Tomorrow, my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes will play their annual rivalry game against unaccredited Iowa State University, whose record currently stands at 0-2. The Hawks did not look great in their first two outings, but they are 2-0 nonetheless. That discrepancy prompted the University of Iowa Campus Police Department to tweet a funny knock-knock joke at the ISU police, the punchline of which plays out in the image above. I don’t think anyone will disagree that the police of Iowa City are total dicks, but I’m with them on this one.* Today is Friday, and winners are winners regardless of how they got there. Won’t you elide the details with me?
Of course, you can’t have winners without a significant number of losers. I’m not saying Valerie Stamey has lost her battle against Ravalli County, but she lost her job as treasurer, lost the Republican primary in her re-election bid, and dropped her lawsuit against auditor James Woy. Also, the sheriff’s department auctioned off her house. They would have served her with papers for the county’s civil suit, but as of press time no one can find her. Her husband says she’s in another state but won’t say where. So those of you who bet on “Stamey flees the state, never to be seen again” as the outcome of this fiasco can finally collect your winnings. RIP, favorite story in Montana politics ever.
Those who bet on “Dan impregnates a traveling saleswoman and has to stop having fun forever” can keep holding their tickets, thank you very much. As I move closer to an old-fashioned vasectomy, researchers at the Parsemus Foundation are closer to a newfangled, reversible one. If this thing works, it’s going to be great. How many young men are not responsible enough to put on condoms but sufficiently responsible to get their tubes blocked in a one-time procedure? I’m going to say a substantial portion of those currently getting women pregnant and bailing. Here’s my genius marketing tip that the Paresmus Foundation can have gratis: make the initial procedure free and charge for the reversal.
Meanwhile, in another kind of dick, Jeff Koons has announced plans to make sculptures out of designer handbags and donate them to charity. Props to a Charming Stranger for the link. Even in his philanthropy, I cannot like Jeff Koons. Maybe it’s because he keeps saying stuff like this:
Art and philanthropy are intertwined because they are both about a way of life. It’s about an understanding of your internal world, your own position and needs and also the external world, the world that’s vaster than your own being. It’s about bringing those two things together. This is a way of really looking at the world and saying, with my means, with my perception and my understanding of joy and pleasure, how can I receive a sense of greater fulfillment in this life through a commitment to helping others?
Like art, philanthropy is about bringing together the two halves of the universe: everyone in the world and Jeff Koons. There is something symmetrical about his popularity in the financial industry, though. The people who make millions selling derivatives but produce nothing tangible love the guy who sells derivative objects for millions.
Sculpture has become decadent and empty. Fortunately, journalism remains vibrant and meaningf—oh, dammit. Everybody freaked out Wednesday afternoon, when Lifehacker announced that 5 million Gmail passwords had been leaked to a Russian Bitcoin forum. Update: They might not be Gmail passwords, and they might actually have been leaked years ago. Update: the password checker Lifehacker told everyone to use suspiciously came into existence two days before the leak was announced. Update: Lifehacker got over a million hits on this story without verifying any of the information presented therein. None of the original elements is necessarily true. They won Wednesday, though.
They’re total manipulators. But that’s what winners do.
Gulp. I may have interviewed more than once one of those of billionaires mentioned in the Animal New York link.
*scurrying off to hide in a closet*