Thrice-married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich has "endorsed" Iowa's marriage pledge, meaning he has to stop cheating on whoever his wife is now. That's quite a sacrifice. (Update: He left himself some wriggle room, naturally, and didn't technically "sign" it.)

Ron Paul's got it made. While Mitt Romney is struggling to save his pretty-boy campaign, and Newt Gingrich is trying to clarify what "going negative" means, Paul is releasing these long, futuristic ads beating the dickens out of everyone (in this case, Gingrich).

Newsweek, the nation's premiere publisher of fan fiction, has followed up its charmingly hideous "What if Diana Were Alive?" cover story with a brand new exploration of hypotheticals: What will Barack Obama do if he loses, and also, what will he look like? Alas: this one doesn't go far enough. We have some ideas, though!

If all news is local, then why aren't all videogames? That seems to be the premise behind Google Shoot View, an incredibly simple new "game" from a Dutch advertising firm. It's your chance to take a fully automatic weapon to an address of your choosing.

Kelly Evans is a financial columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Unlike most columnists, she arrives at work at 6:45 a.m. That's because Kelly Evans has a second job: she's the co-anchor for the Journal's 8:30 a.m. video newscast, the "News Hub," which plays on the WSJ's homepage just as thousands upon thousands of readers are reading their morning financial news. How many of those traders and brokers and analysts and corporate office drones have fallen in love?

Great strides in the field of anthropomorphically amusing animals: Among 208 new species discovered in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia is an "Elvis monkey" that "looks like it wears a pompadour." The Elvis monkey has no nose (Michael Jackson monkey?) and lives in the Himalayan forests of Myanmar, a World Wildlife Fund report explains:

Oh Christ, someone on Team Romney is going to get fired today: Poor old Mittens was forced to talk to a human, one-on-one, with cameras rolling. And not just any human, but a gay one. Who was a veteran. In Vietnam. Which was a war. And so on. Yikes.

Horrible person Andrew Breitbart is fighting (again) with horrible person Glenn Beck, and while we know we should be feeling that soft warm joy that comes when two horrible people are engaged in a dispute, secretly we are sort of sad: we agree with Glenn Beck!

Just as Newt Gingrich was rising to his spot as the nearly prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, he made a pledge not to "go negative" on his political opponents. Or, in cocksure Newt-speak: "They're not going to be the nominee. I don't have to go around and point out the inconsistencies of people who aren't going to be the nominee. They're not going to be the nominee." But guess who's pointing out his opponents' "inconsistencies today, and always, very negatively? This is the worst pledge ever.

BNY Mellon is the investment bank that used Occupy Wall Street in a hilarious gag at a financial comedy (?) night last month. Bet they cackled all the way to the courthouse in Pittsburgh, where they filed a lawsuit to evict Occupy Pittsburgh from the park they've been camping out in for the past two weeks.

An ironclad rule of hipness is that if you're looking for hipness, the best place to start your search is within the paragraphs of a newspaper article with the word "Hip" featured prominently in the headline. Mainstream newspaper stories explaining phenomena deemed "Hip" by mainstream newspaper editors: where hipness lives.

The journal Astrobiology has published a paper by some Australian National University scientists who assert that "large regions" of Mars could support "Earth-like microbes." That's us! We'll just have to live below the planet's surface so we don't freeze to death or dehydrate.

Although virtually every big newspaper company has suffered major layoffs, declining stock prices, and general existential malaise for the past several years, the last one to actually declare bankruptcy was Tribune Co., which was actively destroyed by a gnomish billionaire's arrogance and incompetence. Well, good news, Tribune: you have company!

Vocal fry: It's not screaming when you burn yourself while cooking bacon. It's how all the coolest young women are talking! Get on board with the glottal sound of the future.

Germany—and, more importantly, Germany's Christmas spirit—is under attack by a man who dresses like Santa, but is, in fact—you guessed it—a Grinch. Of roofies.

These two actresses both have Oscar buzz for the same category, but few are buzzing about their secret lesbian relationship. Which reality star has offered to carry a baby for her famous infertile sister? Today's blind items are all about girl power.

Well, if there was ever a family that looked like creepy right-wing North Dakota survivalists who had to be surveilled by Air Force drones because they refused to let cops onto their land after stealing a neighbor's cows, it's the Brussarts of Nelson County (as you can see above). And wouldn't you know! That's exactly what they are, allegedly!

While campaigning in Iowa, secessionist prime minister of Texas Rick Perry leaked some classified intelligence when he told his audience of hecklers and hog farmers that, for an unknown period of time, the U.S. has been secretly funding "the country Solynda."

Political blogger Ben Smith's career is a series of progressively wackier job moves. He was at the NY Daily News, covering state politics, and was more respected than the average tabloid writer. He moved to THE POLITICO, where he's been blogging about politics and media for the past five years, managing to stay more respected (by us!) than his micro-horse-race-obsessed paper as a whole. Now, he's off to an even weirder destination!

By pulling its ads from TLC's All-American Muslim—a reality show in which Michigan-based Muslims ("terrorists") hug, roller-blade, dance in their middle-class driveways, and engage in other banal activities ("fight the holy war")—Lowe's Home Improvement pleased and appeased America's Islamophobic community. But now it's apologizing for having offended everyone else.