During tomorrow's presidential debates, you will doubtless hear much talk about unemployment in America, but you will not hear from the unemployed themselves. Here, you can. Each week, we're running true stories from the unemployed. This is what's happening out there.

This memo, intended for Gawker Media employees, was published on JimRomenesko.com earlier today. In the interest of sharing our mission to bring editorial and commercial conversation with our readers — those who, under our new discussion platform, truly control it — it is being republished in full here.

Speed of light, speed of sound — potato, parsec. Bottom line: Dude fell really, really fast.

A letter to the editor from a 14-year-old homeschooled teen named Jasmin was recently published in Canterbury, New Zealand's Northern Outlook, garnering stunned silence from most and lengthy rebuttals from others. The subject of the letter was homosexuality in general and the legalization of same-sex marriage in particular.

Gawker fav Twin Shadow goes at this remix of New York band MS MR's "Hurricane" like Nicki Minaj attacks a guest verse, cramming as much entertainment value into his limited space as possible. Within the endlessly shifting track, there's still plenty of space, too. Amazing. All Twin Shadow everything from now on, please.

Chanel No. 5 debuted its much-heralded new commercial starring Brad Pitt on Monday, though it's only a Chanel No. 5 commercial inasmuch as Brad Pitt throws out "Chanel No. 5" toward the end of the spot—a hail Mary pass hurled forth from a bog of nonsensical fortune cookie half-wisdoms.

Freelance broadcast meteorologist Dan Pope was on weatherman duty for Utah's Fox 13 last month during the formation of the short-lived, Eastern Pacific tropical storm John.

Because TODAY has fallen behind Good Morning America in the ratings and "yum wine," Hoda Kotb is looking for a new best friend.

Out of nowhere, Tan Mom has competition for Worst Tan: competitor number 49 at the Arnold Classic Europe bodybuilding competition, who appears to have self-tanned only his body. Here's the full shot:

America's fresh, young face of the GOP, Lindsay Lohan, will be interviewed by Barbara Walters for 20/20.

NBC announced last Friday that it had canceled its midseason Dane Cook vehicle Next Caller before airing a single episode.

Meet Shiseido, an actual human being (not a makeup line), who says she has a fear of mayonnaise. The 25-year-old was profiled on last night's My Food Obsession, the Cooking Channel's answer to TLC's range of programming of weird people doing weird shit extremely.

In Murgatroid, Ohio—a perfectly average small American town, in a perfectly average American state, where perfectly average Americans do not so average things—the day begins, as it does elsewhere, with alarm clocks, the cries of cuckoo birds, and the collective "Thshhh" sound of apple pies being thrust onto windowsills from North Snooker Street all the way down to South Shoobadoop Avenue. The sun's rays, golden in that way that rays are, peek over the horizon. It is morning in Murgatroid. Once again, a small town full of Americans bestirs itself for the unexpectedly inspiring day ahead.

All the hours we've spent losing ourselves in the rich velvet tapestries of premium cable's sexiest historical dramas have guided us to this one moment: Scotland will soon vote whether to declare its independence from the United Kingdom or to remain slaves forever.

At this weekend's New York Comic Con, there were humans dressed like aliens. There were dogs dressed like superheroes, kids costumed like Spiderman, and half-naked women posing as mermaids. There were many Batmen, many Jokers, and many Banes. But on Saturday, there was only one Hulk Hogan.

Sherlock and Holmes, dismissed! That mystery giant eyeball that washed ashore in Florida came from a swordfish.

Yesterday, during an armchair psychoanalysis of Joe Biden's performance at last week's VP debate, controversial Fox News psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow told his fellow "Medical A-Team" members that, in his expert opinion, Joe Biden might be suffering from dementia.

The level of debt held by the average consumer has fallen to the same level it was in 2006, before the financial collapse, before the recession, before the unemployment and the foreclosures and the bankster wars, when everything was all frothy and the streets of the hastily erected subdivisions were paved with money. If only we could live those go-go glory days once again...

Time-lapse videos: they are all over the place, and they are all pretty, and at some point, aren't you like, "okay, I get it"? (As Dylan once sang, "How many time-lapse videos/Must a blogger post/Before he gets enough hits.") But! This one — Istanbul! Budapest! San Francisco! Vegas! Storms! The Northern Lights! — will restore faith in the power of streaming HD video and expensive "prosumer" camera equipment to even the most jaded time-lapse viewer, provided you turn down the shitty dubstep soundtrack and put on something good. Or you could just rent Koyaanisqatsi, I guess. [Reid Gower via Reddit]

A 100% disabled Army veteran and his wife say a Minnesota-based law firm and debt collection agency has illegally garnished their savings to cover a defaulted student loan and verbally abused them when they asked for their money back.