IKEA Monkey

Mist from the waterfalls has been freezing instantly, coating trees, walkways, cliffs and overlooks in a dreamy, brilliant white.

If you’ve taken a peek at the news anytime in the past 12 months, then there’s a good chance you’re having a hard time falling asleep every night. Counting sheep is apparently one way to drift off, but a trippy drone’s-eye view of dogs herding and corralling sheep might be even more effective.

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If Christmas is all about putting stuff up butts, New Year’s Day is the day to read about the many methods of absolute destruction of America’s dick and balls, and to be thankful it wasn’t you. Unless it was.

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Getty Images

A look at the projects expanding the city’s famous skyline

Over the past several years, a wave of new construction has redefined Chicago’s famous skyline as well as brought tall and dense developments to a number of overwise low-rise neighborhoods. New luxury apartments continue to be the driving force behind the Windy City’s vertical growth spurt, but some condominium, office, hotel, and educational projects are also in the mix.

Since our last update, a handful of new buildings opened for business and dropped off the list—including Wolf Point East and Alta Grand Central. But recent additions like 1125 W. Van Buren Street, 448 N. LaSalle, and Hyde Park’s Study Hotel keep the overall count of 100-foot projects in the mid-30s.

Here’s a look at the high-rise buildings under construction in Chicago right now. The projects roughly are ordered from the tallest to the shortest.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented her country's social divisions in a New Year’s address Sunday, but emphasized her commitment to forming a unified government in 2018.

Nordstrom has three large sales each year: The Anniversary Sale and two Half-Yearly Sales. Well, this week marks the end of the second half of the year, so Nordstrom is taking up to 50% off a boatload of styles. It’ll take time to look through all the stuff, so maybe pencil it in as a meeting at work or pretend you’re…

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We bring you possibly the greatest thing that’s ever happened in publishing or law: a marked-up copy of disgraced blithe bigot Milo Yiannopoulos’s book, found and screenshotted by engineer Sarah Mei. It is important to note that we would have none of the following information if Milo hadn’t sued Simon and Schuster because he was upset they pulled his book just for saying it is cool to fuck kids.

For those who’ve not written books, the process is this: You write whatever you think is good, then you give it to your editor where they savage it and give it back to you to repair. This is what’s called “edits” and in literary circles, it is an excuse for anything. Like you could punch three strangers in a bar stone-cold sober and if you told your friends “I’m in edits” everyone would nod sagely.

With that said: I have never seen edits like this. I’ve read probably 20 books that were marked up; it’s not uncommon for advance readers to get an early draft. When I review a book it’s with the understanding that there will be errors and misspellings and that whole passages might still be rewritten. I have never seen edits like this.

So without further delay is the most beautiful editing that I have seen, possibly ever, and that’s including the time that I got into a seven-email exchange with copyediting in which I insisted that “poverty: that’s how you get ants” made perfect sense in context and demanded they leave it in even though at the time not many people watched Archer and it really didn’t make any sense in context otherwise.

This is a Not Good sign. Usually when they remind you that you’ve already been paid it’s when you’re complaining about writing too much and your brain melting. It’s usually not in the comments in the body.

*dies*

OK so I was told to delete two chapters by my editors. That was after my first draft, not the one I gave my publisher. If you get a book to a publisher and they’re telling you to delete whole chapters you are In Trouble. I’d have been in a bottle for a week from this one comment alone.

Like one of the reasons they pay you the advance is so you can hire an editor. They expect this shit to be taken care of.

SPEAKING OF SHIT

Like can you imagine being some regular conservative editor at a regular conservative imprint and you get picked to edit the biggest get of the year and you’re having to write notes like this

I have no idea what this note is referring to and honestly it’s much better that way.

OPEN SCENE: tight shot of an editor at his desk, on the phone, pinching the bridge of his nose

EDITOR: Milo, I’m telling you…no really…mate you have to make sense. It’s fine if you want to call women shrieking harpies and the whole lot of it but you have to make sense. Everything has to track… No, I know it makes sense to the boys in your van. But they don’t buy books…Milo? Milo? [EDITOR] slams down phone

Raises the question of what argument it wouldn’t derail but this poor dude has his hands full trying to ratchet down the crazy and we aren’t going to be too harsh here.

An important thing to know about publishing is that there’s lots of different kinds of editors. There’s acquisition editors, copyeditors, just regular editors. So here we see what happens when an acquisition editor picks up a book and some other poor sap has to make it work.

Sometimes you wind up with authors who are incapable of anything but self-aggrandizement and scattershot thinking.

I wrote a memoir. There is an argument to be made that the entire genre of memoir is inherently narcissistic to some extent. In all the time I was writing my book I never penned a sentence that anyone at any level thought was so narcissistic they needed to mention it to me, much less felt was so bad they might call it “more of your narcissism.” Milo had to have been outdoing himself to get a note like this.

Never let it be said that I am less than fair ’cause this note I recognize.

I’m picturing this note coming in the midst of a chapter on tax policy or something.

This editor, it’s worth noting, has worked on books by Glenn Beck and Donald Trump. This is not his first time at the Conservative Blowhard Rodeo. This just seems to be the thing that finally sucked out his soul.

If you want to read the whole thing, you can go on over to the state’s website and look up Simon and Schuster as a defendant. We here at Wonkette would like to thank Sarah Mei again, since she dug this filing up and brought it to the attention of the Internet, and the Internet IS PLEASED.

We needed something nice this week, I think.

Here, we will leave you with a passage from this truly remarkable book, in case you have ever wanted to look exactly like Milo. Did we say Milo? We meant Patrick Bateman of American Psycho.

No? NO? NOOOO?

Then Milo wrote this:

There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.

Just kidding, that was American Psycho too. But don’t you think he should have?

Wonkette.com: Bringing you American (and British!) psychos today and every day. Hit the tip jar on your way out!

BASSACKWOODS, SADSYLVANIA — In this town, where Donald Trump won one hundred percent of the vote, the carriage is still King.

Horse-drawn carriages put Bassackwoods on the map, and every hardscrabble American I spoke with here remains hopeful that President Trump will put the millers and wheelwrights back to work building the world’s finest mammal-towed conveyances, despite the cold fact that he won’t.

“Like hell he won’t,” says Dale Smail, a regular at the Olive Garden here. “Donald Trump has never told a lie or broken a single promise in his life, and he promised us he’d bring the wagon trade back so fast our heads would spin.”

When I ask why, in his view, this hasn’t happened yet, he shrugs.

“Crooked Hillary, I guess.”

“No, it’s the FBI now,” his wife, Gail, corrects him.

“That’s right, Obama’s Muslim FBI,” he says.

People here have a sophisticated understanding of the factors that caused the decline of the carriage business, though they can be less clear on what Trump might do about them.

“Immigrants,” says one visitor at the jobs museum. I ask him to elaborate.

“Transgenders,” he says. “Kaepernick,” he adds.

The mayor, Pat Warshington, takes a different view.

“First of all, it’s regulations. You can’t keep a horse anymore. Big Brother.”

It’s cold in the mayor’s office, and full of milk. Pat is also the dairy manager at Walmart.

“Then, two, you got Hollywood. In movies, everyone drives cars. It’s Harvey Weinstein values, and I believe the women who accused Donald Trump and Roy Moore of the exact same things Weinstein did are lying. That’s just the totally impartial sense I have as a public servant. Al Franken too.”

He swings two jugs of milk into their racks as I shiver.

A woman I meet outside is also candid: “The smart ones leave here as soon as they can, and we never forgive them.”

I ask what this has to do with Trump.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just like how he yells.”

In the town park, named in honor of a Confederate general who sacked the town during the Civil War, a father and daughter process the swings for scrap.

“I voted Democrat until they became the gay black abortion party, and I’m not racist. Don’t put my name,” he said.

I ask his daughter what she thinks of the Democrats.

“Fuck them pieces of shit,” she trills.

“Donald Trump is Santa Claus and Democrats worship Satan,” dad reminds her. “They hate Christmas.” He and his wife home school their daughter.

I didn’t learn much from my trip to Bassackwoods, and neither did you. But people will hate-read my report and tweet how dumb and pointless it is, thereby propagating it and driving demand for the next one. This cycle, like the opposite of the horse-drawn carriage, is something that’s here to stay.

Like this post? Donate. Didn’t like it? Donate, but angrily. Can’t quite put a name on the emotions it made you feel? That’s a donate. Didn’t read it? Weird, but donate. We’re funded by our readers, have you heard? Donate.

It’s been a good year for worsts. A year when even the things we did to make things better made things suck more. Here are the so-called life hacks that did the most damage in 2017.

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The clams were “extremely so small.”

Move over, humanizing article on random Trump supporters from some random small town, a new “won’t you pity the poor Trump supporters?” rubric is in town — and it is all about how it is hard for them to get dates now. Which, of course, is a thing we are all very concerned about, especially given the tax scam the GOP just passed that is going to fuck over a lot of poor people.

The latest in this genre is a CNN article titled “Swipe Left If You Voted For Trump: How dating in New York is changing under the new administration.” It is all about how many liberals in New York (and probably elsewhere) are getting all “Trump supporters need not apply” in their dating profiles. This is not entirely surprising. I wouldn’t date a Trump supporter. Hell, according to OKCupid, their members are more likely to consider having voted for Trump a dealbreaker than golden showers. Yes, people would be more open to being peed on (or vice versa) than to dating someone who voted for Donald Trump. It’s hard to blame them. At least the former can be rectified with a shower.

In the article, reporter Orlaith Farrell notes that he’s noticed a trend in profiles on his various dating apps, especially in New York:

Since the beginning of the year, I started noticing a new dating profile. Flicking through Tinder, in the interest of immersive journalism, I kept seeing a biography specific to 2017. The photos were interchangeable: the look-at-me-with-my-niece-I’m-good-with-kids shot, the body-shot, and the look-I-visited-Machu-Pichu shot. (I’m starting to feel like I missed the Groupon for that trip). However, under the photos, a trend in descriptions was emerging. In Manhattan, where my app trawled for potential suitors, perhaps 1 in 20 would feature this new angle: The few short paragraphs traditionally filled with description or a witty quip were being used for political demarcation. Men and women were asking suitors to immediately discount themselves based on how they voted in 2016.

Farrell profiles several Trump supporters who are disappointed in the way their choice has affected their dating lives. Some have been outright ditched mid-date, others have been told by people on Tinder that they are no longer interested in them after they reveal their Trump love. Oh, how very sad for them. They just don’t understand why someone would eliminate them as a romantic partner simply because they voted for Trump! As if that somehow says something about them, as a person.

Like this one here:

“My politics don’t define me,” he says, with one of the great accents of a New Yorker with Italian heritage. There wasn’t much room for debate – “please stop talking to me,” she concluded.

“I think it’s nonsense” [Mike] Lagana told me. “Just because I voted for someone does not mean I’m this stuff. Oh, he’s racist, or he’s a Nazi or whatever the case may be. I’m not any of that. I take offense to it. You know nothing about me.”

I suggest he might experience more of those reactions over the next three years dating in NYC. “Eight” he counters, and laughs. Frequently coming across the “swipe left if you voted for Trump” bio, Mike ignores the demand. “I still swipe right. I would like them to know who I am first before I openly tell them I voted for this person. They know nothing about me. I’m a very reasonable guy. I’m a nice person, open-minded.”

I would argue that Mike Lagana is not, in fact, a nice person. While it is possible that he is pleasant, it is unlikely that he is nice. Nice people do not vote for someone who says racist shit or grabs women by the pussy without asking, who emboldens Nazis and white supremacists, or who, quite frankly, is Donald Trump. That is not a thing that nice people do. That is a thing that assholes do. I am not above saying that Trump supporters are assholes. They absolutely are.

Having voted for Trump isn’t merely an innocuous opinion. It’s not a difference in favorite color or food, it’s not even having Paths of Glory as your favorite Kubrick film or not “getting” Harold and Maude.

To suggest that it is somehow unfair or petty of liberals to not want to date Trump supporters is to deny that the personal is political. Why would I want to date someone who doesn’t think I should have reproductive rights? Who doesn’t think trans people should be allowed in the military? Why would I date someone who thinks it’s cool to vote for someone who treats women like that, or who talks that way about Mexicans or Muslims? Why would I want to bring that person around my friends? Why would I want to be around someone whose actions have resulted in harm coming to me and to people I care about, and who isn’t even sorry about it? As someone who is neither a masochist or a sociopath, I’m at a loss.

Later in the same bar, a large group of men and women are celebrating a friend’s birthday. They included Hillary Clinton fans, Bernie Sanders supporters and non-Trump voting Republicans. Of 12, only one would consider dating a Trump voter, with the caveat of whether they have problems with the President now.

Over coffee on the Upper East Side, a woman in her thirties described the reactions she’s received when she revealed that she voted for and continues to support Trump. “I can’t believe you are college educated,” she recalls one person telling her. The native New Yorker was defriended by her entire field hockey team after sharing a video by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

Not being able to get a date, or even being defriended by your entire field hockey time, is the least worst thing to have happened to anyone as the result of Trump being president. If that is the one consequence they suffer, they are still miles ahead of the rest of us.

[CNN]

The best way to romance Wonkette is to leave us a tip!

US Customs and Border Protections discovered three deadly king cobras being smuggled into the US in potato chip canisters. CNN's Ana Cabrera reports.

Prince Harry and his American fiancée Meghan Markle reportedly want to invite former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama to their wedding in May, but government officials in the United Kingdom are worried such a move could anger the current U.S. president. 

That was a fish, once. Tuna specifically.

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From sexual misconduct allegations to deals with Russian companies, here are the 7 most notable political scandals of 2017.

Like a certain deity popular this time of year, the internet giveth, and the internet taketh away. In the case of Hulu’s “Puppies Crash Christmas,” the thing being forced on us, before being magically dissolved, is stress. Released just before the holiday weekend, the hypnotic, wordless movie(?) is a half-hour of wholesome carnage, to be enjoyed by even the Grinchiest among us (but only those with Hulu accounts). Simple footage of five to 10 dogs ripping apart all the presents and lightly destroying the furniture in a tastefully appointed upper-middle-class living room, it brings together our purest instincts: to coo at adorable creatures, and to watch the world burn.

For two decades, the commander in chief has doled out distinguished-looking coins as personal mementos. Now, the presidential "challenge coin" has undergone a Trumpian transformation.

The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump's signature. The eagle's head faces...

Tom Coomer has retired twice: once when he was 65, and then several years ago. Each time he realized that with just a Social Security check, "You can hardly make it these days."

So here he is at 79, working full time at Walmart. During each eight-hour shift, he stands at the store entrance greeting...

The Associated Press is reporting that John Schnatter—known to fans of greasy, pepperoni-laden cheesebread and shitty TV spots everywhere by his self-applied nom de pizza, Papa John—is stepping down as the CEO for his blandly ubiquitous restaurant chain. Schnatter’s departure comes just a few weeks after he plunged…

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America is one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, and for the second year in a row, our life expectancy has dropped. The drop was small—just 1.2 months, the same as last year’s—and in the context of the past several decades, appears as more of a stall on an otherwise steadily growing trend line. What’s the cause? A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics pins the blame on the unrelenting rise in opioid overdoses.

Add another item to your holiday shopping list: last-minute tax planning. Congress is poised to pass the biggest overhaul of the federal tax code in three decades. Here are five moves to consider by year's end to maximize new advantages and minimize the potential hit from other changes.

Outgoing Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback argues his experiment in aggressive tax-cutting pioneered a national debate over helping small business owners that has influenced Congress and other states, even though his home-state lawmakers rolled it back.

It dangled from a branch for days, wrapped with bright ribbons and studded with large nails and oversize safety pins.

It weathered and hardened from gray-black to a leathery brown. From a distance, as professionals and students walked past the tree at the west end of Palmer Square Park to trains...

We live in a post-Last Jedi universe, where we know the truth about [REDACTED], how Kylo Ren looks without a shirt, and that, yes, the alt-right will even launch a campaign against fucking Star Wars. But prior to its release—a simpler era for us all—the greatest controversy around the film was the space penguins…

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OOOOOOKLAHOMA WHERE THE UGH COMES SWEEPIN’ DOWN THE PLAIN!

McMansion Hell is back from the Finals From Hell and do I have a treat for y’all: 

Hoo boy, this house is wilder than a collegiate football rivalry, with a roofline that’s probably the most mountainous geography in the whole state. This wonderful 1998 abode, featuring 4 beds and 5 baths, tops out at around 6500 square feet. It can be all yours for around $750,000 USD! 

Without further ado:

The Lawyer Foyer

✓ Topography joke
✓ Typography joke

“Those DANG Girl Scouts always coming around these parts asking for a handout! Who do they think we are, Uncle Sam?!”
“Grandpa, can we please not talk about this at Thanksgiving dinner?” 

Dining Room

Side note: I just watched Seinfeld for the first time (I know, I know), and I have to say everyone who is painting their kitchen cabinets muted colors right now is only a collection of cereal boxes away from imitating Jerry’s kitchen.

Great Room

Wait a second, what the heck is that reflection in Mirror No. 1?? Mother of…

This is more goth than that time I told myself in the 10th grade that I refused to date anyone who didn’t in some way resemble Robert Smith from The Cure. 

Speaking of dark…

Hell’s Kitchen

(Combining two jokes in one): Hell has a foyer just for the lawyers, amirite?? 

Living Room

Antique Roadshow, 2026:

Announcer Bot 3000: My goodness! This is the largest collection of bland, mass produced art I have ever seen! Don’t you realize what this means?

Collector: *face brightens up in astonishment*

Announcer Bot 3000: You’re going to be a five-dollar-aire! 

Collector: …oh. 

Master Bedroom

Having a babby ceiling fan just to cool you off during the two times a year you guilt yourself into using the elliptical is the perfect demonstration of the sheer fecklessness of stupidly wealthy people. 

Master Bath

Nothing makes for a relaxing, soothing bath like being reminded of the brief period of innocent joy prior to the imminent Fall of All Mankind.

Bedroom 2 (Mustache Room)

Congrats to these homeowners for making beige walls and ceilings somehow goth. 

Sadly, there’s no shots of the rear exterior (I can only assume the realtor was blinded by what they saw), but don’t worry, this rec room more than makes up for it: 

Rec Room

>mfw 

Well folks, that does it for our Oklahoma House! Join us this weekend for a special Looking Around (on sound), and next Wednesday for our Oregon McMansion of the Week! Have a Happy Winter Festivities Session! 

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If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!

Not into small donations and sick bonus content? Check out the McMansion Hell Store ! 100% of the proceeds from the McMansion Hell store go to charity!

Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs are used in this post under fair use for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2017 McMansion Hell. Please email kate@mcmansionhell.com before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

Weeks after federal judges halted Donald Trump’s proposed ban on transgender service members, the Pentagon has released a seven-page guide detailing how to recruit and enlist transgender individuals and stresses that “[e]very applicant will be treated with dignity and respect.” Per court order, the department will …

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No, seriously.

In a move that both highlights the viral potency of her now-signature short story—and will likely cause the heads of its harshest critics to summarily implode—The Associated Press is reporting that Kristen Roupenian, the author of New Yorker sensation “Cat Person,” has signed a book deal that’s estimated to be worth…

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LaVar Ball always shoots for the moon, whether it has to do with the Big Baller Brand line or with his various feuds off the court. Now, the patriarch of the Ball family wants to set his eyes on something really ambitious: A basketball league for those who don’t want to play in college.

ESPN’s Darren Rovell writes that Ball is starting the Junior Basketball Association, which is designed to attract nationally-ranked players that don’t want to take what conventional wisdom says is the next logical step in a hoops career. It will compensate players, and if all goes right, the teams will play in NBA arenas in a handful of major cities.

Ball’s Junior Basketball Association, which he says is fully funded by his Big Baller Brand, plans to pay the lowest-ranked player a salary of $3,000 a month and the best player $10,000 a month, Ball said. Ball is looking for 80 players to fill 10 teams that will seek to play at NBA arenas in Los Angeles, Dallas, Brooklyn and Atlanta.

Ball thinks it will be “easy” to attract players, saying “This is giving guys a chance to get a jump start on their career, to be seen by pro scouts, and we’re going to pay them because someone has to pay these kids.” Oh, and because the league is paid for by Big Baller Brand, everyone who joins will wears the company’s gear.

Additionally, Ball said that he was partially motivated by a series of comments NCAA president Mark Emmert made about him. Emmert said that he believes college should be about student-athletes and not a pit stop on your way to a professional career, which Ball said is actually the correct take.

“Those kids who are one and done, they shouldn’t be there with the NCAA trying to hold them hostage, not allowing them to keep the jersey they wear while selling replicas of them in stores,” Ball told Rovell. “So our guy isn’t going to go to Florida State for a year. He’s going to come to our league.”

While LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball are not participating in the league and their father says he has a ton of work to do, it’s kind of amazing that he actually wants to establish something to go head-to-head with the NCAA. Plenty of sports leagues have popped up with the hopes of dethroning the established leagues throughout American history, and they generally all fail.

Who knows if this one will work out, but I feel fairly confident in saying that LaVar Ball is going to do all he can to make this a viable option for those who don’t want to spend their year between high school and the NBA going through the charade of amateurism.

A Mexican fish species, the Gulf corvina, makes such a loud noise during mating that it could hurt the hearing of other marine mammals, including dolphins, scientists said.