That’s all fine, unless one of those fingers is an obsessive, depressed sexual deviant who also happened to be a cross-dresser (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Here’s a short list — culled from his FBI file published by The Smoking Gun — of reasons Dr. Bruce Ivins probably shouldn’t have been allowed to hang around labs with Bacillus anthracis inside. Now, the case could be made that none of these things taken alone is enough to condemn the man’s personality (who doesn’t like to slip on some ladies panties from time to time?), but the volume of Ivins’s peculiar habits is a little much to ignore:

• He had a decades-long “obsession” with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, because he was turned down for a date by one of its members in the early 1960s, while doing his undergraduate work at the University of Cincinnati.
• He “[did] hold grudges” including one against the New York Yankees, for no particular reason, and was a bit of a sports conspiracy theorist, having commented several times that he thought most soccer injuries were “dives” for penalties.
• He had a weird sex life, such as it was — into bondage, blindfolds, etc. and had a stream of pornographic materials and “stained” — nahmean? — underpants flowing through his home, landing in the trash, where they were picked up by FBI agents (I’d hate to be the sucker on that detail).

I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” which posits (and I apologize for butchering Gladwell’s work by way of brevity) that a small number of individuals command a great degree of clout when it comes to shaping dialogue, fashion, disseminating information and even spreading disease. The argument applies, though imperfectly, here: the concern should never have been how much Anthrax there was around, or how many people had access to it, but who, precisely, those people were. Obsessive sex-freaks, perhaps, need not apply.

“The trend to protective gear is pretty strong right now,” said Richard Geist, the founder of Uncle Sam’s Army Navy Outfitters in downtown Manhattan. “It’s big with rappers, alternative types and even some women.”

Uncle Sam’s sells protective gear to the military. But most of its clients are civilians who snap up authentic bulletproof vests for as much as $1,000 or trade down to look-alike versions stripped of their armored lining ($24). Real or fake, “the look is tough,” Mr. Geist said, “and customers love it.”

Okay, fine, but that’s not much of an explanation. Let me give it a go:

Tipper Gore would probably say something to the effect of, the line between entertainment/fantasy violence and real violence is so blurred that people think walking down the street looking like Jack Bauer is not only necessary, but fun! We’re so accustomed to violence, so fundamentally warlike, that kevlar is appropriate for any occasion, because you never do know when you’re gonna find yourself on the wrong end of the gat.

That’s the cynic’s view, in which the whole world plays out like a present-day Raymond Chandler novel. Here’s another take: Gangsta rap recedes, providing an opening for a somewhat more peaceful situation in hip hop*. As such, flaunting your glock becomes, to an increasing degree, a dated sentiment — surprised or not, I think a lot of us wondered exactly what the funk, in this day and age, Weezy was doing rocking a handgun while smoking weed on the street (the weed part I understand). 1997 would’ve been a more appropriate time for that, stylistically and functionally. In 2010, beef is boring.

Still, life can be brutish and short, and the inclination against performing violence, or just making lyrics about pretending to do violence (Rick Ross, I’m looking at you), doesn’t make it go away. So defense becomes the new offense. Self-awareness, at least as it relates to one’s own frailty, is the new unchecked aggression. It sort of — if you buy into this sort of thing, which I do — loosely follows trending interpretations of masculinity. The latter generations embrace, or at least pay lip service to, a less aggressive interpretation of manhood, which is to a degree focused inward (although it still helps to have a big dick). The “new man,” as it were, is more of a silent type. He can do violence, yeah, and is equipped for it — why carry this heavy fucking vest otherwise? — but isn’t begging for the opportunity. These days, man have scruples.

Here we bring it back around to the fashion. I’m on a limb here: wearing a bullet proof vest to the club or anywhere else looks real stupid. They weigh like a thousand pounds, you’re bound to sweat, coat checking must be a nightmare… and how easy are these things to get off when, as Pauly D says, its time to “get to the business”? Is this the best we can do by the mens these days?

Probably not. I’m going to go ahead and assume this is one of those things that happens when culture rethinks itself. A socio-evolutionary dead end, if you will. Surely the next iteration of this sort of sentiment will be more nuanced. Nuance being something we do really well.

Wow, that’s a lot of thinky-wording for one day. I’m all uptight. Luckily today is awesome television day.

*I’m going to limit discussion, as it relates to larger culture, to hip-hop, partly because its more convienent for me, personally, to do so, but also because the Times seems to suggest that’s where this style originates. I’m not sure who exactly “alternative types” are, but, in the interest of being as forthright as possible, I’ll say straight up that I’ve never seen anyone wearing a bulletproof vest in the hipster bars I go to. Ok scroll back up now.

We’re laughing with you, Eric, we swear.

So remember the Hadron Collider, which, some scientists speculate, might through normal use accidentally tear a hole in the universe through which all life as we know it would pass and be compressed to the size of a dust mite? It keeps breaking down. Matter of fact, development of a  superconducting supercollider has been going on, in various forms, for several decades, yet the God particle eludes us.

So why don’t they just fix the damn thing?

Two scientists think the universe might be trying to tell us something:

I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson [The God Particle], which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

According to what we know about gravity and, uh, other weighty subjects, its not out of the question that matter is transferable through time, as long as you’re going backwards. And to the extent that “time travel,” as it were, would create a paradox that would totally fuck everything up (think Marty McFly’s siblings as they’re airbrushed out of that photograph), that might only be true if you disrupt events whose conclusions are foregone:

While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus. Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn’t be trying to make one.

[New York Times, Telegraph]

Kari Farrell (Inmate SO 295558)
Salt Lake County Correctional Facility
3415 South 900 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84119

For the uninitiated, Farrell spent the last few years between sea and shining sea, bilking everyone she met out of money, food, items, lodging, and dignity. In Brooklyn, mainly dignity.

She also passed $60,000 in bad checks in Utah, which, you’ll notice, is where she resides presently.

Animal New York’s Bucky Turco posted a letter from HG today, which really isn’t very interesting and, under different circumstances, I would probably assume had been penned by an oversexed adolescent. He offers to pass on any questions you might have.

I can’t think of anything, personally. What I am thinking about, though, is how mischievous I can be with this address without risk of being thrown in the clink myself. Ideas welcome.

For what its worth, my personal take is that, inadvertently or otherwise, there is a racial element present here, but aside from that, I’d like to suggest that the idea that you could (or should) start a bar/club in Williamsburg that touts its exclusionary practices on a big dumb sign (rule of thumb: the more exclamation points you need, the stupider you probably are) is a little bit ridiculous. I spent a sizable percent of my waking hours this weekend in a hoodie, for example, and I would guess I’m not of the demographic being targeted here.

Not to say that Williamsburgers aren’t exclusive types (imagine the local response to applying tan schmear for a show at, say, Don Pedro) — part of the reason we started this blog was to push against that. But whether their sensitivity is genuine or simply to maintain liberal street cred, you don’t often see what amounts to borderline racial profiling from that neighborhood, unless its, you know, the cops (and, really, cops in the ‘burgh seem to hate mostly everyone).

Gothamist commenters have a range of opinion (also, installment 249,323 of the hipster/anti-hipster debate), which is sort of surprising, given the relative lack of sanity in blog comments, well, globally. They’ve also pointed out that the bar has taken down this sign, maybe in recognition of its foible, maybe because they were getting some shit for it. We’ll be contacting Hugs to see what they have to say about it. Update forthcoming…

Mini-Update: Hadn’t noticed that freewilliamsburg covered this, too. There’s some comments on their thing, also.

To their credit, Bonner Associates did make the smart decision to forge most of the letters on behalf of senior citizen advocacy groups. This was smart because most old people either can’t read anymore, can’t remember what they said in the recent past, can’t be trusted, or are just too concerned with their upcoming Socialist Death Panel sentencing to be worried about things like where our energy comes from.

It’s sort of like that one guy in high school who came up with a crazy scheme to buy a big tv, claim it was stolen, collect the insurance money and score a free tv out of the deal. But in high school, apparently unlike the offices of Bonner Associates, there was always some other friend sitting around the table who said, “dude, that’s really illegal, it’s called insurance fraud–and people get caught all the time.” I’m guessing Bonner’s wishing they had this guy on their payroll.

But as more forged letters emerge, the most entertaining thing has been Bonner’s defensive strategy, which seems to pretty much boil down to accumulating small wins and grasping at straws. Today for example, they reminded everyone that it’s not like they forged fourteen letters. I mean what kind of sick person…So next week when forged letters 14-16 inevitably emerge, I’m suggesting that Bonner move to the “no one’s even considering that we sent out these forged letters on paper with 35% post-consumer content” defense.

Sometimes all you have to do is provide leading coverage on one crappy story to catapult a crap website with mediocre, or even no content whatsoever, into one of the most highly trafficked sites on the internet.

And then we linked to the Drudgereport? Well today, A DAY LATE WE MIGHT ADD, Drudge has picked up the story, clearly in an effort to quash our efforts to keep this story exclusive to WTPWB, and he didn’t even link to us!

 Matt, we know you read our site. Do the right thing man, throw us a link already.

In case you hadn’t already heard, the Donut Wheel in Huntsville was burgled this past Saturday night. The crooks made off with TWO TONS of powdered sugar. Two (2) tons. In predictable WTPWB fashion, we did some digging:

First, let’s get an idea of how much powdered sugar we are actually talking about here. Two tons, in case you’re not good with google conversions, is equivalent to 4,000 pounds. This equates to about 16,000 cups worth. However you slice it, that’s a lot of powdered sugar.

Next, let’s learn a little more about the city of Huntsville. Population of around 33,373 once you take out the 1,705 prisoners that also reside within the city limits. Home to Sam Houston State University, and a large National Forest of the same name. Another notable aspect of Huntsville is the relative abundance of donut shops. Throughout the city alone, excluding outlying areas, there are six donut shops, concentrated largely on the city’s main drag–not surprisingly called Sam Houston Ave.

In addition to Wheel Donuts, you can head to Fresh Donuts, Mayflower Donuts and Bakery, or one of three locations run by the Shipley donut franchise. Plenty of options. We tried to find some feedback on Wheel Donuts relative to their competition, but we could only come up with this nugget from a fellow named Travis who succinctly claims that Wheel Donuts, “Taste like Windex.”

American consumers eat, on average, 35 donuts per year. Assuming that all the men, women, children, and babies of Huntsville perform their civic obligations and maintain this average, this works out to a respectable 1,168,055 donuts per year, or around 3,200 per day. However, split that out between the 6 options in the city, and this works out to each store doing a business of around 533 donuts per day.

If each donut sells for 75 cents, this would be a daily revenue stream of around $400 per store. A call to the Donut Wheel found that their hours are 4:00am to 4:00pm daily. Even if they only ever had two people working at any given time at the federally mandated minimum wage, this would represent a salary expense of $174 per day, almost half their revenue. Point being, the market seems a little crowded.

We here at WTPWB have developed two hypotheses as to what is happening here. The Shipley Motive, or the Inside Job.

The Inside Job

Let’s return to our analysis of how much powdered sugar was allegedly stolen: 16,000 cups. This delicious looking recipe calls for one half cup of powdered sugar per 18 donuts. As mentioned above, the Donut Wheel probably produces some 533 donuts daily. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that half of these donuts are powdered, this still only works out to 7.5 cups of powdered sugar per day. Even if the thieves took every cup of powdered sugar in the place, this would mean that the Donut Wheel kept enough sugar on hand for 2,133 days of production, or around 5.85 years. Now, it’s true that because it’s an additive, sugar doesn’t spoil, but this seems like an awful lot to keep on hand. And, um does this place look sustainable enough to be around for the next six years?

The Shipley Motive

The second, juicier, and therefore more plausible explanation is that the heist was carried out by rival Shipley Donuts, in a ‘this town’s not big enough for the two us’ type of scheme (this seems to fit really well with Texas too). A couple clues point to this. First, this was not the first heist from the Wheel. Over the past three months they have seen flour, shortening, yeast all fly out the door as well. You really can’t chalk this up to kids, as mishevious little ones might think it funny to take some powdered sugar, but this amount would just be completely excessive. If a true heist, it would have to be someone who also loved to make donuts. The police claimed that the suspect headed north on Sam Houston Ave. The only donut shop in Huntsville north of Wheel? You guessed it, Shipley’s:

But why wouldn’t the police just waltz into Shipley and nab the perps? THEY’RE IN ON IT TOO! A cursory glance at the Huntsville website would make a visiting tourist think there was only one option for donuts in this fine city. There is notably no mention of Wheel, Fresh, or even Mayflower. WE CALL CAHOOTS! Also, cops aren’t known for coming down hard on donut shops. On the contrary, they have more of a reputation for vigorously defend them.

The first, and most telling sign that any country is about to succumb to an alien invasion is when the guy they elect to be premier is married to someone who has traveled to Venus. Seriously. First Lady to be Miyuki Hatoyama described her trip to Venus this way:

“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”

When asked what her husband would think about her traveling to a planet covered with giant volcanoes and sulfuric acid rain, Miyuki was upbeat about her husband’s unwavering support:

 “He would surely say ‘Oh, that’s great’.”

So I know what you’re thinking now–what does the premier’s wife traveling to Venus have to do with Japan being run by aliens? Surely plenty of people make the trek between the two planets all the time. Well let’s go to some other clues.

Here’s a glaring one: The new PM’s nickname? The Alien. Oh good–that’s not subtle. What’s more, his wife claims that he really earned the name, by being, um, different. And if you’re not convinced by either of those two facts, maybe this will link them together. In an interview for a book, Yukio lovingly described his wife as “an energy-refuelling base.” Oh GOOD.

This is the perfect case of hiding in plain sight, essentially creating an alley-oop for pundits who want to repurpose something they wrote a year ago about Obama’s commitment to change, add a couple of Japanese Wikipedia references, post it, and then blow off the rest of the day instead of looking into the fact that these people are from another planet. Hey, it’s a tried and true strategy after all.

But here’s where it gets scary:  This woman who traveled to Venus and regularly acts as a refueling station? She is looking forward to hanging out with Michelle Obama. And why? Well, because “I think she is so natural and has a kind of sensibility similar to mine. If I can have the chance to meet her, I would look forward to it.”

A similar sensibility? Let’s compare the two. Miyuki Hatoyama claims to eat…the sun:

When the sun is up, I always eat it… I tear it off and eat it like this,” she said, gesturing as if clawing at the life-giving celestial body, tearing off pieces and putting them in her mouth. “That gives me great power,” she said.

Michelle Obama claims to eat…Mexican Food.

Miyuki Hatoyama claims to have known Tom Cruise in a past life:

“I remember that he and I were together (in a previous life). I believe he’d get it if I said to him ‘long time no see’ when I meet him.”

Michelle? She doesn’t want anything to do with those celebrities.

And lastly, Hatoyama claims she used to be a “jeans person.” The Obamas as we all know, still are a Jeans Family. Basically, this is terrifying. Aliens have taken control of the Japanese government, and are planning to do something to Michelle Obama, and no one seems to care save for a little blog in Brooklyn. But, we’re not here to complain. Sometimes all you have to do is provide leading coverage on one crappy story to catapult a crap website with mediocre, or even no content whatsoever, into one of the most highly trafficked sites on the internet.