IKEA Monkey

In other Lebron hairline news, this is either the stupidest or best thing I’ve seen this year. Yeah, actually, it’s awesome.

Happy New Year everyone.

[Conor Minogue]

A couple visiting Asheville, North Carolina were hanging out in the hotel bar when they approached a petite young lady and invited her to come home with them. No, this story isn’t quite what it sounds like: that young lady was a four-year-old homeless dog wearing an “Adopt Me” vest, and at this particular hotel, dogs available for adoption greet guests and even mingle with bar patrons.

The hotel already had special appeal for animal lovers, allowing customers to bring their pets for no additional fee. The doggie greeters are a new amenity, part of a partnership between the hotel and a local dog rescue. There’s one hound-in-residence at a time, and it can also visit other parts of the building on a leash. Guests cannot bring the dogs to their rooms, but they do like being able to borrow a friend to visit the rooftop terrace or the restaurant with.

Since the program started, fourteen of the rescue dogs in residence have been adopted by hotel guests and people who live in the community. Dog number 14 is in the photo above, and her name is Ember. She’s been adopted already.

North Carolina hotel welcomes you with open arms and dogs to adopt [AP]

Bret Easton Ellis photographed at his home in LA by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

We know you're busy. You probably didn't have time to read every article we published on VICE.com this year. So we've compiled a list of some of our favorites and will be re-featuring them on the homepage through the end of 2014. This one originally published on February 17th.

Bret Easton Ellis has only got to open his mouth for the cry-babies of the world to crawl out and start berating him for being a morally depraved chancer. Back in the 80s and 90s, you could sympathise with people getting offended by his books if they hadn't spent much time around hedge-fund managers or fashion-world dickheads. If they had, they'd realize that American Psycho and Glamorama are in essence works of journalism—dressed up in Valentino and splattered with blood, yes, but documentaries of a certain moment in history all the same. "The six or seven books add up as a sort of autobiography," he says. "When I look at them I think, Oh, that's where I was in '91. That's where I was in '88. OK, I got it."

Now he has moved into film, as well as writing screenplays for TV and delivering his own weekly podcast. Which, among other highlights, has featured Kanye West and Marilyn Manson. Still, he has repeatedly faced accusations of "douchery" from bloggers and a general outcry every time he criticizes anything on Twitter.

When I called his house in LA last week, Bret talked passionately about his frustration with what he's dubbed "Generation Wuss"—you, me, and everyone else who's young, is hyper-sensitive, and has grown up with the internet, basically. Over the course of a few hours, I was genuinely impressed by the amount of interest he takes in the lives of people who've grown up reading his books, the technology they use, and the way they consume culture. His annoyance seems to come from a place of concern rather than misanthropy.

So, why all the pant-wetting?

VICE: Why have you termed me and my contemporaries "Generation Wuss"?
Bret Easton Ellis: You have to understand that I'm coming to these things as a member of the most pessimistic and ironic generation that has ever roamed the earth. When I hear millennials getting hurt by "cyber bullying," or it being a gateway to suicide, it's difficult for me to process. A little less so for my boyfriend, who happens to be a millennial of that age, but even he somewhat agrees with the sensitivity of Generation Wuss. It's very difficult for them to take criticism, and because of that a lot of the content produced is kind of shitty. And when someone is criticized for their content, they seem to collapse, or the person criticizing them is called a hater, a contrarian, a troll.

In a way it's down to the generation that raised them, who cocooned them in praise—four stars for showing up, you know? But eventually everyone has to hit the dark side of life; someone doesn't like you, someone doesn't like your work, someone doesn't love you back... people die. What we have is a generation who are super-confident and super-positive about things, but when the least bit of darkness enters their lives, they're paralyzed.

I realized the other day that I'm around the same age as Patrick Bateman. His existence was fairly typical of a 27-year-old living in New York at the time you wrote American Psycho, but it couldn't be further away from my reality.
Not to reference the 27-year-old [Bret's boyfriend] too often, but he would completely agree with you. American Psycho is about a world that is as alien to him as Saturn.

I think it was a world we were promised, though.
There was a certain point where we realized the promises were lies and that we were going to be economically adrift. It's the fault of the baby-boomer generation for raising their kids at the highest peak of the empire, in a complete fantasy world. My generation, Gen X, realized that, like most fantasies, it was somewhat dissatisfying, and we rebelled with irony, negativity, and attitude because we had the luxury to do that. Our reality wasn't an economic hardship.

Right—which is what The Wolf of Wall Street is all about. Is that why you like it so much?
I never like a movie because of its subject matter. I liked it because it wasn't an op-ed piece and it wasn't concerned with another thing that so many movies are concerned with today, which is decency: decent people under stress or hardship.

To me, it's a classic young man story, like Barry Lyndon. Nine times out of ten they blow it, they fuck up, they spend all the money, they let their id run wild, don't check themselves, don't look towards the future, and... it crashes. Also, I just thought it was hilarious, and Leonardo delivered a transfixing performance. And the fact that he's not going to win an Academy Award this year is a real bummer.

Seeing him in that film, do you wish he'd played Patrick Bateman?
I was really not involved in the making of that movie. All I know was that it was an offer made to Leo after Christian Bale. It would have been the start of erasing something that was probably quite embarrassing for him, being known for the rest of his life as Jack from Titanic. I don't know exactly what happened. I also didn't know how far along Christian was in preparing for American Psycho, so my endorsing Leo might have looked insensitive. But yes—in answer to your question, I would have liked to see him in the role. But it was probably a lot better at that time and less distracting to have a relatively unknown actor.

You said Terrence Malick was a big inspiration.
One of the key moments in my young movie-going life was watching Days of Heaven and realizing that film was an art form. I'd been leading up to that epiphany, growing up in LA and being very aware of the film industry. But in 1978, that's when I got it. That's why I have such a tie to that film and why I watch it every two years. It takes me back.

Is it a style you'd like to recreate in your own films?
I don't know about that. Part of the problem I had with The Canyons was that I would have directed it faster. I don't have the Asian mindset that Paul Schrader does, which is steeped in [Yasujiro] Ozu and the great Japanese directors from the 50s and 60s. That's his way of pacing a movie.

That sounds like a pretty massive disparity in your vision for the film.
It seems more massive than it really was. The Canyons was guerrilla film making. We were going to make it for no money and put it on iTunes. We didn't think it was going to turn into this notorious cultural event in the US.

Surely you knew that casting Lindsay Lohan would have that kind of effect?
No, but it was a $150,000 movie. We were sitting in friends' bedrooms; we weren't trying to create The Godfather. I wrote the script—I think it was one of only two scripts in Schrader's career that he didn't touch, the other being a script written by Harold Pinter for a film called The Comfort of Strangers, which is a movie that influenced The Canyons—and Schrader wanted it shot the way he shoots. And I thought, 'You know, this will be faster after we've edited it.' And it did [get faster], to a degree.

Look, 20 percent of people I know like the movie; 80 percent don't like the movie. But the sketchiness of it—the sleazy, cold aspect of it—what can I say? It speaks to me.

The sinister portrait of LA that you paint in Less Than Zero—with howling coyotes and dead bodies littering alleyways—is that a realistic depiction of the place? Or has your view of it changed as you've grown older?
I think it's a bit of both. I do think my southern California childhood was very idyllic. Yes, there was a bad marriage going down in the house, and I suffered from a little bit of depression, but there was the beach, there were the malls, and a lot of my friends drove around in convertibles. I mean, how bad is it?

I wasn't an unpopular kid. I had a lot of friends; I threw parties; I had a... girlfriend. But writing all the time alienated me from the crowd slightly, and because of that I did tend to look at the world with a more jaundiced eye.

OK. Is it true that you're writing a TV series about the Manson murders?
Yes, although I wouldn't say it's about the Manson murders. It's about the two years surrounding the Manson murders in LA. The show starts about a year before the Manson murders. I'm just beginning to plan it. It's in the beginning stages.

And are you writing a new book?
Yes, but I wish it wasn't important to people that I am. I had a bit of a breakdown in January of 2013. I did more writing in 2012 than I'd ever done in my life—a series of movies, two of which got made, and countless television pilots. By January of 2013 I was exhausted. I found myself hungry to write prose, so I started working on this book. Every now and then it comes alive and I work on it until I get distracted by something else. It's on my desk, along with a play that I'm writing.

What made you want to do the podcast?
I published a very long, 4,000-word piece for Out magazine. It got a lot of attention here in the US, and reading articles written in response to it, I realized people had stopped reading halfway through.

That's the internet.
Well, there's a positive myth that the internet is great for writing long-form pieces and you can publish 11,000 words, but it doesn't mean people will necessarily read the whole thing. So I thought, if I had a podcast, I could have my say over it. I wasn't into the idea of a talk-radio show at first, but it's been really interesting. I don't understand this idea of the novelist being locked in the top of a tower. I've seen people respond negatively to the fact I'm on Twitter and have opinions about pop culture. I like it. It fucks with people's idea of what I'm really like.

Is this one of the problems you had with David Foster Wallace—that he played up to the almighty author thing?
I think David Foster Wallace is a complete fraud. I'm really shocked that people take him seriously. People say the same thing about me, of course, and I've been criticized for saying these things about Wallace due to the very sentimental narrative attached to him since he killed himself.

But it all ties into Generation Wuss and its wussy influence on social media to a degree; if you have a snarky opinion about anything, you're a douche. To me, that's problematic. It limits discourse. If you just like everything, what are we going to talk about? How great everything is? How often I've pushed the Like button on my Facebook page?

Is it BuzzFeed who said they're not going to run any negative reviews any more? Really, guys? What's going to happen to culture then? What's going to happen to conversation? It's going to die.

Yeah. But I suppose now, in place of money, we have a currency of popularity, and the main pay-off is thousands of people liking your shit on Facebook. In that climate, how do you create vital work?
I agree with you, and it's kind of touching to me that there isn't an economic way of elevating yourself, and the only way to do that is through your brand, your profile, and your social media presence. I think I might be too old to consciously use Instagram or Tumblr to my advantage. I don't even use Twitter correctly. But living with someone who's 27, I think the way you described it is perfectly accurate: Online presence is the currency.

While my boyfriend and his friends can be really quite biting and mean at times, overall they really do want to put out a more gentle, amiable persona.

But I wouldn't say your work in the 80s and 90s was particularly amoral. American Psycho did carry a kind of moral message. It might not have been stated explicitly, but it was there.
You need to feel that, though. I got shit for American Psycho, with people saying it was calculated to offend people. If that was true, I wouldn't have spent three to four years on it, and I would have just filled every page with horrible descriptions. I was writing about my life. I was writing about being Patrick Bateman—a young man in New York during that era—and being lost in that yuppie culture, which is really just consumerist culture. Feeling that I had to have all of the things that a young man had at that time and hating myself for not having them and hating society and not wanting to grow up. That's really what American Psycho was. It was a very personal novel.

Also, like a lot of men, I had a pretty tawdry fantasy world, and if any man really wants to admit that, they're going to be attacked for it.

When people accuse you of misogyny, I'm always like, "Oh, right, because the men come off so well in those books."
Well, look. [Laughs.] This is exactly the kind of thing a misogynist would say, but I've never felt like a misogynist. Yet it has been interesting to look back at myself when I've been accused of that and to understand why someone would say it. For example, I don't think American Psycho is a misogynist text at all; I think misogyny is part of the picture. But, like I said in the Wolf of Wall Street podcast, a depiction is not an endorsement.

I was criticized for speaking about Kathryn Bigelow on Twitter. [Ellis said that her being "a hot woman" had led to her being "overrated" as a director.] First of all, I thought that was an aesthetic thing and a comment about Hollywood and reverse sexism, but it came out in a way that annoyed people who are very sensitive about those things. I got it when I said Alice Munro was overrated, too, without people acknowledging that I've criticized a lot of male authors I don't like, and I've celebrated a lot about female writers I love. My friend Donna Tartt, for instance—her new novel, The Goldfinch, is really good, and I'm in awe of someone who can do that.

And you've made no secret of how much you love Joan Didion.
Well, every now and then someone comes along who changes your perception. Before Didion, it was Hemingway—that was when I was 12 or 13. Didion was later, in high school, and it was more personal because she was writing about southern California and referencing streets I had driven on. She was describing a sensibility about women that jived with what I was noticing in my mom's friends. I tried writing Less Than Zero maybe two times before what was ultimately published, and Joan Didion played a big part in shaping it.

Do you ever feel as though feminism is slipping into a blame culture?
Years ago, I found Jezebel.com very ominous and worrying. I mean, not that I care that much, but now it really has come full circle. I think the Lena Dunham bullying thing—and I don't want to toe the party line and say, "Oh, it was so shitty of Jezebel to do that"—but it was indicative of where a kind of feminism is right now.

I keep thinking that feminism is getting to a place that's cool, mostly because women that I know just want to be real and they want to be sexual and they want to be pretty. Meeting James Deen, being immersed in his world, meeting a lot of women who worked in porn and seeing how cool they were with it gave me a different view.

You don't think it's fucked them up?
No, they're not fucked up by it. James Deen's girlfriend [VICE columnist Stoya] is a huge performer and, like James, doesn't look like a traditional porn star. She also has a blog where she writes about feminist porn and how she's in control.

Can you tell me about the Kanye film collaboration?
You know what, I can't. It's in Kanye Land, and that's subject to a whole other time frame. He came and asked me to write the film. I didn't want to at first. Then I listened to Yeezus. It was early summer last year and I was driving in my car. He'd given me an advance copy, and I thought, regardless of whether I'm right for this project, I want to work with whoever made this. So fuck it, I said yes. And that's how it happened. That was seven or eight months ago. We'll see what happens.

I really like him as a person. I know he comes off in this performance-art way in the press, but if you're just alone with him in a room talking for three hours, it's kind of mind-blowing.

I think he just broke the golden rule of admitting to being a narcissist, and that's what people can't handle.
Why is that rule there, though?

Right, because if you're working in the media or entertainment industry, chances are, you're a narcissist.
Yeah, you're right. We all are. We're all here. And he's one of the few people who will admit it, and I like him for that and I wish more people would follow suit. I think that's what makes Jennifer Lawrence so appealing. She's the future of Hollywood personas. I don't know where the "old rules" of the empire—about showing your best self on the red carpet—gets anyone. It suggests an unfree society.

Can you explain this empire and post-empire distinction? Because you refer to it a lot.
Empire is the US from roughly WWII to a little after 9/11. It was at the height of its power, its prestige, and its economic worth. Then it lost a lot of those things. In the face of technology and social media, the mask of pride has been slowly eradicated. That empirical attitude of believing you're better than everyone—that you're above everything—and trying to give the impression that you have no problems. Post-empire is just about being yourself. It's showing the reality rather than obscuring things in reams and reams of meaning.

But can you ever present a "real" version of yourself online?
Well, turning yourself into an avatar, at least, is post-empire. That's a new kind of mask. It's more playful than hiding your feelings, presenting your best self, and lying if you have to. Unless, of course, you argue that that's just a whole new form of empire in itself.

Download the Bret Easton Ellis podcast featuring Marilyn Manson, Kanye West, and Judd Apatow here.

Bret is launching his own YouTube channel in the coming months.

Follow Nathalie (@NROLAH) and Bret (@BretEastonEllis) on Twitter.

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Portrait of the author as a child

I was around nine years old, lying in bed with my eyes closed shut. I remembered counting to 30, chanting to myself, "Please God, when I open my eyes make me skinny." At the end of those 30 seconds, I opened my eyes and looked down at my naked body. God had left it alone.

I tried again, thinking maybe he just needed a little more time. My eyes shut, and in this second attempt, I counted by Mississippi seconds. When that shockingly didn't work, I went for it one last time. In this third and final attempt, not only did I use Mississippi seconds, but I also spelled out the word. "One Mississippi, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. Two Mississippi, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I..." Again, nothing.

God was given three very generous chances to magically transform my body to my liking, yet didn't do shit. What's up dude? You can part a Red Sea, and make a boat big enough to fit two of every animal, yet can't remove a few measly pounds from a nine-year-old girl's body? I was starting to understand atheism.

When I was this age, I was obsessed with my weight. I wasn't even fat, but I was consumed with the fear of being fat. Like a lot of people with eating disorders, I got good at hiding it. After eating a slice of bread, I would take to my jumprope and burn off the calories from that indulgence. Instead of eating lunch at school, I would suck on a lollipop, because what's healthier than hard sugar?

One day, I complained about stomach pain to my doctor and found out I was severely constipated. He showed me an X-ray of my stomach and drew large circles with his finger. "You see all that? That's your poop." I couldn't see what he was talking about, but I guess my dad did. From that point on, he and my mom got stricter about observing my diet. After a few weeks, I grew to care less about my body and finally felt good again.

Well, as good as any growing girl can feel about herself. Unfortunately, hating your body is a sort of rite of passage for women. It goes hand-in-hand with getting your period and discovering shower-head masturbation. I went through the initial stage, which is usually the most drastic, at an early age. By the time I got to high school, my fear had come true. Now I was actually overweight, but this time around, I didn't really care.

I was never quite sure what caused my weight gain, but I assumed it had something to do with my period no longer making its monthly visit. Later, I would find out that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder that millions of women have. The cause is not quite known, but it is most likely a genetic disorder.

Women with this condition have a lot of internal issues going on, such as cysts on the ovaries and lack of a regular menstrual cycle. It can also lead to infertility, which, considering my age and annual income, is the only bonus. The most visible effect PCOS has on women, however, is that it makes it easy to gain weight and difficult to lose it. Once my period stopped coming naturally, I ballooned.

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My middle period

In high school, I was sort of delusional. Being a teenage girl who was sure of her heterosexuality, the number one thing on my mind was boys. A boyfriend was the only thing I wanted, yet I somehow convinced myself that the way for me to get one was by working on my personality. I didn't care all that much for my appearance and focused on making myself known for the things I looked for in a suitor: a strong sense of humor and a deep knowledge of the sort of things I deemed highly intellectual (Wes Anderson films and Devendra Banhart).

Now, this might come as a surprise to you, but I was wrong. The boys were not flocking to the chubby girl on the school's improv team smugly quoting Rushmore. Maybe I am a complete narcissist, but instead of feeling like I was not good enough, I took the route of feeling that everyone else was not good enough for me, which later resulted in me being extremely picky when it came to dating. (This is known in some circles as a "defense mechanism," but I just like to think of it as good old-fashioned knowing what I want.)

As I got older, by some cruel twist of fate, I ended up being more confident in myself and my appearance. Sadly, for overweight women, this is like winning the lottery. I definitely had (and still have) moments of hating everything about my dumb, fat face and my ugly, gross stomach. What I eventually came to realize though, is that nearly every woman goes through these same feelings, regardless of her relative thinness or fatness.

The heaviest I got was during college. I weighed 175 pounds and stood five feet tall, which is officially obese. At the time, it didn't bother me all that much. I knew that it should have (according to my mom and society or whatever), but it didn't. When I looked in the mirror, I still didn't see an ugly person. I eventually lost some of that weight, thanks to no longer being able to take advantage of my university's all-you-can eat freshman cafeteria. However, I still stayed kind of fat.

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The author today

After many years of being forced to try and lose weight by outside forces and not really being able to do so, I came to the conclusion that life is better lived not constantly counting calories and feeling like a failure because I ate a piece of free bread at a restaurant. I still hear the voices shouting at me to just lose 40 pounds already. They follow me wherever I go, A Beautiful Mind–style. Like schizophrenic math prodigy John Nash, I taught myself to not let those voices control my life even though they're still there.

You think I don't know that those 40 pounds could catapult me from sassy best friend in a rom-com to potential lead? You think I don't know that 40 pounds could get me sexually harassed by twice the amount of strangers at bars? You think it has escaped my mind that 40 pounds would make it much easier for me to do a perfect cartwheel? I know all this, yet I still can't find myself to give a damn. Currently, I feel good being moderately healthy and making walking my main form of exercise. As much as I like to tweet about being sexually aroused by pizza, I have kept to a pretty healthy diet most of my adult life. Not strict, but healthier than the average American. I know that is not saying much, but let's just say there's microwavable quinoa in the freezer, and I know what chia seeds are. Kind of.

I'm not going to lie and say that I would hate being thin. That's bullshit. I'm really just saying that I don't hate being overweight. A middle-aged man who frequently touches my vagina with metal objects (also known as my gynecologist) tells me that losing weight is the only thing that could possibly cure my PCOS. That's my only motivation to try and drop the pounds, but I'm not in a rush. It's strange feeling like there's something wrong with you because you don't despise yourself.

Some of you are going to think I shouldn't promote body positivity because you happen to think it's ugly. You also might try to disguise your distaste of fat women by bringing up the health bullshit, as if we are not all going to die one day. That's fine. For every ten of you who think I'm horrific, there's another ten who are down to fuck, regardless of the stretch marks on my boobs and the cottage cheese on my thighs (literal and figurative). And if I can remember that fact, I feel pretty OK.

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.

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Of the three classic Chicago Christmas animated shorts we grew up with, the one treasured by most is Suzy Snowflake. Look at her tumbling down. [ more › ]

Oh my Lord, shut it down, here is the greatest moment in the history of C-SPAN: A (very Southern) mama called into one of their shows to yell at the guests. Not because she disagrees, but because the guests are brothers and both her sons and she is sick and tired of their shit.

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2014 was a stellar year for cry-babies. But who was the cry-babiest cry-baby of the year?

Below is a selection of people and organizations who won Cry-Baby of the Week over the last 12 months which I've whittled down to ten finalists. It was a difficult list to assemble, and many worthy candidates didn't make the cut (big shout-out to the cop who shot a woman who honked at him and the girl who sued her parents because they wouldn't pay for her college tuition) but these are my final choices.

In addition to the extremely prestigious "Cry-Baby of the Year" title, the winner will receive the above trophy. So don't forget to scroll down to the bottom to vote.

Cry-Baby #1: Sheboygan Falls High School

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Screencap via TMJ4

The incident: A high school basketball player threw up the "three-point" hand sign in a photo.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: The police were called and the boy was suspended from his basketball team.

In January, the Sheboygan Falls News ran a story about Jordan, Jamal, and Juwaun Jackson, three basketball-playing brothers at Sheboygan Falls High School in Wisconsin. The paper took a photo of the three boys (which you can see above) to accompany the article. In the photo two of the boys are gesturing with their hands.

Jordan, the boy on the left, explained the gestures to TMJ News. "When you make a three, everyone does this sign," he said. "Probably you've seen LeBron James do it or someone." He explained that his younger brother's hand sign was just him "pointing at the camera."

According to the school, some parents got in touch to complain that the boys were doing what "looked like gang symbols." So the school called the police (!) to report it. I feel at this point it's worth noting that the town of Sheboygan Falls is 95 percent white.

The local police investigated the photo (!!!) and were "able to confirm that the sign was indeed a gang sign." However, police chief Steve Riffel acknowledged that the boys " posed no threat to the community."

This wasn't enough to stop the boys being punished, and both Jordan and Jamal were suspended from the school's basketball team. They missed one game, but had their suspension lifted by a school committee.

Cry-Baby #2: The Lincolnshire Police

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The incident: A guy took a Snapchat of a cop and drew some dicks on top of him.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: His phone was confiscated and he was forced to pay an $800 fine and do community service.

Last summer, 20-year-old construction worker Jordan Barrack witnessed a bar fight in Lincoln, England. He was taken to Sleaford police station to give a statement about what he saw.

While he was waiting to be interviewed, he sneaked a photo of police constable Charles Harris, the interviewing officer. "[PC Charles] was writing things down, and I just sat there bored out of my head, so I got my phone out and thought I would be a bit cocky and did it," Jordan told the Lincolnshire Echo.

He then drew two penises on the picture before sending it to some friends.

Once the police discovered what he'd done, they seized his phone and charged him with "posting a grossly offensive, obscene picture on a social media site."

Appearing at Lincoln Magistrates Court earlier this year, Jordan pleaded guilty to the charge. He was ordered to pay the officer $650 in compensation as well as $150 in court fees. He also has to complete 40 hours of community service.

Speaking to the court, Jordan said, "I am terribly sorry, and it was a massive mistake, and I shouldn't have done it."

He later told the Echo that he was "massively shocked" by the fine. "People have come up to me and said they can't believe it got to court and said it was a waste of taxpayers' money."

At the time the story was originally reported, Jordan had not received his phone back, despite it being five months after the initial incident.

Cry-Baby #3: The Perry Family

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Screencaps via CBS Boston

The incident: A family was told they were not allowed to bring knives into an amusement park.

The appropriate response: Nothing. Why on earth would you be allowed to bring a knife into an amusement park?

The actual response: They attacked two cops and started a mini riot.

In June, five members of the Perry family attempted to visit the Canobie Lake amusement park in Salem, New Hampshire.

At least two members of the family had hunting knives attached to their belts as they tried to enter the park. Predictably, a member of staff told them they were not allowed to take the knives into the park and would have to leave them in their car.

This didn't sit too well with the family, who reportedly became "belligerent" and launched a "curse-filled tirade" against the staff member.

Two police officers who were already at the park attempted to intervene. After giving several verbal warnings to the family, an officer told a male member of the family that he was under arrest and attempted to handcuff him.

As he placed the cuffs on the man, the rest of the family attacked, jumping on the officers' backs, punching them, kicking them, and attempting to grab their weapons. Both officers were injured. One had to be treated for a dislocated shoulder.

When backup arrived and moved to arrest everyone, the mother of the family faked a seizure.

The family was charged with a range of crimes including felony riot, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct.

Cry-Baby #4: Bayview Middle School

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The incident: A girl took a razor from a kid who was self-harming.

The appropriate response: Congratulating her.

The actual response: She was suspended from school.

Adrionna Harris is a sixth-grade student at Bayside Middle School in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

One Thursday back in March, Adrionna found one of her friends self-harming with a very small razor blade like the one pictured above.

According to Adrionna's mother, no teachers were around, and Adrionna felt the self-harming was "a 9-1-1 situation," so she took the blade from the boy and immediately threw it in the trash.

Adrionna then went to school staff and told them what had happened. They responded by giving her a ten-day suspension because of the school's zero-tolerance policy on possessing weapons on school property.

Speaking to WAVY News, her mother Rachel said, "I was very shocked that a student would get suspended for saving another child."

Rachel also said that she made several calls to the school to try to discuss the suspension, but her calls were all ignored. The school only contacted her after a local news channel made inquiries to the members of the school board.

At a due-process conference the school held, it was agreed that Adrionna would not be expelled, at least, but the school decided it would not overturn her suspension.

"Even if I got in trouble, it didn't matter because I was helping him," said Adrionna. "I would do it again even if I got suspended."

Cry-Baby #5: Melissa Parsons

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The incident: A park ranger danced while on the job.

The appropriate response: Smiling or cringing, depending on your age and if you're related to the park ranger.

The actual response: A woman filmed him dancing, complained to his bosses that it was obscene, and got him fired.

Until June Deryl Nelson, a park ranger in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was known as "the dancing park ranger." He was known as this, obviously, because he would often dance while on duty.

His dance sessions started about a year ago, when he joined a group of people who were in the park dancing to "the Macarena." People reacted well to it, so it became his "thing."

Earlier this month, Deryl was filmed dancing by a woman named Melissa Parsons. You can see parts of the video in this news clip. If you're unable to watch the video, it shows a slightly dorky middle-aged man dancing like a drunk dad at a wedding.

Melissa said she filmed it because she and others were offended by Deryl's explicit moves. "As a parent and seeing all the parents that were covering their kids' eyes and turning their heads away..." she told News Channel 9. "It wasn't something you would expect to see in Coolidge Park or anywhere from a grown man, especially a man in uniform.

"He went all the way down to the ground, he came back up from the ground, he was grabbing areas that you would see on a rated-R movie," she added.

Melissa sent the video to the public works department, who fired Deryl. They listed "conduct unbecoming of an employee" and "inefficiency or negligence in performance of duties" as the reasons for his termination.

After finding out that she'd gotten the man fired, News Channel 9 reports that Melissa said, "Something needed to be done, whether it be fire him or reprimand him, but it was at the city's discretion to do so."

After news of the ranger's termination went viral, Chattanooga mayor, Andy Berke, posted a statement on Change.org, claiming that the dancing was one of multiple reasons Deryl was fired.

Cry-Baby #6: Kathy Rowe

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The incident: A woman lost out on her dream home.

The appropriate response: Finding another home.

The actual response: She tried to trick some guys into raping the people who outbid her.

Back in 2011, 52-year-old Kathy Rowe was hoping to buy a home in San Diego but lost out to an unnamed couple.

As Kathy has a disabled daughter and this is one of the few single-story houses in the area, she was not too happy about not getting the home. So she launched a campaign of harassment against the new owners.

Kathy's campaign of terror started small, with things like signing the couple up for junk mail, sending religious groups to their home, and listing their house as being for sale.

She then started to get creative, posting online announcements for a New Year's Eve party and a free Mexican fireworks giveaway at their house. She also sent Valentine's Day cards from the husband to local married women.

But, several months ago, Kathy escalated her efforts even further. According to a report on NBC San Diego, Kathy posted an ad on Craigslist posing as the new homeowners. The ad was titled "Carmel Valley Freak Show" which sought men to come to the house for sex during the day while the husband was at work.

One man responded to the ad via email, and Kathy, posing as the female homeowner, told him to "just show up at the door and force [your] way in the door and on me, totally taking me while I say no." She also told the man that she loved anal sex and threesomes.

Another man who responded to the listing actually turned up at the home. Luckily, the husband answered the door when he did.

After this incident, Kathy was arrested and charged with soliciting forcible rape and forcible sodomy, as well as several lesser crimes.

In court documents, Kathy claimed that she didn't want anyone to be raped, but was actually just playing "childish pranks." That suggests she doesn't know what the words "childish" or "pranks" means.

The felony charges against Kathy were eventually dropped as part of a plea deal.

She had previously been named a local Mother of the Year in 2007 for taking care of her disabled daughter. No word yet on if she's nominated for 2014.

Cry-Baby #7: Pennsylvania State Police

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The incident: A 14-year-old simulated oral sex on a statue of Jesus to take a funny photo.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: He was arrested.

Back in July, an unnamed 14-year-old boy in Everett, Pennsylvania, posed for several pictures with a statue of Jesus. In one of the photos, which you can see above, he pretended Jesus was giving him a blowjob.

He posted this photo, along with another photo of him standing on the statue with his arms in the air, on his Facebook page.

Somehow, somebody at the district attorney's office saw the photos on the teen's Facebook page and forwarded them to state police.

The state police then launched what they referred to as an "investigation" into the incident, and decided to move forward with arresting the boy.

He was charged under a 1927 law which makes it a crime to "desecrate a venerated object." While awaiting trial in a juvenile court, it was reported that the teen could face two years in jail if convicted.

A reporter from the Daily Mail contacted the church where the incident took place, and a spokesperson said they didn't want the boy arrested. "Our request was for prayer for the young man," the spokesperson said.

The boy was eventually sentenced to 350 hours of community service, probation, and a six-month ban from social media.

Cry-Baby #8: TW Jenkins

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The incident: A church found out that a man they were scheduled to hold a funeral for was gay.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: They canceled the funeral.

In August, 42-year-old Julion Evans died of a condition called amyloidosis. He was due to be buried at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida—a church that he and his family were members of.

The day before the funeral was scheduled to take place, someone from the church called Julion's mother to tell her that the funeral was canceled. She received the call during Julion's wake, while she was standing over his coffin.

According to KSDK, the church canceled after noticing in Julion's obituary that he had been married to a man.

TW Jenkins, pastor of New Hope, spoke with a reporter from the network and confirmed that they'd canceled the funeral because Julion was gay. "I try not to condemn anyone's lifestyle," he said. "But at the same time, I am a man of God and have to stand upon my principles." Which suggests TW try a little harder not to condemn lifestyles.

The pastor had also agreed to be interviewed on camera by KSDK, but refused to answer the door when a reporter went to speak to him. So maybe the real issue here is that he's just kinda flaky when it comes to making plans.

"Regardless of our background, our sexual orientation, how can you wait that long and put someone in a bind when they're going through a loss?" said Julion's widower, Kendall Capers.

Julion's funeral instead took place at a nearby funeral home. He and Kendall had recently gotten married in Maryland. They had been a couple for 17 years.

:(

Cry-Baby #9: Fort Lauderdale

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The incident: A 90-year-old man gave out free food to the homeless.

The appropriate response: Congratulating him.

The actual response: He was given citations by police. Twice.

Since 1991, 90-year-old Arnold Abbot has been feeding the homeless of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for free. He started doing this in memory of his wife Maureen, who died in an accident.

In early November, while he was giving out food, Arnold and two other volunteers were charged with " breaking an ordinance restricting public feeding of the homeless."

The ordinance blocking the feeding of the homeless was put in place the week before. The city had also recently passed a bunch of other laws aimed at shitting on homeless people. These include a law banning people from leaving their belongings unattended, tighter laws on public pissing, and a law to stop people from panhandling at medians.

Arnold announced that he intends to sue the city for his right to give out food to the needy. "I will fight them as long as there is breath in my body," he said.

The following week, he went back out to give food to the homeless. After serving up "a chicken and vegetable dish with broccoli sauce" and a "cubed ham and pasta dish with a beautiful white onion celery sauce," Arnold was once again accosted by cops, who again charged him with violating the ordinance outlawing the feeding of the homeless.

"One of the police officers said 'Drop that plate right now!' as if I was carrying a weapon," Arnold told ABC News.

"Thank God for Chef Arnold, I haven't eaten all day," said Eddie Hidalgo, a local homeless man who also spoke to the news channel. "He feeds a lot of people from the heart."

Arnold was given a 30-day reprieve earlier this month. Local news outlets reported that he faced jail time if a resolution had not been found.

Cry-Baby #10: Chavonda Gallman

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The incident: A woman found out her son had been watching porn.

The appropriate response: Pretending you didn't notice, silently leaving the room, then never, ever bringing it up again (ever).

The actual response: She called the cops.

One Tuesday in August, 40-year-old real estate broker Chavonda Gallman returned to her home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with her two-year-old daughter and one of her real estate clients.

When she went into the house, her 15-year-old son was upstairs in his bedroom.

According to a police report found by the Smoking Gun, Chavonda's daughter went into the living room and turned on the TV. When she did this, porn filled the screen.

"They immediately turned off the TV and took Mrs. Gallman's daughter out of the room," the report says. Chavonda then called the police to report that her daughter had been exposed to porn.

When officers arrived at the home, Chavonda told them that her son had been having behavioral issues, and that she hoped reporting the issue to the police would "help track her son's behavior."

The story was picked up by around 30 news outlets in August, which I'm sure Chavonda's son was THRILLED about.

Which of these clowns was 2014's biggest cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Follow Jamie "Lee Curtis" Taete on Twitter.

Madly in love with my little Reign Aston Disick. http://t.co/YpnPTOMGI2

— Kourtney Kardashian (@kourtneykardash) December 21, 2014

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Photo: AKM-GSI, Fame/Flynet, Getty, INFphoto, Splash News

Join us each month as we round up our favorite seasonal posts from the Cooking Light Blogger Connection.

This month’s theme is holiday cookies, and we’re loving the festive flavors of these five treats.

1. Peppermint Chocolate Chunk Marshmallow Creme Cookies: This cookie from Kumquat is the ultimate wintertime treat, perfect for holiday parties, cookie swaps, or simply devouring warm from the oven.

2. Paleo Gingerbread Cookies: These guilt-free cookies from The Roasted Root have freshly-grated ginger mixed right into the batter, taking gingerbread to delicious new heights.

3. Eggnog Cookies: With The Way to His Heart‘s decadent sugar cookie recipe, you can drink your eggnog and eat it, too. Guaranteed to become a new holiday tradition.  

4. Vegan Cranberry Thumbprint Cookies: Chia seeds and orange zest complete iFoodReal‘s homemade cranberry jam, which gets dolloped inside an almond-based cookie. Yum!

5. White Chocolate Dipped Snickerdoodles: Having a hectic holiday season? Two Peas & Their Pod suggests taking a cookie baking break, and what better to make than these cinnamon-sprinkled gems?

Whole-roasted beef tenderloin is a once-a-year celebratory dish that can be fantastic if done properly. The problem is, its extra-lean meat lacks flavor, not to mention how easily it dries out and overcooks. Our slow-roasting reverse-sear method ensures perfectly medium-rare meat from edge to center with a nicely browned, flavorful crust. Read More

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You may be aware of a hostage situation in a Lindt chocolate shop in Sydney, Australia. Because it appears to be politically motivated, and the gunmen have reportedly displayed an ISIS (or Muslim or Those People, who knows!) flag in the window, it is therefore the perfect opportunity for the idiots at Fox & Friends to invite Expert On All Things Donald Trump to explain this situation, and of course how it is further evidence that America now sucks, thanks a lot, Obama! Trump is an expert on Those People, and as the Fox hosts point out, he also lives near a Lindt chocolate shop. So he’s got that added personal insight.

Donald, please explain how this hostage situation half way around the globe is actually an attack on America.

The fact is, they no longer respect this part of the world, our world, they no longer respect it. And they see what’s happened, they see what they get away with, and they just don’t have respect, and it will happen in this country, and it’ll happen more and more, and throughout the world. But a lot of it is a lack of respect, and they certainly don’t have it.

We checked a globe, and we’re not sure how Australia is “our world,” unless we also colonized it overnight and stuck an American flag in the middle of it, which wouldn’t surprise us, actually. Or maybe it’s just that there are white people there, and they speak American, even if they do it with distinctly un-American accents, and also they have chocolate shops, so they’re basically Just Like Us.

Now, then, if we could just find a way to tie this hostage situation in with the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture, and maybe even find a way to blame Democrats and Obama … Can it be done? Elisabeth Hasselbeck — she’s the new blond chick on the show to replace the old blond chick on the show, and she’s doing a great job of being the blond chick on the show so far — is certainly going to give it the ol’ Fox News try:

It seems as though to contrast, we’re here, now handcuffing and really creating enemies out of those here that want to keep us safe, in law enforcement, in the CIA. What we’ve been going through lately. Describe your take on that contrast.

No, we have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. Something something, if only Australia didn’t have to contend with a handcuffed CIA, something? But Trump totally gets where she’s going with this.

Well, I said it in a few words. We go for sleep deprivation, and they go for chopping off people’s heads, and then we’re horrible people because sleep deprivation is a horrible form of torture. And waterboarding and all. And nobody can tell me we don’t get information from things such as that.

Well, actually, Mr. Trump, plenty of people could tell you that torture is not an effective way to get information. People who actually know what they’re talking about. But that’s no reason for you to listen to them when you are quite sure they’re YOOGE idiots anyway.

And then we pay people $80 million to come up with certain ideas, and then we pay them $40 million to do that horrible report, and now I understand they’re going to be releasing pictures. I know the president, or lots of people in the administration, want to release actually pictures of what took place during the tortures. That’s going to make us look really nice too, and especially to our allies all over the world that are petrified to even talk to us anymore because we’re so stupid.

Did Donald Trump just go from casually dismissing the “torture” we did that is so much better than the torture “they” do — and then get mad about the report filled with all the horrible torture we do and how bad it’s going to make us look because of how bad it actually is after all? Yes, we believe that’s what happened. And now, not only will our friends in the other parts of our world not talk to us because they think we’re so stupid — and if they’re watching Fox & Friends too, they have a point — but just look at what terrible friends we’ve been to them, asking them to do us a solid by helping out with our torture programs, and then blabbing to the whole world about it! Non-blond Brian Kilmeade explains that unique angle:

Yeah, because we asked them to do us a favor and be able to interrogate them in certain places, and we’re exposing all of that, so it gets their careers in jeopardy for doing America a favor, and now we’re doing this self-flagellization [yes, that’s the word he used] for everyone to see.

Kilmeade continues, expressing his annoyance with the vice president for saying we made mistakes, because no we did NOT make mistakes. All that torture we did was good and right and necessary and saved lives, shut up, yes it did, SHUT UP!

“We didn’t act out of fear,” he says. “We did whatever we could to stop the next attack. That’s why we hired these guys, trained these men and women, to get something done.”

Then, without a hint of irony or sarcasm as far as we can tell, Hasselbeck chimes in: “They were just following orders.”

We’ll let you sit with that one for a second. Heck, go on, take two seconds.

Trump then assures them that they are right, of course, because that’s the whole point of the show:

As soon as the next attack happens, everybody’s going to want to go back to the torture, because that’s what happens. After 9/11, everybody felt strongly about it. It was fine. But you know, years go by, people forget the thousands of people that were killed, horribly, by these maniacs, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, “Oh, the torture, and we shouldn’t have it at all. We should just say to people, ‘Please give us secrets’ and ‘What do you know?’ and ‘Let’s be friends.’”

If only stupid Americans who are not Donald Trump could remember that 9/11 happened, then we’d all go back to thinking raping and waterboarding and even oops! murdering detainees is a terrific idea. Even dumb old John McCain, whose opposition to torture and support of releasing the report on torture, just blows Donald Trump’s wind-blown mind. Does John McCain know nothing?

I mean, this is incredible to me. Even watching John McCain and others — and John McCain certainly, you know, went through a lot — but it’s just inconceivable that they can feel this way. To me. Especially in these times that are so troubled and so violent. I mean, you go back to medieval times, and I used to read medieval times, how vicious — well, this is just as vicious as ever in history, what we’re going through now, what the world is going through right now.

And that is why we must do more torture, even though it’s not really torture when you compare it to what Those People do and also medieval times, which Donald Trump used to read about, you know. To prevent another 9/11 and save the American state of Sydney, Australia. Or something.

[BBC/ h/t Mediaite]