This is mostly just a news and picture dump, because the world is strange and must be commented upon.

There’s a tattoo parlor in Baltimore offering free Hillary Clinton tattoos to anyone who wants one. Which is better than, like, getting a John Edwards or Wesley Clark tattoo, for sure. Still not as cool as a Dennis Kucinich, but that’s only because you could get one of that dude on your calf and have it be life-sized.

Also, there’s a new memoir about gay hip-hop stars. It doesn’t name names, but if you’re really into it, you could try and match up the pseudonyms with the real people they’re meant to represent.

One of my conversational ice-breakers over here, when I’m talking to Englishmen I don’t know very well, is to try to determine if you’ll see a major MC come out of the closet before you see a Premiere league footballer do the same. The consensus among the English is that, by default, it will be the former, because you’ll never see an openly gay footballer. I had thought that maybe that revealed an ignorance of American mainstream hip-hop culture, to think that you’d ever see, like, a G-Unit member come out, but I think it actually revealed an ignorance of British soccer culture on my part. Because a rapper, even one whose work is mundane and terrible and boring, is still an artist, still motivated toward self-expression. And while he’d lose sales and get a lot of shit from peers, etc, he’d still be able to do what he does. But a soccer player would be ruined, even worse than would happen if it were, like, an NBA star in America. Because those fans are some harsh motherfuckers. You’d have thirty thousand fans all chanting poofter! poofter! every time he was on the football pitch. So, as a betting man, I reckon you’d have to go with the rapper before the footballer. Sometime in 2055.

Cracked Magazine apparently still exists as a website. They do photoshop contests like Fark, and this one is about campaign ads. Most of them aren’t funny, but this Ron Paul one was good.