It's the best part of any presidential election cycle: That period a few days before the Iowa caucuses when no one's working and so you just type some nonsense about the weather in Iowa. What if the weather is snow? Someone wins. What if it is anti-snow, or sun? Well in that case the other schmuck wins.

Yesterday People told us that Kim Richards, reality television's Blanche Dubois, was out of rehab. The problem is they were wrong. Or were they?

We really do want to ignore the latest Rick Perry ads as they come in, but how can we ignore such odd scripts? (Also: we don't actually want to ignore them, ever.) Take this new one, featuring a children's cartoon, titled "Fox." It's a blanket attack against his opponents who've spent time in Congress. And it opens with this line:

Or she might not be. All day, rumors have been swirling that Beyonce had reserved half of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital's "luxury labor and delivery floor," and would be giving birth sometime on Wednesday.

A sharp-eyed user of the social news site Reddit spotted this giant among the bystanders during Kim Jong-Il's funeral procession. Is this a genetically-modified superwarrior, or just a famous North Korean basketball player? (Click the photo to enlarge.)

Kid hormones! Chemical knot! Fish legs! Pigeon counting! Fluid dynamics! Elephant toes! Space station! Snowflake pictures! And a calendar reform motion, debated and denied! It's your Thursday Science Watch, where we watch science—unsuccessfully!

Lies: They travel halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on. If you don't tell them, you never have to remember anything. Ask me no questions and I won't tell you any. The year that now comes to an end was, like all years, riddled with them. Grand lies and small ones, grave ones and frivolous ones, true ones and false ones—check that. They were all false. Here is a list of some of them that really caught my attention.

New York Times Twitter wunderkind and media reporter Brian Stelter has once again been tripped up by the source of his power. He pulled his second Weiner this month, and told us he's been forced to resort to... email.

Last year, veteran TV news producer Joe Halderman was sentenced to six months in jail for pulling a failed $2 million blackmail scheme on David Letterman, who was having an affair with a staff member. Now, the ID Discovery network's "On the Case With Paula Zahn" has hired Halderman as a producer. He's experienced, so he should be fine, as long as he does not blackmail Paula Zahn for $2 million.

So the New York Times' Dining section wrote one of those things for Southern food yesterday that it writes for every type of food, at one point or another: How there's a new wave of chefs trying to revive traditional fare with more expensive and local ingredients, etc. "They want to reclaim the agrarian roots of Southern cooking," the Times writes, "restore its lost traditions and dignity, and if all goes according to plan, completely redefine American cuisine for a global audience." Again: This is a standard Times food article template with "Southern food" plugged in.

Meet Benedict Cumberbatch. He's been in a zillion BBC productions, was Scarlett Johansson's husband in The Other Boleyn Girl, and will soon play a spy in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He parents are famous British actors, and he has white girl problems:

Men do recessions like, "Aww shit, it's a recession up in here, nothing but crappy jobs out there, guess I'll just keep working this crappy job I have, nothing else to do, stone cold watching some football and drinking brews with the fellas, because my life is a beer commercial." But women do recessions like, "Considering these dead end prospects in the current job market, I shall instead return to school to further my education and enhance my employment prospects for the future." Ladies are crazy!

Sure our collective crazy Irish aunt Sinead O'Connor admitted that her "mad search" for some pot on her wedding night helped lead to her breakup with her latest husband after only 16 days, but there is more to the story. Well, just change "pot" with "crack" and you have the whole story.

If you die in a horrific train accident, be sure to aim your severed body away from any bystanders. That's the lesson from the sad, bizarre case of Hiroyuki Joho, whom a court has ruled can be sued for injuries caused by his own body parts when he was killed by a train.

Boy, 2011: there sure was a lot of music, wasn't there? A lot of good music, even! But probably not even you, Cool Internet Guy, who heard all the cool and good music, have listened to all of it. It's okay! Here are ten great music things from this year that you should have heard—and for some reason didn't.

This actor has a public girlfriend, but really has a thing for her famous mother. A slew of celebrities are getting engaged or breaking up (as always) and a blind item of our very own, about a hunky star discussing his sexual conquests. Enjoy!

There comes a time in the life of every freedom-loving person when he is forced to stand on his own two feet and make a very fundamental choice: Velveeta Cheesy Skillets, or Hamburger Helper? That time is now, Americans. Will you rise to the challenge?

Occupy activists are building their own more flexible and trustworthy Facebook, using of old formats, authentication protocols and open source software. But 2012's hottest login will require an invitation, so you better start attending those interminable General Assembly meetings today.

A Cardozo student spent half a year living on the street because "I wasn't satisfied, my life just felt meaningless because I didn't have really any challenges." Noting that Neaderthals probably didn't experience boredom, he quit paying for his apartment and started sleeping on the street.

I go to the movies a lot. Just about every week, in fact. Rather than just telling you the best and worst movies of the year, I thought it would be fun to rank every single movie I sat through in a movie theater in 2011. Here's the complete list.