Love me a good celebrity mug shot.

It’s no secret that I try to model myself after the celebrity that I no doubt will one day become—whether it be consistently refreshing my wardrobe so I’m not photographed in the same outfit twice or changing my cell phone number every 90 days to protect my privacy, I’m always staying three steps ahead of the paparazzo. So in the midst of this epidemic of celebrity unruliness and misbehavior, it’s refreshing to hear an updated list of excuses for me to add to my vocabulary. There’s nothing I love more than a good excuse.

First though, I think I should start off with an example of what not to do, presented in perfect clarity to us by Charlie Sheen. Can I be the first to say that man, I had no idea Charlie Sheen was such a train wreck. But oh my god, wow—that man is truly horrifying. And to think he’s CBS’s shining star, a network which caters to 60-year-old Jewish grandmothers in Florida.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying that it would be beneath me to freak out at a prostitute I hired and accuse her of stealing my wallet—that’s actually the first thing I think about, traditionally, when I hire them (“oh fuck, I forgot to hide my wallet—is it still there? Did she steal it? She stole that shit! Oh wait. Sorry. False alarm. It’s right where I left it. Well, I got lucky this time…”). If there’s one thing I’ve learned after years and years of watching Law & Order and CSI (Miami and Vegas, NOT New York), it’s that you can never trust a prostitute. Bitches be shady!

But, unlike Charlie Sheen, I’d like to think that I’d have the wherewithal to have a competent entourage in place to take the fall for me. If I’m making $2 million per episode, you better believe my empire would be appropriately staffed.

An allergic reaction to some medication you were taking. Really?

So let me get this straight: not only did Mr. Sheen not have anyone on the front lines, ready to either take the fall for him or hide all of the evidence before the police arrived, he didn’t even have the appropriate back office in place to come up with a plausible excuse for his behavior.

Mr. Sheen, and Co.: as someone who takes fistfuls of pills and is perfectly capable of operating heavy machinery and/or caring a baby in my fetus to term, I’d like to point out how ludicrous your excuse is. An allergic reaction to medication is an awkward outbreak of bumps on your chest or a severe case of lethargy—it’s not going ape shit in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Couldn’t you think of something better? You were in character for an upcoming role; you were distraught of your recent series of divorces…hell, just say that prostitute actually did steal your wallet. Like I said, everyone could relate to that.

Anyway, the best thing to come out of this is a handy reflection by the NY Daily News on celebrity excuses over the years. Or as I prefer to call it, a cheat sheet.

I’ve already written about how I don’t think it’s productive having celebrities on Twitter—if anything, we need less access into their empty brains. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that C-list celebrities and obscure politicians are using this solely as a tool to find relevance. When no one else cares about their meaningless lives, they can always turn to their tens of followers on Twitter to gently brush their forehead and tell them “@RamonaSinger u dont hve #bugeyes. There not to big, their hott. #bethanysux”

Case and point—the Real Housewives of New Jersey Reunion last week (and lately, the last three reunions from that show have featured a segment where the housewives discuss their “adoring” fans on Twitter). Which reminds me—does anyone feel the need to take a Xanax before watching that show these days? These girls are stressin’ me out rulll bad:

First of all, Here’s what Andy Cohen: you don’t “send a Twitter.” You Tweet. Yeah, I think it’s stupid, too, but let’s try and stick to the nomenclature that the tweeple are using, mkay?

But, in general, surrrrriously?

Danielle, just because you get a retweet from some psycho pedophile in Kansas doesn’t mean you’re right or that you’re not crazy. To be sure: you’re certifiable, and anybody telling you otherwise probably also doesn’t know the difference between “their, there and they’re” or “two and too” and certainly can’t be trusted. If it’s riddled with grammatical errors, no doubt it’s riddled with errors in logic as well. Countess LuAnn–your performance sucked; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And Speidi, same goes for you—they’re followers in the sense that they’re laughing at you, not fans that are adoring you. I think we’re just trying to keep tabs on your krazy-ness so we can forward it around the office for a good laugh or two. Plus we’re waiting for your beach ball breasts to explode, because we know you’ll have live tweeting coverage of the subsequent spill as events unfold.

I don’t hate Twitter; I just don’t like how celebrities use it.

But really, it’s no surprise that celebrities have flocked to a medium which requires the absolute minimum amount of work for them to maintain—140 characters of meaningless text. The way that they use it makes it clear: Twitter is for people who are too lazy to organize their thoughts into a clear and structured argument. It’s for people who are too lazy to blog but think that their thoughts are still important enough to be heard.

If you’re not going to put any serious time into your arguments, it’s pretty self-righteous to think I should bother reading them. #justsayin

"Remove connection"... what a friendly way to say I hate you.

You’ve heard it before (maybe you’ve even said it yourself): “I just purged a bunch of people from my Facebook account.” Here’s how I translate that irritating statement in my brain: “I’m a douchebag who likes to pretend that the ‘throngs and throngs’ of people–people who I either added myself on Facebook or accepted their friendship request at one point–were just bogging me down so much and I had to cut them out of my life. Because I’m a douchebag and I need to complain that I’m just too popular. And I hate sunshine and dolphins and Project Runway marathons on Bravo.”

So, douchebags of the world, here’s my response to you:

1. On behalf of those people that you deleted, thanks. We enjoyed being your friend just as much as you enjoyed being our friend (read: not that much). The only difference is that we didn’t have the buckets of time that you clearly have to one-by-one systematically delete individual people from your account. Which brings me to my next point…
2. Clearly, you have waaaay too much time on your hands. Now I’m not going to say that deleting Facebook friends is a difficult task; it’s not. But deleting hundreds of friends (which is usually the number people toss around as they brag about this accomplishment) is.Here’s some math: It’s a two-click action to sever a Facebook friendship (one to remove, one to confirm). Let’s estimate that it takes two seconds to complete this process (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt with a fast connection), and about 8 seconds on average to make the decision to sever a Facebook friendship (“But I can decide much quicker than that if I don’t want to be friends with someone” you say. Yes, but let’s be sure to factor in all the wandering that you will inevitably do when a scantily-clad profile picture draws you in; really, I’m being generous with this as well). That’s 10 seconds for the whole process, or roughly 6 friendships a minute. If you were to delete 100 friends at this rate, that would take you a little over 16 minutes. So to purge 300 friends (the most common number I hear) would take around 45 minutes. Good lord, what a miserable use of your time.

Seriously, it’s a digital connection. It’s of no cost to you to maintain this electronic relationship. What has our society come to where someone will go out of their way to electronically break off all communication with you, just because they felt like they had “too many friends”?

Before you come back with a douchebag retort that “justifies” your action, let me just say that I’ve heard all of them and they’re all nonsensical. Here are two, followed by my retort:

“But their status updates were annoying.”

Simple solution: hide them from your news feed.

When you see a chronic annoying poster, simply click the “X” to the right and hit “Hide [name]“–easy, right?

Also, your Facebook feed learns what you like reading based on what you’ve clicked in the past. So really, it’s your own fault that your feed is annoying (disclaimer: this is an example of an unverified statement of fact which sounds correct, so just take me on my word). I can personally state that there’s one person in particular whose updates always get shoveled into my feed. Annoying? Yes. But do I click on every single one of them? Absolutely.

“I don’t want them to see my profile anymore”

Simple solution: Create special categories for groups of people and only give them limited access to your profile.

Seeing how your profile looks to other people: just another cool privacy setting brought to you by Facebook.

As much as people bitch and complain about Facebook’s privacy settings, they’re actually pretty straightforward; while they’ve built a lot of interesting features, most people are just too lazy to take advantage of them. One of those features is the ability to setup special groups; here are some examples: “Family”, “Coworkers”, “People I’ve Slept With”, “Aboriginals”, “People I’ve never met before but their profile picture was hot so I friended them”. Another cool feature is the ability to see how other people view your profile, based on what privileges you’ve given them.

Also, what is on your profile that you don’t want them to see? Slutty Halloween costumes? A picture where both of your eyes aren’t lining up correctly because you’re wasted? Really, this begs another question: if you don’t want Aunt Mildred seeing a picture of you doing body shots on a beach in Cancun, should those pictures be up on the internet at all? And maybe you shouldn’t have been so slutty in the first place (there, I said it).

Do you know what those pictures say to me: wow, you graduated from college. So did I. So did your parents. We all have pictures like that somewhere (our parents’ pictures are just in boxes stored in a basement in Boca Raton). And I guarantee you that you only know of about half of them on Facebook. When you run for Congress, they will be found, whether or not you delete me from Facebook (in fact, I think you’re only incentivizing me more if you delete me).

Pretty soon, we’ll get to a point in our society where those photos won’t mean anything anymore. Do you know why? Because in 20 years, you and I will be writing stories for the Washington Post, we’ll be sitting on the other side of the interview table, we’ll have our own kids, and we won’t care about those useless photos anymore because I’m sure we will have had worse. So I’m votingwithmyfeet.com by not caring.

If you’re planning on deleting me on Facebook, do me a favor: let me know, so I can delete you first.

Last night’s VMA debacle only confirmed what we already knew: Kanye West is a huge douchebag. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being humble old Mother Theresa and 10 being that Ed Hardy-wearing guido, Kanye is like an 11 or 12. Yeah. He surpasses this guy.

So I decided to compile some of the most douchey-est quotes from Kanye. Without further ado, let’s jump in:

1. He told Michael Jackson’s parents that he was going to take over the role of “King of Pop“:

   “You know everyone loves and respects Michael but times change. It’s so sad to see Michael gone but it makes a path for a new King of Pop and I’m willing to take that on…First there was Elvis [Presley], then there was Michael, now in the 21st century it’s Kanye’s time to rule. I have nothing but respect for Michael but someone needs to pick up where he left off and there’s nobody better than me to do that. I am the new King of Pop.”

   So this actually turned out to be fake. But still, it sounds like something he would say, right? And in my blog, that’s good enough…

2. He tried to sue Twitter. Because people were making fake accounts impersonating him. But the best part is what he posted to his blog (the caps lock is from him):

   “I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF.”

   He only blogs about 5% of the time on what he’s actually doing. Well, Mr. West, I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank you for giving us a glimpse into 5% of your Caps Locked-filled life. Really, it’s fascinating.

3. He thinks he’s an etymologist. He’s not. But just for shits and giggles, let’s let him try:

   “Only white people and older black people say ‘bling’ now. If a white person uses slang too early, then that makes them look like a wigger. But if black people use slang too late, then it makes them look like a wigger.”
   

   Thanks for that grammar lesson, Kanye.

4. He titled his apology to Taylor Swift “I feel like Ben Stiller in ‘Meet the Parents’ when he messed up everything and Robert de Niro asked him to leave.”Really, Kanye? That’s the best you could come up with?? Well, you see, the difference between you and Ben Stiller is that Ben Stiller is likable. He has a pleasant disposition. You aren’t and you don’t.
5. And my personal favorite; his douche bag-y lyrics. There are a lot to choose from, but how about these from Stronger: “Do anybody make real shit anymore?
   Bow in the presence of greatness
   ‘Cause right now thou hast forsaken us.
   You should be honoured by my lateness,
   That I would even show up to this fake shit.

   My contention with these lyrics is that this song is a cover of a Daft Punk song that came out six years earlier. Don’t get me wrong–it’s a really good song. But the premise, Mr. West, of you calling out other artists for not “making real shit” anymore in a song that’s a cover of another song is just, well, hypocritical? Ironic? Stupid? Yes!!–that’s it, stupid.

So, in summary, you’re a huuuuuuge douche bag, Kanye. It just sucks that you make really good songs. Because other than that, you’re a douche.