Paul Ford: I am leaving to pursue other opportunities. Not a euphemism! I'm working primarily with Activate, which is the amazing new-media/technology convergence consulting micro-megacorporation that sprung fully formed from the heads of Anil Dash and Michael Wolf, and also with Predicate, which is a powerhouse content strategy consultancy operated by Jeffrey MacIntyre. Both are working with me so that I can mention them in the Awl, so now I can invoice.

I've been at Harper's for five years. It's very weird to be outside. Everyone has MacBooks. People use nouns as verbs. Someone wrote that they were going to f/u with me the other day, which concerned me, and someone else said that they looked forward to calendaring a meeting. Can I learn this strange new bird-language? I don't know. I'm planning to ride my bike to Newark soon, outside of bedbug range, and hit up the thrift stores so that I can have some emergency suits. Let's hope someone with size-54 shoulders recently died. Also I want to start my blog up again. The most important thing any person can do in this world is get back to their blog. In my opinion.

Choire: Are rats sinking a deserted ship? [Jennifer Szalai, a senior editor, who handled reviews, also quit this week.] No wait, you know what I mean.

Paul: The rats are smoking a little too much, trying to figure out how why they can't get the layout to work in InDesign. Some rats are going, most rats are staying. Like everywhere. Here are some fun rat facts: NYC's vaudeville union was called the White Rats. I once wrote something about ratproofing my apartment: The most common rat name is Slim. Rats can legally vote in Louisiana.

Choire: Are you a rat? Or will you be "consulting" with your former employer?

Paul: You think I don't see your little insinuating quote marks? I'm still an editor, dammit. You can't slip things like that past me! I will not be "'consulting'," I will be CONSULTING.

This has been very amiable and kind of sad for everyone involved, except for the people who have secretly hated me for years. I plan to pop back in before too long and finish up the re-code of the site in Django and make it easier for editors to work on the site through a web interface, and basically make everything go okay. I'll have a relationship of some kind with the magazine until I'm an old web coot telling young people about how we edited our HTML by hand rather than having our digital sex pony avatars do it for us in our Farmbooks. Which is basically me now talking to anyone younger than 27.

You know what happened, really and without irony? I had an opportunity to be an editor at Harper's, to edit pieces for the magazine. It was something I expected to really want. I had wonderful editors to learn from. I did a little of it for print and a lot for the web. I wasn't bad at it, even. Not great, but not bad. I could have been a respected editor instead of a huge nerd. But all the editing in the world can't compare to building little websites and mangling text and writing things and messing around in spreadsheets and figuring out what's wrong with comments. I wake up thinking about how all the pieces fit together and I want to do more of it and with lots of people. I plan to be scared and exhausted most of the time. So far that's working.

Choire: What is your favorite Alex Chilton video, song or tale?

Paul: My favorite tale is from Our Band Could Be Your Life, when he shut down Gibby Haynes's rampage through the Netherlands:

Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! [Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers] screamed, eyes flashing in delirious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.

“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.

Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and gestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”

Like, THIS kind of insane: "I know people need help right now, but its a slap in the face to know that I'm busting my butt working 40+ hrs a week, buying generic to feed my kids and someone collecting food stamps is eating better than us – thanks to my hard work. Do these people think this is ok? And seriously if you're just getting food stamps so you can buy organic free range chicken that is HORRIBLE!!!!"

Well at least you have the broadband so as to complain on the Internets. And I'm sure your kids are thrilled that you are such an unhappy person.

And: "Of course people are going to be pissed that they're busting their asses every day in real jobs so that some douchebag can satisfy his 'flexitarian' gourmet diet."

This "ass-busting" is a recurring theme.

Also, LOL: "Maybe a degree in post feminist analysis of Sumerian Temple Prostitutes wasn't such a wise choice after all."

And then there's this letter:

As a 27 year old single mother of three children I qualified for and received food stamps from 1979 to 1982 while completing my undergraduate degree. During that time, while shopping at the local Safeway, I presented the orange USDA coupons for my food and dug out a dollar for a Time magazine. The checker said with no small amount of distain, "I wish I could afford Time magazine." As if, because I was using food stamps, I should not be purchasing a magazine. I'll never forget that checker's attempt to shame me for my choices.

There will always be people who discount those of us who take advantage of government programs to further our welfare and that of our families. I've been employed almost continuously since I graduated from college in 1982, I've paid my taxes willingly. I might not agree with what our government does with "my" tax dollars, but I have three, high-functioning, well-educated, adult children who remember aloud what it was like to grow up without much money. They never talk about how they went to bed hungry, because they never did.

I don't begrudge anyone whatever they choose to buy and eat using government subsidized food. At least they know how to cook, which is more than I can say for myself. More power to them. Maybe someday they will have a chance to pay into a system that gave them the opportunity to eat well, with dignity, when they did not have much money.

Getting food stamps while GOING TO COLLEGE? And having children left and right? Disgusting hipster welfare queen! CRUCIFY HER.

Because you drop one of your little pills in my house with your fumbling, amped-up hands and it could be CURTAINS for the cat. (Curtains I say!) "Right now, Adderall is probably one of the top three human drugs that the poison control center gets calls about for cats," it turns out. Your enjoyable little habit = Cat Death!

And?

Most poisonings cases that the ASPCA's center learns about involve dogs, [toxicologist Sharon] Gwaltney-Brant says, because they’re fairly indiscriminate about what they’ll eat. Not cats. Out of curiosity, they might sample a pill or capsule – but seldom finish it, she says. As soon as they bite in and discover its bland or even objectionable flavor, they tend to walk away.

Except when it comes to Adderall XR. Cats not only bite in but readily finish every bit. This suggests, she says, that there’s something about it that cats find unusually enticing.

And that’s bad, because a single 20 milligram capsule could kill the average size cat.

Murderers! You're all potential murderers. Highly-alert, extremely productive murderers.

This message brought to you by The Cat Lobby.

TINA BROWN: We do pay for content on "The Daily Beast," but it is certainly not the —

CHARLIE ROSE: You don’t get rich on what you pay.

TINA BROWN: Right. So are we building this new sort of subculture frankly of impoverished, living in garret writers, because the fact is writers can hardly make a living right now because they don’t get paid. The same is true of songwriters and the same is true of so many artists today. We are actually relegating great people to not being able to make a living.

CHARLIE ROSE: So how are we going to change that?

TINA BROWN: Well I think we haven’t figured it out, and I think what we are right now is in a volatile moment of absolute realignment, I mean, there is kind of a volcanic shift that is happening in the landscape. And it is painful interim for artists and writers at the moment. They feel absolutely beached and orphaned. I think we are going to emerge from that and, in fact, there is a golden future, that in fact we will figure out these business models and actually there is an effervescence of content, of need for content, and real good material to see feed these multi-channels.