Things will be allowed to be stable again in America only when executive pay is restored to its ludicrous bubble value. Writes Felix Salmon: “People who were comfortable with seven- and eight-figure salaries a couple of years ago have a natural tendency to want to return to the status quo ante; the rest of us see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring executive pay down to the kind of levels which normal human beings can relate to. Given that the pay levels of old clearly did no good and colorably did a great deal of harm, that doesn’t sound like an unreasonable request. But there aren’t any mechanisms in place to make it happen….” And who will benefit? Actually, the government, because of tax income: “The government’s interests, then, are naturally aligned with those of the plutocrats-and when that happens, the chances of change naturally drop to zero.” What’s most amazing is that Tim Geithner has been pretty direct about this! “You cannot address those long-term deficits, you cannot put the government of the United States in a position that we can go back to living within our means, unless you repair the damage done to this economy and to its revenue base.” Right. The only “damage” done to the economy itself is a halt in the flood of massive amounts of revenue to really rich people. Everything else, from the housing market to unemployment, and you-that’s just collateral damage.

There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution, without change, without passion and without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine. It will attack and devour anything. It is as if god created the devil and gave him… carp. I mean, I don’t know if this is more like Jaws or Piranha or Deep Blue Sea. But it is pretty damn scary. CBS news reports that giant Asian carp-much like Benson, who was from England, but less heartwarming and dearly departed, and more giant and voracious and terrifying and, apparently, unstoppable-are on the verge of invading Lake Michigan and killing us all.

Oh yes. “The 40- to 80-pound leviathan consumes 40 percent of its weight every day and is now a short swim from Lake Michigan. It spawns three times a year and has no known predators.”

Apparently, Asian carp eat the same plankton and algae that other Great Lakes fish like perch and salmon eat, but much, much more than them. And so a $7 billion fishing industry is shitting in its waders. They also jump out of the water, a lot, and hit people in boats, like that eagle ray that killed that lady in Florida last year. (In this video, a relentless carp jumps into a boat, is stabbed through with a knife and thrown overboard, then jumps-like twenty feet in the air, back into the boat! Blood everywhere!)

“Once they’re here, there’s no stopping them,” said Joel Brammeier of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Imported from China to clear southern fish hatcheries of algae in the ’70s, the demon spawn were swept into the Mississippi River by floods in the ’90s. Now they’re in the Illinois, and a shipping canal that connects to Lake Michigan. “We have positive results from environmental DNA [that the carp is] one mile from this location downstream,” said Colonel Vincent Quarles of the Army Corps of Engineers. Quarles overseas a $10 million government program to stave off disaster with underwater electrical barriers in the canal. But all measures, including the planned temporary poisoning of the canal to kill the carp, seem hopeless. “The Asian carp’s progress has been inexorable,” writes CBS’ Dean Reynolds. “And anything man has done to deter it has at most only delayed it.”

Man. Nuclear annihilation. Meteor strike. Airborne toxic event. Sure. Even genetically engineered sharks. But carp? I never though that’d be how we’d go out.

If you are in New York City right now go outside immediately. I mean, leave this browser window open, obviously, but get out there: It is fucking fantastic, and you are going to need to store up all the joy you get from this last nice day to keep you going through the hard winter to come.

This is far outside our bailiwick. However, it should be mentioned that this game, called Continuity, is possibly the greatest flash puzzle game ever invented, as well as being a work of art.

Here, have your mind blown with this story about Zac Efron on the set of Me and Orson Welles.

Is the idea of the celebrity memoir as publishing cash cow in decline? In Britain, at least, evidence is mixed. (Link includes some Martin Amis misogyny, if that’s your thing.)

“I like these liquor-sacks. When you’re done, they fold flat, and their flexible form means that they could be easily secreted in the crotchal region to defeat all but the most enthusiastic of friskings. A win for secret alcoholics everywhere.” Restoration Hardware solves the difficult holiday dilemma of what to give to the alcoholic who has everything.

I had no idea that there was so much controversy surrounding “The Hokey Pokey.”

OMG you guys Friendster relaunches tomorrow! Remember Friendster? What? No? Eh, me either.

We have many, many things to say about Tom Ford, which we will get to over the next week. For now, we are confronted with a Times Styles profile. Let’s put our concerns in order!

1. Let us look at the boys in the background of this on-set picture. Hot, identically-clad in high-end flannels… I see. Working hard, boys! I mean, I also enjoy hiring pretty, fashionable boys? (And from a quick overview of the crew list, it looks about 75% male.) But sometimes, in the real world, we find that the best person for the job is a not-pretty, unfashionable girl.

2. The quote from a friend. “Ms. Eisner added, ‘When people think of Tom they think he has sex a million times a day.’” You might think there was more coming after that quote! Apparently there was not. The meaning, however-that Tom Ford is actually asexual-is clear.

3. Weinstein paid all of $2 million to distribute. They, at least, will make that back. And yet there is an obsession with doing big business in this piece. Ford says he had a hunger to have a “voice in contemporary culture.” And the writer says: “For Mr. Ford to have a bona fide hit, the movie must appeal to as wide an audience as possible…. If ‘A Single Man’ manages to garner a few Oscar nominations, too, the attention could propel Mr. Ford back into the familiar role of cultural arbiter.” Okay, first of all: why? Why this weird big dick Hollywood movie talk? He made the little movie he wanted to make, for better or for worse (in may ways for worse, as we will discuss later), and it is about a sad gay widowed gay guy who wants to kill himself. BOX OFFICE GOLD? No. Cultural arbiter??? Not really!

4. So these ideas about business and art are not only all messed up in the Styles section, as they usually are, but also in the mind of Tom Ford, and everyone else’s mind. What’s a business product and what’s a piece of art, and where are they the same thing? Everyone is super-confused about this.

5. Have people been talking about what a pompous jerk Jason Reitman is? So at the end of this profile, Reitman staggers over and starts blathering. He is such a blatherer! I heard him talk after a screening a couple weeks ago and I was blown away by his pronouncements and his self-regard. It’s kind of funny? Because he is like, THIRTY ONE or something. Let us just enjoy, and God bless the reporter for just letting this one roll:

AS if on cue, Jason Reitman, the Academy Award-nominated director of “Juno,” approached Mr. Ford’s table at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had seen the film in Toronto and wanted to say how much he loved it.

Mr. Ford brightened at the unexpected visitor. Earlier, he had been discussing how different viewers — gay men, straight women — reacted to a poignant moment where Charley professes her love for George and threatens their friendship. “Were you moved emotionally, even though you are straight?” Mr. Ford asked Mr. Reitman of the scene. Mr. Reitman looked confused. He wondered aloud if Mr. Ford was hitting on him.

“No, I wasn’t coming on to you,” Mr. Ford said.

Mr. Reitman did not recall the scene. When Mr. Ford’s guest began explaining its particular resonance with some viewers, Mr. Reitman scolded her: movies “are not meant to be told that way,” he said.