Amy Jean Porter is an artist who lives in the woods outside of New Haven, Connecticut. She has a book out, and a brand-new horse print at 20×200.

Your newly recognized condition of the day: “For people with a condition that some scientists call misophonia, mealtime can be torture. The sounds of other people eating — chewing, chomping, slurping, gurgling — can send them into an instantaneous, blood-boiling rage.” I can actually see how that would be kind of annoying.

A Tahoe-area bear broke into a Prius and drove it into a nearby house. The bear emerged unscathed, but the Prius was totaled.

Look at all that trash the Apollo 17 astronauts left on the moon. (Seriously, look. Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently zoomed down to 25 kilometers above the surface, and the pictures it has sent back are amazing.) You can see the shape of the moon buggy and everything, just sitting out there to rust like on some American’s front yard.

Jollily abrasive media critic Jack Shafer, recently let go from Slate, has landed on his feet, by which we mean he’ll be doing his media criticizing for Reuters.

“Loneliness is a profound factor for cancer and death; it’s on par with cigarette smoking. Social engagement is very important.”
 — Ohio State University scientist Dr Lei Cao discusses a new study which shows that hanging out with lots of different people “may keep people slimmer than spending hours on a treadmill.” The study was conducted on mice, but whatever, I’m totally buying in. Who wants to meet for drinks tonight?

Photo by Creatista, via Shutterstock

Things just got EXTRA exciting in the drama that is unfolding between TechCrunch, its parent company AOL and Michael Arrington, the co-editor of the site and the new manager of a multi-million-dollar startup investment thingie. (AOL said that Arrington would no longer be the editor since his new role; he clearly disagrees!) So just now Arrington says they can either be free to do whatever they want WHATSOEVER, and not report to the Huffington Post — or AOL can sell the site back to its original owners. Crazy thing is? He’s taking the absolutely correct hard line. AOL said TechCrunch would be independent; that is now not true. Good for him!

“Iggy and the Stooges have delayed their upcoming four-date tour of America because Iggy Pop broke his foot during a festival gig in Romania late last month.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged…

That a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife.1
That a single man in possession of a good fortune must be queer.2
That a Fallen Woman of good family must, soon or late, descend to whoredom.3
That a single girl in search of mysteries must occasionally be in want of a big damn knife.4

That strippers should not want to show preference for any individual customer —
that all things being equal, all men behaving equally crudely,
and all billfolds being equally sized,
they should want to thrust their mounds underneath the noses of as many patrons as possible to maximize their payout.5

That Everything Is Funnier With Monkeys.6
That Ph.D. students make tiresome companions.7
That eventually everything turns up on the Internet.8

That large overseas military commitments
cannot be sustained without even larger economic resources.9
That the growing international mobility of goods, capital and technology
has completely changed the economic game.10

That anyone can be killed.11

That most reunions at Christmas end happily, while most reunions at Thanksgiving end sadly.12
That you cannot make a road movie in England.13
That in order to sell books, someone has to buy them.14

That the problem with new shoes is that they are never as comfortable
as the ones they are meant to replace.15
That an up-and-coming neighborhood in possession of increasingly hip retail and rising rents must be in want of a name.16

That a single neuron in possession of a good potential must be in want of a network.17
That the most efficient way of working with AutoCAD is to use the keyboard to enter command aliases or open and close palettes.18
That Q was always to be found guilty of altering F.19
That a single tract of text in possession of charms attractive to potential readers, must be in want of good binding and secure lodging.20
That taxonomy is in a parlous state.21

That he could really be making more money at a hedge fund.22
That one should never direct a writing program before tenure.23
That prevarication is practically part of the job description.24

That all gay men love their mothers.25
That a parent will lie to a child to soften the burden of reality.26
That a woman in possession of an idea on the internet, must be in want of correction.27

1 Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi [source]
2 A Ned Rorem Reader, Ned Rorem [source]
3 Point of Honour, Madeleine E. Robins [source]
4 In The Dark of Dreams: A Dirk & Steele Novel, Marjorie M. Liu [source]
5 Lads: A Memoir, Dave Itzkoff [source]
6 The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine, Paul Collins [source]
7 Economic Democracy and Financial Participation: A comparative study, Daryl D’Art [source]
8 Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella, Evgenia Citkowitz [source]
9 Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, Niall Ferguson [source]
10 “We Are Not the World,” Paul Krugman [source]
11 Searching Shakespeare: Studies In Culture And Authority, Derek Cohen [source]
12 “The Family Stone,” Roger Ebert [source]
13 McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland, Pete McCarthy [source]
14 Putting Your Passion Into Print, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry [source]
15 Knightley Academy, Violet Haberdasher [source]
16 “WestEnders,” Aaron Britt [source]
17 The Neurobiology Of Neural Networks, Daniel Gardner [source]
18 AutoCAD 2011 for Dummies, David Byrnes [source]
19 Berryman’s Shakespeare, John Berryman [source]
20 Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Donald R. Forsdyke [source]
21 The New Taxonomy, Quentin Wheeler [source]
22 The Social Climber’s Handbook: A Novel, Molly Jong-Fast [source]
23 The Writing Program Administrator’s Resource: A Guide to Reflective Institutional Practice, edited by Stuart Cameron Brown and Theresa Enos [source]
24 Your Call Is Important To Us: The Truth About Bullshit, Laura Penny [source]
25 Brief Encounter, Richard Dyer [source]
26 Soul Market, Sonnet O’Dell [source]
27 Twitter dot com, Helen Rosner [source]

Elon Green writes supply-sider agitprop for ThinkProgress and Alternet.

Remember that kid in high school who played by his own rules and flouted authority at every turn but still managed to get good grades and was the one everybody, even the teachers, secretly wanted to be? The one who could be counted on to do the right thing when it really came down to it? Well, even though he has spent the years since letting himself go, spending money he doesn’t have and generally doing everything he can to sabotage himself, people still think he’s cool. Man, the rest of the world must really suck.

Photo by Jim Pruitt, via Shutterstock