Opponents of medical marijuana in Billings, MT, have shown their disapproval of the legal palliative by firebombing two dispensaries in the last two days. Sadly, both fires were quickly extinguished, ruining the likelihood of any Cheech & Chong-style unintended wackiness.

Hugh Hefner got philosophic about the most recent boom of 3-D and customer demand for it, asking ‘’What would people most like to see in 3-D?’’ You may not be surprised that his answer was: ‘’Probably a naked lady.’’ And lo, the June issue of Hefner’s bible to manhood Playboy will be packaged with a pair of vision-warping glasses and a picture of “a very blurry” Hope Dworaczyk, who has been crowned Playmate Of The Year. Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek is also hoping that with this up-close-and-personal glimpse at Dworaczyk’s best assets, readers will take a moment to be reminded of magazines’ place in the cultural firmament:

Jellinek said he hopes the issue featuring centerfold Hope Dworaczyk in 3-D also reminds people that for all the infatuation with the Internet, there is nothing quite like having a magazine in your hands.

‘’People want things that last and have meaning,’’ he said.

For his part, Hefner also pointed out that you can’t hide the Internet under a mattress. Which would seem to be true even in the iPad era, no?

Good news, everybody! Mercury, whose retrogradation celestial semiotician Emily Gould recently pointed to as a reason for the general state of weirdness so many of us seem to have experienced over the last few weeks, is no longer moving backwards! Everything will be fine now, unless astrology is total bunk or life actually is as miserable as it seems to be. Smiles! Or whatever your default rictus of choice happens to be.

Sure, it was basically a glorified ad for the author’s overly precious personal-finance site, but that doesn’t mean that Alexa von Tobel’s recent Huffington Post piece on living in New York City on $0 a day wasn’t offensive and dumb. Von Tobel’s giggly guide to keeping it real could have been retitled “The Well-Off Person’s Guide To Playing Pauper For A Day” — the hold-on-to-your-wallets flip side of all the “aspirational” dreck that clogs too much media even to this day. She walked to work, which just happens to be a mere 20-minute hike from her apartment, instead of taking a cab! She gave up Le Pain lattes and made coffee at home! She had some friends over for a potluck, and even conned a pal into bringing the wine! “I recognize that this experiment is unsustainable for a long period of time,” she wrote, but god dimmy, that doesn’t mean she’s not going to try and piggyback off it for her own personal gain.

Anyway, here is my No. 1 tip for not spending any money in New York City, based on empirical research and also being broke now and again! Arianna, if you’re reading this and you want me to, you know, expound further, give me a call.

Never leave the house. Even if you live in a expensive apartment that’s right by a very tasty restaurant, you should try to have a homebound job (like, say, blogging! although if you’re doing so for HuffPo, you probably won’t get paid, whoops!) so as to minimize your need to go out, because that is when the money starts coming out of your wallet like it’s attached to strings. Yes, being homebound day in and day out might over time drive you into a semi-feral state where you’re unable to make eye contact, much less talk to people who exist in a form more corporeal than a screen name. But just think of all the money you’ll save by going it alone — no MetroCards, at-home lunches that never existed near a deli counter, no need to dodge the fundraising attempts by the brats who belong to that annoying person from accounting!

And there’s a domino effect, too: The longer you stay at home, the less people will call you to go out. Bye bye, cell phone; see ya, land line! And if you keep up the hermitude for long enough, you’ll eventually shed the need to do things like groom yourself — which means you save money that would be spent on frivolities like soap and shampoo! The whole “food for sustenance” thing is something that has to be navigated through, unfortunately, but if food and Internet are the only big-ticket items you’re spending money on, grocery-delivery charges shouldn’t be all that bad to manage. At the very least, seeing the person who brings over your provisions now and again will give you a little bit of the face time that you’re missing during the other 23.75 hours of the day!

(In all seriousness, the art writer Geeta Dayal has put together a pretty great guide to cheap living for freelancers and other creative types that isn’t as giggly or gimmicky as von Tobel’s piece, but that is full of sound advice. No. 9 in particular, which is the one that I always seem to forget, is key!)

So how did the Twitter bug that allowed users to force-feed followers to unsuspecting people get discovered, anyway? Blame a German user’s love of the hard rock band Accept: “[Bora] likes a group named ‘Accept’ and to show his love, he tweets ‘accept pwnz’; but instead of seeing this post, he sees twitter user ‘pwnz’ follows him.” And the rest is history. Oh, and hey, look what recently reunited titans of Teutonic metal just kicked off a tour! I smell shenanigans…

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Today in the poetry section; two new poems by Kimberly Grey, of the fine borough of Queens.

To Grieve in Other Verbs

Tie the ribbon around yourself & see how long it holds. You are alive
& have just begun to wrestle. There are other ways to fly. You’re trying
to marry human & loss, trying to shape & peel the wound. Find a place
to house large things. The walrus lost its hands to evolution, so it taught
itself to roll. Now, you hover over the earth. You’re barely. The ground
did soften & forgive & still, you’re winter. There’s no shame in wanting
to be useful again. You yo-yo & furl. You dress in other people’s clothes.
And the light? It can not tell you from a hermit or horsefly. Today in
Manhattan, not a single person died. How’s that for hope? You must
understand the history of loss did not begin with you. You’ve got to spit
out this thing that you chew & chew. To hurt is a way to love, I thought
you knew.

Only a Moon to Soup Her

Improper you could say, the way we use light
to awe each other. But there, a waxing gibbous
haught in the sky and her on the bed, full
and waist-ful. It is wrong to think that only
a fish could glow like this. We are like
Schenectady when Edison arrived, a center
of energy and brightness. And don’t forget
either, her hand against the pane. If the moon
were wrong side out and halved maybe the earth
would be hotter than us. But seven swoons
and sighs later, she melts into sweet broth.
Oh, of all things floating and how can it float?
The moon hangs outside the world and we let it
into our lives. Lunatic, I say. Guppy, Guppy.
Clean up this light. We’re filthy.

Kimberly Grey’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Linebreak, The Brooklyn Review, DIAGRAM, and Opium. She lives in Queens and will be teaching contemporary poetry at Adelphi University next year.

You can reach the editors at poems@theawl.com.

If you had any plans to see Europe before it is destroyed in a series of default-fueled riots, too bad: Eyjafjallajökul is expected to continue erupting for at least six more months, at which point the only thing left on the continent worth journeying to observe will be the petrified remains of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s hair implants.

Here is something that not that many people will get all heated about on the Internets but maybe should a little. (The unexcitement, at least, means there’ll be no ridiculous Senate committee hearings!) The SEC has notified the rating agency Moody’s that it believes that Moody’s lied about how it determines credit ratings. Moody’s has responded to the SEC with a big “nuh uh.” Here’s a vague way to say something, courtesy the Times: “Moody’s said its Wall Street Analytics unit was cooperating with an S.E.C. and Department of Justice investigation into services it provided to financial institutions regarding the valuations of some of the financial instruments they held.” And here, courtesy of the Journal, is a very even-handed way to put the larger situation: “The threat of an SEC case is the latest setback for Moody’s, which has been criticized over its failure to properly rate billions of dollars of mortgage-related securities and other complex debt products.” And also! The best part is that their CEO sold off a bunch of his own stock in the company the same day they got the notice from the SEC. Way to be, bro.

A new Marist poll reveals that George Pataki is viewed as the best New York governor in recent memory, which, you know, okay, the last two guys, sigh, and, Mario Cuomo almost tied him, sure, and, really it’s been a good 30 years since anyone actually thought about Hugh Carey, but, George Pataki? George PATAKI? This state, man… some days I just don’t know.

How’s your sperm, fella? Probably not so good, if Science is any indication. In fact, the situation is downright dire!

Professor Niels Skakkebaek, of the University of Copenhagen, describes the issue ‘as important as global warming’. Last week, one science writer even suggested, in starkly terrifying terms, that if scientists from Mars were to study the male reproductive system, they would possibly conclude that man was destined for rapid extinction.

And if it continues, this trend could indicate men are on a path to becoming completely infertile within a few generations.

Well, you know, you don’t really want to have kids anyway, right? And you can pretty much say goodbye to condoms if you’re able to give evidence suggesting that you’ve got bad nads. But still, dude, we’re talking about your sperm. It is right up there with your cock and the fact that you can pretend to listen to someone yammer on about their feelings while you’re actually focused on the game that is playing on the bigscreen TV over their shoulder on the list of things that makes you a man. Who is responsible for this terrible emasculation? Science is here to help: The fault lies with women!

Factors such as women eating a lot of beef during pregnancy — which means they have consumed a diet rich in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that are potentially damaging chemicals — to the issue of obesity during pregnancy and a woman’s exposure to smoke, pesticides, traffic fumes, plastics and even soya beans are all thought to have a bearing on a male foetus’s future fertility.

So, really, it’s a plot by the ladies to despermify us out of existence. Well, whatever, hold back your ire. Let’s look at the last few years of human development. What exactly have we been doing with the gift of life?

[Reality TV producer Doron] Ofir is currently casting for the third season of Jersey Shore, which will feature an entirely new cast; The Persian Version, a Jersey Shore-like take on the Iranian community in Hollywood; Wicked Summer, a Jersey Shore-like take on Massholes (assholes, of course, from Massachusetts); Chongas, a Jersey Shore-like take on Latino gay men; and the aforementioned Friggin’ Weddings, among other projects.

And that’s one guy creating those shows; the rest of us will be watching them. I think, on the whole, it is time to give the reproduction thing a rest and let some other species take over the planet. I vote for bears.