Animal Collective is another one of those bands that happened too late for me, i.e. after the point in my life when I was still able to process any new bands beyond the most superficial level of “oh, I like it” or “what is this shit?” It’s a terrible thing that will happen to you too one day, young people. You’re cruising along taking in every new experience and cataloging it in your mind and adding new information as it comes along and then suddenly, BAM, you’re full up and anything else that you want to remember you need to write down somewhere and refer back to. So anyway, Animal Collective is one of those bands for me. I think I get them confused with Grizzly Bear? One of them has a member named Andy Panda or something? I can’t keep track, and — here’s the worst part — I have stopped actually feeling bad about not being able to keep track anymore. But this song? Oh, I like it. [Via]

“When we emerge on Bedford Avenue, Lyonne seems terrified. ‘You notice how everything just slowed down?’ she asks. ‘Why is everybody moving so slowly?’ We pass a blonde, dreadlocked hippie playing guitar. ‘A handsome young person you could probably sleep with is the Williamsburg equivalent of a homeless guy,’ says Lyonne. ‘Look at this guy. You could totally take this guy home for a hot meal.’ Seconds later, we pass a sofa on the curb. ‘He has sex with women on the sofa in broad daylight, while reading The Tin Drum and strumming his guitar,’ says Lyonne. ‘Welcome to fucking Brooklyn. Does anyone over 50 live here?’”
 — Natasha Lyonne, dream girl.

by Nicole Cliffe and Mallory Ortberg

It has been three years and three months since the publication of “Negroni Season,” one of four short anonymously published tales in the series “The Worst Boyfriend In The World.” For those just tuning in, it was about this guy, and he was the worst boyfriend in the world. Fortunately for her but unfortunately for us, our heroine moved on with her life. But there’s always one thing to fill the silence that follows any creative endeavor that ended too soon: fan fiction.

“But it’s only thirteen-thousand dollars,” he said, looking up at me from the sofa. “Thirteen-thousand dollars and we can have our own coconut oil factory.”

“I thought it was a farm?”

“Factory, farm, whatever. It’s — you can harvest and process and package the coconut oil all on the same property — the name isn’t the point. The point is it’s only thirteen-thousand dollars to give me a chance to follow my dream.”

“I thought your dream was to create an app that lets you know if any of your Twitter friends have ping-pong tables.”

“A person can have more than one dream.”

*

We had been together seven years before he finally told me when his birthday was.

*

“I need to be with someone who really inspires me, you know?”

“I just don’t think that’s a good enough reason for us to have a three-way with Marisha Pessl.”

“When did you become so hard? I don’t remember when you became such a hard person.”

*

“She’s my mother,” I said, unclear on whether or not he was joking. Sometimes it was hard to tell with him. He shrugged.

“I just don’t see why you can’t take a cab to the hospital. If I drive you there, then I have to drive you back, and it’s Purim. You can’t ask me not to drink on Purim.”

“Today isn’t Purim.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re missing the point.”

*

The day he started referring to eleven a.m. as “Whiskey Sour Power Hour” was the same day my cat went missing. “I don’t remember you having a cat,” he insisted, “and I don’t mean to be rude, but your face looks really weird when you cry.”

*

“Give us your wallet,” the mugger said.

When no response came, he rubbed the blade along my throat, causing a thin line of red to appear.

“I made that wallet out of duct tape, I’m pretty into it.”

“Okay, just hand me the money, then. I’ll kill her, I swear.” I could feel his hand waver.

“This is happening really quickly. I need a minute to clear my head.”

Ten minutes later, as the mugger and I stood in the alley, we realized he wasn’t coming back.

“Shit,” he said. “I mean, I’m not usually in the business of telling people how to live their lives, but you could do better.”

*

“Actually,” he said, “in fairness, the bike share program was kind of my idea.”

“I don’t ever remember hearing you talk about it,” I said.

“Well, I did. I even drew it out on a napkin.” He started rummaging through the piles of old magazines and Gatorade bottles and socks littering his desks. “I kept the napkin somewhere. I still have it.” His head disappeared underneath a stack of notebooks. “Fuck,” he said, somewhat muffled.

“I don’t think they’ll take a napkin as evidence,” I said.

“Fuck.”

*

“It’s Singapore Spring,” he said patiently, by way of explanation, then resumed vomiting.

*

I stood over the coffin and brushed his hair back from his face.

“Now it is always Negroni Season,” I said, and walked out of the church and into the sun.

Nicole Cliffe and Mallory Ortberg are proprietors of The Toast. Drunk dude photo by John Goodridge.

The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company http://t.co/8VokdkOp8f

— Michael Roston (@michaelroston) August 5, 2013

I’m listening to the conference call. WaPo staffers asked not to tweet for 10 minutes.

— Romenesko (@romenesko) August 5, 2013

wait sorry is this a joke?

— Rachel Fershleiser (@RachelFersh) August 5, 2013

People who purchased the Washington Post also liked these products

— Jason Linkins (@dceiver) August 5, 2013

They can’t make a non-shitty Kindle Fire but they can buy the Washington Post????

— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) August 5, 2013

★★★★ A smooth blue river and an energized toddler hailed the coming day. The sunlight was keen; little girls walked up Broadway speaking German, with pale and apparently secular kerchiefs on their fair heads. Just west of the Park, a whole family on rollerblades was getting out of a Chevrolet. Within the Park gates were cyclists and runners and ballplayers and eventually people playing catch with a plastic jai alai set — everything except the children’s soccer class that had been advertised as daily, but which turned out not to be daily on Sundays. Unstructured and non-didactic playtime, then. Broken glass glinted brown and green and clear on the way up the face of the rock outcropping overlooking the playground. On the way back down, where lumps of the schist stuck up along the path of least resistance, wear-brightened crystals flashed. In the playground gateway, a skylight framed hot white clouds in a rectangle of red brick. Children splashed through the concrete channels of the play fortress. The scene was scored for solo violin, followed by solo saxophone, with an ensemble chorus of creaking swing set chains. Outside the Columbus Circle entrance, a man slept on a shaded bench with his face to the wall, a cane on the ground below him and hospital bracelets around his wrist. Pigeons and sparrows poked their beaks though holes in a garbage bag. The late afternoon achieved a melancholy flawlessness. Leaves whispered over the schoolyard and the din of a wedding carried from the new synagogue. Squirrels peeked into the trash cans, a little self-consciously. One chased another in a figure-eight knot, down and around and up the tree, over and over. The toddler advanced on the squirrels until a squirrel began advancing in return. The clouds were vivid pink and gray again at sunset, with two airplanes passing each other high up in the last of the sunlight, like brilliant silver planets. Then the clouds drifted away to leave a full, even spectrum from the purple zenith to the red horizon, not omitting the green.

“Monkeys living in a Dutch zoo have been behaving strangely over the last week, sitting listlessly with their backs turned to visitors and even refusing food. Something may have spooked them, with theories including a scary T-shirt, a runaway snake or a UFO.”

“Hackers can harass users of a smart toilets in Japan by exploiting the power of a free Bluetooth app. The advanced ‘Satis’ automatic toilet can be remotely operated by a free app available on Android smartphones that lets people raise and lower the toilet set as well as trigger a bidet function and flush. The unlikely Bluetooth security vulnerability warning came from IT security firm Trustwave, which said the high-end Satis toilet can be operated remotely.”
 — If there’s still an Earth left to discover millions of years from now, I hope this is all that future explorers learn about our civilization.

“Everybody always shifts their priorities and business plans every 12 years or so.”

“Millions of Britons are currently not talking to at least one of their neighbours, a survey has shown.”