Wednesday, some lucky Queens, New York resident won a staggering $133 million in the Mega Millions state lottery. And since I live in Queens, I was pretty pissed off it wasn’t me. Then I made myself feel better by remembering that most people who win the lottery have their lives ruined by the money. But that got me thinking, what exactly are you supposed to do, if you miraculously win, to keep it from ruining you life? (Surprisingly, “hookers and coke” is not the right answer.)

After a little research, I’ve come up with a few quick tips for how to conduct yourself after becoming richer than your wildest dreams. (more…)

Calls for the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana grew louder this week, coming from a highly unlikely group: the police. In a 180-degree shift in position, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents, along with police chiefs and elected sheriffs from around the state announced their support for the legalization and taxation of marijuana.

“Weed is good.  Weed is right.  Weed works,” said Dorchester County Sheriff B.D. Squire, spokesman for the group. The change comes after calculating how much tax revenue could be produced by legalizing marijuana.

“There was a half-million dollar bust a couple weeks ago in Berkely County,” said state Agriculture Secretary Hugh Weathers, “if that pot was taxed at anything near the rate of tobacco… well that would be about $500 million straight into the state coffers. Can you imagine what kind of income we’d pull in if it was planted on proper farms and not just in little patches in the woods? We wouldn’t be having a ’stimulus’ debate because we wouldn’t need the money.”

Check out the whole story here!

OK, what. the. f**k is going on here? If I were a celebrity, I would be very afraid for my life – Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and now king of the television pitchmen, Billy Mays, all dead within five days of each other. Mays, 50, was found dead early this morning at his home in Tampa, Florida, by his wife. Police say no foul play is suspected, TMZ.com is reporting.

So to honor this fallen icon of 4am television, here is The Best of Billy Mays – Video Remix Edition.

RIP, Billy – buying stuff off the TV will never be the same without you.

A new report has linked alcohol consumption to one in 25 of all deaths worldwide. The study, conducted by a team from the University of Toronto, found that the average amount of alcohol consumed worldwide is 12 drinks-per-week. In the United States, that number jumps up to 17-per-week, whereas in the Middle East (where alcohol is widely banned) that number drops to 1.3. But Europe takes the award for biggest lushes, with a whopping 21.5 drinks-per-week. (more…)

Yesterday, President Obama signed into law a anti-tobacco bill, which will make the distribution of flavored cigarettes illegal. The law is intended to limit tobacco products being “marketed to children”, but this could also signal the end to something any pot smoker holds dear: flavored blunts.

Now, the wording of the bill seems to specifically target “cigarettes,” not cigars or tobacco wraps. But it doesn’t take much to imagine a judge ruling that flavored cigars and tobacco wraps qualify just as much as cigarettes do. And if that happens, it will be a sad day in Pot Town. (more…)

With the increasingly bloody battle for Iran’s future raging on in Tehran, social networking Sites, like Facebook and Twitter, remain the primary source of news out of the country, whose government has effectively banned all established press from reporting.

Wisely, Twitter has done whatever it can to help maintain its service for the Iranian people, ensuring Twitter’s relevance in this new era of information sharing, if not in the history books. Facebook, on the other hand, has taken a different approach.

Meet Saeed Valadbaygi, author of the Website, Revolutionary Road and one of the primary ‘citizen journalists’ for the revolution currently going on in Iran. His extensive reports have been referenced and quoted repeatedly in the mainstream media, from Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish to MSNBC.

In addition to posting on his Site, Saeed uses both Twitter and Facebook to report everything from first hand experiences to videos from the frontlines in Iran, online, for the world to see.

But within the last few days, Facebook has twice threatened to cancel Saeed’s account, citing as the reason vague violations of their Terms of Service. After receiving the warnings, Saeed posted them to his Facebook page, without comment. Facebook then deleted the posts from his Site.

In response, a Facebook group, “in defence of Saeed’s activities on Facbook” [sic] is attempting to keep Facebook from canceling Saeed’s account. The group currently has more than 1,350 followers and is growing by the day. (more…)

Supporters of legalization and decriminalization of marijuana received a boost from Capitol Hill Tuesday, as Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank introduced a bill to the House of Representatives, which, if passed, would decriminalize marijuana on the federal level.

The bill, labeled H.R. 2493, the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009, would remove federal penalties for personal possession of up to 100 grams of marijuana (roughly 3.5 ounces), and would reduce the penalty for smoking pot in public to a mere $100, echoing Massachusetts’s similar (though controversial) marijuana law, which passed last November. (more…)

Well, school’s over for the year.  You former freshman have moved back in with your parents and secured that summer job and, after the first couple of weeks, have discovered a sad truth: while you’re a college student, summers blow.

You’re working forty hour weeks in menial labor.  None of your college buddies are around anymore.  Your parents don’t seem to appreciate when you show up at your house drunk at 4 a.m.  Your mom still does your laundry, but she’s sharing her car with you, so you have to let her know when you’re going anywhere.  You never thought you’d ask this, but: is it September yet?

You call up the ever-dwindling number of people you still talk to from high school and see what they want to do, and at some point, somebody suggests going to the bar — you know, that crap-tastic small town dive bar filled with locals.  Sure, why not?  When you walk in, here’s what you can expect to find: (more…)

Well, it’s about g*ddamn time.

Like many Americans, we here at COED have been constantly harassed for the past year, countless times a day, by robocalls announcing that ‘the warranty on your vehicle is about to expire’. They called our office lines and our cellphones. Time and again, we pressed ‘1′ to speak to a “warranty specialist”, connecting us to some a**hole in a call center somewhere, who we asked to remove our names from the list. We also asked for the name of the company making the calls, where they were located, why the f**k they had the right to call us, endlessly. We were never removed from the list – and they never had any answers. But now, they’re totally screwed.

Friday, ArsTechnica.com reported that the Federal Trade Commission has finally gone berserk on these illegal companies, putting an end to their punkass ways. (more…)

Early Thursday morning, Google News shutdown for hours before coming back online with a new feature – little YouTube thumbnails next to news stories. When clicked, users were taken to YouTube news videos. Cool, I guess. But it seems as though these changes caused a worldwide Google sh!tstorm never before seen – Google search wouldn’t load, nor YouTube, nor any Site running Google ads. Basically, half the damn Internet was down for the count. It’s like their servers caught the Google flu.

Needless to say, we started freaking out – along with everybody else. It was so bad, we even used Yahoo search for the first time in years. And while the outages only lasted a little more than an hour, it made us realize exactly how totally and completely f**ked everything would be if Google really went down for any significant amount of time. Kinda makes that whole ‘Internet monopoly’ investigation seem a bit more important, wouldn’t you say?