What's Smashing Pumpkins bandleader Billy Corgan up to these days you ask? Oh, not much.

Just starring in a wrestling-themed furniture ad for "wacky" Chicago-area retailer Walter E. Smithe.

Corgan, who "has been at least as focused on wrestling as music for the past few years" according to Spinner, told Crain's Chicago Business he hoped to drum up some interest in his Resistance Pro Wrestling promotion by appearing in one of the Smithe brothers' signature "over-the-top" ad campaigns.

"Branding anything these days is a real challenge," Corgan told Shia Kapos. "We have to build credibility in the wrestling community. It's based on visibility and name recognition."

Kapos notes that the Smithes got Corgan to cameo in the commercial for free on the condition that he gets to plug Resistance Pro.

No doubt the ad is generating press for Corgan's wrestling business, but it's also been a boon for punny comments.

"Get yours for ZERO down," quips YouTuber ira82. "I guess... Today isn't the greatest day of his life," contributes blingadingading. "Billy Corgan has fully transitioned from melancholia to infinite sadness," opined Uproxx commenter Stinky Pete.

And one Rolling Stone reader went straight for the throat: "I think Zwan is better than this." Ouch.

[H/T: Chicagoist]

Goldschläger incarnate Lindsay Lohan has allegedly learned the hard way that, like dolls' hair and a child's limbs, expensive beaded frippery doesn't just grow back once you cut it off. She reportedly returned a borrowed floor length designer gown in "tatters," its bottom half roughly hacked off with scissors.

A couple weeks ago, Lohan borrowed a beaded gown from celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch to wear to the amfAR (American foundation for AIDS Research) gala. At the time, Bloch had only kind things to say about the experience, calling Lindsay "effervescent, charming, funny, gracious, and extremely polite."

But that was before Lohan returned the dress. Or, more correctly, half the dress, because the other half is lying stuffed in the corner of a DJ booth somewhere, mopping up spilled tequila. (Us has a photo of the chop job.)

A source reportedly told the magazine that Lindsay said she ripped the dress at a club following the fundraiser, then enlisted the help of a stylist friend to cut off the damaged portion with scissors borrowed from the club's bouncer, Edward Scissorbouncer. An intentional alteration to hide an unintentional one. Like how if you spilled red nail polish on your bedroom comforter, you might just burn down your bedroom to hide the mishap.

If you are a LiLoyalist fond of conspiracy theories, you might entertain the possibility that a member of Bloch's team hacked at the dress after Lindsay returned it, in order to keep generating press about The Time Lindsay Wore A Pretty But Also Pretty Normal Dress Provided to Her By Celebrity Stylist Phillip Bloch.

If you have ever encountered or been punched by Lindsay Lohan in a club, though, you are probably like:

"Oh, yeah, she ripped it. For sure."

[Us Weekly // Image via AP]

Everybody talks about the "Too Big to Fail" problem: financial institutions that are so huge and interconnected that, when they run into a crisis, the public will always bail them out, because the consequences of not doing so would be catastrophic for everyone. Nobody does anything about it. Maybe that's because banks have powerful lobbyists; maybe it's a human psychological flaw that causes us to stop worrying about inevitable future crises as soon as the last crisis seems to have passed.

No matter the cause, the solution is simple. It's time to break up the banks.

Normally, capitalism has a built in system that regulates risk-taking: failure. A business can take as many financial risks as it wants; if they don't work out, the business can fail. This generally causes businesses to avoid drastic, reckless financial gambles, in the same way that you generally avoid putting your entire life savings on the roulette wheel in Vegas, just because you might win a lot of money: the downside is that you lose everything.

But banks are different. The biggest banks have grown so large and interconnected that they can reasonably expect to be bailed out, should they risk insolvency. This is exactly what happened during the 2008 financial crisis. Rather than let financial institutions eat the consequences of their own bad bets and go out of business, we bailed them out and saved them. Since bankers are (in some ways) both smart and rational, they understand that they are able to take financial gambles that businesses in other industries would never dream of doing. Why? Because if they win, they keep their winnings, and if they lose, the public helps cover their losses. This causes banks to engage in risky practices, which inevitably leads to financial crises. The public's bailouts of the financial industry amount to a huge tax levied on all of us to allow bankers to pursue riskier paths to profit.

It's no wonder, of course, that we bail out banks. The current alternative is doom for us all. The latest attempt to calculate the real value of big banks finds that just four institutions—JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo—have combined assets nearly as large as the entire U.S. economy. It's not as if allowing them to fail would just punish the bankers who took those inappropriate and reckless risks in the first place. Those people are already rich. Allowing these massive institutions to fail would vaporize the assets of millions upon millions of Americans and destabilize our entire financial system, leading to who knows what level of chaos. The literal disintegration of civilized society (at least temporarily) would not be out of the question.

Even an idiot child or blogger can see the primary problem here: these banks are too big. If your local community bank got taken over by a greed-crazed gambler, made tons of risky bets, and lost, and went out of business, well, no biggie. You can go to the bank across town, that's not so poorly managed. But if JPMorgan exhibits the exact same behavior, well, shit, we can't let them go out of business, because then the other huge financial institutions that trade with them would go out of business, and the entire American economy would revert to 1492 status. The financial industry is too consolidated, and the banks are too big. There is no flexibility in the network. The major players have become so powerful that they are able to, in essence, force governments to clean up their messes, in a massive game of economic Chicken.

This is not a new idea. In The Black Swan, a book about the consequences of rare, unpredictable, extreme events published in 2007, before the great financial crisis struck, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote:

[Globalization]... is not all for the good; it creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are not interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks (often Gaussianized in their risk measurement)— when one falls, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogenous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur... I shiver at the thought. I will rephrase here: we will have fewer but more severe crises.

The year after this was published, the global financial system blew up in exactly the way Taleb predicted. Today, we are still suffering from the effects of that crisis, but the structure of the banking industry has not been significantly changed. U.S. banks made a profit of $37.6 billion in the third quarter of 2012. They have absolutely no incentive to change, even though the risk of structural collapse remains the same as it was in 2007.

The tendency of a few massive companies to monopolize industries is good for the companies, but bad for you, the consumer. That's why we have anti-trust laws. Even standard mega-corporate growth has significant drawbacks—but at least in some industries, it has upsides as well. We can argue over whether or not the growth of Wal-Mart is a net good, but at least its size pushes down prices for consumers. Not so in the banking industry. The growth of these huge mega-banks, and the growth of their non-retail banking businesses which bear no resemblance to what normal banks do (take in deposits and make loans) does not benefit you, the consumer. It benefits the financial institutions. It allows them to keep in-house control of the entire spectrum of financial activities. It allows them to reap greater profits for themselves. And it raises the risk of another massive financial crisis, which will have devastating effects on average people and on the public treasury. Too Big To Fail-sized banks are, in the long run, not good for anyone except bankers.

How to fix the problem? That's not complicated either: make banks responsible for their own losses, and subject to normal competitive forces like other businesses. Since at a certain level bank losses can greatly damage society at large, that means limiting the size of banks. In capitalism, profit comes from risk, and risk entails a certain amount of failure. The problem is not that banks sometimes fail; it's that banks have gotten so big that if they fail, we all lose. Taleb wrote that "We would be far better off if there were a different ecology, in which financial institutions went bust on occasion and were rapidly replaced by new ones, thus mirroring the diversity of Internet businesses and the resilience of the Internet economy."

Banks that know they will bear their own losses will naturally behave more responsibly. They will be more prudent with loans; they will be far less likely to take fliers on exotic derivatives that risk blowups that could sink the entire firm. They, not the public, will be expected to bear the risk. And if they don't manage that risk well, they can fail. The financial system itself will be okay.

A financial system composed of a tiny group of Too Big to Fail banks represents the massive and unchecked consolidation of corporate power that liberals despise. It also represents the uncompetitive, anticapitalist, fiscally imprudent type of elitist cronyism that conservatives despise. Breaking up the banks is an issue that everyone—except bankers—can agree on.

So do it, already. Don't wait until the next crisis to have this conversation all over again.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Facebook photos of a KFC employee in Tennessee making out with what appears to be a tub of mashed potatoes molded in the shape of a boob were recently brought to the attention of local CBS affiliate WJHL, which subsequently launched an investigation into their origin.

It was soon determined that the photos were snapped at the KFC on North Roan Street in Johnson City, and an email was sent to the company's corporate headquarters to find out what was being done to ensure food safety at that particular location.

A KFC spokesman responded by saying that the employee in question was terminated as soon as the photos were brought to the attention of the franchisee.

The worker who took the photos was also fired.

According to the spokesman, the incident took place "after the restaurant was closed and none of the food was served."

But eagle-eyed commenters noted that the employee appears to be wearing her drive-thru headset, pointing out that she would have likely removed it had the restaurant truly been closed for the day.

Irrespective of the truth, the spokesman told the Johnson City Press that operations and quality assurance teams had been dispatched to the restaurant by corporate "to reinforce and retrain on KFC's high operating standards."

[H/T: Eater, photos via WJHL]

Rachael Hosein says the day she met Matty the Baby Sloth at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica was "the best day of my life."

Watching him smooth-move his way into her heart with a gift of flower petals may not make this the best day of your life, but it's bound to at least make it much, much better.

YouTube comment of note: "DO NOT SHOW KRISTEN BELL THIS VIDEO. SHE WILL DIE."

[H/T: Tastefully Offensive via SISFTI, animated GIF via Reddit]

Last August, the NYPD announced they'd partnered with Microsoft to create an elaborate city-wide spying/surveillance program, called the Domain Awareness System. The program provides the department with access to over 3,000 public and private security cameras, information that's then instantly cross-referenced with criminal and terrorist databases, 911 call histories, license plate scanning machines, and radiation monitors.

All of this information is presented immediately, with a reportedly easy-to-understand (cop-friendly) design, across computers in the program's lower Manhattan headquarters. When Bloomberg announced the program, he added that New York City, which invested $30 - $40 million in the system, hoped to turn a profit by eventually licensing the software – New York gets a 30% cut of profits — to other cities. Now, based on a report from the Associated Press, the push to sell the program is in full swing, and not just to other cities; Microsoft is also looking to license it to private companies that manage large events.

"It works incredibly well," said Jessica Tisch, director of planning and policy for the counterterrorism unit.
…
"It was created by cops for cops," Tisch said. "We thought a lot about what information we want up close and personal, and what needs to be a click away. It's all baked in there."

But how well does it work? Maybe an example of when it was used to save lives? That would probably help persuade potential buyers.

For example, officers used the system during a deadly shooting outside the Empire State Building in August. Dozens of 911 calls were coming in, and it initially looked like an attack staged by several gunmen. But officers mapped the information and pulled up cameras within 500 feet of the reported shots to determine there was only one shooter.

That incident, of course, ended with two NYPD officers shooting nine innocent bystanders, all in response to a crime in which there was only one targeted victim.

The Domain Awareness System, which, as the AP notes, has "been quietly in use for about a year," is currently used only in NYPD offices, "mostly" for counterterrorism cases, but there are plans to expand access to laptops in squad cars and smart phones for officers walking their beat. But if you're concerned about the NYPD abusing their new powerful technology by targeting people of a particular religion or race, you have nothing to worry about, according to the NYPD's press release from last August.

"As with all NYPD operations, no person will be targeted or monitored by the Domain Awareness System solely because of actual or perceived race, color, religion or creed, age, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, gender (including gender identity), sexual orientation, disability, marital status, partnership status, military status, or political affiliation or beliefs."

[Image via AP]

Last weekend, 27-year-old Nicholas Gonzales got drunk in Louisville, Kentucky. Then, as drunk people tend to do, he made a stupid decision and allegedly broke into a nearby firehouse, smashing one of the building's windows. When firefighters went to investigate the sound of broken glass, they found Gonzales in the midst of an act that they probably weren't expecting: he was reportedly masturbating onto their gear, which he'd removed from their lockers.

The firefighters detained Gonzales, which I'm sure was an interesting ordeal, until police arrived and arrested him. But why was Gonzales allegedly masturbating onto the firefighter's gear, according to the police report?

"Because I wanted to."

Fair enough. Gonzales was charged with burglary, public intoxication and criminal mischief.

UPDATE: A reader tipped us to the Twitter, Amazon (very NSFW) Tumblr accounts of gay porn star Donny Wright. The reader noted a resemblance between the two, and the name on the Amazon account is Nicholas Gonzalez. And, according to his Twitter account, Donny Wright aka Nicholas Gonzalez was in Kentucky last week.

Feel like I went thru a time machine. Kentucky !!

— Donny Wright (@DonnyWrightXXX) February 15, 2013

Not saying the alleged firehouse masturbator was definitely Donny Wright, but this is certainly an interesting twist on the story.

[Image via WHAS 11]

When a maintenance worker at L.A.'s Cecil Hotel opened the hotel's rooftop water tank to investigate low water pressure, he found something inside he probably wasn't expecting: a dead body. Investigators believe the remains of Elisa Lam had been inside the tank since January 31, when the 21-year-old was last seen. As police work to determine if her death was the result of foul play or "a very, very strange accident," the LA County Department of Public Health is investigating a more urgent matter: the potentially contaminated water, which hotel residents had, for several weeks, used to bathe in and brush their teeth.

"The water did have a funny taste," Sabrina Baugh told CNN on Wednesday. She and her husband used the water for eight days.

"We never thought anything of it," the British woman said. "We thought it was just the way it was here."
...
"The shower was awful," she said. "When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was going back to normal."."

"The moment we found out, we felt a bit sick to the stomach, quite literally, especially having drank the water, we're not well mentally," her husband, Michael Baugh, told CBS.

The water from the tank was also used in the hotel's restaurant and its coffee shop, which will remain closed until all its equipment is sanitized.

Terrance Powell, a director at LA's Department of Public Health, said the likelihood of contamination was "minimal" due to the tank's large size, though he said the department was erring on the side of caution. "Our biggest concern is going to be fecal contamination because of the body in the water," Powell said.

Aside from Lam's mysterious disappearance (she was last seen by surveillance footage pushing elevator buttons and sticking her head out the doors), the strangest part of the story is the fact that 11 of the hotel's residents elected to stay there, despite offers from the management to move to another hotel.

Those who chose to remain in the hotel were required to sign a waiver in which they acknowledged being informed of the health risks and were being provided bottled water, Powell said.

[Image via AP]

According to South Africa's Eyewitness News, Hilton Botha, the investigating officer in the Oscar Pistorius murder case, faces seven counts of attempted murder related to a 2009 shooting. Botha and three other officers allegedly opened fire on a minibus full of passengers while drunk. Botha was arrested and charged for the crime in 2011; at one point, the charges were dropped, but they were later reinstated.

Johannesburg police spokesperson Neville Malila said Botha will stay on the Pistorius case.

"There was a decision taken by the DPP's office to charge the members, each one of them with seven counts of attempted murder. That was the number of people that were in the taxi."
 
He said Botha was chosen to handle the Pistorius case because he is a seasoned detective and said there were no plans to pull him off the investigation.

"The member is innocent until proven guilty. The member was chosen by the station to do the investigation due to the fact that he is a senior."

This has been a rough week for Botha. On Monday, he contradicted himself during cross examination and during Wednesday's testimony, he admitted that "there was no evidence to show inconsistencies in the version of events the Blade Runner put to the court" and that he had contaminated the crime scene during his initial investigation.

[Image via AP]

A veteran nurse is suing the Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., over what she says was a request by a swastika-tattooed man that no African-American nurses care for his child—a request the hospital allowed.

The nurse, who is African-American, has accused Hurley of acquiescing to the man, whose newborn was in the NICU last fall:

The lawsuit claims the nurse's supervisor, the charge nurse, contacted a nurse manager who re-assigned the baby, later met with another supervisor to OK the father's request and even had a staff meeting to let them know about the decision.

The suit claims there was a note posted on an assignment clipboard before a hospital attorney told the nurse manager they could not continue doing what had been done. [...]

The lawsuit claims, "The father told the Charge Nurse that he did not want any African Americans taking care of his baby. While telling the Charge Nurse, he pulled up his sleeve and showed some type of tattoo, which was believed to be a swastika of some kind."

A hospital spokeswoman acknowledged that the request was made, but that "[t]he father was informed that his request could not be granted[.]"

ABC12 was able to obtain a copy of the note that the nurse, who remains anonymous, says was attached to the child's assignment clipboard for about four hours. "That did not happen," the hospital's lawyer said.

[ABC12]

TLC's weekly hoot My Strange Addiction profiled one of its wackiest specimens yet last night. Fifty-three-year-old Margaret is a ringer for Mackenzie Phillips who lives in Morningview, KY and stings herself with bees up to 15 times a day. It started as a treatment for her arthritis but then became a recreational activity. She describes the sensation as "peppery" and reports, "No two stings are alike but I feel relief from all of them."

As with many addictions, Margret's comes with guilt and there is a simply hallucinatory scene above of her playing a flute requiem for the bees that she kills as a result of having them sting her. The scene ends with her breaking down next to the hives she keeps in her yard. Also, when confronted by her husband about her habit, she points out that 10 stings make sex "great," and he agrees. There's no further explanation, which is simply infuriating.

In the end, a doctor told urged Margaret to stop her bee habit, fearing she'd develop an allergy and her throat would close up and she'd die like Macaulay Culkin in My Girl. Margaret resolved to cut back to 10 bees a day, but vows that she will "continue stinging." The program works.

Also profiled was a woman named Asha, whose yards of hair she referred to as "Mr. Cobra." Her friend was named Jewelri. Asha referred to herself as the "Black Rapunzel" and a "living legend." Well, now she is.

A temporary warehouse worker at a company that manufactures stress balls among other novelty items exploded with rage after being told by his manager that he was being let go.

Darren Baldwin pleaded guilty to affray and assault in a Blackpool court this week after being arrested for punching his former boss in the face and pulling out two knives on coworkers who sought to calm him down.

According to the prosecutor, Baldwin brandished the knives in the direction of his colleagues and shouted "I will cut you up."

Baldwin was reportedly hired to pack boxes with stress balls, and the knives were part of his employee toolkit.

He was granted bail and released on condition that he stay away from the trading estate where the SPS warehouse is located.

[H/T: Arbroath, photo via Shutterstock]

"My greatest achievement," brags proud dad Jesse Teeters. "The culmination of 2.5 years of parenting. Our first duet."

Teeters and his little daughter collaborating on Piero Umiliani's timeless "Mah Nà Mah Nà" is so adorable, you'll find yourself easily forgiving him for teaching a toddler the lyrics to the theme song of a softcore porn film.

[Reddit]

Hello, it is time for "Hey, Science," our nauseatingly scientific weekly feature in which we have your most provocative scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No question is too smart for us to tackle, which will be our downfall. This week, medical experts answer the question: Can you eat your own poop?

THE QUESTION: This week's query comes from Gawker writer Max Read (not a joke, I want it to be perfectly clear that this question came from Max Read): Can you eat your own poop? We've all heard of people who claim that drinking your own urine has health benefits (vitamins, etc). Why not poop? Would there by any benefits to eating your own poop? Since it's already been fully processed by our own bodies, how could there be any dangers? Might it even be GOOD for us?

Daniel Pomp, PhD, professor, UNC School of Global Public Health:

A big difference between urine and poop is that urine is sterile while poop is, well, you know, smelly and full of bacteria.

That said, those are the same bacteria that live in your gut and play many healthy roles in your body, so coprophagy [Ed.: this means "eating poop," write it down] is not necessarily unhealthy unless the poop originates from an unhealthy individual.

In fact, a recent article published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine showed that fecal transplants, where poop from one individual is infused into another individual's intestines, have performed better than regular antibiotics in treating certain bacterial infections that cause severe diarrhea.

Parul Agarwal MD, assistant professor of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, University of Wisconsin:

Thank you for this interesting inquiry. Drinking your own urine and eating your own poop is perfectly safe. Urine is sterile, poop is not, but they are your own bugs. There are no positive effects of eating your own poop that I know of. Hope this helps. [Ed.: it does help Max Read, in particular.]

Lars Eckmann, PhD, professor of medicine at UCSD Medical School, Division of Gastroenterology:

Interesting question. In theory, ingesting your own stool should not be harmful, as long as it "clean" (i.e., not contaminated with stool from others, as might occur by contact in a toilet bowl, etc). Furthermore, there may be a theoretical minor health benefit in doing so. Bacteria in the colon can metabolize non-absorbed food materials (fiber) and generate useful nutrients (e.g. vitamins such as biotin, or sugars and amino acids from fiber and other undigested materials) that are only partly absorbed during initial production, the rest is excreted with the stool. Re-uptake of these nutrients by ingestion of stool would give a second opportunity for absorption in the gut. In fact, coprophagy in mice (a normal behavior) helps to extract extra energy from food compared to mice that are prevented from coprophagy.

However, any theoretical biological benefit is heavily outweighed by our strong aversion to coprophagy. The primary reason for that is probably the unconscious awareness that stool is often a source of infections in humans (because we do not get to ingest "clean" stool, but rather mixed stool from other people). Practically all food-borne infections are ultimately transmitted through the stool (fecal-oral), so we have very good reasons to stay away from stool as much as possible by hygienic measures (toilet construction, separate drinking and waste water systems, etc).

Having said that, an increasing medical interest exists in "stool transplantation", where normal, "healthy" stool gets ingested by patients who suffer from certain forms of diarrheal disease caused by use of antibiotics. The challenge is to standardize the stool preparations and formulate them in ways that are acceptable to patients.

P.K. Newby, ScD, MPH, MS nutrition scientist and food writer:

Bottom line: the human body is a wondrous machine, with complex systems designed to extract nutrients from food and, during metabolism, excrete the waste products in the form of both liquids (urine) and solids (feces). The body is not 100% efficient, however (no machine is), so there could be some residual nutrition left in the waste.

That said, whatever small amount of nutrition that remains, which can have utility in some cases—-a likely explanation why certain species do eat their poop, like dogs; why poop from some species provides nutrients for others; etc—-it's not a terribly efficient way of obtaining energy and nutrition for humans. Your body has excreted this waste, and reconsuming it is literally a waste of energy and, further, could be harmful; there's a reason your body is excreting this waste, after all, and no reason to further tax your excretory and digestive systems with remetabolizing it.

There is likely some innate biological proclivities at play here that would lead a human to want to consume his/her waste, likely going back to days of hunting and gathering when food was scarce. But that is no longer the case in many places (like the US setting), thus there are certainly healthier, safer, and tastier ways of obtaining nutrition for our bodies in the 21st century.

In summary,consuming foods naturally rich in vitamins, minerals, and other things the body needs, like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds, for example, are a better way to go than, say, consuming the waste of those (or whatever) foods.

THE VERDICT: Assuming you are a healthy person, eating your own poop would probably not harm you. Eating someone else's poop could make you sick if they were unhealthy, but eating poop from the right person could cure your diarrheal disease. But generally speaking, Max Read should stick to eating real food.

Previously
Can Huge Man-Made Lakes Fix Our Rising Sea Levels?
Can Animals Be Mentally Ill?
Can Blood Transfusions Cure HIV?
When Can We Go Live on the Moon?

[Image by Jim "The Poop Chef" Cooke. Do you have a scientifically provocative question for "Hey, Science?" Email me.]

Three people are dead on the Las Vegas strip after a gun battle between passengers of an SUV and a Maserati came to a fiery end at a busy intersection outside Bally's casino—blowing up a taxicab and killing its driver and passenger.

The third victim is the driver of the Maserati, who was shot and killed by unknown assailants driving a tinted Range Rover, which is still at large. At least three other vehicles besides the Maserati and Taxi were involved in the crash—"I looked out my window at Caesars Palace ... and could see a fireball," a witness told KLAS—and several people were injured, including a passenger in the Maserati.

[KLAS]

In my day, if you wanted to buy a car, you just opened up the "newspaper" to the "classified ads" section and looked under "used cars." (Later, you had to find some money also.) Things change. These days, none of those things in quotation marks exist any more.

Turns out that finding a nice used car to buy these days is harder than... I dunno... harder than some of the hard materials, metals and whatnot, that might be used to produce a car. Why? Because when you try to steal one, whoops, turns out the owner has a gun in the glove compartment. This is America, after all. And also because of the recession. From the WSJ:

The shortage of used cars stems from the deep plunge in new-car sales between 2008 and 2010, and the virtual disappearance of new-car leases during the financial crisis. As a result, three-year-old cars are now hard to find and even older models are holding their value.

They're holding their value so god damn well that cars that are just a few years old are almost as expensive as new cars, so what's the point? You'd be better off just taking your town's extensive and affordable 24-hour mass transit system to work, as we do here in New York. "Be more like New York City" is the clear answer, once again.

Or, move to Europe, where they have the opposite problem.

[WSJ. Photo: John Lloyd/ Flickr]

Justin Timberlake performed "Mirrors" from his upcoming 20/20 Experience album at last night's BRIT Awards in London. When that track was released after the Grammy Awards, it seemed like an energizing, skittery return to FutureSex/LoveSounds Justin. In the live context, it was just as dull as his R. Kelly-lite Grammys rendition of "Suit & Tie" and "Pusher Love Girl."

It's not that these songs are bad or that Timberlake shouldn't be performing them, it's just that there is a distinct lack of energy in his recent appearances. There is something to be said for the audacity of midtempo, for the boldness in releasing a series of laid-back tracks instead of giving the kids the EDM bangers that they want, especially after his "SexyBack" helped reacquaint pop with the four-on-the-floor house beat pattern almost seven years ago. But like much of Timberlake's public behavior, it seems like cockiness is steering, that his musical reemergence is the main attraction and the point, that the music and the way he's packaging it are afterthoughts. Should we be honored by his lateness?

The bombastic live instrumental arrangement didn't help matters, as it forced Timberlake to strain his vocals, a jarring contrast between the cool image he's attempting this time around.

Police say a landlord in the southwest Ohio village of Waynesville has admitted to spanking a male tenant several times on his bare butt with a belt.

53-year-old Ron Kronenberger had allegedly told the 29-year-old victim "if you're going to act like a child, I'm going to treat you like one," after the latter fell behind on his rent to the tune of $2,800.

Police say the assault, which took place on January 22nd in the back office of Kronenberger's Hometown Market store, left "little marks" on the unnamed tenant's behind.

The victim told Police Chief Gary Copeland "he was scared and just wanted to get it over with," so agreed to Kronenberger's request to bend over and hold on to a chair.

Kronenberger was charged with misdemeanor assault, and was due in court today.

A former president of the local Chamber of Commerce, Kronenberger was named Waynesville's Citizen of the Year in 2006, according to the Dayton Daily News.

[screengrab via ABC22]

The former First Lady's feathers have been ruffled. An advertisement supporting same-sex marriage used a clip of Laura Bush without her permission, and she is very upset. The soundbite captured by Respect for Marriage Coalition is from a 2010 interview on CNN's Larry King Live, where Mrs. Bush said, "When couples are committed they ought to have, I think, the same rights that everyone has."

Bush's spokeswoman, Anne MacDonald, has stated the former First Lady "did not approve of her inclusion in this advertisement nor is she associated with the group that made the ad in any way." Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Vice President Dick Cheney also appear in the advertisement. Mr. Cheney has publicly supported same-sex marriage since the 2004 election, when it was revealed his daughter Mary is a lesbian. In the ad he says, "Freedom means freedom for everyone."

The advertisement concludes with a clip of President Obama during his second inaugural address stating that "our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law."

[Via Daily Mail / Image via AP]

Shia LaBeouf was all set for his first stroll along the Great White Way before abruptly departing Daniel Sullivan's upcoming production of Lyle Kessler's Orphans due to "creative differences."

In an ostensible effort to explain his sudden exit, LaBeouf used his Twitter account to "leak" a series of email exchanges between himself his former play-mates — Sullivan and co-star Alec Baldwin among them.

In a touching soliloquy entitled "apology," LaBeouf writes, in part: "A man can tell you he was wrong. hat he did wrong. That he planned to. He can tell you when he is lost. He can apologize, even if sometimes it's just to put an end to the bickering."

Powerful, heartfelt words. Except they weren't his.

The entire refrain was lifted verbatim from Tom Chiarella's "What Is a Man?," which appeared in Esquire's 2009 "How to Be a Man" issue.

It soon became apparent that LaBeouf's "confessional" tweets were less about being humble and more about humblebragging.

As evinced in such as responses as "I don't have an unkind word to say about you" from Baldwin, and "you're one hell of a great actor" from Sullivan.

Even LaBeouf's other co-star, Tom Sturridge, got in on the action, telling LaBeouf he "lifted the play to a place higher than maybe it ever deserved to be."

LaBeouf clearly knows how to quote properly, as he did with words from David Mamet and Mark Twain, so it's unclear why he didn't bother to extended Chiarella the same respect.

Probably because pretending to have written something smart makes a person appear smarter to those who are unfamiliar with the original text.

Of course, the downside is, when that person is ultimately exposed, they end up appearing dumber than they otherwise would have.

UPDATE: Tom Chiarella responds to Shia LaBouef's plagiarism of his Esquire piece: "A man who's been plagiarized must be graceful and grateful that your words have power. A man who plagiarized just owes an acknowledgment and a one-sentence apology. But I don't expect it."

[H/T: Entertainment Weekly, @ditzkoff, photo via AP]