Mattel made a hoverboard. It doesn’t hover.

Instead of the fulfillment of a lifetime (MY ENTIRE LIFE) of fantasizing about my magical, McFlyAss future, we have instead been given a half-assed skateboard-with-sound-effects. Sorry Mom, I asked for a giant laser so that I could destroy martians, not this plastic piece of shit with a tiny strobe light and the alarm from a clock radio. This is worse than when 2002 came and 0% of 3-2-1 Contact’s predictions (Flying Cars, Space Tourism) came true. I’m depressed. I’m also incredibly spoiled. While we’re at it, if Apple is so great, why don’t I communicate via Hologram?

Via Engadget

Some entitled lady was breastfeeding her spawn in a Houston Target when an employee asked her to, y’know, not do that in the aisles. One month and one million comments reading “well, this mama” later, a bunch of other people who have pushed out babies are all getting together to nurse their children in Target stores across the country. Proving… something.

I am against public breastfeeding. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with breasts, in public or otherwise. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I’m pro breasts. Whip ‘em out.

But breastfeeding implies a child, and I don’t think children should be allowed in public. They’re gross, sticky, small, loud, and generally terrible. I like your boobs, I just hate the screaming shit-flinger chomping on it.

Via Chicagoist

Today in history, a boat full of anti-sex activists from Europe arrived on the shores of Massachusetts. It was the shortest day of the year so they were probably full of SADness, but they didn’t let that stop them.

They would go on to steal America from its native inhabitants, end the practice of magic forever (inspiring such films as Flight of Dragons and also that one with Winona Ryder in a stupid hat), and eventually become extremely apologetic about everything, forming the quaint communities of Northampton and Provincetown.  To be fair, several months on a boat locked in a room full of rats and people with diarrhea would probably make all of us pretty cranky, don’t you think?

Today also marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Fredonian Rebellion, which is when white people first came together to stick their flag in Texas.  (Yes, I did read about it on Wikipedia–I would never otherwise want or need to think about Texas.) Of all the things I did not expect to appreciate about a people that would elect this uneducated cattleman to be their leader, it was not that they would pick an awesome, Joss Whedon-like sci-fi name for their first stab at secession. “Fredonian Rebellion” just sounds really awesome and full of powerful lasers.

Here are five great ideas for feeling better today, inspired by the jerks that started it all:

1. Wedge yourself between two people on the subway until one of them becomes exasperated and moves. Like a Canadian, your other neighbor will sort of owe you even though they don’t like you.
2. Walk into a busy bakery full of tourists (I suggest City Bakery or Balthazar’s), wait for someone to walk out with a very delicious treat, and tell the hungover college student at the counter, “I think that was probably mine.”
3. Pick sides in an ongoing battle involving equally uninformed but ideologically opposed political factions, and then go bang a drum in a public place for as long as possible.*
4. Wear a fucking ascot.
5. Make your own flag! My favorite is this one. Also, DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS AND WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?

Don’t say I didn’t get you anything for solstice.

*Obviously I meant the Jazz elective versus the African Dance elective over use of rehearsal space at your liberal arts school, and not something else you were thinking about. Come on.

The smug rag has an article this week profiling a woman who is causing terror among parents in Manhattan. Is it some crazy pedophile rapist*? Drug kingpin? Other legitimate big city fear?

Nope! It’s the woman who runs the admissions for the almost $40,000 a year kindergarten, Dalton. Dalton is best known for a rigorous program helping 4-year-olds learn futures shorting, tort reform, and mastering foursies. Read more »

I work in Chinatown (actually, I work in Little Italy, but let’s be real here) and as such, I often eat grab-n-go sushi. It’s cheap, easy, and doesn’t make me feel like committing seppuku for shaming my stomach (I’m looking at you, Five Combinations).

There’s a giant Asian grocery store near me which is where I usually go. It’s like something out of a movie—filled with screaming grocers, live crustaceans, yellow squid, and roasted birds hung from every corner.

But none of that is as weird as the guy who stands outside trying to hand people newspaper coupons for the store. Every—and I mean every—time I walk by, he meows at me. Not like a passing word, but a full on meow like that girl you dated who was convinced she understood her cats (yes baby, I can totally see her face change when you do that). Read more »

It’s no secret I’m a giant fan of NBC and especially NBC comedy. When I think of my favorite network sitcoms of the last few years, most of them appeared with a little peacock in the corner. Which is why it’s so strange to remember that NBC is basically hemorrhaging money.

Gavin Polone, producer for Curb and more, takes them to task in this article and outlines 4 steps for getting themselves back on track including stop fighting for the elderly demos and start making edgier content.

If The Walking Dead were on NBC, it would be the most successful and least expensive show on the network.

I think it’s a well-thought out list and urge you to check it out.

Polone’s Four-Step Plan for Saving NBC at Vulture

It’s official: my apartment has moved from sinister plotting directly into actively working to throw me off this mortal coil.

Is it through some sort of black fungus, growing murky and secret behind some unseen corner of my closet? No. A radiator that is so many times hotter than the surface of the sun, I touched it and my fingers became a previously-unseen ninth state of matter? Nope.

Read more »