Every morning, schoolchildren in China have to do synchronized morning exercises. Usually these are boring calisthenics performed to a soundtrack of communist anthems.

Welcome back to Midweek Madness. Every Wednesday, we party in the pages of In Touch, Star, Life & Style, Ok! and Us, looking for a good time. This week: Christina Aguilera, Scarlett Johansson, and Kate and William. [Jezebel]

A new study shows that Americans work 8.5 hours a day. The eight-hour work day is a fiction!

After dinner in New York last night, Tom Cruise was photographed doing which of the following? a) Quelling a tantrum in daughter Suri; b) Committing infanticide; c) Removing his daughter from a brass rod shish kebab (far left) so he can eat her for dessert; or d) Asking if he could borrow her pink Uggs tomorrow. [Radar, Dlisted, Images via Splash]

He's been expunged from Twitter's official history, but Noah Glass is widely acknowledged as the microblogging system's most passionate advocate from when he named and helped create Twitter until the day he was fired. Business Insider tells his story.

Sure, Danielle Staub may be out, but that doesn't mean anything has to change with the Real Househarpies of New Jersey. It appears that this season is just like any other, in which the ladies screech for male strippers, someone's husband dresses up like a lady, and they get in a huge fight on vacation.

Being a cold-hearted snake (look into my eyes) I'm usually not a huge fan of cat pictures on the internet, but these have a bit of cruelty and unbelievability to them. These aren't cat pictures— these are a healthy cat with an arrow through its head pictures!

In your wet Wednesday media column: Newsweek's suddenly cloudy future, CNN would like some black viewers, Univision eyes cable news, the AP's union negotiations drag on, and a sad NPR Twitter addict.

Clarence Thomas's wife Virginia is making a big list of the contact information of tea party organizers around the country—because apparently someone thought it was a good idea for her to have lots of people's phone numbers. [Jezebel]

Gustave Courbet's 1886 oil painting of a naked woman's lower half, The Origin of the World, hangs in Paris' Musee d'Orsay. But it is not welcome on the hallowed walls of Facebook. Facebook has abruptly canceled at least three accounts after users posted the painting, and art connoisseurs are fuming.

Delirious old coot Sen. Jim Inhofe has a flying license! Who knew? What's even more amazing is that he was able to keep this license after choosing to land his Cessna on a closed runway last year, even though there were "men and equipment on the runway," over whom he "sky hopped" after the first touch down. Wow. And yet, so in-character for Jim Inhofe! It's pathetic that this doesn't even surprise us.

The New York Times pressed Wikileaks to publish classified Pentagon documents to avoid charges of conspiring to commit espionage, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claimed. The Times was too scared to scoop, in other words.

The framework for deficit reduction President Obama will lay out Wednesday is a mixed bag for members of his party. It borrows heavily in some areas from the conservative-leaning Bowles-Simpson recommendation, but commits elsewhere to enhancing the cost-cutting programs in the health care law and rejects Republican proposals to privatize entitlements, or maintain or reduce the tax burden on the upper class.

At last week's Dressed to Kilt fashion show in Manhattan, Chris Noth flashed his rear, revealing more than intended, and someone's camera flashed at the right moment. Smile, baby! [Fleshbot (NSFW)]

After weathering husband Michael Douglas' battle with cancer, Catherine Zeta-Jones has checked into a mental hospital to treat her bipolar disorder. Says her publicist:

BYU has been held up as a symbol of all that's decent in college sports for its treatment of Brandon Davies, who violated the school's honor code by having sex with his girlfriend. The reality isn't so appealing. [Deadspin]

Remember the "trailer park/artist community" in a Bushwick warehouse that got shut down last year? It started up again, only get shut down again, this time for fire code violations. Brooklyn just can't keep the little buggers out! Artists in trailers: The new bedbugs. [NYPost]

Okay, banksters, let's call a temporary truce: We'll stop calling you sociopathic bloodsucking hell monsters for a few weeks, if you can just get Speaker John Boehner to stop using the impending debt ceiling vote as leverage to cut basically every entitlement program. We're all in this together against the dingbats who don't understand that failing to raise the debt ceiling means Global Apocalypse, not "tightening our belts" or whatever other homey metaphor that doesn't apply to macroeconomic reality.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" orgy parties are completely notorious at this point, but today Italy's biggest newspaper published new graphic accounts of what goes on inside. The problem is, we can't read them!

Most Americans think of our neighbor to the south, the land of Meh-hee-ko, as a place primarily populated by taco-wielding mariachi bands passing out tequila shots in a welcoming spirit of friendship, speaking "espanyole." We regret to inform you that that impression may be overoptimistic.