I was in New Orleans for four days. It's too early. This cup knows how I feel.

[Laughing Squid]

Public polling is often inherently ridiculous, so this particularly strange new way of asking if people believe President Obama is a secret Muslim can't be given that much credit, but it is a little disarming how many of the likely Republican primary voters nationwide seem to be confident that they have a sense of where the velvet rope lies during the afterlife.

[Slate]

Let's just say you're a Catholic priest and a photo is released of you, shirtlessly hugging another guy that you're rumored to be in a relationship with. The Church is upset with you, demanding you undergo some sort of "how to be straight" remedial training. What do you do?

a) Have an open discussion of your sexuality and how it relates to your faith.
or...
b) Claim that you and your shirtless hugging partner are only friends and make a statement to the Catholic church saying "Let them measure my anus and see if it is dilated"?

Decisions, decisions.

• Map by Google, adaptation by Dan Gibson in MS Paint

Hurry up Start Our State people. If you can beat North Dakota to the punch, America can avoid all that crazy flag re-designing and stick to 50 states:

North Dakotans will vote on whether the state needs to "clarify" its status after a local history buff discovered a flaw in its constitution that has created a state of confusion — over whether North Dakota is even a state at all.

The 82-year-old Grand Forks resident, John Rolczynski, says he believes North Dakota is still technically a territory, 122 years after it officially joined the United States.

The misunderstanding stems from one word that was omitted in the state constitution that was written up in 1889, Rolczynski told msnbc.com.

Rolczynski, who was born in North Dakota and taught history there for years, was offered the chance to write a book on his state. It was during research for the book, in 1995, that Rolczynski found the error....

"We'll vote on it in November of 2012," Rolcynski said. "The people of North Dakota have to approve it."

• Photo Ryn Gargulinski
• Bomb pops are the safest bombs on July 4.

While that doesn’t make it any smarter that Tucson supermarkets and roadside tents still sell fireworks all over town, although they are illegal for private use in city limits, it could mean a few other things. Fireworks might actually be getting safer or — get this — people might actually be getting smarter about the dangers of such explosives.

Except for the guy North Dakota who had his head blown off.

The North Fargo fatality occurred when 41-year-old Jesse William Burley lit an explosive, believed to be some type of mortar-style firework, which exploded in a cloud of smoke and resulted in his decapitation, according to a report on North Dakota’s Inforum news website.

Burley’s neighbor Chris Hanson, who lives up the street in the mobile-home park, admitted he had seen Burley’s stash of fireworks earlier that day and knew to get out of there. He said the fireworks sported stickers that read: “If found please report to the U.S. government.”

Hanson was about to leave the neighborhood when Burley lit off a second firework after the first one exploded with no other side effects but a big bang and visible shock waves.

The second explosive ripped Burley’s head off.

If you've ever had your first name egregiously misspelled on a Starbucks cup, this website is proof that you haven't suffered alone. As you take in your nonfat vanilla latte, feel some empathy for Lacey ("Lazy"), Jackie ("Shaggy"), Aline ("Alien") and poor old Molly, whose name was misspelled above as "Pollen."

Sadly, this photo was taken in Michigan and not Alabama (so we could continue our tribute to the Southern state), but I think the same sort of purely American brilliance is at work here.

[Reddit]

Nearly all music from 1990 has a weird distant feel at this point, but this leaked video from the Scientology archives is particularly bad. Catch organization head and very nice man (according to several terse emails I received) David Miscavige wearing a very strange sweater around 2:45!

[Laughing Squid]

We get it, dude. You guys wear weird costumes and do flips. Just throw the damn ball and stop making the rest of us look bad.

The Arizona Republic busts Republican state Sen. Al Melvin of Southern Arizona for posting a phony quote allegedly from Abe Lincoln on his Twitter account.