Readers of the New York Magazine (ones who don't read Slate, the New York Times Styles, Forbes, the San Francisco Chronicle, or Wired) now know there's a boom on. Writer Kurt Andersen spends three pages (well, the last page is two lines, like the last page of a dictated-length term paper) telling the same story as the other papers, but with the cluelessness with which the New York media glitterati always approach the Internet. It's like seeing USA Today redo a trend piece, but without the humility. So spare yourself the read and use the Valleywag Lazy News Edition.

SF Chronicle writer Dan Fost has rolling updates on the "Tumbleweeds in South Park" tale referenced in his South Park feature story.

Domains are like women in Silicon Valley — all the good ones are taken, according to journalist Om Malik's latest blog entry. So as a service journalism project, Valleywag hunted down some prime domains for your new startup:

The New York Times today touts Zunafish, the revolutionary sharing site that lets users swap books, CDs, and other media. It's like Mediachest or Delicious Monster or Peerflix or GameTZ or Lala — but with fewer options.

The New York Times goes cuckoo for oo's today. John Markoff holds a debutante ball for Webaroo while Bob Tedeschi plays catch-up with Squidoo. And the Times could oo and ah at a different startup every day at this rate:

Stirr's mixer last night brought startuppers, marketers, and investors (and one gossip blogger) to Palo Alto's Fanny and Alexander bar for a handful of one-minute dot-com presentations and a night of drinking, demoing, and awkward schmoozing.

Ever since getting dumped by Google, Dictionary.com has let itself go.

Wired News runs a trend story (journalism rule #42: three weak stories make a trend story) on antisocial networking. The tipping point: Full-blown parody site Snubster. It's the Hot New Joke (and by "new" I mean "dated as 'I'm Rick James, bitch'") that's turning into a healthy little community. It's not the first joke-cum-business.

Another day, another social network site acquisition. This time, says a reader, it's run by at least one MIT kid who might get some schadenfreude if Facebook falls flat on its, um, face.

Online matchmaking is just like the real world: shit happens. The Wall Street Journal points out a few failures and the new effort to perfect it — we can do it better with TECHNOLOGY — from eHarmony, True, and Match.com. And the goal is always marriage.

Recent Technorati emigrant Niall Kennedy hosted a swanky demo session last night at the Westin St. Francis. This is the second of his SF Tech Sessions. Chicago startup Blish.com bought the room, the drinks (for the record, I stuck to beer and coffee), and the pricey salmon platters.

Ask.com finally killed their best asset, the lovable butler Jeeves. What better excuse occasion for an ex-Jeevester and friend of Valleywag to reminisce.

Pity the poor PR flack, pumping out press releases, subject to the hatred (and occasional alliteration) of Valley journalists and bloggers. Or just pity the people who hired him.

Loan site Prosper wants everyone to know it's no Zopa. When Valley venture blog alarm:clock asked why Benchmark Capital invested in two competing loan companies, Prosper whipped up a little chart showing what it's got that its UK counterpart doesn't: collection agency options, public listings, whiter teeth and cooler toys.

You know those joke sites with the serious lead-up to a punchline, where the "monitor test" or "Let the computer draw you" test gives you one answer no matter what you put in? And how you should only pass on the joke with the same straight face?

Well, this wasn't the Valleyschwag I mentioned yesterday, but it sure is sexy: San Fran web designers Rubyred Labs just launched Valleyschwag, a schwag-of-the-month club with a few things going for it:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2005, after Facebook was valued at $100 million:

"How geeky are you," asks Newsweek, ruining a perfectly good cover story with an awkward quiz. Bad enough that half of it is desert-island questions; even worse that the "desert-island book" options don't include the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Everyone knows that Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield were made for pretty photos. Flickr's founding couple does a great job sexing up the cover of the latest Newsweek as the poster children for the new feel of the Net. In case you missed the last three years of what Newsweek calls "the Living Web," here's an intro to the cast.

BusinessWeek writer Steve Rosenbush is the latest sipper of the Facebook Kool-Aid, putting a positive spin on its "sell for $2 billion" plan in his latest article. (Tuesday morning drinking game: take a shot every time he follows a doubt with a "but" — as in, "Facebook doesn't match the scale of MySpace, but...")