Florida State University professors have vocally objected to the proposed addition of a school of chiropractic medicine at their school. As a form of protest, they have created a revised campus map showing the school's position at the precipice of a slippery slope of pseudoscience. On their map, the proposed school is situated across the street from the Bigfoot Institute and the department of Past Life Studies.

The St. Petersburg Times (via Boing Boing) has the satirical map.

It's hard to blog about celebrity deaths in a week that 77,000 people have lost their lives to a natural disaster. But after at least four Law and Order reruns per week over the past six years of post-secondary education, we've spent enough time in the company of Jerry Orbach, aka Detective Lennie Briscoe, that we're pretty saddened by his passing. The prostate is a finnicky little do-dad. Super useful, but forever getting cancer.

So, dear prostate cancer: Damn you for stealing away our favourite L&O detective in the history of ever. No, seriously. You suck.

Related

• Gothamist's Jen Chung, who loved Lennie as much as anyone in the blogosphere, offers all the requisite linkage.
• Attaboy's written a nice obit that captures what we loved best about Orbach: "You always had the feeling, when you watched him play his most famous character, that you knew this guy."
• The Optimuscrime salute to Orbach's tenure on L&O is found here.
• Brandon Bird did a terrific L&O-themed exhibition, is selling Lennie shirts to raise funds for prostate cancer research, and we totally stole a detail from one of his paintings for this post (sorry.)
• Nervous Breakdown notices that nobody has yet broken the news to IMDB.

Attention teenagers:

1. You did not spring forth from the womb with an innate ability to play the harmonica without lessons or practice.
2. When you are in a pack¹ of your peers and someone has brought along a harmonica, you do not need to pass it around and each attempt to play it in order to establish #1.
3. #2 goes doubly when you are riding on a crowded GO commuter train.

Attention mothers of five hyperactive children who must explain homosexuality to their offspring after they start asking questions after they tell their white-trash boyfriend that some celebrity featured in their People magazine is a 'total lezbo':

1. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
2. Please, dear God, shut up.
3. Why are you not shutting up?

¹ What is the collective noun for teenagers, anyhow? A pack? A herd? A gossip? A grumble?

Is there an Awesomest Person In The History Of Ever contest? Because if so, how do we go about nominating Brandon Bird? If he's not making t-shirts to save Detective Lenny Briscoe's prostate, he's curating a collection of hilariously inauthentic Children's Letters To Christopher Walken (via Chromewaves). Our favourite reads:

Dear Chris,

My daddy says I'm too old to believe in Santa.

Please come to our house on Christmas Eve and put the fear of God into him.

Everything this man does is total genius (Bird, that is. Not that we're not fond of Walken. More cowbell!) If you've got $5, we suggest you buy his Dukes of Hazzard postcards. If you have $800, we totally recommend splashing out on the portrait of L. Ron Hubbard eating Funyuns. Pure hottness.

Glad tidings, pretties, on this snowy, wintery Festivus day. We've arranged a generous donation for you as a special holiday gift (see above), but that's not the end of our cavalcade of presents. No, today, you also get the last MP3 of our holiday advent blog. It's Coldplay, who we've always considered to be a poor man's Travis. But give it a listen. It's all kinds of pretty.

And to all of the Editors, Readers and Homies of Optimuscrime: Merry Christmas, y'all.