The Way We Live Now: plumbing the bubble-less depths of despair. Some people get private islands, other people don't even get an orphanage. But nobody will be getting mail on Saturday. So equality lives.

Lindsay Lohan is having a shitty day. Not only is she in court today for violating her parole, she got served with another lawsuit while she was in the elevator heading back to her hearing.

It's the New York Times new-ish headquarters and the American Institute of Architects has declared it the most unattractive in the city, more so than a T.G.I. Friday's and a Trump tower. Really? We're not so sure about that.

Sunday was the 4th of July. Everyone was either off work yesterday, or at work doing nothing. Today, therefore, is one of the slowest news days of the entire year. Luckily for our city's beleaguered journalists: it's hot!

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse claimed its first victim when a man in New Zealand died during an afternoon screening. Was he murdered... by Taylor Lautner's abs? The autopsy will be carried out tomorrow to find out. [news.com.au via atlasfugged]

Tar balls from the BP spill hit beaches around Galveston, Tex. for the first time this weekend. It may have travelled via boat. Or, it has become sentient, and heard Galveston was nice. [Houston Chronicle; picture, of Florida, via AP]

[A South African kid plays with a makeshift ball in Thokoza, outside Johannesburg. World Cup quarterfinals start today as Brazil and the Netherlands meet up in the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. Pic via AP.]

Juan Lazaro, one of the alleged Russian spies arrested earlier this week, told feds that he is not actually Uruguayan; not, in fact, named "Juan Lazaro"; and would not betray "the Service," which had, uh, bought him a house. [CNN]

Gerald Posner—the former Daily Beast writer who's recently been found to have plagiarized one bazillion times—is also an attorney. Mahmood Karzai is the crooked brother of Afghanistan's president. Together, they're a legal PR combo that cannot lose!(?)

Michael Mineo, the Brooklyn man who says cops sodomized him with a baton, saw the officers acquitted on criminal charges in February. Now, Mineo's lost most of his civil suit too (one claim's still pending). Sorry; rules are rules.

[Remember Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban kid who became the center of a custody controversy in 2000? Well, that's him, now, with Cuban President Raul Castro, officially marking the ten-year anniversary of his return to Cuba. Pic via AP.]

[Former boxer Mike Tyson, who is just a weird, sad dude, wore a traditional Kazakh costume to the Astana International Action Film Festival in Kazakhstan, where he presented Tyson. Yeah, I don't really know, either. Pic via AP]

Crystal Gail Magnum, the woman who falsely accused members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping her, held a crazy press conference in her yard today to announce that new charges against her—of arson and attempted murder—are false.

In what may be the biggest divorce settlement ever, Tiger Woods is said to be giving ex-wife Elin Nordegren $750 million in exchange for her never speaking of their divorce or his affairs in public. And that's not all.

We hope you haven't already made up your mind about the rightness or wrongness of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates' arrest in his own home. Because after a full year, a Cambridge "blue-ribbon" panel has issued a worthless, wishy-washy review!

Senator Al Frank (D - MN), as bored as the rest of the country, sketched his colleague Jeff Sessions (R - AL) during the Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings. Click through for a bigger image and side-by-side comparison.

Tutankhamen's penis is missing! Maybe you think it was the victim of a "brutal autopsy"? Or, if you're conspiracy-minded, you think someone removed it because it was "under-developed"? Either way, you're thinking about a mummy's penis. [New Scientist]

[The expressions on the faces of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and her brother Irving sum up exactly how we feel about Senate confirmation hearings. Image via AP]

Since Scott Brown is scared of making enormous banks pay a few bucks to implement financial regulatory reform, Congress has re-opened "closed" negotiations and will probably take the cash from either small banks or your tax dollars. Seriously. [Image: AP]

The iPad security breach earlier this month didn't just expose thousands of email addreses, but could also help hackers track down users' physical locations, says a growing chorus of security experts.