An Orlando man who was pulled out of an apartment fire Sunday night said he had been trying to burn the bugs that infested his home and computer, the Orlando Police Department reported.

Officers who checked the apartment after the fire was extinguished discovered "deplorable" living condition, including "trash and empty beer cans covering the majority of the floor in the living area and the kitchen." The bedroom, where the man started the fire, was filled with more trash and cans.

The man won't be charged with a crime—no other apartments were damaged in the fire—but he was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation, and police filed paperwork to hospitalize him under Florida's Baker Act as a danger to himself and others.

[H/T: @_Cooper, Photo Credit: Shutterstock]

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A man who discovered a photograph of his 85-year-old mother stuffing bills in the waistband of a young male stripper is now suing the nursing home, claiming his mother was defiled during the dance.

Franklin Youngblood discovered the picture while visiting his mother, Bernice, at a nursing center in Long Island. When he confronted a nurse about the image, the nurse apparently tried to snatch it out of his hands.

A nurse later told another of the victim's sons that the strip show was an "entertainment event" for the patients and was done in "good faith," according to the suit.

"Hiring male stippers to perform for the defendant's nursing-home patients was a serial occurrence," the suit claims.

"Bernice Youngblood has lived 85 years as a traditional Baptist, hard-working, lady . . . And now she has been defiled," [attorney John Ray] said.

The family is now suing the East Neck Nursing Center, accusing the employees of hiring the strippers for "the perverse pleasure and enjoyment of the Defendant's staff."

A lawyer for the nursing home told NBC that residents of the home had initially requested the strippers, prompting a 16-member activities committee to approve the expenditure.

After slogging through their 2,000-word anti-Google ransom note, I did not expect to engage in a remotely reasonable discussion with the Counterforce. Not when the anti-capitalist protestors distributed fliers to Kevin Rose's neighbors in San Francisco demanding that Google pay them $3 billion—and especially not when the group "stalked" Google X engineer Anthony Levandowski.

But the Counterforce caught me by surprise during the Q&A, conducted via email, below.

Yesterday after writing about the unhinged protest against Rose, the founder of Digg and currently a general partner at Google Ventures, I got an email from someone using the handle Nicolas Flamel. That's the same pseudonym as the author of Wordpress site kevinroseisaterribleperson. To show that they represented the Counterforce, they added a smiley-face to the Wordpress blog for a brief, agreed upon period of time. To verify that the Wordpress site is affiliated with the group, they sent me a still image "from the unreleased video of our interaction with Kevin Rose."

That's not airtight proof that the person or persons I communicated with represent the Counterforce, which claims to have members who work for Google, or even that their responses were true. However, the fact they suggested meeting in person was a mark in the "Possibly maybe legit" column.

This isn't the first time the Counterforce, which also claims to be behind anti-Amazon protests in Seattle, has spoken to the press. NextShark just published a Q&A yesterday. According to the emails in my inbox the NextShark interview "was one perspective from a Counterforce member and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the entire group." The answers below, my responded insisted, were drafted by "about half the present group," adding, "A sewage leak, the beach, work and other preoccupations prevented more collaboration."

Like those who claim to speak for Anonymous, perspectives can be contradictory, hard to verify, and just as petty as the rest of us.

Logical might be too strong a word for anyone who thinks they can get Google to part with $3 billion, much less overthrow capitalism. The many-tentacled monopoly recently managed to wriggle out of billions in potential anti-trust fines in Europe as well as a class action lawsuit for data mining students' emails. But after reading reports of the protest, the bar was very low. They definitely had more patience for my pedantic line of questioning than some of the technocrats they oppose, so I'm biased.

Besides, if Silicon Valley can proselytize about cloud country and dividing California into six pieces, why can't their political enemies engage in similar flights of fancy about the world as it currently exists?

Given rising tensions, it was also a relief to hear that despite the spectacle of threatening to snip-snip Rose's "ballz," the Counterforce purports to be non-violent when it comes to human or animal life. Then again, there's a strong possibility that I'll come away with a different conclusion after they release the video of their interaction with Rose. Stay safe, everyone!

How many people are part of the Counterforce?

It is hard to accurately determine this. Membership in the Counterforce is not quantifiable. The group is composed of everyone who takes a conscious stand against the hyper-gentrification of their neighborhoods, whether that be refusing service, yelling at gentrifiers on the street, painting slogans, or holding banners outside residences. The Counterforce has no internal knowledge of its own membership.

You said that the group includes some people that work for Google. What is their role at the company? Why continue to work for Google considering your objections? Can you offer any proof that you have members who work at Google?

A few of our members work for Google, although we cannot describe their positions for security reasons. The wages they receive from their employer go into many anti-capitalist projects. However, our comrades who work at Google cannot stand the culture within its walls and that is why they have lent us their services. We cannot expose their identities or concretely prove to you that they are there, but think about the leaked documents, fortuitous circumstances, and uncanny occurrences that have appeared during this entire tech-backlash

Alternatively, they brought this all upon themselves through their infatuation with social-media and their reliance on exploited workers to get through their daily lives.

Hopefully this makes some sense.

How would you respond to skepticism over whether The Counterforce is actually made up of service workers, as you claim, and is distracting from genuine community activism?

Some of us are most definitely service workers who serve the new ruling tech-class. Again, we cannot concretely prove this to you, but service workers have been marginalized by society, forgotten by the old trade-unions, and exploited by the rich, and thus far their plight in the current context has gone largely unreported.

As far as detracting from genuine community activism, we would reply that we are genuine community organizers and should be taken seriously. No other community organizers have condemned our actions, so we believe that there is no conflict.

Do you honestly believe that Google will give you $3 billion? If not, why advocate for that over something more realistic that might improve the lives of people struggling to get by or find/keep housing?

Yes. The loss of 3 billion would not destroy Google. If that money were given to us, we would absolutely be able to accomplish the limited objectives of creating areas free from capitalism in the Bay Area and Northern California. We do not expect everything to go perfectly, but at the very least we could create sizable communities within each Bay Area city that are free from capitalist relationships and that would eventually blossom into a movement that could not be stopped.

Why did you chose Kevin Rose and Anthony Levandowski as targets? Neither is a Google executive.

Both were targeted for the objective functions they perform within Google, the objections to which we have described in our communiques. Unlike Google executives, these two men are perhaps slightly more inclined to speak to us. The executives never would, isolated as they are from reality and normal human behavior.

How long have most members of the Counterforce lived in the Bay Area?

Many have lived here our whole lives, some for a over decade, others for only a few years, a few have just arrived, some are just returning. In this respect, we are like any other group of people.

Unilaterally driving out everyone employed by a tech company would have a negative impact on the local economy. Why advocate for that?

We are not especially concerned about the positive health of the capitalist economy, given that it is our enemy.

Why don't you see a distinction between tech workers? These corporations are stratified. They do not behave uniformly. They don't all have access to the same wealth and opportunity. They do not all abuse that privilege.

Google has already stratified itself with its different castes of employees: white badges, green badges, red badges, and yellow badges. Thus far, our efforts have been aimed at the white and green badges. White badge employees are the ones gentrifying our neighborhoods and riding the buses to and from Silicon Valley. If these employees stop fulfilling their objective roles in gentrification (paying exorbitant rents, complaining about neighbors, driving up demand for luxury apartments, etc.), they will find that they are no longer subject to such intense criticism and scorn from all sectors.

What do you hope to achieve as a group?

If it is not clear, we want the end of capitalism and the creation of a free world.

Why not protest government officials or policy makers, as opposed to tech corporations?

Been there, done that. When the tech corporations are challenged, they point the finger at city hall and the federal government. When city hall is challenged, they point the finger at the tech corporations and the state government. It all goes round and round, they are all equally complicit, and they should all be equally challenged.

You told NextShark: "Anarchists are the only group with the skill set necessary to solve" the problem of capitalism. Can you point to a prior example where this skill set has provided a viable alternative to capitalism?

Yes. For example: [here, here, and here] and in regards to the current moment: [here].

Is the Counterforce non-violent?

Any group claiming to be the Counterforce is against the harming or taking of human or animal life.

To contact the author of this post with any information about the Counterforce, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the unambiguously sinister data-mining startup Palantir and Clarium Capital alum, is just like the rest of us. When he turns 30, he rents out a castle. And when it's time to watch Game of Thrones, he procures a replica Iron Throne for himself.

Also in attendance at Lonsdale's viewing party—because who doesn't want to hang out with a guy who identifies with Joffrey?—were venture capitalist John Fogelsong, the Wall Street Journal's Evelyn Rusli, Square's Isabelle Bicaci, and someone in a viking helmet who has perhaps never watched Game of Thrones.

Jim DeMint, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation and latest spiritual guru of the tea party, told a Christian radio host last week completely un-ironically that "the conscience of the American people" freed the slaves in the 1860's, not "big government."

DeMint—who, being a former Republican senator from South Carolina, knows a thing or two about the institution of slavery and its role in the South's secession—Dixiesplained his historically bafflegab thesis to Jerry Newcombe, the head of a South Florida right-wing ministry whose last big coup was a documentary about President Obama's socialism starring Michele Bachmann.

Right Wing Watch was johnny-on-the-spot with DeMint's bizarre Civil War revisionism (emphasis added):

DeMint: This progressive, the whole idea of being progressive is to progress away from those ideas that made this country great. What we're trying to conserve as conservative are those things that work. They work today, they work for young people, they work for minorities and we can change this country and change its course very quickly if we just remember what works.

Newcombe: What if somebody, let's say you're talking with a liberal person and they were to turn around and say, 'that Founding Fathers thing worked out really well, look at that Civil War we had eighty years later.'

DeMint: Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to 'all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights' in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.

Full audio:

There are too many hilarious factual inaccuracies in this short passage to count in short measure, so I'll just tackle a few. Feel free to add more in the contents:

• Pretty sure the Union Army counts as "big government."
• Pretty sure Abe Lincoln counts as "big government."
• Pretty sure Abe Lincoln articulated how what we now derisively call "big government" was actually the democratically representative conscience of the American people with which DeMint tries to garb himself here. Pretty sure that's why Lincoln, in his Gettysburg address, defended the war against slavemongers as a "new birth of freedom," a fight to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
• Pretty sure the consciences of abolitionists didn't end slavery, unless by "the consciences of abolitionists" you mean "U.S. Grant's willingness to throw wave after wave of soldiers at the exhausted Confederate Virginia reserves until they finally, grudgingly, gave up the ghost."
• Pretty sure the pro-slavery South didn't put much stock in the U.S. Constitution, especially when setting up their own. "Let us be no longer duped by paper securities," a leading secessionist from DeMint's home state said of the American founding fathers' crowning achievement just before South Carolina led the mass split from the Union.
• In fact, here's that same secessionist from DeMint's backyard, articulating the conscience of the American people in that backyard, in 1861: "[A]s there is no common bond of sympathy or interest between the North and the South, all efforts to preserve this Union will not only be fruitless but fatal to the less numerous section."
• Actually, it wasn't the Constitution of the founding fathers that ended slavery, although it did set up a nice scheme for white landed Southerners to get federal big-gubment representation for a share of their slaves. The Constitution didn't weigh in until the South was broken and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were passed, according to this link from this place where DeMint used to work.
• Funny that DeMint mentions William Wilberforce, a wealthy elite Briton who sat in Parliament, as a paragon of America's anti-slavery spirit, but he doesn't mention John Brown, the American religious zealot who did some killin' to make his abolitionist viewpoint known.
• Oh, and also, slavery may have ended de jure between 1863 and 1865, but "the conscience of the American people," especially in the South, was sorta slow to catch up, both back then and also more recently.

But hey, these are mere facts. Facts that were probably approved by some Common Core Big Government Socialist someplace. Tyrannical facts! The conscience of the American people knows better.

Which is why DeMint took the rest of his time on the radio show to explain that the conscience of the American people consists in denying same-sex life partners the same financial and social benefits enjoyed by straight couples. Do you hear Jim DeMint, American conscience? Of course you do. He is you: L'amérique, c'est moi!

[Photo credit: AP]

Slate columnist Reihan Salam has an important message: He still believes in neoconservatism. He concedes, more or less, that the past 13 years of United States foreign policy have been a hideous spectacle of strategic, tactical, and moral failure, all perpetrated in the name of neoconservative ideas. "Given all of this," he asks, "why am I still a neocon?"

The answer—albeit Salam's unintentional answer—is that he's a neocon because he is a sloppy thinker who is deeply confused about history and how the world works. This is a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of America's role in global affairs. Neoconservatism is a fantasy, and fantasies are hard to abandon:

Why do I still believe that the U.S. should maintain an overwhelming military edge over all potential rivals, and that we as a country ought to be willing to use our military power in defense of our ideals as well as our interests narrowly defined? There are two reasons: The first is that American strength is the linchpin of a peaceful, economically integrating world; and the second is that we know what it looks like when America embraces amoral realpolitik, and it's not pretty.

Goodness, ideals! Our ideals, lately, have led to our national spy corps running an open-ended international program of mass surveillance and paramilitary war, featuring kidnapping, torture, and robot-assisted assassination. In Afghanistan, one of the countries where we have most actively worked on pinning together a peaceful world, aid workers and journalists are being shot by the locals for simply being associated with the West. Meanwhile Russia, despite the undeniable appeal of a world led by the United States, has begun de-integrating territory from the Euro-American sphere of influence.

Presumably Vladimir Putin is reacting to President Obama's relative lack of strength, now that neoconservative ideas are in eclipse. Yet the American military, despite reports of its imminent demobilization, is immense and well funded. Salam addresses this:

You may have seen one of those charts illustrating how much the U.S. military spends on defense vs. other countries. Slate recently ran just such a chart to show that America's 2012 defense spending surpasses that of China, Russia, the U.K., Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy, and Brazil combined. The implicit message of these charts is "Wait a minute, you guys—doesn't this seem like overkill?" There is no question that there is waste in the U.S. defense budget, and that our military could deploy resources more effectively.

But these charts are misleading insofar as they gloss over a pretty important fact, which is that personnel costs are much higher in rich countries than in poor ones. Stack up the U.S. against the same list of countries on health or education spending and you'll find that we spend an impressive amount in those domains too.

Salam didn't go to the trouble of really stacking the United States up against those countries. Our own Reuben Fischer-Baum was kind enough to do it for him:

So on health care—where the amount we spend is recognized across party lines as a national crisis and a scandal—our government is spending only 75 percent as much as those other countries' governments. On education, we're spending 58 percent as much. Our military spending is the anomaly. But who needs facts when you have ideals?

Salam goes on to argue for the importance of "moralistic crusades," citing a personal example: His own uncle, he writes, was among the hundreds of thousands (or millions) of Bengalis slaughtered in 1971, as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger refused to stop Pakistan's violent suppression of the population in the territory of East Pakistan that would become Bangladesh.

In other words, Salam presents Nixon and Kissinger as embodying the opposite of a vigorous right-wing military interventionism. People in Cambodia and Laos (to say nothing of Chile) might find this a surprising historical interpretation. It's certainly a peculiar case study for Salam's purposes—the trouble in 1971 was not so much that Nixon was not bold enough to use arms against Pakistan as that he was unwilling to do anything whatsoever, including using diplomatic or financial pressure, to rein in the brutality of his allies in the Pakistani junta.

Trying to define Nixon and Kissinger out of the interventionist camp, Salam describes them as "too taken with treating the world as a chessboard." But their amoral gamesmanship in Pakistan was itself the result of the great moralistic military struggle against Soviet Communism. The Bengalis were never the point. War is a chain of events and decisions, ever more removed from the original plan or purpose (thus our campaign to punish the perpetrators of 9/11 sent us to Afghanistan, because the Taliban was sheltering bin Laden, and the Afghanistan war effort required us to cooperate with the Pakistanis, who eventually ended up sheltering bin Laden themselves).

Or rather, that's what actual war is. Salam is not much interested in that. Here the neoconservative spirit reveals itself. What he supports is good war, waged by good people for good reasons, to achieve good ends. That's great. I suppose I support clean nuclear energy, myself—energy from nuclear power plants that never have accidents and which dispose of their radioactive waste in a safe and sustainable manner.

A neoconservative energy policy, though, would argue that Fukushima and Chernobyl are not relevant to discussing the merits of nuclear power. What do those catastrophes have to do with the question of whether a well-run nuclear plant would be a good idea? War is humanitarianism in action, and the failures of the previous crusade should have no bearing on the next one. All that is necessary for the defeat of evil is for good men to do something. Anything. Good things.

Salam's public service, here, is in the incoherence and ridiculousness of his argument: These people have no idea what they're talking about. Never listen to them again.

[Image by Jim Cooke; graph by Reuben Fischer-Baum]

The Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden want $11 million from Uncle Sam for a state-of-the art workout center. Which isn't as much as it sounds like, really, I mean, it's not like they're a Texas high school football team or something.

The Atlanta Braves, America's team, set America's flag on fire in their home opener yesterday.

You know what America has too much of? Godless socialist hippie brainwashing of our youth, who are the future. You know what America needs? Some Marine Todds to crack hippie skulls. You know who Aaron Miller is? He's the evolution-hatin' Marine Todd our Congress needs!

Mother Jones' Tim Murphy notes that Miller, an (Army, not Marine) Iraq vet who's running for Congress in Minnesota, wants to put it to the atheistic hordes of ACLU college professors and grade-school goons who cram America's fair gullet up to the uvula with talk of men being monkeys' uncles!

Miller recently "explained that he was running for office in part to ensure that his daughter won't have to learn about evolution at her local public school," Murphy notes, citing a Mankato Free Press report on Miller's comments:

He also called for more religious freedoms. He repeated his story about his daughter returning home from school because evolution was being taught in her class. He said the teacher admitted to not believing in the scientific theory to his daughter but told her that the government forced him to teach the lesson.

"We should decide what is taught in our schools, not Washington D.C.," Miller said.

Miller has declined to provide any more information to verify his story.

Aaron Miller/Marine Todd has no time for your story verification! Because he's too busy racking up verified kills—of jihadis, sure, but mostly of communist khans who want to deflower his daughter's virgin ears with all that Darwinist claptrap.

[Photo credit: Miller for Congress; h/t Ben Dreyfuss]

A dentist who owns one of John Lennon's teeth is looking forward to the day when human cloning becomes sufficiently advanced that he can create a baby version of the late Beatle and raise the mini-rockstar as his own child.

Michael Zuk, of Alberta, Canada, paid $33,000 for the tooth when it was auctioned by Lennon's housekeeper two years ago.

"My goal is to own John Lennon's DNA," he told the U.K.'s Channel 4, adding that he believes exclusive control of the Beatle's genome is worth "millions."

As for the legal implications of "owning" a cloned individual, Zuk is confident he can navigate them by forum-shopping for a country where regulations are loose.

"Depends where you do these things. If it can't be done in one country you can do these things in another," he said.

Once he has his baby Clone Lennon, Zuk plans to put that whole "nature versus nurture" debate to rest by signing Lil John up for guitar lessons to see if he can become a famous musician, just like the man who involuntarily provided his genetic material.

The dentist has some interesting ideas about how to raise a rockstar, though.

"He would still be his exact duplicate but you know, hopefully keep him away from drugs and cigarettes, that kind of thing," Zuk said.

That's exactly the kind of clean living that brought us albums like Rubber Soul and Magical Mystery Tour.

[Photo: Channel 4]

An actress whose credits include Saw 3D: The Final Chapter and The Sad Guy is being sued by a Cinemax-affiliated production company for allegedly breaching a contractual "nudity rider." Since your sex drive was wondering, the dispute is related to an episode of the softcore series Femme Fatales.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the ordeal began with a lawsuit filed by the actress herself two years ago. Anne Greene decided to sue Cinemax, HBO (which owns Cinemax), Time Warner (which owns HBO), and True Crime LLC (the production company directly responsible for what we're sure is a critically admired, compelling show) for sexual harassment and a dangerous work environment. Greene claims she was bullied into performing nude in an episode of the show, titled "Jailbreak," in which she played the lead role. She claims she never would have taken the part if she'd known it was "soft-core porn."

Not so, says True Crime's counter-complaint, filed just two months before Greene's court date. The company claims she took the role after having been sent a preview reel and casting breakdowns calling for actresses comfortable with varying degrees of nudity. She also allegedly signed a "nudity rider" to an employment contract after she took the part.

The company also claims that it accommodated her wishes to the extent that it could. The suit claims that despite having been sent several versions of a script in advance, Greene said she was not comfortable with an oral sex scene. The scene was accordingly revised, and True Crime claims it did not "attempt to convince, persuade or coerce Greene to perform any scenes against her will or to which she expressed objection or discomfort." Problems continued after Greene objected to being filmed completely topless. It was eventually sorted out, but Greene's objections, the complaint says, caused "substantial delay and disruption" in the production of the show. True Crime wants $85,000.

Filming resumed after producers magnanimously allowed Greene to wear pasties during her topless scene. Why magnanimous? Because apparently covering an actress's nipples with stickers actually isn't "compliant with HBO's policy prohibiting the use of 'Pasties' in sex scenes."

That's right. HBO won't allow pasties. Game of Thrones makes so much more sense now.

[Image via Shutterstock]

From time to time we publish letters from death row inmates. Today, Texas death row inmate Travis Runnels writes to us with a remembrance of his friend and fellow inmate, Ray Jasper, who was executed by the state of Texas.

Unlike most of our letters from death row inmates, we did not solicit this one. Travis Runnels wrote of us of his own volition to share his memories of Ray Jasper. Runnels was sentenced to death in 2005 after pleading guilty to the 2003 killing of Stanley Wiley, who was a supervisor at the Texas prison where Runnels was serving a 70-year sentence for aggravated robbery. His letter is below.

Dear Mr. Nolan,

This letter I send to you is in response to the letter from Ray Jasper. A friend of mine knew me and Ray-Ray were associates so she downloaded the letter and mailed it to me. Now that his state sanctioned murder has been carried out I feel its my duty to expound upon his letter due to the extraordinary person he was. Don't get me wrong he had flaws just as every other person does, but he consciously applied himself to not let his flaws nor his incarceration define who he was or how he look at what he was capable of accomplishing.

The first time I met him and we had a conversation I was impressed with his speech and his ability to articulate. At first I was a bit skeptical because I've met many slick talkers who don't actively apply to their own life or actions the information they are sharing. As the days went by and he started sharing books with me to read on self help, money management, investments, how to run a business and books on self reflection. Then he explained to me all the books he reads are directing him towards his goals and a more productive mind state. At that point that's when I understood he knows what he wants out of himself and life and he's doing what's necessary to reach that point. I admired his strength not to be tempted by action and thriller best seller novels because these I enjoyed reading since it helped me cope with the isolation. But I took the time to study the books he sent me and my education expanded and my growth progressed.

You could ask guards or prisoners about Ray-Ray and they will all say he was quiet and didn't talk to everybody or a lot of people. This he explained to me one day. The people you interact/ socialize with or either pushing you towards your goals or away from them. So frivolous socializing about nonsense or negativity was time wasted for our situation with the possibility of execution looming. The state did not execute a man named Ray Jasper, they killed a man who had the potential to impact lives. The world lost an asset. I pray his daughter can carry on in honor of her father who lead not by words but his actions despite all the negativity surrounding him.

Thank you for your time Mr. Nolan and I hope my thoughts can give your readers more insight on who Ray-Ray was, since thats what we called him.

Sincerely,

Travis Runnels 999505

Previously

All of our "Letters From Death Row" can be found here.

[Photo via Getty]

Attendees at the 2014 Social Media Marketing World convention—that's a real thing!—were treated to a rousing song called "Let's Get Social," about getting social. Tickets to the event cost $1,300, and literally everyone who sat through this is now dead.

If you're ever questioning your career choice, remember that you never had to sing this, or listen to it in person:

We're searching for the story
That'll bring us instant fame
So we shoot our "viral video"
And we post it to the Gram

We're looking for the secret
Of Facebook's Holy Grail
We try to keep from paying
That leads to hashtag #fail

(Repeat pre-chorus and chorus then to bridge)

This is proof we need a ban on tech conferences implemented at the federal level.

[h/t Ed Zitron]

Comic Sans, the most reviled font in the world, has now inspired two improved versions, meaning two fonts that replace culture-shaking absurd hideousness with run-of-the-mill unattractiveness.

I can't think of a better way to recommend Jeffrey Schwarz's 2013 documentary I Am Divine, out on DVD this week, than by sharing the clip above. It draws a picture of what it was like for Harris Glenn Milstead, who'd go on to become the John Waters muse and drag icon known as Divine, to be gay in the '60s. It's affectionate, it's snappily paced, it's brimming with Baltimore-bred weirdos (including Diana Evans, whom Divine dated for about six years starting in high school, and seems like the least weird out of all the talking heads). All it's missing is commentary from Divine himself, which is something the movie has no shortage of, given the big archive of press appearances Divine left behind when he died in 1988.

My favorite quote in the clip above comes from Waters: "It was not like today, where everybody was out and there was a gay scene. There was, but it was illegal to be gay. It was kinda more fun then." I love Waters' irreverent commentary on gay culture, which refuses to conform to increasingly sensitive sensibilities. (Also see this quote regarding John Travolta in Waters' 2010 book Role Models: "'Here's how I feel: even if Scientologists say that they can make you straight if you're gay, so what? If someone's that miserable being gay, I don't want 'em. They'll just make bad boyfriends. Let Scientology have them!'')

That kind of irreverence was key to Divine's persona, which was a sort of satire on the Baltimore drag scene that Divine quickly grew tired of after seeing how seriously it was being taken by his fellow adopters. Waters says he encouraged Divine's unconventional and consciously unflattering aesthetic decisions "because he was making fun of drag." It would be decades before drag could even approach being taken seriously as an art form, and yet Divine and Waters were already tearing it down and stomping on it.

"He could never pass as normal," says Waters of Divine, and so Divine turned what many people would consider a weakness, even today (for gays, perhaps more than ever), into an asset. Divine's persona, on screen and onstage, could be howlingly aggressive. He had a lot of pain in his past — he was brutally bullied in school, his parents rejected him for being gay. Divine's art, giving a full-bodied performance no matter the medium (stage, screen, music), was in part his way of making productive use of his pent-up rage. That's a conventional story for a lot of people who've been shit on for being who they are, but Divine's way of coping was all his own. There was never anything like him and there hasn't been since.

There, too, was something conventional in the attention-baiting that Waters and Divine engaged in. The motivation behind their antics, as reflected on in I Am Divine, feels modern and base, and yet someone who's willing to eat dog shit before our very eyes possesses an audacity that today's young narcissists couldn't even dream of. Apparently, to coerce Divine into the shit-eating that would go on to define not just the movie in whose last scene it appears (Pink Flamingos), but also Divine's career in general, Waters leveled with him: "Listen, do you want to be famous?" Divine did, and so he ate the shit.

Condensing a varied life and career into 90 minutes is a feat unto itself, and yet I Am Divine is vivid and specific through the anecdotes shared by Divine's friends and peers. Taking part in a Cockettes show, Divine scandalized the hippies of San Francisco by telling an audience full of them, "I eat white sugar." As Sue Lowe, who appears in the clip above, helpfully points out regarding their clique: "We were freaks, we weren't hippies. Freaks drank, ate meat and did…mmm, y'know…drugs." Divine was a wake-and-bake pot-smoker, someone who was high morning to night, as was a pre-sober RuPaul, who first smoked weed at 11. That's a coincidence, but a telling one, given both drag performers' difficult pasts and the flat-out absurdity they would frequently tap into through their art (Ru's faces in the "Supermodel (You Better Work)" video alone are all the commentary you need on how weed fueled his expression).

I Am Divine was released last year to almost unanimously positive reviews, with the rare voice of dissent referring to it as "overly reverential." It's true that this movie is a love letter that only makes Divine seem like someone that everyone wanted to be around. Some people really are just that appealing, though, and that an overweight drag queen could attain such a status in the '70s and '80s is nothing short of a triumph worth remembering.

Welcome back to Midweek Madness. Every Wednesday, Callie Beusman heads to the newsstand to purchase the new issues of In Touch, Life & Style, Ok!, Us and Star, so that together we may dig into moist, rich celebrity tabloid dirt. This week: Tom Cruise is wearing his midlife crisis on his face; Kim Kardashian spent $23K on "fat-blasting"; and Angelina and Brad give their kids free reign. How bizarre. How bizarre, how bizarre.

Ok!

DIETS THAT WORK

Nothing shocking here. Kim Kardashian kwit karbs. Atkins for the win. Jessica Simpson is on Weight Watchers, which you knew. Britney Spears makes "smart choices," which is shorthand for more proteins and smoothies. Melissa Joan Hart does Nutrisystem, Khloe Kardashian is a kalorie kutter, and Miranda Lambert is doing "good, clean livin." Whoop de fucking doo. Also inside: Lindsay Lohan is desperate for money and Spongebob gets better ratings than her show. Finally: Katie Holmes and Jason Segel are dating and "she thinks he is wonderful." Yawn.

Grade: F (light/air diet)

Us

WEDDING DIET

Lots of celebrities are on wedding diets, and since you're DYING to hear about their eating and exercise regimens, here you are: Lauren Conrad eats kale and goes hiking; Jessica Simpson walks six miles a day; Kim Kardashian does 100 morning squats. Riveting stuff. In other news, the Royal Family traveled to New Zealand with an 11-person entourage that included Kate's Royal Hairdresser (duh). The baby got testy because he is a baby who was made to go on airplanes. In other news, Courteney Cox and the guy from Snow Patrol moved in together and are "enjoying being in love." That's nice! Next: Rob Kardashian is in a "really dark place," says a source — last week, he cryptically tweeted "No one will ever understand how much it hurts." Yesterday he wrote "Life of Pi is on :)" so maybe he's feeling better? Aaaaand nothing else remotely of note is contained in this magazine pages.

Grade: F (tapeworm diet)

In Touch

3 BABIES ON THE WAY!

Kourtney Kardashian, Snooki and Jennifer Aniston are all pregnant, says In Touch. THE 3 WOMBSKETEERS. The only one who has officially announced her pregnancy is Snooki, who will give birth about a month before her wedding next year.InTouch frets about her ability to lose the baby weight in time because of course it does. Kourtney Kardashian has been carrying around large purses, wearing big coats, and one time she ate a lot of churros, which is basically a statement from her rep. And Jennifer Aniston allegedly used IVF to get pregnant — but the cover photo of her "first bump pic!" is from the August 2013 premiere of "We're The Millers" and it has been used as proof of her burgeoning pregnancy for literally six months. So. Giant grain of salt. In other news, Kate Gosselin is still around and on the Celebrity Apprentice, which is also mysteriously still around. She might be in a secret relationship with her married body guard. Yawn. Elsewhere in the magazine, French Montana is Khloe Kardashian's "dangerous new romance" because he comes from a "troubled background" and also raps about coke. Ok, grandma, whatever.

Grade: D- (cabbage soup diet)

Life & Style

FORCED TO SPILL JUSTIN'S SECRETS

Selena Gomez has been subpoenaed to testify in Justin Bieber's three civil cases and two criminal cases (which is a really impressive resume for America's Next Top Menace; good work, Biebs). Anyway, this apparently amounts to her "being forced to betray the love of her life," and there's a chance she'll be asked about his wild behavior, his Sizzurp use, and his cheating. Bieber is truly the Bad Seed. Moving on: Kim Kardashian spent $23,000 on fat-blasting, which is apparently a real medical procedure, but still wants to lose 10 additional pounds before her wedding. Wedding diets. So newsworthy. In other news, the Jennifer Aniston-Justin Theroux impending breakup rumor drags on. He let a woman touch his butt at a bar, which is a harbinger of end times for sure. Elsewhere in the magazine, Miley Cyrus has once again "hit a new low" — for being too sad about her dog dying. She sent out a series of extremely depressed tweets, which Life & Style had a psychotherapist analyze; they also engage in some analysis of their own: "She adopted Floyd [the dog] in 2011, when she and Liam [Hemsworth] were deeply in love and planning their future. The... pooch was Miley's last connection to those happier times." OR MAYBE SHE JUST MISSES HER DOG. Finally, Shailene Woodley is the new Jennifer Lawrence, because we as a society can only have one likable female celebrity at a time and they must all be modeled after a single prototype. "Both stars are down-to-earth, jeans-and-tee-loving girls," notes the mag. "Shailene... makes her own toothpaste out of clay." ♫ That's So J-Law ♪

Grade: D- ("cleanse")

Star

INSIDE THEIR BIZARRE WORLD

What's actually "bizarre" is this story trying to convince you that Angelina and Brad are bizarre. The copy promises to let you inside their "unique, mysterious world" in which Angie is "a bitch and supervindictive" and Brad is a "huge stoner." The tale morphs into a scolding of their "unorthodox lifestyle" and the "free reign they give their six children"; apparently, according to a source, there are empty candy wrappers, piles of toys and clothes in their house "and a housekeeper is expected to clean it all up." How bizarre? There's a cute story about how Brad once helped the kids "zombieproof" their French chateau by building a bunker — and lots of info about the three full-time tutors and the six "principal" nannies and the two night nannies and the team of bodyguards and how much all they make; then it gets into all the different languages spoken in the house and so on. The only truly "bizarre" part is that Angelina does scream therapy. Allegedly. According to an "insider": "She runs a bath and screams under the water, drives to the ocean and screams or just sticks her head in a sink full of water. It seems to be doing her a lot of good." Okay! Also inside: The story about how Giuliana Rancic is "stick thin" claims that she "looks mantis-like" but does not mention that she is a cancer survivor. Rob Kardashian is in a wellness center, "dealing with his depression," according to a friend. Best of luck to him. Naya RIvera's wedding to Big Sean is off because he cheated. Naomi Campbell and Michael Fassbender are dating, which the mag calls a "new power couple alert." Tom Cruise is maybe having a midlife crisis because his "face looks like a puffy pillow." A doctor who has never treated him says "He may have had his cheeks injected with fat from his love handles" or "his face could've been stung by bees." Ouch. But hey, at least they're treating a man the way they usually treat women? Equality? (Sobs.) (Fig. 1) Finally, a piece about Khloe Kardashian's "bad news boyfriend" French Montana details his multiple arrests and domestic violence charges. Noted.

Grade: D (baby food diet)

Addendum

Fig. 1, from Star

George W. Bush got all of his painting inspiration from Google images. But you have to admit the fella's got a lot more talent and heart than George Zimmerman.

There is a new Viral Wedding Video out there, from a San Francisco couple named Bambo and Janice, who decided to announce the date of their wedding (Saturday July, 12!) with a "trailer" that involves a helicopter and Great Gatsby quotes. There is absolutely no reason to do this.

If your wedding is fun people will remember it, or maybe they won't because they've been to dozens of weddings and sometimes they bleed together. But really, it doesn't matter: the wedding is your wedding to remember, which you will even if you don't produce a video in which you fly a helicopter or name your wedding "Boss Wedding."

What you don't want—even in a modern fantasy land like San Francisco—is to be known as the couple who thinks so highly of themselves that their mundane declaration of eternal love and devotion can only be understood in the context of a blockbuster film. Kanye West—who rented out a baseball stadium and hired a choir to play Lana Del Rey for Kim Kardashian—could barely get away with this, and you, Bambo and Janice, are no Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

May people never stop saying things wrong on television. It's way too much fun.

[via NBC Los Angeles' News at Noon; H/T: Chris Rundgren]