Tumblr has been down a long time. Hipsters should meet at Starbucks and pass around Moleskine diaries until it’s back up.Mon Dec 06 17:35:31 via tGadget

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THE GREAT TUMBLR PANIC OF LATE 2010 IS STILL ONGOING. Tumblr DOWN For 13 Hours And Counting! Victim Of Its Own Success: Tumblr Redefines The Concept Of “Back Shortly”! The frightened headlines even finally crept onto CNN: “It bills itself as ‘the easiest way to blog.’ But the hip website Tumblr crashed on Sunday night and hasn’t been online since.” The people with Tumblrs are so angry. “We’re almost through,” Tweeted the techs of Tumblr three hours ago. That is THREE HOURS without pictures of volcanos and cats and Bea Aurthur and people beefing without any context whatsoever about that dude they totally almost had sex with this weekend and who is the most ableist! But hold tight. It’ll be back? Maybe? The official line is that they’re all dumping a whole lot of Tumblr back in from some backup servery thingie because their big servery thingie had some sort of emo weepy existential breakdown? But what if the server is too sad to ever, like, share its feelings with the other server that wants to help it? Who will reblog its cry for help then? 🙁

The Best Comments from Oprah Book Club’s Online Discussion of “Freedom”

by Reeves Wiedeman

Today, on the nearly-over Oprah Winfrey show: “One family comes forward about their secret relationship with Michael Jackson. Then, best-selling author Jonathan Franzen and Oprah’s new book club pick.” While Franzen has taken the Oprahtunity to recommend 34 books to America, Oprah’s America has already weighed in on him. Note: sic throughout.

Emily72: I sware! don’t people know how to raise kids anymore?! Parents keep apologizing for being incharge, for heavens sake! No wonder people are insecure and act like idiots.

Buckley06: I cannot understand what Oprah saw in this unless it is the constant political rants. If I have to read one more, I swear I will upchuck! I get enough of this on every single show I watch on Tv. Even Law and Order shows have a political rant within each show.

victoria48: I don’t know about the rest of you but I have had people tell me that it is hard for them to say “I love you.”

Hakanen: Could have done without a lot of the sex scenes but great character development.

Norkdo: This section (reading right now) would be equivalent to the stage Robert Bly would describe as the Baba Yaga stage. Walter has survived to date by adhering to rules (a head-led state, as opposed to a heart-led state).

sweetpotato79: I have a problem with Franzen’s condescending attitude towards motherhood.

6dinnersid: I am extremely disappointed in this Oprah book selection and even more so that I spent $28 on this book. Love Oprah and her show!

Boxofcats: My only issue is that for some reason I just can’t picture Patty. I usually “cast’ most books I read, but I am finding that impossible with Patty. Any ideas — who would you cast as Patty?

kdip66 : Worst book I have ever read!

billiep: Maybe consider donating your copy to your local public library and you won’t feel so bad about the money spent! Just a thought. Now go find yourself a book that you can really enjoy. Life is short! 🙂

MKM1234: Walter was a dolt.

DMerkl : Stupid guy question and way off-topic: what does Patty mean on page 174 — Im 42, she said, it would cost me twenty-thousand dollars to get pregnant now? Is that how much an abortion cost (seems way too high)? Or — do abortions cost more for older females? Or — is the implication that she would keep the baby despite her age and possibly have a more complicated (expensive) pregnancy and delivery?
teammom62: The key word is GET, it would cost twenty thousand dollars to GET pregnant, meaning at her age she would have fertility problems
DMerkl: Thanks for clearing that up, teammom62. I misunderstood Patty’s sarcasm.

donya34 : I started this book thinking WHY; why did Oprah think this was a good choice, why should I spend my time reading this, why does this author feel it necessary to use every word he knows, some of which aren’t even in the dictionary on my Kindle.

sjames85296: I ABSOLUTLY AGREE WITH YOU ON YOUR INTERPRETATION OF FREEDOM. SOOM PEOPLE GO THROUGH THEIR ENTIRE LIVES AND DON’T BREAK AWAY FROM THE FEELINGS THEY SURPRESSED IN THIER CHILDHOOD AND ARE UNHAPPY OR JUST THINK SOMETHING JUST NOT RIGHT WITH THEM AND THEY JUST DON’T GET IT!

Bchuma: This book is a piece of jewelry that Amricans give to the world.
Bookread: If this is considered a piece of jewelry that America gives to the world I can only say that to me the material contained it’s share of fool’s gold.

bethy47: Surely you understand that many people live their entire existence without being “aware” of much beyond what they see and touch.

judicraig : OMG, make it END! I one of those people that HAS to finish a book once I’ve started it no matter how bad it is, but for the love of God, make it END! Thankfully I’m listening to it rather than reading it so I don’t feel like I’m completley waisting my time. At least the house is getting cleaned and the laundry is getting done!

EvilWylie : I cannot wait until Emperor Franzen visits Oprah’s set for his coronation!
d4729mmm : Another of Oprah’s fake supermen.
producerji: Is he going to wear his cape???

Reeves Wiedeman actually enjoyed being a member Oprah’s Book Club.

Genius: CablegateRoulette. It’s just like ChatRoulette but with Wikileaked diplomatic cables, so, less naked guys, more international intrigue.

“Owing to an editing error, we said that Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall slept with more than 1,000 women in a three-year period during the mid-80s. That was meant to be more than 1,000 a year, based on his estimate of an average of three such encounters a day, as stated elsewhere in our stories (A new flame: Hucknall apology to 1,000 women he bedded, page 19, 3 December; ‘I feel a bit like the antichrist’, page 3, Film & Music).”

“The boon in panda numbers at the Chengdu centre has largely been attributed to the innovative ‘twin swapping’ technique. More than half of pandas give birth to two cubs at a time but only care for one. It is assumed that as pandas cannot store fat, they lack the milk or energy to care for more than one cub at a time. Whenever a cub was abandoned after birth, keepers at the Chengdu centre swiftly moved it to an incubator. Panda mothers were tricked into caring for twins as staff stealthily rotated them between their mother and the incubators.”
 — Female giant pandas have an annual fertility period that lasts only 12 to 24 hours. Males have problematically short panda penises. The animals seem to forget how to have sex in captivity, and react poorly to being shown sex-ed videos or given viagra. Still, miraculously, conservationists at China’s Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center have successfully raised 168 cubs since starting their efforts in 1987.

Now they say that within 15 years, they will try to reintroduce the endangered creatures into their natural environment of wild mountain bamboo forests — all the remaining of which will presumably be domed in plexiglass and rigged for 24-hour video camera surveillance by then. This is good. The things are obviously going crazy all penned up like they are.

“These guys ran against Washington, but they ran against the bad parts of Washington — the bloated bureaucracy and Nancy Pelosi’s agenda. That’s not a contradiction to take money from a trade group or corporation that represents free-enterprise principles.”
 — Andrew Theodore, fundraising consultant, explaining the flurry of debt-retirement fundraisers in D.C. for the GOP freshmen class. Those free-enterprise supporting corporations include Rolls-Royce, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Yum Brands, Delta Airlines, K&L; Gates (the lobbyists) and the National Automotive Dealers Association PAC.

He’s not quite as awesome as the greatest American hero of the 21st century. (Yes, Wesley Autrey is greater than even Sully Sullenberger in my book, because he intentionally lay down in the disgusting gutter, underneath a speeding train, to save another person. And, even more probably, the whole “I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s okay…” thing, which just breaks me in half every time.) I guess the unnamed Spanish policeman in the above video falls somewhere between Chad Lindsey and Carlos Flores. But points for only having been on the job for two months. And, of course, for doing it on camera.

The precipitation outside is so half-assed as to necessitate a new word, since calling it “flurries” would be an insult to actual flurries, but, yes, the first snowfall of December is HAPPENING NOW. Go stick your tongue out and catch one, if you’re not worried about cancer.

“Andrew is a pint-sized conservative who’s not afraid to actually say he’s racist. That’s pretty refreshing.”

It’s gonna be a rough couple of days for New Jersey’s bears: “The six day hunt could bring as many as 7,500 hunters who obtained the required permit into the forests and mountains of northwest New Jersey by sundown on Saturday.”