Alexander Hamilton’s perpetual rotisserie must be on overdrive this morning: “A reputed crime-family captain, with the nom-de-mob ‘Big Nose,’ dug in for some nasal gabagool during an appearance in Brooklyn federal court yesterday — picking and pulling the entire time the judge instructed the jury on deliberations. Then he disgustingly licked every finger.” I hope some mobster scratches his ass soon; I’m looking forward to the phrase “anal mortadell’.”

“Studies show that dispersants, which break down oil into tiny droplets and can also break down cell membranes, make oil more toxic for some animals, like baby birds. And the solvents they contain can break down red blood cells, causing hemorrhaging. At least one fresh dolphin carcass found in the Gulf was bleeding from the mouth and blowhole, according to Lori Deangelis, a dolphin tour operator in Perdido Bay.”
–Scientists have done autopsies on the 1,866 birds, 463 turtles, 59 dolphins and one sperm whale who have turned up dead in the Gulf of Mexico this summer.

The cause of death is often a mystery-most of the carcasses are not, as one might think, soaked in oil. Suspicion is falling on shrimpers, who it seems, faced with the destruction of their livelihood, may be flouting rules designed to protect other types of wildlife, and on the two million gallons of chemical dispersants poured into the water-a solution which many environmentalist experts have been warning against for a long time.

Perhaps faced with the evidence of bleeding dolphins, BP will reverse course. What counteracts oil dispersant? More oil! More oil! We need to pump more oil into the Gulf! Luckily, a hydraulic leak on a line attached to the latest cap halted progress on efforts to stop the spill yesterday. Phew!

By 2024, the diggers had forgotten why they were digging. The diggers were the last workers with houses and legally enforceable pensions, negotiated in the time before President Palin, so they never stopped digging. Otherwise they’d be trash-eaters like everyone else. The diggers knew about the pictures on the Internet of two tall buildings at the foot of Manhattan that had supposedly stood in the pit. Sometimes the diggers would argue about these pictures.

“Those are Daniel Libeskind’s assistant’s original plans for Magical Commerce Sky Towers that were rejected,” one digger would say. “What a joke! Look how tall they are-they are like many, many houses, stacked atop each other!”

“No, that’s a conceptual drawing by Fumihiko Maki,” another digger would say, “and they were two kilometers high and people used to go on the Internet and laugh about it.”

As tall as these imaginary buildings seemed to be from the fake photographs, the hole was even deeper. Down and down: beneath the many layers of lost keys, beneath the slave bones, beneath the aboriginal bones, beneath the immense schooner which was later found to have been scuttled in 1752 to form a reef, down even beneath the bones of some cat that must have stood 15 hands tall, one day a digger found his digging exoskeleton had become fastened to the spot.

Others came and dug down around, their spotlights picking the rooted digger in the deep murk of the hole where the sun barely penetrated. When they were done, careful all the while not to also became magnetically attached, they found that the trapped digger’s frame stood atop a standing rectangle. It was so black that it ate the light.

They got the anti-magnet machines out and pulled it up; it made a little subsonic pop, like a tooth coming loose.

A few of the old scientists came to look at it for a while. They pushed their shopping carts over. All the workers stood back because of the stench.

“Greable murghle dlah,” raved the scientists.

Eventually the police tased the scientists off. Sammy, one of the diggers, put the monolith on his truck, and, driving slowly between the armed guards of the Green Zone Highway, took it back to his two-bedroom palace in the Walled City of Great Neck. Sammy turned the monolith on its side and put his TV on it.

That’s right. Check out this exciting email we just received!

Hi Choice,

With The Awl’s reputation for sharing the latest and greatest trends, I wanted to share this great partnership and promotion from Chili’s Grill & Bar with you.

Chili’s is now offering up free Chips & Salsa when guests check in on Foursquare at participating Chili’s restaurants. Known for engaging guests through multiple social media outlets, Chili’s is the first national casual dining chain to offer socially tech-savvy guests a free menu item with every Foursquare check-in.

For a limited time, when guests check in at Chili’s using the geo-locating service, they will instantly receive a special coupon to redeem for free chips and house-made salsa.

Check in at your neighborhood Chili’s to see if they’re participating. If so, encourage your readers to check-in to chow down.

Interested in learning more or interviewing the Chili’s Marketing Director? Just shoot me a reply, and I’ll be happy to coordinate something with you.

Best,

[REDACTED]

by Ana Marie Cox And Jason Linkins

Here are GQ’s Ana Marie Cox and the Huffington Post’s Eat the Press editor Jason Linkins to explain our Muslim President’s hot gay affair with wee yet hot Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, through the joys of the White House’s Flickr feed!

Jason: Oh, wow! You realize she’s back in Michelle Obama’s Kiss And Cry Room! (Previously, on Michelle Obama’s Kiss And Cry Room.)
Ana: It actually looks like it may be a very special White House edition of What Not To Wear.

President Obama presides over the world’s most boring game of Simon Says.

Obama’s like: “You know, in my situation room, we have these wall sized iPads. But we can make due with these corkboards, I guess.”

Ana: Poor Mayor of Gulfport, the only guy who wore a tie. I can’t help but notice in the luncheon picture that someone did not even touch their hushpuppies.

Jason: It looks like every meal I have ever had on the Outer Banks, minus the joy (and the bourbon).

Ana: Blurry GOP, sad Obama. That’s pretty much the narrative for 2012.

Jason: You just did Chuck Todd’s work for him.

Ana: Put me on MEET THE PRESS, dammit!

Jason: God, I’d actually look forward to that show, if you were on it.

Orange Beach, Alabama’s Tacky Jacks preps for its first “Wet POTUS contest!”

Jason: I despair of the way this White House Flickr page is organized! That Mike McFaul thing we already did is still on the front page!

Ana: YES. Though there is Reverend Falwell!

Jason: I think you mean Billy Graham, though it’s an easy mistake to make.

Ana: Yes. Who is now so liver-spotted that he is also biracial.

Jason: Okay, well, now we’ve captioned that photo, haven’t we?

And now, this month in “Obama pensively listening to the world fall apart around him in the Situation Room.”

Next: Garth Brooks???

Ana: This looks like Obama is trying to help Garth Brooks through an episode of senile dementia.

Jason: That award, by the way, is a “Grammy On The Hill.” For those of you who thought you couldn’t degrade the brand name of Grammy any further.

Ana: I love how the caption just HAS TO remind everyone that Obama won a Grammy for best spoken word album.

Jason: Congratulations to the zero other nominees!

Ana: Here’s Medvedev TOTALLY UNDRESSING OBAMA WITH HIS EYES.

Jason: Who’s roofie-ing who here? I guess in terms of the Russian power alignment, Medvedev comes pre-roofied.

Ana: I can’t tell if he wants to kill Obama or fuck him.

Jason: Speed-dating session? Or awesome Stratego tournament?

Ana: Poor Mullen — his speed dating guy is ON HIS CELL. [Insert a repeal of DADT joke here]

Jason: Looks like one couple went home happy.

Ana: Nice

Jason: I’m talking, of course, about photographer Pete Souza and that mirror!

Ana: Even nicer!

Ana: I don’t think there are enough gays in Prague. Or at least they’re not in the right lines of work. I mean, that bouquet????

Jason: I think this, from this picture’s comment thread, is even funnier than the picture: “You can almost picture people waiting inside the plane and stepping out the door.” YES, I GUESS YOU COULD “ALMOST” DO THAT!

Ana: Or you could look at some other pictures, unless that is actually beyond you.

Ana: I HATE IT WHEN THEY PUT OLD PHOTOS IN THE STREAM

Jason: Oh, yeah! That’s from December! But nuke-treaty is newsy.

Ana: There are a lot of old photos of Obama ON THE PHONE too. Because…?

Jason: He has a great long distance plan?

Ana: Like: “Here he was working on the treaty over the phone in December!” And: “Here he was working on the treaty over the phone in July!”

Jason: He really tried, Fred Hiatt! To work on more than one issue at a time!

Ana: “Here’s a picture of him on the phone working on the treaty in January! Oh wait, that was just a pizza order. WHO LABELED THESE????”

Jason: But, look, if I were in the White House Press Corps, this is the sort of thing I’d bring up about the way the White House manages their image. Of course, that assumes that anyone besides you and me and the Awl readership actually examines this Flickr account with any degree of discernment. But, you know! BE LESS STUPID! Also: HOW TO COOK SOME FUCKING MEAT.

Ana: HOW TO COOK SOME FUCKING PHOTOS.

Ana: Cute couple.

Jason: Yes.

Ana: “After dining with their wives” who they then excused so they could go cornholing in the bushes.

Jason: Russia has come a long way if they are giving Souza the same permission to just run around on the grounds of Medvedev’s dacha, hiding in the bushes and stuff. You want to know one way in which it’s better to be Dimitry Medvedev than it is to be Obama? That this picture suggests?

Ana: Besides being able to fit into Russian cars?

Jason: Oh, too true. But also: Medvedev can basically smoke any fucking place he wants to.

Ana: Obama could probably as well, technically. Like, what good is it being President if you can’t smoke? “Let me get this straight: I can BLOW UP THE WORLD, but not ash on the White House grounds?”

Jason: Well, let me put it this way: Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi wouldn’t have considered it a scoop if the eXile had totally blown the doors off the secret smoking glades of the Russian political elites. But if Chip Reid can unravel that mystery, LOOK OUT!

This looks disturbingly post-coital.

Obama signs papers allowing a select group of brown people permission to travel through Arizona. “This is probably going to become a thing,” he said.

Um, help? “An alleged gold-digger attacked his Saudi Arabian princess ex-girlfriend’s chauffeur in a drink and drug-fuelled rage after she caught him having a threesome in her flat, a court heard today.”

Jim Behrle is also quite adept at verse.

The Real Truth About Adrian Lamo

The riveting Bradley Manning affair has been flawlessly covered by Glenn Greenwald-but Greenwald appears to have missed the most glaring point regarding the man known as Adrian Lamo. Namely, his real identity. (To play along, here’s the background in three easy sentences: Bradley Manning, an Army analyst, was charged this month with distributing classified data to Wikileaks, including video that showed the killing of civilians in Baghdad and, allegedly, a bombing that killed “scores of children” in Afghanistan. Manning allegedly told this to journalist Adrian Lamo, who promptly handed over his IM chat logs with Manning to the feds, believing that “lives were in danger.” Meanwhile, Wikileaks honcho Julian Assange is currently, conveniently, not in the U.S.) Anyway! Lamo!

Lamo’s bizarre, incoherent response to Greenwald appears on cryptome.org , which has become a kind of Weekly World News for Wikileaks-related commentary.

Here is a photograph of “Lamo”:

Did he really expect this transparent disguise to pass unobserved? One person, and one alone, could have come up with the delusionally grandiose public claims we’ve seen so far from “Adrian Lamo”:

The uncanny resemblance goes far beyond the physical. “Lamo” complained in his cryptome.org response that Greenwald didn’t publish his ridiculous outburst in Salon, alongside Greenwald’s own piece, in quite unmistakable tones. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of pronouncements made by “Lamo” and the figure who is quite obviously behind the nom de guerre: Mandark, of the “Dexter’s Laboratory” TV series.

Lamo: It was a clever attempt to turn the tables-to put my reputation on trial before the public.

Mandark: Yes, Dexter, I can read your thoughts, and I am smarter than you.

Lamo: But Greenwald seemed to have no qualms about hurling vehemence [sic] at me-in a following Twitter post, Greenwald expressed his “blinding contempt”-and as we see here, his contempt appears to have been blinding indeed.

Mandark: Excellent! My sneaky ways have put me in the lead! I’d give myself a pat on the back, but I’m driving, so I’ll have to do it later!

Lamo: Let’s clear this up now, friends and neighbors. I am not now, nor have I ever been, in the thrall or employ of the federal government, be it as a confidential informant, a special agent, or a janitor.

Mandark: What do I have to do to be cool?

Lamo: I invite readers to listen to the audio of the interview and use Google to research me. Draw your own conclusions. Don’t let them be drawn for you by a man who was discussing how he’d judged a man well before he ever spoke to him, and wasn’t about to let facts get in the way of a good hatchet piece. Think for yourselves. Watch my documentary, Hackers Wanted.

Mandark: All hail Mandark, the genius! All hail Mandark, the genius! Sing a song of Mandark, the greatest genius this world has ever known!

Interesting? Yes. Conclusive? You be the judge.

P.S. If only we were in Sweden. If we were, it might be possible to prosecute “Lamo”-who told Glenn Greenwald that he represented himself as a journalist to Bradley Manning-for failing to protect his source. Because in Sweden, they have got an unpronounceable thing that we are in desperate need of here: offentlighetsprincipen.

Sweden is considered the first country in the world to have enacted modern freedom of information legislation with its Press Freedom Act of 1766.

The act served as the genesis of that what is commonly referred to today as “offentlighetsprincipen” (‘The Principle of Public Access’) which stipulates that “every Swedish citizen has the right to access public documents”, according to the current constitution.

As Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, explained to NPR’s “On the Media” last February,

The Swedish Press Freedom Act is very progressive. In many other countries, the angle journalists have taken is: we want to be protected from being forced into court. But the angle taken in the Swedish Press Freedom Act is that it’s the source who deserves the right to communicate to the public, and the public who deserves the right to know. And the journalist is an intermediary in this process. So the journalist must be protected, but the journalist also has a responsibility to protect. And if that responsibility is broken, the source can ask that a criminal prosecution occur.

And now I am going to go to Ikea, buy wineglasses and eat meatballs in frustrated admiration of this enlightened policy.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and

Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

If you’re a fan of the multi-talented John Lurie you will probably enjoy this gallery of his artwork. If you are not a fan I discard you.

WORDS ACTUALLY SPOKEN IN THIS NEWS REPORT: “The latest Internet craze… it’s called i-dosing… websites are luring kids with free downloads of so-called digital drugs… this alarming new trend… Parents really need to listen up on this one!” But, wait, kids are worried too! “’I heard it was like some weird demons and stuff through an iPod and he was like freaking out,’ said Mustang High School student Meghan Edwards.”