The review of Mike Heppner's massive, hyperactive novel The Egg Code published on the August 18 NY Times opens with the following statement:

The minimalist fiction once fostered by creative-writing programs -- with its miniature profiles in anemic anomie -- is dead, perhaps of exhaustion. The future belongs to M.F.A. maximalism: fiction that sprawls, with narratives as complex as the page can bear, its story lines branching out across whole continents or eons (preferably both). The cast of characters is huge and densely interconnected; as many as possible will be allegorical figures, often bearing funny names. The saga is to be rendered in prose having the texture and intricacy of a circuit board, with all metaphors ultimately deriving from esoteric fields of knowledge. (The maximalist author may have studied quantum mechanics or Renaissance poetry in graduate school. Failing that, there's always Google.) No writer of ambition can be satisfied with quiet epiphanies now, when the soundtrack of our lives throbs with so many layers of noise. Where Raymond Carver was, David Foster Wallace shall be.

Don't know whether to fear for the fate of fiction or jump in joy and start hitting the Goog to perform research for the next blognovel.

In form, [New York Times' executive editor Howell Raines] said, the articles and pictures will be identical to those The Times has used for weddings. As with weddings, he added, the Styles editors will decide which couples can be accommodated in the available space. The criteria — the newsworthiness and accomplishments of the couples and their families — will be the same as those that have traditionally applied to weddings.
— Times Will Begin Reporting Gay Couples' Ceremonies

On August 18, the NY Times announced it would start publishing on its "Weddings" pages gay and lesbian unions. This may look like a further increase in society's acceptance of gay lifestyles, but according to Slate's Timothy Noah, the Times has "struck a blow for gay rights;" a blow which could be undone with a simple solution: abolishing the wedding pages.

The wedding pages [an anachronistic holdover from the days when newspapers carried "society" pages] remain because a very small aristocracy demands that they remain. And when [Mr. Noah] says "aristocracy," he means it largely in the traditional sense, i.e., "those who pass great wealth or power on to their children." The Times wedding pages are clearly more meritocratic than they were in the bad old days of what Nicholas Lemann has termed the Episcopacy, but there's a limit to how meritocratic they can be because most people, even today, are too young when they get married to have acquired much wealth or power on their own. Although the Times wedding pages no longer give much preference to Mayflower descendents, it's still true that the best way to get your wedding written up by the Times is to be the daughter (or, increasingly, the son) of the chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company. There's little reason to believe that a female telephone receptionist's civil union with a female dental assistant stands any greater chance of getting a Times write-up under the new, more "inclusive" policy than it ever did under the old.

He wasn't my king
By Helen Kolawole
August 15, 2002

For black people, Elvis, more than any other performer, epitomises the theft of their music and dance.

Only the second article that have read so far on the death anniversary of Elvis Aaron Presley, which offers a harsh counterclaim to the previous one: Elvis was the great white hope which stole from a whole race and now clouds their achievements. John Lennon's valentine to Elvis, "before [him] there was nothing," is now skewered as whitewash.

Over there where Andrew Bayer Is Dreaming of China, he posted a picture of the Muppet's Beaker with the following caption:

How can you not love Beaker? I mean, he's cute, pathetic, and takes a beating like nobody's business. And he can pull his head into his shirt like a turtle.

This earned the following reaction from yours truly:

I remember reading someone comparing Wille E. Coyote with Sisyphus for his eternal struggle to capture that damn Road Runner. Your comment of Beaker being "pathetic, and takes a beating like nobody's business" made me think he may have some of that going for him, too. But what's his boulder? The pursuit of scientific breakthrough?

To which Andrew responded:

I've always been convinced that Dr. Honeydew is in fact Beaker's uncle - y'know, the one who got hit in the head real hard as a kid? Beaker's been sent by the family to watch over their crazy relation, and he's so dedicated to his family that he takes all the pain and punishment Honeydew's insane experiments can dish out - which also explains why Honeydew never actually came up with anything, y'know, that worked.

Let's see: Andrew posted the picture to his log first. This scribbler commented on it then, on Andrew's comment database. He then posted an answer to that on his log. And now have posted the whole shebang here myself.

Huh. This Weblog thingie is a terrible funhouse.

P.S.: Taliban.

Neal Travis, 62, Columnist, Is Dead
By The New York Times
August 15, 2002

Neal Travis was a gossip columnist for The New York Post whose work appeared daily opposite the paper's Page Six celebrity page.

Looking at the referral list, found a hit from a Google search on "page six jerry nachman." This spiked my curiosity: what could have been printed about Mr. Nachman on the NY Post's gossip column? Had to find out, so went searching to the Page Six Website. Arriving there, the first outstanding item stated that "the original editor of Page Six... whose column Neal Travis' New York appeared in the New York Post since 1993, died last Wednesday." Knowing this must have registered with the Gray Lady, went there searching for the corresponding obit, which opens this entry. Then returned to Page Six to search for the Jerry Nachman story, but couldn't find anything posted in the last seven days.

Well, that had nothing to do with Mr. Travis' death. That's how it happened, anyway.

Attention Salon blogs technical team: the server is shrinking. Several Webloggers have noticed that even before a month has gone by, the 10MB of hosting space is almost gone. At that rate, are you honestly expecting users to pay after the 30-day trial is over?

One more thing: buying Radio from UserLand gets me 40MB of hosting space. Does the same apply for the Salon flavor? Or will we get a lame-ass vanilla version?

And last: When the hosting space is gone, are we supposed to delete our archive? Move it to our own servers? Is there an option to expand, or are we up the creek without a paddle?