Last we checked in on the Euro 2012 tournament, there were apparently stray dogs and soiled mattresses on the corners of every street in Kiev, but that wasn’t stopping European countries from sending their best soccer players to compete for the Henri Delaunay Trophy in between nailing every wannabe soccer WAG in sight.

Here’s a look at the Euro 2012 tournament field when action begins on June 8:

Um. There you have it. I think.

Unfortunately, the real news isn’t the actual games taking place in the Ukraine and Poland, but the trophy itself, as the radical Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN has tried and succeeded on multiple occasions to knock over the Delaunay Trophy during the preliminary trophy tour. But I don’t mean radical like, “GRRRRR VIOLENCE!” I mean it like, “Bro, they’re all topless.”

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It ain’t gon’ be nothin after that.

Links

UFC 140 Aftermath Part I: Jon Jones Puts Doubts, And Machida, To Rest - But honestly, what do you expect? You can’t get the nickname “Bones” by being passive. Unless you’re Leonard McCoy. [Cage Potato]

The 10 Stupidest Characters in Street Fighter History - These all come from later games, as if “T. Hawk” wasn’t f**king stupid. [Gamma Squad]

New Dark Knight Rises Poster: ‘The Legend Ends’ - Batman Begins was as iffy to me as The Dark Knight was good, so there’s a 50/50 chance this movie will make me sad. I need Bane yelling I WILL CRUSH YOU and trying to run at me repeatedly, dammit. [Film Drunk]

A Collection of ‘Community’ Christmas GIFs - Won’t you be my daddy? I’m a silly Christmas baby! [Warming Glow]

Apple Store Opens In Grand Central, Thousands Of Apple Slavish New Yorkers Lose Their Minds - You know the drill. There are no funny Apple jokes or observations left. It’s the airplane food of commerce. [UPROXX]

My Weekend With The Black Keys’ “El Camino” - If you listen to the radio in Austin, every weekend is your weekend with The Black Keys. And Foster The goddamn People. [Smoking Section]

Yee Haw My Family Is Traumatized - How about those people on the football team known as the Cowboys?? [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

The 40 Best Protest Signs Of 2011 - And the sign says you got to have a membership card to get inside. HUH! [Buzzfeed]

The Ten Most Inappropriate Christmas Songs Ever Rrecorded - “Santa Baby” is the worst and least appropriate, especially when sung by Taylor Swift, which is what makes that Annie scene from last week’s ‘Community’ so amazing. [FARK]

A Broken Soul Stares from a Pair of Watering Eyes: The Most Intriguingly Odd Television Characters of 2011 - Update: Claire Danes is still not interesting. [Pajiba]

Five of the Worst Movies by Otherwise Great Directors - Lists like these always devolve into commenters agreeing about how much they hate the Coen Brothers, which is the worst conversation a person can have. [Unreality]

As the Florida Marlins continue to design the nuances and luxuries of their new $515 million Miami Ballpark, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have taken issue with the team’s decision to place two giant aquariums – featuring live exotic fish – behind home plate. In a letter to Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, PETA implores the Marlins to instead use artwork or technology to showcase ocean life. Perhaps a Snorks DVD box set would make our favorite tree-huggers happy.

The aquariums were announced last week, and they have been designed using high impact bullet-proof glass so that errant foul balls don’t lead to the fish being spilled into the stands or the field. PETA representatives insist that the strength of the glass isn’t the problem, as much as the unnatural environment that will surround them.

Tap on our glass casings to stir up terror, Miami Herald:

“Being exposed to the loud crowds, bright lights, and reverberations of a baseball stadium would be stressful and maddening for any large animals held captive in tanks that, to them, are like bathtubs,” wrote PETA executive vice president Tracy Reiman in the letter.

But PETA said the Marlins should explore alternatives, such as “artist-designed aquariums full of beautiful blown-glass animals,” “high-definition plasma screens showing underwater footage of sea animals,” and even “robotic fish that can ‘swim’ through water.”

Loud crowds. Marlins stadium. It’s clear that PETA has its pulse on the attendance figures of Major League Baseball these days. Reiman added that he hopes the Marlins leave these animals in the ocean “right where they belong.” As the Marlins currently have no intentions of changing their plans, Marlins President David Samson called the matter a philosophical issue, and stated that the animals they use will be treated great, possibly even better than those in the ocean.

And you know what, PETA? He might have a point.

Protesters have gathered in Washington D.C., not because of the BP oil spill or the economy or the unemployment rate or war or health care or tea parties or bailouts, but because they have a problem with the English language. That problem? Words are too hard for people to learn. And, of course, to voice their displeasure, they picked the Super Bowl of child grammar prodigies – the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Four – count them, 1-2-3-4 – protesters launched this assault of the English lexicon that quickly spread to at least a dozen people yesterday, as they are claiming that so many of our words contain letter combinations and sequences that make it too difficult for at least 40 percent of the population to properly learn them. Instead of the words that we all have learned since birth, the protesters would rather we adopt a new system that simplifies words by spelling them how they sound. The idea is so controversial that, when hearing of it, Akshay Buddiga fainted on the spot. *Holds hand up, waits for nerd high-five*

Can you please use douchebags in a sentence, MSNBC.com:

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for “fruit” to be spelled as “froot,” “slow” should be “slo,” and “heifer” — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be “hefer.”

Meanwhile, inside the hotel’s Independence Ballroom, 273 spellers celebrated the complexity of the language in all its glory, correctly spelling words like zaibatsu, vibrissae and biauriculate.

The group, pictured above, arrived wielding signs that read, “Enuf is Enuf Enough” and “All We Need is L-U-V” to prove their point that spelling like illiterates would somehow be better for our children. Meanwhile, Chinese children are laughing at this idea in 16 different languages.

Spelling aficionados aren’t taking this argument lightly, though, as one former Scripps contestant told MSNBC that this proposed change would mean the end of the spelling bee as we know it. Replied one of the protesters, “Kwit aktng lyk a litle bich.”

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