Galleycat: “‘I don’t want to sign.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I want to discuss it with my wife.’ ‘Dude,’ said Harris, ‘sign it now, you won’t get a better deal.'”

• Lev Grossman has made an astonishing discovery! Check this shit out, yo! People are actually using the Web to create comics! And they’ve been doing since the late 1990s! I mean, who knew? Next thing you know, people will be using the Web to keep track of literary news. Of course, I maintain high hope for this medium. You folks are thinking small-time with text and images. But what if someone actually started posting audio and video onto this Internet thing? (via Heidi McDonald)
• Speaking of comics, here’s a list of this year’s Reuben nominees.
• Marlon Brando’s estate is suing over a chair. They had planned to sue over a sofa and an armoire, but they figured that they’d start with basic seating units and work their way up.
• NBC Universal and FOX are planning to start a rival to YouTube. The new portal, called FuckYouTube, will force users to fill out a ten-page questionnaire revealing their income, sexual preference, and purchasing habits to these benevolent corporate overlords, who promise that they will do nothing whatsoever with this personal information. Then, and only then, will users be able to watch episodes of 24 and The Office without fear of litigious attorneys. Of course, there will be a thirty-second commercial for every minute of video. And it’s probably much easier to TiVo these shows without these requirements. But this is the Internet, dammit, and you are all guilty until proven guilty.
• Sam Lipsyte didn’t finish Against the Day, but that didn’t stop him from picking it over Alentejo Blue!
• Scott Esposito gets to the bottom of Cees Nooteboom! (And, yes, Mr. Esposito is also worthy of an exclamation mark! As is this parenthetical aside!)
• Great jumping George! Airplane reading!
• You know, if you’re sort of halfway into the BDSM thing and you’re too scared to go all the way, perhaps these chain link scarves are for you.
• Sarah Hopkins has a cracker of a story. And, by cracker, we’re not talking some saltine that will crumble into your hands or those little fish crackers you pour into your chowder. We’re talking a veritable Aussie expression.
• Peter David betrayed Charlie Anders! This is terrible! Call the police!

Editor and Publisher: “The mystery creator of the Orwellian YouTube ad against Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic operative who worked for a digital consulting firm with ties to rival Sen. Barack Obama. Philip de Vellis, a strategist with Blue State Digital, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that he was the creator of the video, which portrayed Clinton as a Big Brother figure and urged support for Obama’s presidential campaign.”

I was unable to make it, betrayed by the 43 Masonic line, which I really need to have less faith in. But there are reports of last night’s shenanigans from ZYZZYVA editor Howard Junker and from “boredlizzie,” who notes that her favorite participant was “the old dude from Zyzzava” [sic].

He walked westward on Washington Street, carrying a burgundy bag cloaking pizza boxes, as if it were a faux pas to reveal cardboard in the Financial District. In his other hand, two white plastic bags, containing fixings, the top ends neatly twisted in the same relentless knots found in some Chinese restaurants. He was ignored by everyone else. You might even say that, aside from my five-second glance, I ignored him too. Why exculpate myself? What business did I have with the man? It wasn’t as if he was bringing me food. And even if he was, it wasn’t as if I’d get to know him, or ask him about the sports or the weather, let alone his name. The only thing I’d probably do is tip him generously. Perhaps more so than the investment bankers he was delivering lunch to, if I were to rely upon the remarkable tip-to-income inverse ratio described by acquaintances who worked in the food service industry.

He remained unnamed, as anonymous as a soldier in a tomb. Not even a name tag. Instead, the red pizza uniform and the slightly mystified and resigned look revealing why he, a man of thirty-five or so, was still delivering pizzas at his age, and how the advancing years had made him more invisible, and how he had quietly accepted his lot.

I took in many details in five seconds: his unsmiling face, the way he hid his eyes beneath sunglasses (it was a sunny day, but not that sunny), the white flecks settling into his dark hair, a torso neither muscular nor paunchy, but perfectly nondescript. Did he have a wife and kids? What were his hobbies? Did he have a second job? Did he have health care?

I thought of the pizza delivery man when I stood in line for lunch. And I fell quietly into line with the rest of the suits. I was an utter hypocrite. And there were more people there, paid to service us, with soft lines beneath their eyes and fabricated smiles to last the afternoon. I couldn’t eat easily. Because I kept thinking to myself: at what cost this food? Not the monetary cost, but the price I had paid in basic human decency. “Thank you” and brief pleasant talk didn’t cut it. This was the current economy. This was the human food chain.