Our Foreign Correspondent, SAC, reports on developments at Arianna Huffington's blog empire and non-developments at Nick Denton's blog non-empire:

In the land where people actually do the things they talk about, Arianna Huffington has squatted down in the rice fields and given birth to her short-awaited bloggy blog. Arianna is an old friend to those of us in Sacramento, the land that grows failed political candidates. She comes by her name via the titular Michael Huffington, the man whom she badgered into running for the Senate in 1996, the most expensive (and reticent) non-presidential race in this once and future great nation's history. Fortunately, Californians noticed Arianna's lips moving as she worked the Michael Huffington puppet. He/they lost to Diane Feinstein, a known bot. Soon after he turned gay, so traumatized he was by the experience (of being married to Arriana Huffington). But that's a story for when you are older. For The Huffington Post, she has badgered her friends into working for free. Every contributor, from someone called "John Cusack," all the way down the line to Larry David's wife, is so much more famous than you will ever be. Cusack's burnt offering drives the final nail into the coffin of whatever was left of Hunter S. Thompson's coolness (nothing) by revealing that the Gonzo-journalist (fuck, do I feel like a real reporter when I use such a hackneyed phrase) would send self-consciously gruff actors t-shirts with embarrassing quotes on them. Also, David Mamet is totally stealing my schtick. I'm talking about his numerous award-winning plays, of course, definitely not his mock-solipsist piece in The Huffington Report wherein he likens computers to hermaphrodites and doubts the corporeal existence of any blogger he has not met personally. Come to think of it, that premise sounds familiar as well, and is one I still operate under, as this so-called "Spiers" well knows.

Dance Dance Revolution? Yes! Blog revolution? Not so, according to Nick Denton in yesterday's NY Times article which I scanned briefly for possible material. In it, Denton once again dances around the question of blog profitability with surpring agility, considering he is British. He plays down the advantages of conglomoration by saying, "It's actually a disadvantage, because it looks corporate." Nice move. He probably says some other things along those lines, I can't be sure as I didn't get past the 4th paragraph (my limit for NY Times articles). I should point out that the family picture used in the article is misleading. Denton is actually situated BEHIND the others, it just looks like he's closer because of his giant head.