You are not suave.

Bad news.

When you try to flirt with the guy at the next cubicle, or the chick you pass on your way to the elevator, you look like a complete moron. You may think you're communicating your attraction subtly through giggles and jokes, but in fact you're a blabbering, shoulder-massaging nuisance, as this video from Fast Company illustrates.

If you want to keep your job, save your flirtatious disasters for late night Tinder sexting.

All that Castaway fanfic I wrote is finally coming to life!

ICYMI at the #NYR game last night Tom Hanks and Wilson were finally reunited! #BFF

A video posted by New York Rangers (@nyrangers) on Feb 5, 2015 at 10:05am PST

A happy ending! It only took 15 years, but Tom Hanks and his island companion Wilson met again at a Rangers game on Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. Hard to imagine how this happened aside from magic or a cynical set-up, but Hanks seems genuinely abashed at being on the jumbotron, and then just as genuinely delighted to see a painted volleyball. Then he and Wilson chant, "Let's go Rangers!" like they've never been apart.

And if you forgot the painful rift that separated them:

Hold your friends close today.

"You're a really lucky mountain, because you look good with a few extra tons of snow. Wait. Hold on. That came out wrong!"

Sometimes "don't go there" is a metaphor. Sometimes it's not.

Y'know that moment when something leaves your mouth and you instantly see it break the bonds of social pleasantry in an entire room? That's what this is like, except with real death instead of just being dead to your coworkers. Fortunately, like a fast-talking idiot who barely avoids having to go to HR, this guy came out of it alive enough to post it on YouTube.

Sorin Radu is a rescue worker and avid snowboarder who spends his time bombing around the slopes of the Retezat Mountains in Romania, according to a helpful commenter who says she's almost been wiped out in the same spot several times. Maybe being a rescue worker explains how Radu had the foresight to turn and try to stay at the forefront of the avalanche instead of, y'know, hoping it would gently wash over him.

I'm a little frustrated that he never thought to wipe off his GoPro after coming back up for air, but I guess he was preoccupied.

1. California Might Make It Illegal For Parents To Risk Lives With Their Dumbness

As reported cases in California's measles outbreak rise into triple digits, some lawmakers are planning to introduce legislation that will rescind parents' right to be idiot dumbshits who believe discredited medical studies by charlatans and refuse to have their kids vaccinated.

One of the worst side effects of measles is me burning your house down if you didn't vaccinate your kid.

— Julian McCullough (@julezmac) February 5, 2015

2. Tom Brokaw Finally Has An Acceptable Excuse For Not Liking Brian Williams

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw wants current anchor Brian Williams' "head on a platter" after his replacement admitted to lying about wrestling a ferocious robot lion to the ground (or something) while covering the war in Iraq, according to an anonymous source at the station. This shouldn't be a big deal, since Williams reportedly became adept at sewing his own head back onto his body while covering the Battle of the Bulge.

Critics of Brian Williams forget that Walter Cronkite once claimed he wielded Orcrist the goblin-cleaver in battle against an army of wargs.

— Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) February 6, 2015

3. Excited Breaking Bad Fans Will Get Their Chance To Be Disappointed By Better Call Saul This Sunday

The people behind AMC's much-anticipated new show, Better Call Saul, are doing their best to temper fan expectations ahead of its premiere this Sunday night. "It's tough," co-creator Peter Gould told the Hollywood Reporter. "We have this glorious thing, a built-in audience that knows this character and that's interested in the world of the show, but the truth is, this isn't Breaking Bad." I don't think he has much to worry about. Fans like me don't need it to be exactly like Breaking Bad. Just so long as it's about a chemistry teacher with brain cancer who becomes a meth kingpin and loses everything of value in his life, I'll be fine with whatever.

Brick just crashed through my window warning me that I'm not showing enough enthusiasm for "Better Call Saul."

— Josh Comers (@joshcomers) October 7, 2014

4. RadioShack To Close 2,400 Locations That Apparently Still Exist Somehow

People who supposedly continue to frequent RadioShack for whatever it is they sell these days will be disappointed to learn that the company has filed for bankruptcy and will be selling more than two-thousand locations nationwide. That is, assuming those people actually exist.

With RadioShack closing, anyone know of a good place I can go to feel depressed, confused and pressured all at the same time?

— Clarke Kant (@clarkekant) February 6, 2015

5. Annoying People Can Now Get Coconut Milk At Starbucks

Starbucks has announced that it will begin offering a coconut milk option to customers who like ruining their coffee drinks with subpar creamers but are getting tired of soy milk.

There's no coconut milk at this Starbucks. I can't tell who is more upset: the woman that asked or the woman who has to work at Starbucks

— Michelle Wolf (@michelleisawolf) January 18, 2015

Hopefully, he isn't stupid enough to ever try this again.

This video, from YouTube user Shreyas Rao, claims to show an Indian girl giving a middle-aged guy hell for trying to sexually harass her on an IndiGo Airlines flight. The video has over 6 million views.

The girl calls out the guy, whom she was sitting near on the flight, for trying to touch her more than once. At the top, he seems to ask for forgiveness and that she not make a scene, but that just pisses her off even more.

Here's what the girl wrote about the video:

This man on the seat behind mine, put his fingers in the seat gap to touch me!!! I was very shocked for sometime to react. By then the flight went to landing mode. Then the moment flight touched down, i got up. Saw his hand was again on the side ready to take up any opportunity to touch me!!! I created such a scene, humiliated him in front of the whole flight! He thought like usual girls will keep quiet and he can get away with this! I have lodged an FIR [First Information Report] now! He is a very rich man of Bhubaneswar and is now very humiliated in front of the people who know him. Cant believe the ordeal i had to go thru but being silent is a crime! The police officer was very helpful and the Indigo staff remained with me throughout. The man is under police custody currently. I clicked his pictures and made videos, shouted so loud that the entire plane came forward to see him! i made sure i humiliate him as much as possible because i know law will do nothing

Don't worry. I think he learned his lesson. If nothing else, he learned that people have phones with cameras.

With every orgasm an angel gets its wings.

(screengrab via HandJobTW)

Even independent, fully-abled people can have trouble getting laid (ahem) so picture the difficulties facing a person homebound by muscular dystrophy or other physical limitations. There's the basic restriction of movement and the possibility that your caretakers are family members with whom you could be uncomfortable talking about sex. There is also the cultural taboo of open discussion of sexual needs and the erasure of differently abled people from our public landscape. Basically, you're surrounded by a lot of people who don't want to even consider that you're a grown adult and a sexual being with the same desire for intimacy as anyone else.

Fly free, hands.(via HandJobTW)

Taiwanese NGO Hand Angel is trying to address some of these issues, offering hand jobs to the severely disabled. There's a core group of only 10 volunteers doing the actual work and there are strict boundaries on what they do for their clients. However, it sounds like even these introductory encounters with sexual contact can open up worlds for people. Andy, a young gay man with muscular dystrophy, described his experience to Vice:

"I didn't feel I was the target of pity. The whole process was full of respect and equality. This might be deemed as controversial by society, but as long as you're willing to look into it, what we desire is no different from others. Just ask yourself: do you need to consult your parents before having sex?"

Nope.

She looks like she's had scales up against her butt cheeks since childhood.

The story behind Jennifer Lawrence's #VFHollywood Issue snake photo http://t.co/rFBvLKJR5xpic.twitter.com/TgpjwewQPR
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 5, 2015

You had me at "Jennifer Lawrence posed nude with a snake," Vanity Fair.

The photo above, "an homage to the 1981 Richard Avedon Vogueportrait of Nastassja Kinski that launched a million dorm-room posters," was taken at a private home for the magazine's upcoming Hollywood issue.

Apparently, J. Law was as "brave and nonchalant" about the whole "being fully exposed while a Colombian red-tailed boa constrictor snuggles up to your buttocks" thing as you'd imagine she would be. Turns out we almost lost her to the snake:

"Lawrence only became uncomfortable when the snake took a fancy to her neck. Then the shoot was over and Mr. Boa went back into his box."

This family worried about the very worst thing that could happen to their child, and then made it happen.

This is what happens when you don't have Alice in the middle to balance your family photo.
(via Lincoln Country Sheriff's Office)

The family of a 6-year-old Missouri boy had him kidnapped, tied up, threatened with a handgun, and told he could become a sex slave, all to "teach him a lesson about being too nice to strangers."

According to police, the boy's aunt, Denise Kroutil, 38, recruited her co-worker Nathan Wynn Firaved to help the boy's mother, 25-year-old Elizabeth Hupp, and grandmother Rose Brewer scare the child out of his innocence.

On Monday, Firaved kidnapped the victim after he got off the school bus.

The little boy was told he would "never see his mommy again," and that he would be "nailed to the wall of a shed."

Firoved threatened the boy with a handgun, bound his hands and feet with plastic bags, blindfolded him with a jacket, and took him to the basement of the boy's own home.

Once there, the boy's own aunt crept into the basement and removed the boy's pants, telling him he "could be sold into sex slavery."

The torture went on for four hours before he was brought upstairs and told thatthis was all an elaborate ruse to teach him about Stranger Danger.

At some point, this is not a kidnapping hoax, this is just straight kidnapping.

Are they trying to warn him about strangers, or teach him he should never become an international spy?

I've said it before (under much less serious circumstances) about how worthless pranks are -- where you think everything that happens is OK once you reveal it. This is obviously much worse, but operates under the same principal of doing something terrible but with a well-meaning intent. This was, in a sense, the logical conclusion of terrible pranks. There is no real relief once the intentions are revealed. Instead of learning that he cannot trust strangers, this child has just learned that he can never trust anybody.

On Wednesday, the boy told school officials about the incident, and all four adults were arrested and brought in for questioning.

"In the 11 years I've been in law enforcement, I've never seen anything like this," Lt. Andy Binder told NBC News.

The adults involved were charged with felony kidnapping and child abuse, and all except the mother were charged with felony restraint.

The boy has been placed with another aunt who, hopefully, has better parenting skills than straight-up torture.

Spoilers Ahead, obviously.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go not write."

Somehow or other, somebody got their hands on George R.R. Martin's original 22-year-old pitch letter (included at the bottom of this post) to his agent for a "high fantasy" trilogy that he was planning to write. As we all know, those three novels exploded into a planned seven (possibly eight) novels, with five already on bookstore shelves, one currently transitioning from Martin's brain to his word processor and one (possibly two) floating in the ether of possibility.

In the letter, Martin writes "I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it." So, unsurprisingly, the story as laid out here has morphed somewhat in the two decades since this was sent. In honor of the Seven, are seven interesting elements of Martin's original concept along with a few potentially devastating spoilers:

1. Robb Stark is not killed at the Red Wedding.

In fact, there is no Red Wedding. Tywin Lannister never needs to set it up with Walder Frey because Robb Stark, King in the North, is killed in battle with Jaime Lannister.

2. Catelyn Stark is not killed at the Red Wedding either.

In fact, she's not killed at all! Instead, she and Arya are smuggled out of King's Landing by Ned. They eventually hook up with Bran and head to the Wall to chill with Jon Snow and the Night's Watch before heading farther north. Catelyn ultimately gets killed by a White Walker.

3. Sansa has a baby with Joffrey.

Let that sink in for a moment: Ned's daughter Sansa marries the man who had him beheaded, and then has a child with him. Ugh!!! This is the very worst thing I can possibly imagine. And I've read all five books so far. So, that's saying something.

4. Tyrion burns Winterfell to the ground.

Apparently, Tyrion Lannister was actually supposed to become somewhat of a military leader early on, because he leads a group of his father's men to lay siege upon the seat of House Stark and then he destroys it. And I thought I knew him.

5. Jaime assumes the Iron Throne after Tyrion removes Joffrey from it.

It doesn't say exactly how Tyrion pulls this off, but it's safe to assume that Joffrey has a fateful meeting with the Stranger. It's likely that the current subplot involving Tyrion being blamed for poisoning Joffrey had their seed here. Afterward, Jaime kills everyone in the line of succession between himself and the throne. Typical Kingslayer, huh?

6. Jon Snow and Arya Stark fall in love, which is weird, but also not that weird.

So glad this didn't happen! But even if it does pop up in one of the next books (please don't let it happen!), it won't matter terribly because "the secret of Jon's parentage [will be] revealed in the last book." So, they're probably not brother and sister. Though, this subplot would probably mean Ygritte was never going to show up.

7. Daenerys Targaryen kills Khal Drogo but still never actually goes to Westeros.

Faithful book readers know that Daenerys is not known for her sensible behavior, so it should come as no surprise that she was originally supposed to kill her husband Khal Drogo after he kills her awful abusive brother Viserys. Then she runs off into the Dothraki sea and thinks about invading Westeros without ever doing it. At least as far as this pitch explains.

It probably took George R.R. Martin about...

...four months to finish...

...these three pages.

Corporate social media is so lame! Let's make it racist, too! That'll teach 'em.

Thanks, Caity. Now I can no longer sail through life not knowing the Fourteen Words.
(via Gawker)

Coca-Cola this week tweeted out images made out of the Fourteen Words credo of white nationalism, as well as snippets from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.Gawker writers tricked them into doing that, so I guess that means Gawker wins...at spreading Nazi propaganda online.

I don't write for Gawker, so I don't really get outraged. There is a logic to saying "if Coke is stupid enough to set up an algorithm that will reprint Nazi propaganda, then Coke deserves to be made to reprint Nazi propaganda." It's called troll logic and it's boring. If you're giving millions of people the opportunity to discover hate speech firsthand and the point you're making is boring, you are wasting an opportunity.

#MakeItHateSpeech

Show your support for the #MakeItHappy movement. “Sign" our Smile Petition with your smiling face. pic.twitter.com/MeYZeb3ILj
— Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) February 4, 2015

Almost-but-not-quite-as gross as white supremacy.

This all started in response to Coke's #MakeItHappy campaign. That Twitter promotion reached high-fructose-corn-syrup levels of sappiness by turning "negative tweets" into ASCII cartoons (you know, pictures made out of text). Someone call you a bunch of slurs and threaten to kill you? Coke would turn it into a happy balloon animal.

Gawker writer Caity Weaver kicked it off by sending Coke the Fourteen Words of white nationalism, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children," which became the image at the top of this article. Gross, ew, yuck, ew.

Limit One White Supremacy Prank Per Customer

"German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not indeed on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no."(via Hitler/Gawker)

If it was just what Caity did, that would be fine. We could debate whether it falls into the category of "people calling over-the-top offensiveness 'irony' when really it's still pretty offensive," like a white guy who loudly pretends to hold racist opinions and then wants everyone to laugh with him. But I like to err on the side of fucking with companies. It was a good play on "we turned the hate you found into something happy" and it serves a point about how poorly Coke was checking their tweets.

"Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in the same REICH. The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in the one State." (via Hitler/Gawker)

Then it kept going. Gawker felt that #MakeItHappy "pose[d] an interesting hermeneutical question." I can never remember whether hermeneutics is the academic word for textual analysis or metaphorically performing oral sex on yourself, but this should have been the point at which they realized they were all the way inside their own buttholes.

"When the territory of the REICH embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood," (via Hitler/Gawker)

The Editorial Labs director for Gawker, Adam Pash, built a bot (@MeinCoke) that tweeted Hitler's magnum opus Mein Kampf line by line at Coke. Here the joke really begins to break down, because, y'know, you're spending time creating a program that reads Hitler aloud online and hoping a company with 2.85 million Twitter followers will accidentally, as they put it, "#SignalBoost Hitler."

"only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come."
(via Hitler/Gawker)

They succeeded, and Hitler was soon being recited to millions.

"And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task. But in another regard also it points to a lesson that is applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot was the"(via Hitler/Gawker)

Did you really want to embarrass Coca-Cola, or were you all just swept away by your own cleverness? Because you could have made Coke write out things that are actually damaging to itself.

"scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole German nation and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German history. At the time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a bookseller, Johannes Palm,"(via Hitler/Gawker)

The Coca-Cola Company is terrible. You could get them to accidentally reprint literature about how it causes health problems around the world, how its suppliers use terrible pesticides, how it's draining our fresh water supplies, or about their promotion of unrealistic standards of holiday cheer among polar bears. Frankly, the rate at which Diet Coke cans have that unacceptable moldy-metallic taste has been on the rise, too.

"uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the French, was put to death here because he had the misfortune to have loved Germany well. He obstinately refused to disclose the names of his associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly responsible for the affair. Just as it happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like the latter, was denounced to the French by a Government agent. It was a director of police from Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that occasion and set the example which was to be copied at a later date by the"(via Hitler/Gawker)

You really want to embarrass Coke? You wanna talk about Coke and Nazis? How about the fact that Coke kept manufacturing in Germany right up until the war, several high-level executives were members of the American Nazi Party, and when the US executives were kicked out (along with syrup supplies), Coca-Cola Deutschland invented Fanta. When Coke returned right behind Patton's tanks, they were delighted to find piles of Nazi Fanta money waiting for them.

"neo-German officials of the REICH under Herr Severing's regime. In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr, a town that was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian State, my parents were domiciled towards the end of the last century."(via Hitler/Gawker)

Or why not trick Coke into promoting things Gawker ostensibly likes? Why not have them make animals out of criticisms of privilege? Why not ASCII art that rips apart Rolling Stone for botching their UVA report and making it harder for victims of sexual violence everywhere? If the only thing you could think of was white nationalism, WHY NOT JUST HAVE THEM SAY "BUTTS"?

"My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously." (via Hitler/Gawker)

Coca-Cola did end their campaign, which means we may never know what a dancing banana made out of social criticism looks like. But at least now everyone knows the Fourteen Words!

This is the true story of how one pop group rescued forever the mornings of female commuters.

His game is kinda weak and I know that he cannot approach me.
(stock photo, but she gets it.)

Olivia Cole is a writer in Chicago who witnessed some serious next-level badassery and relayed the whole thing on twitter. This is the kind of thing you dream about when you are screaming into a karaoke mic, but in real life with real results.

So, let her give you something to think about...

YALL I have the best morning commute story ever. I hope you're ready.
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

So I was on the train to work this morning. Now, most women know that street harassers never think it's too early to street harass.
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

So that was happening. This dude was aggressively hitting on this woman, who was about my age. She was ignoring him. Everyone else was too.
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

He kept after her. I could hear him saying, "Come on. I want your number. You're so pretty. You don't want my number?"
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

She finally says, loudly, "NO, I don't want your number!" And what happened next was amazing.
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

This young woman a few seats away, looks up and she says, also loudly, "AND NO, I DON'T WANNA GIVE YOU MINE."
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

And there was this awkward silence. Like, at first people just stared at her, myself include. But then I realized, and slowly so did others.
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

The second woman's friend started laughing and she said (not as loud, but still audible) "NO, I DON'T WANNA MEET YOU NO WHERE."
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

And together they sang, really loudly (and off key) "NO, I DON'T WANT NONE OF YOUR TIIIIIME"
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

The dude trying to get the first woman's number just stared at them, and the woman he was harassing was just LAUGHING. He was done.
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) February 6, 2015

If you're not imagining T-Boz working her neck, you're not fully appreciating the magic of what happened on that train in Chicago today.

The moral of the story? If she's looking like class, and he's looking like ass, she can't get with no dead beat trash.

Oh yes, son, I'm talkin' to you.

But maybe...

At long last, the two greatest comedy forces of our time have been brought together on one bursting-with-hilarity Tumblr. Behold, the majesty of Louis C.K.'s words coming out of Cathy's mouth!

(via)

(via)

(via)

(via)

(via)

Lots more Cathy and CK collaborations to be found over here.

I can't stop this feeling / deep inside of me / Chris and Chris don't realize / what they do to me.

Star Lord, Captain America, & a kid who never guessed he'd make everyone so jealous.
(via Chris Pratt on Facebook)

Chris Pratt, Seahawks fan, star of Parks and Recreation, and Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy made a bet last week with Chris Evans (Captain America) that the Seattle Seahawks would triumph over the New England Patriots in a little thing called the Super Bowl. The terms of the bet were that the loser would show up to a charity of the winner's choice while wearing the costume of their respective Marvel heroes.

(via @prattprattpratt, @ChrisEvans, & redditor marcelowit)

As it turns out, Evans' team won, so Chris Pratt had to don his Star-Lord costume to go visit Christopher's Haven, a charity helping kids with cancer in Boston. (Keeping this story amazing, Evans not only accompanied Pratt to Christopher's Haven, he has promised to visit Seattle Children's Hospital as Captain America anyway.) Not that Pratt minded, in fact he stole one of the Star Lord costumes off the Marvel set for the exact purpose of visiting sick kids if the movie became successful. Here's the first of two albums from their visit:

Pratt did also keep the promise to show up in a Brady Jersey, although he made some alterations.

I look forward to seeing Evans visit Seattle Children's Hospital as Captain America next. Now if you'll excuse me, it appears some kind of alien menace is attacking the tear ducts in my eyes. There also seems to be some kind of mind-control beam at work making me think uncynical thoughts about celebrities and people in general. If you'd like to help these charities as a normal person, visit Christopher's Haven or the Seattle Children's Hospital online.

It's not safe to adapt franchises alone, Netflix. Take, uh... your time?

Finally, a collaboration between two companies that make it really hard for me to find fair-use images!

Sources close to Netflix have told the Wall Street Journal that the streaming video site is in the early steps of developing a live-action Legend of Zelda series based on the incredibly successful 26-year-old Nintendo action/RPG franchise. The show, as you might have guessed, is about a princess named Zelda and the farm boy named Link who must save her.

It will have all the swords and magic of the video games, which explains why it's currently being given the very odd description of being a kid-friendly Game of Thrones. They're apparently still looking for a writer to helm it, so whether this ever lives to see the light of day is still up in the air. Nintendo, as usual, is commenting on nothing.

This should be very exciting news for gamers everywhere...except that dramatizations of Nintendo properties have had, uh, a lot of issues in the past. Perhaps even more infamous than the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie* were the licensed Zelda games for the abysmal Philips CD-i game system. Although not technically a show or movie, these games were mostly cutscenes...horrible, horrible cutscenes. Here's the intro:

TV adaptations have done somewhat better, although by "somewhat better" I mean there was a brief-lived set of animated kids' shows in the late 80s and early 90s that included The Legend of Zelda, Captain N: Game Master, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and The Power Team. Remember those? I didn't think so.

100% forgettable, which is still much better than the CD-i games. (via Wikipedia)

Still, the Zelda franchise has re-invented itself time after time more dramatically and more effectively than any of Nintendo's properties, including Mario. On the other hand, people definitely seem to like Link a lot more when he's not saying anything.

*To put that in perspective, the Super Mario Bros movie was so bad, John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins had to get drunk before shooting just to get through their lines.