“But in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions? “

I wanted a little bit more reasoning and example on this “THE WAY WE LIVE NOW” piece from this upcoming New York Times mag, which says that people should abandon their underwater mortgages (true!). He writes: “Mortgage holders do sign a promissory note, which is a promise to pay. But the contract explicitly details the penalty for nonpayment — surrender of the property. The borrower isn’t escaping the consequences; he is suffering them.” Sure! There is of course often the complication that then, you know, people have to find somewhere else to live.

“Xe, the US security firm formerly known as Blackwater, has reached a settlement in a number of lawsuits over the killings of Iraqi civilians.” And how much? “Two sources with inside knowledge of Blackwater’s settlement with Iraqi victims of a string of shootings, including the Nisour Square massacre, have confirmed to me that Blackwater is paying $100,000 for each of the Iraqis killed by its forces and between $20–30,000 to each Iraqi wounded…. Based on the number of dead and injured named in the civil lawsuits, the total amount paid by Blackwater is likely in the range of $5 million.”

In a memoir she plans to publish in 2015, Yoko Ono is apparently set to reveal why the Beatles broke up. For those of you who are worried that you might not be alive five years from now to learn the shocking truth, we provide this brief spoiler of the reason for the band’s dissolution: They weren’t really getting on well with each other at the time. Now you know!

This is an important update to remind you: are you following along with the Internet’s greatest long-form, scanned-written-word website? Here’s one more reason to do so.

Although it is apparently quite popular, I just now discovered this “remix” of Pixar’s Up. The Wall Street Journal calls it a “pick-me-up,”, and that is exactly right: It is extremely joy-inducing. And who doesn’t want a little joy? Have some joy, goddamnit, life is short.

by Jay Casey

From time to time, The Awl offers its space to normal, everyday people with a perspective on national issues. Today brings a report from Jay Casey, who has been paying attention to the Internet all week.

A few nights ago now, something insignificant happened. Therefore people on the internet became very interested. During the Boise State halftime show, a news camera panned down the drumline, stopping on a young woman playing the cowbell. She had what looked to be a sullen look on her face and after these seconds of footage, people were already talking about her on Twitter. They called her Sad Cowbell Girl. A clip was put on YouTube and her face was Photoshopped onto Will Ferrell’s in Blue Öyster Cult parody videos. There was Christopher Walken, yelling for more cowbell while the girl beat to the rhythm. The meme was mildly amusing until her glassy gaze and blank expression was explained. She is blind.

When people realized they had been laughing at a blind person, the mood shifted. No one wanted to have a good time at the expensive of a disabled person. This was branded unfunny. Actually, anyone amused by her state became the butt of the joke.

Gone was the happy beat of her hollow instrument, replaced by stolen chuckles, stifled under hand-covered mouths.

Everyone’s favorite cowbell player was now everyone’s very guilty pleasure.

But we should laugh at Sad Cowbell Girl. She’s one of us. She’s a regular person. Why does her blindness protect her from being caught off-guard by the camera?

What if she was caught up in the moment?

What if she was stunned by the majesty of her cowbell?

Here is this girl, on the percussion line, striking an object, making this distinct sound. Isn’t it funny when she plays the cowbell, too?

People are only willing to laugh if they’re not going to be judged. It’s this anonymous removal, this distance that we enjoy on the Internet, that makes it okay to mock others. When it became known that she was blind, it made her actually human to us. It created this awkward intimacy that we’re not ready to address. When found out about her blindness, we became less removed. We thought that, therefore, we were bad people for laughing at a blind percussionist.

But it’s okay to laugh. She’s the cowbell player. The cowbell is a silly instrument.

Jay Casey blogs semi-anonymously to get out of explaining why he has no manners.

“We have learned that several Times Company employees have become ill with gastrointestinal symptoms over the past 24 hours.” This is very funny unless you are the one pooping your pants while on deadline. Actually, that’s probably still funny. Anyway: *joke goes here*.

“Afterwards, the patient was given an anaesthetic and although his willy was left bruised and swollen it was otherwise unharmed.”
–The Sun reports on a 30-minute operation in which seven firefighters used a grinder to help remove a man’s penis from the steel pipe in which it had become entombed. “The anxious man aged about 40 failed to explain how the pipe had become stuck,” says the paper, but we all know how easily these things happen.

This documentation of his endless press tour-which is a hideous, broken system of publicizing movies-actually makes me like Up in the Air director Jason Reitman again a bit! It’s mostly meaningless, just like interviewing film directors.

Here’s video of Vampire Weekend playing a new song called “California English.” I really liked the part in the recent New Yorker article when singer Ezra Koenig said that “There are probably a lot better reasons why you could say we’re not good” (as opposed to questioning the authenticity of three preppy white boys and one preppy Iranian-American playing Afropop). This song sounds, and looks, awfully hard to play. It is a fast song. In fact, drummer Chris Tomson has a bit of difficulty-and laughs at himself in a nice way.