Sad news for our nation's youth: Silly Bandz are apparently so over.

What's going on in America these days? Let's look at three different stories which, taken together, provide a snapshot of our country in an era of economic difficulty and political upheaval.

First, a warning to parents that letting their children wear overly tight latex products on their skin for an extended period of time may result in injury.

Silly Bandz — the non-circle-shaped variants on the old rubber-bracelet theme that clog up the checkout counters at your local drugstore and get serially banned by concerned elementary-school principals — are now a hit among adults, according to Thursday Styles! Hats off to this trendlet piece's author, Kayleen Schaefer, who is so devoted to her Styles-reporting craft that she found someone who wears the brightly colored, 20.6-cent scraps (shaped like "a palm tree, the number 3 and a monkey") on the same wrist as her Rolex. [Pic via]