Carlos Castaneda. Timothy Leary. Daniel Pinchbeck…mopey Ted Mosby? Josh Radnor, he of How I Met Your Mother and that movie no one saw that kind of looked like Garden State, looks to join the literary titans of tripping with a memoir slated for an April release. One Big Blissful Thing details his journey from a suburban Ohio upbringing to ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic plant that many Amazon tribes use for ritualistic practices. Maybe all that drug use is why he keeps rambling on and digressing with how he actually met his wife?

It must be that Rick Perry's too scared to go home and face the constant howling mockery of every person in Texas for the rest of his life, because there's no reason for him to be in this presidential race anymore. That is, unless he wants to ruin whatever political stature he has left with increasingly desperate and insane comments? If so, that's his business. Our (every other human's) business, though, is to avoid a World War III or nuclear winter anytime soon, and Rick Perry wingin' it at debates with maniacal jingoistic death talk is detrimental to this end.

Energized by The New Republic's new excerpts from the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic conspiracy newsletter published (though not specifically authored) by Ron Paul in the early 1990s? Disappointed that they're no longer being published? Unable to hire Lew Rockwell to write most of it for you? Fret not, alternate Vince Foster death theory enthusiasts: just use the Gawker-brand Ron Paul Magnetic Newsletter Kit to make your own.

Dear everyone in the damn universe with iMovie and a Gmail account: we do not want your "Shit People Say" video, no matter how good or clever you think it may be. Do not send them to us. Do not email them, do not Twitter them, do not IM or DM or PM or Facebook them.

Like any plutocrat worth his salt, Mitt Romney makes sure to get all painted up in portrait form every few years.

Young Lee, the co-owner and co-founder of shockingly popular frozen yogurt-ish dessert chain Pinkberry, has been accused of chasing down a homeless man and beating him with a tire iron. But why?

Tucker Max, Chad-in-Chief of the Beer Division of the Pussyhound Brigade (Duke Chapter), is back with an astounding and incredible offer for all you losers out there who would do just about anything to achieve your life goal of licking Tucker Max's sneakers clean as he Googled "misogynist slurs" and then read off every single entry, at you. You could be Tucker Max's new research assistant. Doesn't that sound great? A great job? Bitch?

Real Housewives of New York's Cindy Barshop's Completely Bare body waxing salon has come up with the most trivial* use for the fur industry in all of history: "the Foxy Bikini, in which the bikini line is waxed bare and replaced with a pubic wig made from real fox fur." It costs $225, comes in multiple artificial neon hues, and looks like nightmare porno from the id of Dr. Seuss. I hereby dub this monstrous device "furkin." [TMZ]

Have you had the opportunity to settle down with the hot new political gossip book of the past several days, New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's The Obamas? The Gawker Political Desk rarely consumes these White House reporters' bound anecdote collections but, for mysterious reasons, both obtained and made it through 200 pages of Kantor's offering before having to stop due to a total lack of interest in continuing.

Everyone is all atwitter that Lindsay Lohan is in talks to play Elizabeth Taylor. How dare she? How could she? The mock indignant travesty. And now Megan Fox is in talks to play the same role. Cue the same pseudo outrage with additional overtones of a cat fight. Please. It's never gonna happen.

Francesco Schettino, the Italian cruise ship captain who caroused with his passengers before steering his ship dangerously close to shore and then fleeing immediately when it ran aground and capsized, leaving 11 (at last count) to die and thousands to flail in terror, sounds like a real go-getter. Here is a tape of an Italian Coast Guard official ordering Schettino, who was speaking by phone from a lifeboat, to get back aboard and help evacuate the women and children who were still on his boat. He said no.

Kim Kardashian's lawsuit against Old Navy just got juicy: To combat Kim's claim that the company damaged her "reputation" by airing an ad featuring Kardashian lookalike Melissa Molinaro, the clothier has launched an investigation of Kim's crappy reputation.

Unions are not doing well. Their membership has been plummeting for years. Their political influence is at an all time low. They're a convenient scapegoat for just about any social or economic problem plaguing America. At least they deserve some good ads.

Check out Newt Gingrich on Saturday, gabbing with some nice old ladies after a most uncomfortable church service. Who are these women — church elders, pillars of the community, something along those lines? Let's check the AP photo caption: "Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista, meets with prisoners during an event at the Jones Memorial AME Zion Church, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, in Columbia, S.C." Hmm. What gives the AP the impression that these elderly ladies have run afoul of the law?

The late Kim Jong-il's oldest son, the Ferragamo-wearing Chad Kim Jong-nam, lost out on a power struggle with his youngest brother, Kim Jong-un, years ago, and has since spent most of his time in Macau and China, doing whatever it is international playboy dictator relatives do. (Eat, apparently.) Not that he's jealous, or anything — no, he just likes to tell Japanese reporters that his younger brother is going to fail for completely different reasons.

Here's a peculiar internet phenomenon that leaves me unable to discern ironic offensiveness from earnest idiocy from cultural paradox: Angry Brides, a Facebook game in which you play an angry Indian wife who bludgeons her husband with frying pans and shoes.

This guy is a hit with the Academy but his neighbors hate his noisy helicopter. This actress was getting busy after the Golden Globes, another actress is causing trouble with three families, this TV hostess is in love with a gay politico, and this actor cheats on his wife with hookers. At least he's quiet about it.

When the topic of "What America really needs" comes up, one answer inevitably surfaces as a common refrain: less labor-intensive access to fast food. Your dream may soon come true, America.

Andrew Sullivan is apparently the blogger who dare not speak his name, at least as far as Fox News is concerned. As Sullivan notes, the network blurred his name out of an image of Newsweek's current cover, which features a clever and tendentious essay about how dumb Republicans are. (Fox News disagrees.)

Here's Bill O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg, arguing about who is the the most white person on the planet, and who is a "brother," based largely on who can accurately distinguish between two famous black men. I had a long rant planned about how embarrassing and irritating it is when white people play the "who's whitest" game, and all the bullshit ignorant assumptions built into it, but I think Ice T really gets to the heart of the issue in this tweet: