https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azh5grNxqIg

Here are new-to-the-web audio recordings of Kathy Acker reading from Pussy, King of the Pirates, recorded in England in 1994. There are also clean uploads of the 1996 release of Pussy, King Of The Pirates by Mekons & Kathy Acker. Above: a horribly distorted and amazingly hilarious TV performance of one of the songs.

“We’re getting progressively unhappier according to a recent University of Vermont study, which analyzed more than 46 billion words tweeted by 63 million users around the globe. ‘We’re at our lowest point now in four years as far as our measure of happiness through Twitter goes,’ says Peter Dodds, an applied mathematician at UVM and the lead author of the study. The 46 billion words Dodds and his team analyzed varied widely — everything from ‘pancakes’ to ‘suicide’ — which they then compared to scores given to the most common 10,000 words in the English language. For instance, a word such as ‘laughter’ earned an average ‘happiness score’ of 8.5 out of 9, while the word ‘terrorist’ got 1.30.”

Above, Justin Bieber in a radio station studio, rapping over the beat Bad Boy Records producer Nashiem Myrick made for the Notorious B.I.G.’s 1995 classic “Who Shot Ya.” Below, a new television commercial wherein a voiceover promotes McDonald’s Big Mac and Mac Snack Wrap sandwiches over the beat Bad Boy Records producer Easy Mo Bee made for Craig Mack’s 1994 classic, “Flava in Ya Ear.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rzc050E6t4

“Semper Chai” would be a good name for a band.

If you did some drinking last night, this very moment is the worst you’ll feel all day, according to a Daily Mail article which makes itself immediately suspect with its assertion that your first drink came at 8PM last evening. 8PM? For the first drink? How did you spend the four hours before that? Shaking uncontrollably? Give me a break.

Photo by slon1971, via Shutterstock

Are you a Bill Clinton or a Mindy Kaling? Don’t lie.

If you’re not following the Carrier IQ story, it’s the flip side of the User Agreement Trust Economy. It’s the modern tale: Who Secretly Owns Your Data and What Do They Do With It? For background of the story to date, here’s a fairly good timeline. Carrier IQ gathers diagnostic information on some phones; it may or may not actually keylog what you type on your phone; it may or may not sometimes or always gather the passwords you enter on your phone; and, according to the FBI’s refusal to release information, it may or may not have actually turned over information to law enforcement. (Carrier IQ denies all of this.) Sprint has now disabled it on some or all of their phones. Most interesting is that Carrier IQ came in hot and legal immediately, trying to shut down the fellow who first started posting about the keylogging; then someone wrangled some sense into them about not appearing totally evil. Super-geeks will enjoy reading their recently released report that explains their product. Unfortunately, that document explains that their product sometimes “accidentally” records text messages. To be fair, if our stealth drones had this, we wouldn’t have to ask for them back from other countries probably.

Kreayshawn’s “Gucci Gucci” is somehow only the 11th most irritating song of the year. Those other 10 songs had better be SUPER IRRITATING.

Well, here you go. What to even quote? Let’s try this!

Asked if he were willing to pay more taxes in a Nov. 30 interview with Bloomberg Television, Blackstone Group LP CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke about lower-income U.S. families who pay no income tax. “You have to have skin in the game,” said Schwarzman, 64. “I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.”

It’s an incredibly hot defensive mess up in there.

Previously: It’s A Wonderful Lie: Bank Fraud, Bailouts And Ponzi Schemes In Bedford Falls

Jon Methven is the author of This Is Your Captain Speaking, due out in 2012 by Simon & Schuster. He can be reached here, or follow him on Twitter @jonmethven.