Disney owns Marvel
Changed logo to Verdana
Internet explodes!!!

None of this actually happened. Disney is too rich to use the same fug font that IKEA circa now uses.

A recent study showing that men-particularly those who are "devoted to traditional beliefs about masculinity"-are far less likely to visit the doctor than women or pussy-ass metrosexuals was not exactly a surprise to anyone, but it hit home personally and caused me to reconsider my own longstanding aversion to having a medical professional look me over and tell me to stop doing everything I enjoy and start doing everything that I don't do already because it's boring or might cause me to sweat. I mean, let's be honest: I am not getting any younger, and the damage I've been doing to my body lo these many years is beginning to take its toll. So I bit the bullet and made an appointment. READ MORE

"The golfing community has been split by the birth of a controversial new caddy service which provides attractive, nubile women to carry players' clubs," reports Britain's Daily Mail. It's a typical story-I think this weekend's Post had something about attractive, nubile women who clean people's apartments-but what I particularly enjoyed about this piece was the photcredits accompanying the shots of the attractive, nubile caddies: The photos, which appear to be ganked straight from the website of the service in question (and which even I would feel gratuitous and cheap for posting here), list the copyright holder as "Internet"? Is that a standard British thing, or is that something we can all get away with now? Because if so, this site is about to get a lot more colorful! Oh, right, also the situation described in the story is terribly, terrible sexist and not at all something we'd endorse.

In the wake of the Summer of Death and the colossally major news that Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion (a number that means "death" in Cantonese and is therefore avoided at all costs-not in enumerations of 4, obvs-in addresses, car license plates, cell phone numbers, etc., and, cue ominous, chongy music) and because Mr. Nasir "Nas" Jones says that sleep is the cousin of death, we must report the (in some circles, equally) important news that the soporific in Nyquil (doxylamine succinate) is found in much higher doses elsewhere. Namely Unisom (25 mg per pill vs. 6.25 mg in a 15 ml dose). READ MORE

A study showing that 1 in 10 New Yorkers was infected with swine flu earlier this year will be released this week. (Of that group, 47 died.) The estimate comes in advance of a press conference tomorrow from Mayor Bloomberg which will outline the city's plans to deal with the expected fall outbreak. Details are scarce, but some sources suggest that the Mayor will announce that pieces from the voluminous collection of brochures he has sent out to every city resident in support of his re-election campaign can be easily manipulated to serve as surgical masks.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released its report on the first half of the year today. The results? "Twenty-four of the top 25 newsstand sellers posted declines in the first half of 2009, according to the audit bureau, including top seller Cosmopolitan, down 7.8% from the first half of 2008. The lone gainer in the top 25 was Real Simple, which posted a 1.2% increase." Yikes! There was some good news on the subscription side, but we're gonna reiterate that "yikes," because, well, yikes.

Tough times for Bertelsmann, owner of (among other things) Random House: "Anyone seeking a summary of the publishing industry's woes needs look no further than first-half results from Bertelsmann. The privately held German group's swing to a €333m net loss in the six months to June reflects both this year's steep advertising downturn and the longer-term structural shift under way in the media business, as companies grapple with fragmenting audiences and the changing economics of the digital age. Rivals could be forgiven for wincing as Europe's biggest publisher warned that a €900m cost-cutting drive may not be enough to prevent a full-year net loss."

The next line, if you can believe it, begins, "It could be worse."

Pitchfork put up the cover image for Ghostface Killah's forthcoming The Wizard of Poetry album and it is awesome. After hearing the album's first single, "Baby," a nice hip-hip love song marred by the autotune menace, one can only hope the rest of the music is anywhere near as dope as that picture of The Yellow Brick Road leading through a field of flowers and fly honies to the gates of Emerald City. READ MORE

Apparently the "moon rock" the U.S. gave to Dutch Prime Minister Willem Drees to commemorate NASA's "moon mission" in 1969 has been revealed to be nothing more than petrified wood. The wood has been on display at the Dutch National Museum in Amsterdamn since Drees' death in 1988. The Dutch were also saddened to discover that the magic glowing crystals on display at the museum were pieces of gravel colored in yellow highlighter.

Here you will find a terrible attempt to analogize the New Labour experiment to Oasis: "Visit Oasis's Wikipedia page and the narrative eerily traces the birth, life and death of New Labour. The early Nineties are called 'Formation and first years'; 1995-98 are called 'The Battle of Britpop', which could be a chapter from Blair's biography; 1999-2000 are recorded as 'Line-up changes'; 2001-04 are 'Transitional years' (drummer Alastair Campbell, I mean Alan White, quit the band then); there was a "Resurgence in popularity" in 2005-2007. And now it's all over." You'd better believe there's a mention of Blur in there.

So everybody knows that Wikipedia is a fun tool not to be used for actual, real research but a widget that makes nouns and verbs do entertaining things like when you ask an 80-year-old, first-generation emigré of a non-English speaking country why a certain episode of Entourage should go before another episode of Entourage in the grand tapestry of narrative arcs that is this season. But apparently, the online encyclopedia that everyone can modify is trying to, you know, change things. First they locked certain pages to where you can't just go and declare that Barry Obama only eats with tiny, baby cutlery like it was one time written somewhere about Victoria Beckham and/or Melanie Brown and now they're trotting out something called WikiTrust, which highlights the background of certain information, kinda like how Men's Health does when they want you to pay real good attention to which cities have the fattest people (eat them; not them!). READ MORE

Philip Markoff, the Craigslist killer, definitely one of our least favorite killers of all, gets the Maureen Orth treatment in the October Vanity Fair. What's creepy is how it points out the sheer amount of tracking in our lives. For instance, they know you're reading this website right now, at least if you're at work, you future killer! This, you know, is a great thing when you're trying to find a dude who kills people. READ MORE

Here's a clip from Comedy Central's new web-only series "The Worst Speeches of All Time," which I guess just started today? I'm not sure and Google is no help. But anyway, I kind of enjoyed it!

A new edition of Wuthering Heights designed to resemble Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books has sold over 10,000 copies in Britain this year, reports the Guardian:

"Love the Twilight books? Then you'll adore Wuthering Heights, one of the greatest love stories ever told," gushes the book chain's synopsis of Emily Brontë's novel. "Cathy and Heathcliff, childhood friends, are cruelly separated by class, fate and the actions of others. But uniting them is something even stronger: an all-consuming passion that sweeps away everything that comes between them. Even death!"

Roger Ebert came out of the A.A. closet last week, with a long and fascinating essay about his experience in A.A. Lots of people loved it, and found it pretty educational. But what are the negative repercussions of this, asked some in the comments-as A.A. has no public spokespeople and it asks that media outlets keep members private and also (mildly) asks that members don't represent the organization publicly. (It seems like a fine point-but how well can an alcoholism treatment program be perceived if its spokespeople later kill people whilst driving drunk, say?) Of course, it's unlikely that Ebert will give people a bad impression of A.A., unless he goes on a stabbing spree or something later this year, which in any event would be kind of awesome, really-and yet he now finds himself in some pretty strange company, with people who've gone public to improve their reputations and/or careers... or just because they were too wasted to know better. Or because they had a tacky memoir to sell! READ MORE