1. O.J. Simpson Trial Will Finally Become The Trashy Docudrama Series It Was Meant To Be

Former football player and Hollywood actor O.J. Simpson's murder trial will be the subject of the first season of FX's upcoming crime drama American Crime Story. The true crime series is a spinoff of the network's popular American Horror Story, with the biggest difference being that it will actually be scary and disturbing. But probably not for the reasons the network is hoping.

It's a shame how OJ Simpson's amazing football career will forever be overshadowed by his even-more-amazing performance in "Naked Gun."

— Patrick Cassels (@patrick_cassels) September 21, 2014

2. U.S. To Make Sure Airline Travelers Aren't Smuggling Ebola Into The Country Inside Their Circulatory Systems

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is apparently planning to start screening airline passengers coming into the U.S. to make certain that they are not bringing the Ebola virus with them. These screenings could include taking temperatures, requiring questionnaires to be filled out and making people promise that they're super duper sure that they're not infected with the disease.  

How long does the ebola virus last in a pumpkin spice latte? #Ratings

— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) October 8, 2014

3. Robert Downey, Jr. Teases That He Might Or Might Not Continue On With Marvel In Future Projects That May Or May Not Be Happening

Film star Robert Downey, Jr. teased some very unhelpful information to movie fans on last night's Late Show with David Letterman, seeming to imply that he's not playing Tony Stark in a fourth Iron Man film that maybe/probably is not going to be happening, while also hinting that he's going to continue working with Marvel Studios in some capacity that is vague and confusing. Take that as you will.

Somebody please trap Robert Downey Jr in that Iron Man suit and just film his everyday activities. #IronManInfinity

— Lamont Price (@LPizzle) September 8, 2014

4. Justice Kennedy Grants Idaho And Nevada A Few More Blessed Days Of Anti-Gay Bigotry

Justice Anthony Kennedy—more often referred to as the Supreme Court Justice who effectively decides 97 percent of all cases—isssued a temporary block on same-sex marriages in Idaho and Nevada to allow the states a few more days to be festering sores of inequality marring the face of humanity, while their emergency requests to be exempted from this week's SCOTUS anti-decision, that would force them into accepting marriage equality, is processed and ultimately denied.

Look, all I'm saying is I don't remember the moon turning blood red *before* all these states legalized gay marriage.

— Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) October 8, 2014

5. Jon Stewart Got Sick And Turned Into Jason Jones

It would appear as though Daily Show host Jon Stewart has contracted some sort of ailment that turned him into Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones for the entire duration of last night's episode. This obviously leads to the inevitable question of whether Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones is in fact himself or just some other person who has contacted a chronic case of the disease.

Legalized gay marriage is a slippery slope that before you know it ends up with Jason Jones hosting The Daily Show.

— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) October 8, 2014

(by Dennis DiClaudio)

If only these two would finally just sit down and get to know each other.

Maybe the French didn't get the memo. But if you want Jay Z to explain to you what the hell his whole deal is, you'd better be a sweet little old lady...

(by Bob Powers)

Comedian/theoretical astrophysicist Louis C.K.(via)

Louis C.K. is undoubtedly one of the best things that ever happened to Twitter. It's not that he's constantly tweeting out really funny jokes about today's headlines. He's not that at all. In fact, he's actually pretty inconsistent, sometimes going weeks without a single tweet and then finally dropping an apologetic message like, "I seriously just can't think of anything to tweet. #sorry." But then, every once in a while, magic happens. he gets drunk on a plane or frustrated with his kids' homework, and then he's off on a several-hour, poorly punctuated tear.

Today is one of those days. Something apparently got him thinking about Earth and Mars and the moon and martian DNA and the Big Bang and some other stuff that's just beyond me. Reading through C.K.'s surreal tweets about the origin of life in the universe gives me a headache very similar to the one I got while trying to read the new Stephen Hawking book: 

It really feels like Mars used to be a here that got globally warmed by some very us-y people-things.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

I'm not saying I can prove it. I'm saying it feels like it.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

It feels like they left mars on a moon that they pushed out of orbit and rode over here to try to orbit what was earth

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

That's the only way you could move billions of people-y types. But their moon crashed into pre-earth and everyone died.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

What was left turned into here and our moon and got seeded by marsian corpse DNA. And later we'll use our moon to go back.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

That's what it feels like anyway.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

And it feels like we are gonna keep bopping around on moons til we realize the whole solar system is actually a spaceship.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

The sun is the engine and if you wait til it all lines up just right and you push "go" you can ride it to a bigger far place.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

I would really like to emphasize that these are not opinions or theories. It's just a feeling I have.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

Also I feel like I know the origin of the basic despair that we all feel in the pit of our being, that one thing we all share.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

We used to be one single thing that was nowhere. The Big Bang happened, sending us, which used to be a "me" hurtling outward.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

And that basic sad despair inside is us going "aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!" Through space. We're like on the 20'th "a"

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

If you go "aaaaa!" For a jiblion years you stop even hearing yourself say it. Anyway that's just how it feels sometimes.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

I'm not high.

— Louis C.K. (@louisck) October 8, 2014

I actually believe him.

(by Dennis DiClaudio)

Custom Bugatti Red Peen. (via)

There are less than five hundred in the world, so it was already a rare vehicle. Now, thanks to a vandal with a can of spray paint, there's a Bugatti Veyron cruising around Seattle that you have to believe is one of a kind, because it's hard to imagine anyone else wanting to be seen driving a car with a crude, red dick and balls on its hood. Who knows who did it—an angry spouse? A class warrior trying to make a statement? Maybe another Seattle Bugatti owner who can now say, "mine's the one without the dick on the front."

The identity of the owner isn't known, either, which is understandable. He probably waited until no one was around to drive away. Because even at a top speed of 200 mph, you look pretty silly behind the wheel of a car with a red penis on it.

It must have been a long, miserable ride home for car's owner. Still, it wasn't the worst look anyone's had driving a Bugatti. That distinction still belongs to this guy:

(by Jonathan Corbett)

Stephen Collins is an actor who played a Protestant minister on 7th Heaven and a Catholic priest in real life.

Just delete it.

Anyone with parents knows the dangers of letting them handle new technology on their own. Luckily, Someecards is here to take your parents, step by excruciating step, through the simple tasks you do with a computer every day. In this tech tutorial, we'll show your gullible mom or dad how to properly delete an unwanted email without opening the attachment in that email.

By "do it one time," I assume you don't mean "grieve for millions of innocents."
And by "lol," you mean...?

San Antonio point guard Danny Green has a very simple motto for his Twitter and Instagram accounts: "Respect is everything... I give what I get." Well, Mr. Green certainly has it coming today. As you can see from the screenshot above, the 27-year-old Green took a selfie at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews In Europe in Berlin, Germany while he was in town for an exhibition game against a Berlin team. He also captioned it "You know I had to do it one time lol #holocaust." 

Now, this is actually not the worst Holocaust selfie I've ever seen—that dishonor is reserved for American teen tourist Princess Breanna. Nevertheless, you could make a good argument that a selfie is fundamentally inappropriate and egotistical in this location, and you could make a rock-solid argument that "lol" and "#holocaust" are mutually exclusive sentiments. 

Green, for his part, realized he was being an ass and changed the caption on his Facebook picture:

He also wrote a series of apologetic tweets.

All told, I'd rate this social media incident as an "embarrassment" but not a "scandal." He screwed up, but he's a 27-year-old athlete who a.) visited the Memorial in his free time and b.) apologized and retracted his words. So basically, it's worth making fun of him today about it, but I will go back to being unaware Green exists in approximately 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....

(by Johnny McNulty)

Tweet this pic and you'll pay!

Had enough of passengers freaking out over reclining seats? How about for a nice change of pace we take a look at one pilot's freakout over a passenger's perfectly understandable joke that had nothing to do with him at all. In fact, the passenger was reportedly only saying how he hopes he can get drunk on the plane, which is a very reasonable thing to hope for and no one should be penalized for such things.

According to what passenger Lisa Carter-Knight told WPVI News 6, when JetBlue flight 760 to Boston finally boarded after an hour delay in Philadelphia, another passenger joked that he hoped that there would be a fully-stocked bar on the plane, referencing his own desire to get plotzed after having to wait in an airport for longer than he wanted to. Perfectly human needs.

The pilot must have overheard the joke and misunderstood its meaning. According to Carter-Knight, before anyone knew what the hell was going on, the pilot ran out of the cockpit and shouted, "That's it; everyone back up at the gate; I've been accused of being intoxicated."

Defensive much, Captain?

Carter-Knight used her time "back up at the gate" to tweet about the experience, because at this point social media is 95% people complaining about air travel (the other 5%: accidental politician wang selfies). 

#JetBlue Major debacle on flight 760 in Philly- pilot accuses passengers of accusing him of being intoxicated demands all passengers back

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

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#philyjetblue760 Passengers falsely accused and ordered back to gate-pilot accuses passenger

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

.

#wmur Philly Boston flight 760 grounded due to unruly pilot - false accusations by pilot that his sobriety was questioned by passengers

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

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#jetblusofly. Flight 760 grounded due to irate pilot accusing passengers of questioning his sobriety pic.twitter.com/LzTQQcjSrJ

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

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Philyflight760. Still grounded as authorities board plane for pilot sobriety test pic.twitter.com/8qOU6UaYqB

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

I guess in addition to never saying "bomb" in an airport without getting strip searched, you now also can't say "booze" on an airplane without a way oversensitive pilot getting all "how dare you!"

Eventually, the sobriety tests must have come back clean and Captain Makes It All About Him All The Time allowed the passengers to reboard—all except for one.

Jet Blue just denied me to board the aircraft due to my social media coverage of tonight's events. The pilot and staff denied service to me.

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

Jet Blue denied me access tonight to a flight home to my three children.Thanks for supporting single working mothers.#philyjetblue760

— Lisa Carter-Knight (@drinkwaterevent) October 8, 2014

Maybe single, working mothers should think twice before tweeting about the guy responsible for every life on board an airplane throwing a childish hissy fit over a harmless joke that had absolutely nothing to do with the drinking problem he may or may not have (but if he does he's really defensive about it).

This isn't the first time someone's been booted from a plane over a tweet. This past July a family got removed from a Southwest flight after Dad tweeted about the rude gate agent who wouldn't let his kids board with him because they weren't in the same boarding class.

JetBlue claims they did not deny Carter-Knight reentry to the plane because of her tweets, stating that other passengers also tweeted about the incident. Per the airline's statement on the matter:

"If we feel a customer is not complying with safety instructions, exhibits objectionable behavior or causes conflict at the gate or on the aircraft, the customer will be asked to deplane or will be denied boarding especially if the crew feels the situation runs the risk of accelerating in the air. In this instance, the customer received a refund and chose to fly on another carrier."

As WPVI reported, the airline failed to indicate what sort of behavior Carter-Knight was exhibiting that the crew found objectionable. Perhaps they noticed a certain hostility in the way her thumbs were slamming against her phone's screen. That woman's opposable digits are trouble, and who knows what could happen once we're in the air.

(by Bob Powers)

Probably some kind of gun safety lesson to be gleaned here.

This Sunday evening, The Walking Dead returns to AMC to begin its fifth season. In the coming weeks—as we watch Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon, Michonne and the rest of their band of beaten-down survivors trudge through a world full of death while acting kind of like actual human beings—we're certain to learn a lot about not just their world, but our world.

In the past four seasons, we've already received so many valuable life lessons. Here are just seven of the more profound ones:

1. The world is a relentlessly bleak wasteland full of hideous monsters who are mindlessly bent on devouring your life force.

On the show, they’re gnarled remnants of the well-meaning people they once were who shamble through the world smelling of rotting meat. In real life, they're gnarled remnants of the well-meaning people they once were who shamble through the world smelling of KFC’s Double Down Sandwich. Whether the people around you are trying to eat your entrails or steal your good ideas at work, they’re all really after the same thing: dragging you down into the same miserable existence as them. As long as you're aware of this you can fight them off. If you forget for one minute—BAM!—you're a zombie, too. (Interestingly, this is also the central life lesson of pretty much every television show, movie, books and New York Times Op/Ed column.)

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2. The thing you’re looking for is quite often in the last place you’d think to check.

Have you misplaced something? Your earphones? A favorite paperback? A member of your band of survivors? Here’s a novel idea: instead of wandering all around the city looking for your missing item, why not take a nice, solid look at your immediate surroundings first? Sure, it might be more comforting to believe that your headphones fell out of your pocket while you were buying coffee at Starbucks than considering the possibility that you’re too dumb to remember sticking them in your back pocket. And, sure, the young woman from your group probably isn’t milling around inside a foul-smelling barn with a bunch of other walking cadavers. But what if she is? Taking five minutes to check could potentially save you a half-season worth of boring cyclical narrative.

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3. It’s okay to say 'no.'

Sometimes life hands you an opportunity. Something that seems too good to pass up. And, although the current circumstances of your life might not seem ideal for grabbing this opportunity with both hands, you think to yourself, “Can I really say ‘no’?” Yes! You can say ‘no’! You really can. Sometimes ‘no’ is the most positive answer you can give. You really don’t need to give birth to every baby conceived with your husband’s best friend during a zombie apocalypse. If you say ‘yes’ when your gut says ‘no,’ you just might end up forcing your preteen son to put you out of your misery after you receive a c-section in a dirty boiler room with no anesthesia. Just saying.

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4. Know when to give your loved ones a little space.

Kids. They grow up so fast. Before you even know what’s happening, your daughter has outgrown her dolls and toys and now all she wants to do is tear at your flesh and sink her jagged teeth into the soft meat of your face. You can try keeping her chained up in a closet all you like, but that’s really only prolonging the inevitable moment when somebody comes along and puts a samurai sword through her muldering skull. And then you wind up on a maniacal quest for vengeance against a group of malevolent outsiders when you could have lived happily as the godhead of your ersatz city-state. It’s not worth it. Let your children go.

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5. Don't temp fate.

This bit of wisdom is sometimes referred to as "Don't press your luck" or "Don't poke the zombie." There comes a time for all of us in which we encounter our own personal zombies stuck in the mud in the woods of our lives. In these moments, we're given a choice: go back to camp and continue on with our lives, well aware of the dangers this world; or we can taunt that zombie with a gun until it wriggles itself free and then follows us back to camp and bites the beloved old crank of our group. The choice is all of ours. What will you do?

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6. Speak up!

You need to make your presence known to the people around you, or to whatever ethereal television audience might be watching you. Regardless of how often you're hanging around, off in the corner of the frame (so to speak), if you don't contribute some dialogue to the conversation, it'll be so much easier for the powers that be to kill you off and then move on with the story as though nothing even happened. Metaphorically speaking, obviously.

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7. It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Let's say you want to murder two of your friends who happen to have contracted a deadly virus and then drag their bloody bodies out to a clearing and burn their corpses into ash. If you ask the people around you, they're probably going to say no. But if you just do it, and then wait several months to confess your deeds to the grieving romantic partner of one of those dead people, he might just be thoroughly jaded by the horrors of the world enough to forgive you. 

(by Dennis DiClaudio)

For the squeamish!

What is it about pumpkins that bring out the worst in some people? Teenagers like to smash them. Adults get a kick out of gutting and carving them up. Even some dogs appear to be bothered just by the sight of them. Like this Corgi pup, who is obviously not a fan. They're already fighting when the clip begins, so it's tough to say how it started. But if this dog is anything like the Corgi fighting a lemon candy in this video, or the one in this clip doing battle with a stationary tennis ball, it will probably end with no clear winner, and one passed out puppy.

(by Jonathan Corbett)

End vagina taxation without representation.

Sarah Silverman is picking out a dick and getting a sex change. She's sick and tired of being taxed $11,000 per year just for having a vagina. That's the average amount of money men earn more than women annually, which adds up to about $500,000 over the course of a woman's lifetime.

She's also publicizing the Equal Payback Project, which is trying to raise $30 trillion to pay back every woman in America. If they can't raise that much, the proceeds will go to the National Women's Law Center, a non-profit that fights for equal pay in the workplace.

But as long as things remain as ridiculously unfair as they currently are, there's only one question on Silverman's mind: what penis will go best with her boots?

(by Shira Rachel Danan)

Your daydreams probably left out the severe vertigo, though.

My coworkers have informed me that the things they think about when driving over a bridge are really dark and messed-up, so hopefully you're like me and just daydream about superhero stuff because you're secretly still 5 years old. This guy is not a superhero, but he is a stunt person, and therefore you should really not try this on your own because it would make me feel bad if I showed this to you and you died.

This video was, predictably, made by GoPro. It's not pretending not to be something organic, however, so I'm fine with that. After all, I really enjoyed Red Bull (which is much less directly related to stunts) sponsoring Felix Baumgartner's jump from space, so I can't start complaining now.

(by Johnny McNulty)

Artist's representation of what a Hillary Clinton visit might look like.

We all have dreams. Some of us want to acquire a magical Elven Gauntlet of Fortitude. Others of us want to gain enough experience points such that we may take our Half-Orc Mages to the 19th level and gain the power to Speak Fire. And still others of us want to raise former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's $200,000 speaking fee through Kickstarter so that we can get her to speak at our Dungeons & Dragons club.

This video concerns the latter group:

This crowdfunding project is off to a pretty impressive start. They've already raised $214, and it's only been active about a week. That means that all they've got to do is get an additional $199,786 in 22 days to push them over the hump, and then they'll have a presidential hopeful all to themselves for an entire night. That would be almost as cool as somehow combining a Bag of Holding with a Helm of Teleportation!

By the way, if you lost your Saving Throw vs. Recognizing Funny People, the main guy in that video is Jared Logan. He's right on the verge of getting enough experience points to jump up a level from Kind of Famous Comedian to Celebrity Comedian. Here he is casting Spell of Laughter upon Pete Holmes' TV audience recently:

(by Dennis DiClaudio)

Los Angeles is where my luck is going to be much better than it was in New York, I just know it.

Pictured: A Comcast vehicle doing nothing, which is the best you can ask for.
(via Dwight Burdette)

Update 5:34 pm: Since the publication of this article, Comcast posted "A Public Apology To Conal O'Rourke" on their blog. Here is that statement: 

Wow. That was so nice of them to apologize to us, the public, because according to Mr. O'Rourke's lawyers, they still haven't said peep to him directly, nor have they released what was actually asked for: the recorded calls that would prove Mr. O'Rourke was telling the truth, because it doesn't matter if Comcast said "fire this guy"—they knew it would happen. But hey, at this rate it will only take 6 more months.

Published 3:05 pm: Hold on to your lunch, people, because we're going into the belly of the beast. 

We all agree that Comcast is evil incarnate, but even I was shocked to learn that they will punish your complaints by calling your job and getting you fired. That's what investigative stories from Ars Technica and the Consumerist say happened to Conal O'Rourke from San Jose, California. O'Rourke spent 11 months trying to refute mystery charges for phantom devices he had never used, including almost two grand in equipment charges that Comcast sent him by mistake, only to lose his job. Now he and his lawyer are fighting back, demanding "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50." He should be asking for a lot more, but I guess he really thinks getting his job back is a possibility.

Comcast: Even more crooked than PWC's logo.

Mr. O'Rourke, a former accountant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in San Jose, signed up for Comcast in early 2013 after falling for a promotional 9-month offer. Things immediately went terribly, by which we mean "normally." Comcast charged him for HD outlets he never had installed, for cable boxes he had not activated, and misspelled his name, causing problems with billing. He made his first call to Comcast customer service in May of 2013, coming away with an assurance that all these problems would be resolved.

Fast-forward a few months, and Comcast had stopped giving him his nine months of free premium channels after only three months, continued charging him for cable boxes he hadn't activated, and threw charges for an imaginary modem into the mix for good measure. More fruitless calls to customer service were made. Finally, in October of 2013, Mr. O'Rourke made his first attempt to cancel his Comcast service. 

The viral "customer retention hell" call.

Now, it's at this point that I should make a public service announcement and remind everyone to always record every call with Comcast or Time Warner, or else they'll hand you to a sociopath who will torture you into staying, just plain steal from you, or put you on hold and go home.

I should just start mailing people junk and charging them for not returning it.
(via Conal O'Rourke/Ars Technica)

Comcast promised Mr. O'Rourke three months of free DVR service and The Movie Channel as an apology. What he got instead was 12 pieces of Comcast hardware ("DVRs, modem, standard boxes and equipment that I was unfamiliar with," according to Conal) for no reason, except possibly the $1,820 in equipment charges that came with them.

To be fair, that's a really clean floor for a Comcast office.
(via Conal O'Rourke/Ars Technica)

Mr. O'Rourke, remember, is an accountant. So, when he returned Comcast's bogus equipment to their offices, he had with him spreadsheets showing every financial interaction he had made with Comcast, complete with all their extra charges. Unsurprisingly, this had literally no effect on the people at Comcast. It's possible, however, that a sarcastic email he sent nominating a Comcast manager for a customer service award had an effect, though, since his account was promptly and wrongfully sent to a collections agency even though he still had time to pay it. Which brings us to February 2014.

Having now called customer service on six occasions, Conal called Comcast's office of the Controller, aka the accounting department. Mr. O'Rourke detailed his miserable year of being a customer, in which "he had not received one single bill in which he was not overcharged." He was promised a follow-up call to resolve his issues. What happened next, shown here in this letter from O'Rourke's lawyer, would be unbelievable if it's not also exactly what we've come to expect from Comcast:

Classic Evelyn. (via Conal O'Rourke/Ars Technica)

This insane interaction led Conal to call the Controller's office again and complain about the weird call he'd just received, in addition to the months of horrible service. He was promised another service call that no one ever showed up for, which was followed by another promised service call that never materialized.

Wow, an independent, non-profit corporate watchdog founded by Congress?
No wonder no one's ever heard of it.

His big mistake, though, was correctly telling the Controller that someone should contact the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, since Comcast is clearly (and often) charging people for equipment and services they are not actually getting. This is not an exaggeration, Comcast making bogus charges is something you read about regularly. A quick look at their books should be able to verify this, and this is exactly why the PCAOB exists. It's the equivalent of threatening to call the Better Business Bureau for people who understand math. Despite the fact that it is objectively true that Comcast should be audited and probably fined because of their business practices, the cable giant took this as a threat. A threat from someone who wasn't recording their calls. 

Comcast's response to a letter from O'Rourke's lawyers.
(via Conal O'Rourke/Ars Technica)

Here's where things get messed up. Not long after talking to Comcast, Comcast talked to Mr. O'Rourke's higher-ups at PriceWaterhouseCooper. Apparently, PWC does some consulting work for Comcast, and Comcast used that relationship to claim that Conal had somehow used his job title to pressure Comcast into giving him special treatment. First of all, Conal denies that flatly, but secondly, I guess Comcast thinks not being robbed and actually getting the service you pay for is "special treatment." According to O'Rourke and his lawyers, someone must have quickly realized from the way he was talking that he was an accountant, and Googled him.

OK, it's total speculation, but Comcast could easily disprove it if they released the calls.
(via Conal O'Rourke/Ars Technica)

Surprise, surprise: Conal got fired after the call from Comcast led to an ethics inquiry at his firm. Mr. O'Rourke claims he had never received negative feedback at work prior to being fired. In addition, he denies saying he worked for PWC and even Comcast acknowledges that his only "threat" was to report them to the proper authorities:

Translated from Lawyer: "Eat s*** and die, peasant." 
(via Conal O'Rourke/Ars Technica)

Most importantly, Comcast will not release any audio or transcripts from the calls, insisting that their summarizations are sufficient. As we all know, Comcast records everything for "quality assurance purposes," so this is horse-patootie. Likewise, neither Comcast nor PWC will say exactly what was discussed between them. PWC would only say that Mr. O'Rourke was fired for violating PWC's "ethical standards and practices." If Comcast released the audio, they could prove very simply that O'Rourke said he worked for PWC. This would disprove O'Rourke's theory that someone realized from the way that he was talking that he was an accountant and Googled him. It's not like Comcast's Office of the Controller is run by a former PWC partner who could have gone over O'Rourke's head and had him axed. Oh, wait, it is:

Chief Officer in charge of taking care of pesky little questions.

In conclusion, Comcast won't say what it told PWC, and PWC (which does millions of dollars in business with Comcast annually) won't say specifically why O'Rourke was fired. One would think that O'Rourke would also sue PWC for wrongful termination, but according to his lawyer, since PWC believed Comcast on the phone, "we didn't feel that contacting them would do any good until Comcast retracted their defamation, or until we get the tapes through litigation."

So, there you go. Always record your calls. It's entirely possible that Conal was a dick on the phone with Comcast and talked about how any accountant with half a brain could prove that Comcast was engaging in criminal activity by charging people for products and services they didn't ask for and making it unbearable to dispute those charges. However, unless he actually said "I"m a big-shot at PWC and we're gonna pull up your books and bankrupt you unless you give me HBO On Demand free next month," there is no reason this should have happened. Consumerist asked a Comcast representative if contacting employers was company policy for Comcast: "Our customers deserve the best experience every time they interact with us." As for Mr. Conal: "we will review his lawyer’s letter and respond as quickly as possible."

Sure. Sure you will.

(by Johnny McNulty)

P.S. - Let's take a moment to remember that 3.7 million Americans wrote the FCC last month to protest the merger of Time Warner and Comcast. That's more than twice the number of messages the FCC had ever received on any issue before—and the previous record-holder was Janet Jackson's Super Bowl boob. What did Comcast do? They bragged that the "silence" of everyone who didn't comment was an endorsement of their deal. But no, there's no way they could have gotten a guy fired because he called the head office and threatened to report them in a legally acceptable manner.

Is this embarrassing if a 29-year-old yells it?

Have you ever had to tell your child not to use her vulva as a pocket? Have you ever had to tell her twice? 

Then you'd probably enjoy The Pump and Dump Show, a comedy show run by moms and comedians Shayna Ferm and Tracey Tee. During the show, Shayna and Tracey encourage moms in the audience to write down the most effed up things their kids have ever done. Presumably, this makes everyone feel better that their kid isn't the kid who open mouth kissed the dog's ass (except that one lady). 

Here are some of the most disturbingly funny confession cards they've collected.

If you're in the San Francisco area, check out The Pump and Dump Show a week from today in Mill Valley, CA. Here's a preview of the hilarity in store:

(by Shira Rachel Danan)