“Recently, I found out my 13-year-old son had been visiting glove fetish Web sites with pornographic glove pictures.” Is it great that the Internet gives us glove fetish websites for our children? Or is it a bad thing? I do not know. Neither does the advice columnist to whom this (rather overparenting) parent turned, but that’s par for the course-she comes down awfully hard on the side of “no one will ever love this person with a glove fetish”! This seems really unfair, given that Fits Like A Glove, the gay glove fetish group, just had a super-fun outing to Six Flags!

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi bought a “priceless” antique bed once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte and then requested it be enlarged, presumably to prove that he is beyond parody.

The thick chunks of snow that are falling across the city drop softly on the pavement and dissolve, but they are already starting to stick to cars and trash cans, and it’s only a matter of time before the very ground upon which you walk will be coated with a thin layer of slush or ice. After that?

THERE WILL BE A PERIOD THIS AFTERNOON INTO EARLY THIS EVENING WHEN THE SNOW MIXES WITH OR CHANGES TO RAIN. THE PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO CHANGE BACK TO ALL SNOW TONIGHT. THE SNOW WILL THEN GRADUALLY BECOME LESS STEADY AND LIGHTER INTO FRIDAY…BEFORE TAPERING OFF TO LIGHT SNOW OR SNOW SHOWERS BY FRIDAY EVENING. FOR NOW EXPECT ACCUMULATIONS TO RANGE FROM 7 TO 12 INCHES…

Also: “Some AccuWeather.com meteorologists have even been referring to the storm as a ‘snowicane’ rather than a blizzard,” reports AccuWeather.com, “in order to express the fierce extent of the snow and wind expected from the storm.” Fair enough. I don’t expect we’ll have much of an accumulation here in town, but it’s probably going to be a pain in the ass to get around, because why should anything be easy? This is your life now: bleak, slippery, and inconvenient. There is no hope to be had. Even if the sun ever returns, you will eventually still die anyway, most likely alone, most likely unmourned. It will be winter forever-in your soul.

Check back for updates!

A reader writes! “Now are we to bombshell stage?” He refers to the third story the New York Times has run on David Paterson in the last week or so, which went up last night, rudely disrupting my dessert. The story detailed the hideous personal life of Paterson’s aide, David Johnson, whose girlfriend was pursuing a restraining order; Johnson and Johnson’s lawyer both refused service on the restraining order; the woman stopped pursuing the issue only after contact from the state police, whose jurisdiction is not such matters, and also a telephone call from the governor. Johnson was suspended last night; this is particularly troubling that this suspension occurred just hours before publication of this story, as a matter of reaction to scrutiny. So local opinion suggests that the answer to the question of bombshell status is “kind of.” But in part, based on what we still don’t entirely know!

There are, however, dissenters, who consider it “shocking” but not “gamechanging.” So, we have griped here about the Times’ previous murky references to Johnson’s Halloween-costume ripping assault on a woman. Now the paper has given us almost entirely what we wanted on that issue-they went and got the records!-so we will not quibble about this story; it wouldn’t be fair.

First, it does seem important to note that Paterson is not Johnson, even while they are extremely close. Part of the frisson of the story is simply that it’s Paterson-related. It’s highly Paterson-adjacent. And yet the story for the most part, it needs to be said even though it is obvious, is not about Paterson at all.

But here’s the part that is about Paterson.

Perhaps you have friends and coworkers with extremely objectionable personal lives! (I sure do.) Let’s try this this on for size.

Congrats, you’re the governor. And say one of your best buddies works for you. A woman is reporting an assault by him. You’ve met this woman three or four times. Do you… call her? And ask if there’s anything you can do for her? The day before her court date? With what motivation would you do that? I suppose I can see a way in which that was done out of common decency… but the timing, in particular, makes absolutely no sense.

The violent incident occured in OCTOBER.

The court date, the one that took place the day after Paterson made the call to the woman, was IN FEBRUARY.

That is extremely, obviously, highly problematic. That’s when suddenly you get an itch to call this woman to pledge your assistance?

And then, why would you later tell reporters that she called you, contradicting her lawyer’s statement that you called her?

And when a newspaper goes to talk to this woman, why would you then tell the paper that they are out digging for dirt on you? That doesn’t add up, unless it does add up.

And finally, referring to the incident between this woman and Johnson as a “bad breakup,” as Paterson did, is pretty unforgivable.

I generally support zoos and aquariums. Because I think it’s good for people to observe and learn about animals, despite the cruelty inherent to keeping them in pens. But, man, after the ice-skating bear that killed its trainer in Kyrgyzstan, and the circus tiger that mauled its trainer during a dinner show in Germany, and now the killer whale that drowned trainer Dawn Brancheau in front of an audience full of children at Orlando’s SeaWorld yesterday-the third human death associated with this same whale! It’s like a Dino De Laurentiis movie-you get the feeling that it’s maybe time to reconsider the wisdom of having captive animals perform for us. We put these massive, powerful, naturally free-roaming creatures in a box a tiny, tiny fraction of the size of their natural habitat-”an area that to them is like the size of a bathtub,” according to a statement from PETA about the latest incident-and teach them to do tricks for food, and soon enough it’s Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. “I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you?” The next thing you know, they’re stuffing us in a trunk and borrowing steak knives from their moms.

As if the killer whale story is not terrible enough, the Times revisits an even more nightmarish episode that occurred around this time last year. You remember: in Connecticut, Travis, the friendly and beloved 200-pound pet chimp drinks wine and takes prozac, goes crazy and mauls face and hands off visiting family friend, owner is forced to stab beloved pet chimp with butcher knife, cop shoots beloved pet chimp, who walks back into house to die in comfort of its own cage. Today’s update focusses on the psychological trauma suffered by the cop, Frank Chiafari. And includes the quote, “There are thumbs and fingers all over the place.” And that’s not even the worst part. I swear to god, this one is a real-life horror movie. Melissa Lafsky should be writing about it, not me. I’m supposed to take my kid to the zoo sometime this summer.

Mosi Tatupu, the special teams expert for the New England Patriots who was one of the most likable players in the game, has died at the age of 54.

Barack Obama is BETRAYING BRITAIN “in her hour of need,” taking a neutral position in the latest dispute over the Falkland Islands (or as Barack probably calls them, Las Islas Malvinas). It is, to put it in terms the British might use, almost as if he knifecrimed the Special Relationship in the back.

“Jobless claims rise on snow-related layoffs”! This is AP-speak for “When it snowed recently, the unemployment offices were too snowy to process some recent unemployment requests,” but also? “The blizzard also likely led to more workers having to file claims because they were unable to work.” Why does God hate jobs? The rolling number of people receiving unemployment is 4.6 million. Good news though! At the end of the month that number may drop by a million! Which is going to maybe make the unemployment numbers look really good! But other numbers, like “the number of new homeless,” might not look as good?

“This is what you might call putting ‘perfume on a pig,’” says Sarah Palin of the President’s health care proposal. I kind of love her, because she knows she’s fucking with you.

We hear it’s “99% done” that Sally Quinn’s Washington Post column is also done. Update: Ouch. Quinn’s been moved to “online columnist” (welcome, dear!) and will mostly be about White People Jesus and tables, or something?