Times are tough for the Gosselins. One of them might be having an affair. Another might be an genuinely horrible witch.

Their kids are at the centre of an exploitation investigation. And they must all face up to the fact that people only watch Jon & Kate Plus 8 is because one day somebody’s bound to have a shrieking emotional breakdown and hold a child hostage behind a locked door with a jagged shard of crockery held to its throat. But things couldn’t get worse for Jon and Kate Gosselin, right?

Wrong – now they’ve been accused of animal abuse too. Hilarious.

The thing about cruelty, right, is that it gets boring so darn fast. One minute you’re making your spouse’s life a unrelenting nightmare by, say, sleeping with other women or withholding funds in your grasping little hands, and then that all starts to get a bit dull so you decide to rope your obscenely numerous children into starring in a reality TV show that’s mostly about the look of growing despair that spreads across their faces over the course of 40 episodes as they slowly come to realise that their parents don’t even like each other. And then that gets old too. So what do you do?

Simple, you start beating up your household pets.

Not that any of that has happened to Jon and Kate Gosselin from Jon & Kate Plus 8, though – true, Jon may have been accused of screwing around, and Kate may have been accused of being a fame-demented harpy determined to live her life out in public no matter the cost to her immediate family. And, yes, they might both be under investigation for child exploitation. But none of it has been proved – and if there’s one thing the Gosselins are not, it’s animal-abusers.

Unless, you know, you happen to listen to the complaints received by the Gosselins’ local Humane Society, which allege that the Gosselin kids beat up their two family dogs Shoka and Nala and bite them and pull them around by their tails and whatnot. Because then it might seem like they are animal abusers.

Not that any of it matters – the Humane Society doesn’t believe that the animals are in danger and Jon Gosselin has released a statement backing it all up:

“We understand the responsibilities of being good dog owners. Whenever my kids are with Shoka and Nala, everyone is carefully supervised to ensure that no one – dog or child – is injured. Shoka and Nala are loyal companions who we consider members of our family. We would never do anything to hurt them, and treat them with the respect and love that they deserve.”

See? Jon Gosselin thinks that his dogs are members of his own family, and as such would never do anything to hurt them. That means he wouldn’t, say, sleep around with a succession of other dogs behind their backs, or put his name on a number of books about raising dogs without their explicit permission, or force them to star in a reality TV show that they’ll one day grow up to realise was a painful portrait of a loveless marriage in its final gasps that was only made to satiate a relentless and inexplicable desire for attention and material wealth.

Nothing like that at all. They’re family, after all.

Anyway, tune in next week, when we admonish Jon and Kate Gosselin for verbally abusing some bacteria.

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In today’s world of boring, pointless, vapid celebrities mincing around never doing anything, not causing any trouble and generally being thoroughly boring you could be forgiven for thinking that the entertainment that we, the public, rightly deserve from these fools is never going to come our way.

Then DMX goes and gets a mega-whammy of arrests for a number of different reasons – granted, he’s not going around stabbing people, but he is doing things that we’re allowed to take the piss out of. Which is clearly much better for us.

The most recent of DMX’s failures to obey the law came about when the rapper didn’t really manage to appear in court for an earlier arrest. Instead he went to hospital. Close, but not quite the right building. Must try harder.

DMX, known to people who don’t want to dignify that ‘name’ by actually using it as Earl Simmons, was lingering about a Wal-Mart, possibly trying to cause more mayhem involving drugs and stuff, when the police acted on a warrant and brought the vagabond in for his no-show.

The original charges levelled against Earl were related to possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, though reports this consisted of a T-shirt with the slogan “DMX Likes Pot” on it and a matching headband were unconfirmed at the time of going to press.

Needless to say though, these are definitely serious charges and ones sure to cement Simmons’ reputation as a bad boy on the rap scene. Or just a bloke who had some weed on him and got caught. Either way, he’ll be known as… a man… who did something.

DMX is also waiting on the outcomes of a few other cases, involving animal cruelty and identity fraud, amongst others. Come to think of it, we do remember receiving an email from an ‘American prince’ the other month, but we didn’t actually put two and two together until now. He offered us the chance to “Party Up” if we gave him all of our savings.

Naturally we did, but this ‘Prince of DMXia’ never got back to us. It all makes sense now. But why he would want to take on the identity of the amorphous blob that is hecklerspray we do not know. Maybe the life of alleged crime is too much for the poor dear.

It’s not the first time the X-ey one has faced charges – he was cleared of rape, a stabbing, impersonating an FBI agent and some other pretty comical charges like ‘mischief’. We didn’t know you could be arrested for behaving like a nine-year-old boy, but hey ho – at least he’s keeping his part of the bargain up and actually offering us some entertainment in his private life.

It would appear that outside of allegedly committing crimes, DMX is the only artist to have five consecutive albums debut at number one on the Billboard chart. (Alleged) crime does pay, it would seem.

Wednesday’s arrest was for speeding, but his time DMX was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty and drug possession after a SWAT team raided his house on Friday morning and found five pit bull puppies and half a pound of cannabis.

So, to try and help east the confusion a little, we’ve come up with a little rhyme to help you keep track of DMX’s arrests: If DMX was busted Wednesday last, he’s been caught driving cars too fast; if DMX is busted on Friday morn, the partially-burnt carcasses of mistreated pets were found on his lawn. We’re available for hire, you know.

We should probably point out now that by the time you’ve finished reading this article, DMX will have probably been arrested six or seven more times, possibly for setting the moon on fire or driving a monster truck over a funeral. But for now let’s just concentrate on what we already know.

Days after he was arrested for speeding, DMX has fallen foul of the law yet again. And rather than simply drive past a speed camera like a feckless goon, this time DMX might have properly blown it for himself.

Last August, police seized 12 of DMX’s pit bulls after they were found to have been badly mistreated. Officers also seized the burnt remains of three decomposing pit bull corpses which may or may not have been mistreated depending on your views about burning decomposing dog corpses.

Anyway, on Friday morning police raided DMX’s home to arrest him after a seven-month inquiry. And, while DMX was barricading himself in his bedroom trying to avoid arrest, officers also stumbled upon half a pound of cannabis and decided to add that to their arrest list.

But it’s not all bad because, as BBC News reports, DMX’s lawyer seems to think he’ll escape the animal cruelty charge:

Mr Simmons’s lawyer, Murray Richman, said he believed evidence did not support the charges of animal cruelty, which has been a major focus of Sheriff Arpaio. “I think that the animal cruelty is not going to be able to be established and I think that this is Sheriff Joe’s moment,” he said… At the time, the rapper said he had not been at the property for at two months and a caretaker who was left in charge failed to care for them.

It’ll be interesting to see if DMX ends up charged with animal cruelty, because dogs play such a big part of his image. DMX has two albums with the word ‘Dog’ in the title, has countless songs about dogs and even makes a noise a bit like a dog whenever he gets a bit excited. And soon he could be charged with treating them inhumanely? That’s a bit unexpected. It’s like Hitler bringing out a gangsta rap album featuring songs called For My Jews and Jew Intro.

However, if DMX does wind up getting charged with animal cruelty, at least it’ll provide an answer to his often-asked question “Where my dogs at?” They’re in the garden being burnt because nobody gave them any water and they died. That’s where your dogs at, DMX.

Read more:

DMX On Animal And Drugs Charges – BBC