Kate Middleton's Awful New Portrait

Controversy over Kate Middeltone's new official portrait. How bad could it be, you wonder? This bad?

No, this bad.

The artist caught her at the moment when she's tired of your excuses and is just waiting for you to finish embarrassing yourself before she unloads. That's what you'd paint if you'd been married to her for ten years and it hadn't been working out for the last four.

PRISON BLUES Police in Australia were looking for four Smurfs, wanted on assault charges.

Notice how the "man dressed as a Smurf" quickly becomes a Smurf himself. That's all it takes? You smear yourself cerulean, and suddenly you're a fictional Euro-gnome? Noted.

Lest you find the story suspicious, we have security camera footage from the store.

After the video was released to the public, they came forward and were arrested. (h/t: a commenter in the Time.com story on the Smurf problem; he had the embed code and the movie, which Time declined to provide. Odd.)

Well, that's not true. You can. It's just not as easy as it was when every surface street connected to the core. It could have been worse: this was a proposal for ramming a freeway into downtown, in the old Gateway district:

What a vibrant, bustling wonderland that would have been, eh? Well, the article proposes something novel: covering up the freeways, and using the space for retail, parks, and so on. It would seem impractical to build structures on the spot, but imagine a long greensward stretching from downtown to the Crosstown: it would be gorgeous, and would instantly tie the communities back together.

It won't happen soon, but it's not a bad idea to keep in our back pocket. Or course, that's where I keep the coupons I intend to use at Cub, and I always find them a week later after washday in a useless wad.

Am I making sense today? It's hard to tell. Which brings us to the next story:

SPY BOTTLES Drug thieves might be nabbed by a new proposal.

After four days on Vicodin - yes, this nonsense is being written Under the Influence - I don't know why people want to be on this stuff if they don't have to be. I can't wait to be done with it. Imagine being wide awake AND incredibly sleepy AND your blood has been replaced with cement. It's better than pain, but I can't imagine anyone volunteering for a sensation this banal. According to the dentist, today is Maximum Discomfort Day. Tomorrow, no more of this stuff. If it hurts I'll go full Cowboy, and chew on a leather strap soaked in whiskey.

Anyway, some people are complaining about the fake bottles, as if the government will use them to spy on people who have legitimate uses for the pills. No. If the Feds were putting pills that had tiny GPS devices into regular prescriptions, the critics might have a point, but that would be stupid. Sir, I'm getting some peculiar readings. The target appears to have stopped at a McDonald's restaurant, but now I'm showing that he's heading west at 14 MPH towards the municipal waste treatment facility. Should we send someone to intercept him at the front gate?

VIDEO Making the rounds today is a deaf bulldog named - all together now - WINSTON, whose owner has combined his scooting with a blues song. The owner appears in the comments to assure all the scolds that he is not wormy, doesn't have gland problems, isn't having a seizure, and is collar is just fine honestly you people I swear. It's like 17% of the Internet consists of people who troll home videos so they can point out their superior awareness of animal needs and behavior.