Ah, it’s been a year since we looked at the evil monster people who throw their cats in the snow each winter. Well they’re all still at it! Here are some sad videos — followed by soothing videos of cats enjoying snow. Those are very good! Wouldn’t want to get too worked up on a Friday afternoon.

But! Enough of that!

On with the videos of cats who are happily enjoying snow!

The best, right?

In today’s most shocking media news: “Publishing giant Conde Nast is likely to finalize its 1 million-square-foot lease at One World Trade Center by March, developer Douglas Durst told Crain’s today.” One meeeeeelllion square feet! God, they must be getting an amazing rate, given how much, oh, everyone who works at Condé Nast despises the idea. They would become only the second tenant to sign up for the World Trade Center (though they claim, with this and other current interest, they’d have 85% leased), which will be completed sometime when our grandchildren will care. (Presumably there will still be magazines in that future.)

This is clip is specific to Houston, but, really, it could be anywhere. Good Lord, the last twenty years really blew by, didn’t they? Also, they really blew.

The Orange County Zoo is holding a contest to name a wild bald eagle that has been perching outside the cage of Olivia, a resident female bald eagle. Zookeepers don’t know the gender of the visitor, but the visits have been daily, and the two birds have been screeching back and forth to each other. So, with Valentine’s Day coming up and all, they’d like to think he’s come a courtin’.

If so, their love will be in vain, because Olivia is injured and would not survive outside her enclosure, according to Marisa O’Neil, public information officer at the zoo. (Sounds like captorspeak to me. Free Olivia!) But since the wild bird is becoming something of a fixture on the premises, the zoo is taking suggestions for a name.

“Romeo” is a little too obvious, I think. And I can’t remember any of the guy’s names on “The O.C.” (Seth, maybe?) So I submitted “Travolta,” because, y’know, Olivia Newton-John and Grease.

Here’s the Stones.

Here’s Dire Straits.

Here’s Bruce.

And here’s the Eagles, one the few songs of theirs that I really like.

Despair though you might at the idea of the Black Eyed Peas, do not forget that Super Bowl halftime shows used to be like this. [Shudders.]

if you could change one thing about yourself, which of his ex-girlfriends would you kill?Thu Feb 03 20:10:11 via TweetDeck

Kate Riley
bubblebathos

As a person who hates funny people — they always seem like they’re trying so hard! — I avoid “funny” Twitter accounts. There’s a few that are always satisfactorily hilarious: Michael McKean, and Kevin Fanning and the nuttiness that is Josh Allen. And then there’s Kate Riley. I have no idea who she is! Probably a comedian or something. Anyway her whole Twitter thing is about self-hatred and sad-girl things to the nth degree. It’s like a parody of a parody but so extremely hateful that it crosses over into actually being funny.

does this tube top make my childhood look shitty?Sun Jan 30 18:16:45 via TweetDeck

Kate Riley
bubblebathos

still can’t get over how adorable my boyfriend looks, sound asleep in bed with that bitch he’s married toSun Jan 23 03:48:57 via TweetDeck

Kate Riley
bubblebathos

do we have any evidence that Matthew McConaughey is NOT a gigantic rainstickMon Jan 17 18:38:07 via web

Kate Riley
bubblebathos

It’s extremely dark!

Previously:

Judy Blume
Roger Clark
Emma Gilbey Keller

Sad news for those who rush to the New York Times Magazine every Sunday just so they can hate-read Deborah Solomon’s annoying Q&A;’s: She won’t be doing it anymore. Relatedly, I guess, I did enjoy this quote from the current edition of “Questions For,” from filmmaker Eugene Jarecki: “We’ve reached the point of such hysteria and the stupidification of the American discourse that to simply approach a subject in a measured fashion is to totally jam the circuits that currently exist for that kind of communication.”

You know what to do, folks: let’s get organized and let’s get him. Also please take care of yourselves on the streets, as always.

Exciting news! Awl pal Elizabeth Spiers has been named Editor in Chief of the New York Observer. Presumably we will have more to say about this when the half of the editorial team that follows this topic obsessively returns from lunch, so stay tuned.

“That such a strong drought should follow the ‘One in 100-year’ drought of 2005 only five years afterwards in 2010 is exceptional, and of concern. The 2010 drought appears to have been more widespread than in 2005, and this may have important consequences in regions across Amazonia already prone to drought stress. The underlying climatic cause needs to be understood more fully, and its impact quantified, not just on the ecology of the region, but also on society.”
 — Patrick Meir, professor of ecosystem science at the University of Edinburgh, on satellite measurements of rainfall that indicate 3 million square kilometers of rainforest went dry last year. The resulting decomposition of trees killed by the drought could result in 5 billion metric tons of CO2, which is about the annual U.S. output. (In normal years, all the healthy trees in the Amazon absorb CO2.) I sure hope some of the those 1,200 newly discovered exoplanets are inhabitable. And that maybe the Jerusalem UFO will come back to pick us up.