Back when Texas implemented yet another end-around on the legality of abortion in October, one which required women who were to have the procedure undergo a sonogram and wait 24 hours before being allowed to proceed, (among many other ridiculously ineffective, and downright offensively political hurdles) many critics rightfully pointed to the inherent fallacy at the heart of the law.  As Kate Sheppard wrote in Mother Jones "the entire premise of this kind of 'informed consent' law is that women don't know what's in their uterus. Of course, the reason they are seeking an abortion in the first place is because they do know." 

PTSOTL's resident libertarian reactionary/non-leftist MINT E. FRESH sent me this story from The Daily Mail a couple weeks ago. "Surprise! Men and women really ARE different: Sexes share just 10 per cent of their personality traits."

He asked, "Equality versus science. Who you got?"

Men and women really are different, according to a study – and while the differences between them may not come as a shock, the scale of them might...

The fairer sex, for example, tend to display higher levels of sensitivity and warmth, while men are generally more emotionally stable and dominant...

The researchers concluded that there were ‘extremely large’ personality differences between the sexes which could have implications in the workplace.

OK, fine, I said. Maybe that sort of thing can be proved. But my real question is, why do you get such a boner for this type thing?  Why would someone have a dog in this race?

I've been meaning to pull together a post about some of my favorite comments and emails I've gotten in the past month or two, but then again I've been meaning to do a lot of things for a long time, like not do that thing I just said, so you can see my predicament. Ah, fuck it, some of these are too good to go un-shared.

This anonymous fellow, (obviously a dude, because only dudes care enough about the quality of music to sound this angry), writing about  wants to teach us a lesson about quality or good taste, or something. His stance against Katy Perry and Lady Gaga is, frankly, very brave, and must have taken a lot of courage to muster up the words to express it. No fucking way I'm listening to that blues-hammer link he included, so someone tell me if it's any good.

Here's another slice of finely tuned hate snatched from the bro-jaws of our blog bro -- bro-nan I guess you'd say -- Bronan the Barbarian. (TRIGGER WARNING FOR BODY SNARKING AND FATISM YOU BIG SENSITIVE PUSSIES). 

I’ve often debated that the future of the human race consists of a combination of and Wall-E. Now you too can have the best of both dystopian futures with a brand-new product – Forever Lazy! Take a gander at this advertising gem ABOVE. Forever Lazy fulfills every adult’s innermost desire, which is to horribly embarrass the shit out of friends and family by wearing fuzzy toddler’s clothing in public venues. 

Forever Lazy comes in three convenient sizes.

I know that we're all legally obligated now to film our children and pets in embarrassing situations and post it to YouTube for the lulz, but I didn't realize that same statute applied to life-threatening scenarios as well. Like in this video, which according to some miracle of happenstance isn't actually titled LOL MY CAT GOT ATE UP BY A ALLIGATERZ.  (io9 via the DailyWhat) and is the most tense internet standoff I've seen take place outside a fast food restaurant in months.

More like alli-gay-tor here though, rite? Who's the actual pussy in this old fashioned chicken meat standoff? I know cats are evil and everything, and they secrete black magic with their fur and are good at shitting in a box in your kitchen, but alligators are science-fictional space dinosaurs from the moon, seems like they would have the upper hand here. Turns out this isn't even the first time a cat has stared down an omnivorous man-eating mutant lizard to the uproarious delight of onlookers (For real, what's so funny about this shit? No one laughs when people fall into the polar bear pit). 

Here's another cat teaching nature who the king bitch in the swamp is:

You ever wonder what it's like to be a paranoid conservative? Perpetually braced for the oncoming Constitutional apocalypse brought about by the horrifying direction the country is headed in that has been about to happen any day now, every day, for however many decades? That bureaucratic apocalyptic mindset has got to be downright exhausting -- like a bunch of Chicken Littles trying to rub a perfunctory load out of a wilted ideological coke boner while caught in the middle of a ever-impending but never-arriving hypothetical sneeze.   

Oh my god nothing is funny this week. Still, one has to shovel shit onto the content furnace, so you see my dilemma. Here's some words I made about musics this past week that weren't exceptionally embarrassing about Cults, Avicii, Elements drum and bass, Hot Pink Delorean and lots of other shit that is pleasurable and/or 'meaningful' to listen to.

I interviewed the :)+:( dreamy noir-pop NYC indie group Cults in the Boston Phoenix. Hanging in a crush-gaze balance with Cults. 

What do you think has been the most buzzed-about indie style over the past few years? Electro-house? Dubstep? 9tz grunge?

All worthy guesses, but look to the music of New York City duo Cults for a better answer. Their reverb-laden '60s Girl-Group-pop is one part sunny sheen of a hipstamatic California beach party, one part big-city crime noir. It sounds like roller skating down the boardwalk and tripping over a murdered wannabe Hollywood starlet, then falling in love with her anyway. Of course, the same can be said of everyone from Lykke Li to Best Coast to Vivian Girls to La Sera to Dum Dum Girls and every other indie bird with fierce bangs and a shoulder-sleeve tattoo making music now in a reactionary magical manic-pixie antithesis ideal.

Never got to the bottom of who won that super meaningful beef between Azealia Banks and Kreayshawn from a while back, but Azy is teaming up with Scissor Sisters now, and Kreyshawn isn't. Not sure if that factors in. Not just to the fight, but anything in the world. Let's listen and find out.  (via RCRDLBL)

I loved The Used. There's just no getting around that fact, and we're all going to have to accept it if we want this thing between us to work out. I also like dubstep, even the shitty stuff. But this little infusion of a dubst3p b@ss w0bbly breakdown type dealie in the new The Used single "I Come Alive" is making me go :/. Granted, it is pretty subtle, so maybe it's not a big deal. More thoughts to come when my full review comes out in Alternative Press soon, but in the meantime check out the track. What do you think, siqq synergy or overly-produced try-hard? Maybe both!

Should you wear pants when you go to Walmart? Bronan the Barbarian answers this very important question for us with this Simple Guide to Covering Your Fat Ass With Clothing.

Welcome to Bronan’s Guide to the Wonderful World of Fashion! This is the first in a series of articles wherein I helpfully impose my fashion sense upon the internet with an iron fist.

Many of my readers have questioned the acceptability of gracing Walmart and other public venues with their presence sans pants. I’ve created this handy flow chart outlining every possible scenario regarding whether or not your disgusting fupa should be hidden from public view.

I think this is a couple months old, but being way too late on a trend and seeming really corny in the process kind of fits perfectly thematically, so let's call it even. I think it's safe to say we're all done with this word now, right? Then again, toiletries are pretty swag. Tissues and shit. Toilet paper, son. SWAG. Potato chip sales like a motherfucker.

And just so you can't say I never gave you anything, here's wherein a young woman walks around Walgreens and explains to us how much various items cost.

I hate to besmirch the recently dead, but then again, most recently dead dudes didn't systematically cover up and/or look the other way from a decade plus of child rape going on under his nose by his buddy. Allegedly. Good night sweet prince. Prince of fucking darkness.

Joe Paterno, the longtime Penn State coach who won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that scarred his reputation for winning with integrity, died Sunday. He was 85. AP

The statement from his family reads, in part "It is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Paterno passed away earlier today. His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled."


"He died as he lived," covering up child abuse so his football business didn't get closed up." He fought hard until the end, stayed positive," except when he remembered that he was a serial child rape enabler, "thought only of others," except that whole thing with the raped kids, "and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been," unlike those kids. "His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community," but, and we probably can't stress this enough, not those kids, the ones that got raped that he knew about all those years.

For as long as I can remember Massachusetts has been steeped in outdated Puritanical blue laws meant to hinder our beastly vices. As things are getting more and more relaxed, a total scumbag pauses to consider whether that's a good thing or not.

My home state of Massachusetts is well known for doing a few things very well, most of which any proud Masshole can and will list off at the slightest provocation whether or not they personally have anything to do with them (they don't). Not only did we basically invent America here, we've got the best universities and hospitals in the country, an august and profound tradition of literary greatness, the winningest professional sports franchises of the past decade, and an exceptional track record for churning out taste-making music. In short, fuck you. 

This video of a Boston Bruins fan tackling the Tampa Bar Lightning mascot, *shuffles papers, puts on reading glasses* one Mr. Thunderbug, after he takes a load of silly string to the grill, is the most Bostonest thing I've seen all week. (Deadspin via CBS Sports). Although the indeterminate racial status of the bro in question is kind of stymieing things a little. The XXXXXXL t shirt, however, is spot on.

Just so we're clear, when you hear everyone talking about how SOPA will stifle creativity and artistic expression on the internet, this is the type of thing they're talking about. And me, a guy who had nothing to do with creating it, posting the fruit of that expression here on my own blog. That's not meant as a value judgment, I'm just reporting the facts. Couple more after the jump. More . 

As you've undoubtedly heard, a few of the internet's most popular websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, and others, are blacking themselves out today in opposition to the the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) currently being considered in the US House and Senate respectively. The attempts to curtail online piracy through heavy-handed legislation, pushed in large part by the Motion Picture Association of America (now headed by former Senator/world class schmuch Chris Dodd) are without a doubt over-reaching, and could set a dangerous precedent for the exchange of information over the internet. 

Perhaps most horrifying to everyone, this site itself would essentially cease to exist. The law would make it so that every time I post a photo, or a video, or quote at length from another copyrighted work that I do not own, which I do frequently, much like every other blogger in existence, I would make not only myself -- and here's where the change comes in -- but also the company that hosts this website (Blogger via Google), responsible for the copyright violation. 

Patrick Kay, whose work you may remember from Street Carnage, never learned the value of money. Which is surprising, because unlike most people of his generation, it sounds like his parents didn't spoil the shit out of him, the little brat. He explains why in the piece below. 

 

How do we learn the value of money? I’ll tell you how I learned. Through soul-crushing disappointment. 

Just found a booger-stained wish list I drew up in crayon when I was in jr high that listed all of my hopes and dreams. I wanted to be able to see pictures of every girl I went to school with in her underwear whenever I wanted, to have every record in the world available to me at any time, to be able to get up to the minute messages about what my favorite actors and football players were having for lunch, and, most importantly, for everyone to know I had a real girlfriend. I mean, I had a girlfriend back then, you guys just didn't know her, she was from Canada. 

All of those first few have been available for a while now, but suddenly the internet has made the last one feasible as well, points out. 

A video which appears to show US Marines pissing on the faces of dead Taliban soldiers. (h/t Metro Boston). Good thing they're only heathen savages whose lives don't count for shit, right gang? 

I'm not naive enough to think this sort of thing hasn't gone on forever in the long history of killing people and pissing on someone's face being funny, but homeboys here have hung themselves with the single biggest defining behavior of this retarded generation. Here's a pro tip: when you do something criminal, shameful, unethical, downright horrifying, or something that might, you know, further fuel the fires of Anti-American hatred even hotter than they already are throughout the world, maybe don't video it. 

Obviously what's going on here is the extreme results of dehumanaizing the enemy to the point that they're robbed of their personhood. The stream of piss is a metaphor, meant to exhibit distance between the target and the pisser. That's typical of any war, right? But you're gonna have to piss really long and hard to blast yourself up and away from this situation, marines.

video below. 

Evan Kenney brings us one step closer to answering one of life's eternal questions: whose music is more embarrassing, white dudes or black dudes? SPOILER: It's a tie.

When you got it, you got it, and Virgin Steele? They got it. They've got the look that the ladies go wild for. They wield a fiery sword that is dangerously close to burning up their wife's Beanie-Baby collection, they've got Al Bundy from The Matrix on guitar, and in this video, they are performing at some of the most picturesque video locations that Long Island has to offer. Can we say that these guys are the next Zeppelin? Without a doubt.

Oh man white people are awful, right? Haha, not so fast black dudes...

Remember when that guy wrote a song about Tim Tebow the other day and we all had a moderate chuckle over it? That was fun. This song about Wes Welker, on the other hand, is just great. It simply puts its head down and gets the job done. Not flashy. Doesn't look for the glory.

It was International Subway Pervert Free Pass Day earlier this week, aka No Pants Subway Ride, sponsored by Improv Everywhere and FlashMob Mexico. It's the one day of the year where it's not only OK to check out people's asses on your commute, but it's encouraged. Required, almost.  Something about cultural norms yadda yadda art. Some other people took photos of this really important event, then Buzzfeed rounded up 50 of the best ones, then I took the ones I wanted to write jokes about and posted them here. Long story short: the internet.

Here's my joke about this: everything about this. Thank you, good day. 

OK fine, a little more context. Tim Tebow, for those of you too cool to know or trying-hard enough to pretend not to know, is that one main football guy these days. (Not liking sports is on the List for hard btw). He is extremely popular. People were tweeting about him something like 9500 times a second the other night when he played in an American football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, "the most-watched game of season, the most-watched wild card game ever with 42.4 million viewers and the most-watched TV program since Super Bowl XLV," according to the NFL. In other words, he's a total thing. That's partly because he's objectively pretty bad at football, comparatively speaking, and for some reason people think he's an underdog, which he is in no way, shape or form, as Drew Magary pointed out in this great Deadspin piece. 

The Holy Ship!/ Hard electronic festival-related thing just pulled back into shore. The cruise to the Bahamas featured a who's who of today's EDM scene, like Skrillex, Steve Aoki, A-Trak, Rusko, Boys Noize, Laidback Luke and every other turd with a sideways haircut and a grindy Macbook in the world. The only thing it was missing was a submarine to torpedo the whole thing into oblivion, right dudes? /cuts off sleeves, practices karate, butt rocks the fuck out. 

 Will you look at all these losers? Partying day and night with a thousand of their peers in the gorgeous sun, getting to see a huge lineup of international talent all in one place, fingering mad stubbly pussies in the engine room or whatever (via Titanic). I'd much rather be home in a freezing Boston apartment making fun of people on my computer. :/ Which is what I will now do anyway, because your enjoyment of life is an affront. 

Seriously though, this is the most exciting cruise ship related thing I have ever seen since the time I got diarrhea on the way to Pleasure Island with my parents in high school/ Kickball Katy got her tubs out on that indie rock cruise ship thing last spring.

Photos via the or Spin, where noted.

Congratulations on the birth of your new child. Truly, it's a miracle, and an occasion which you'll never forget. Do you happen to be internationally famous for yelling into a microphone? No. Oh. Then never mind. Your baby is a piece of shit. 

That's the jist of the situation in the neonatal unit at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, where the VIP section is popping off this week after the birth of Beyonce and Jay-Z's child Blue Ivy Carter.  Baby bottles filled with Crystal and shit. Designer onesies. Incubator entourages. Never mind spitting flow, lil baby here is spitting-up, amirite? So it would seem according to this New York Post story which I'm trusting has been thoroughly vetted and lays out the situation in the evenhanded and sober manner we've come to expect.

There's usually thought-provoking stuff over at the site Gucci Little Piggy, even if it's generally way outside of my huge government-loving, Nanny State teat-suckling, radical, Cambridge leftist agenda. Chuck Rudd wrote recently on his experience inside the unholy alliance of big government and the corporate restaurant industry, which I'm sharing here below. 

--

This could get me fired.  Oh well, I need some strife in my life – a little bit of getting off the pot after years and years of doing Sudoku puzzles will do me some good.  

Luke O’Neil’s piece at his blog PTSOTL criticizing an Iowa newspaper’s wide-eyed pecorino cheeseball profile of a new restaurant provided a bit of synchronocity that compels me to out myself and the company I work for.  The second-tier Italian chain restaurant that I write about so often:  Olive Garden of “here, pour all of this lettuce and sauce and soup and bread down your gullet” fame.

U JELLIE?

Americans are homophobic, therefore Skrillex. I think that's the takeaway from this  New York Magazine piece on the ascendency of Skrillex and his bro-stepping brethren to the forefront of the shitty teenagers getting shitty movement.  "Keep in mind that Americans, and especially American males, have traditionally had some weird reservations about electronic dance music—at our worst, we’ve written the whole thing off as silly, trashy, soulless, effeminate, or 'gay.'" writes Nitsuh Abebe in this thoughtful piece which attempts to wrestle in the mud with the same conceptual bear in a neon pink tutu that many other music writers, myself included, have fuxed wit the past year or two in order to answer a pretty interesting question. That question is "how do I turn this popular, but highly controversial cultural movement into page views?" See my previous posts What the fuck is dubstep anyway?; The kids these days + Identity Festival; The day, the duuubstep died; Somehow people still don't know what dub step is; and WTF is dubstep part 50 featuring Nero for evidence.

The secondary question, of course, is a more direct, but complicated one: "Why? Just why?" It's something you've probably asked yourself about dubstep, only the latest example in a long line of rotted-out cultural meat stinking up the back corner of the taste fridge, and every other genre that's been popular amongst children and recently-non-children since you yourself were within shouting distance of your first boner and/or girl boner. Back then the answer was self evident: this is fun, and girls seems to like and/or I am a girl. 

I'm not a hateful man. I try my best to keep my innate Northeastern liberal elitist impulses in check as much as possible, because I recognize that this is a big country, and people are different in many ways -- their hopes, their talents, their access to education and culture. Their shitty parents.  Fuck all of that though, because when I watch this video from Toddlers & Tiaras (TDW via BWE), a show that apparently airs on cable and people watch -- maybe even you! -- I can't help but think it's time to shut 'er down. We had a good run. Railroads and steam engines and shit. I'll miss football I guess, and ginger ale. Would've liked to have stuck around to see what new jetpack developments turned up in the next decade. We'll never know now. Bring the fire rain down upon us, vengeful Christ on the moon,  it's the only way to be sure vile creatures like this can't propagate and take over the world. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go drink a gallon of "go-go juice" and show the judges my belly for mommy and wait for the sweet release of blissfully eternal sleep.

Video below. Don't watch it if you haven't had your Lorazepam yet today. 

Every now and again I take a break from covering really important Twitter beefs between swag ass bitches and piling on some poor sap on the Olive Garden beat to put on my big boy writing pants. I've got a word machine that I built with my hands up today over at Slate about being reunited with a long lost older sister I kind of knew I had. People like it. I'm a good writer and a good boy! (Really all due to editing by my man Dan Engber, who is the Bill Belichick of editors. Puts me through the fucking ringer that kid. Worth it though). So, I can feel happy about myself for the next 24 hours before reclining back into the banal comfort of self-loathing. Go check it out. It's a touching story or whatever, although I'm already kind of a shitty brother to two sisters already, so who knows what to do now. My favorite part is how utterly punchable that little goober's face is in the photo. I want to give that nerd the biggest wedgie of his short, and soon to be revealed in his near future, mostly pointless existence. 

The music world was shaken to its core yesterday when Azealia Banks, PTSOTL's new female rapper crush, who we predicted will break the internet this year, and for some reason no one gives a shit about yet besides the UK press, started a beef with last year's #1 vaguely rapper-like swag ass bitch Kreayshawn over Twitter. Or was she responding to a slight from Kreay Kreay? The world needs to know. 

It's hard to tell exactly what happened, since Kreayshawn seems to have taken down her original tweet, also her feed is an avalanche of shit, but as NME points out, and my Phoenix homeboy Michael Marotta breathlessly brought to my attention, Banks tweeted at yr girl "you think you're funny? You're a dumb bitch. And you can't rap. I'll sit on your face... Fall back slut."

Look, I'm going to be honest with you people, I think we know each other well enough at this point to get down to real talk. A lot of times I post 'wacky' stuff on here that I only find moderately amusing at best. It's really pretty hard to get me to genuinely laugh at anything, but that's mostly because my father was murdered by a guy who was incapable of ever laughing at things who's own father was murdered by a clown. That clown was me. (Revenge killing. Think about it).  

But this, this piece of journalism in the Sioux City Journal, which I'll get to in a minute, is stabbing me like a metal robot dildo directly in the g-spot of my Ha Ha Hole, which isn't just the best place to find me 'workshopping' 'bits' at open mic nights on Mondays, but also an actual part of the science brain.

I made it most of the way through a second night one time back in the bad old days. Wasn't too long into rolling a few games of ceelo with Jim Morrison (and losing pretty handily if I remember correctly) before the brain burger kicked everyone out of the pool, right fucking now, and I had to sleep that shit off for like a week. Long story short, I'm kind of a pussy.  Gavin tried staying up for 5 days to break the record for most movies watched in a row for his A Million in the Morning movie gag,  and Irish artist Shane Harrington has fucked with no sleep in his work as well.

Joe out of Leisure says he can stay up for upwards of 2/3 of a day at a time in this post The Professional Insomniac. Pretty intense shit. Check it out below, then stick around for some pictures of hot chicks doing lines, because that seems like a reasonable thing for an adult man to put on his blog on a Wednesday morning.  

A lot of people have a suspicion that they're racist, paranoid maniacs, but sometimes it can hard to choose between the varying brands available in a crowded delusion market. For a step in the right direction, take a look at this video of an Afghan war veteran doing an interview on camera with CNN at the Iowa caucuses and see what you think. 

OK. Did you watch it? So who was responsible for this technical mishap here?

Sry that yr dead u guyz :( Bronan the Barbarian pinch hits here with his list of the 5 Deadest Celebrities of the Year. Or was it the 5 People He Liked Who Are Dead? The important part is that the number 5 gets in the headline so stupid people will click on it.

Have you ever noticed that Americans are addicted to television, magazines and other media? This is primarily because most people lead empty, boring lives that must be filled with endless amounts of celebrity gossip and potato chips. Let’s take a moment to fill that gaping void in your soul with my list of awesome celebrities that used to be alive.

Godammit, I'm starting to think I really fucked up my Shittiest Pieces of Shit Songs of the Shitty Year list by not digging deep enough into the PTSOTL Shitty Pieces of Shit Archives, because not only did I forget to give a mention to Lady's "Twerk" or "Yankin", which I will regret for the rest of my life and/or the next 20 seconds, I also didn't include the worst song of the year Scandinavian version, from our girl Tonje Langeteig. Here's the post below in case you missed it. Really sorry about the oversight you guys. :( It's been a hard year.

Fire up your laughing holes internet bullies, because the new worst song of all time is here.

"I don't want to be a crappy housewife. That's why right now to the disco I go." That right there, my friends, is poetry. Also the official motto of every eurotrash broad I've ever met.