Economic decline, unemployment, political strife, violence, taxes, crying kids, lazy spouses, broken homes, filthy streets, unwatered lawns, stubbed toes, cracked iPhone screens, food stuck in your teeth. Where does it end? Well, as if that weren't enough to worry about, add one more thing to the list: whooping cough. Yep. There's an outbreak right now. Worst one in half a century. Vaccines wearing off, and whatnot. As if we needed that. Ain't it always something?

"It is a very real possibility this terrifying tragedy may affect The Dark Knight Rises‘s opening box office today and this weekend." [Deadline Hollywood]

Police have one suspect in custody after 12 people were shot and killed during a late-night showing of The Dark Knight Rises at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater early this morning.

In bizarro Pennsylvania news, over 200 chihuahuas were seized from a home in Benton on Thursday. Obviously some horrifically strange person lived there, but this is sort of a sad case – as opposed to just being weird – because many of the dogs were sick or already dead. The surviving dogs will all be in animal shelters by Friday, where they'll be treated by veterinarians and, if deemed healthy/sane enough, put up for adoption. Mike Pechart, who oversees dog law enforcement at the Pennsylvania Agriculture Department, hit the nail on the head when he described the situation as, "an unfortunate situation of animal hoarding."

FBI Agent Robert Schmitz went to unusual lengths to solve a 2009 bank robbery: he snagged some of boxer Martin Tucker's blood from ringside during a fight, and matched the sample to DNA found in a mask used in the robbery.

According to a CDC study, which I am very qualified to interpret, one out of thirteen pregnant women are boozing it up. And out of that group of lushes, one in five are getting hammered, which the CDC not-so-euphemistically describes as binge drinking (or having four or more drinks in two hours).

In today's America! news, Houston resident Thelma Taormina chased off her local electric maintenance guy with a gun because he was attempting to install a fancy new electric meter called a Smart Meter. This new meter thing supposedly keeps track of power usage digitally and then wirelessly transmits the information to the electric company instead of them having to send someone out to read the meter. What an amazing, time saving device, right? What will they think of next?

Karaoke is one of those things that you either love or hate. Fifty-year old William Carr Oller Jr, of Shingletown, California, loves it. Seventy-year old William Henry Oller Sr, of Sacramento, California, and William Carr Oller Jr's father, hates it. Oller Jr loves Karaoke so much that he wouldn't stop singing a country song when his father asked him to. So Oller Sr shot Oller Jr in the arm, allegedly.

Who among us has not come away from reading a classic like Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Brontë's Wuthering Heights and been disappointed by the distinct lack of explosive sex scenes?

For just $2,400 a month, you can live the high-class presidential lifestyle Barack Obama lived back when he was a broke college student.

We have written about 50 Shades of Grey. Our sister site, Jezebel, has written about 50 Shades of Grey. The Atlantic has written about 50 Shades of Grey. The New York Times has written about 50 Shades of Grey. Everyone has written about 50 Shades of Grey, ad nauseum.

I've done my fair share of joking about dipshit society folks here at Gawker, but it would be disingenuous of me to rip on teenage social climbers, sorority rush coaches, and Gatsbabies without first disclosing my own strange encounter with with the New York Society of Mayflower Descendants.

For many, eggs' chief uses lie in the fields of weaponry, holiday decoration, and design inspiration.

An assload of "Let's Have a Kiki" remixes just dropped, and it's just as well: you can never have too much kiki.

Hollywood bully-blogger Nikki Finke has apparently escalated her bonkers feud with Bret Easton Ellis and his agency ICM to previously unheard-of levels of Nikki-tude: According to the Hollywood Reporter, ICM has hired attorneys to get Finke to stop "harassing" the agency's employees. Among the charges: "Finke told top ICM employees she would reveal their home addresses and where their children go to school."

Americans hate the media with a passion. So they'll be happy to know that the average U.S. journalist—grrr, the MSM!—is paid even less than the average American.

A short history of JoJo: She released her self-titled debut in 2004 when she was 13 and scored a Top 20 hit with the Kidz Bop-perfect anthem "Leave (Get Out)." In 2006, she released her follow-up, The High Road, which contained the Top 5 hit "Too Little Too Late." Along the way, she has suffered record-company bullshit and picked up a legion of stans. Last year, she released "a riff on Drake's "Marvin's Room," in which she said "fuck." Maturation had set in.

Despite amusing wise cracks from Albert Brooks and the rest of the Internet about the news that veteran character actor Fred Willard was arrested for allegedly masturbating inside an adult movie theater in Hollywood, it seems his employer, PBS, is not laughing.

This is "Mexican Drug Blood," a regular feature on the deadly Mexican drug wars.

Heartthrob Joseph Gordon-Levitt deeply disappointed many a female fan last week when he appeared to side with Adam Carolla in the ongoing "are women funny" debate.