IKEA Monkey

It's an infamous and iconic scene in movie comedy. Ben Stiller's character in 1998's "There's Something About Mary" ends up with a rather personal substance hanging from his ear, and Cameron Diaz mistakes it for hair gel.

A lot of Facebook's teen users are breaking up with the social media site in favor of other platforms, where they won't get a friend request from their parents.

Babies on Roombas are the new cats dressed as sharks on Roombas. The internet just giveth and giveth.

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Man, we are gonna miss this Minneapolis mayor’s race. It really has exceeded expectations in terms of giving us things to mock. Up until today, that was primarily because of Jeff Wagner, who did one ad where he emerged from a lake in his underwear and another where he simulated masturbating. Oh, and we also have a guy that legally changed his name to Captain Jack Sparrow and is running on behalf of the Occupirate party, which seems to include maybe just him? Now the weirdness has infected not just the super-fringe candidates but some of the more mainstream as well.

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If your marriage ceremony didn't include the Lord or his ambassadors — and instead maybe involved jumping over broomsticks and then sticking them up your partner's butthole before making out with a litter of dogs wearing pasties and chaps?* — you might be an atheist. And if you're an atheist, there's a chance your marriage might last longer than a Christian one. Take that, holier than thou sanctity of marriage people! Take that all the way to divorce court. Where you probably already are.

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Do you dream of creating the unlimited-steak-fries experience you get at Red Robin at home without so much as peeling a potato? Is the “Horsey Sauce” you get from Arby’s just the right combination of mayo and horseradish sauce that you simply can’t duplicate at home? Good news: no more stealing handfuls of sauce packets. Well, unless you’re cheap.

Yes, you can make your own roast beef sandwiches at home but still drown them in the fast food chain’s signature sauces. Arby’s sauce is their own version of barbecue sauce. The chain’s “Saucepocalypse” ad campaign encourages customers to slather the sauce on everything for some reason.

Such as Red Robin-branded frozen French fries. Arby’s-branded curly fries, of course, have been available in grocery stores for years.

News: Arby’s Offers Bottled Horsey and Arby’s Sauce [Brand Eating]
News: Red Robin – New Seasoned Steak Fries to Make at Home [Brand Eating]

Quite literally, this isn't something you see everyday: An alligator was found walking around under an escalator at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport Friday. [ more › ]

It’s very hard to let Saturday Night Live have its cake and eat it too. I can’t fault the show for opening as it did tonight. A bit of a furor had built up about the show’s un-diverse hiring this summer, exacerbated by Kenan Thompson’s interview with TV Guide where he said the show wasn’t finding black female comedians who “are ready” for the show, and later Lorne Michaels’ comment to AP that he’s aware of the issue and is sure the show will get more diverse sometime. Kerry Washington is the host this week, and the cold open revolved around her having to play every black woman in the news.

It was a clever wink to the show’s presence in the news and a far smarter idea than, say, a Gilbert & Sullivan spoof. At the same time, I’m sure there’s ...

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A condemned child killer and rapist testified from Ohio's death row Friday in a bid to get his execution postponed because the state plans to use an untested cocktail of drugs for a lethal injection.Ronald Phillips, who is due to be put to death Nov.

LOS ANGELES—Explaining the exact nature of the situation to his wife, pop superstar Justin Timberlake reportedly told Jessica Biel on Wednesday that even if she were to make the mistake of telling somebody what happened, not a goddamn soul would bel...

An engineer who blew up a whale carcass in Oregon using some 20 cases of dynamite has died, but the biggest bang of his career will live forever in YouTube infamy.

DENVER — Did a giant kraken troll the Triassic seas, crushing ichthyosaurs and arranging their bones into pleasing patterns?

The rate of preterm births in the United States dropped to a 15-year low of 11.5 percent in 2012, according to a report released Friday, but the country still came in dead last among industrialized nations on this measure of infant health.

Multiple students at University of California Irvine forwarded us an email blast from their college Career Center that was sent out early Monday morning with helpful tips on "How to Ace That Job Interview." But along the lines of that cool law firm memo we read last week, one of images included was less full of helpful tips and more full of weirdly gendered advice.

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HALLOWEEN AHHHHHH AHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! (Thanks for the tip, Aaron!)

Real Kitchen, a small Chicago eatery that mostly does take-out food, dressed up as Michelin 3-star Alinea for Halloween. Some genuine LOLs here, especially the table-side dessert to-go.

Tags: food   Halloween   Real Kitchen   restaurants   video

The above commercial for Tanishq jewelry seems fairly innocuous at first glance: A glowing bride prepares for her wedding while her excited daughter looks on. During the ceremony, the groom picks up the little girl (his soon-to-be-stepdaughter) and spins her around in a joyous celebration of their new family. You drown in your own feelings, then buy ALL THE NECKLACES. Advertising accomplished!

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HOW WAS YOUR DAY? Are you taking in as much of the perfect fall air as you can before it quickly transforms into cold, painful winter air? Did you get the final pieces for your Halloween costume? Did you fall down the steps? How much coffee did you drink? Did your crush tweet at you? Did the guest of your dreams finally agree to be on your podcast? Well, even if he or she didn’t, I can guarantee that your day isn’t going as badly as Nicolas Cage’s day, because HE MIGHT GET HIS DINOSAUR SKULL TAKEN AWAY! From Moviefone:

The UK’s Telegraph reports that Cage purchased the Tyrannosaurus bataar skull for $276,000 in 2007, outbidding fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio for the 67 million-year-old fossil. The Tyrannosaurus bataar is a close relative of the T-Rex, and native to Mongolia.

Which is perfect, obviously, no duh we all know that this is perfect so far, but the only problem is that the section of the Gobi Desert from which Nicolas Cage’s dinosaur skull was taken is a target for looters who illegally smuggle the dino bones out in order to sell them to innocent buyers like Nicolas Cage and not Leonardo DiCaprio! Oh nooooo!

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One of the hottest places to visit in 2014 is Antarctica, according to the writers and readers of the Lonely Planet guide book series. It's right up there with Brazil and Scotland.

There is no greater slight in a child’s eyes on Halloween than when mean adults ruin it by refusing to hand out candy. But while sure, kids can deal with houses where they’re handing out dental floss or healthy snacks, here and there, children will probably want to avoid the home of the woman handing out letters to Trick-or-Treaters she deems “moderately obese.”

The home where the opposite of fun lives is in North Dakota, and was revealed in a radio interview where a local woman said she was taking control of childhood obesity.

“I just want to send a message to the parents of kids that are really overweight…” she told Y94 morning radio, via ValleyNewsLive.com. “I think it’s just really irresponsible of parents to send them out looking for free candy just ’cause all the other kids are doing it.”

“I’m contributing to their health problems and really, their kids are everybody’s kids. It’s a whole village,” she adds.

While it’s understandable that someone might be concerned with the health of children, is it really the job of a stranger to punish/surprise kids who are expecting a treat, as tradition might suggest, and instead get a letter saying there’s something wrong with them?

“It’s just that kind of thing that for some kids, if they’re vulnerable, might trigger major problems,” chimes in a professor of psychology who studies eating disorders in children.

If you don’t want to give kids candy, that’s fine. But any lecture or discussion of their personal wellbeing? Probably best to leave that to the parents. So keep your lights off or don’t answer the door, but keep your opinions on child-rearing to yourself.

Woman Handing Out Letters, Not Halloween Candy [ValleyNewsLive.com]

Oh hi, pleased to meet you! I moved in with my mom and dad about a month ago, and let me tell you, they cannot get enough of me! Not that I blame them. My favorite thing to do is cuddle up and nap, and you know what, I don't discriminate who I do it with. No sir, not this guy. Meet me on the street and offer a cuddle/nap session? You know who would never turn you down? Me. Feel the need to pull your car over to ask me to have an impromptu photo session? Certainly! In fact, that happens to me pretty regularly, so I'm a pro. If anybody is interested in proposing a cuddle session, please contact my assistants, er, I mean, my mom and dad at your leisure!

You shouldn't text and drive. There's no getting around that. If you need more reason than the safety of yourself and others, a number of states have harsh penalties for texting while driving, and this map will show you how much your state can fine you (or in some cases, how long you can be imprisoned) if you do.

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Concluding years of being able to use the question of their possible casting as John Belushi as a euphemistic way of calling actors fat, Emile Hirsch has finally landed the role in Steve Conrad’s upcoming Belushi biopic. Hirsch was one of the names most recently said to be in the running, alongside Workaholics’ Adam Devine and even Joaquin Phoenix, but Hirsch eventually won out, taking on the role of the late comedian in a film that will cover the apex of his fame. Having previously lost 40 pounds to star in Into The Wild, as The Wrap notes, Hirsch will now “have to gain weight for the part” of Belushi (meaning he might soon be getting a very concerned email from Tom Hanks). But he could probably do that by just rehearsing Belushi’s old Elizabeth Taylor sketch over and over.  

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While numerous telecoms in Europe and Asia are acknowledging that it’s becoming cheaper and easier to provide TV and high-speed Internet service to consumers, many U.S. providers are continuing to charge high prices for a mediocre product, according to a new report from the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.

The report looks at the wide array of broadband offerings in nearly two dozen markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., and found that the most affordable services are generally found when customers bundle Internet service with cable and phone (the well-known Triple Play package), but that even then Americans are paying several times what their counterparts pay overseas.

See the above chart, listing the 15 most-affordable triple play bundles — none of them found in the U.S. — followed by the most affordable bundles in the surveyed American cities.

As you can see, it’s like looking at the Olympics results for one of those sports that the U.S. performs really poorly in, like cross-country skiing, with the lowest-price bundle coming at #32. That bundle from Bristol, Virginia’s fiber network, costs $55/month and only provides 6Mbps download speeds. Consumers in Zurich and Bucharest are getting similar speeds for $20/month less, while one bundle in Seoul provides 8Mbps for only $16/month, 1/3 the cost of the Bristol bundle.

And many of the bundles in the top 15 provide significantly higher speeds, with a median of 20Mbps and an average of 28Mbps. The most affordable triple play bundles in the U.S. with those sorts of speeds are at least $68/month.

In fact, of the 21 most affordable bundles in the U.S., only five advertised speeds above the median 20Mbps of the top 15 from Europe and Asia. The median speed of these U.S. bundles is 10Mbps and the average is 20Mbps.

The median price for those top 15 packages is around $35 with an average of $32. But the most affordable American bundles have a median monthly price of $82 with an average of $90/month.

A previous report from the Open Technology Institute had been criticized by telecom apologists for including rural and suburban areas in its comparison to global markets with dense populations. So for this study, OTI stuck to densely populated areas, many with high-speed fiber lines.

Indeed, there are a handful of cities in the U.S. that offer Gigabit Internet access, and others where consumers can purchase plans advertising speeds faster than 100Mbps, but as you can see from the chart below, the amount people are billed is not always a measure of how fast they can download files:

Google Fiber is available in Kansas City and only charges $70/month for the super high-speed service. While that’s much, much less expensive than the $1,000/month you’d pay in Lafayette, LA, or the $320 you’d pay in Bristol, VA, it’s more than double what consumers pay in Seoul and Tokyo for comparable service.

Cable companies also offer high-speed service stateside, but it’s going to cost you. Verizon customers in NYC, L.A., and D.C. will have to pay hundreds of dollars to get the top speeds available from FiOS, which are only 1/3 to 1/2 as fast as they could get via Google Fiber.

Meanwhile, 500Mbps in Riga, Latvia, costs $9/month and $27/month will get you 300Mpbs in Paris (as part of a triple play bundle).

The OTI has made its entire data set available in an Excel workbook if you want to go crazy sorting and comparing the thousands of available plans and bundles to compare.

I really wanted Batman: Arkham Origins to be awesome. In fact, I spent more way time with this game than I did for my first impressions of Grand Theft Auto V and Bioshock Infinite just to give it a chance to open up and give me something, anything, besides the feeling of “This is it?” Which it didn’t. So before I start throwing Dickjoke-arangs at Chris Brown and rich people’s stupid Halloween costumes, let’s take a quick look at what I thought went wrong with Arkham Origins, a few things that went right, and why you absolutely cannot settle for good enough on the heels of a GTA release. *fires up Asshole-Opinionator*

What Arkham Origins Did Right:

Marketing: I’ll give WB Montreal this, they make some goddamn amazing trailers. Case in point: I already know exactly what Arkham Origins is like, yet I still watched this and went, “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!”

Cutscenes: The cutscenes are phenomenal at putting you right in the action, practically on Batman’s shoulder, and setting a tone, albeit one that completely evaporates as soon the gameplay returns. During the opening sequence, I sat there going, “Fuck yeah, Batman!” and then a minute later I’m going, “So I’m just hitting the square button then? Goddammit…”

Deathstroke: By the time I got to Deathstroke, I was already bored to tears with the combat which I’ll whine about later. Fortunately, this fight was perfectly executed before I packed it in. It expertly captures a raw, just-starting out Batman who’s over-compensating for inexperience with brutality, and has to learn on the fly to anticipate his enemy’s move. Apparently, some people hate this fight because “wah, it’s too hard,” but I honestly don’t consider myself a person with any type of serious gaming skills whatsoever, and I beat it within four tries on Normal. Shit, I had a harder time just getting on The Penguin’s boat without getting my bat-dick shot off.

The Setting: Not Gotham itself – Haha, hell no. – but the snowy, Christmas Eve backdrop was a well-planned move for a late October release. It doesn’t seem like much of a touch, especially if you live in a freakish, non-season-changing location, but it adds a sense of urgency as you’re battling the goddamn winter to monotonously button mash your way to Christmas morning.

What Arkham Origins Did Wrong

The Button Mashing: When I plunk $60 on a AAA video game title, I don’t want to be only two hours in and bored to shit of the combat already. Combat that’s repetitively served up over and over again with little variation and all over the goddamn map. As you first start to zip around Gotham, which is sizable yet also repetitive to travail, you’ll notice you have the ability to jump into crimes in progress, defuse Anarky bombs, or just land on different roofs. All of which are loaded with the same gaggle of thugs with the exact same combat. Button mash, button mash, counter, button mash, button mash, counter, slow motion shot of Batman taking out last thug. This is the setup for way too many scenarios, peppered with hanging from gargoyles and glide kicking down to take out a thug, then grappeling back up to rinse and repeat. Keep in mind, I’ve only played Arkham Asylum when it first came out four years ago, and completely skipped Arkham City (I actually have a copy, just got sidetracked.), yet I still felt like I wasn’t breaking any new ground here.

Gotham: Like I mentioned before, travailing around Gotham gets old real quick. You’re basically gliding, batclawing, gliding some more, all with some pretty boring animation. On top of that, there’s very little variation on the street except for gang of thugs after gang of thugs at every fucking turn. If Gotham was literally this loaded with criminals, Batman would be dead within five minutes. He couldn’t even stop to bat-whiz off a building without eight crooks throwing knives at his pee-pee. And you really can’t get this monotonous on the heels of a title like GTA V which is a years-in-the-making, open world where just when you think you’re doing the same old shit, the game waves its dick in your face, and on that dick is a tank that fires a rocket into your expectations. (Looking at you, The Paleto Score.) Whereas Arkham Origins is a boring gray soup with some fantastic cutscenes that dump you right back into that soup.

The Bioshock Comparisons: A lot of the atmosphere, music, and set designs are very reminiscent of Bioshock Infinite which is really something this game should’ve avoided at all costs. Because where Bioshock Infinite has a painstakingly crafted narrative where hunting down extras like the Voxophone immediately serves up well-written audio recordings that expands and pulls you deeper into a story with a cunniling-your-brain ending, Arkham Origins lacks almost all of that depth and has you hunting trinkets just to mark off a checkbox. (But did I start trying to find those trinkets? Yes, because I’m a gerbil.)

The Bottom Line

This whole write-up is why I’ll never get, or want to get, advance copies of games because I’d feel like I need to sugarcoat things to maintain that access. Which is why I can feel comfortable saying, point blank, Batman: Arkham Origins is not a great game. It’s not bad, per se, but again, releasing just weeks after GTA V did it absolutely zero favors because talk about a game where you felt like you’re getting your $60 worth thanks to an insanely rich experience. Then again, without GTA to compare it to, I would still be bored as balls with the repetitive nature of Arkham‘s combat, and I felt that way in under two hours before even finding out the open world is a buttload more of it. I liked the impetus behind the plot, and the younger Batman aspect, but there’s no way I could sit here and tell somebody this is a title they need to have today. Maybe at a much lower price? I don’t know. It all depends on how okay you are with spending your time slogging through non-inspiring gameplay to get some admittedly sweet cutscenes. That said, if you are looking for a decent Batman game with a surprisingly fun experience, definitely give Injustice Gods Among Us a whirl. It was allowed an insane amount of freedom to craft a world that pits Batman against a disenfranchised and twistedly-broken-by-the-Joker Superman. Plus Wonder Woman’s tits are just ridiculous. I almost needed a bigger television.

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"Murder She Wrote," featuring the mystery writer turned murder detective made famous by Angela Lansbury, is being rebooted by NBC. Deadline was first to report the story.

While former athletes running for political office in the U.S. is no big deal – Jesse “The Body” Ventura is still the greatest governor ever – it’s still pretty cool when it happens, especially when the athlete in question is 6-foot-7 and still a reigning world champion. In this case, WBC Heavyweight Champ Vitali Klitschko told the Ukrainian Parliament yesterday that he is going to run for president in 2015, and even his declaration sounds like it came from the beginning of a Jason Bourne movie.

“I want to say that I cannot be intimidated or stopped,” Vitali Klitschko, 42, said from the Ukrainian parliament rostrum in the capital city of Kiev. “In order to put an end to various attempts to get rid of me as a possible candidate, I want to say that I’m running for president.”

He added: “I have a residence permit in Germany, but this doesn’t violate the Ukrainian legislation, and I’ve always been a citizen of Ukraine.” (Via CNN)

A fun way to imagine what he’s talking about when he mentions “various attempts to get rid of me” is to think of him waking up in the morning to get ready for his political meetings and whatnot, and having to fight off scores of ninjas and assassins by boxing them, and then showing up to parliament to face the current president’s army of trained fighters. Basically, my brain is like a Russian version of the Japanese restaurant battle in Kill Bill.

But I guess the important question is “Why, comrade? Why should I say, ‘Da’ to a Klitschko presidency?”

“We want to build democracy in Ukraine,” Klitschko told ESPN.com before the Charr fight. “In Ukraine, you can buy everyone. You can buy every position, every judge, you buy every court decision. The biggest enemy to democracy is that there are no clear rules and so much corruption. Ukrainian politics is simple business and we have to change that. It’s painful to say that Ukraine is the most corrupt country in world and we need to change that. We are for more democracy [and] freedom of speech.”

“It’s tough job, to be honest,” he said. “I have learned lessons about Ukrainian politics, and I want to make changes in Ukraine. I am not alone. Together, me and many other people, we have a vision. We are fighting for changes in Ukraine and real democracy in Ukraine.” (Via ESPN)

Okay, sounds important or whatever, I guess. But it will probably mean that Klitty – he’s cool with me calling him that – will have to surrender his title, since he’s not fighting this year and all. I just wish it was actually Wladimir Klitschko so Ukraine could have First Lady Hayden Panettiere.

I’m not going to lie… I kind of want to know how they do it.

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

Cry-Baby #1: James Alfredo Valenzuala

via Reddit . Images via Google Maps and Maricopa County Sherrif's Office

The incident: A guy saw a poster of some shirtless men hanging outside of a gay bar.

The appropriate response: If you're into it, reading the details of the poster to see what it's advertising.  If you're not into it, nothing.

The actual response: He set fire to the bar.

Last week, 19-year-old James Alfredo Valenzuela (pictured above, with one of the most detestable faces I have ever seen) was out walking in Phoenix, Arizona. 

While passing by a gay bar called Plazma, he saw a poster for an all-male revue. According to police, this poster featured an image of multiple shirtless men. 

James can be seen on the club's surveillance footage using a lighter to set fire to the poster. Once it became apparent the flames were growing out of control, he hopped over a fence and bailed. 

The manager of a car repair business next door noticed the fire and was able to extinguish it. 

According to the bar owner, the fire caused about $2,000 worth of damage to their building. 

James was arrested five days later. He admitted to police that he'd set the poster on fire because he "did not like" the image of shirtless men. 

According to AZ Family, James is now facing felony arson charges.

Cry-Baby #2: Radu Dogaru

Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge", one of the stolen paintings you're gonna read about in a second. Image via, story via Yahoo News

The incident: A guy was part of a gang that stole millions of dollars worth of paintings. 

The appropriate response: I have no idea. Going to prison or something. 

The actual response: He is threatening to sue the museum he took the paintings from, for not making them secure enough. 

Radu Dogaru is one of six Romanian men currently on trial for allegedly stealing several paintings from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands.  

The seven paintings, which included works from Gauguin, Monet, and Picasso, were taken in a predawn raid in October of last year. They were worth an estimated $24 million. 

However, Radu feels he is only partially responsible for stealing them, as, despite their value, none of the paintings were equipped with an alarm. 

Earlier this week, Radu's defence lawyer, Catalin Dancu, told journalists that they were considering taking legal action against the museum for not making sure the paintings were more secure. "We are considering hiring Dutch lawyers to start a legal case in the Netherlands or in Romania."

He explained that they were considering the legal action because, if Radu is found guilty, he will have to pay compensation to the insurers of the paintings. Compensation he feels the museum should have to take some responsibility for, too, for failing to stop Radu and his pals from taking them. Speaking outside of the court, he said, "We can clearly speak of negligence with serious consequences." 

The missing paintings are yet to be recovered. Earlier this year, Radu's mother claimed she had burned the paintings in her stove in an attempt to destroy the evidence against her son. She later retracted what she said, and denied burning them, but experts from Romania's National History Museum tested ashes and nails found in her stove, and said they were the remains of oil paintings. Which makes her retraction seem kinda bullshitty. 

When asked in court where the paintings were, Radu said, "The paintings were certainly not destroyed. I don't know where they are but I believe they have been sold."

Funny and service-y!

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