jezebel blorg

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This Concludes the Jezebel Post-Hurricane Emergency Blog

Oh, HELLO: Jezebel.com is back up and running! And so one tiny, minuscule, inconsequential sliver of our post-Sandy nightmare comes to a close. It’s time for us to head home. Thanks, Tumblr, for letting us hang out. 

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This cat and owl are Best Friends Forever (until one of them decides to eat the other one). This video is so cute and great, and the soundtrack has me chair dancing (NEVER STAND UP TO DANCE WHEN A CHAIR IS AROUND), but the fact remains: Who do you think will do the mudering and who will be the murderer? Something this adorable, this dangerously adorable, cannot last, right?

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Brunswick, one of two 5-month old harbor seals rescued by Seal Rescue Clinic at Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Conn., faces the ocean much the same way we should all face impending Monday mornings -- with a mix of fear and wide-eyed eagerness. via Buzzfeed

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Guess What, Everyone? The Vatican Haaaated J.K. Rowling’s New Book

I think we’d all like to believe that, sitting next to a reading lamp and swaddled in his Holy Snuggie somewhere deep inside the Vatican’s intestinal labyrinths, Pope Benedict Palpatine Vader XVI read The Casual Vacancy with a mounting sense of disappointment that Harry Potter didn’t make at least a cameo appearance. Really, though, who’s to know what the Pope really thought of J.K. Rowling’s adult fiction effort?

All we know for sure is that the Vatican’s official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano fucking haaated Rowling’s latest novel, observing that, although Rowling “has all the qualifications to be the worthy successor of Grace Metaloius,” there’s simply “something missing” in The Casual Vacancy. Get it?? It’s a big-tim Catholic burn.

The negative review probably had something to do with all the book’s sex, swearing, and drug use, although, to be fair, the paper’s resident movie critic really liked Skyfall, so unless the new James Bond movie is actually a Care Bears movie, there’s probably a little more substance to L'Osservatore Romano’s critique. Like, there was zero Harry Potter in The Casual Vacancy. Vatican slams J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy [Telegraph]

-Doug Barry

[jezebel]

Thanks to the the blog NOLA to New York, we have written evidence that schoolchildren can make your heart feel like a marshmallow spinning gleefully in a microwave with just some markers and good cheer. This adorable note (and many, many others like it) come from the fourth graders at the Harriet Tubman School on Algiers Point just a brisk swim across the Mississippi from the French Quarter (don’t swim in the Mississippi because it’s totally gross).  Not to nitpick, but...New Jersey doesn't get any love?  Just a perfunctory, "Be safe"?  Jeez, thanks, kid.  

via Buzzfeed

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Dogs That Chase Their Tails May Be Totally OCD, Says Science

Owning a dog brings many joys and frustrations. For instance, in order to chaperone my dog from puppyhood into young adulthood, I have been forced to perform all of the following duties, sometimes simultaneously: listen to her plaintive wails while she was being crate trained, clean another dog’s poop out of her face fur, brush her teeth, throw a tennis ball until my shoulder made a clicking noise, and watch the vet violate her with a rectal thermometer while she looked at me as if to ask, “Why are you allowing this to happen? Do something!” I’ve also had the pleasure of watching her chase her until she literally vomited from sheer dizziness without realizing that it may be a symptom of a very human problem. She may have OCD.

“Dogs can have OCD?” you ask suspiciously as you watch your dog rearrange your bookshelf by color. According to a study on canine compulsions published over the summer in the journal PLoS ONE, certain behaviors such as tail-chasing and snapping at invisible insects might be manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Study co-author Hannes Lohi, a professor of canine genomics at the University of Helsinki, explained that these compulsions are usually specific to certain breeds (like German shepherds, for instance). In order to figure out what was driving such seemingly compulsive behavior, Lohi and her colleagues distributed a detailed questionnaire to 368 dog owners in Finland (150 of the dogs in the study showed none of the supposedly compulsive behaviors and therefore served as the controls), and also collected blood samples from 181 of the canine subjects.

Researchers determined that several characteristics of canine compulsive disorder are suggestive of human OCD, including the fact that dogs usually begin demonstrating compulsive behavior before they reach maturity. Thanks to the blood tests, researchers also found that littermates have a strong tendency to have the same behavioral dispositions, meaning, says Lohi, “There might be a shared biology behind the development of the disease.” If that sounds convincing to you, then you clearly don’t have the scientific skepticism of Perminder Sachdev, who was all like, “Um, hold up” after reviewing Lohi’s research:

Perminder Sachdev, director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick, Australia, notes that humans, unlike animals, usually recognize these distressing behaviors and attempt to control them. Tail chasing, he argues, is more akin to stereotyped and repetitive behavior, which is often seen in people with autism. “I think that it is difficult to argue that tail chasing is a true model of OCD,” Sachdev says. Lohi, however, plans to check further into dog-human connections in future studies.

So dogs could suffer from anthropomorphic OCD, or they could suffer from anthropomorphic autism. The natural world abounds with mysteries.

Dogs That Chase Their Tails May Have OCD [Scientific American]

Image via Michael Pettigrew/Shutterstock.

-Doug Barry

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Awful Vandals Spray Paint “Baby Killer” on Campaign Headquarters of Eric Cantor’s Democratic Challenger

Maybe you’ve forgotten that it’s election season, what with all the superstorms swirling around the planet, but that’s totally okay because vandals in Virginia were on hand to remind the nation that politics can be really gross by spray painting “Baby Killer” on the campaign office of Wayne Powell, the (pro-choice) Democrat challenging Rep. Eric Cantor (R. Va) for his congressional seat in Virginia’s 7th District.

According to the Huffington Post, vandals struck Powell’s campaign headquarters in Midlothian, but, in case that wasn’t enough stomach-churning awfulness for one morning, a Powell spokesperson also confirmed that staffers reported that someone had demonstrated his or her proclivity for racism by spray painting “N--- Lover” on a sign in front another Powell office in Henrico (police departments in both counties have been contacted).

Cantor, alas, has his talons deeply dug into Virginia’s 7th District, but that just goes to show you how poorly some people handle winning. And racial equality. And reproductive freedom. And not mouth-breathing on all the Dixie Forever mud flaps in Walmart. [via HuffPo]

Image via AP

-Doug Barry

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In Breaking Booze News, Birds Are Totally Down to Party

Birds, as you may or may not already be aware, love to party, and by “party” I of course mean eat fermented rowan berries until they die from alcohol poisoning. According to a Saturday report in the British Medical Journal’s Veterinary Record, drunk birds react pretty much exactly as drunk people, if people had wings and thus the added danger of trying to fly in between buildings while intoxicated.

You might, at this point in your Sunday news perusal, be wondering why this is at all newsworthy and maybe also thinking that we shouldn’t make fun of bird for enjoying the occasional cocktail after a long day of preening and harmonizing. I’m glad you’re such a critical-minded reader. Researchers determined that birds can get drunk on fermented berries after investigating the mysterious, mid-air deaths of 14 blackbirds that apparently just flew into each other.

Wild theories abounded as to how this could have happened. Were we witnessing an outbreak of avian flu? Were the birds trying to kill themselves before the Rapture? Nope! Bird coroners detected a fermenting smell coming from the dead birds and discovered, much to their chagrin that each bird had rowan berries in their stomachs. Further testing showed that at least one bird had pure, unadulterated booze in its system.

One bird, which was captured alive and observed for a few days, stumbled around for a while before recovering, helping confirm for concerned ornithologists that the birds were merely involved in a deadly berry bacchanal. [via NYDN]

-Doug Barry

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Elizabeth Warren Is Pulling Ahead of Scott Brown and Can Hardly Stop Herself from Gloating

At least according to this gif Elizabeth Warren seems positively wracked with glee that she may very soon get to do victory donuts in front of Scott Brown’s house with her Harley (I don’t know if Elizabeth Warren rides a Harley, but if she did I can’t imagine how else she’d use it). According to the Western New England University Polling Institute (which is an organization that exists), Warren leads Republican rival Scott Brown 50-46 in the Massachusetts Senate race. Her, knock on wood, victory party will feature juice and cookies, though I’ve heard a delightful rumor that the juice is spiked with grain alcohol and the cookies have weed in them. Three cheers for election season! [via WaPo]

-Doug Barry

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All of a Sudden, Beasts of the Southern Wild Is the Most Relevant Fable Ever

In a crass attempt to exploit storm-weary New Yorkers (kidding!), director Benh Zeitlin came onstage for a Q&A after a special screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild in Astoria. What once seemed like a whimsical (and extremely parochial) fable about residents of a South Louisiana town trying to patch up their community after a hurricane now, in the wake of Sandy, seems like it has the potential to resonate with pretty much everyone who lives in a coastal region and therefore can look forward to experiencing an annual “Storm of the Century.”

Zeitlin told the Wall Street Journal’s Barbara Chai that, though his film sprung out of the storm-ravage Gulf Coast, Sandy proves that the world’s weather (and thus, the world’s sea-dwelling population) is changing:

"For me, this film wasn’t about the past, it was about the future. When I was writing the film it was in 2008 when we had Gustav and Ike, really bad hurricanes not in New Orleans but in the South where we shot the film. It was inspired by a moment of just realizing that storms used to come every 100 years, then they came every 50 years, now it’s like every three years. It was really about a future where storms are a perpetual threat.

I do feel South Louisiana is the first place to deal with this, but that’s what it is, the first. The world is changing, the planet is changing, and this is something that’s going to become a big part of everybody’s lives. It’s crazy to come up here and see the same thing happen in a place where no one was prepared for it or expecting it."

Let’s hope the mostly-underwater Manhattan envisioned by the mostly-terrible (except for Jude Law!) A.I. is something that we can collectively avoid. [via WSJ]

Image via AP

-Doug Barry

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Here’s a horrifying (and probably NSFW) ad promoting veganism for dudes as a way to increase their sexual stamina, which works by turning their previously sad, shriveled flesh junk into massive, phallic produce. I mean, that seems to be the real takeaway, no? Hey guys, with a plant-based diet, you will be able to leer at women, like, all day, waving your genitals at them while you grimace in a vaguely menacing way. [via Buzzfeed]

-Doug Barry

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BTW, Pippa Middleton Is Something of an Epicurean

Critics -- the Telegraph book critic Christopher Howse who looks like a Santa Claus that’s been turned into a Dracula Santa Claus (incidentally, a sure-fire title for a spec script for Supernatural (you’re welcome)) -- have not been kind to Pippa Middleton’s new book, Celebrate, which is about how much Pippa Middleton loves to write, cook, and throw well-mannered tea parties with her stuffed animals.

If Celebrate was actually a novel narrated by a young recluse who’d only ever had stuffed animals for friends, it might be worth checking out, but, as it is, the book is only worth digesting in small bites courtesy of a Sunday article in the Telegraph, which is for the best because Pippa, fyi, is something of a foodie.

I’m a real foodie – something, I think, not a lot of people know about me. For instance, the last dinner I cooked for friends was slow-braised pig’s cheeks. I didn’t tell anyone what it was in case it put them off, but it was a huge success. Pigeon-breast salad and venison stew also appear regularly on my dinner-party menu.

Not only that, but she also used her unsuspecting (and plush) friends as test palates for kitchen experiments, like hare jugs (which is British for breast of rabbit, obviously) and seafood pies:

My friends at Edinburgh University were often my guinea pigs. I knew I could try anything on them as friends don’t really mind if something doesn’t quite work out, like my jugged hare (a recipe I won’t be trying again in a hurry). But the salmon and prawn pillow – which I have included in my book, Celebrate – always went down well. In fact, any pie was popular. As was making sushi as a starter, which was fiddly but well worth the praise.

If that’s not incentive enough to buy Pippa’s party book, rumor has it that with each purchase of Celebrate, Pippa will throw in one free birthday cake, an old-world British confection made from kippers, marmalade, and haughty disdain for flavor. [via Telegraph]

-Doug Barry

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Enjoy a picture of marathon runners doing something practical and useful for a change.  From Gawker:

Here’s a mob of New York City Marathon runners packed into the Staten Island ferry terminal. There’s no race today, instead, they’re all going to help out with relief efforts in the battered borough. [Image via Paul Sailer]

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Lindsey Vonn Determined Far Too Awesome a Downhill Skier to Compete with the Dudes

The International Ski Federation has told Lindsey Vonn, whose race-day nails are very glittery, that under no circumstances will she be able to compete in the men’s World Cup downhill race Nov. 24 at Lake Louise, which, for all you geographically challenged readers, is in Canada, the cozy knit cap of the continental United States with a special earhole cut out for the cauliflower ear that is Alaska.

Though the Federation (which, when you put it that way, sounds like a nefarious governing body that presides over intergalactic affairs) did say that Vonn could request to be a forerunner, i.e. official course-tester, it rejected her request to compete in the men’s World Cup race, officially insisting “one gender is not entitled to participate in races of the other.” There you have it, folks -- the nefarious Inter[galactic] Ski Federation has spoken, and though Vonn could totally be included in the men’s race as a forerunner, she then wouldn’t be eligible to actually compete in the women’s race.  

According to the BBC, the much more congenially-named U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association petitioned the Federation to consider Vonn’s request, and is pretty disappointed by the decision to not let Vonn compete. Also pretty bummed about the Federation’s intransigence is President of Alpine Canada Max Gartner, who told the BBC that, not only would Vonn’s inclusion in the men’s race be a boon for the popularity of downhill skiing, but that Vonn, of all female skiers, was uniquely qualified to compete in the Lake Louise event:

Lake Louise is the perfect venue to have that comparison because Lindsey has as much experience on the mountain as many of the men have had. I hope Lindsey gets a chance to fulfill her dream at a later date.

Nbd or anything, but Vonn is a four-time overall World Cup champion, so...what’s the problem? In an earlier statement to the New York Times, Vonn said she simply wanted the chance to do for her sport what Annika Sorenstam did for golf in paving the way for women to compete against men. Contrary to naysayers who put her “far outside” of the men, Vonn obviously thinks she could finish in the top 30 and just wants a chance to prove it. The Federation, however, bent on intergalactic ski tyranny, has taken great pains to ensure penis-wielding skiers all across the universe will not have to answer this opposite-sex ski challenge and therefore can continue to sip their hot cocoa in the warmth and safety of the lodge while a winter squall of gender inequities beats futilely against the window. Lindsey Vonn denied chance to race in men’s World Cup downhill [BBC]

Image via AP

-Doug Barry

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Police Officially Charge NYC Nanny with Murder

Just in case you had started to believe that the horrifying story of a New York nanny stabbing to death two of the children in her case was simply an awful collective nightmare we had before Hurricane Sandy, here’s an update: Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny in question, was charged Saturday with murder.

According to the AP, Ortega had recovered enough from her apparently self-inflicted wounds Saturday to be interviewed by police, who then formally charged her with two counts each of first- and second-degree murder for the stabbing deaths on Oct. 25 of 6-year-old Lucia Krim and her 2-year-old brother, Leo. Though Ortega had come out of a coma last Sunday, police delayed filing formal charges because she was still intubated (which, according to police spokesman Paul J. Browne, is pretty much standard operating procedure).

In an earlier statement to police, Ortega mentioned “friction” in her relationship with her employers, Marina and Kevin Krim, and apparently complainted about having housekeeping duties heaped on top of her childcare duties. Since plenty of people go through the daily grind of living and working -- which almost definitely includes doing a whole lot of unpaid, one-for-the-team extra work -- there’s probably a little more to Ortega’s stabbing motives than a tale of simmering class angst. Police charge NYC nanny in stabbing death of kids [AP via USA Today]

Image via AP

-Doug Barry

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Did you remember to set your clocks back? Neither did I -- I’ve been up since forever. Thanks a lot, Benjamin Franklin. [via Bad Astronomy]

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So SNL writers apparently found a great work-around for Louis CK’s purportedly awful rehearsals -- they simply crafted sketches in which the self-deprecating comedian could do as much stand-up as possible, such as this sketch in which Lincoln is imagined as a show on FX about our sad-clown 16th president, you know, the socially awkward one who couldn’t make any black friends, was married to a historically insane woman, and carried around this overbearing sense of dread that someone south of the Mason-Dixon Line would murder him. [via NBC]

-Doug Barry