• Diddy Blog #10: Bitchassness Alert Level Orange [YouTube]

Hormel doesn't particularly like this explanation. Its executives prefer to attribute any gains to the marketing of the product, and that's probably fair because, when you think about it, Spam isn't simply some cheap generic...

The average price of a can of Spam is up almost 7% to $2.62, or 22¢ per ounce, according to the AP. That makes it costlier than both the average retail price of pork, 18¢ per ounce, and ground beef, 14¢, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Not exactly a bargain.

So if not for sheer necessity, why has Hormel seen Spam sales go up for seven straight quarters? The real answer is heavy marketing from Hormel—including the admirable work being done at Spam.com—and the luck of incredibly high name recognition versus competitors.

Still: the "Spamburger Hamburger" will hopefully die a quick death.

[Ad Age]

You'll remember, I trust, that Rosen claimed that her ex-boyfriend might be sending us (in an attempt at "Gawkering me back") fabricated tips emails suggesting that she had dated one of the boys from the teen sex romp Superbad. We never received said Superbadian innuendos. Well, not exactly. We got two late night emails from the ex-boyfriend, a shaggy-haired fellow named Justin Grace. He'd like to set the record straight and resolve these issues as quickly as possible. By sending us copied-and-pasted Facebook messages. Why, Justin, why? Don't you know what we do here??

And what did they say, these Facebook messages that Grace so painstakingly shared with us? Well they elucidate the Superbad story a bit. Molly wrote to Justin at some point:

You know what else is awkward? My "relationship" with Jonah [Hill]. You guys haven't touched wieners just yet. In fact, you might never touch wieners. Basically we met at his movie set, hit it off, he took me out to the owner's box at a Red Sox game and then out to a party and then we got drunk and he had a "talk" about how he has a crush on me and wants to bone me but has a girlfriend in California, but is moving to New York in two months, and can we date when he moves here? I guess he basically is trying to put me "on reserve," like a very large pair of pants, which is something I guess you're entitled to as a celebrity. However, since said date he hasn't returned my texts (I have sent 2), so maybe he likes his girlfriend more than he remembers and is ignoring me.

He also clarifies his role in the whole fiasco in his first, non-Facebooky email:

My "involvement" with this saga basically boils down to calling Molly Jane Rosen a couple of names that would take Hemingway aback and responding to her (unprovoked) pleas not to "reverse-Gawker"(Really?) her about a story she passed on to me a few weeks back. I'm not going to give details, because it's not my place. Whether or not it was true is for her to know. But I would be damned if I didn't want to let her stew for a while in the same sort of limbo she's been putting Alex through over the past week.

This situation reminds us of other incidences where personal matters were tossed carelessly into the internet void. Lovelorn bloggers worked through their issues on this here site, Hamptons townie kids tried to speak their piece and got lambasted. Again. And who can forget when a Craigslist playa thought that leaving us a weird voicemail was the quickest route to privacy? That's not how the internet works! Nothing ever gets better by sending strange (hopefully drunken) emails to us at 1:30 in the damn morning. I mean, we love them but, really, you're only making things worse for yourself.

Sigh. Though to his credit, Justin did preface the "PS"-subject email that contained the Facebook missives with a helpful "not that I really want these published, but..." Heh. That's like being in the witness protection program and auditioning for a reality show. But! Aha! Could this Facebook message be one the of the evil, ominously portended fakes? Who the hell knows! And who knows if we'll ever find out. For their sake, we hope these crazy kids will use their considerable smarts (she went to Brandeis, he's at Columbia) and decide to stop sending us stuff. Here's our advice: go meet somewhere in Morningside Heights. Maybe Tom's? Maybe Rack and Soul? Sit down. Have a nice chat. Work this thing out. We need not be involved (though we totally will be if you want). Just remember: it never gets better here. We're telling you this because we care about you.

1. Suck up to Peyser! Andrea Peyser is here to cast judgment on humanity. And generally, she does not like what she sees. As a hateful, finger-wagging moralist, her usual weapon is outraged hyperbole, especially against celebrities, and especially especially against lady celebrities. But, you know, if you give her an exclusive, and play desperately, shamefully apologetic, you might get a little sympathy! Especially if you compliment Peyser's columns viciously attacking a different terrible woman:

She called me to explain herself. Also, because she liked my columns slamming another discarded wife, Dina Matos McGreevey.

"If I were an acting coach, I'd tell her not to make faces!" she said of Dina. "Don't look mad or petulant. She looks like a 12-year-old."

2. Suck up to the NYPD! The cops? Heroes. Always. They do no wrong! Also, they are fantastic sources, if you're a tabloid. O'Neal is not only not mad at the cops for arresting her, she is grateful at the favor they did her!

"Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me!" Tatum crowed.

"I was saved by the bell, by the guys in the Seventh Precinct."

3. Avoid the Sob Story Everyone's got one, and they rarely get you very far. So be careful when employing this one. Best to put on a cheerful, "there but for the grace of God" tone, say you're getting your life back on track, admit you've made mistakes, and leave it to Peyser to spin your tale of woe in her inimitable style. O'Neal focuses on the positive—her career is picking back up! Her boyfriend is a saint!—while Peyser reminds us of her lifetime of abuse and addiction. (Though O'Neal does point out that she lost her beloved dog, which is the sort of relatable sob story that does work. Poor puppy.)

(And if all else fails, hire Post flack Howard Rubenstein.)

Tatum to Cops: Thanks! [NYP]

Egypt

Egypt really takes the cake, arresting, detaining, harassing, and beating bloggers that span the entire ideological spectrum, from the ultra-conservative Muslim Brotherhood to Coptic Christian minorities to socialists.

• Kareem Amer. Site: Karam903.blogspot.com. Result of arrest? Not good. "The trial was adjourned to February 22, 2007 where the judge said Nabil was guilty and would serve three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mr Mubarak."
  
• Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed Site: A now-deleted Facebook group urging protests against food price hikes. Result of arrest? Released!
  
• Another blogger/protester, Mahamed El Sharkawi, was also released.
  
• Not so lucky: fellow protester Kareem El Beheiri. Site: egyworkers.blogspot.com. Still in custody after reported beatings and electric shocks.
  
• Back in November of 2007, Egyptian authorities arrested blogger El-Hendy (Site: Eshreen) for a protest. He too was eventually released.
  
• A month before that, they detained human rights blogger Hala El-Masry. Her site: Deleted.
  
• Muslim Brotherhood member Abd El-Rahman Faras was arrested in 2007 for anti-government threats on his site. He was released on the condition that he'd erase the offending post.

Saudi Arabia

• Fouad al Farhan is known as the Father of Saudi Blogging—sort of the Instapundit of Saudi Arabia except actually dedicated to reforming and improving his nation. He was arrested in December for an anti-government listicle and finally released in April.

China

• Jamyang Kyi is a Tibetan blogger who was arrested just a month ago by the Chinese. The charges are unknown, though an arrest basically guarantees a conviction. We probably won't be hearing from her again for a little while. But hey, who's got Olympic Fever!
  
• Probably not Chinese dissident Hu Jia, who was sentenced to 3-and-a-half years in prison for blogging dissident-y things.
  
• They don't always jail bloggers in China, of course. Sometimes they throw them in mental hospitals! He Weihua was guilty of blogging about human rights, which you probably could've guessed.

Iran
Reza Valizadeh was arrested last November for, uh, revealing that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's guard dogs were overpriced. Seriously. Ahmadinejad is a blogger himself, but that hasn't stopped his nation from arrested dozens of web scribblers. Including:

• Soheil Asafy
  
• Sina Motellebi
  
• Arah Sigarchi
  
• Mojtabal Saminejad
  
• Omid Sheikhan
  
• Nadme Omid-Parvar—who was pregnant at the time of her arrest.

Syria

• Tarek Baiadi was arrested for "undermining national sentiment" and "publishing false information." He's been due to be tried for some time, but there have been no updates. In his case.
  
• Poet Firas Saad got four years in prison for similar charges, btw.

But those five nations aren't all! Other bad eggs include:

• Kuwait (arrested for a comment!)
  
• Vietnam
  
• Turkey
  
• Burma
  
• Tunisia
  
• Thailand

And, of course, the US of A.

In one sense, yes; the latest circulation figures showed almost no big gains among the top 25 magazines, and Time and Playboy even took double-digit dives. The biggest winners were AARP's in-house publications, which is not a good sign for the youthful vitality of the industry.

Magazines aren't in as bad a situation as newspapers are in terms of the "death of print," but they're on the trailing edge of the same phenomenon. One difference is the demographics of the readerships—an area in which magazine companies should have a theoretical advantage, because they are much more well-positioned to tailor their publications to suit them to desirable demographic groups than newspapers are. People also value magazines more for their production values, which gives them an advantage over plain old news, which can be easily replicated for free online.

Also, trade magazines and other super-specialty publications are the sector of the magazine market that should be the safest in these crazy times. They will be much slower to suffer declines, generally speaking, than the consumer market will be (just like small, community papers will be slower to see the internet eat their profits than national papers have been). So if you have hundreds of millions of dollars laying around, buying up Reed Elsevier's magazines might not be a bad investment.

Of course, if the overall economy declines, trade magazines can be a dangerous place—when their industry subscribers see their own revenue fall, high-priced trade mag subscriptions are one of the first nonessential expenses to get cut.

So, magazine industry: Fun place to work, semi-poised for a slow decline, and no longer looking for "editors." Possibly a good contrarian investment, but subject to be punished by broad market fluctuations.

A better sector of the media to put your money on? Janitorial services.

The best way to meet rich men is to cultivate rich friends. Wealth attracts wealth and this is usually done through introductions. If you don't know any wealthy people, however, don't despair. They're easy to meet.

First of all, find out who they are. Check the society column for weddings and engagements. Not only will you get an idea of who's who, but you'll also find out the names of the most fashionable churches. Claudia, 23, makes it a point to go to Mass in the "better" churches and then mingle with the parishioners at coffee hour following the service.

Another special group of men who lead hectic lives and also put up with a lot of frustration are doctors. They often get rid of their nervous tension on the racquetball court. Check out the health clubs nearest the large teaching hospitals...

[T]here are other ways of meeting doctors. . Hospital cafeterias are particularly good after July 1, when a whole new class of interns arrive. For the first few weeks everyone's eyeing one another—it's just like the first few days of school. Hospital cafeterias are open to the public as well as the staff.

our new roommate, she's black
and always drunk. in the past five minutes we've witnessed her running into a wall, chugging rum in her closet, drinking zwack from our freezer, running into the kitchen wall and falling over

So there's this:But then there's also this: The most interesting thing about this whole Emily and Michelle story is that, though usually greater access to a thing engenders greater understanding of it, with Emily and Michelle the more you know the less you understand until you find yourself living with them, going crazy and drinking zwack from their freezer to numb the pain/pleasure.

• Anika plays Euterpe in Broadway's "Xanadu." Annika is a conceptual video artist!
  
• Anika was born in Cambridge, Mass. Annika was born in Stockholm, Sweden.
  
• Notable quotables! Anika: "Someday—I don't care where it is, in somebody's barn, in somebody's high school, in somebody's backyard—I want to play Evita. So I'm going to make that happen. It may be in my own shower, but I'll do it some day. Annika: "The people that I use in my works, rather than creating characters, become figures lacking in individual history or depth."