Twitter's stock is currently plummeting down almost 17 percent, but it could have been even worse. The lockup period expired yesterday, prompting fears of a crash should employees and investors decide to sell their stock. But former Twitter employees complained earlier today that they were blocked from cashing out.

Former Twitter engineer Sara Haider, Chad Woodford, Twitter's former product and business counsel, Mischa Nachtigal, who used to work on media and content partnerships, former engineering manager Mark McBride, and others appear to have chimed in on a private Facebook thread about the mismanaged lockup period. I've reached out to Haider and others on the thread to confirm that their statements haven't been doctored.

I also asked Twitter to verify the details and whether the issues have been resolved. An anonymous reader in Kinja, who directed us to the Facebook thread said "basically no employees have been able to sell," except executives. According to the thread, a Schwab representative said Twitter placed a hold on exercising options and Schwab did not expect the hold to be lifted until this afternoon.

Twitter's former head of communications Sean Garrett wrote that Twitter sent out an email after the market opened saying:

"There was a glitch in the exercise functionality with Schwab, but it has been turned on."

Haider, who now works at Secret, did not take the news well:

"a glitch? a fucking glitch. wow, just wow."

Extreme frustration with the process and the company is evident throughout the conversation. Nachtigal posted the following comment:

"Meanwhile, VPs and the GC are selling shares, while we have to wait. Serenity now!"

McBride wrote:

"The company infamous for infrastructure headaches experiences the same with employee lockup."

Twitter's CEO, cofounders, and investors may be holding onto their shares, but it doesn't appear ex-employees have has much faith in the company.

If you are a current or former employee of Twitter, please feel free to contact the author of this post: nitasha@gawker.com.

Last week's revelation that Kanye West went zip-lining and hated it was a cathartic moment for the internet, and a humanizing moment for the rapper with the world's most titanic ego. What if Ye were one us? Just a slob like one of us?

As much as we'd like to go on believing, a new photo has emerged that shows the millionaire rapper thoroughly enjoying his life as a millionaire rapper. In fact, he may actually be Pharrell-level happy. Hell, the man we thought we knew as Sad Kanye might have just been bummed out that his zip-lining adventure was over.

Or he could have been irritated that his posh Mexican vacation was cursed with the presence of Girls Gone Wild founder (and Douche of the Previous Decade) Joe Francis. Who can truly say? It's hard for mere plebes to discern what goes on in the mind of a god.

Regardless, R.I.P. Sad Kanye (2014-2014). Your time with us was precious and fleeting.

[H/T: @alivingiano, Photos: Casa Aramara]

Here today we have a flawless specimen of Valley doublespeak: Dalton Caldwell, the founder and CEO of an inscrutable company called App.net, wrote up a "state of the union" for his company. Money is good! But all full-time positions are eliminated. What?

It's very hard to reconcile these two paragraphs:

The good news is that the renewal rate was high enough for App.net to be profitable and self-sustaining on a forward basis. Operational and hosting costs are sufficiently covered by revenue for us to feel confident in the continued viability of the service. No one should notice any change in the way the App.net API/service operates. To repeat, App.net will continue to operate normally on an indefinite basis.

The bad news is that the renewal rate was not high enough for us to have sufficient budget for full-time employees. After carefully considering a few different options, we are making the difficult decision to no longer employ any salaried employees, including founders. Dalton and Bryan will continue to be responsible for the operation of App.net, but no longer as employees.

So, the company is "profitable" and "self-sustaining," but lacks the revenue to employ anyone on a full-time basis. Even the two guys who started the company are dropping out. I'm waiting to hear back from Dalton as to what exactly this might mean, but it seems like a really phenomenal contortionist act. Having to downgrade everyone to contract work seems very obviously the behavior of a company that cannot sustain itself.

Next year's memo: our company is doing great, but unfortunately we had to shut down our website and mail this memo to you from a pup tent on Big Sur.

Photo: Wikipedia

Months after the infamous Swiss cheese man terrified city residents, Philadelphia has a new public masturbator on the loose.

Friday afternoon, a Temple Ph.D student was riding a SEPTA bus when the man next to her pulled down his pants and allegedly started to masturbate. The woman asked the man to stop; when he didn't, she began filming him with her phone's camera.

"You know this is on video, right?" the woman asked in the video, which was obtained by NBC Philadelphia. "You really wanna do that? I have it on my phone."

"Are you crazy? Do you see how many people are on this bus? Do you see a child behind you? You are disgusting."

Eventually, the man—who seemed completely shocked by her angry reaction—responded.

"Are you serious right now?" he said. "I'm standing here the whole time. Why wouldn't you just say something?"

"Does someone need to tell you not to touch yourself in public on a bus?" the woman said.

Soon, others confronted the man, and he left the bus. Both the woman and the bus driver later called 911.

Police told NBC Philadelphia they know the suspect's identity but are waiting for a warrant to be approved before making an arrest.

"45 Percent Of Men Orgasm In Under Two Minutes And I'm Totally OK With That. I don't want some dude slamming his junk inside of me for hours." XOJane.com's relationship advice remains indispensable.

Last Friday in the Guardian, the novelist Will Self declared the novel dead, inert, lifeless, kaput. Self himself (whoa) tries to hedge his bold headline, but it still leaves him sounding like a much more verbose Jonathan Franzen. Also: he's wrong.

Self said he was not writing the obituary of "prose fiction" altogether. He admitted that "the kidult boywizardsroman and the soft sadomasochistic porn fantasy" were doing just fine. What he is worried about is the literary novel. He expresses sorrow at the loss of the "general acknowledgement" that:

[T]he novel was the true Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.

Ah, yes. Last night I dreamed I went to Wagnerian Manderley, too. How fondly we all remember the hours we bright young things whiled away around the fire, discussing Gesamtkunstwerks instead of that dreadful Gillian Flynn person. Back then I had not yet worn the waling on my corduroy smoking jacket down to the nub. Etcetera, etcetera.

This stuff is easy to make fun of because in his efforts to be narrow and precise Self uses so many words that he comes off as an insufferable prig. The problem is not so much the "difficulty" of his language as it is that his narrator's tone sounds off. For example: there is an element of judgment of the reading habits of other people in such arguments, no matter how hard you try to take it out. And a man who uses terms like "kidult boywizardsroman" isn't trying very hard, at all.

It's not just the potential for "snobbery" that bugs, though. It's the fact that essays like these always seem to present feeling "out of touch" as some new and novel condition afflicting only the men of today. (I use the term "men" advisedly.) Besides nostalgia, Self also cloaks his argument in observations about the pace of social media and its interruption of the "codex" of a book to suggest that what is dying is the serious or difficult novel. Which would be more convincing if he did not have so many ancestors in his argument.

Do a little search, and lo and behild, the "death of the novel" has been fertile soil over the years! See, for example, from the New York Times in 1925:

There we have someone complaining in a lecture that novels in those days were written "not so much with a pen as with a bicycle pump," meaning the novels were too airy, not "serious."

There was also this, from the Los Angeles Times, in 1968:

(Goddamned Vidal.)

Or this, from the Observer on Sunday, in 1954:

Or even this, an announcement of the death of the "sex novel" from the Chicago Tribune, in 1889:

There were always skeptics, too, as in this piece from the Los Angeles Times, in 1970:

Conclusion from this non-comprehensice survey: the novel has pretty much always been clinging to a kind of life support.

This is pretty clear to most people who aren't literary writers given that they don't read literary novels. And it's also pretty clear to a lot of literary writers, who are spending their days eking out an existence on meager advances, adjunct salaries, and temp jobs, that what they do is marginal. The difference between those people and Will Self, a lot of the time, is that they do not expect that what is important and meaningful for them personally must be important and meaningful for everyone.

Do not get me wrong. I believe in novels. One reason I will always and forever refuse to accept arguments like Self's is that they provoke an emotional reaction in me. The end of novels would be for me something like the end of trees. And yeah, I read the "serious, literary" kind. But my admiration for them does not depend on their standing astride some kind of Culture Mountain. I just happen to like to read.

[Image via Shutterstock.]

The Sultan Of Brunei is often called the "World's Biggest Car Collector," because, namely, he has a lot of cars. But Jay Leno hates him. And you should, too.

Jay showed up with his wife, Mavis, to a rally yesterday at the Beverly Hills Hotel, to protest a series of laws recently instituted by the Sultan.

The hotel is owned by the country's investment fund, which is directly controlled by the family of the ruling monarch.

The Sultan of Brunei, also known by his non-titular name, Hassanal Bolkiah, is the ruling monarch and absolute dictator of the country that goes along with his title.

Longtime readers of Jalopnik should probably know what an atrocious monster the Sultan is already, as he serves not so much as a collector of fine automobiles, as a hoarder.

A collector curates, a hoarder piles.

The Sultan's car collection has sat in various states of rot for years, especially after the investment firm belonging to his brother, Prince Jefri, collapsed in the late 1990s.

While he has tried to sell of some of the cars, he hasn't sold off nearly enough. So like a collector of rare books who's run out of a toilet paper, he's resorted to letting the remnants of his stockpile tarnish.

If you've never thought about Brunei for more than five seconds, and, let's be honest, most people in the world wouldn't, it's a tiny little country in Southeast Asia, snuggled by Malaysia. On a small scale, it looks like this:

On a broader scale, it looks like this:

In case you can't tell, it is actually smaller than Delaware.

And if you've never been to Delaware, which is understandable, because there's not a whole lot there besides credit card companies, it is really, really small.

But more than 400,000 people live there, and while the little country of Brunei was once famous as a lavish tropical nation of free healthcare, free education, and generous housing subsidies, all fueled by vast oil reserves, it is becoming notorious for another reason.

Last week, the Sultan enacted sweeping Sharia laws with incredibly devastating punishments for even minor infractions. Even as the Sultan has portrayed himself as a friend of the West for decades, and has participated in all the decadent "pleasures" his own laws condemn.

Petty crimes are now punishable by flogging, even amputation. Capital "crimes," such as homosexuality, adultery, and apostasy, are punishable by stoning.

Blasphemy and pregnancy outside of marriage are illegal. The country's Christian minority has found that baptisms are illegal.

But while most of the rest of the world has already settled on the fact that the death penalty itself is pretty barbaric, and the United States is bickering about whether or not lethal injection is humane, it is out of the question that the practice of stoning is outdated at best, and a horrific transgression against humanity at worst.

And while Brunei hasn't actually executed anyone since 1957, we can't be exactly sure how they would carry it out. But by adding it, along with a bunch of other horrible laws, to their books, they are opening up the door for it to occur. So while we don't know how stoning will look over there, we do know how it is carried out in other countries.

Take Iran, for example, which has actually put a moratorium on stoning people, but which still proscribes a methodology, via Slate:

First, you get buried. Iran's Islamic Penal Code states that men convicted of adultery are to be buried in the ground up to their waists; women, up to their chests. If the conviction is based on the prisoner's confession, the law says, the presiding judge casts the first stone. If the conviction is based on witness testimony, the witnesses throw the first stones, then the judge, then everyone else—generally other court officials and security forces. Stones must be of medium size, according to the penal code: Not so big that one or two could kill the person, but not so small that you would call it a pebble. In other words, about the size of a tangerine. The whole process takes less than an hour.

The TL;DR version is that they bury you until you can't escape, and then a mob throws stones at your head until one finally kills you. It is very, very painful, and can be very, very bloody.

In Brunei, that's what you'll get for loving someone who just happens to not be the opposite gender.

The United Nations classifies stoning as torture. And women are much more likely than men to be victims of stoning.

So while you may think that the denizens of Brunei are lucky for dwelling in the presence of the Ferrari Mythos, just remember why a real car collector like Jay Leno is protesting.

The Sultan of Brunei is a horrible dictator.

Photos via Getty Images

A former Portland State University undergraduate has filed a $1 million lawsuit against her faculty mentor for sexual harassment over the professor's alleged obsession with the student's experiences as a BDSM model and sexual-abuse survivor.

The suit, which alleges some bizarre sexual situations in great detail, highlights a tension "between a faculty member's legitimate academic engagement with sexually tinged topics" and "sexual matters inappropriate to discuss with a student," according to the Portland Oregonian.

Whitney "Theda" Orlando was pursuing a degree in psych and French at PSU when she struck up a collegial relationship with Assistant Professor Marcia Klotz, taking Klotz's courses on Feminist Literature and Erotics of Power. They had similar research interests, and Orlando began to work with Klotz more closely.

In 2009 Orlando confided to Klotz that she used to model in bondage photographs, sometimes in the nude. Over the next three years, Orlando alleges in her lawsuit, Klotz used her position of power to pressure Orlando into providing pornographic images from her past work. A "state of sexual and romantic tension" arose between the two, according to the court papers.

Early on in their correspondence, Orlando also told Klotz that she'd been molested by a middle-school teacher and still felt some effects from the experience. Rather than take that as a cue to back off, the professor allegedly pressed Orlando for more intimate details and encouraged her to do research related to sexual abuse.

Things seemed to escalate. The lawsuit alleges that Orlando felt pressured into watching a documentary on porn with Klotz and Klotz's husband at their home, leading to an "increasingly romantic and sexualized" relationship that made Orlando ill at ease:

Klotz encouraged plaintiff to explore sexual and BDSN-related subjects with her, including discussing aspects of plaintiff's childhood sexual abuse. Klotz admitted to finding plaintiff's earlier sexual abuse erotic, and expressed an interest in replicating aspects of that abuse with plaintiff in a BDSM context.

To illustrate her erotic interest in her partners' sexual trauma, Klotz shared with plaintiff details of Klotz's sexual interactions with her submissive male partner that included reenactments of that male partner's childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his father. Plaintiff believed that Klotz was attempting to recruit plaintiff to participate in similar kinds of sexual encounters with Klotz.

The stress apparently took a serious toll on Orlando, who was eventually hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat. But when Orlando tried to shift to another research project with a different professor, Klotz accused her of shoddy work and plagiarism to their program coordinator—a potential career-ender.

Orlando, who is seeking damages from the university, left school and is finishing her degree elsewhere; Klotz now teaches at a university in Arizona. The last course Orlando took with Klotz, ironically, was an independent study section titled Privacy Rights.

[Photo credits: Portland State University]

Why won't the U.S. government let veterans smoke weed? Shit, VICE, that's a damn good question.

Last August, three months into John Oliver's turn as substitute host of The Daily Show, the British comedian was being being tabbed by Vulture as Stewart's obvious successor. But just three months after that, Oliver was gone to HBO, where he has now found something even better: his own show that is a much funnier version of the one he left.

It's only been two episodes, granted, but in that hour of television Oliver has proven himself to be an antidote to Stewart's current brand of humor. Perhaps more precisely, he is what Stewart himself used to be: an outsider who presented the absurdity of politics and the hypocrisy of powerful blowhards while guffawing along with the audience.

I don't watch the Daily Show much anymore, because it feels like a burden, both to consume and, seemingly, to produce. Stewart has a recurring trope called "Bullshit Mountain," which is what he calls Fox News whenever he does a segment about the network, which is often. Fox—and cable news generally, but mostly Fox—has long been The Daily Show's foil, but there was a time when Stewart wanted to make fun of Fox, instead of trying to beat it. But that was a while ago, before he started debating Bill O'Reilly in public and organizing rallies to counter Glenn Beck (remember him?). Instead of standing at a distance and laughing at "Bullshit Mountain," Stewart has spent years trying to climb atop it, and as such his show has taken on a sad Sisyphean quality, not in the least because Fox will certainly outlast him.

Stewart seems exasperated and angry now, fixated on culture wars—good media versus bad media, Democrats versus Republicans—that are ceasing to exist. Last year was a horrible one for cable news—all three major networks saw viewership declines, including Fox, whose primetime viewership in the 25-54 demographic dipped 30 percent. Millennials, more than any other generation, don't categorize themselves under the umbrellas of political parties. The entire worldview of The Daily Show is starting to become fossilized, a point made clear by Stephen Colbert, who is shedding his shtick as a conservative satirist in order to replace David Letterman.

With Last Week Tonight, Oliver has designed a show for viewers who still identify with the tone of The Daily Show's golden age but who have moved on from caring about Fox and Republicans. The show's first episode made a passing mention of Cliven Bundy, but only to joke about him doing an interview while cradling a dead calf. It critiqued mainstream media, but through the lens of India's upcoming presidential election, which, Oliver argues, has been poisoned by the country's television news networks modeling themselves after our own. The second episode spent 12 minutes talking about the death penalty, but presented cable news clips only to illustrate a larger point about America's infantile approach to discussing capital punishment at-large. That episode's second segment was about the Sultan of Brunei.

But even more than its scope, the appeal of Last Week Tonight is Oliver himself. He has picked up some of Stewart's mannerisms—namely hunching over his desk—but Oliver carries no ego. He affects the same surprise and chuckling resignation that he means to evoke in the viewer, helping to give his show the same undercurrent of camaraderie that Stewart's once had. As a result, the points made by Last Week Tonight shine through the jokes without smothering them, or you.

Though I once watched The Daily Show religiously, the lasting image I have of Jon Stewart is of him in some sort of permanent sneer. This bothers me not because Stewart's subjects deserve his humanity, but because, as Tom Junod once wrote, the sneer assumes his own importance. Oliver, once considered a lock to slip into Stewart's seat permanently, instead chose to shuffle off to 11 p.m. on Sunday nights on a premium cable network, a place where assumed importance could never work even if he wanted it to.

A former combat Marine says he shouldn't be languishing in a Tijuana jail for crossing the Mexican border with three guns, because it was all a mistake: He was heading for a night out with his buddies in California, missed the last highway exit, and ended up Mexico-bound.

Via Stars and Stripes:

Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, 25, said he was headed to dinner in San Ysidro on March 31 when he mistakenly wound up at a border crossing point in Tijuana, U-T San Diego reported Sunday.

"I was going to call them after I drove off the exit, but I never got off the exit, I blew right past it," he told the newspaper in an interview from jail. "I wasn't paying attention, thinking I had way farther to go. I ended up in Mexico with no way to turn around."

Agents at the border found three guns in the vehicle, which he'd just driven from Florida to California to make a "new start," he said. The four-year Marine vet—who served twice in Afghanistan, where the photo above was taken—is being held without bail and faces up to 21 years in a Mexican prison.

U.S. officials are trying to get him released, but Tahmooressi might not be able to wait, judging from this detail:

After he was jailed, Tahmooressi tried to escape by climbing over a gate and heading up onto a roof, and then onto another one. He gave up when a guard opened fire, but the incident earned him the nickname "Spider-Man."

Semper fi, Spider-Man. Semper fi.

[Photo credit: DOD]

Consider the humble cereal bowl. It holds food, which is useful. But then it becomes dirty, and you have to wash it, a chore that steals away precious seconds of your very busy day. So fuck it. Skip the bowl. Just combine the milk and cereal in your mouth and...

Never mind.

Incidentally, this stunt was made popular on Vine last year. We must learn from past milksplosions, or we're doomed to repeat them.

[H/T Uproxx]

An Archbishop gave the first real explanation of what the Vatican does with priests who are accused of raping or molesting children during a UN committee hearing on torture today.

Archbishop Tomasi, the Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, provided the committee with the outcomes of 3,400 rape and molestation cases reported to the Vatican in the last decade.

Of those 3,400 reports, 848 priests were defrocked and the remaining 2,572 were sanctioned to lesser penalties. Tomasi apparently stressed that the sanctioned priests were "put in a place where he doesn't have any contact with the children."

Apparently the lesser sanctions are commonly given to older priests, who tended to have committed the abusive acts decades ago.

The reports appear to spike around years with big priest sex scandals, and have hovered around an average of 400 reports a year since 2010. Because the data provided today only covers the Holy See and not local tribunals, the AP notes that the total number is likely much higher.

Legal experts say Tomasi, who appeared to implicitly agree with the proposition that sex abuse could be considered a form of torture, may have opened the door to some major legal ramifications for the Church. Because many countries consider torture outside the statute of limitations, victims might be able to circumvent expired abuse claims by framing them as a torture issue.

[image via Getty]

Previously: Everybody agreed that Zane was the worst drug lord, which is quite an accomplishment if you think about it. Nick Ford really wanted Zane dead, and was willing to put the screws to Norma to get it done. Eventually he kidnapped Norman, which was Shakespearian in its irony considering neither Nick nor Norman knew that Sherriff Romero had evidence that Norman (or some part of him) had definitely had sex with and probably killed Nick's daughter Blaire in last year's finale. So now Norma Bates has two problems! (Norma Bates actually has in excess of one thousand problems.)

While Norma was staging a one-woman Occupy White Pine Bay protest on her boyfriend George, whose cultural capital and general wealth were merely the thing she decided to freak out on him about – since the real reason is almost impossible to explain, but very easy to see from where we're standing – Romero was looking for Norman for several reasons, and Norman himself was chilling out in an old wooden box that was getting rained on, and slowly going a new kind of crazy.

Which is where we rejoin him at the top of the hour, no longer quoting his favorite speech from Meet John Doe but now just begging politely for somebody, anybody, to help. Over and over, in his sweet little voice.

This is my favorite speech from Meet John Doe. I can't say I have ever repeated it to myself in exactly the same circumstances as Norman Bates, because I have never been a drug-war hostage, but I have definitely said it to myself a few times when people started getting me down:

"...My friends, the meek can only inherit the earth when the John Does start loving their neighbors. You'd better start right now. Don't wait till the game is called on account of darkness. Wake up, John Doe — you're the hope of the world."

But when you think about how much people are continually trying to take away from Norman Bates, for no other reason than his mesmerizing innocence, maybe this is the most appropriate one of all:

"...If you can't lay your dirty fingers on a decent idea and twist it and squeeze it and stuff it into your own pockets, you slap it down. Like dogs! If you can't eat something, you bury it! Why, this is the one worthwhile thing that's come along... It may be the one thing capable of saving this cock-eyed world."

Romero spots Dylan running out into the road – as Bateses (and Massetts, and Calhouns) are prone to do – and pulls right over, where Dylan immediately confesses to murdering Nick Ford. They head back to the house to look for Norman, and Romero immediately finds Nick's bodyguard looting the house with Nick's smashed-up dead body still downstairs. A short pistol-whipping later, they've located and freed a barely conscious Norman Bates. Dylan hugs the shit out of him, just holds onto him for an unbelievable length of time, which as you can imagine brings the kid back from the brink almost entirely by itself.

It's funny how easy it is to see Romero and Dylan as a buddy-cop movie, despite them having barely dealt with each other in the past. I guess when you're the only two men on earth that Norma Bates doesn't automatically assume are sex cannibals, that bonds you. It's a lot of pressure!

But not as much pressure as what was going on inside that box he was in, which was a creepy sex memory of this one time Miss Watson gave him a blowjob and then he cut her throat while fucking her and grinning at himself/us in the mirror, and then stole her pearls most definitely as a sex-murder trophy. So that's another thing Norman has on his plate today, besides dehydration.

Norma arrives at the hospital at about Mach Ten, almost shoving Dylan through a wall to get to Norman, but the second she's at his bedside she gives Dylan a strongly worded warning that she loves him very much. The fact that she could be saying this solely because he just saved Norman flits across his face, and he bounces, which suits her just fine either way. Despite knowing that Norman needs his rest, after a long night of being abducted and put in a box in a field, Norma is driven to wake his ass up anyway.

Norman tries to explain his sex-murder of Miss Watson – and how it actually brings a lot of other mysteries into focus, such as what he is doing when he is blacked out and why Norma always acts so squirrely about it – but she just tells him to shut the fuck up and do some of her ignoring techniques that she regularly uses to survive her nightmarish hellscape of a life with such aplomb.

Back home, Norma can't even believe her own shitty lying as she tells Emma that Norman has the stomach flu, and that's why he, um, disappeared for 24 hours and is now covered in blood and bandages. I have had some stomach flu that made me feel like that, for sure, but Emma is already pissed at them for having secrets, so she just side-eyes them and heads back to the office.

Supporting Norman on the long walk up the hill, Norma explains how Emma is quitting on them because of always being left out of the show, and gives a very funny "what are you gonna do" twist to the very logical explanation of how no matter how much she likes and will miss Emma, this season has been way too intense to tell her about.

Then she heads to the grocery store for a run-in with Christine, who fucking hates her now, after her big flip-out on George. "You are a trainwreck," she spits – even Norma is like, "That's valid" – and then makes it very clear that she'll build that highway bypass with her own goddamned manicured hands if necessary. Man, I loved Christine but you knew – from the second Norma slept with George, if not sooner – that whole family was going to end up dead, or at the very least pissed as hell at Norma Bates.

Over dinner, Norma weirdly lies to Norman about sleeping with George. Which, I have enjoyed their creepy love-triangle about this, this season. Last season it wouldn't have made as much sense for them to be so openly jealous and vicious about sex, but once Shelby happened it only made sense that they'd circle their wagons and act twice as married as before. And now that we know them better, it's barely even gross: They're just doing Norma/n, really. What else are they gonna do, double-date? That would be ten times as fucked up. I can't even contemplate that.

Anyway, Norma says the word "semen" to her teenage son about fifty billion times over some pot roast, and then tries to blow off his sex murder by saying it was just sex and not murder. But the jig, it is up. Norman makes that most pitiful face of the faces he makes, about how he is now for sure a sex murderer, and there is a little relief at the bottom of it, as her hysterics – and then her creepy, willfully oblivious calm – confirm what he has wanted to know all season, which is that he does do things when he blacks out, and they are not great things to be doing.

He says he remembers it, not like a hallucination or a dream, but like you remember the taste of gingerbread at Christmas, no matter what time of year it is. Kid can't even sex murder somebody without coming off like a peaceful lake in a world of concrete. We have the benefit of seeing Norman, and seeing Mother, and knowing the difference: He doesn't have that, because he's not there when she is. So Norman can't be expected to love Norman anyway, the way we can.

(But. If he were to strike a bargain, say. If Mother were to take it on, formally. We know he'd never hurt a fly: But what if he never had to?)

Norma spends the night rocking – shudder – at his bedside, until the sun comes up. Has no idea he's already retrieved Bradley's gun, and plans on using it in the morning. Then she heads to the office, where she picks up a variable number of tickets to Montreal and then agrees to present Norman for a polygraph test when Alex Romero drops by. She's so happy to see him, until he reminds her that he is there because her son's semen was found inside a dead child molester, and the way justice works in White Pine Bay is, you can't just be putting the wrong random dudes in jail. Set them on fire, hang them in the streets, blow their heads off mid-lap dance, sure, but that would just be too much. A bridge too far.

Up the hill, Norman is making a list of heartbreaking tasks to do before he commits suicide: Finish taxidermying a sparrow for Norma, so she can be free. Eat apple pie for the last time. Find places for all his other dead things. Make room in the family for Emma. Spend one last happy night with Norma. Dylan's not on the list, but this is the one time that wouldn't hurt my feelings. My feelings are already hurt.

Emma agrees to bring a book up the hill for Norman, dragging her tank like she does, and then he sits her down with – I knew it the second he produced it – their old copy of Blake's poetry. "Tyger, Tyger." The whole room is full of dead creatures, watching over him; he has a plan.

Emma sitting on the bed, he shuts the door and softly tells her about Caleb Calhoun, and Dylan Massett; how everything started. It's not his secret to tell, exactly, but it does explain why Emma's feelings weren't matching up with the facts – and let's be honest, without that part of the story Norman wouldn't even exist. Emma breaks down, of course, in sadness for both Dylan and Norma, and that's when he strikes: "My mother loves you, Emma. She loves having you here." Check. Emma gets the mom she needs, Norma gets the daughter she's always deserved. They're both going to die young and beautiful, but only one of them knows it.

For a moment you think Jodi is selling Dylan out to her brother Zane, using the same language as when she was quasi-manipulating Dylan to kill Nick and/or Zane in the first place, but then – whew! – the camera pulls out to reveal that Dylan and Romero are in on it, and Zane is going down one way or the other. Hope it's in the face, whatever happens. Right in the smacker.

Man, I just love Jodi. The Pamely Isley of White Pine Bay. I hope she sticks around for a long time, just being a peaceful beautiful drug lord earth-goddess, sharing fun calm times with Dylan and romping around with her pets and botany hobbies. I'm sure it'll be fine, this show always keeps its guest stars around forever and ever. Had me worried there for a minute!

Okay, where are we on Norman's Pre-Suicide To-Do List? Oh, I see everything has been checked off except for "Mother." At least he's been productive today. They do some serene dishes and discuss the delicious apple pie he will never eat again after he kills himself, and she talks dreamily about how she loves to cook for him, and how his polygraph will turn out fine because if it doesn't, you just stomp your foot and call it a dick and scream about the unfairness of life, and then it will do whatever you want, right? Norma's Theory of How Everything Works has to eventually prove out, I think. One of these days.

For his part, Norman is totally chill like he always is, just being all not-nervous and un-solicitous and free to just be a child for once. Just kidding, he is being eerily sweet and calm because he is about to be dead and can afford to ease up and relax for the first time in his life. Now, you and I know that suicide is a dillweed move, but if anybody could ever make the case. They dance together to "Dream Lover" on the phonograph, with a dead owl watching from the mantel, and it is in fact the perfect night.

Zane storms his sister's house and she eventually stabs him with some garden shears, getting shot for her trouble; Zane then turns the gun to Dylan, and Romero takes him out in a dramatic fashion, after taking down his droogs outside. Romero creates a whole narrative for the night that Dylan does not exist for, and then gives Dylan the sad news that, like it or not, he is now the new drug kingpin of White Pine Bay, because without anybody on the Iron Throne the whole kingdom falls into disarray, and the quality of life goes way down – which the rich bastards like George will not be having thank you, but also to which Alex Romero has pledged his life because it's better than chaos – and therefore Dylan is trapped, utterly.

After spending all year accidentally working his way up this corporate ladder simply by taking care of people and doing the right thing, over and over – protecting Bradley, and his family, and even Zane; weighing out the needs of the many against the few – he is now rewarded with the crown of being the Literal King of Scum. Isn't that so sad? He's one of the purest people on television, held onto it so hard through the whole war, even unto the destruction of his entire persona and his understanding of his own body, and now he's being asked (forced really, by higher forces) to give up even his own dignity, or grace, to keep the peace. He really deserves something for his trouble, I think. We'll see how the rest of the episode treats him.

Norma summons him to a lake that evening, to tell him Norman's finally broken through: He's remembering the blackouts, he sex-murdered B. Watson, the whole thing. They try to imagine him in jail, and they cannot. He watches her, in pain, remembering that day she came to his work, and was so proud. And then she shocks her son, utterly: She bought three tickets to Montreal.

"I'm sorry, Dylan. I'm so sorry, for everything. For how you were born, how I handled it, how I shut you out. It was horrible of me, and I'm so sorry."

Every word slams through him; he forgives her before he can even speak. She was just a kid, an abused kid with no concept of what was happening or how to deal with it. Same as him. The hope of the world.

Jiao.

"...As horrible as it was, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Because you're here now, and you're beautiful, and you're a ... miracle, that someone like you could come out of all that. And I wouldn't give you up for anything."

I guess sometimes it can be hard to figure out why you needed to hear somebody say something. Maybe it's because Dylan deserves a break; maybe it's because I needed personally to hear somebody say it, and that's why I lost it. But I think maybe it's because we all do. At least once or twice, before the game gets called on account of darkness.

They weep, and they are saved. It's not just Norman that needs to know he's a normal John Doe. And after awhile, they wake up to something new: Dylan points out that if the lie detector reveals anything, it won't send his brother to jail: It'll put him in an institution, which will keep him – and, admittedly, us – safe. The thing they both want.

If the wrists-up-by-the-ears posture is the scariest way for a man to hold you, what would you say is the safest? Norma puts her hands to her chin, anguished and comforted, and her son wraps his arms all the way around her. It's warm enough to get her home. She's almost brightened up, by the time she heads upstairs to find him.

Mother, I made this little bird for you. I will always love you, and we will always be part of each other. Norman.

The bird perches on a branch, ready to sing; festooned in ribbons and greenery. Mr. Sandman, they sang, Bring me a dream. It's delicate, but it will last. So I don't have to dream alone, they danced.

It's gotta happen, happen sometime.

Norma runs screaming down the hill toward the office, where Emma sends her shouting across the street – through terrified traffic, of course; the bypass isn't built yet – and she tracks him down in the misty woods quickly enough. Those long legs, stumbling over themselves. When she finally throws herself on him, gun in hand, he kicks her onto her ass: "I'm sorry, Mother. I didn't mean to hurt you, but I am going to do this. I'm bad."

Once he really digs in and starts thinking about it, he realizes he killed his father, too. It just keeps coming. She flows toward him like water, pulling the gun away, and puts her face to his, forehead to forehead, looking right into his eyes. She holds the gun loosely, hanging behind him.

"How can you ask me to live with this?"
"Because I will die if you leave. If you kill yourself, I'll be there one step after."

She's not kidding. It's not a huge surprise to either of them. Nor when she promises to stick with him every inch of this next journey. And certainly not when she kisses him, sweetly and sadly, and hungrily.

"All right, Mother. You win."

The next day, he's wearing a stiff sport jacket. Dylan meets them at the breakfast table, silently. Nobody smiles, but they are a family somehow in a way we haven't seen before. There is a quiet comfort and a shared burden there. Maybe just shared more evenly.

At the facility – remember, they're doing this off the books with Romero's dad's old partner – they have to wait outside, in a dark hallway. Alex gets Norman all set up, strapped into a chair in a cavernous dark warehouse space. He answers every question honestly, while Romero paces outside with the family. You don't see how truly brave he's being until they say Miss Watson's name. He swallows it, and holds up his chin; he almost chokes on the follow-up question, and begins to hit his stride. But when the man asks if he killed Miss Watson, the world fades away.

"Norman? Norman? Norman. You need to know something very important. You didn't kill Blair Watson. I did."

The set of her shoulders, her bobbed hair: Mother is a vixen, sometimes. She seduces.

"You have to keep this a secret. Do you promise?"

They smile, flirting; they will have many secrets. The first one is this:

Q: Did Norman Bates kill Blaire Watson?
A: Not really. Not anymore.

He won't go to jail, or to an institution. The whole family will celebrate, and they will lie in their beds, feeling safe, not six inches from each other, through a very thin wall: They won't have to dream alone. And one day, when she is still young and beautiful, Norma Bates is going to die in that house. Because of what happened here, today:

He couldn't hurt a fly! And now he never will.

[Image via A&E]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Read more here.

Don't invite veteran software designer Scott Jenson to your next tech conference, unless you're prepared to sell out Madison Square Garden: ReadWrite reports the stuck-up veteran bailed on a speaking gig, scoffing "I do not speak to small groups."

Google's "Don't Be Evil" mantra has been giggle-inducing for some time now, but even expecting them not to be "kinda pissy and arrogant" seems too much to expect:

According to eyewitnesses, Google product strategist Scott Jenson angrily stormed out of a conference in San Francisco Tuesday, 30 minutes before he was scheduled to deliver a keynote address—a week after inviting himself onto the program via Twitter.

"I am Google," he told a woman working at the registration desk of the Internet of Things Expo. "I do not speak to small groups."

And then he left.

ReadWrite adds that Jenson had invited himself to speak at the conference via Twitter.

Seth Rogen, like many human beings with the ability to see and hear, is not a big fan of Justin Bieber. Yesterday on the Howard Stern Show, he explained why.

"He's a good example of someone you meet, who you think you're going to hate, and then you get to hate him as much as you thought," he said on the show. "You meet him, and he lives up to every one of your expectations of how you hope he will be."

Rogen said the realization came years ago when they both appeared on a German talk show. At some point someone came to Rogen's dressing room and said Justin wanted to meet him.

"And it was weird, I was like, 'Sure, I'll meet him.' So I went outside to meet him and he was acting like I asked to meet him. It was very nonchalant, 'Yo man. Wassup,' and I was like, 'What the fuck, I don't give a fuck about, I don't want to meet you. Don't act all nonplussed to meet me. I didn't want to meet you. I was totally cool not meeting you… But I was like, fine, I wouldn't have said anything, I was like, 'He's a bit of a motherfucker. Whatever. He's young, the kid's a dick.'

And then I met him like two years later maybe, I saw him again at an MTV awards show and he literally had a snake wrapped around his fucking wrist that he was wearing as an accouterment and I was like, 'What the fuck,' and I talked to him for like five minutes and I was like, 'Fuck this kid.' He was trying to be funny with like, 'Hey this snake.'

Rogen also clarifies that tween heartthrob and late-night troublemaker Justin Bieber is nowhere near as cool as tween heartthrob and late-night troublemaker Zac Efron (who he is currently co-starring in a movie with.).

All jokes aside, Justin Bieber is a piece of shit.

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 23, 2014

[h/t the Blemish]

Join us over at Gawker's Morning After tonight, as we watch Ramona act totally normal on Real Housewives of New York, Jess and Nick continue doing whatever on the New Girl finale, and Mindy Lahiri find love in one or more hopeless places on the Mindy Project finale. No one deserves to be alone with these people.

There's a definite limit to what you can get away with in the sky, even on a Virgin Atlantic flight. One intoxicated woman learned that the hard way this weekend.

According to the Sun, a British woman in her twenties was on a flight to Las Vegas with her parents when she decided to it would be a good idea to join her seatmate in the restroom.

"They went to the bathroom and people could hear loud noises," a passenger from the plane told the Sun. "The cabin crew forced the door open. Then she really kicked off, screaming drunken abuse. She was shackled to her seat."

A spokesperson told reporters the airline doesn't tolerate "disruptive passengers."

Las Vegas police detained and questioned the woman when the flight landed, but eventually released her with a warning and a lifetime of incredibly uncomfortable family dinners.

[image via AP]

It was only a few months ago that Larry King was angling to get his old job back, but the ancient soothsayer is now telling interviewers that he dodged a bullet.

"I miss being live, which I did all my life, and I miss the big story, though I will tell you, I am glad I am not at CNN now with this missing plane," King said in a recent interview with Capital New York. "Because that has been turned into the most absurd news story. It was a great news story and then it went absurd."

The funny thing about it is that in all this time, which I guess is approaching six weeks, the only thing we know is that it made a left turn. We don't know anything else, so I have learned nothing, and all that coverage has led to nothing. So while it gave them better ratings, they weren't doing what I consider great news work, which is letting the audience determine what is news. In that same period of time they had landslides in Washington, they had the ferry boat in South Korea, they had Ukraine, they had the G.M. recall with 13 people killed, and they are leading with the missing plane.

King says he's happy with his current gig hosting two online shows for Ora.tv.

[via, image via AP]

Back when Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm were teenagers, they competed in a game of Trivial Pursuit to win a girl's heart. The winner, without question, was the girl.

The anecdote comes from Vanity Fair's June profile on Hamm that was posted online Tuesday morning.

Preston Clarke, a friend of Hamm's from high school, recalls a Paul Rudd–Jon Hamm showdown. Hamm had taken Clarke's sister, actress Sarah Clarke, to the prom in high school, but when Sarah met Rudd, who was Preston's roommate at the University of Kansas, there were sparks. Rudd came to St. Louis to visit the Clarkes, of which Preston tells Windolf, "I thought he was coming to visit me, but obviously he was coming to visit my sister. Hamm was there because he was always at my house. And Paul knew that Jon had taken Sarah to prom. He was slightly intimidated. And then we started playing Trivial Pursuit." Rudd recalls that night, telling Windolf of Hamm, "He seemed like he was a good-looking, athletic guy who possessed qualities I did not possess. We were playing Trivial Pursuit in teams. Sarah and I were on one team and Jon and Preston were on the other team. Jon would want to go right to Yellow, which was History, and I was like, 'Oh, great, this guy is smart too.' They would ask a question like 'What is the largest lake in Africa?,' and Jon immediately went, 'Lake Victoria.' I felt so emasculated in the game that, as a result, I started reading atlases."

The piece doesn't mention whether the man of the ages or the man who never ages won over Sarah Clarke (who went on to play Nina Meyers on 24) but considering Jon Hamm's very real '90s struggle, Rudd may have had a chance.

[image via AP]