• So maybe I’m just really 2006 over here, but I thought this week’s story about South Park using the ol’ blocks and bleeps to censor an episode depicting the Prophet Muhammad was going to generate more discussion. Because isn’t this the first big indicator of the long-term pop culture effects of that Danish cartoon scandal? So what jumped the shark here – free speech and religion as a topic for passionate debate, or South Park’s cultural cache? Maybe everyone is just in agreement with Lindsday Robertson, who says, all debates aside, South Park is run by two gigantic assholes. Possible! Baseketball, anyone? -jc

• I gave your brain a break last week with the hipster list, but this time I’m going one step further and linking you to a video! Be warned though; at some Twitter conference Christopher Weingarten (a.k.a. @1000timesyes, a.k.a. the guy who reviewed 1000 records via 140-character tweets in a year) spews an expletive-laden rant on the future of music criticism (i.e. the post-music criticism era). It’s good stuff, worthy of the highbrow shit we tend to post here on the ‘Dump. Except for last week’s hipster list. -am

• See this is what happens, when we sign off on our contributions to this weekly link round-up: you see that some weeks it’s everyone, some weeks it’s not. Anyway, I’m gonna leave it off on a tender note: the internet is made of real people. Props to Rafi for tweeting this! -am

• Breaking news: I have bad memory. Further breaking news: Leah McLaren wrote an op-ed about the responsibility of being appropriately smug and entitled. I really don’t have much more to add. You just can’t make this stuff up. -sy

• I have a confession: I didn’t read anything this week! At least, not on the culture front. Well, not anything that wasn’t Oscar-related, and don’t worry I’ll spare you that headache. Instead, join me in re-watching some amazing Canadian public service announcements. Gawker.tv did a great round-up of clips, everything from “I can put my arm back on,” to “Don’t you put it in your mouth,” and the fun extends into the comments section with “Some people say I eat too many chocolate bars, but…” and “I smell burnt toast, doctor!” Who needs reading? Everything I need to know in life I learned from these clips. Now excuse me while I laugh at all the non-Canadian kids who became pimply epileptic fools with severed arms in their mouths.

• I want to say  this article by Anne Trubek over at GOOD magazine is a must read, except I’m not entirely sure if she technically wrote the thing at all. I won’t hesitate to say this is one of the most inventive uses of the written word I’ve ever seen online, articulating a philosophical debate on plagiarism, writing and originality in a way her own words probably could never have done. Great concept, well executed and probably worth talking about for a few hours over some beers. Seriously, call me after you read it. I’m so lonely.

• When George Lois starting designing covers for Esquire in 1962, he brought in an era that saw the mag push the boundaries and create some of the most memorable imagesto ever be burned into the collective conscious. The Ny Times recently spoke to Lois, and got him to tell the stories behind his 12 favourite covers here.

End of Decade lists can get tiresome, but that’s no reason to ignore Matt Zoller Zeitz’s “Directors of the Decade” series at Salon.com; Zeitz writes thoughtful essays where others just make linkbait. Be sure to check out Michael Bay at number 10, where the film writer provides a sober, fair analysis of someone most would rather ignore or ruthlessly mock.

Tara Stiles is a Yoga expert and contributor for the Huffington Post. Her most recent column is about dealing with difficult people, but mostly reads like a hilariously over-dramatized account of her traumatic experiences in educational environments. I’ve never understood people who had life changing stories from kindergarten or had formative life experiences based on how bad their high school years were. Perhaps I lack empathy, but I can’t help but just laugh at Stiles’ anecdotes about her sad-sack teenage era, even though I know she is attempting to gain emotional currency. I suppose it’s a cultural difference between Canada and the U.S., right there with ketchup chips and saying soda.

Celebrating a landmark birthday just before the end of a seemingly-full-of-promise 00’s has got me all angsty and cynical. Things weren’t supposed to be like this! Maybe my decade-long habit of chilling, hanging out and other varieties of loafting are to blame, but why point the proverbial finger at myself when I can blame the Internet? During a time when epochal lists are making the rounds, the Village Voice’s count down of reasons “Why This Decade Sucked” is mad refreshing. Especially reason number 10: “Social Media Ruined the Internet” which addresses aforementioned feelings as a necessary by-product of increased social isolation thanks to the WWW.

We’ve all heard of the Nigerian email scam, and I’m not exxagerating when I say I receive about one or two a week in my inbox. While I usually just hit delete, I recieved one this morning that can only be classified as the best email scam letter in the brief history of the information super highway. I would be doing a disservice by not sharing it. Italics and brackets mine.

Hello !

So that I can well write you this letter. I looked your questionnaire on a site . To me it is pleasant that you have left to me the e-mail address I hope that you have not forgotten me, my profile on your site. My name Olga, I to consider there you and you have very strongly interested me. But certainly under your questionnaire I cannot understand who you and that from myself represent. But I would like that you knew that you very much have interested me and to me it would be very pleasant if you have told to me about yourself.

It was always interesting to me, what your culture??? That inhabitants of other party of the earth love. It always was the riddle for me (WTF?).

I have started to search for myself the partner in life absolutely recently. I hope that you understand that the person cannot there is constantly one. Certainly the person which near to me will be necessary to me.

If you here also write to me. You mean as is lonely, means to us it is necessary that we were not lonely and were together once in the near future.

Tell to me about itself. If you answer me I will try to tell to you all about yourself, to begin with I will give you a few information on my age of 30 years, and my growth of 170 centimetres and I from Russia.

I hope that to start it will suffice you. We are still absolutely not familiar, but I think that soon all will be corrected also we will know each other very well, I hope that this correspondence will lead us something big than dialogue is simple.

I hope that you will write to me seriously because I search for the serious person for a joint life.

I would like at once you to ask, if it was not pleasant to you that I have written to you then it is not necessary for me to answer or be rude in the letter. As it is not pleasant to me when at me simply photo of the frank maintenance so I ask do not ask from me naked photos. I the normal decent girl and I search only for serious relations, I do not like to play game, gravity is necessary to me only (wow, we have so much in common. I too like gravity).

Please answer only to my personal e-mail:  milochka4istulya@yahoo.com

If you want I will learn is glad to answer you more.

All good greetings from Russia from Olga