I never thought I would end up this way.

Well-adjusted teen Justin Bieber posted a fun image to Instagram yesterday: a drawing of him, nude, cuddling in post-coital bliss with an anonymous fan, also nude (and helpfully labeled "BELIEBER"). He posted it to his feed without comment, leading hundreds of thousands of anonymous teenage girls to conjecture that the girl in the image represented them, specifically.

Newton Leroy Gingrich, a former college professor who co-writes speculative novels about alternative versions of history, has just coauthored the most momentous counterfactual of his career. Forget wondering what would have happened if the Confederates had won at Gettysburg, or if the United States had fought Imperial Japan and left Hitler alone: What if the two most absurd and most widely loathed candidates in last year's Republican presidential primaries had joined forces to win the White House?

The day after Thanksgiving is the traditional start to the Christmas season, when celebrants everywhere put up traditional Christmas decorations, sing traditional Christmas carols, and hunker down for the yearly reading of the traditional incest-themed fan fiction based on a two-minute Folger's commercial.

If you've seen the Twilight movies — and my condolences — you know that confrontation between Edward and his romantic rival Jacob generally amounts to a lot of growling and snarls.

Eduardo Saverin isn't just a Facebook co-founder made famous by The Social Network and set to get very rich off the Facebook IPO. He is also, judging from the burgeoning genre of Mark Zuckerberg fanfic, the college hottie online romance authors most want to see hook up with Facebook's young CEO.

There is much glee on the ethereal plane high above the Bethesda clouds from which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman writes his column today. We're treated to his latest venture into despondent centrist wet-dream fanfic, in which the Mustache of Understanding imagines a world where political parties don't have bases, but still manage to dig deep, treat each other politely, and deal with false problems in bad ways through their own sheer purity of will.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts thought it would be a good — again, that's good — idea yesterday to ramble for 10+ minutes yesterday on the Senate floor about his fantasy game of basketball with President Obama, during which they would discuss policy. This is the only way to get the president's attention, he larfed. Hehe, yesiree. What?

Awaken and behold the tale of six chefs, two hearts beating as one, a sad strip, a sassafras dream and a love supreme. I'm Joshua David Stein and this is your Top Chef recap.

Misunderstood Times columnist Maureen Dowd got in trouble for not rewriting something her friend emailed her from a blog, so today's column is something only MoDo could've written.

Last night on tv's Dr House, MD, House finally slept with Cuddy!! But it turned out that he didn't. SPOILER ALERT: this made the internet, and Times critic Gina Bellafante, feel very :(

Levi Johnston, a 19-year-old Alaskan who, unlike Meghan McCain, has held a real job, is going to write a book. Maybe. Or maybe not!

We honestly wish there was some way we could dress up NBC rock star Ben Silverman's appearance on Charlie Rose last night as something more than two talking heads—albeit enviably bone-structured heads—covering the nuts and bolts of programming strategy in a 21st century, multi-platform TV jungle. Unfortunately, there isn't. So we're instead going to do the next best thing: Write some Ben on Charlie fanfic. It's after the jump!When Ben Met Charlie Chapter One: First Impressions Charlie sat in his dressing room, staring into his mirror with a paper-towel bib tucked into his shirt collar, as Joy the makeup girl dabbed concealer beneath his eyes. "No point, Joy," he said. "Couldn't hide those puffy things with cement and a trowel." "Oh Charlie," she laughed. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You're as handsome as ever." Why was he so self-conscious? He was a broadcast icon. He had interviewed heads of state, captains of industry, sports heroes and movie stars. Yet none of them disarmed him the way today's guest did—a young, handsome and charismatic network TV president whose swift rise to power he had admired from afar. A knock at the door shook Charlie back into the moment. "Come in," he said. The first thing he saw were the brows—strong and angular, and peaked towards the ends. Then he wandered slightly downward, to the nose. It was a powerful nose—a hit-sniffing nose if he had ever seen one. For a split second, he migrated up to the eyes—mesmerizing!—but quickly landed on his visitor's full, cranberry lips. They opened to speak. "Charlie—" "Ben!" Charlie said leaping up, pulling his bib out of his shirt as he threw out a hand. Ben took it in his. It felt strong, Charlie thought, and large. New, yet familiar. It was comforting. Suddenly feeling extraneous, Joy used the moment to slink out of the room. "I just wanted to say hello before the interview." "Of course, of course—please, come in. Have a—" he looked around nervously for a chair, and spotted one leaning against a shelf filled with hardcover books, most only barely thumbed through. "Have a seat! Are you a scotch man?" "Tequila, usually, but scotch will do in a pinch," Ben replied, smiling. A knock at the door alerted both men they were needed on set. Next: Chapter 2: A Game of Wits And Footsie

Former Hillary Clinton spokeshipster Howard Wolfson says Hillary Clinton totally would be president right now if the John Edwards scandal had gone public last year. "I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," he told ABC. And furthermore: Wolfson says the Clintons knew the story but didn't push it. "Any of the campaigns that would have tried to push that would have been burned by it." Ha. Bullshit. If they had the story, they would've planted it without getting their hands dirty. And furthermore, Edwards would've had to drop out right before Iowa, and not after. And furthermore, their Iowa ground game sucked and Obama's didn't. And frankly their campaign didn't kick into gear until they were losing and started taking shit seriously; being the frontrunner was a liability. But all that aside, playing alternative history is totally fun! So let's all pretend the Edwards revelations broke close enough to the Iowa caucus to force Edwards to drop out but not so far from them that everyone had already forgotten or stopped caring. What would our world look like now?

Serious-minded online magazine Slate usually deals in conventional wisdom upending, but over the last couple days they're just going in for political fanfic. First: what if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could both be president? At the same time! OMG best ever! We bet Han Solo and Captain Kirk woulda totally been bros too! Maybe Obama and Al Gore can team up with Wolverine to end global warming? ALSO wouldn't it be totally kick-ass if Hillary Clinton gave a really good speech about being a lady, like how Obama gave that speech about being black? That would be so cool. And it might go... a little something... like this: