Shain Gandee, the breakout star of MTV's redneck reality show BUCKWILD, is dead at 21.

Today is April Fool's Day, so when it comes to pictures of toddlers crushing cigarrettes, we tread carefully. Still, here are several pictures of a chill ass toddler smoking a cigarette lit for him by his mom in Shanghai's Fuxing park on Easter Sunday.

By now, you know all about Two Scoops, the new short film that Robert Rodriguez is making about a pair of extremely attractive ass-kicking twins named Lola and Lucia for Project Green Screen in conjunction with BlackBerry. The first act, in which he's asking regular people such as yourself to submit a performance of one of the roles, is underway. Greg Stees showed you his. And readers Aaron and Artie showed us theirs.

Prosecutors said this morning they will ask for the death penalty for James Holmes, the alleged Aurora theater shooter.

Screw you, New York Times /
This is weak, joyless garbage /
Nor is it haiku.

Supporting an institution (such as marriage) over actual human lives isn't a very Christian thing to do, but it is a very Catholic thing to do, and so Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan upheld the Church's interest in protecting marriage from homosexual demons in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday on This Week. This is what a losing battle with a twist of internal conflict sounds like:

Glee star Cory Monteith, 30, has admitted himself to rehab for substance addiction, according to a statement from his representative.

This video of one saxophonist encountering another on the New York City subway is, maybe (probably?), some kind of fake set-up thing, but it's nice to imagine a world where subway buskers are constantly being challenged to prove their worth as musicians. I'm thinking, like, some kind of publicly-funded agency of saxophonists and acoustic guitarists and doo-wop groups and Mariachi bands wandering the subways to engage buskers in musical battle; if the buskers lose they are no longer allowed to ask for money in exchange for the entertainment they provide. Just spitballing here. [via Reddit]

If Georgia and Tennessee went to war, here's how it'd play out. (Spoiler: Georgian occupation and Volunteer insurgency.)

Today is April Fool's Day, a magical 24-hour spell during which companies spend lots of money to make stupid changes to their websites as a joke instead of as a business decision. In the spirit of public service we'd like to remind you: Don't trust anything you hear today. "Google Nose BETA," the search engine for scents? No. YouTube shutting down in preparation for finding the best video of all time? No. Twitter charging for vowels? No. Google Maps' new "treasure map" setting? Not real, and also not really even a joke. As usual, tech companies are the worst offenders in the publicity-in-exchange-for-saying-things-that-aren't-true game, but marketers have been gearing up for this for weeks, too. And TV: Good Morning America had a segment on a gorilla language this morning, and the Today Show had a Chris Brown "Breezy Flash Mob" complete with an interview. (Oh, no, wait: Today actually interviewed a violent and unrepentant abuser and hosted his insane fans outside its studio.) The prize for politics-related April Fool's is a tie between Sen. Ted Cruz who made a horrifically ugly April Fool's image macro for his Twitter, and the Yale Daily News, which straight-facedly announces that Hillary Clinton is joining the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. (Ah: that famous New Haven sense of humor.) I don't have a clear memory of anything that happened before, say, 2005, so I have to ask: Was April Fool's Day always this excruciating? Or is this all—the endless stream of bad non-jokes, the news coverage of the bad non-jokes, and the grumpy bloggers whining about the above—the internet's fault? April Fool's! I already know the answer: Human beings have always been embarrassing and unfunny, well before the internet. [Lifehacker | NYT | USAT]

When a man cat-sitting for a friend was attacked while attempting to feed his houseguest (the cat), he took it well. And by took it well, I mean he decided to sue the cat's owner for the entirely reasonable sum of $100,000.

As we've noted before, it's possible we'll all die from the bird flu. That established, here's some cheery news — At least two people have died in China after contracting a strain of the bird flu that previously hadn't affected humans.

Cat Marnell reportedly sold her memoir, How to Murder Your Life, to Simon & Schuster for $500,000.

In what was surely a bizarre scene for the patrolman who made the bust, a man wearing a full Easter Bunny costume, including a view-obstructing rabbit head, was stopped by the California Highway Patrol for driving without a helmet on Saturday. San Diego CHP officer Adam Griffiths spotted the Easter Bunny, who – to complete the odd scene— was driving an old-fashioned motorcyle with a side car.

Four people were injured after a man drove a car 20 feet into a Wal-Mart and attacked shoppers with a blunt object.

Moments ago Louisville Sophomore Kevin Ware suffered a highly disturbing injury during a game against Duke in the NCAA tournament. The injury, an unusual one for basketball, happened when he was landing after contesting a shot. He shattered his shin, briefly exposing both bone and flesh.

Creepy footage of two people being abducted in New York City.

Sometimes restraining orders just aren't enough to get ex-boyfriends to stop sending horny middle-aged men to your house.

Even long-dead elephants can't catch a break from the ivory trade.

The New York Times's obituary of acclaimed rocket scientist Yvonne Brill was awful and sexist, so they changed it.