Oh my God, what are you guys doing this weekend?

• "12 CDs for the price of 1?" No thanks!

• Korean-American adoptees on their first trips to Korea.

• America's Tea Party and Anders Breivik

• "Just because you write most of a book doesn’t mean you can finish and sell a book." (Ruh roh!)

• Here comes August! Consider it proved: it's the month when real scandals grip the country and we pay attention to other things.

• And this weekend is going to be toasty. There may be cooling centers! Mmm, cooling.

Photo by Nicole Cash.

Waterfall

The most romantic thing a human being can say
to another human being is Let me help you vomit.
No human being has ever said this to me
& I keep going to god too clean as though god
is frightened of muddy feet. If I am missing
a hairpin I don’t go at all. Please describe
your vomiting; it is like a psalm for me
a place where wilderness might be new.
Other people’s dirt makes a lovely frock.
Grant I be forgiven in the gush. READ MORE

"Sam Taylor sent this intriguing note: 'Did you know one of your classmates is officially considered a hate-monger by the Southern Poverty Law Center?'" Oh Yale alumni news!

Today the Times prints a recipe for "tomato salad on a roll," in which the final recipe instruction is this: "Cover sandwiches with a clean dish towel and wait for an hour or so before serving." (Sure, they want the sardines and garlic to "marry" and whatever, okay, sure, I get it, it's just: it's hot and I'm hungry.)

Here's my very own summer tomato sandwich recipe!

1. Get some bread, toast it lightly, just a little.

2. Put tomatoes (preferably little ones, and yellow, and cut in half) and torn basil, with some olive oil and salt and pepper, on one piece of bread. Put some mozzarella on the other piece of bread.

3. Put them both under the broiler for like 2 minutes, max. Your cheese bubbles. Take them out.

4. SLAP TOGETHER (putting cheese on top of tomatoes, obviously) AND PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH IMMEDIATELY, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

"Fif states he’s on 'it'
But whatever 'it' may be
'It' is not the beat"
—Ego Trip reviews eight new rap songs in haiku and it is just the thing today.

Food porn is one of the Internet's veritable viral cornerstones. Pictures of wacky cupcakes, fusion fried chicken or an incredible, competitive array of deviled eggs get reblogged viciously by legions of salivating fans. In an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist and assess what's to be the next "hot thing all the young, hip and/or upwardly mobile people are doing," I filmed my first amateur food porn.

The food porn party creates two works of art at once: the edibles, and the documentation of that which is eaten. The dishes are chosen for their potential attractiveness. The food, after it is created, must be styled—and then it must be shot to be glowingly attractive. But unlike actual magazine-level food porn, you can't use hairspray to make your pork look shiny, because you're actually going to eat this. In real-life food porn, you can only fight fair. READ MORE

Although it is infrequent, I do on occasion think to myself, "Maybe you should stop drinking for a little while." Generally, these realizations occur during the mornings after excessive bouts of inebriation that make my fairly heroic regular intake seem like the paltry tippling of the average civilian who has a glass or two of wine with dinner. They insinuate themselves into my already foggy brain, which is straining to recall the events of the previous evening and trying to figure out why exactly those extra few glasses of bourbon seemed so acceptable, if not vital, at the time. As I cope with trembling hands and furrowed brow, sweat dripping down my back and the taste of whatever I imbibed still strong in my mouth, the small voices of sanity make their arguments as to why the damage I'm doing to my body needs to be given a brief respite. (The voices know better by this point than to suggest that I stop entirely; they have been reduced to requesting "a few days off.") In my weaker moments, when I am particularly wracked with guilt and despair and I feel like there is something crawling on my skin and my eyes imagine they see things at the corners that are clearly not there, I even regard these entreaties with some sympathy. It might indeed be nice to spend a day without the numbing filter of alcohol, to experience the apparent clarity of which those without my deep dependency seem to make such productive use. But Science says if I do that I'm gonna die, so I guess it's back to the bottle for me. Phew!

Photo by cuttlefish

Type “why am I” into a Google search and autocomplete will suggest “why am I here?” Type “why did” and you’ll find “why did I get married?” These questions seem so hackneyed, the kind of generic lamentations you might hear in a bad movie. And yet, Google’s autocomplete algorithm insists that searches relating to marital strife and existence are, in fact, incredibly common. This has led me to wonder again and again: has Google become one of our expressions of existential moaning?

Outside of the confines of autocomplete, we generally know very little about each other’s online searches (although blog metrics can provide surprising—and sometimes bizarre—insights). But back in 2006, AOL’s research division released a text file containing 20 million searches conducted by 650,000 users over a three-month period. While the furor surrounding the privacy implications of the release ultimately led AOL to remove the file from its website and issue an apology, the document remains easily downloadable. READ MORE