IKEA Monkey

CLEVELAND—After the fourth such interruption of the night forced him to pause Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, frustrated moderator Chris Wallace sternly reminded attendees to refrain from any John Kasich chants while other candidates were speaking. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, let’s keep this debate respectful,” said Wallace over the din of the effusive crowd, admonishing audience members for cutting into Chris Christie’s time by erupting into loud impromptu chants of “Ka-Sich! Ka-Sich! Ka-Sich!” “I don’t want to have to call security, but if you continue to chant loudly and hiss at the other participants, I will have each person in the audience removed. Aw, for Christ’s sake, not again.” At press time, half the crowd was shouting “John” while the other half responded with “Kasich.”

Chicago's first adults-only camp-in is coming to Northerly Island this month. But if you're interested, it'll cost you.

Nearly 18 months after the Russian Track Federation banned her for doping, Russia's Liliya Shobukhova finally is being stripped of her three Bank of America Chicago Marathon titles.

Bombs away.

Bring on big splashes, wet clothes, and hot sunny afternoons of

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Despite the Supreme Court decision in June that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, leading evangelicals vowed this week that the fight to keep marriage between a man and a woman is not over.

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

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Two sons and their elderly mother were found dead in what police are calling a "Wiccan ritual killing" related to the "blue" moon last week.

Would you look at that adorable couple? That is Daniel and Larry Lennox-Choate, and they are dudes who are so gay for each other that they decided to get married at their alma mater, which is, ahem, WEST POINT. They were the first gay couple to do that, in 2013! And well, we guess they’ve been living happily ever after since then, except for this one unfortunate incident this past Sunday, when, as they were shopping at the bodega in SoHo (probably assessing the quality of various fruits and vegetables, in order to prepare THE perfect Sunday dinner), some fuckin’ asshole decided to start hurling anti-gay obscenities at Daniel, pictured on the right. Then, according to the New York Daily News, he punched Daniel.

Read more on Dumb Gay-Basher Gets Dumb Ass Handed To Him By Gay-Married West Point Ninjas…

The post Dumb Gay-Basher Gets Dumb Ass Handed To Him By Gay-Married West Point Ninjas appeared first on Wonkette.

Birth control pills are revealed to have prevented hundreds of thousands of cancer-related cases, according to a new study published by The Lancet Journal.

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The delivery included almost a quarter of an ounce of heroin, more than 2 ounces of marijuana and more than 5 ounces of tobacco, officials said.

Pope Francis' call Wednesday for a church of "open doors" that welcomes divorced Catholics prompted speculation over whether he was signaling support for easing the ban on Communion for couples who remarry without a church annulment.

Donald Trump’s viciously racist remarks regarding Latinos should be condemned with all the ardent fury decent humans can collectively muster. But Kelly Osbourne only exemplified white condescension toward the Latino immigrant community when she referred to them as toilet-scrubbers.

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Community is probably officially over, after being resuscitated by Yahoo for a sixth season. Joel McHale confirmed the show’s death in an interview with Metro Weekly. “You’re not going to be able to get Alison Brie or Gillian Jacobs at a normal television salary anymore,” he says. “There is just not enough money to be able to pay for the show.”

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It's easy to get into Confederate Facebook. Just go to a news article about a police shooting and scroll down to the comments. Most comment sections are linked to people's Facebook accounts, so you just have to find someone with a Confederate flag avatar expressing a racist opinion, click through to his or her profile, and select "Add Friend."

Everyone in Confederate Facebook seems to accept friend requests from strangers, which I guess can be chalked up to Southern hospitality. Facebook's friend recommendations will quickly turn into an endless, mesmerizing stream of folks with names like Prepper Jeff and Amanda Rebel. Just keep clicking "Add Friend" over and over, and before you know it your Timeline is full of racist Minions memes and pictures of Looney Toons who are somehow mad at Al Sharpton.

Related: The Racist Behind the Pro-Confederate Flag Demonstration Is Hated Even by Other Klansmen

Predictably, many Confederate Facebook posts consist of proud displays of the Confederate flag—on tattoos, in wedding photos, flanked by flaming blue skulls, airbrushed onto truck windows, whatever. But then you can find people freaking out at the possibility that Obama might arrest them for posting racist stuff on Facebook, or getting mad that people are calling them racist.

I was beginning to feel stupefied and distressed, and my friends were complaining that all their recommended friends now had Confederate flag avatars as well. While some of the Confederate Facebookers were plum happy to have me on board—check out this weirdly adorable picture of a bowing horse someone sent me!—others, like the guy who told me to "run off and join ISIS," were not.

Just when I was about to unfriend them all and start drinking, I was invited to a private group of about 2,500 called "confederate pride, heritage not hate."

The group consisted of more of the same good ol' boy palaver about Southern Pride and Confederate Lives Matter, peppered with tirades from a handful of out-and-out Stormfront white supremacists and neo-Nazis. I added a few dozen of my friends, who promptly started trolling the shit out of the group.

It should go without saying that the folks who have built their identities around a 150-year-old treasonous cause to keep human beings in bondage are not very good at the internet. The group's creator had no idea how to lock the banner image at the top of the page, so friends of mine added their own.

Then...

And then...

Then there was a guy named Chris, whom we accused of being a Northerner in disguise.

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Watch our documentary on one school's White Student Union:

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Chris got so riled up by the insinuation that he was from the North that not only did he post pictures of all of the (non-Northern) flags on his truck, he also posted his phone number and requested that an admin call him to vet his Southern bona fides.

Our friend Lowen dialed Chris to investigate. He claimed to be a guy named Roger who'd heard Chris was a Northerner who'd joined the group to troll. Understandably, Chris was upset about this, and claimed to have never left the state of Texas. "Roger" told Chris he'd heard that he had the state flag of "Maine or New York" on his truck, that he worked at Dunkin' Donuts, and that he'd voted for Obama "both times from a polling station in Brooklyn, New York." Chris was very upset that people were spreading these vicious rumors about him, and told "Roger" that his "friends in high places" would slap the trolls with prison time for their actions.

All of these shenanigans were too much to keep up with for the group's lone, overworked admin, who did not seem to know how to stop the banner from changing or ban the trolls, whose numbers were starting to rival those of the Rebels. So, in the style of Shock Doctrine, I swooped in and offered to clean up this manufactured crisis. The hapless admin fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Once I was in charge of the group I decided to take it in a new direction. The Confederate flag, I felt, had become a toxic brand. And all this South-rising-again business was a sure loser with swing voters. A top-down rebranding was in order. After rigorous focus-group testing, I decided to align the group with LGBT rights, Michelle Obama, Judaism, miscegenation, and the victorious Juche ideology. And that is how "confederate pride, heritage not hate" became "LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama and Judaism."

The estimable @BrooklynJuggler then posted an awesome Benjamin Marra comic of a group of rappers gunning down Nazis and Klansmen, which became the new pinned post.

Juggler also gave the group a custom URL to reflect the new focus, which, per Facebook policy, can never be changed.

Sadly not everyone was happy about these alterations. Users demanded to know what the "quier stuff" was about and threatened to revoke their membership. So I made 50 of my friends administrators to help enforce the transition.

Things went smoothly for the first couple hours. While my friends and I gabbed about our shabbat plans and different-race partners, I thought I had finally found a place in Confederate Facebook where I fit in. Then the original admim returned and started undoing our work.

This kicked off a vicious power struggle among the group's dozens of admins, over the course of which the group and its purpose went through dozens of changes, not all of which were well received.

The group hemorrhaged followers throughout the day until, at last, Facebook took it down. I still have my dozens of Confederate Facebook friends, but even they are starting to drift away now that I have taken to posting "I'm an illegal immigrant" on all of their status updates, which ended in one guy threatening to report me to Homeland Security.

Yet somewhere online the South lives on in groups with names like "strait souther confederate nation," Southern Pride, Pride of the Southern Heritage, and probably thousands of combinations of the terms "Southern," "Confederate," "pride," "heritage," "NOT HATE," "DEFINITELY NOT RACIST," and "flag."

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Thanks to all who contributed to this piece.

A former elementary school teacher in eastern Pennsylvania has been charged with having sex with a 13-year-old student.

Kraft is recalling 36,000 cases of individually-wrapped cheese singles because part of the wrapper could become a choking hazard.

A procedural vote in the Senate on legislation that would have barred all federal funds for Planned Parenthood failed on Monday.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: An unnamed man in Yorkshire, England

Photos via Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons

The incident: A man discovered his girlfriend had fed his bacon to a cat.

The appropriate response: Asking her not to do that, if it bothers you.

The actual response: He called the emergency services.

Earlier this week, West Yorkshire Police in England released several of the most ridiculous calls they've received to their 999 emergency number.

The most ridiculous of these ridiculous calls (which you can listen to here) is a man who is calling to report his girlfriend for feeding his bacon to a cat.

The call opens with the caller saying, "Er, me girlfriend has let the cat eat my bacon."

"What would you like the police to do with regards to that, sir?" the operator asks. The man tells the operator that he wants to press charges. "Against who," the operator asks. "Your girlfriend, or the cat?"

After telling the operator that he wants to press charges against both his girlfriend and the cat, the man is told that it's not an arrestable offense to let a cat eat bacon, and also that the West Yorkshire Police does not arrest cats. The man then ends the call.

Other 999 calls released by the West Yorkshire force include a woman calling to report a pigeon in her house, someone calling to report that food they'd ordered wasn't very good, and a woman complaining that her neighbor's washing machine was too loud.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Evening Post, Tom Donahoe, who heads up West Yorkshire Police's team of 999 operators, said, "The serious point is that, a lot of the time, we're talking about a matter of seconds between us being able to get to a genuine emergency effectively and not being able to, and therefore having people's lives put at risk."

Tom also described a call they'd received in which a man asked for help figuring out who played the lead role in Magnum P.I. He did not specify whether or not the 999 operator had been able to help the guy out.

Cry-Baby #2: A Starbucks manager in Tampa, Florida

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A man made a habit of confronting people who illegally park in the handicapped parking space outside his local Starbucks.

The appropriate response: Congratulating him.

The actual response: He was banned from Starbucks for life.

For the last few years, St. Petersburg, Florida, resident Rob Rowen (pictured above) has been confronting people who illegally park in the handicapped spot at the Starbucks he visits daily.

This is important to Rob, as his son-in-law has muscular dystrophy and, Rob says, often has difficulty finding parking. He told ABC News that while some customers he confronted would move politely, others complained to Starbucks staff.

Speaking to Tampa's WTSP 10 News, Rob described his confrontations with customers unhappy about being asked to move their cars. One man accused Rob of harassment after Rob took a photo of him and his car. In another incident, a woman called the police after Rob took a photo of her car parked in the handicapped space; according to Rob, she ended up getting a ticket for illegal parking, which he said "felt really good."

Then, a few months ago, another customer complained about being confronted Rob to the manager of the Starbucks. According to Rob, after this incident, the manager approached him and said, "I don't want you harassing my customers. I don't want you to come back in this store ever."

A few days later, Rob received a letter from Starbucks. Initially, he thought the company was writing to apologize, but actually, the letter informed Rob that the ban had been extended to every single Starbucks in the world.

It reads, in part: "Starbucks requires that you leave its locations immediately and do not return. This expulsion notice is permanent and applies to all Starbucks locations."

After Rob's story started getting national media attention, though, a representative for Starbucks announced they were overturning the ban. "Mr. Rowen is welcome at any of our stores and we will work with him to improve the parking situation at this store and create better awareness and understanding of of the parking issue," a spokesman for the company said in an email to ABC News.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this little poll down here:

Previously: A company who fired a toll booth operator for paying a customer's toll vs. some cops who arrested a woman for leaving her children unattended 30 feet away while she was being interviewed for a job.

Winner: The toll booth company!!!

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Unlike a certain companion animal that will go unnamed, dogs lose their minds when reunited with their owners. But it’s not immediately obvious why our canine companions should grant us such an over-the-top greeting—especially considering the power imbalance that exists between the two species. We spoke to the experts to find out why.

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Ice-T and Coco finish each others’ sentences. It’s something you might expect from newlyweds, or couples otherwise in the dawn of their relationships, but the duo has been married since 2002, and their tangible affinity for one another has been a representation of relationship goals since Ice Loves Coco , the reality show chronicling their lives that ran on E! from 2011 to 2014.

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The Cubs' Ricketts family is placing its bets on Scott Walker. [ more › ]

It’s a classic caper: passing yourself off as your brother or sister to squirm out of trouble when you’re caught doing something you shouldn’t. But New Jersey police say one man didn’t quite pull off the sibling switcheroo when he was stopped for $7,500 in unpaid tolls.

Port Authority police in New Jersey say officers stopped a 44-year-old man after he drove through an EZ-Pass lane on the George Washington Bridge toll without paying, reports NJ.com.

A police spokesman said the man couldn’t provide any documentation for the motorcycle he was riding and the license plates didn’t match the bike. After a search, police said they found baggies of cocaine in his pocket, which he at first said was just candy.

While he was being taken into custody, officers say he gave them a government ID card that had his brother’s name and photo on it. Unaware that it wasn’t him, police issued the man a summons under his brother’s name and let him go.

When Port Authority police figured things out, they issued a warrant for his arrest. He was later arrested by State Police on unrelated traffic warrants and was turned over to Port Authority police to face wrongful impersonation, theft, hindering apprehension and cocaine possession charges.

Man used brother’s name to dodge unpaid tolls, drug charge, police say [NJ.com]

He served one term as the governor of Virginia, ending in 2002.

My car was manufactured about eleven and a half years ago, which I thought was relatively old. That’s why I was surprised to learn that it’s perfectly average. According to data compiled by the consulting firm IHS Automotive, cars that are registered and on the roads have an average age of 11.5 years, and there’s a record number of cars registered right now.

Why does this matter? First, it’s interesting, because the trend of older cars began during the recession, and the average age of cars on the road has been increasing since 2008. People wouldn’t be keeping their cars for longer (or acquiring older used cars) if the cars themselves weren’t more durable, though, and that indicates that cars are more reliable than they use to be and staying out of the scrap heap.

IHS are business consultants, though, and one important implication of this data for repair shops, dealerships, and auto parts manufacturers is that with more cars that are in or approaching their teens in circulation, there will need to be more parts for those vehicles and mechanics able to work on them.

Cars that are more than ten or eleven years old used to be thought of as an anomaly by some aftermarket repair shops, and that’s not the case now: eleven-year-old cars are perfectly average.

Average Age of Light Vehicles in the U.S. Rises Slightly in 2015 to 11.5 years, IHS Reports (via Fortune)

First off, apologies to all the Trevors, but we had to pick a name, so we went with Trevor. Or Chase. It could easily be Chase. Would Hunter like to join us? Sup bro? What shall we do this evening, with our hipster, trend piece, easily marketed to, Instagram-American selves? Well, why don’t we drink a really disgusting wine, which marketing executives and professional trendsetters have been trying to rebrand as something OTHER than “it is TOO different from white zinfandel, because it is French, which makes it CLASSY, even though it kind of tastes like mouth herpes”? Anyway, meet some bros who are into rosé, and who call it “brosé,” because putting the word “bro” into other words is a super cute pun, but in a manly way:

Read more on Douchebag Hipsters Named Trevor Would Like A Glass Of Your Finest Rosé Please…

From The Message is Medium Rare, an appreciation of the ShackBurger, "a straightforward, honest-to-goodness burger". It includes a review of the typography used by the restaurant:

These three typefaces artfully express the ethos of both the burger and the brand. Neutraface is the bun: sturdy, reliable and architectural. Futura is the patty: basic but bold. Galaxie is the lettuce: wavy, quirky and fresh. To the layperson this comparison may seem like a stretch, but designers know they are purposefully expressive.

Tags: burgers   food   restaurants   Shake Shack

The FBI is struggling to attract computer scientists to its cybersecurity program mainly due to low pay, according to a Justice Department report.