America's fiscal crisis finally hits us where it hurts. We hear the prices these days are obscene. (Very special thanks to tipster A.H.) [Reuters]

So now that we know everything we need to know about balls and penises, we've turned our attention to politics, and to the penis of John McCain, the man—the hero—who could be our next president. After the jump, five important facts about John McCain's penis.

CBS News has been running a lot unappetizing stories about sex lately. First it was "Things You Didn't Know About Your Penis" (or "Four Things I Already Knew About Your Penis And One That Grossed Me Out"). Then there was "Top 10 Reasons To Have Sex Tonight" (or "10 Terrible Reasons to Have Sex Tonight.") Instead of waiting for CBS to produce their inevitable list of factoids about testicles, we made our own. After the jump, five terribly important facts about balls.

Hoorah! The BBC has recanted from their evil, terroristic radio-bleeping of the word "faggot" on all their English wireless sets whilst playing the classic amazing 1987 Pogues song "Fairytale of New York" this holiday season. Bless you, BBC. [Daily Mirror]

You know how all Raymond Carver's short stories are like, "We sat in the kitchen. It was raining. I poured another scotch. I drank it. She sat on the chair, drinking. We drank together a while"? Apparently they weren't always so minimalist. In fact, according to Raymond's widow Tess Gallagher, they were downright "expansive" before his editor Gordon Lish got hold of them, radically cutting them and in some instances changing their titles and endings. And in a recently-unearthed letter, Raymond seems to plead for Gordon to stop publication of the altered book. So Tess wants to bring out an alternate edition of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" that contains the unedited stories. Is this a terrible, terrible idea?

The zombie plague that a great sage once predicted descended on Williamsburg yesterday, but all they did was practice yoga. It was a promotional stunt for a book called The Zen of Zombie, it turns out. Best quote from the Metro article about the stunt: "I guess someone has to make the videos that go up on YouTube." [Metro]