A seven-month-old girl was apparently abandoned Monday on a subway platform at Columbus Circle. Witnesses claim seeing a woman walk the child in its stroller off a northbound 1 train, leave the stroller and the child on the platform, and then turn around and get back on the train.

According to the New York Times, a woman discovered the child and stayed with her for 20 minutes before alerting authorities and that the child was taken to Mount Sinai Roosevelt by police as a "precautionary measure." From CBS New York:

Police said there were no apparent signs of trauma. The baby had a bandage on her hand and a slight rash, but was otherwise unhurt, sources said.

The child will be placed in custody of the city's Administration for Children's Services until her identity is established. There was no identification with her, sources said.

Authorities said it's unclear whether the woman intentionally pushed the stroller from the subway car. Police are looking for the woman, who they described as black and in her 20s or 30s.

NBC New York reports that the child was left on the platform around 12:30 p.m. today.

[Image via MTA/Flickr]

After a series of wild outbursts and derivative art stunts, former Disney property Shia LaBeouf is "voluntarily seeking treatment for alcohol addiction." But what precipitated LaBeouf's unraveling? Was it a systemic failure in his MK-ULTRA Monarch slave conditioning? Unblock your Ajna chakra and examine the facts.

Item: Roseanne Barr Told Russia Today that "MK-ULTRA Mind Control Rules in Hollywood"

Roseanne Barr has talked about this sort of thing before. In 2001, she told Larry King that she believed she had an induced multiple personality disorder because she had "this head shrinker and he says it's deliberately induced, because the CIA is where they started inducing it when after they brought all the Nazis over from Germany to run [the] American Psychiatric Association." Shortly after Michael Jackson's death in the summer of 2009, Roseanne took to her blog to accuse Jackson's father of being "an MK-ULTRA operative [whose] abuse of his own children was used to profit the CIA's programs that follow and study the effects of child abuse on the young, and how their minds can be controlled to such an extent, and with such abuse, that they can be forced to develop talent." These are serious allegations.

As you open the gate to your Ajna chakra, (your "third-eye charka" at the center of your brow), breathe deep and let Roseanne's statements pass through into your higher mind.

Now, breathe out.

Roseanne had been sounding the alarm about MK-ULTRA indoctrination in Hollywood for over a decade when — last year, in the middle of what had clearly been slated as a more jejune sociological segment on Hollywood and America's "culture of rape" — she surprised RT with her even more serious, more sweeping allegation:

As a rule of thumb, you can probably infer that your CIA mind control conspiracy must implicate only the highest global elites, if your choice celebrity interview criticizing them is one that even Russia Today no longer wishes to host on its YouTube page.

But, where did Roseanne learn about this MK-ULTRA program aside from that one shrink she once had?

The shortest possible answer is Cathy O'Brien, a self-professed survivor of an MK-ULTRA sex slavery initiative codenamed Project Monarch.

Unlike the many other real, disturbing, and chilling operations and experiments pursued under the CIA's MK-ULTRA program, no records exist about Monarch aside from O'Brien's personal recollections, first published in her book Trance-Formation of America, self-published in 1995. O'Brien co-wrote the book with her husband Mark Phillips, who claims to have been the intelligence operative that rescued O'Brien and her daughter "from White House/Pentagon level MK-ULTRA mind control victimization."

According to Kenn Thomas, an archivist for the the University of Missouri–St. Louis' Thomas Jefferson Library and long-time publisher of the conspiracy theory magazine Steamshovel Press, O'Brien and Phillips became a wildly popular team of speakers when Bay Area UFO conference promoters began their Conspiracy Con in 2001. As Thomas describes it in his book on American parapolitical culture:

Fanciful or not, O'Brien and Phillips opened the door for other such victim/lecturers as Bryce Taylor and Arizona Wilder to come forward, to near celebrity status on this newfound lecture circuit. By August 2003, no less than eight former subjects of MK-ULTRA spoke at the Sixth Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference in Windsor Lock, Connecticut in the US.

As with less immense, phantasmically hegemonic cases of sexual assault and abuse, these are dicey, non-falsifiable claims that are difficult to investigate skeptically without resorting to callous and inhumanely dismissive presuppositions.

Does it disqualify O'Brien's account in Trance-Formation of America (and elsewhere) that she claims that George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Dick Cheney, and Hillary Clinton all ritually abused her under the Monarch program? Does the fact that she quotes long extended conversations from these events, which she claims to remember verbatim, strain credulity to the point of making her statements wholly unvalid? Difficult as it may be, we all have to check our privilege before honestly answering these questions: our privilege as Americans who were never ritually abused and experimented on by the elite masters of the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control program.

Close your eyes. Take a minute of silence to mediate on what you have just learned.

Now open them.

Regardless of one's opinion on O'Brien's veracity, Roseanne Barr believes her. She spoke at a Conspiracy Culture event in Toronto last October with Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips. What's more, many people who have come to love and trust Roseanne's brash, "tell it like it is" style also believe. They believe, because Roseanne believes.

But, enough about Roseanne.

Where's LaBeouf?

Item: Shia LaBeouf Was In a Richly Symbolic, Sexually Disturbing Sigur Rós Video

If you've ever read anything online about Hollywood, MK-ULTRA, and ritualistic sex slavery, you should have known this was coming.

The whole community of researchers/believers in this area are fixated on the idea that either a.) programmed celebrities are trying to secretly communicate warnings about their present predicament; or, more insidiously, b.) that the masters of the Monarch program choose to craft these coded Pop Culture messages, the way that Frank Gorshin's Riddler would always give Adam West's Batman ornate clues to his malfeasance.

As the dean of this school of reasoning, the Vigilant Citizen, describes Shia Labeouf's appearance in this (incidentally NSFW) Sigur Rós music video thusly:

After the dance, two strange dudes enter the room and give the couple suspicious-looking lollipops with scorpions inside. Since scorpions are known to be venomous insects, there is reason to believe that these lollipops aren't simply pieces of candy but most probably mind-altering drugs, such as those used in mind-control programming. The couple eagerly sucks on these lollipops, indicating that they are helplessly addicted to them.

Simply by blowing on them, the handlers are able to get the couple to go where they want it [sic] to go. The fact that no physical contact is necessary to control the couple implies that it is all about … mind control.

This may not be as convincing as simply watching the video with your own eyes and seeing all the potent Monarch imagery yourself. (There is, for example, a poisonous species of butterfly, Danaus plexippus, commonly known as the Monarch featured in the video. It was also in that movie Silence of the Lambs — a Hollywood blockbuster.)

Now. Relax and, very carefully, watch the video:

Item: Shia LaBeouf Knew the Scope of the U.S. Government's Warrantless Surveillance Program From Working on the 2008 Action-Thriller Eagle Eye

In a recent post, the Vigilant Citizen speculated that LaBeouf's recent meltdown was in some way related to a September 2008 interview that the star did on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Promoting the paranoid, political thriller Eagle Eye, LaBeouf told Leno that one of the film's FBI consultants revealed to him that 1-in-5 phone calls made by Americans is logged — proving this to LaBeouf by playing for him one of his very own, very intimate, phone calls.

How this reflects on LaBeouf's current behavior, the Vigilant Citizen can only speculate:

In February, Shia appeared at the Berlinale International Film Festival with a bag over his said [sic] saying "I am not famous anymore". Was the "paper bag" incident actually a sick way for his handlers to humiliate him, perhaps to show that his career is purposely being destroyed? [...]

Is Shia's "meltdown" a result of actual MK programming? Is he purposely being placed in awful situations to hurt his career by industry handlers? His situation is strikingly similar to other stars who, after years of success, spiral into a self-destructive pattern. Like Britney Spears and others, Shia was a child star raised in the Disney system. While it is easy to put all of the blame on "drugs and alcohol", there is something more at play here. Drugs and alcohol are usually symptoms of a deeper problem.

Here's what a younger, more clear-minded Shia LaBeouf had to say in 2008, five years before Edward Snowden said a single word. Is this why he is "not famous anymore"?

Do not let your ego answer this question for you. Calm your mind, still your heart, and access your spirit. Repeat the question to yourself, quietly, over, and over again.

Keep away all of your other worries, from the materialistic outside world. Breathe out your stress. As you find yourself drifting, return to the question, "Is this why he is 'not famous anymore'?"

Item: Hollywood is in California, a Seething Hotbed of Fringe Beliefs and Carnal Exploitation

From the Manson family, to Scientology, to Heaven's Gate, to that time a rocket scientist at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tried to impregnate a woman with the Antichrist, to what all Bryan Singer was doing, to the Source Family, to Jonestown — California is really just one big, tectonic fault line where strange (sometimes drug-induced) belief systems and depraved (sometimes drug-induced) sexual activities converge.

For all we know, the CIA has had its claws in Shia LaBeouf since season one, episode one of Disney's Even Stevens. Without ever having had a Disney Channel show, who's to say?

LaBeouf seemed fine playing baseball this weekend.

Spiral energy freely through your fifth chakra and express your truth in the Kinja discussion below.

[image screen capture via the music video for Sigur Rós' song "Fjögur píanó" via Parlophone Records]

Taylor Swift's essay for the Wall Street Journal's 125th anniversary issue has just gone up online, and never has the haunting chorus of Swift's runaway 2009 hit "You Belong With Me"—

She wears short skirts.

I wear T-shirts.

She's Cheer Captain and

I'm providing a logically sound if overly simplistic and only intermittently lucid analysis of the value of "albums in today's music marketplace.

—rung so true.

The essay is titled "For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story."

There's a lot to love about "For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story": the woodcut portrait of Swift that accompanies it; the multi-paragraph comparison of fans' relationships to romantic relationships that appears under the italicized subhed "Arrows Through the Heart."

There is, however, also a great deal that will have to be discussed during office hours.

The basic gist of Swift's modest proposal is that Swift, a self-described "enthusiastic optimist," who, according to Forbes estimates, made $64 million last year thanks to the music industry, believes that the music industry is not dying. She also thinks that music should not be free. But these observations, as Swift states again and again (three times total), are just her opinions. ("It's my opinion that music should not be free," explains Swift, on the subject of should music be free.)

At least one person in the music industry made $64 million last year. It's important to be an optimist and have a good attitude.

Stylistically, Swift makes frequent ellipses in her writing, apparently as pauses for effect, rather than to indicate the intentional omission of words.

Before I tell you my thoughts on the matter, you should know that you're reading the opinion of an enthusiastic optimist: one of the few living souls in the music industry who still believes that the music industry is not dying…it's just coming alive.

Several of her sentences end with prepositions ("Some music is just for fun, a passing fling (the ones [consumers] dance to at clubs and parties for a month while the song is a huge radio hit, that they will soon forget they ever danced to)"); fewer with coherent thoughts ("My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet…is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.").

The second sentence of one paragraph is devoted entirely to clearing up an imagined confusion regarding the words used in the sentence preceding it.

I think forming a bond with fans in the future will come in the form of constantly providing them with the element of surprise. No, I did not say "shock"; I said "surprise."

Did Taylor Swift say "shock"? No. She swears to God she did not. If you truly believe she said "shock," go back to the beginning of the paragraph and read it again. It is Taylor Swift's opinion that, upon doing so, you will quickly discover that she did not say "shock" until the sentence denying her initial use of that word. Of course, by now she has used "shock" multiple times. But that is a topic for another essay.

At times, Taylor Swift's logic is so sound it becomes redundant, doubling back on itself to form a perfectly circular circle, as when she states that (in her opinion) the financial value of an album is based in part on its financial value.

In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace.

Elsewhere, as on the topic of the scarcity of art, her logic seems stretched.

Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.

And occasionally mathematically sweaty.

There will always be an increasing fixation on the private lives of musicians, especially the younger ones.

Perhaps inevitably for a millionaire so famously humble, Swift's essay is peppered with humble brags.

It isn't as easy today as it was 20 years ago to have a multiplatinum-selling album, and as artists, that should challenge and motivate us.

In the YouTube generation we live in, I walked out onstage every night of my stadium tour last year knowing almost every fan had already seen the show online.

A friend of mine, who is an actress...

I haven't been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera.

One thing Taylor Swift did not brag about: the shit-ass gardens junking up the premises of each of her multimillion dollar homes:

And as for me? I'll just be sitting back and growing old, watching all of this happen or not happen, all the while trying to maintain a life rooted in this same optimism.

And I'd also like a nice garden.

Of course, it is Gawker's opinion that the entire essay is worth reading, particularly for fans of opinions.

What can you do? She's better in rhyme.

[Image via Getty]

Oklahoma City officials say that Mayor Mick Cornett's office has received over 450 emails and phone calls opposing a satanic "black mass" set to be held at a city-owned downtown theater.

The sinister event, scheduled for September 21 at the 95-seat City Space Theater in the basement of the city's Civic Center (get your tickets here), is being put on by 35-year-old Adam Daniels, who described himself as a high priest of the satanic group Dakhma of Angra Mainyu.

According to their website, group worships Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, a god who they believe will cleanse the world through destruction.

Daniels is also a convicted sex offender, having had a sexual relationship with a female prisoner while he was a guard at an Oklahoma prison.

According to NewsOK, Catholic Archbishop Paul Coakley has denounced the event as a "distortion of the most sacred beliefs not only of Catholics, but of all Christians."

Christian website aleteia.org reports that a black mass typically involves a "usually obscene burlesque of the true mass" and features at least one naked woman.

The website also includes an interview with an unnamed "exorcist" who added:

"You cannot attend such an event—even if one does so merely out of curiosity, and not with any firm desire to worship Satan—without being adversely affected," the exorcist cautioned, in an exclusive interview with Aleteia. "The mere fact that this black mass in Oklahoma City will be public lends it a certain legitimacy, and I suspect that some people will go simply to be entertained. What they may not realize immediately is that simply by going, they will open themselves to the power of the demonic."

Oklahoma City is, of course, no stranger to satanic activity.

City officials say the satanic group is paying $420 to rent the theater for five hours. They also add that essentially the same group (under different names) has leased the space three times since 2010, and that nobody actually attended the most recent event.

Image via Simpsons.wikia.com

Police arrested a man at the Detroit Metro Airport after TSA agents found a knife hidden in the lining of his shoe. The TSA heralded this man's ability to hide a weapon in his shoe, saying it was "artfully concealed."

If you weren't aware: "Knives and most other sharp objects are prohibited in carry-on luggage; these items should be placed in checked baggage," a TSA spokesperson told the Detroit News. Not much else is known about the man who was arrested. From the Associated Press:

The Associated Press left messages with TSA spokesman Michael McCarthy and airport spokesman Brian Lassaline (LASS'-uh-leen) seeking details about the passenger.

Wayne County prosecutor's office spokeswoman Maria Miller says her office would have jurisdiction if the airport police send a report. Miller says the case also could be handled by federal authorities or considered an ordinance violation.

[Image via Detroit News]

British Home Secretary Theresa May announced Monday a massive investigation into decades of sexual abuse allegations brought against government officials and how those allegations were handled (or weren't). The investigation, May said, will extend to health providers, religious groups, and the BBC.

"In recent years we have seen appalling cases of organised and persistent child sex abuse," May told British parliament today. "The government will establish an independent inquiry panel of experts in the law and child protection to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse."

As reported by the Guardian, the investigation will include allegations made in the 1970s:

Ministers had been holding out against such a sweeping inquiry, but, facing charges of an establishment cover-up, succumbed and promised there would be no no-go areas for the investigation.

The inquiry will be able to examine the files of the security services and allegations that the Tory whips' office in the 1970s may have suppressed allegations of child abuse by members of the parliamentary party. It is also expected to take some evidence from victims.

Labour MPs pointed to a 1985 BBC documentary in which a former government whip between 1970 and 1973 said that the Tory whips' office, when faced by an MP involved in "a scandal with small boys", would get him out of trouble, partly so the MP then felt obliged in the future to carry out the bidding of the whips.

Peter McKelvie, a former child protection manager, told the BBC that there is evidence of "at least" 20 pedophiles that includes government officials:

Mr McKelvie said some of those who were alleged to have abused children had now died.

He told the BBC he had spoken to victims over "many, many years" and that children - "almost exclusively boys" - were moved around like "a lump of meat".

They had been subjected to the "worst form of abuse", including rape, he said.

Mr McKelvie was a child protection manager in Hereford and Worcester and worked on the conviction of paedophile Peter Righton - a former consultant to the National Children's Bureau.

And according to the Telegraph, evidence in the form of a dossier containing the names of child abusers in Westminster were turned over to the Home Office in the 1980s, and the government is now accused of ignoring the evidence. Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that the investigation would "leave no stone unturned."

[Image of Theresa May via AP]

Christine Saunders, 45, was arrested by police in Dekalb County, Ala. after she drunkenly stole a horse and rode it to a nearby store to steal merchandise. Police found the horse tied up outside with three cans of Keystone Light inside a plastic Walmart bag tied to its saddle horn.

According to AL.com, the horse was later returned to its owners, who are not pressing charges. And per WAFF, police are working with the owners of the store Saunders robbed on other charges. So far, police have charged Saunders with public intoxication and illegal possession of a prohibited beverage.

The horse's name was not released.

[Image via WAAY]

Twenty-five people were trapped 20 feet above the ground and at a "precarious" angle on a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain Monday. Park officials say that the coaster car on the "Ninja" ride became stuck after a tree branch fell on the track. According to KTLA, four people sustained minor injuries.

The Los Angeles Times reports that a team with specialized tools were called to the scene to cut through the brush and break the car free. Further from KTLA:

Multiple cars holding riders appeared to be stuck at an angle in an area where the tracks pass under trees, aerial video from the scene showed.

Firefighters appeared to cutting at or struggling with foliage near the large white pillars that support the ride.

The Ninja, as described by Six Flags ("Ninja is temporarily closed"):

There's a reason Ninja is known as "The Black Belt of Roller Coasters." This thrill is a suspended swinging roller coaster. There are only four of this kind in the entire U.S. and you're about to ride one of them. You're hanging from the track, which on this insane ride is above your head. Shoulder harnesses secure you in place but don't expect to just sit in one place — you're going to be swinging all over, a full 90 degrees each way.

According to the Associated Press, riders were stuck for nearly an hour before being rescued.

Spokeswoman says all stranded passengers on Ninja were alert and talking. Watch Live: http://t.co/EHIn0RSmf8 pic.twitter.com/2L332L1zza

— KTLA (@KTLA) July 8, 2014

[Image via KTLA]

Germany's Marcel Kittel crosses the finish in London, England, winning the third stage of the 2014 Tour de France. Cyclists raced Monday in the rain for 96 miles from Cambridge to the stage's finish past Big Ben in Westminster. Image by Peter Dejong via AP.

PSA: If you leave your dog locked in a hot car for 13 hours, it will die. Even if you crack the window, sometimes.

That's what happened to Cassaundra Rasmussen, a 49-year-old woman who left her pooch Waldo unattended during a marathon-length shopping trip to Wal Mart in Crestview, Florida. A fellow shopper discovered the dog while walking through the store's parking lot last Thursday, but at that point, it was already dead.

Rasmussen left her car's window slightly open during the half-day stretch, but didn't leave any food or water inside. Police said the dog died from overheating, and charged the owner with a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge.

When cops asked Rasmussen about Waldo, she claimed she had forgotten the animal was inside. Even if that's true, it ignores the larger question at hand: What was she doing in Walmart for 13 hours?

[Image via CBS]

A London gallery has removed a semi-nude painting of a woman from an exhibition, apparently because viewers couldn't handle the depiction of a small strip of pubic hair.

The painting, Leena McCall's "Portrait of Ms. Ruby May, Standing," was part of the Society of Women Artists' annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries, but the venue reportedly deemed the work "too pornographic and disgusting" to remain hanging.

"After a number of complaints regarding the depiction of the subject and taking account of its location en route for children to our Learning Centre, we requested the painting was removed," the Mall Galleries said in a statement.

McCall believes the piece was taken down "because Ruby meets your gaze."

"She's not a shy, timid woman; it's not pornography in the sense of 'Here I am, come and get me!' It's very much an equal gaze and that was the whole purpose of the painting," McCall told Vocativ.

The gallery made her point for her when it replaced her painting with a nude piece by another artist. A clothed woman displaying her tattoos and just a hint of pube is apparently inappropriate for "children and vulnerable adults," but there's nothing wrong with full nudity.

[H/T Vocativ, Photo: Leena McCall]

On Monday, the fabric of society was shredded by a solitary photograph. When Zac Efron kissed Michelle Rodriguez on a boat in Italy, "Zachelle" was officially born (I voted for "Michfron"), inciting a frenzy of shocked fans who simply could not believe they were together.

The world seemed to stop spinning all because High School Musical kissed Blue Crush. Because no one saw it coming. She was supposedly with Cara Delevingne; he was supposedly too busy taking his shirt off to fall in love. Kreskin smoking PCP in a sensory deprivation tank wouldn't have been able to predict those two as a couple.

But you needn't worry that Zachelle will be the final undoing of western civilization (the Comfort Wipe is still in the lead for that accomplishment). It's not the first time the world has collectively gasped and blurted out "Wait, those two are a couple?" Here is our look at the most bizarre, unholy, world-ending celebrity couples of all time.

Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett

This is one of the earliest celebrity WTF couplings. In 1993, Julia Roberts was one of the world's biggest movie stars, having come off a string of hits including Steel Magnolias, Pretty Woman and of course her groundbreaking performance as a gallerina/drug dealer mule on Miami Vice. She was also known as "America's sweetheart," which apparently means all you can you ever do for the rest of your life is wear pastel colored hoop skirts and tell stories about baking cranberry muffins.

But Roberts, being a real live human being and not some fembot cooked up in the imagination of Pat Robertson, wasn't quite ready to play along with all that bullshit. So she married country singer Lyle Lovett in a small church in Indiana, while barefoot and wearing a long headscarf big enough that Voldemort could hide in it later.

People were completely gobsmacked that Hollywood's "Pretty Woman" had wed a guy with curly hair. Let's face it, that's what everyone's real problem was. Society cannot accept when someone with beautiful hair marries someone with bad hair. Think about it. I bet you'd rather see the world descend into a Waterworld-ish post-apocalyptic state than see Jennifer Aniston married to someone with frizzy hair.

Sandra Bullock and that gross mechanic Nazi guy

Sometimes your friends (or complete strangers who irrationally obsess about your private life on the Internet) try to tell you that the guy you are hooking up with is wrong for you. But you don't want to listen because Paula Abdul and a dancing fucking cat once said "Opposites Attract," so LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU, HATERS. But Paula Abdul is completely full of shit and so is that cat.

Sandra Bullock found that out the hard way after she married "outlaw" glorified motorcycle mechanic and all-around shitty person Jesse James. This coupling was equivalent of that time when you were a little kid and wanted to have some Lucky Charms but there was no milk in the fridge. So you decided to use orange juice instead because you were a genius who figured out that juice tastes awesome and Lucky Charms taste awesome so obviously combining them was a no-brainer. ( How come mom never figured this out, you smugly said to yourself.) Everything was fine until the spoon hit your mouth then all your childhood dreams collapsed on your tongue. That "DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MYSELF" moment when your taste buds became the Three Mile Island of flavor is exactly what Bullock experienced the second she realized she was married to a philandering asshole who had a thing for Nazis. This isn't a guy who should be marrying one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood. This is a guy who should be convincing you to upgrade your motor oil brand at the Walmart Auto Center.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes

It's easy to look back at all the couch jumping and accusations of brain washing and forget that these were just two crazy kids who spontaneously fell in love and weren't trying bolster their own careers or anything. Watching their "love story" unfold was the equivalent of shotgunning a Four Loko and watching a Maya Deren film in reverse. People were more skeptical of this relationship than climate change deniers are of everything comes out of Bill Nye's mouth.

Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney

When the news broke that Academy Award winner Renee Zellweger had married the NASCAR shirt with the sleeves ripped off known as Kenny Chesney, people were stunned. No, that's not right. Everyone pretty much freaked the fuck out.

The story goes that Chesney saw Jerry McGuire and was so moved by the film he decided to write a song called "You Had Me At Hello." You'll know it as the song that made you cringe when your cousin picked it for the Daddy/Daughter dance song at her wedding. Four months later, he was married to one of the film's stars because that is how life in Celebrityland works. If a guy wrote a song for me about a line from a Tom Cruise movie, I'd probably move to Tasmania and live in hiding to avoid the public humiliation of having to admit that's how I was wooed. By the way, I unearthed several other heretofore unknown Chesney songs inspired by the blockbusters of Tom Cruise:

1. I Want the Truth But I Know You Can't Handle the Truth
2. I Feel the Need For Speeding Up This Romance
3. Tame the Cunt, Tame It (THIS ONE IS SO ROMANTIC)

This is yet another case of we were right, famous people were wrong. Zellweger filed for an annulment from him citing "fraud" and everyone lost their shit all over again wondering if it was because he was gay. No, it was probably because she finally just listened to that song.

Emilia Clarke and Seth MacFarlane

No, no, no, Khaleesi, no, what are you doing? You must stay away from the Man of a Thousand Boob jokes. You are the Mother of Dragons. He is the guy who made a bulimia joke at the Oscars.

Ryan Reynolds and Alanis Morrisette

When the beautiful set of Canadian abs named Ryan Reynolds was reported to be engaged to alternative rock goddess Alanis Morissette, the 90s were officially declared dead. Somehow, the fact that that "You Oughta Know" was maybe written about Full House's Uncle Dave Joey was way less disturbing than this. Alas, the coupling was not to be. Reynolds went on to marry impossibly beautiful human person Blake Lively and Morissette went on to write the album Flavors of Entanglement about their relationship, which seems like a lot of trouble to go through over the guy who was in R.I.P.D.

Sean Penn and Charlize Theron

True fact: When I saw the first headline about their relationship, I went to Snopes to make sure it wasn't an elaborate Internet hoax. If Michelle Obama held a press conference tomorrow and said she was divorcing the president to marry the resurrected rotting carcass of Mussolini, I would be less horrified than I am by this relationship. The Cornballer seems like a more stable thing to be around than this coupling.

Adam Duritz and Everyone

Of all the great haunting mysteries of the universe (who built the pyramids, what happened to the city of Atlantis, who keeps greenlighting M. Night Shyamalan movies, etc.) perhaps the most perplexing is the mystery of why famous, beautiful women keep dating Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz. He makes Adam Levine seem like Rudolph Valentino. Because I CAN'T EVEN WITH THIS, here's a list of all the women who have supposedly let the man one Jezebel staffer described as a "haunted Chia pet" touch them while naked:

1. Mary Louise Parker
2. Gwen Stefani
3. Lara Flynn Boyle
4. Emmy Rossum
5. Winona Ryder
6. Jennifer Aniston
7. Courtney Cox
8. Samantha Mathis

Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen

This celebrity hookup was so utterly WTF it ended up being its own crazy reality show. They first met on VHI's Surreal Life 3 and fell madly in love. They genuinely seemed to enjoy doing lots of drugs and being on television spending time together. It was like a relationship created by a six-year-old on an Etch-a-Sketch. It looks like a big, hot mess but when you take a step back, it's actually kind of beautiful. Then you're compelled to shake the shit out of it and pray that your brain will forever unsee what it was just exposed to. Actually, this might be one of the greatest love stories of all time. Fuck The Notebook; I'll take Strange Love as my romance guidebook any day of the week.

Images via Pacific Coast News; Getty.

"We Are The Next Lost Generation"—a Thought Catalog exercise in putting life in perspective.

To be "deracinated" means to be torn up by the roots. The Lost Generation was made up of the 1920s' 20s-somethings, young men and women that were deracinated by World War I. Lives were lost and the ideals of the past were lost with them. Whether or not they had fought on the European front, they were different after the war. The atrocities of war broke them, shattered their once optimistic view of humanity. Their homeland didn't feel like home, and nowhere else did either. With no roots to secure them, they were free but without any meaning. I wonder, are we Millennials any different now?

We didn't grow up during a World War, but September 11th had a similar effect on us. Terrorism destroyed our sense of security, of protection, and left us with a pervading feeling of uneasiness and instability. For those of us that were young when the attacks happened, we subconsciously realized that tomorrow was not a given.

And that's how watching a plane hit a building on the TV is like being part of a generation that suffered 37 million casualties in brutal industrial warfare.

Also sometimes Netflix doesn't load very fast these days.

[Photo: AP]

U.S. Navy veteran Madelynn Taylor filed a civil rights suit against the Idaho Division of Veterans Services yesterday, after her request to be buried in the state's vet cemetery with her late wife was denied. Taylor married Jean, who died in 2012, in California in 2008.

According to the Associated Press, Taylor, 74, didn't even think it would be a problem to be buried with Jean, because federal veterans cemeteries allow gay couples to be buried together. The vet cemetery in Idaho is operated by the state, however, and it won't recognize her marriage.

Taylor's health is deteriorating, so sadly, there is a sense of urgency here. Her lawyer tells the AP that Taylor's situation is "among the most extreme examples of the harm caused by state laws that deny respect to the marriages of same-sex couples. Denying these important protections to committed couples is not simply unjust, it is needlessly cruel." The Idaho Division of Veterans Services and the state's attorney general have 60 days to respond to the suit.

Boise Weekly profiled Taylor in April, and she told the magazine how she was administratively discharged from the Navy in the 1960s because she was outed as gay. In 1979, she successfully petitioned for an honorable discharge to get her full benefits back. Taylor also noted that when she met Jean in 1995, it was love at first sight. "Jean was a lady," she said.

[Image via AP]

Jeremy Meeks, the former gang member known variously around these parts as "sexy mugshot guy," "fine felon," and "Dreamy McMugshot," may not actually have a modeling contract, but he did Blue Steel and Magnum his way through his day in court Tuesday.

There's good news and bad news for Meeks, who appeared in an orange jumpsuit rather than the civilian clothes his attorney reportedly requested.

The good: Originally facing multiple charges of weapons possession and "street terrorism," Meeks is now only charged with one count of "Felon in possession of a firearm." The bad: It's now a federal charge, carrying a potential prison term of 10 years and a $250,000 fine.

A spokesman for the San Joaquin County DA's office said that turning gun charges over to federal prosecutors leads to longer sentences, Sacramento news station KXTV reported.

Meeks had a gun in his trunk when he was swept up as part of a multiagency gang crackdown, but says he's no longer part of a gang.

The fine felon is now headed for federal custody, so unless his multiple agents can work some magic, these are the last new photos we'll be seeing of him for a while. And we almost didn't get these: Meeks' defense attorney, Tai Bogan, originally asked the judge to bar cameras from the courtroom.

[H/T WaPo, Photos: Getty Images]

Solidifying their status as the very worst "satire" site on the Internet, the fake and bad National Report decided to capitalize on a full-fledged humanitarian crisis on Saturday, publishing an article titled "CDC Investigates Mystery Illness Spreading Through Border Towns." As described in the story, the immigrant-carried outbreak has caused victims in Texas to regress to a "primitive brain state" becoming "very hostile and territorial, almost like feral dogs." By Monday, the vague parody of xenophobic hysteria had completely succeeded, but only at drumming up further xenophobic hysteria:

http://t.co/KXwxvlsVzo MYSTERY DISEASE SPREADING 2 BORDER TOWNS IT'S TIME WE TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK & GUARD AGAINST DOMESTIC TERRORISTS AT WH

— slo129 (@slo129) July 5, 2014

#Obama Spread 300K #Illegals 2 #USA #Community-s>NOW #CDC Investige MYSTERY ILLNESS!http://t.co/ueNdW76Jyl #media #press #ABC #CNN #ESPN #VA

— Born American (@sunnyherring1) July 5, 2014

here we go folks the start no wonder why they shipped all them coffins from georgia to chicago and elsehwere... http://t.co/d8kcpHYdT0

— TheRightSide (@RightSideMedia) July 8, 2014

Asked about the supposed epidemic, CDC spokesperson Llelwyn Grant told Gawker the agency is "not aware of any mysterious outbreak occurring in southern Texas or California." Furthermore, Grant said, "The names and sources quoted in the [National Report] article are fictitious," confirming that while the mystery illness is totally fake, unscrupulous hoax news sites are unfortunately very real.

[Image via Warner Bros.]

Uber and Lyft are the Hatfields and the McCoys of ordering cars on your telephone—if the more affluent Hatfields had $1.5 billion in venture financing to the McCoys' piss poor $332 million. Now the feud the companies started in San Francisco has traveled 3,000 miles without losing any steam.

At the same exact time that Uber announced an agreement with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman not to price gouge during emergencies (praise startups!), Lyft announced that it would launch in New York City this week. In a savvy bit of marketing, Lyft is positioning itself as a populist alternative to Uber's elitism. According to the New York Times:

The company's initial target is those in boroughs outside Manhattan, namely Brooklyn and Queens, who commute there.

"Those are the areas that are most underserved by public transportation," John Zimmer, Lyft's chief executive, said in an interview. "There's a huge need to unlock the city for people who want to access it at a lower price point."

Zimmer gestures at a real problem. Back in 2011, when the City Council first started debating the efficacy of e-hailing apps, council members were particularly concerned about how they would effect Bronx residents, voicing worries about a two-tiered system, especially for residents without a credit card.

Focusing on the outer-boroughs is not necessarily an act of good will, but rather a typical part of the expansion process. A beta test, if you will.

And Uber has another leg up on Lyft in New York. While new Lyft users can hail drivers from Brooklyn and Queens for rides up to 60 miles in any direction, they cannot summon rides from inside Manhattan, as they can with Uber. Lyft said it was common for the company to start in a new city on a small scale, to make sure the service is reliable before further expansion. For now, however, Manhattan users are stuck taking the subway — or a ride found through Uber — back to Brooklyn.

There is no mention of the Bronx in the New York Times article, but the Bronx and Staten Island are all over Lyft's new commercial celebrating why the city needs Lyft.

Tech company commercials have raised the bar on absurdity and insanity before. Ads are designed to move product, so naturally companies will pull any heartstring they can monetize. But Lyft's commercial leans awfully hard on the sharing economy's insistence that it can change the world. What do pink mustaches and venture capital have to do with upward mobility and ethnic diversity? Not much, but sit back and enjoy the heroic soundtrack.

To contact the author of the post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via YouTube/Lyft]

Literally. All of it.

Pictures from the scene are just as gruesome:

[AP Photo/Bruno Magalhaes]

[AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills]

[AP Photo/Bruno Magalhaes]

[AP Photo/Bruno Magalhaes]

[AP Photo/Leo Correa]

[AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd]

[AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd]

[AP Photo/Leo Correa]

[AP Photo/Leo Correa]

[AP Photo/Leo Correa]

[AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd]

[Getty Images/Mario Tama]

[Getty Images/Laurence Griffiths]

[Getty Images/Laurence Griffiths]

[Getty Images/Laurence Griffiths]

[Getty Images/Laurence Griffiths]

[Getty Images/Victor Moriyama]

[Getty Images/Robert Cianflone]

Anna Bella was just the start of things.

A patron of a New York City Chop't restaurant—a "Creative Salad Company"—happened upon a disgusting dead rodent when chomping into his wrap on Tuesday. The wrap had been made by the Chop't location in the Financial District of Manhattan.

According to his supportive friends and colleagues, who tweeted links and photos on his behalf (both which have since been deleted), the wrap-eater had already taken a bite into his lunch when he discovered the deceased rodent. The wrap was made at the 80 Pine Street location, a franchise that had been given an A rating by the NYC health inspector as early as September of last year.

Via Gothamist:

When reached via phone, Chop't Founder Tony Shure told us he knew about the incident and said that the store had been shut down for the day and that staff was "doing a deep clean." An employee at the 80 Pine Street location confirmed that the location is currently "closed for maintenance."

And for good measure, more dead rodent:

Enjoy lunch! Yum yum.

[h/t Gothamist]

Today, Buzzfeed published a long read on Michael Johnson—a.k.a. Tiger Mandingo—whose story went super-viral earlier this year after news broke that he videotaped himself having sex with 31 people while knowingly exposing them to HIV.

There are five charges against Johnson, according to Buzzfeed's Steven Thrasher: "one count of 'recklessly infecting another with HIV' and four counts of 'attempting to recklessly infect another with HIV,' felonies in the state of Missouri." If convicted, Johnson could face life in prison. He's in his early 20s.

Thrasher's piece helps humanize a man who has been made out to be a monster—even an anonymous source whom Johnson put at risk via unprotected sex calls Johnson "a nice guy." Johnson, who has a learning disability, stepped up to claim paternity of a son that he knew wasn't his because "I didn't want to be the kind of guy to say, 'Just because the baby is white, I'm not going to say that this isn't my son.' I grew up without a father, I don't want him to not have a father." (The mother of the child was his high school sweetheart. Johnson once dated women but in the story he says he always identified as gay.)

The piece also contextualizes the less-than-tolerant atmosphere at Lindenwood University, where Johnson attended. "As recently as 2010, Lindenwood refused to allow a gay-straight alliance to use the word 'gay' in its name; it went by the Spectrum Alliance instead for years," writes Thrasher, who also describes the racism that pervades criminal HIV prosecution:

A study published in the journal AIDS and Behavior, looked at 10 years of HIV prosecutions in Nashville. It found that "Persons who were black were more likely to be convicted of criminal HIV exposure related to a sexual interaction than persons who were white," and that "individuals who were black received significantly longer sentences than those who were white."

What's frustrating about the piece, though, is that though Johnson was interviewed for it, he's mum on pertinent details, namely who knew what in terms of his HIV status. Thrasher writes that Johnson signed a form acknowledging HIV diagnosis on January 7, 2013. He wasn't arrested until the following October. In the meantime, his mother says he told her, "'Mama, I told people I was HIV [positive] … and they wanted me anyway, because of who I am.'" Then she adds, "So in a way he feels kind of used." Johnson has pled not guilty to all of the charges against him.

The aforementioned anonymous source claims he had no knowledge of Johnson's status when he had receptive, condom-less anal sex with Johnson. The account of his fuck-buddy association with Johnson is among the most maddening aspects of an article brimming with maddening details:

They hooked up later that month in Johnson's dorm room, where, the student said, Johnson told him he was "clean." He gave Johnson a blow job.

Johnson invited him to go out sometime, but the student got busy and "didn't have time for that." They didn't hook up again until early October.

This time, they had anal sex without a condom. "I let him come in me," the student said. He wanted bareback sex, he said, because Johnson was "huge," "only my third black guy," and — as he said Johnson told him yet again — "clean."

The student said he has barebacked with multiple "friends and ex-boyfriends," situations in which "we trusted each other. I mean, I don't just let anybody do it." Yet he also said he had bareback sex "with people I barely knew." In those cases, he said, "I knew they were clean," sometimes just "by looking at them."

And then, when Johnson did fess up about his status, this source says he "got pissed." "I had asked him several times, and he'd said he was clean, and I trusted him!" What an idiot.

This is not to excuse the alleged lies Johnson told, but if you engage in risky sex, the onus is on you. You may hope for transparency, you may be optimistic about the general goodness of the human heart, you may think, "Hey, this intimacy I'm experiencing must extend to matters of truth and fairness," but all that wishing and hoping will amount to is a pop song that's already been written if you're lucky (and musically inclined). It's best to err on the side of solitude and believe that no one owes you anything. That way you're not surprised when that person that you don't even know tells you that your fuck session may have changed your life irreversibly.

If you like taking loads so much and are legitimately concerned about contracting HIV, so concerned that you would put the blame on someone else for your own behavior, go on PrEP. It's not perfect, but Jesus Christ, it's better than demonizing others for your preferences. Your body is your responsibility.

Speaking of medication, there's only a passing mention of Johnson's regimen by that same anonymous source, who doesn't exactly seem so with-it. "He infected someone with HIV. Without medication, that person could get AIDS, so he's slowly killing someone. It's a form of murder, in a sense," he says. It is unclear as to whether Johnson declined to answer questions about meds, or if Thrasher didn't ask (an email request to Thrasher to clarify this point has not yet been returned). Legally, this point would likely make little difference, although it should, since a recent study showed no instances of HIV transmission between partners in serodiscordant couples where the HIV positive person had an undetectable viral load due to antiretroviral medication. Zero.

The implications are that, in fact, having sex with an HIV positive and undetectable person is not a form of murder, in a sense, but in fact safer sex. (Also, the idea that HIV is a death sentence is an antiquated notion for those who have access to antiretrovirals. It's no walk in the park, but it's not 1985 anymore, either.) It's far riskier to have sex with someone who thinks he or she is negative but is in fact positive and untreated—the higher the viral load the more contagious a person is.

Again and again, it's ignorance that's the monster, and some activists argue that criminalizing HIV fosters the worst kind of ignorance: willful ignorance. This is from a 2012 AP report:

While prosecutors defend the HIV laws as appropriate for certain cases, some activists argue that criminalization of exposure to HIV can backfire and actually fuel the spread of the disease.

They note that under most of the state laws, people who don't know they have HIV are less culpable than those who do know. This fact could deter some people from learning their HIV status, and thus preclude some HIV-positive people from getting treatment.

A better approach, the advocates say, is to encourage responsibility and disclosure without the underlying threat of arrest and prosecution.

But if you must make assumptions, just assume that everybody has HIV or is lying, and act accordingly.

[Image via Instagram]