Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be the two days of the week when we're free to be ourselves. No work means the days are wide open—the tie goes on the rack, the first meal of the day comes with alcohol. We yawn happily, like baby birds in anticipation of that sweet, healing leisure we read about in the paper. This is not what really happens.

48 hours of freedom means 48 hours of restless, torpid loathing. It is a broad guilt—one that grows every time a West Chelsea installation closes before we've gone and every time a magazine arrives before we've opened that last issue. It is a guilt that exists only on the weekend—one that stretches from the past into the future, from the work we didn't do the week before to the work we won't have time for on Monday.

In the Journal, businessmen confess they're trying to stop playing games on their BlackBerries, but they can't. In the Funny Pages of the Times mag, a woman blames herself when a pervert raps on her window and exposes himself.

And on page one today, the Times' John Leland reports on "debt bloggers," a subset of masochists who use their webspace to punish, rather than express, themselves. These are people with severe money problems who post about their expenditures online so that the pain of public humiliation will compel them to scale back.

Leland quotes one lady, writing on her site last week: "I think about this blog every time I'm in the store and something that I don't need catches my eye... Look what you all have done to me!"

Everyone else Leland talked to is the same way. 37-year-old Leigh Ann Fraley, once $19,947 in the hole, is quoted as saying that when she finally got out of debt, "The blog was the first people I told."

Fraley's blog is called "Save Leigh Ann—The Daily Rantings of a Bulimic Shopper." Like almost every other blogger Leland references, Fraley posted on her site prior to her appearance in The Sunday Times, the anxious loathing you would expect from the distinction just barely camouflaged behind excitement.

OMG! I was just interviewed for an article in the NEW YORK TIMES!!! ABOUT MY BLOG!!!!

And don't think I didn't just swoon over you guys!!

The carnage goes on:

I told him if he was mean I would come to New York and go on a shopping spree, get in total debt again and say he was lying about me getting out of debt!!!!!!!!!!

The next day:

Photographer was great.....but I told him if he didn't photoshop me into looking like a supermodel I will kick his butt and take pictures!!!!

UPDATE: It will be in tomorrow's paper in the Main Section.

Maybe not after they see my headshot!!

MAN....WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN RADIO!!

Why, indeed. To conclude: a commenter quoted a wise thing yesterday when we first punched in for our weekend duties: "You can either read the Sunday New York Times or you can live your life."

"I often feel guilty," she wrote, "but I've made my choice."

It was unclear which way she meant it, but the crushing point is that it makes no difference. Whether you read it or not, the Sunday Times keeps existing and the dread piles up like debt. We have always already missed the last installment of the Funny Pages serial.

[Photo: Theo Rigby]