Well, we started the day with some fun Chicago Cubs news and my semi-feigned disappointment that Nick “Ron Swanson” Offerman is a lifelong Cubs fan, so why not pile on with some more North Side news? Because this one might sting a little.

Sony released a new commercial for MLB 12: The Show today, and while the theme is admittedly clever and surprisingly beautiful, I just can’t help but think that it’s like pushing a burn victim into a sand pit. The video – that you can view after the jump in case you’re impatient and don’t feel like reading one of my patented build-ups – sets the scene of the Cubs winning a World Series for the first time in a bazillion, jillion, zillion 104 years, and I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t make this Cardinals fan a little misty just thinking about what could be.

Then I felt warm so I tapped Alfonso Soriano on the shoulder and he started swinging his bat to cool me off. Hooray for baseball season!

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That’s still a thing, isn’t it?

20 Of The Greatest Flash Mobs Ever Conducted - If I was God, the first thing I’d get rid of would be airplane turbulence. My second act would be to make the Reverse Flash real, so he could put his fingers in the brains of Improv Everywhere and vibrate them until they died. [Uproxx]

Cupcake Orgy: The Definitive Collection Of Elaborately Themed Cupcakes - The weird iris cupcake was my favorite part of Bridesmaids. I also like that “making desserts” has replaced “being a magazine reporter” as the default romantic comedy job for women. [Uproxx]

Who Is Karin Catherine Waldegrave? - And while we’re at it, who is Paula Schultz? [Uproxx]

A FilmDrunk Exclusive: Trailer for The Facts of Life XXX - I wanted this trailer to be so much more. I wanted the mentally handicapped girl to show up, or at least Tootie’s pre-Crisis roller skates. I think I might know too much about The Facts of Life to be a heterosexual adult human male. [Film Drunk]

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Here’s a not-so-feelgood story out of Europe involving an Italian teenager (not pictured), a PlayStation, and a dad getting stabbed because he was kicking his boy’s ass in FIFA. Roll blockquote…

The man, identified as Fabrizio R., suffered a deep cut to the throat after his 16-year-old son, Mario, attacked him during an argument on Sunday over the soccer video game FIFA 2009.

Police said the argument broke out when the 46-year-old storekeeper offered his son advice on tactics to improve his play, and then turned the television off in response to his son’s behavior.
Fetching a knife from the kitchen, Mario stabbed his father in the neck before returning to clean the weapon at the kitchen sink in front of his mother and leaving it to dry on the draining-board.

Forty-six year-old housewife Monica B,. told Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera that she had no idea what had happened until her husband stumbled into the room, clutching his throat. –Y! News.

Mario [It's'a mee! Mario! --Ed.] got the game just a few days earlier as a birthday present. But here’s the money quote, from Mario’s mom, emphasis added:

“Mario is obsessed. He’s forever playing on his PlayStation, and we bought him FIFA 2009 because we didn’t want him playing violent games,” his mother told Il Corriere.

Good move, mom. That’s a fine piece of preventative parenting. Because little Mario beating up hookers and shooting cops in a video game would have just turned him into some anti-social maniac. I’m sure he’ll get over that eventually. Stabbing his father, that is. Nobody ever gets over videogames. Because videogames never say, “Sure, I’d love to hang out, but I’ve gotta work late tonight.”

It’s amazing to think that if we’d all been alive 100 years ago, we’d be putting in 12-hour shifts at some meatpacking plant instead of dicking around on the internet. It’s just one of the growing pains of an industrializing nation, and we should all be grateful that we missed it, but I’m getting off topic. Here’s a reminder for anyone with an Asian girlfriend: get a fuggin’ job. And really, if you’re living with a girl that’s this hot and you’re spending your late nights playing Need For Speed, you’re doing it wrong, and you deserve to have your video game system destroyed by a hammer.