There were cuts across the board over at Brides.com (my former employer, as of today at 10:46 AM). Here in the NY office (1166 Sixth Avenue), members of the online ad sales team were let go (reps and associates), along with at least one rep for Brides Local Mag. Likewise, the Brides.com sales team got the kibosh out in Chicago.

Even better, they're pulling the same stunt that they did over at Brides and are only offering 2 weeks for every year of employment for severance.

Burn the shit down man.

Oh right. And I'm drunk. And packing. Suh-weet. Let the funemployment commence.

Hire these people, quick.

Major Mackerel—remember him, from back in the day? 'Dutty Bungle?' 'Pretty Looks Done?' Well if you really liked dancehall you probably would. But in an interesting insight into what musical artists do after their time in the spotlight is over, Major Mackerel's now living a quiet life in Brooklyn. Until yesterday, when he fell victim to that most urban of crimes: a samurai sword attack, by an irate neighbor. Major, what happened out there?

"I was singing my song, then I see him with a sword," he said.

This is the most notable Ninja vs. Reggae Artist incident since Super Cat was slain in a shuriken attack in a Cincinnati suburb in 2003.
[Pic: Myspace]

Way to just stand around chuckling and taking digital photos, pedestrians below. Even before you knew it was a stunt! Jeez Suge Knight could probably take over the entire nation of New Zealand in like four days. [via Adfreak]

Hyman went and got one of his nude models arrested yesterday in the Metropolitan Museum (enthralling blurry video of the crime at that link, btw). New York Post vagina beat journalist Justin Rocket Silverman got the explanation from the heroic security guard, who detained the stripping harlot model:

"There were little kids in here watching the whole thing."

Mmm hmm. And riddle us this: When Zach Hyman took nude hipster pixxx it was all fine and dandy, but as soon as he has socialite (we're just saying that because her photos appear on Guest of a Guest) model KC Neill strip at the Met, it's straight to jail. A bit of subculture favoritism? Well Zack Hyman takes nudes of all types of men and women all over, so don't blame him. Pigs.

[Pics: NBC New York, Zach Hyman]

Andreas Oscarsson was the founder of PokerListings.com. He reportedly had homes in SoHo as well as in Sweden. He was shot to death in his bedroom on August 3. News reports make the crime sound like a targeted hit on Oscarsson; various theories are being floated (with little concrete support, that we can find), and most of them seem to indicate that this was not a total surprise. From Poker News Daily:

TwoPlusTwo member Loctus, who lives in Sweden, commented, "Police [have] been talking on the radio about it saying that it's quite probably [something] from his past that has caught up to him in this unfortunate way."

Bluff Europe Magazine reports a fantastical-sounding rumor that someone else named "Andreas Oscarsson" was killed last year in what may have been a case of mistaken identity; they also say there are rumblings of enemies:

As of now there are no further details except that police are uncertain of the exact motive, but reports emanating from Sweden suggest 'concrete threats' were made towards Oscarsson, according to friends and colleagues in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

[Pic: Pokerlistings.com]

It's Dick Cheney! For some reason, former Vice President's Secret Service protection has been extended, though no one knows for how long. Also: these extensions must be approved by the commander in chief, so Obama is protecting Cheney from someone. Or maybe he is protecting all of us from Dick Cheney?

There's a recession on, have you heard? No longer can we afford our steroids and Gold's Gyms. It's all dumpster diving, "30 Day Shred" videos streamed over Netflix, and, to splurge, public workouts in liquor store parking lots:

Rex Weiner, 58, an unemployed screenwriter in Los Angeles, and his friend Victor Perez, 22, a manager at a liquor store, decided a few months ago that they wanted to get fit without spending a lot of money. He and three other friends sought a personal trainer to work them out in the parking lot in front of the Liquor and Food Mart, where Mr. Perez works...
[The trainer] says this is the first time she has trained anyone in a parking lot.

She will not last, with her mental weakness. America is turning inward, pursuing its destiny as a lean and hungry warrior nation. Why? Because the war is coming:

Purchases of guns and ammunition are surging across the country. Nearly four million background checks — a key measure of sales because they are required at the purchase of a gun from a federally licensed seller — were performed in the first three months of 2009. That is a 27% increase over the same period a year earlier, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

No one knows exactly what is behind the gun-buying craze. Some buyers say they are stocking up for themselves in anticipation of new gun-control laws, while others say they're worried about deteriorating public safety as the economy worsens.

Race war? States rights war? Tea party war? Nobody knows yet. Prepare for everything. Do yer pushups.

While the rest of America milled around jumbotrons set up around the National Mall, contributors who raised $300,000 or more for Obama's inauguration got VIP tickets to private meetings with America's Hope Tsar and his smiley sidekick Joe the Biden. And there was basically no security at those special meetings, the Washington Post reveals.

Three contributors who raised $300,000 or more for the inauguration said they were never asked to show identification to retrieve dozens of tickets, including VIP passes that allowed them and their guests to meet privately with Obama. One of the three said ticket checks were so lax that no one noticed when, after a breakfast for contributors, a friend whose name hadn't been submitted for a background check tagged along into a VIP room to take pictures with Vice President-elect Joseph Biden.

There are two levels to this story: one, that no one considers rich liberals to be a threat. And two, that the rich liberals were concerned not so much with the safety of our president than they were with the terrible idea of being infiltrated by commoners.

But after passing through a magnetometer outside the hotel, members of the group said they were directed to a public sidewalk and told to find their way across Ninth Street to buses waiting in a convention center parking lot. Along the way, they said they mingled with throngs of spectators streaming toward the Mall. The VIPs were not screened again or asked for identification, they said.

Suzi LeVine, a former Expedia executive, said volunteers lined her path to the buses. Even so, she said, "I was definitely thinking, 'Is there a way that people could be infiltrating this group?' "

We see a wonderful political thriller or possibly 24 plot involving a shadowy George Soros-like figure.

[Video compiled by crack Gawker video intern Josh Rachford]

CNN interviewer: Another fascinating finding is that you are more likely to be in a plane crash if the pilot comes from a particular country. What's that all about?
Gladwell: Yes. That's a fascinating thing. The single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes is not the plane, it's not the maintenance, it's not the weather, it's the culture the pilot comes from.

The pilot, after deploying fancy "research" and "records" and "analysis," claims this is "a reckless and untrue statement... absurd... I am extremely disappointed that somebody as influential as Malcolm Gladwell said it. In addition to being incorrect, it encourages the widely held notion that non-Western airlines are by their nature less safe than those of North America and Europe."

He also slaps Gladwell for not giving the Koreans enough credit for reforming their aviation system and for overplaying the importance of culture in bringing down a Colombian jetliner.

Which is fair enough! This guy is, after all, a pilot. And Gladwell probably was talking out of his ass in that quote from television, as people on television sadly tend to do, to fill dead air or not look dumbstruck. But Gladwell is, foremost, an author rather than a CNN talking head; and, anyway, who ever said the popular nonfiction writer was supposed to be the last or even second-to-last word on any scientific topic, any more than Jon Stewart would have (or want to have) the final word on any piece of news or Andrew Sullivan would think of his blog as anything other than provisional and part of a "superficial medium... reward[ing] brevity and immediacy?"

Leave the last word to scientific journals (not yet killed by evil evil Gladwell!); at least Outliers made the Salon pilot write this interesting blog post, got a doorman and cop to argue about the topics in Blink; and got the n+1 kids possibly briefly interested in something other than decadent literary self-absorption. As Sullivan wrote, of himself and his ilk:

He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.

It's not just this latest "PUNCH IN 'FACE BOOK,'" as the Post eloquently puts it. The media has been warning us of internet dangers forever!

• Myspace: Log on and have your children raped.
• Facebook is filling up with creepy old people (who are probably rapists).
• Also Facebook will ruin your engagement.
• Flickr: A place where baby rapists look at pictures of your babies and masturbate to them.
• The government uses bloggers to hide its role in the Kennedy assassination.
• Nasty internet comments in England could cost you eleventy billion dollars.
• And dangerous hackers are hacking your email and looking for pictures of your children, which is why we should all be thrown in jail.

"A resource (marshmallows) exchange task was introduced whereby pressing a lever would give another monkey a marshmallow; hence this was a task that involved a bit of altruism. Not only were monkeys taught about the game. Two specific monkeys were conditioned (entrained), such that one always pulled the lever for his monkey partner (thus being a very generous partner) and the other never pulled the lever for his partner (stingy). Then they let these conditioned monkeys play the game with other monkeys. Monkeys that played with the highly generous monkey figured it out and quickly took advantage of him. Monkeys that played with the stingy monkey also figured it out quickly and subsequently shunned or were aggressive toward him [...]

"Other work suggests that monkeys do not have a fully developed sense of fairness. There are signs that they are acutely sensitive to getting less than their fair share, such as if they see another monkey getting more than they get. If you have two dogs and give one a biscuit treat, the other will look at you with a mixture of expectancy and indignation. Getting less than your fair share is called being underbenefited, and many animals seem to have that.

"But a fully developed sense of fairness means that you are uncomfortable with being overbenefited as well. That is, it bothers you to get more than your fair share. Here is where humans seem to part company with other creatures.

"What happens when monkeys overbenefit from an exchange - do they experience guilt, embarrassment, shame, or try to rectify the situation? Apparently not." [Psychology Today]

Greedy, hungry, and with no sense of fairness. Oh, they're cute all right.

This was not Obama's regular campaign plane, which is being overhauled. It was a loaner, having previously been used by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY.

How convenient! Anyway, look for our exciting theories on how exactly Hillary almost pull this off in our new screenplay, Prematurely Inflated Escape Slide on a Plane.

I wanted to contact you today and see if Gawker would be able to run a story about a hate crime that occurred early Wednesday morning at the trendy NYC nightclub 1 Oak which is owned by Richie Akiva and Scott Sartiano (dated Ashley Olsen, and Jamie Lynn Siegler) -

Early Wednesday morning (June 18th, 2008) at approximately 2:30AM - two individuals were attacked by a man inside 1 OAK. and were called "faggots" - victim number 1 had to be rushed to the hospital due to massive blood loss. Victim number 2 had no visible wounds at the time.

Victim number 1's friend wanted to call 911, however the two owners of the nightclub, Sartiano and Akiva, told the friend NOT TO. 911 was called regardless. The club owners then wanted to rush the victim into a car when they knew the ambulance was coming. A minute goes by and the attacker was able to walk right out of the club, without security questioning or anyone's interference, even after the victim's friend screamed out "that's the guy!"

The attacker turns out to be someone that frequents the club often and knew the doorman and the staff, since he was able to walk right into the club and said hello to the doorman in the beginning of the night. When questioned, the owners claimed to not know who the attacker was, and provided no information.

Victim number 1 ended up with 5 stitches, a broken nose, busted upper and lower lips, and lacerations around the face. Victim number 2 suffered from acute migraines due to an attack to the back of the head. A police report was filed the next day. However the club owners did not seem concerned, and did not supply the name of the attacker and did not phone the victim to follow up on the progress or the status.

The owners of the club did not seem to care for what happened within their club, and only was concerned that the police was not informed and no press comes out of this, they wanted to retain their public image.

From 1 Oak's PR firm, Shadow PR:

Unfortunately, the situation that occurred at 1OAK was out of the establishment's control. 1OAK is cooperating fully with the necessary parties and hope the matter is resolved immediately. This inappropriate behavior is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

[Interior pic via Men.Style.com]

In some nations, like China, there are restrictions on blogging in general. Burma has arrested hundreds of people who may be bloggers. Sometimes no one knows if someone has been arrested or not. Also the report doesn't even mention Sheila!

We've covered blogger-arrests (despite the total lack of interest from American blog-readers!) rather extensively recently. Be careful where you tumble log, people.