Here’s the nine best Instagram videos and the one best Vine of Beyoncé last night at Barclays. Um. Good Lord! GOOD LORD!

And finally:

by Mike Duncan and Jason Novak

Mike Duncan lives in Austin and is studying public history at Texas State University. He used to write “The History of Rome” podcast. Jason Novak is head illustrator at The Rumpus and a regular contributor to The Paris Review Daily. Their other collaborations include A Brief Opinionated History Of Taxes In America, She Nukes Me, She Nukes Me Not and Papal Abdication: A Potpourri of Popery.

Look, I know we are all groaning under the weight of the current cultural condition that insists our obsession with the past can be best conveyed by forcing us to contend with all oral history everything all the time, but if this collection of personal reminiscences from the principals behind Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” video isn’t the best piece of ass music reportage that you see today I implore you to please send me an email letting me in on what other websites you are regularly reading so that I may add them to my media diet.

“Two researchers at York University have worked out a way to communicate between two points using vodka evaporated into the air. They used their system to message the lyrics of ‘O Canada’ between two points, leading them to conclude that in times of need, when there is no cellular reception, it would be possible to text-message using this system.”

“The Vitamix 5200 high-performance blender is squat, black, and rubberized, loud as a leaf blower and powerful enough to pulverize a steer. Its 2-horsepower engine approaches the strength of a lawn mower. At 11 pounds, it’s as heavy as a cannonball. The weight and a sheath of thick thermoset plastic damp vibrations and keep the blender from flying off the counter. A Vitamix blender is a symphony of precision engineering, with motor, container, and blades working in powerful harmony. The container is curved at the bottom to create a vortex that pulls food through the blades, which are surprisingly dull. That’s because a Vitamix doesn’t chop or slice, as we imagine blenders do. Instead, the angled blades, which travel at speeds up to 240 miles per hour, simply obliterate whatever is inside. The process creates enough friction to boil soup. ‘They are essentially bashing the materials to death,’ says Greg Moores, the company’s vice president for engineering, ‘breaking down the cell walls to emulsify them at a molecular level. Theoretically, this is healthier for you because it emulsifies plant matter more than your teeth can by chewing it.’ The 5200, which retails for $449, is actually one of the cheaper models. All told, Vitamix expects to sell 1.4 million blenders this year,” and yet everyone who buys one is still going to die.

You know what? This is super-happy sounding and we are so close to Christmas I can taste it coming back up in my throat. That’s gonna have to be enough. Enjoy. [Via]

“Mike Allen is a silly man who lives in a secret den in a funny little town called Washington. His job is to tell all the other silly men that they are very, very important and strong.”
 — Now that Awl pal Alex Pareene’s annual Hack List is complete you can enjoy the whole thing in one sitting. It’s beginning to click a lot like Christmas!

If you don’t know who the troll is, maybe you are living under a bridge and hurling invective at goats in the hope that one of them might fall into your gaping maw, satiating your terrible hunger with the sweet and bountiful pleasure that only rich, filling goat meat can provide. You could be the troll, is what I’m saying. Don’t act like it’s impossible. Because it’s not. Troll.

by Matthew J.X. Malady

dude slides right up next to me on half-empty train, holds his phone out, & starts looking at his own d*ck-pic selfies.

 — @clairehoworth

People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask.

Claire! So what happened here?

Matthew! A penis, that’s what. A thingie thing happened on the way to the office.

I was headed uptown from an appointment, on the 2/3, somewhere between Chambers and 14th Street. It was just before 11 a.m., so the morning rush was long past, and the train was mostly empty.

I was sitting there, minding my mind, listening to Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” on repeat, and a guy who had been about four seats down on my left somewhat slowly slid into the seat next to me. It wasn’t sudden enough to really scare me, and it wasn’t slow enough to go unnoticed. But nobody with good intentions gets that close on a midday train.

An older woman across from me also saw the sidle-up, and we exchanged “we are savvy, knowing women on this dirty, dirty train” glances. Or so I recall. (In life, everyone, heed a wise lady’s wariness.)

The next thing I knew, this guy had whipped out his phone, positioning it just above my left knee, so that I could — and did — get a full view of the selfie on display. A selfie of his pelfie.

My first instinct — which I was thankfully able to suppress — was to lean in closer and fact-check: “Is that a penis?!”

When I was in high school, my family went to a wedding in Colorado, a bajillion miles more above sea level than low-lying Mississippi, where I’m from. My mother promptly developed a crippling case of altitude sickness. She was horribly ill, bed-ridden, and throwing up constantly.

One of the days we were there, I walked into my parents’ hotel room when she happened to be heaving, her head pushed into a garbage can.

I couldn’t help myself, I don’t know why, but I actually said, “Is that vomit?!” It wasn’t the first time my blurterism acted up, nor would it be the last, but it remains the blurtiest.

“Is that vomit?!” has since become a rhetorical family catchphrase whenever someone says something so obvious that she has revealed herself to be an inveterate moron.

I certainly did not need confirmation of what I was seeing — there could be no doubt. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Well, except Virginia had every reason to question the veracity of Claus. But vomit and dicks are not faith-based concepts. Yes, Claire, that is vomit. Yes, Claire, that is a penis. A giant, shining one, around the periphery of which peeps your seatmate, a crown of hair and a pair of faraway eyes atop a gleaming, bald obelisk.

Anyway, my first-and-a-half instinct prevailed. Which was to wish my husband were with me, and to get up and move to a different train car.

That is awful. People are terrible. Has anything like this ever happened to you before, or is this a first?

This is actually not my first ride at the dick-pic rodeo. It’s my second!

The first time was less anonymous, more peenous. I actually wrote about it for The Daily — prompted by the most famous Weiner-snapper. But since that link no longer exists, I should make sure the story follows me around on the Internet.

The first summer I lived in New York, I met this guy — a hot, smart, rich South American — at a bar on the Upper West Side. He was getting dual degrees at Columbia and the London School of Economics. That night, he recited the opening passages of Lolita and asked me on a date.

Before any date took place, though, his cell number briiiinged a text message on my phone, which I flipped open (it was 2004, and we only had dumbphones back then) to reveal an extremely — I mean, extremely, way, way, way beyond the “me and the pussies” business — graphic photograph. I was shocked, and in no way attracted or aroused. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt and texted back: did someone steal yr phone?

I’m not sure why I thought a thief would text back and say “yes,” but hey — is that vomit?

The answer came back right away: light of my life, fire of my loins.

Okey doke. Not stolen.

That photo turned out to be the first of many, the rest of which arrived after I demanded that he stop contacting me. They continued to appear sporadically over the next two years. I eventually got a New York number and they stopped, but I’m sure some pitiful soul in the 303 area code never has to pay for porn.

Lesson learned (if any)?

Don’t take a well-lit subway at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Or talk to good-looking, smooth-talking, well-read strangers in Upper West Side bars. Or be a woman, apparently.

Just one more thing.

No. No more “things,” please.

Matthew J.X. Malady is a writer and editor in New York.

These Adorable Puppies Will Leave You Unable To Express Yourself In Human Sound And Then When You Finally Regain The Power Of Speech You Will Choose Not To Make Use Of It Because Your Heart Will Have Been So Melted By The All-Consuming Cuteness Of The Puppies That You Will Reevaluate Every Decision You Have Made In Your Life Thus Far Until You Realize That Your Absent-Minded Pursuit Of Financial Rewards And Personal Acclaim Has Been A Shallow Quest Which Even The Most Total And Complete Achievement Thereof Would Not Wind Up Providing You With The Spiritual Satisfaction You Would Find In Devoting Yourself To The Selfless Assistance Of Those In Our Society Who Are In The Most Serious Need Of Aid And You Will Briefly Consider Casting Off Your Worldly Possessions And Joining An Organization Whose Sole Goal Is Ministering To The Neediest And Just As You Are About To Make The Call You Will Notice A Friend Has Emailed You A Link To A List With The Stunningly Clickable Headline “These 20 Photographs Will Leave You Speechless. Especially The 6th One. There Are No Words” And Even Though You Like To Think You Are A Better Person Than That (And Even If You Try To Tell Yourself You Are Only Clicking On It To Make Fun Of It) You Will Click Through And Suddenly All Of Your Good Intentions Will Be Forgotten, Only To Resurface Every Now And Again At Recurring But Rapidly Diminishing Intervals As Brief Feelings Of Unease And Lack Of Fulfillment In Your Life That You Will Forcefully Ignore Until You Finally Die

Puppies!