery system" for marijuana is used to rape your wife?

The Redman album featuring the song "How to Roll a Blunt" was released on September 22, 1992.

[NYP. Photo: Jorge Gobbi/ Flickr]

The world cried out for more words on puppy-rescuing Newark Mayor, New Jersey Senate hopeful and Twitter celebrity Cory Booker, and Buzzfeed has delivered — 5,000 of them, answering the question "Can Cory Booker Keep It Together?" (the answer: Maybe?). Unfortunately, only a handful are devoted the only question anyone really cares about: is he gay? The answer, again, is "maybe?"

His spokesman refuses to say one way or the other. From the profile:

The rumor resurfaced more recently following the release of Booker's Stanford Daily column, which prompted the site, Jezebel, to run the headline, "Cory Booker Tackles Cory Booker's History of Homophobia - So Is He Gay or What?" It's not a subject political operatives in the state will shy away from gossiping about, either. When asked about the mayor's sexuality, a spokesman said they "would not comment on such matters." Booker, of course, talks openly about dating women.

We've heard rumors on both sides on the fence. It comes up every time we write about Booker, and more frequently when our sister site Jezebel describes him as an "imaginary boyfriend." (One commenter called it "that rainbow hued elephant in the room.")

But former Jezebel editor Anna Holmes says she's heard from a "very reliable source" (wink wink) that he's straight:

Our gossip-mongering boss Nick Denton says a friend told him that Booker is "Very supportive but definitely straight! Think he is sort of a dawg."

Which might make Cory Booker the first person about whom Nick Denton is more confident in proclaiming heterosexuality than his own spokesman.

[Buzzfeed, image via AP]

It sounds like one of those schoolyard riddles: A driver in northern France was killed by a stray bullet that apparently ricocheted off a wild boar over a mile away.

Hunters who spoke with local reporters said a bullet fired at the boar bounced off at an "unlikely angle," and proceeded to fly across a two-kilometer stretch of fields before striking a motorist in the head.

Even more amazing is the fact that the car was in motion at the time. The driver's wife said she had to quickly seize control of the car to avoid crashing into a line of trees.

"It's unheard-of," said the local hunters' association president, Guy Harlé d'Ophove. "The bullet rebounded at almost a right angle. In terms of probability, it's very unlikely."

A police investigation into the incident is ongoing, and the elderly hunter who fired the magic bullet has been taken in for questioning.

[photo via Shutterstock]

Drop whatever you're doing unless it's made of glass and clear a smallish, rectangular space on your coffee table; Amy Poehler is writing a book.

But not just any book. All books.

Here's the description from her publisher It Books, a Harper Collins imprint:

an illustrated, nonlinear diary full of humor and honesty and brimming with true stories, fictional anecdotes and life lessons.

Okay.

So it's a diary, but not in order, and also there are fictional stories, but some of the stories are true, and they're funny, and there's advice, and there are pictures.

It's also a dictionary, partial thesaurus (letters A-L), collage of recipes, with an atlas component, a reverse chronological history of Bridgewater, Mass. with an emphasis on oral tradition, and it's wearable art, and it's graffiti. It's also very honest.

Amy Poehler's book of twenty-first century sea chanties and fictional non-fiction will be released in 2014.

[The Hollywood Reporter // Image via Getty]

This is Sam. Sam has eyebrows. Sam's eyebrows make him look perpetually worried. But Sam has nothing to be worried about: Among the #catsofinstagram, Sam stands alone.

In just over a month, Sam and his eyebrows have attracted over 2,500 followers. Do you have 2,500 followers on Instagram? Didn't think so.

But don't be too hard on yourself. You do have a distinct disadvantage. You're not a cat with eyebrows.

[Reddit via DOTD via DPAF]

According to the anti-regime human-rights group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as many as 80 men were found killed execution-style in an Aleppo suburb on Tuesday, many with their hands bound behind their backs. The group claims to have documented the massacre's aftermath — details of which are still obscure — in a series of extremely graphic videos it posted to its Facebook page.

The bodies, all men between 20 and 30, were said to have been found floating in, and along the banks of, a river near Aleppo. The SOHR says it has identified 17 of the 65 bodies that have been recovered, and that the total number of bodies could hit 80, "since there are still bodies floating the river." The men's identities, and the reason for their deaths, are unknown; according to The New York Times, someone in the video suggests that they were killed "because they were Sunni Muslims."

Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, has been the site of a stalemate between government and rebel forces since last summer.

[NYT, image via AP]

Entertainment Weekly broke the news late last night that 11-year-old Rowan Blanchard has officially been cast in the role of Cory and Topanga's daughter in the Disney Channel's upcoming spinoff of Boy Meets World.

The newcomer has just two onscreen credits to date that are worth mentioning (and even then, just barely): Rebecca Wilson in Spy Kids 4D, and "Mona's Kid" in 2010's The Back-up Plan.

But Rowan may have just landed the role of a lifetime playing Riley Matthews in Disney's Girl Meets World.

"As soon as Rowan walked into the room, I was reminded of why Ben Savage was loved as Cory Matthews," legendary showrunner Michael Jacobs told Entertainment Weekly. "Rowan is real and accessible and I am hopeful this girl is about to meet a world that will love growing up with her as well."

Ben "Cory Matthews" Savage was also pretty excited about the casting choice, tweeting to his 266k followers "I have a beautiful, new daughter."

Girl Meets World picks up several years after the finale of Boy Meets World, and revolves around the misadventures of Cory and Topanga's 13-year-old daughter — "an adorable girl on the cusp of whatever comes next in life, and wanting to rush into it head first."

Casting is ongoing for two additional characters — Riley's older brother Elliot and her best friend Maya.

No word yet which — if any — Boy Meets World characters will reprise their roles, but Rider Strong who played Shawn Hunter said last year that he had no plans to get involved with the sequel.

The show's pilot will shoot next month, with the series likely to premiere later this year.

[photo via Facebook]

In New York City last year, 141 were struck by subway trains, and 55 were killed. There have been several recent high-profile deaths on the tracks, including one that made the cover of the NY Post. Falling (or being pushed) in front of a train is a classic nightmare scenario. So what should we do to prevent it? Well... something cheap, if anything.

A common refrain after hearing about someone dying on the tracks: "Why don't they build doors on the platforms?" Other cities have sliding doors that open when trains arrive, thereby keeping everyone safely on the platform. Yesterday, the M.T.A. said the cost of building such doors throughout the system would be $1 billion, conservatively. (The M.T.A. also said the 2nd Avenue Subway line would be finished years ago, so you can safely inflate that number upwards.)

The WSJ calculates the risk of being hit by a train during your subway trip as one in 11.8 million. The risk is quite low. Nine of the top ten causes of death in New York City are from either disease, or natural causes. The only exception is "Unintentional injuries," which ranks sixth, just behind diabetes. The top ten causes of injury-related death do not include being hit by subway cars. The top five: unintentional poisoning, unintentional falls, homicide by firearm, unintentional pedestrian injury, and suicide by hanging. (Unintentional death by motor vehicles is sixth, but subway deaths would account for only a small fraction of those.)

So, rationally, if we're going to spend public money to help reduce the risk of death, it would make sense to first tackle public health; since diabetes is more deadly than injuries, I hope that everyone calling for subway doors is also a big supporter of Bloomberg's big soda ban. Even if you want to invest to prevent injury deaths specifically, subways are not the best place to do it. Hell, considering the fatality rates of unintentional falls, a billion dollars invested in anti-slip bathtub mats would probably prevent more deaths than an entire system's worth of doors on subway platforms.

As Jared Diamond points out, it makes much more sense to address common risks (obese citizens, smoking, unsafe sex, guns, household accidents, cars) than uncommon risks (being pushed onto the subway tracks by a raving madman). America, of course, tends to go in for the "Bankrupt ourselves in a largely futile effort to prevent spectacular and spectacularly rare risks like terrorism" strategy, generally. But in any arena with limited resources/ budgets, the resources should to where they'll have the greatest impact. (This common-sense principle is already widely accepted in the do-gooder world.) Otherwise, you're wasting at least part of them. And by wasting that part of them, you're failing to prevent as many deaths as you could. By being seduced by sensational incidents, we make poor resource allocations, which indirectly lead to more preventable deaths. Great.

The NYC subways are actually pretty safe already. Spend $1 billion getting people to exercise instead.

[Photo: Paul Lowry/ Flickr]

Jeff Zucker, the flesh egg whose destruction of NBC earned him a job running CNN, has launched his reign of terror over the network: James Carville and Mary Matalin — gone! Erick Erickson — gone! Managing editor Mark Whitaker — gone! And lo: Chris Cuomo's silhouette appears on the horizon, ready to take on "a major role in a new CNN morning show and across the network."

These aren't really terrible moves, not The Lyon's Den-level terrible, at any rate, though Erick Erickson's daughter is sad:

When I told my 7 year old I had decided to leave, she laid on the sofa for an hour crying that she'd never see Anderson Cooper again.

Best of luck to all involved. We can't wait to not watch Chris Cuomo's morning show.

[Politico]