Michelle Shocked skipped an Internet radio interview and then freaked out on Twitter. Now things are getting fun!

In a move that is predicted to tip the balance of power in the entire U.S. fast food industry and spark an advertising war between top players that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, McDonald's is set to roll out the "biggest launch of 2013," which will reach into every corner of American dining culture: some chicken wrapped up in a tortilla.

If you were hoping to pick up a cat-skin rug for your mancave through the Kiwi auction site Trade Me, it seems you're out of luck. The last one has just been sold to the highest bidder for NZ$955 (~USD$800).

The man who introduced the CIA's Chief Technology Officer, Ira "Gus" Hunt, at yesterday's GigaOM Structure:Data conference in New York City thought it would be funny to quip, "If you don't give a big round of applause for our next speaker, he's gonna find out and it's gonna go on your permanent record." It was supposed to be a little joke, but then Hunt took the stage for his speech on "Big Data," told everyone that the CIA is now attempting to "collect everything and hang on to it forever," and suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore.

A freak hail storm passed over Brookshire, Texas, early yesterday morning, dumping thousands of stones, some as large as quarters.

Fat dick Roger Ailes is the subject of a deeply, deeply terrible new biography by magazine writer Zev Chafets. You can gauge its value by the fact that Chafets saw fit to acknowledge his "debt" to Fox News chief flack Brian Lewis, who, when he's not busy feeding Chafets bullshit about Roger Ailes, has been orchestrating a smear campaign against people who are writing less adoring biographies of Fox's Dear Leader. It took me about 30 minutes of reading before I came across the book's first documentable lie from Ailes: His claim that he was never paid to be Richard Nixon's message guru and tie-picker.

Sound the end-of-days air horn — Robert Rodriguez's new short about twin sisters Lola and Lucia, ice cream truck moguls who dabble in monster-hunting, is most likely to crush your mind to smithereens, much like a psychotic monster would rip apart an innocent farmhand. But he needs you to help him finish it.

In socialist Europe, where the hard work and financial innovation of bankers is not as appreciated as it is here, times are tough: bankers have just had their bonuses limited by law. How to deal with this new, slightly less opulent reality? An unintentionally hilarious listicle is here to help.

Police in Taiwan apprehended a man wanted on drug charges after he unwittingly wore a shirt that drew attention to the fact that he was a fugitive.

Last night, Discovery aired KKK: Beneath the Hood, a documentary that purported to offer previously unavailable access to various Ku Klux Klan chapters. Such unveiling feels like an act of desperation for a dying breed of people who are irrationally fixated on racial purity and white supremacy while claiming that they don't hate anyone. Bigotry is alive, of course, but I wonder how well it is when even the Klan is too cowardly to own up to its hatred. (Note: Hamilton Nolan's "My Kasual Kountry Weekend With the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" Gawker story from last year touches on this very phenomenon.)

Twitter turns 7 today. (Here's its first homepage.) An early report: "There is also a fake Borat." Not much has changed.

There's no use fighting it: The 21st century belongs to China.

A week after a harsh Senate report on how derivatives cost JPMorgan billions, Congress seeks to deregulate derivatives.

Last night's episode of My Strange Addiction was the show's fourth-season finale (I'm already mourning) and boy it was a doozy. The entire half hour was devoted to Michelle, a 29-year-old resident of Lancaster, Calif., with a Jane Child ear-to-nose chain situation and an affinity for drinking animal blood and human blood. Michelle is a tattoo artist but not a vampire. She prefers pig's blood to beef blood because it's gamier. She reports that every human's blood tastes different, there is a difference between men and women's blood (men's is thicker) and that she generally extracts it from the upper arm, elbow area, upper back or inner thigh. "I try to avoid the neck 'cause that's way too cliché," says Michelle. And here I thought that Shoshanna telling Ray on Girls that "Sometimes I love you like I feel sorry for a monkey" would be the best thing I heard anyone say on TV this week.

Meticulously scruffy smirker Ryan Gosling has announced in an interview that he is taking brief professional hiatus from acting:

The city of Saratoga Springs, New York has a problem: homelessness. I mean, the problem is not that Saratoga Springs residents are forced to sleep on the streets—the problem is these homeless citizens are sleeping in City Hall. How are the city fathers supposed to conduct their important business of helping out Saratoga Springs citizens when those citizens are being all, like, dirty in their space?

You are looking at, more or less, a portrait of the internet over an average 24 hours in 2012—higher usage in yellows and reds; lower in greens and blues—created by an anonymous researcher for the "Internet Census 2012" project. How, exactly, do you gather this much data? Well: not legally, that's for sure.

Gainesville mayor Craig Lowe was arrested early this morning by Florida Highway Patrol troopers after he was found asleep behind the wheel of a badly damaged Honda Civic near the scene of an accident.

Five former officials in Bell, California, America's most corrupt little city, were convicted of felonies yesterday.

Hours before Gov. John Hickenlooper, surrounded by family members of victims of shootings in Aurora and Littleton, signed a package of contentious gun control bills, Colorado's top prison official was shot and killed in front of his home. Tom Clements, 58, had been appointed executive director of Colorado Prisons in January 2011, and had won praise from officials and activists for his commitment to reform; Tuesday night at around 8:30, he answered his front door and was killed by an unknown gunman. Police have no suspects, but prisons have been placed on a partial lock-down and security has been increased at the state capitol and the governor's mansion. In an emotional press conference, Hickenlooper called Clements' murder "an act of intimidation." Hours later, the governor signed a series of new laws requiring background checks for private gun sales and banning magazines with more than 15 rounds, the end result of a long and emotional process. "I started crying," Tom Mauser—whose son was killed at Columbine High in 1999—told The New York Times. [Denver Post | Denver CBS | NYT]