As Hurricane Sandy, now combined with a Nor'easter, bears down on the mid-Atlantic, people everywhere are looking for answers: will I be safe? What should I do? Where should I go? And most importantly, what shadowy organization, group, or cosmic force is manipulating the weather to cause this terrible storm? Luckily, the internet has answers to all those questions — especially the last one. (Current suspects: President Obama, the gays, and perennial weather-conspiracy favorite the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program.) Let's take a look at the best conspiracy theories on the web.

Where do birds go during a storm? I wonder.

The New York Fire Department is reporting that the boom of a crane attached to a high rise on West 57th just collapsed, and is now dangling perilously over the street.

In order to keep readers updated on Frankenstorm safety bulletins, the New York Times has temporarily lifted its paywall for online articles. It has also temporarily lifted its policy of not posting absurd shit.

The ascent of Twitter has been wonderful for the democratization and quickening of news and information. A few decades ago, it might take days for a person in California to see pictures of a disaster that took place in New York. Today, all a person needs is a smartphone and an internet connection and, with Twitter, they can be their own photojournalist, updating the site's millions of global users with up-to-the-minute images of events like Hurricane Sandy.

A British man who was tired of being harassed by telemarketers decided to bill the company for wasting his time.

If a hurricane makes landfall in a forest, and no one's there to Instagram it, did it really make landfall at all?

Instacane is a pretty fun site that displays Instagram photos from Hurricane Sandy. A lot of them are fake, so beware.

Wilberforce, the nation's oldest historically black college, is teetering on the edge of possible extinction. Dang.

Unfortunately, when disaster strikes it affects not only the wretched Normals, but also a better, brighter class of people: Celebrities. Here's how they're handling it so far:

Sandy is here, and like many of you, we have no idea what that means in scientific terms. All we know is that it's windy and rainy and we just blew all of our money on batteries and booze, so this better be real.

Peter Doocy, a "Fox News General Assignment reporter" and son of the notable Fox and Friends personality Steve Doocy, brings us the first reporter wipeout related to Hurricane Sandy. Was this wipeout attributable to 45 mph winds or severe flooding? No, unfortunately. Poor Peter Doocy stepped off the dock and got his foot stuck in wet sand. We're all expecting a little better effort next time.

Roman Polanski's 1968 film Rosemary's Baby was among the earliest examples of the modern, post-Universal monsters phase of horror cinema, and yet it remains among the genre's most mature, least conventional offerings. A key factor in its endurance is described in David Konow's recent chronicle of horror's history, Reel Terror:

Sad news for day gays: Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show will not return for a third season.

Somers Point, New Jersey is currently feeling the watery wrath of Sandy, but this chill dude doesn't seem to mind.

Remember Jeremy Epstein, the ungainly 20-something, who — wearing the same suit he wore at his bar-mitzvah — questioned Barry O. and Willard R. about his job prospects in the Town Hall debate?

A Russian ship carrying 700 tons of gold ore has gone missing. The pirate's booty was on board a ship sailing from Neran to Feklistov Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.

And he's from Brazil! Where apparently you can "do Halloween" whenever you want. With a little help from his boyfriend (the skull-looking dude on the right) and some "cheap skin paint I found," Redditor juririm transformed himself into the splitting image of Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama "Hope" poster from the 2008 election cycle.

The 16-member crew of the HMS Bounty, a replica vessel modeled after its 18th century namesake, was forced to abandon ship after a collision with Hurricane Sandy off the coast of Cape Hatteras caused the ship to start taking on water at an uncontrollable rate.

Last week Murray Waas reported in the Boston Globe that as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney refused to change the state's birth certificate to acknowledge legal births to same-sex parents. Gay couples with children were to cross out "mother" or "father" on the forms and write themselves in, leaving their children's official documents permanently altered. Romney later explained the thinking behind the decision this way: "Some gays are actually having children born to them. It's not right on paper. It's not right in fact." Here's the video.