Maybe there’s a simple explanation for the whole Berlusconi thing: “What you have to understand before you read coverage by any Anglo-Saxon reporter about the women seen at Berlusconi’s party is that many Italian women, but Roman women in particular, dress like hookers.”

So, yes, there is this:

According to a recent study, certain men appear to be allergic to their own semen…. The condition is called POIS or post-orgasmic illness syndrome. After first thinking POIS was psycho-somatic, researchers say they concluded it was an allergy after noting that the symptoms only appeared when semen came in contact with the skin; men who masturbated without ejaculating were void of symptoms. The LA Times says a therapy is in the works, which involved injecting men with concentrated doses of their own semen in an attempt to build up immunity.

Okay, so obviously it’s a terrible thing, and we feel incredibly sympathetic toward those poor souls who suffer from the syndrome, but hold on a second: Who the hell masturbates without ejaculating? Why go to all that trouble if you’re not going to get the reward? It’s like a day without sunshine, or non-alcoholic beer, or a blowjob that ends without a swallow. It’s just NOT RIGHT. Good Lord, what a world.

Photo by quinnanya, from Flickr.

“My corner of Connecticut was covered in ice today, until news broke of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s impending retirement. Magically, a warm glow spread. It was a delicious feeling: the end of the reign of the politician I despise most.”

Oh, look, the Coachella music festival lineup is announced! (The festival takes place in the desert in spring. Mostly indie-hippies attend.) And a good point is made: what conception of the fame and relevance of its performers does the festival seek to convey? To the poster!

Robyn is now more famous than Lauryn Hill!

The Kings of Leon are more famous than Robyn! (This is probably true, if sad.)

Cee Lo Green and Sleigh Bells are equally famous!

Bright Eyes and Big Audio Dynamite are a bigger draw than the Scissor Sisters and the New Pornographers! (This here? This is patently insane.)

Animal Collective and Mumford are more important than Erykah Badu! (*Makes strangling noise*)

The Strokes are more important than PJ Harvey. (This was true for two seconds in 2002.)

Das Racist will not be appearing.

Long Island-based Republican megadonor and hedge fund honcho Robert Mercer (and his wife, Diana) gave more than $100,000 in the 2010 election cycle to people like Michele Bachmann. (Also his three daughters donate big-time as well, at least in name, although certainly one of them has her own money, from her $2 million settlement against Duke, from when she was kicked off the football team for being a girl. So she’s that unusual thing: a far-right gender equality litigant! She also runs, with her sisters, a bakery in New York City — while donating to Jim DeMint. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! We are a nation of diversity!) We bring up the Mercer family because it was Robert Mercer, who loves to be a secret political operator, who personally financed the million-dollar anti-”Ground Zero Mosque” advertising campaign. Isn’t that neat? Now you know who wanted all of America in a racist tizzy over a local zoning matter. Why is the far right so afraid of freedom?

What are you doing tonight? I’ll tell you what you’re doing tonight: You’re heading over to McNally Jackson to see Awl pals Matthew Gallaway and Sasha Frere-Jones discuss Matthew’s new novel The Metropolis Case and debate the current state of affairs in Tunisia. (Okay, maybe not, but they will for sure be talking about the book.) See you at 7. It’s an Awl pals kind of week!

Dear NYC Young People: You Never, Ever Call an Emergency Locksmith

Sooner or later in many a young person’s life, he or she moves to New York City and is then fairly promptly locked out of his or her terrible first apartment late at night. When this happens, you young people should know, the answer is go sleep at a friend’s house, or pick up someone in a bar and sleep at their house, or sleep in a park, even if it gets you hassled by a cop and it’s 20 degrees out. This is what happens pretty much, without fail, when you call a locksmith at 1 a.m. We’re sorry we didn’t let you kids know this sooner. (Later we’ll tell you about the deli sushi and some other things.)

Remember that time — hint: most recently, that time was last night — that seemingly everyone that partakes in the Internet watched the premiere of a TV show, and were aghast, and kept putting their aghastness on their Twitters and their Tumblrs, making the Internet nearly unusable due to constant expressions of aghastivity? Yet apparently no one ever thought to actually get up and turn off the TV! Or to at least suffer in silence? I mean, not to say that all of Twitter and Facebook and the like isn’t already actually noise, because who cares what we ate for dinner/threw up in the morning/did to our cats? But on some level it’s like the way Google is struggling with spam farms. Currently, learning anything on the Internet is next to impossible. We’re drowning in hastily-written, inexpert, uneducated directions on how to tie ties and how to trim your cat’s nails and EIGHT THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH PERSIMMONS, all of which have at least one fundamental error that will result in your poisoning or your cat’s bleeding all over the house or you looking like an idiot at a fancy function. It’s a mess out here on the Internet! In other, totally unrelated news, don’t you just want to enter into a committed love-polygon with at least three cast members of “Downton Abbey”? I can’t stand it. What’s that? You’ve been too busy being aghast at crap? Here, PBS’ cut of episode one is online! You’re welcome.

“I think of myself as being kind of a wreck no matter what I’m doing. If I didn’t acknowledge how clueless or lost or unstylish and unsophisticated I was straight off the bat, I always felt like I was not being completely honest and clear with the reader. When I meet someone, especially if I’m showered and wearing something decent, I want to say, Don’t get the impression that I know what I’m doing here because I don’t know what the fuck is going on. That’s the first thing I want anyone to understand.”
 — Awl pal Heather Havrilesky talks to the folks at the Paris Review about her new memoir, the lure of heartbreak and a bunch of other stuff.

The sunny, retro stylings of critical darlings Best Coast have not totally grabbed me yet. Not that I particularly dislike them, but, for instance, I would enjoy this song more if it were a cover of Madonna’s greatest ballad. But, interestingly, they’re premiering their new video on the LOLcats mothership, I Can Haz Cheezburger (which yes, just raised $30 million). Here’s the Madonna video.

And some other songs that were on the generally excellent soundtrack to the 1985 Matthew Modine movie, Vision Quest.