ASYLUM - For all mankind

The approach of the year 2012, the latest in a series of predicted Ends of the World As We Know It, really didn't have us all that worried. After all, we've been burned before. (Y2K, anyone?)

Then, we saw a new bill introduced by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) that proposes the establishment of a United States Commission on Planetary Defense to help protect Earth from the kind of catastrophic impact illustrated here by freakin' NASA.

Should we be worried? Is the sky falling? Will the commission include Bruce Willis and/or Morgan Freeman? Is it time to get an End Times condo?!?

Keep reading to find out what Congressman Rohrabacher told Asylum, which made our blood run cold.

Adriana Lima
Start your day off right (The Chive)

The Manliest Summer Camps
Have a REAL camp experience (Esquire)
Bad Idea
Most regrettable pop-culture tattoos (Huffington Post)

When Aaron Burress, an Iowa native, was asked to be the best man at his brother's upcoming wedding, he fully understood the implications and responsibilities of his role. Only, instead of sticking to a cheesy wedding toast, the 28-year-old made it his goal to stand up (as in, on two feet) for the special occasion.

Sounds easy enough, but there's a catch: Burress has been paralyzed from the waist down for 10 years.

That's right. While other male wedding party members across the country were planning bachelor parties and talking the groom out of cold-feet mode, Burress was kickin' it miracle-style and training for the impossible.

Continue reading to see how Burress accomplished his goal.

Showbiz news you actually want, from geek gossip to celeb train-wrecks.

Drew Carey showed off his dramatic weight loss at the CBS Summer Press Tour Party. (The Blemish)

Get a peek inside the Playboy Bunny House with Playmate Jaime Edmondson. (The Smoking Jacket)

Ellen DeGeneres is leaving "American Idol" after one season because she hates hurting people's feelings. (Popeater)

Lady Gaga claims the sex photo of her floating around online is a hoax. (Radar Online)

Troy Aikman joined the cast of "Dancing With the Stars." (With Leather)

Leonardo DiCaprio dropped out of Mel Gibson's Viking movie. (Film Drunk)

Check out some sci-fi burlesque with the curvy Penny Starr, Jr. (Aol Weird News)

Score a walk-on role on "True Blood" by bidding now. (Charity Buzz)

Fans of HBO's "Eastbound and Down" will want to check out the Kenny Powers baseball card collection. (Next Round)

Here's why the New York Comic-Con is superior to the San Diego Comic-Con. (UGO)

Locally brewed beer is as synonymous with Louisiana and the Gulf Coast as the sweet succulent seafood that unfortunately, as of late, has been marinating in BP's gumbo of tragedy and carelessness.

But just like at any neighborhood crawfish boil that suddenly goes south, beer is here to help make things much, much better.

The Abita Brewing Company of Abita Springs, La., unveiled a new bottled brand of brew called "SOS," designed solely to raise money, relief and awareness of the Gulf Coast oil spill, which has ravaged much of the southeast coastline in the 100 harrowing days.

"We knew we needed to do something," said Abita president David Blossman. "Our neighbors were hurting and the ecology of the Gulf and the wetlands are hurting. We decided to do what we do best, which is make beer."

Our friends over at FilmDrunk have the trailer for "Yogi Bear." The film, which is slated for a Christmas release, is a mix of live action and CGI and stars the voices of Dan Aykroyd as Yogi and Justin Timberlake as Boo Boo.

Because "Avatar" made a heckuva lot of money, Yogi Bear will be released in 3-D.

You obviously can't get the 3-D effect from watching a trailer on your computer, but something still struck us when we took a look: 3-D might be a good medium to introduce an exotic place like Pandora, but is it really necessary for a movie set in Jellystone Park? After all, that is a location most of us have, more or less, already been to.

And do we really need Yogi, and all of his self-proclaimed bear intellect, all up in our grill?

Yes, 3-D can be pretty cool in certain settings. However, like fine china, might it be best used only for special occasions?

Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

Residents of Louisiana spend less time doing physical activity than residents in the other 49 states.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek defines "laziness" as "a measure of leisure time spent doing sedentary activities compared with activities that require more physical effort, such as exercising and even working." With that definition in hand, and using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures from between the years 2004 and 2008, they applied it on a state-by-state basis.

Louisianans took the "lazy" crown by spending an average of only 2 hours and 41 minutes a day working -- which is 42 minutes less than the average American. In further comparisons, residents of the Bayou State also spent nine minutes more a day sleeping, 37 minutes more watching TV, 11 minutes more relaxing and 10 minutes more socializing.

Mississippi and Arkansas came in second and third on Bloomberg BusinessWeek's laziness scale, whereas North Dakota rated as the most active state.

Having witnessed the frenzy of Mardi Gras, we seriously doubt that Louisianans are lazy. Perhaps, during the rest of the year, they're just unmotivated.

Someone figured out a great way to get people to buy underwear for ridiculously inflated prices (like $30–45). It's called Nutty Tarts and, despite the name, it's not a Tumblr about ballsack runoff or something. Instead, it's one company's underwear product line, which features drawn-on hair on the exterior of the undies.

Katriina Haikala and Vilma Metteri, a Finnish design duo, say their aim is "to do things like they have never been done before." Congratulations, ladies, this is certainly one of them. Screenprinting pubic hair on pairs of underwear or tacking on strange V-shaped chest hair on a T-shirt has not been done before ... because it's freakin' bizarre.

If we wanted to show off our incredibly erotic chest hair, which sort of looks like Tom Jones got in a fight with Willie Nelson's beard, we would just take off our undershirts. After all, who's going to see our tighty-whiteys or wife-beater tops except someone who's about to see what's underneath those items?

Keep reading for more photos of these ridiculous creations, which we have to hope are a joke.

Earlier this month, DirecTV and Fox Sports partnered to broadcast the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 3-D. Asylum's Anthony Layser checked out the festivities and looked into Panasonic's new 3-D technology in an attempt to find out if 3-D really is the future of watching sports.

Collect Pond Park, at the intersections of Lafayette, Leonard, Franklin and Centre Streets in Manhattan, is not the most popular park in the world. It's frequented most often by a combination of local beat cops, transit workers, homeless people and employees of the nearby courthouse.

But now a roving gang of slimeballs has infiltrated the park and ruined it for everyone. (And no, we don't mean skateboarding teenagers.) According to NYCTheBlog, there are rats, some the size of bloated kittens or puppies. The park has now been dubbed "Rat Zoo." (Free admission!)

Ratso Rizzo would have felt rather at home here, what with the benches missing seats, random holes in the walkway and busted-up sidewalks -- this despite a recent $3.5 million grant to clean up the hellhole, which will surely be discovered in some bureaucrat's Cayman Islands bank account within the next year.

"Rats have created a network of tunnels underneath," explains NYCTheBlog's Paolo Mastrangelo. "I found it interesting that this park serves a working-class population during the day" -- a criminal court, family court and legal-aid society surround it -- "and indigent people at night -- both demographics, apparently, not worthy of a cared-for and landscaped park."

The way things are going these days, no demographic is worthy of much of anything, it seems, except for fare hikes and bedbugs.

The video of the rat posse, after the jump.