Toilet seats: your penis belongs dangling in front them, not crushed underneath them, but try telling that to America’s dumb kids. A new study published in urology journal BJU International (summarized in Reuters under the ominous headline “Falling toilet seats: Rare but growing risk for boys”) found that emergency room visits prompted by toilet seats slamming down onto little boys’ penises with the righteous fury of an angry God increased by a rate of 100 per year between 2002 and 2010.

In 2010, 1,707 people were admitted to the ER with such injuries. 97% of them were boys under 8. 100% of them were male, because girls are smarter and more careful with their penises.

Study author Benjamin Bryer suggests that number could be “the tip of the iceberg” (just the tip) because there may be boys whose parents do not take them to the ER following the injury. (Bryer notes that “the vast majority” of the patients were treated in the ER and then sent home, with no evidence of permanent damage.)

At this rate, eventually every boy in America will have been admitted to the ER because he can’t figure out how to pee without injuring himself. Children will emerge from their mothers, pink and screaming, and a toilet seat lurking nearby will zoom in and snap shut on their little peeps.

In order to Save Our Penises, Breyer suggests parents swap out their traditional wooden, ceramic, or thousand pound iron toilet seats made of swords for “slow close” or “soft fall” models. Some manufacturers offer U-shaped options that preserve the thrilling clatter of a slamming toilet seat, but remove the more dangerous elements (such as the front part).

Alternatively, you could also groom your kids to develop lightning fast ninja reflexes, since Breyer notes that most toddlers “just don’t have the reflexes to move fast enough” when a toilet seat comes swooping down.

Or you could only have baby girls.

[BJUI // Image via Shutterstock]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

Proving once and for all that people who pray for Boy Meets World sequels pray harder than people who pray for an end to world hunger, God has answered the cry of His most highly favored children: the Disney channel announced Monday that it had ordered a full series of Girl Meets World, the much-hyped follow-up to its 1990s TGIF bildungsroman.

Unlike the original series, set in a bland tree-filled suburb called "Philadelphia," the new show will take place in New York City. Cory Matthews is now a 7th grade history teacher. HIS DAUGHTER'S 7th grade history teacher. (Embarrassing! But maybe sometimes a source of comfort. We'll have to watch and see.) Topanga owns what is described in a press release as "a trendy afterschool hangout that specializes in pudding." Remember when Topanga was accepted to Yale? Now she runs a pudding store for tweens. She used to be an impassioned child activist and now she slings pudding while the sons and daughters of wealthy Manhattanites suffocate one another with sticky vanilla kisses. It's funny where we end up sometimes, wanderin' down this road that we call life, isn't it Topanga?

It was previously confirmed that Cory's sage old stalker, Mr. Feeny, would appear in the show as well.

Girl Meets World will debut on the Disney Channel in 2014.

[Image by Eric McCandless/Disney]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

Remember back in 2010 when 33 Chilean miners spent 69 days trapped just a few yards above Hell in a caved-in desert mine, sacrificing their health and sanity so that the world might have hilarious topical Halloween costumes? What's the first thing you think of when you think of that incident? JLo? That's the first thing JLo thinks of too.

The Hollywood Reporter has just confirmed that Jennifer Lopez will star alongside Antonio Banderas in an upcoming dramatic adaptation of the miners' ordeal, titled The 33. The film will be produced by Black Swan producer Mike Medavoy.

Banderas will star as miner Mario Sepulveda, nicknamed "Super Mario" for his energetic demeanor in video journals the men sent to the surface to let everyone know they were alive and still capable of generating unique, marketable content. There's no word yet on JLo's role. Maybe she'll get a stylish bob haircut and play one of the miners. Maybe she'll rim her eyes with the blackest kohl and play the mine. Maybe she thought it was a movie about some "Chilean minors," and as she separated her hair into two thick pigtails, and contorted her face in the mirror so that the faint parentheses around her lips went taut, she mumbled confidently, "I can still play 17, right?"

Last time the world checked in on the miners, most of them weren't doing so hot, though they were excited about this movie. That was back in 2011, before JLo had even committed. Imagine how excited they are now.

[Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

A Manhattan real estate agent inadvertently exposed more than the beautiful brickwork inside a $2000 Upper West Side apartment he listed Friday, when he uploaded a photograph of a large* penis alongside shots of a sunny living room and renovated kitchen as part of an online listing.

When contacted by Gawker, the agent said he was not aware a photo of a penis had been posted with one of his apartment listings. He politely denied the penis was his and speculated that his account had been hacked. (ATTENTION HACKERS: Stop hacking into real estate agents' work emails and posting pictures of a random penis on one of their apartment listings. Rude.)

According to the listing, the penis apartment boasts high ceilings, stainless steel appliances, and a decorative fireplace. The dignified building which houses the penis apartment was erected in 1899. No pets are allowed in the penis apartment.

The photograph of the penis has since been removed from the penis apartment photo album.

*Gawker's in-house penis expert maintains that the there is not enough penis on display in the photo to confidently characterize the member as "large," but allows for the possibility that it is.

[via StreetEasy]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

In honor of Father's Day, a day when mothers across America buy cards for their husbands and then search all over the house for their children so that they can sign the card—they literally don't have to do anything but sign the card, look, here I already bought it—TIME magazine assembled a team of famous fathers to write open letters to their daughters. There were old dads and young dads and politician dads and musician dads and good dads and Bruce Jenner. Most of the letters were sweet, if a little dull.

One of them was a passive-agressive master class in embarrassment.

TOM. BROKAW.

Unlike most of the daughter letter recipients, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's three children are grown. He opens his note with standard fare about how privileged he is to be their dad, and encourages them to use the holiday to reach out to people who have lost their fathers.

Then he segues into a litany of complaints disguised as story time.

His beautiful daughter Andrea is careless with other people's belongings.

Andrea, did I yell when you left the keys to the family car on a back tire in the Bronx and it was promptly stolen? Maybe I would have been angrier had it not been just as promptly recovered.

His brilliant daughter Sarah hooks up with déclassé thieves.

Sarah, we’ll always have that New Year’s eve where I encountered your boyfriend walking through our house, drinking my precious magnum of Dom Perignon straight from the bottle.

Then he just starts talking about their menses.

The physical changes, the onset of menstruation, the attitude of adolescent boys, the hair, the cosmetics, the shoes (!)—and then, the greatest gift of all, pregnancy and birth.

Classic Brokaw dinner table fodder. Reminiscences about the onset of menstruation. A "hilarious" story about the time Andrea got the fucking car stolen in the Bronx. What ever happened to that boy Sarah used to date? The disrespectful one with a drinking problem. Oh, right, she married him. You girls sure are something. And look at those shoes. How much did those shoes cost me? Pass the scotch. Happy Thanksgiving.

Father's Day, whatever.

[TIME // Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

The Wrap reports that Bullock has just rejoined (previously stalled) talks to portray orphanage proprietress Miss Hannigan in Jay-Z and Will Smith's upcoming adaptation of Annie, a musical about a billionaire industrialist who hallucinates his home is haunted by a terrifying girl-spirit with moonstone eyes.

Quvenzhané Wallis has already signed on to play the titular Annie, a role Will Smith recently revealed was intended to go to his daughter Willow, before she decided she didn't want it.

Jamie Foxx is on board to play New York City mayoral candidate Benjamin Stacks, a variation on the classic Daddy Warbucks character who hopefully will not send any dick pics to anyone (except his lovely assistant Grace Farrell).

The film is expected to hit theaters in December 2014.

[The Wrap // Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions to caity.weaver@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

Today it was hot and muggy outside, and when my co-worker returned from lunch, he was a bit sweaty. To cool himself down, he unwrapped a new sponge from under the office's kitchen sink, wet it, and put it in the freezer to "make an ice cube." After retrieving the cold sponge from the freezer and using it to cool himself down - hold it against his forehead and neck - he microwaved the sponge for 60 seconds to kill all the germs, and put it back in the kitchen on the sink.

I told him that I think this is really gross - not the germs necessarily, because I know that nuking the sponge kills the germs - but the principle of subjecting everyone in our office, unknowingly, to his old sweat-sponge. He contests that the nuked sponge is just as clean if not cleaner than the existing sponge, and rattles of a long list of other germy things (subway poles, cell phones, door knobs, etc.). Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

If you have to microwave something to sterilize it after using it in a non-traditional way, that’s a good indication that you shouldn’t be doing whatever weird thing you’re doing with communal property.

You know what else you can put in the freezer to make an ice cube? WATER.

As you say, your coworker is technically correct that the nuked sponge is just as clean, and possibly cleaner, than it was to start with. You could also make the argument that, if you squeezed out a firm little turd right on your coworker’s desk, then disinfected the entire area with bleach an hour later, that desk would be as clean if not cleaner than it was to start with. Despite this cold, hard science, your coworker still might feel a little unsettled using his desk as, say, a sushi tray. This is essentially what he's done to your dish cleaning tool.

Yes, the sponge is physically intact. But he has destroyed its honor.

Let’s ignore the layer of grime for a second and dip below the surface of the sponge, into what, in this metaphor, is just more sponge: what you have described is a staggeringly inefficient way to cool down.

Scene:

As the lunch bell dings, your coworker returns to work from slurping soup inside a sauna, dripping with sweat. He scans the office—his eyes traveling past a box fan, a stack of sweat absorbent paper towels, and an A/C vent blasting a column of frigid air from the ceiling—and hones in on the sink. He removes a sponge from the undersink cabinet, frantically rips off the plastic wrapper, and runs it under the faucet. He places the soaking wet sponge in the freezer, alongside several trays of pre-formed icecubes.

~30 minutes elapse~

Somehow still dripping with sweat—he hasn’t cooled down at all since setting foot inside the office, which is located in the fiery depths of hell—he removes the now frozen sponge from the freezer. He puts it on his forehead and his neck as his body temperature plummets down to basal levels. He re-wets the sponge, and places it in the microwave for 60 seconds to kill the bacteria.

~30 seconds pass~

He continues waiting 30 seconds.

~30 seconds pass~

Using the tips of his index finger and thumb, he flings the boiling hot sponge back into the sink. It is clean now.

End scene.

This just doesn't make sense. If his body is able to sustain that much heat for that long, poor communal kitchen etiquette is the least of this man's problems; he needs to see a doctor.

To me, it sounds like cooling off was a residual effect of what your coworker was really trying to do, which is show off and spark conversation with an attention-grabbing display. People get hot every day and most of them don’t remedy the situation by making quirky sponge ice cubes. This behavior is weird enough to justify a playful (even if it’s only a one sided-ly playful) argument, but probably not so weird that you would refuse to ever speak to him again because of it. Now that he’s gotten some play out of This Interesting Thing He Did, tell him you would feel better if he just spent 40 cents on a new sponge, and kept that one for private cooldown uses.

(By the way, if he’s so cavalier about germs, why did he feel the need to unwrap a sparkling new sponge for his special project? Shit, girl. We nailed him.)

This is my personal social networking pet peeve. I spend my days surfing the interwebs and often come across funny pictures, articles, youtube videos, etc (I’m unemployed, cut me some slack?). Then I post them to my facebook page so my friends can get giggles while they’re slaving away at work. Some of my friends who want to share them use the "Share" button on facebook, so I get credit for my hard work of interwebs surfing. Others just repost the link like THEY found the hilarity. I find this quite rude. There are several repeat offenders. I’m considering calling them out in a Facebook-etiquette status update. I just want credit where credit is due! Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

You can haz major insecurity issues.

You’re upset that people are sharing work (that you didn’t create) without crediting you (for not creating it)? I’m upset that no one has ever written in with this absurd grievance before because it’s hilarious. THIS IS THE FAKEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD.

You’re not conducting hundreds of hours of independent primary source research here, cobbling funny pictures together on a wing and a prayer; you are finding a .jpg that someone else found and sharing it. You are doing exactly the same amount of work (ctrl + v) as the person who follows you. Congratulations: you're an artisanal content farmer.

Whom do you credit when you share a funny photo of a goat that looks like Ian McKellen? The site where you found it? The person who posted it on that site? Do you track down the owner of the original goat photo and ask his or her permission to share it on your Facebook page? Do you contact Getty Images to workout a one-off deal wherein you will pay them $200 to host a photo of Ian McKellen at the Vanity Fair White House Correspondents Dinner Afterparty Cocktail Reception (necessary for goat comparison purposes) on your Facebook page for up to one month? Do you submit a formal request to Sir Ian McKellen to use his likeness? Is it enough for you to be credited by name in subsequent shares of this photo, or have you also prepared a brief bio?

What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here? Building your personal brand on Facebook?

“Once I get enough shares, I’m gonna monetize this puppy,” you think, posting a picture of a puppy. "What is Facebook, really, if not a gallery of curios exhibiting my exquisite tastes?”

What benefits are your Facebook friends swindling you out of by sharing your shared content? No one has ever, browsing their friends’ Facebook pages, thought “The misheard lyrics section of Matt’s Facebook wall, apparently curated by his friend Kara, has been simply sublime lately. How can I track down this fantastic Kara? I would like to hire her.”

I firmly advise against posting a status update in which you angrily bemoan the fact some people don’t credit you for finding the pictures you find. If you do, I guarantee that screenshots of it will get passed around, to friends of friends, to friends of friends of friends, and on and on. Some will share it and credit the person who showed it to them. Others will simply repost. No one will care though, because caring about that is dumb.

It goes without saying that the time you spend posting clever YouTube videos to Facebook could be better devoted to something more productive, like your job hunt. BuzzFeed is hiring something called a “Rewind Intern,” a position that sounds like it would consist solely of posting LOL and OMG pics that prompt people to REMEMBA WHEN. Perhaps this would play to your strengths.

If you still feel this issue requires some kind of action on your part, you could always stop posting hilarious pictures on your Facebook Wall in silent protest. But I suspect that most people will not notice the change.

There’s lots of pictures out there.

(submitted to icanhas.cheezburger.com, by: unknown)

Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions here. Image by Jim Cooke; source photo from Shutterstock.

The 84-year-old line cutter who was recently rewarded for jumping the queue at Publix with the largest single jackpot in American lottery history ($370.8 million), may have bought dinner for a restaurant full of strangers over the weekend. She also may have continued hoarding the millions all to herself, not givin' anyone shit. An employee of the Buddy Freddy's restaurant in Plant City, FL told the Tampa Bay Times that a woman who "sure looked like" Gloria MacKenzie paid for dinner for 180 people on Sunday. That woman told the employee that she sure wasn't Gloria MacKenzie; just some other mysterious 84-year-old millionaire from central Florida buying everyone dinner for no reason.

This presents us with a valuable case study on how to buy dinner for a restaurant full of strangers.

Item 1: Who Deserves My Free Dinner?
The mysterious wealthy woman who looks very much like, but who is possibly not, Gloria MacKenzie purchased her mass of dinners at 4 p.m on Sunday. In this way, she ensured that she would be giving her free dinners mostly to the elderly (HER BEST FRIENDS) and their fidgety grandchildren. Who else but this very specific subpopulation is eating dinner at 4 p.m. on a Sunday?

Careful timing ensures you are treating only those people you want to reward with free dinner. If you want to buy dinner for teenagers on curfew, plan to eat in time to get everyone home by 10. If you want to buy dinner for people who work the graveyard shift, plan to eat around 6:30 a.m. If you want to buy dinner for people having affairs, plan to eat around 2 p.m. on a Thursday in a town where no one asks questions.

Item 2: How Can I Get Maximum Free Dinner for Minimum Money?
By treating everyone to the early bird special, not only was Gloria MacKenzie or the mysterious twin of Gloria MacKenzie making everyone's night late afternoon, she was also budgeting responsibly. If you are a millionaire but not a billionaire, consider buying everyone a round during happy hour or judiciously applying a "25% off regularly priced menu items" coupon to your total thousand-dollar bill. Don't feel pressure to buy dinner at a fancy restaurant; people will be just as happy for free mozzarella sticks as they would be for free Malpeque oysters, and those fancy folks are probably expensing their dinners anyway.

Item 3: Will Not Tipping Rock the Boat?
Schmoria SchmacSchmenzie gave each of the restaurant's five servers a $50 tip on Sunday. $50 sounds like a lot of money, especially in relation to $5 or negative dollars, but, assuming the total bill amount was $2,600 as the Times write-up implies, it actually works out to a little less than a 10% tip for each server; they probably would have faired better if everyone had just paid for their own damn food. HOWEVER, these calculations only hold if no one but Schmoria left a tip. Hopefully, tippled off their—now free—half dozen or so iced teas (unlimited refills at Buddy Freddy's) and the general aura of largesse in the air, all the patrons tipped generously.

Here's a tip: Let everyone know the tipping score by standing on your chair and declaring magnanimously "Dinner's on me, but don't forget to leave a little something for the fine servers who helped us out tonight!" Maybe lead the room in a round of applause. Everyone's feeling great.

Item 4: Should I Let People Worship Me as a God?
The most curious part of the happy free dinner story is that the walleted crusader never revealed her identity to the restaurant patrons she had treated to free dinner. If she really was Gloria C. MacKenzie, the 84-year-old $370.8 million lottery winner from the next town over, it's not exactly a big secret that she has a lot of money. The Buddy Freddy's manager told the Times that people started clapping and hugging their benefactor after it was announced that dinner had been taken care of, so everyone knew which human being in the restaurant was responsible for picking up the tab. If you don't want people to know you're rich, buying everyone dinner is a bad way to go about that, because buying everyone dinner is not something that poor people do.

Item 5: Can I Pretend to Be the Real Dinner Buyer if I'm Not?
You can do whatever you want — it's Wednesday! But why would you? You're only increasing your odds of getting robbed in the parking lot and, unlike an actual millionaire, you cannot afford security.

[Tampa Bay Times // Image via flickr/Vassil Tzvetanov]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

When asked about his infamous Taylor Swift microphone grab, West declares the incident a product of an instinct that has "only led me to complete awesomeness at all times."

It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness.

In a rant about the importance of accuracy to historical records, West complains that he has never won a Grammy against a white person, an interesting statistic that is also untrue.

I don’t know if this is statistically right, but I’m assuming I have the most Grammys of anyone my age, but I haven’t won one against a white person.

But the thing is, I don’t care about the Grammys; I just would like for the statistics to be more accurate.

Among the Grammys he has won against competition from white artists: his very first, in 2005. (He beat the Beastie Boys for Best Rap Album.)

You want the historical record to be right.

Yeah, I don’t want them to rewrite history right in front of us. At least, not on my clock.

Perhaps the most quintessential Kanye moment, though, is when he explains (in the third person), the relationship between himself and Steve Jobs. Specifically: that while Steve Jobs was the Steve Jobs of Apple, Kanye West is the Steve Jobs of literally everything.

I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.

He also reveals that he offered to storm the Grammy stage and grab the microphone from the Dixie Chicks in 2007, when Justin Timberlake lost to them for Album of the Year. ("I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things.")

And he calls himself a nucleus.

[NYT // Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

In 2002, Craig David asked the world "What's your flava? Tell me what's you flava (aaah)." Now Ben & Jerry's is performing similar research, asking the question in a less smooth and infinitely more confusing way.

The New York Daily News reports that the ice cream company has just launched a new "City Churned" campaign, which will culminate in the creation of city-specific flavors for New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

Residents of these cities (or anywhere! Hail from whatever ice cream town you want, Jay Gatsby) can vote online for which random non-ice cream products they want to be incorporated into Frankenstein's city-specific sundaes ("SIXPOINT BEER or BANANAS?" reads one NYC option). Votes will also (allegedly) be monitored by a team of marketers who will keep track of things like whether they see more people riding fixed gear or freewheel bikes around San Francisco, so that every time you ride a freewheel bike in The Mission, you are inadvertently contributing a vote for cinnamon to this weird promotion. The winning flavor combinations will be sold for exactly one day in their namesake cities, rendering the seemingly gargantuan task of vote tabulation even more bewildering.

But whatever! Most people love icecream and everyone lives in a place. If the place where you live were an ice cream flavor, what ice cream flavor would it be and why?

[Image via Shutterstock]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

I agree with the other the commenters who've pointed out that, if anything, the presence of another person in the bathroom would have led to more hand washing.

For God knows what reason, you people don't like washing your hands. Maybe you don't feel you have 20 seconds to take away from your action packed day to devote to splashing around in a sink. Maybe you are a Dark Age peasant transported to our dimension through a wrinkle in time. Maybe you think there is something about your hands that makes them inherently cleaner than everyone else's. "Hey," you say, "I'm washing my hands right now!" "Hey," I say, "DON'T FUCKING LIE TO ME."

A recent study from Michigan State (via LiveScience) found that of 3,749 people observed using public toilets in one college town, only 198 (5.3%) washed their hands with soap and water for at least 15 seconds, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Actually, the CDC recommends 20 seconds.) Most people (38.2%) spent 5-8 seconds washing their hands, the equivalent of showing up to class but not participating. One in 10 (the cool kids with dirty hands) just walked out of the bathroom without doing anything.

Here is a brief list of things that do not count as "washing your hands."

1) Rinsing your hands with water and then drip drying them is not washing your hands.
Washing your hands without using soap is like vacuuming a rug without plugging in the cord: a curiously elaborate pantomime that is also ineffective. And yet, people love it! According to the Michigan State report, 23% of those observed wet their hands after using the bathroom, but didn't wash them. Why? Wetting your hands in the sink subjects you to the worst part of washing your hands (dealing with wet hands) while removing the step that makes the exercise worthwhile (killing germs). Hand wetters, it would seem, stagger around the Earth in search of a "magic water" that will clean their hands simply by being briefly rubbed on them. Little do they know, this "magic water" already exists. It is also known as "liquid soap" and it is usually stored right there next to the regular water. Use it to wash your hands.

2) Realizing that your hands look clean and then not washing them is not washing your hands.
About 10% of the people observed didn't even pretend to kinda wash their hands after evacuating feces and urine from their bodies in a restaurant bathroom. Now, we've all experienced the unbelievable speedball high that comes from realizing your hands look so clean that no one will even know you didn't wash them. But pause for a moment and consider: Are most people washing their hands because they are visibly covered in poop? You wash your hands to stop the spread of germs and bacteria invisible to the naked eye. So slow your roll and wash those hands.

3) Rubbing hand sanitizer into your visibly dirty hands is not washing your hands.
Sanitizer after using the bathroom is tricky because 1) it can be an effective tool for reducing germs on your hands, and 2) packaged in tiny clear bottles, it seems like a futuristic space tool that should be able to clean your hands better than you can. Officially, the CDC advocates the usage of the alcohol-based hand sanitizer—containing at least 60% alcohol—as a back up cleaning method if soap and water are not available, noting that santizers "do not eliminate all types of germs." They are also less effective on hands visibly covered in grime, just in case you are one of those people who thinks rubbing marinara sauce into your hands with melon-scented glitter hand sanitizer is the same thing as removing marinara sauce from your hands.

Every day is a birthday when you wash your hands: As mentioned above, lots of people try to wash their hands, but give up a few seconds in. The CDC advises humming the "Happy Birthday" song all the way through—twice—in order to help you while away the recommended 20 seconds. Use this time to insert your own name into the birthday song, since you probably never get to sing it with your name under normal birthday circumstances. (Unless your name is, say, Jessica and you were born in 1986, in which case you probably sing it constantly because all your friends are named Jessica except for Amanda.) Enjoy the feel of your name on your tongue, as you slide it into the birthday song.

You can also use this time to quiz yourself on your friends' birthdays. If you imagine singing the song to your friend Ian, you should also take a second to remind yourself that his birthday is March 2 and you missed it—oops—Happy Birthday, Ian.

If you're feeling industrious, use the hand washing window to create a new copyright-free birthday themed song. Maybe something like "Birthday, birthday — it's your birthday! Birthday, birthday — hey hey hey!" stretched out to twenty seconds.

Important: Like wetting your fingers with water or brushing your hands on your clothes, simply humming a birthday song does NOT make your hands clean. Do not skip the crucial step of hand washing.

Above all, remember: being touched by someone who hasn't washed their hands is gross. So learn to wash your hands, dum-dums.

[Michigan State University via LiveScience // Image via Shutterstock]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

The British royal family's waking nightmare Pippa Middleton proved once again last week that you can take the girl out of the color coordinated party supply business but you can't remove her hands from the ass of her lover, because they have been firmly attached there with rubber cement. Photographs have surfaced of the younger, bronzer Middleton grabbing the butt of her boyfriend, banker Nico Jackson, in front of some car in London. Just on the street. Just Pippa grabbing butts on the street.

E! reports that the couple had just finished playing a rousing (arousing) game of tennis when they grabbed one another and began engaging in the kind of behavior that would get you kicked off the middle school dance floor so fast your head would spin. Pippa recently wrote a column for Vanity Fair about how she loves tennis and everyone thought she meant love like "enjoy," but now we know she means love like "fuck." Pippa loves tennis so hard. Pippa loves tennis at midday on the street in sunny London, next to a stranger's parked car. Pippa loves tennis and she doesn't mind if you take freaky photos of her doing it.

In other news, Pippa's niece or nephew, the future queen or king of England, continues to live inside Kate Middleton.

[Image via SplashNews]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

On Sunday, the New York Times ran an uplifting story about a brave California teen who doesn't go to regular school anymore and one time she spilled spaghetti on the carpet. It's Kendall Jenner!

"Kendall Jenner," declares the Times headline, proudly. "A Sister Who Does More Than Keep Up." What is the "More" exactly? Unclear at this point. Seems like less, from the article, which says nothing. It's Kendall Jenner!

"Look who landed on an entire page in the Sunday New York Times today," tweeted Kris Jenner, mom of Kendall on Sunday. And land there she did, right on the page, SPLAT. You can almost see Kendall, dazed from her fall onto the page, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "Where did I land? What happened? Why am I here?" Great questions, Kendall, all great. Who knows the answers? Not Kendall and certainly not the New York Times, but we're so happy to have you anyway because it's Kendall Jenner!

In the article, Kendall Jenner. Kendall Jenner article. Kendall Jenner words and Kendall. Jenner Jenner (Kardashian) Seacrest Kendall. Sisters Kendall here okay and Kendall. Kendall TV Kim Kendall? Kendall page, Kendall.

But that's not all the New York Times addresses in its full page article about Kendall Jenner. The newspaper of record also devotes some coverage to her modeling, which she is reportedly taking "seriously." She is taking it "seriously" because she has lots of good model things like brown hair and eyes and a body full of legs. The "raw material" of a person/model.

The plot twist is that unlike other celebrity/aspiring models, Ms. Jenner actually has the raw material. She has big doe eyes, shiny dark hair and full lips. She is 5 feet 10 inches, very slender and very leggy. She has a real shot, even without her family connections.

Over the course of the interview Kendall fidgets by methodically ripping up a cardboard clothing tag she found somewhere. She says things like "my plate got really full" and "I was just like, I don’t know." She participates in the following eerie exchange (or, perhaps more accurately, one-way transmission) between herself and one of her publicists, plural:

“I think you always talk about how appreciative you are,” one of her publicists said.

“Yeah, how appreciative I am,” Ms. Jenner said, plucking at her tights.

“And that you enjoy the life you have,” the publicist said.

“I enjoy the life I have,” Ms. Jenner said, zipping and unzipping a sofa cushion.

Ryan Seacrest, a 38-year-old man not a member of the Kardashian family who acts, for the New York Times, as a secondary source on Kendall Jenner, promises that the 17-year-old will "at some point" be depicted dating on her family's show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which he executive produces.

At the end of the interview, Kendall says she is hungry (her growling belly the opposite of that plate she spoke of earlier) and leaves the room.

She is really going places.

[Image (Kendall on the left) via AP]

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Drunk people are good at lots of things. They are good at ordering drinks. They are good at cajoling other drunk people into dares. They are good at chasing adventure. They are good at combining all three of these talents to work in frenetic, exciting concert. They are less good at piloting helicopters.

This past December, a Russian businessman's private helicopter crashed into a forest an hour northwest of Moscow, killing him and two passengers. At the time, Russian papers described the chopper's owner, 35-year-old Fedor Tsarev, as "notorious"; shortly before his death, he was charged in connection with all sorts of things the cartoonish villain of an animated kids movie would be charged with: deforestation, illegal mining, corruption, making million-dollar toothpicks out of Truffula Trees, setting FernGully on fire, etc. Once, when police tried to arrest him at his mansion, he fled the scene by helicopter. Neighbors reportedly complained to the Moskovskij Komsomolets newspaper that he would sometimes land his aircraft in public parks and soccer fields where children played.

Six months later, Zee News reports that an inquest into the December crash has identified the probable cause of the accident: drunk, bad piloting. But not by Tsarev.

Testing revealed Tsarev's blood alcohol level at the time of the crash to be .09. However, officials don't believe he was the one operating the helicopter as he was found sitting in the front left seat, rather than the pilot's chair on the right. Perhaps because friends don't let friends drive (a plane) drunk, Tsarev apparently handed the controls over to one of his passengers. Unfortunately, the passengers were even drunker than he was, with BACs of .16 and .22.

Of course, even if Tsarev hadn't been intoxicated, he wouldn't have been qualified to fly the helicopter on the night of December 8; the medical documents he used to obtain his license were forged.

[Zee News via NYDN // MKRU // Gazeta.ru // Image via Shutterstock]

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One of the noblest, most versatile, and yet most underused story-telling mediums available today is the Beyoncé gif.

For the rest of the week, I'm going to be on vacation, visiting my boyfriend's family.

Here is the story of what will happen, illustrated via Beyoncé gifs.

Our flight leaves early in the morning, so when I wake up, I will be like "This is crazy!"

I'm going to take a shower.

And get dressed.

I will ask my boyfriend if he's ready.

And grab my bag.

Then, on the steps, I'll say the same thing I say every day which is "I THINK I FORGOT PHONE."

But actually I will have had it on me the whole time.

I will be chill on the plane like I always am.

And as his parents drive us back to their house, I'll look out the window and sigh "I've been to Madrid so many times, but I've never seen Madrid."

And they'll be like "...We're in Kentucky."

And I'll cover real quick like "...I know."

When we get to their house, I'll run inside and touch everything because I've never been there before.

And I'll have wine with his mom—hey Karen.

My boyfriend will drive me around town to show me things like where he went to elementary school.

And we'll visit his little brother, Solange.

We'll go to a lake.

But you can't get in the lake because it's filled with water moccasins.

I will probably lie down a lot.

And eat all their snacks.

After we leave, I will write a nice note thanking them for their hospitality.

Because that's called "manners."

Please illustrate an event of your choice via Beyoncé gifs in the comments.

[Image via AP // .gifs via BeyonceGifs.Tumblr.com]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

Bear the bear thought that, maybe, in New Jersey, he would finally make a friend. On Monday morning, he ended up in Montclair, not a bad little town, with its own art museum and a Whole Foods and big green backyards, perfect for a bear and his friends to play in. Scared and alone—his first time in New Jersey's 60th-most-populous municipality—he began lumbering around, hoping that a friend would find him.

Alas, all of his potential friends were immediately ushered indoors. The New York Times reports that children across the Montclair school district were ordered to be kept inside Tuesday morning, staring at the cloudless blue sky from inside their classrooms, like bears in cages. Preparations for a fun-run to raise money for Africa were postponed. Cool eighth graders' plans to discreetly smoke cigarettes behind the science trailer were put on hold. There would be no morning P.E.

"The Montclair Police Department has notified us that there have been bear citings in Montclair," the superintendent explained in a note to parents. Unfortunately, for many, the typo of "citing" for "sighting" overshadowed the importance of the communication. (In a subsequent note, the superintendent apologized for the error, saying she "[trusts] that it did not overshadow the importance of the communication.”)

But back to that wandering, woeful black bear. Each time he was spotted, police rushed to the location to sound horns and make noise at him; a misguided attempt to drive him toward a nearby wildlife reservation that only succeeded in creating a party vibe. The Times reports that the scene buzzed with "a general carnival atmosphere."

The bear wandered around near the Whole Foods, before he remembered he didn't have any money. He shimmied up a tree and imagined all the things he and his friend would say to one another, like "You're my friend and I love you." He stood in a backyard and waited for his life to begin.

He was in a backyard, looking bored. He was up a tree, looking reflective. He was in the street, looking sad. The bear even made it near a Whole Foods market, where he was spotted looking confused, according to one posting.

"That's just my face," the bear would think later, after hearing the things people had been saying behind his back. "But now I really do feel sad."

By midmorning, the 18 month old animal had been tranquilized, tagged, and, in classic Jersey fashion, given a tattoo he would not remember getting (for identification purposes).

The children were free to go outside.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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If you maintain a cordial to friendly relationship with any creepy nerds on the Internet, you know that many people are freaking out about an episode of Game of Thrones that aired on Sunday, in which many things happened. The most shocking thing that happened—the thing that people saw happen with their own two eyes and still cannot believe—is that Will Champion, the drummer from Coldplay, had a small cameo in the episode.

You can see him here, in this soundless clip (minor spoilers, like the fact that the Coldplay drummer appears in this episode), banging away at a drum with the commitment of a Ren Faire employee who refuses to break character, even to tell you where the bathrooms are. He played a drummer with no name who has no lines, the same character he plays in Coldplay. Fans are calling Sunday's episode the most shocking of the series, possibly due to Champion's unbelievable cameo.

Weirdly, as the NME points out, Will Champion is not the first British alternative rock band member to have appeared in Game of Thrones this season. Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol appeared as a soldier in one episode, and Morrissey makes frequent cameos as the three eyed raven who haunts dreams.

[Images via HBO/Getty]

Great news if you've been meaning to have a baby with Daniel Radcliffe for a while but have yet to broach the subject with him because you're worried he'll say no or won't know what a baby is or won't know who you are. (It's me, Daniel Radcliffe. The girl who lives in your cupboard. I'm ready to have a baby with you.) He is ready to have a baby with you. He's been waiting for you to ask him all along.

In a new interview with Time Out: London (excerpted by People), Radcliffe, who turns 24 next month, says he "definitely" wants to have a home full of children (BECAUSE THEIR TINY FINGERS ARE SO ADEPT AT STITCHING HIS FINE CRAVATES haha just kidding probably) and hopes "to get started on it" before he turns 30.

It's not exactly clear what Radcliffe means by "it" here: Does he want to already have a child by the time he turns 30? Does he want to have impregnated a human female by the time he turns 30? Does he want to have had sex with a woman by the time he turns 30? Does he want to move past a handhold by the time he turns 30? What does he want?

One thing he definitely (maybe) wants is a wife who is taller than him (he's 5'5) so that his offspring can "be good at sports," and just all-around superior human specimens.

Previous evidence (i.e. past girlfriends) suggests Daniel Radcliffe prefers women who have a body and a face. Nothing too fancy here.

He also told Time Out he loves getting beaten up.

"I love getting beaten up. I encourage people to just hit me."

So get out there and beat your way into his heart.

[Image via Getty]

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