Congress: unless you're using it as an old-fashioned way to describe sex, it's practically a synonym for "getting nothing done"—except for endless fundraising that is. As John Oliver explains in the April 3 episode of Last Week Tonight, America has successfully gotten itself into a mess where it's not just that Congress won't do anything, it basically can't because members have to spend the majority of their time begging rich people and special interests for money. This has a lot of other knock-on problems, like the fact that those donors, through lobbyists, often write the actual legislation Congress passes. As Americans well know, members of Congress often don't even read those bills—because they're too busy fundraising. It's a pretty awful spiral, so basically just prepare yourself for getting pissed off:
In an open letter printed in The Des Moines Register, a high school student named Jake Smith blew a hole right through the argument of several Senate Republicans. They've contended against holding hearings for Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. And while Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said that justice should not be picked by a "lame duck" president, Smith, a mere teenager, pointed out that by the same logic—as a "lame duck" senator— Grassley should have to relinquish his powers until the election as well.
Garland's a white dude with 'family values,' so their problem is obviously political.
Said Senator Grassley: “Stated differently: The president should let the people decide.”
Smith, a senior at Roosevelt High school and perhaps future President of the United States, wrote a letter to the editor aptly titled, "To Grassley: Step aside until after election:"
The argument many Republicans are making is that Barack Obama is a “lame duck” president, and, because “the people have not spoken,” he should not be allowed to nominate a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia.
However, you are running for reelection in Iowa this November. At that time, Iowans will go to the polls and their voice will be heard. Until then, who speaks for the people of Iowa? You, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, carry significant power in determining who gets to become the next Supreme Court Justice. But senator, since you, too, are in an election year, how can you possess the authority to make a decision that will affect the future of our country if “the people have not yet spoken”? Following the direction of the Republican’s logic, I politely ask you to step aside as chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee until the elections take place.
Smith's argument seems to be that if Republicans are going to use creative logic to avoid doing their jobs, at the very least, they should have to apply the same logic to themselves.
When he's not writing letters that cleverly call Republicans out on their shit, Smith is just a high school senior trying to decide what college to attend next year. He told The Huffington Post that he plans on majoring in political science, and when asked about his future senate campaign, he said, "Maybe in a few years."
Ryan Halderman may be to young too have enjoyed Toy Story when it first came out, but he has since come to understand the genius of the film series. And in doing so, he's noticed that he can look quite a bit like the villainous Sid when he tries to. Halderman snapchatted a picture of himself glaring beautifully, with a skull emoji added onto his black attire for the full Sid effect.
Twitter user @cvena_ added a comparison photo, in case you don't see the resemblance.
5. Iggy Azalea, because she's in deep with the IRS.
Iggy Azalea after the IRS repossessed her shirt.
Rapper/model/beefmaster Iggy Azalea may be Australian, but that won't protect her from having to cough up her hard-earned American dollars to the taxman just like everybody else. Apparently, she's been trying to skate by on her good looks for years.
TMZ is reporting that the IRS has slapped Azalea with a massive lien for $391,056.55 in unpaid income taxes dating back to 2014. Considering that's the year her debut album The New Classic became a huge hit, she's probably getting off light. Then again, she could use a break. Last week, her boyfriend admitted to cheating on her.
All in all, it's not a great day for the person who was once accused by Macklemore of cultural appropriation. She probably thought nothing could be more humiliating than that.
4. Drew Barrymore, because she's getting divorced.
Just last October, they were still smiling for the camera together. Was it all a lie?
Good news for creepy dudes who are still stuck in the mid-90s—your all-time celebrity crush is back on the market. After three years together, Drew Barrymore and husband Will Kopelman are calling it quits. Like any modern couple, they acknowledged their decision by releasing an exclusive statement to People Magazine:
Sadly our family is separating legally, although we do not feel this takes away from us being a family … Divorce might make one feel like a failure, but eventually you start to find grace in the idea that life goes on … Our children are our universe, and we look forward to living the rest of our lives with them as the first priority.
The language of the statement is very sweet and reasonable, highlighting exactly how much the 41-year-old Barrymore has matured since her "wild child" days, back when she was flashing David Letterman (before he became a mountain man). Here's hoping that their family remains strong and happy, and that she never makes another movie with Adam Sandler.
3. 50 Cent, because fans got violent during his show.
50 Cent posing with Rosie O'Donnell, who was not involved in the brawl. But how great is this picture?
Here's a headline that's sure to shock no one. During a performance at Stage 48 in New York on Saturday night, some of 50 Cent's fans got a bit violent. It's no surprise, considering that the rapper is most famous for being shot (and posing with fake money).
50 was rapping from the middle of the crowd like a true populist, and then quickly proved why most performers don't do that. Fans started getting pushy, trying to get closer and closer to the man himself. When security got in the way, things became heated, but the rapper managed not to get involved—until one of his worshippers tried to grab his t-shirt. Then he swatted that fool like a goddamn bug.
The whole incident was caught on video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI9iIBZIJjA
Afterward, the show was stopped until the crowd could be cleared from the area. It's not hard to understand why 50 got so upset. With his money problems, he probably can't afford another t-shirt. He's got to keep that one pristine.
2. Mariah Carey, because she fired her whole entourage (or they quit).
Mariah Carey in her pajamas.
Mariah Carey is the definition of a diva in every sense of the word. So, nobody should be too surprised to learn that her relationship with most of her personal staff has soured and that they no longer work for her. But it's still not clear exactly whose decision that was.
Reports originally claimed that Carey's staff were becoming disgruntled over conflicts with Stella Bulochinov—who has been the singer's manager for the past year,and may or may not rule over every aspect of her life with an iron first. After months of friction, Page Six is claiming that a half-dozen of Carey's closest employees, including her tour manager and stylist (who designed her insane engagement ring) had resigned in protest.
But now, Carey is telling TMZ that she was the one who canned her team so that she could replace them with vastly superior, Bulochinov-approved alternates:
I dismissed a majority of my team because I discovered that they didn’t have my best interests at heart. My new team, including manager Stella Bulochnikov are the top of the line in the entertainment business and more importantly in my life and I am now much more financially successful and more organized than in the past.
Is this the truth, or a case of sour grapes? Regardless, it doesn't seem to be bothering the singer too much. She's moving on with her life, planning her extravagant wedding to a billionaire and posting her underwear to Instagram like always:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDtRJvgreDP/
Yup. She's going to be just fine.
1. A teenager in Roswell who was arrested for stealing and smashing a UFO.
After all these celebrities and their personal problems, it's a relief to read an old-fashioned story about a dumb kid being dumb. Last week in Roswell, New Mexico, a beloved local landmark was stolen—the model UFO that hung on the side of the International UFO Museum. In one senseless act of vandalism, an entire town lost its sense of identity. Surveillance video caught the culprits loading the alien craft onto the back of a pickup truck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GniuZYJaEMk
And just when things seemed like they couldn't get worse, they did. The saucer was discovered on the outskirts of town shortly after, smashed to intergalactic bits. Apparently, the universe's most advanced technology couldn't protect itself from hoodlums with baseball bats.
While nothing can bring the UFO back (except plywood and house paint), at least justice was finally served. One of the three thieves was identified and arrested. Police have not released his name because he's only 17, which means he won't have a permanent criminal record for this case of Grand Theft Spaceship. He still has a chance to turn his life around before the aliens find out what he did.
The Fit4Less gym location in Long Eaton, England has been getting much more publicity than it intended due to a billboard featuring a nice-looking alien and a bit of fat-shaming, according to the Daily Star.
"They're coming... and when they arrive they'll take the FAT ones first," the poster reads. Natalie Harvey, founder of Combat Bullying, has trouble seeing the humor in the ad.
44-year-old truck driver Gary Turner told the Daily Star that the ad was "a classic example of fat-shaming" that made him feel "a bit self-conscious. "It is just embarrassing that a big company like that has to resort to the kind of childish bullying humor you would get in a playground," he said.
Jan Spaticchia the head of Fit4Less's parent company, said that ad was "harmles fun" and has been "very successful." "We don't take ourselves too seriously," he said. "There is such a thing as being overweight and healthy, not everyone has to be skinny.
No one, it seems, has any interest in alien abduction and chose to read the advertisement as a massive compliment, or incentive to gain weight.
For years, the Simpsons have made allusions to the sexual orientation of Waylon Smithers, Jr.—Mr. Burns' devoted, faithful, obviously-in-love-with-him assistant. For example, in the 2003 episode “Three Gays in the Condo," Homer runs into Smithers roller-blading out of the Stonewall Bakery in a tank top and rainbow shorts. In 2007, Simpsons director David Silverman defined Smithers’s sexuality as “Burns-sexual.” But it wasn't until Sunday, April 3, 2016 in "The Burns Cage" (like The Birdcage, get it?) that the show finally addressed Smithers' sexuality head-on. Although he still never actually says he's gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7EnPOR9aKc
(Spoilers) In the episode, Smithers, who's Homer's supervisor at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, finally realizes that his feelings for Mr. Burns will never be reciprocated. Unfortunately, he takes out his frustration on Lenny, Carl, and Homer at the plant by making them actually work, so they decide to try to find Smithers a new boyfriend, using a phone app similar to Grindr.
Simpsons writer Rob LaZebnik, who wrote the episode, told the New York Post: “We didn’t really want to have that big moment of ‘I’m out,’ you know? Instead, just have it be a big embrace—like everyone knows it.” LaZebnik also told the Post that he wrote the episode in part to show his support for his gay 21-year-old son. Hopefully, his son is not also in love with Mr. Burns, though.
Scott Baio, former teen heartthrob and current grumpy old conservative guy, took to Twitter to deny climate change, a topic the world has long-awaited Scott Baio's sarcastic and misinformed take on.
Baio is so confused about global warming that he addresses his tweet to it as if it were a sentient being who could respond to him, which, if it could, would probably say something like "Dear Scott, that sounds like a pleasant vacation! Btw your grandchildren will die by my hand."
He subsequently got called out by a legion of Twitter users, and even engaged in a brief beefing with TV writer and childhood Baio-fanatic Nick Amadeus.
The artist formerly known as 'Chachi' has a unique social media presence in general, where he shows support for his presidential candidate of choice by lying to Starbucks employees and re-posting conservative memes.
What happened to our Chachi? Did Michael Jackson's lying down in a similar position to how he once did really make him so angry? Cleanse your palate with the halcyon days of Baio below, or tweet at him that you hope he feels better soon.
On Sunday, the California Highway Patrol engaged in a high-speed (well, medium-speed) chase over the Oakland San Francisco Bay Bridge in pursuit of a tiny little fugitive—a little black Chihuahua.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImBp2f117sY
Okay, the dog is probably not a criminal (we'll never know for sure), but he was running through traffic caused enough of a ruckus that the cops temporarily closed the bridge in order to catch the dog. Authorities arrived after someone called 911 to report the pooch.
The dog is in custody (or you know, with animal control) while the police wait for its owners to come forward to claim him. In the meantime, they're calling him Ponch, after Erik Estrada's character on the television show CHiPs.
"What she went through, like getting that call at six in the morning, she's still bitter about that," Morgan said, pointing emphatically off-screen at his wife, Megan Wollover. "The police called the media before they called her."
Oprah gasps at the temerity of the world outside her magic green refuge.
"I got hit at 12:59. She didn't know I was in the hospital in a coma until 6 o'clock in the morning!"
The 2014 car accident killed Morgan's fellow comic James "Jimmy Mack" McNair, and it left Morgan in a two week coma—plus he also suffered "head trauma, a broken leg, and broken ribs." Three other passengers were also injured in a crash likely caused by a truck driver's exhaustion.
"When she got there, I was in the ICU. She thought she was gonna get there and I was gonna have a broken leg making the nurses laugh. They said 'Ms. Morgan are you prepared?' Then they took her up to the ICU and she flipped."
When Tracy later asked his wife how he looked in that moment, she got straight to the point: "Dead." But the story has a happy ending—as you know—Tracy Morgan's back.
Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele did not throw away their shot to pitch a Betsy Ross musical to Miranda (their brother isn't in it, so he's clearly the Peggy of the family), the next Revolutionary War musical to revolutionize Broadway.
Featuring Questlove on the drums and a rap battle with Ross's nemesis Karen Her, "Betsy Ross" is a great entry into the ever-expanding universe of Hamilton parodies.
A 12-year-old Muslim honor student, Waleed Abushaaban from Sugar Land, Texas is claiming that his teacher called him a terrorist in front of his entire class. Basically, this teacher did pretty much everything a teacher shouldn't do. Houston's KHOU reports the story.
In a press conference, Waleed Abushaaban, who is a seventh grader at First Colony Middle School, said the incident occurred when the class was watching Bend It Like Beckham and he laughed at the movie. As if that choice of movie was not questionable enough, the English teacher then said “I wouldn’t be laughing if I was you” and when he asked why, she said, “because we all think you’re a terrorist.” Bad move, teach.
According to Abushaaban, this prompted the students to start teasing and bullying him, and pretending he had a bomb.
Malek Abushaaban, Waleed's father, said during the news conference "Just because my son is a Muslim doesn’t mean he is a terrorist. He’s an American. He’s as American as anybody else. He was born here. That’s all he knows is how to be an American"
The Fort Bend school district released this statement:
On Thursday, March 31, 2016, the District was informed of parent concerns regarding offending remarks reportedly made by a probationary teacher. The District does not support the teacher’s actions, and when school administrators learned of the incident, they immediately removed the teacher from the classroom and placed her on administrative leave pending completion of the District’s review of this matter.
While the teacher reports her statements were made in the context of trying to make a point about negative stereotypes, District officials do not believe that the teacher exercised the appropriate sensitivity expected of the District’s educators, and do not believe that the statements were made in a manner that is in keeping with the District’s Core Beliefs and Commitments.
The District is proud of its rich cultural diversity and this isolated event is not representative of the positive learning experiences that the District's teachers provide to our nearly 74,000 students each and every day.
TLDR version: the teacher was trying to prove a point about negative stereotypes by using a negative stereotype to humiliate a middle schooler.
The teacher is temporarily removed from the classroom on administrative leave, but Waleed's family is fighting to get her permanently removed. They also are requesting religious sensitivity training for not only staff, but students as well.
While the Internet is often the source of anxiety, it can also provide oddly soothing and strangely sensual videos to help you calm down. The latest random source of titillation is the Man Saver Pneumatic Post Driver, a handsfree way to build faces that could also make men obsolete if it came in pocket size, ifyouknowwhatimean. It's strangely erotic, even if that pole wasn't intended for dancing on. Enjoy the mesmerizing up and down device that will make you marvel at your own perviness.
Imgur user Blufiz posted a text conversation with his girlfriend that took place while he foolishly thought he could handle buying her makeup while running errands. Like most straight men that know nothing about makeup, he failed spectacularly. He stubbornly insisted that he could handle it before getting hopelessly lost in a sea of similar colors and goofy names. But they managed to have a little fun along the way:
He's almost definitely kidding about that last part—because otherwise this would be a story about a murder.
Have fun with this poll, and tell us which thing is the toughest for boyfriends to shop for on their own.
Justin Bieber has unlocked another achievement in his quest to become the ultimate fuccboi. The very head that was once home to his signature bowlcut is now arranged as white-boy dreadlocks. It was an inevitable development in his journey of cultural appropriation and pissing everyone off in every way possible. Here are Twitter's best responses to this disappointing, unsurprising news.
Whoever is responsible tweeting for the brand (or was responsible before today) responded with a tweet that has since been deleted: "They do say imitation is the best form of flattery. Maybe Beyonce is so Crazy In Love with our brand, she made her own."
Uh-oh. Cue the sound of a zillion Beyoncé fans (the BeyHive) getting ready to take to Twitter and ATTACK!
Yikes. But Beyonce's fans do make some good points. It's also useful to remember that Lululemon is a notoriously jerk-affiliated brand (seriously, the founder came up with the name because he thought it would be funny to hear Asian women try to say it). Also, you just don't mess with Queen Bey.
The dad of redditor u/nrvsdrvr captured this disturbingly patriotic image of 24 bald eagles feasting on dead beavers near Rural Deer River in northern Minnesota. Before you start feeling bad for the beavers (or worrying that this portends a war with Canada), remember that this is nature and nothing is sacred from predators' lust for bloodshed.
This image would serve well as propaganda depending on what you think dead beavers represent.
The redditor provided a little context for the photo on Imgur.
They are eating beaver carcasses. My dad is a trapper. There were also a ton of ravens and other scavenger birds.
Beyond the eagle buffet, what's even more stunning is that 'trapper' is still a profession people can have in 2016.
Redditor u/handicapreader commented with a series of fun eagle facts in case this scene of carnage has inspired you to learn more about the winged U.S. mascot.
Bald eagles have a massive wingspread of about 7 feet (2.13 meters)
Normally, bald eagles weigh 6.5 to 14 pounds (3 to 6.5 kilograms)
The bald eagle is found only in North America.
Bald eagles are typically solitary creatures. When there is abundant food, though, they may gather with others in groups of up to 400, according to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
Bald eagles are "fish eagles." They are in this classification because their main food source is fish. They will also eat smaller birds, other bird's eggs and small animals like rabbits, reptiles, amphibians and crabs.
Bald eagles are thought to be monogamous. This means that once the birds find a mate, they will continue to only mate with each other for the rest of their lives. A bald eagle will find another mate only if it is widowed.
Bald eagles make large nests from sticks, grass, feathers, moss and cornstalks to accommodate their eggs. The largest bald eagle nest on record was found in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was 9.5 feet (2.9 meters) in diameter and 20 feet (6.1 m) deep, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It was estimated to weigh 2 metric tons (4,409 lbs.).
Though bald eagles can't swim, they can cross water without flying over it. They will sit in the water and row themselves across with their wings, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Bald eagles have no sense of smell, but they can taste. For example, if a bald eagle thinks that its food tastes spoiled, it won't eat it.
Further increase your eagle content today with this video of America's bird trying to Michael Phelps the Mississippi River.
