As was the case when a video of a US Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff in Iraq sparked widespread outrage, death threats and maudlin displays of outrage across the internet, the news that Costa Rican artist Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas had starved a dog named Nativity to death as part of an art exhibit has been making the rounds on Myspace bulletins and well over a million people have signed internet petitions calling for his banishment to the Chateau D’iff of the art world. First off, the story is almost certainly just another performance art hoax, like the recent Yale abortion art. But even if it were real, the whole point of Vargas’ as he himself explained was to “illustrate the point that…in my home city of San Jose, Costa Rica, tens of thousands of stray dogs starve and die of illness each year in the streets and no one pays them a second thought. Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us. Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway.”  If illustrating the lazy hypocrisy of so-called “animal lovers” was the goal of the installation, I’d say Vargas succeeded in spades. All the people signing these petitions and expending their energy making Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas a famous performance artist in the name of “animal welfare” should take a good long look in the mirror and realize that millions of cats and dogs are euthanized in this country each year for no other reason than people don’t care enough about them to pay for them to live. Likewise, many millions more are tortured to death every single day to provide our cheap, overly meat-laden diets and yet most people do nothing. I guess its a lot easier to sign some fucking stupid petition than to actually do anything real to back up your supposed convictions. Great job everyone! Way to make a difference. OBAMA ‘08!

So remember that story in the LA Times a couple of weeks ago linking Sean “Diddy” Combs to the shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur? Apparently it’s bullshit:

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.” Sabatino is pictured in the above mug shot.

The author of the story was, of course, none other than Chuck Phillips, who previously won a Pullitzer for his reporting on corruption in entertainment industry, who just the other day, defended his sourcing on the story to MTV News:

“I often get approached by a lot of people, and then I talk to a lot of people who I thought knew someone and I find out they’re lying,” Philips said. “It takes a lot of time to develop. I’m not gonna write it just because someone says it. I have to, in my mind, have double or triple sourcing on something and people who hadn’t spoken to each other and I can assure myself that they haven’t spoken to each other. Because I’ve had two people try to set me up. … I would catch them. But if you have three, you never get tripped up. I learned that writing about the music business, because I’d write about big deals that were coming out or a firing that would happen five days before it happened. And you had to be right about that sh–, because those guys would sue your ass. But in this case, I don’t write anything until I feel it’s confident, it’s true. I know all kinds of stuff I don’t write about. But then if I know that it’s true, I’m gonna write about it. But I never tell anybody what it is, because it’s unfair if it’s not true. And there are people that will lie to you. Same thing happens in the music business, when I wrote about that. Same thing happened in the government. The police lie to you all the time. Police write up documents that are completely false, and you can print that. As a journalist, if they write up a police report that’s false, you can put that on the front page of the newspaper and not be sued, because it’s a police document.

“People are talking about that document,” Philips added. “I had all of the information before I got the FBI document. [Editor's note: Philips obtained FBI records cited in Monday's story that said an informant told authorities in 2002 that Jimmy Rosemond and James Sabatino set up Shakur.] And when I got the FBI document, that was really like frosting on the cake for me. Because in this document, by somebody who I had never spoke to, I did speak to them eventually before the story ran, but who I didn’t know or speak to, he said almost the same thing that I found out. So for me, it’s just another resource, but for everybody who reads it, ‘Oh, it has to be true. The FBI is sourcing it.’ “

Um, RONGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

The “cold prevention” product Airborne has been shown to use false advertising due to a gross lack of supporting research. Basically it’s nothing more than a run-of-the-mill vitamin, and now they’re paying out 23 million plus in a class action lawsuit. What a bunch of bullshit. “Invented by a teacher.” Yeah, so it must be legitimate, because a teacher would never mislead anyone. I feel bad for my grandparents, who always bought it for me when I was home in the hope that it would make me feel better if I was getting sick, which it never did. Anybody who has claimed this bogus product to work can simply thank their mind for enlisting the power of a placebo.

Just kidding! She’s fine. She was never even missing.

Dear Concerned Internet Denizens,

Ashley Flores is not missing. This is a hoax. Some idiot fooled you into caring about this young girl who was never actually missing. This is the kind of thing sweeps inboxes every four months or so. My mom passes me shit like this all the time. Do a little research before blindly passing on emails like these. Thank you.

Here’s the full scoop at Urban Legend.

In other news, I know of a widow from the Middle East who will give you millions of her deceased husband’s savings if you help her set up a secure US bank account….email me for details.