Question of the day: Why isn’t Chelsea Handler funny?

School officials in Federal Way, WA, are warning parents of a disturbing new trend: students splashing themselves with Axe body spray and then lighting themselves on fire. Experts warn that the condition, known as “being a 6th grade boy,” could prove harmful. I’m trying to remember why we did crap like this back when I was in 6th grade. I mean, what was the point if we didn’t have any YouTube to which we couldupload video of ourselves doing it? Oh, right, I know: because we were 6th grade boys, humanity’s stupidest creatures. Anyway, I’m glad to see Axe body spray is being used for some actual purpose other than skipping showers.

Here’s an interesting article about the problems caused by Internet spam filters. The piece starts out by discussing Canadian history journal The Beaver, which has been forced to change its name because its current moniker causes it to run afoul of online content blockers. (The magazine will henceforth be called Hot Wet Pussy Review.) But it also provides a history of the issue, notably the so-called “Scunthorpe problem” of 1996, wherein residents of a British locality were “initially banned from registering with internet service provider AOL because the town’s name contained an obscenity.” (The town was named Dripping Snatch Village.) But why does the problem persist to this day?

The spammers develop ever-more sophisticated techniques for slam-dunking our inboxes with ads extolling the benefits of manhood enlargements, pornography and virility pills, among other things. Then the spam filter engineers have to hit back by creating smarter deterrents, in a perpetual game of cat and mouse.

Thus the continuing and inevitable blocking of e-mails containing words and place names that could conceivably be offensive. And while the technology that could resolve the issue is continually improving, it is cold comfort to residents of cities like Vagina Heights, OH, or Hard Throbbing Cocks, AZ, who still have a hard time getting their e-mails through.

Suitcase with $78,383 inside (Lower East Side): “I thought I would at least post this. If you can describe the other items inside I will return. If not I am taking to the Police and after no one claims it I think I can legally own this. It is real hard posting this. But I know it is the right thing to do.” The right thing, maybe! The stupid thing, quite possibly. (via)

Jersey Mayhem: Man Accused Of Stealing Two Cases Of Corona From Bar, Throwing Bodily Fluids At Police Officer

First of all, let’s get this out of the way, the bodily fluids in question were not contained inside the bottles of Corona. In fact, the bodily fluids were not “thrown,” apparently, despite the official charges, they were spit. And, they were just spit. Nevertheless, this is a story from the “Jersey Mayhem” section of the Asbury Park Press that really earns the distinction.

Police officers Richard Johnson and Joseph Lamb were called to a bar in Keansburg Sunday night and told that a man had stolen and ran off with two cases of Corona beer. Which is understandable: Corona is delicious and refreshing, especially with a slice of lime. It’s transportive even, enabling the drinker to imagine himself miles away from an ordinary New Jersey bar, sitting in a beach chair under a palm tree, a beautiful woman at your side, so relaxed and unconcerned with everyday cares that you toss your cellphone into the turquoise sea stretching out before you like a metaphor for limitless time and possibility. But it’s not really worth paying for 24 bottles if that’s how many you want to drink on a Sunday night. And you have a call to make on the cellphone, actually. So, soon enough, 26-year-old Shannon LeComte was apprehended nearby and brought back to the bar so that witnesses might identify him as the culprit. As the paper reports,

When they arrived at the tavern, LeComte was sitting in the back seat of the patrol car, talking on his cellphone, police said. When Johnson told him to hang up, the Ocean Township man threw the phone in his face, police said. Then he began to kick and punch both officers, the deputy chief said. LeComte spit on Johnson, kicked out the side window of the police car and bent the door frame, police said.

He was then pepper-sprayed and taken in to the station, where he was charged with shoplifting, resisting arrest, throwing bodily fluids at a police officer, terroristic threats, criminal mischief and three counts of aggravated assault on a police officer. Bail was set at $62,000, which would buy many, many cases of Corona. I don’t know why the charge is “throwing” bodily fluids. Maybe it’s stemming from the fact that “spitting up” is synonymous with “throwing up?” Seems like a stretch.

We have recent movement on the fun party game that is called “Who Gets To Live in Bloomberg Valhalla.” The thing about working in City Hall is that it is actually very hard work. New York City is, obviously, a giant pain in the neck. Mike Bloomberg and his long enforcing hand, Patti Harris, are detail monsters. And you know, this system works! Say what you will about New York City, and we have, and Lord knows we don’t agree with all the choices coming out of City Hall (it serves the privileged class of the City first and best, for starters), but the trash gets picked up and the cops aren’t incessantly murdering people and there are no zombies roaming the streets. And for their attention to minutia and their ability to roll with the very real terrors of City Hall, a few long-serving staff get rewarded with post-service jobs at the stately, long-lunch-friendly Bloomberg Family Foundation, which has recently retooled how it gives money in the City. From the outside, one might have thought that long-serving deputy mayors Kevin Sheekey and Edward Skyler were going to easily shuffle off to that gravy train on the Upper East Side. Well, Sheekey got halfway there-to a job at Bloomberg LP. But Skyler, shockingly, is off for the worst flacking job in the history of finance: mouthpiecing for Citibank’s “global public affairs.” (In short, their global public affairs “kind of suck” right now.) That’s way down the list of things one would want to do, far beneath “chilling uptown and funding programs with Bill Gates.” What happened?

After a year in which he was beset by scandal-see every post we’ve done about him ever-and a campaign during which authorities announced he was being investigated for attempting to influence coverage of the many scandals by which he’s been beset, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi can claim a resounding victory in regional elections this week, with parties in his alliance capturing four regions, retaining two, and reducing the hold of the opposition Democratic party to 7. Notwithstanding low (by Italian standards; the number was 64%) turnout, which is being seen as a sign of the electorate’s disaffection, and notwithstanding the fact that the alliance’s support in the north was due to the strength of the Northern League, a party of xenophobes and secessionists, this is a pretty solid win for the Premier, who gracefully acknowledged that “I took to the field, and this is my victory.” (It was also a victory for leftist comedian Beppe Grillo, whose new Five-star Movement did quite well for a party on its first time out.) Expect those new laws making everything Berlusconi has ever done to be totally legal shortly!

Michael Crichton’s art collection is being auctioned off soon and, uh, how had we forgotten this? Two early Rauschenbergs, a Warhol Mao, three Picassos and? “Crichton’s collection of works by Jasper Johns (b.1930) is the most significant and complete to ever come to the market and contains examples that span the artist’s entire career. The top highlight of the collection is Jasper Johns’ Flag, 1960–66, (pictured right) a painstakingly beautiful rendition of the American flag in encaustic, has never been on the public market.”

by Lindsay Robertson

Remember the viral sensation known as “OMG Cat”? Of course you do, it was last week. Today I spoke with the world’s foremost expert on internet cat videos, Brad O’Farrell, who in addition to writing the blogs Snuzzy (about cute animals) and Moar Rawr (about evil animals) and a Tumblr entirely devoted to Cats + LOLing is also the loving co-parent of a cat named Amex. And if that isn’t enough expert-ness for ya, Brad is also the original creator of the Keyboard Cat video. (That’s right: he found the cat video just sitting there on YouTube, edited it, created the “play them off” concept, gave it the “Keyboard Cat” title, and cleared the rights for both his video and everyone else’s parodies — all that.) Brad IM’d me about something that was bothering him — and in this resulting interview, he reveals his shocking theory about OMG Cat. Warning: if you read this you’ll probably never be able to truly enjoy an extraordinary cat video again.

Lindsay: So tell me again what you said earlier about the OMG cat because you saw it was my IM avatar.

Brad: I think OMG Cat is actually a sick cat. Cats don’t step out of character to personify people unless they’re sick.

Lindsay: How do you know?

Lindsay: That kind of sounds like cat propaganda.

Brad: Because if everyone’s cat did that then we’d all have viral videos.

Lindsay: We kind of all do!

Brad: That’s true, but also, I did a little research, and a cat’s mouth hanging open is likely a sign of an infected tooth or an injured tongue. It may also be a broken jaw. In which case, its “OMG” face could be in response to the pain it was enduring.

Lindsay: Wow.

Lindsay: You just really made this a lot less fun.

Lindsay: I was thinking “sick” like “totally crazy in the cat-head maybe!” Like “It’s so delusional it thinks it’s people!” Or: “Greenberg: The Cat!”

Brad: If a human was doing that it wouldn’t be considered cute.

Lindsay: So it wasn’t so much “stepping out of character” mentally?

Lindsay: Its natural response to pain just looks like something we do in response to emotions.

Lindsay: Okay, here:

Lindsay: What about when it perks up its ears? That doesn’t seem like a pain-response.

Brad: If a human were doing this it would also be clearly a natural response to pain or injury. Only like, hammy gay humans or sassy black ladies or Simpsons characters ACTUALLY make that kind of face when expressing “OMG.”

Lindsay: I think I make that face in response to YouTube videos pretty regularly.

Brad: That’s true. I actually think I made that response to that cat video.

Lindsay: Well, I found myself involuntarily mirroring the cat.

Lindsay: After the first watch (you know, the 20 successive watches).

Lindsay: Okay, I’m totally with you.

Lindsay: But at about the :09 mark the cat perks up its ears and moves its head, clearly tracking a creature or object.

Lindsay: So: it’s in hunting mode?

Lindsay: OR, actually, it could be adjusting its poor wittle jaw!

Brad: That might actually be it trying to signal to the camera man that it needs help, like a paralyzed person rapidly blinking.

Lindsay: Jesus Christ, Brad!

Brad: Don’t say “poor wittle jaw.” It’s probably BROKEN. There’s a reason vets have to make up terms like “Feline AIDS” and “Feline Leukemia” even though they are totally different diseases from the human ones, because pet injuries are less cute when people see the parallel to a human injury.

Lindsay: Feline AIDS was actually originally called “Kitty Adowableness Syndwome.”

Lindsay: (FACT.)

Brad: Right, but they changed it to be PC, like with GRID becoming AIDS.

Lindsay: So we shouldn’t call him OMG Cat, we should call him…

Lindsay: Chairman Ow?

Lindsay: (I’m joking about this cat stuff but only because the Horror Is Too Great To Bear.)

Brad: We should probably call him animal control. Because it may be true that its owners don’t have its best interest at heart. (I almost typed “parents” instead of “owners” because I’m used to phrasing it that way.)

Lindsay: I would like to get into people who criticize you for saying owners instead of parents but we need to stay on task.

Lindsay: Have you seen a cat act like this before?

Brad: No! But if my cat was acting like this I would take it to the vet and not make a YouTube video.

Brad: Imagine if this was a baby!

Brad: “Check out OMG Baby, LOL, it doesn’t close its mouth, it just looks at the camera in a fixed-scream!”

Brad: “Honey, the baby is doing it again, get the camera!”

Lindsay: Oh God.

Lindsay: That leads us to something.

Lindsay: Another clue: the video is totally silent.

Lindsay: Why would that be?

Brad: ….

Lindsay: It’s like Sherlock Holmes! The dog DIDN’T bark!

Lindsay: The owner/parent muted it because the cat was SCREAMING?

Brad: Because people are now aware that their videos are going on YouTube. It used to be that home videos from 2003 were being uploaded and there was weird background audio of people talking. Now everyone is aware that anything they say is just going to be fodder “for the haters.” This person, I am presuming, wanted to get his cat video, cash his Internet money check, and get out of there.

Lindsay: So you’re saying maybe it’s not screaming. That’s good?

Brad: Yes, if it was screaming they would’ve left that in.

Brad: Because it would’ve made it “more adorable.”

Brad: There’s nothing a sick cat can do as a cry for help that people won’t choose to interpret as it being cute.

Brad: “Screaming? I think it’s saying ‘I wuv woo, mommy’!”

Lindsay: So they were trying to avoid the fate of the background-stupid-conversation-having Broccoli Cat hippies?

Brad: Exactly.

Lindsay: So basically OMG cat is like a cat with a little dolly bonnet on its head that was put there by, let’s say, a 7-year-old girl in the mid-80s in Florida.

Lindsay: And who walks around on its hind legs with its hands up trying to remove the dolly bonnet.

Lindsay: It’s not really “being people,” it’s quite possibly “really fucking annoyed or in pain.”

Brad: Right. I think really it comes down to an oversaturation of cats. Even people who don’t have cats have already seen all a cat can do. It’s like when someone goes through all the sexual fetishes they can find and needs to invent crazy new shit to keep it spicy. Even if OMG Cat was screaming, it’s still a cat doing something we’ve never seen before, and thus, a viral video.

Brad: Speaking of cats with bonnets, remember that ‘first LOLcat’?

Brad: There was this whole industry in the late 1800s of making post cards with cats on them.

Lindsay: Yes.

Brad: People don’t realize though that cameras had really bad shutter speeds at the time.

Brad: So those cats were dead.

Lindsay: Oh my God.

Brad: They were stuffed and posed to look cute. And then people bought them because they were cute, even though you could pretty easily deduce that these were pictures of dead cats. And not even cats that had a full life — kittens specifically killed to be posed.

Brad: So, when you think about it, people being dead silent in their cat videos, knowing the audience hates when human intent meddles in their cute kittens… Combined with the fact that we DON’T CARE that the cats are sick or dead… It really says a lot about the patrons of this art. We don’t care about the cats themselves, or the people bringing us the cat pictures or videos. We just care about the “OMG cuuuuuute” chemical reaction we get out of it. It’s pornography.

Lindsay: All I want to do now is see cats doing boring cat things.

Lindsay: Like their main activity: Just Lying There.

Brad: Then go get a cat.

Lindsay: Oh, snap!

Lindsay: To quote The Onion? I don’t want a box of shit in my house.

Brad: It’s like the difference between using pornography and being in a relationship.

Lindsay: This is revelatory shit, Brad.

Lindsay: I’m not sure what the relationship “box of shit” is but actually that makes sense too on a metaphorical and finding-toenail-clippings-behind-the-couch level.

Brad: You can just consider all the non-fun parts of relationships to be part of “the box of shit.”

Lindsay: Totally.

Lindsay: I already do that in relationships!

Lindsay: “I gotta get home to my box of shit”

Lindsay: “The ol’ box ‘o shit.”

Brad: Still, like how pornography isn’t as good as the real thing, LOLcats aren’t as good as the real thing. I think there’s a sad eagerness to accept that we can replicate all of life’s things on an iPad. Looking at a video of a sick cat doing something funny is never as cute as looking at your OWN sick cat doing something funny.

Lindsay: Is there anything hopeful to say about cat videos?

Lindsay: Like, is there a very very healthy cute cat on YouTube?

Brad: Maru is healthy.

Brad: Maru is healthier than most people.

Brad: He knows what he wants in life and he jumps right into it.

Lindsay: Maru could stand to lose a few pounds.

Lindsay: But let’s not get into cat body-snarking and cat pro-ana triggers.

Lindsay: Do you think we’ll ever know what happened to OMG Cat?

Brad: The Internet’s not like Maury, it rarely does “update shows” but I think we’ll know OMG Cat is okay if the original uploader uploads another video with it later on. If they don’t we can probably assume it is dead.

Brad: Or a one trick pony. Which is basically the same thing to us.

Lindsay: So we need a Proof of Life video for OMG cat.

Lindsay: With today’s paper, for the date.

Brad: Yes, looking at today’s news paper in shock.

Lindsay: Oh my God. TWIST.

Lindsay: The original-original OMG Cat video has been removed by the user.

Brad: Now we’ll never know its fate.

Brad: Wait. NO. NOW WE DO KNOW ITS FATE.

Brad: It’s possible they removed the video because the cat died and they felt bad about uploading it.

Lindsay: OR they submitted it to America’s Funniest Videos who asked them to remove it from YouTube? In nine months we’ll see Tom Bergeron on ABC interviewing the family with their healthy cat who looks surprised to have won them $10,000 and be surrounded by falling balloons and cheering Disneyland crowds? Can we think that?

Brad: Sure. Let’s think that.

Lindsay Robertson has written things for the internet since before you were born and Brad O’Farrell wants to make it clear that he’s not a veterinarian.

by Simon Dumenco

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 45.50 points on Monday to 10895.86, and then opened high and quickly corrected in anticipation of today’s scheduled video premiere of Justin Bieber’s “Never Let You Go.” (Oh no, oh no, oh oh / They say that hate has been sent / So let loose the talk of love, of love, of love / Before they outlaw the kiss / Baby give me one last hug, last hug, last hug.)

• The Nasdaq Composite closed up 9.23 points to 2404.36, and then slid mid-morning, on word that Chaz Bono’s gender reassignment is now complete.

Simon Dumenco is The Awl’s Senior Wall Street Correspondent and Justin Bieber Bureau Chief.