This cat and owl are Best Friends Forever (until one of them decides to eat the other one). This video is so cute and great, and the soundtrack has me chair dancing (NEVER STAND UP TO DANCE WHEN A CHAIR IS AROUND), but the fact remains: Who do you think will do the mudering and who will be the murderer? Something this adorable, this dangerously adorable, cannot last, right?

Brunswick, one of two 5-month old harbor seals rescued by Seal Rescue Clinic at Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Conn., faces the ocean much the same way we should all face impending Monday mornings — with a mix of fear and wide-eyed eagerness.

via Buzzfeed

I think we’d all like to believe that, sitting next to a reading lamp and swaddled in his Holy Snuggie somewhere deep inside the Vatican’s intestinal labyrinths, Pope Benedict Palpatine Vader XVI read The Casual Vacancy with a mounting sense of disappointment that Harry Potter didn’t make at least a cameo appearance. Really, though, who’s to know what the Pope really thought of J.K. Rowling’s adult fiction effort?

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Thanks to the the blog NOLA to New York, we have written evidence that schoolchildren can make your heart feel like a marshmallow spinning gleefully in a microwave with just some markers and good cheer. This adorable note (and many, many others like it) come from the fourth graders at the Harriet Tubman School on Algiers Point just a brisk swim across the Mississippi from the French Quarter (don’t swim in the Mississippi because it’s totally gross).  Not to nitpick, but…New Jersey doesn’t get any love?  Just a perfunctory, “Be safe”?  Jeez, thanks, kid.  

via Buzzfeed

Owning a dog brings many joys and frustrations. For instance, in order to chaperone my dog from puppyhood into young adulthood, I have been forced to perform all of the following duties, sometimes simultaneously: listen to her plaintive wails while she was being crate trained, clean another dog’s poop out of her face fur, brush her teeth, throw a tennis ball until my shoulder made a clicking noise, and watch the vet violate her with a rectal thermometer while she looked at me as if to ask, “Why are you allowing this to happen? Do something!” I’ve also had the pleasure of watching her chase her until she literally vomited from sheer dizziness without realizing that it may be a symptom of a very human problem. She may have OCD.

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Maybe you’ve forgotten that it’s election season, what with all the superstorms swirling around the planet, but that’s totally okay because vandals in Virginia were on hand to remind the nation that politics can be really gross by spray painting “Baby Killer” on the campaign office of Wayne Powell, the (pro-choice) Democrat challenging Rep. Eric Cantor (R. Va) for his congressional seat in Virginia’s 7th District.

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Birds, as you may or may not already be aware, love to party, and by “party” I of course mean eat fermented rowan berries until they die from alcohol poisoning. According to a Saturday report in the British Medical Journal’s Veterinary Record, drunk birds react pretty much exactly as drunk people, if people had wings and thus the added danger of trying to fly in between buildings while intoxicated.

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At least according to this gif Elizabeth Warren seems positively wracked with glee that she may very soon get to do victory donuts in front of Scott Brown’s house with her Harley (I don’t know if Elizabeth Warren rides a Harley, but if she did I can’t imagine how else she’d use it). According to the Western New England University Polling Institute (which is an organization that exists), Warren leads Republican rival Scott Brown 50-46 in the Massachusetts Senate race. Her, knock on wood, victory party will feature juice and cookies, though I’ve heard a delightful rumor that the juice is spiked with grain alcohol and the cookies have weed in them. Three cheers for election season! [via WaPo]

-Doug Barry

In a crass attempt to exploit storm-weary New Yorkers (kidding!), director Benh Zeitlin came onstage for a Q&A after a special screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild in Astoria. What once seemed like a whimsical (and extremely parochial) fable about residents of a South Louisiana town trying to patch up their community after a hurricane now, in the wake of Sandy, seems like it has the potential to resonate with pretty much everyone who lives in a coastal region and therefore can look forward to experiencing an annual “Storm of the Century.”

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Here’s a horrifying (and probably NSFW) ad promoting veganism for dudes as a way to increase their sexual stamina, which works by turning their previously sad, shriveled flesh junk into massive, phallic produce. I mean, that seems to be the real takeaway, no? Hey guys, with a plant-based diet, you will be able to leer at women, like, all day, waving your genitals at them while you grimace in a vaguely menacing way. [via Buzzfeed]

-Doug Barry

Critics — the Telegraph book critic Christopher Howse who looks like a Santa Claus that’s been turned into a Dracula Santa Claus (incidentally, a sure-fire title for a spec script for Supernatural (you’re welcome)) — have not been kind to Pippa Middleton’s new book, Celebrate, which is about how much Pippa Middleton loves to write, cook, and throw well-mannered tea parties with her stuffed animals.

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Enjoy a picture of marathon runners doing something practical and useful for a change.  From Gawker:

Here’s a mob of New York City Marathon runners packed into the Staten Island ferry terminal. There’s no race today, instead, they’re all going to help out with relief efforts in the battered borough. [Image via Paul Sailer]

The International Ski Federation has told Lindsey Vonn, whose race-day nails are very glittery, that under no circumstances will she be able to compete in the men’s World Cup downhill race Nov. 24 at Lake Louise, which, for all you geographically challenged readers, is in Canada, the cozy knit cap of the continental United States with a special earhole cut out for the cauliflower ear that is Alaska.

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Just in case you had started to believe that the horrifying story of a New York nanny stabbing to death two of the children in her case was simply an awful collective nightmar