It's reassuring for me, as a writer, to know that if all else fails and my entire career crumbles to pieces, I can always survive by selling Slate literally any story about anything I have ever done. I can derive an entirely new income stream for a period of time equal to the length of my entire writing career, by writing thousands of new stories recounting each individual day of my career, and the exciting—or unexciting—lessons I learned, or did not learn. It doesn't matter that that would be pointless; "pointlessness" is a concept that does not translate to the internet. We're living in a post-pointless era. Enjoy it.

Santorum, as followers of politics know, is the Bible-thumping Republican underdog who tied Mitt Romney at last night's Iowa Caucus. Santorum is also, as users of Google and followers of Dan Savage know, a neologism for "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex."

The year-end listicle is a stressful affair. It's important: You are defining a moment in history. It's hard: You have to remember stuff that happened twelve whole months ago, which is multiple millennia in internet years. Finally, it has a strict deadline: If you procrastinate, then the work you've done will be rendered completely irrelevant at the stroke of midnight on January 1st.

New York Times Twitter wunderkind and media reporter Brian Stelter has once again been tripped up by the source of his power. He pulled his second Weiner this month, and told us he's been forced to resort to... email.

University of Iowa professor and pretentious troll-journalist Stephen Bloom recently wrote an article in The Atlantic mocking Iowa as a backward, hick-filled state full of people smoking meth out of corncobs (paraphrasing). Which it is, probably! (Never been there personally, thank god.) But now Stephen Bloom has literally fled the state in terror to "an undisclosed location" after Iowans got mad at him. You're doing this all wrong, Stephen Bloom.

Might as well get THIS one out of the way: the Sex/ Internet/ Microfame story of the week comes to us courtesy of Kat Stoeffel at the New York Observer, who introduces us to 21 year-old college student and occasional writer-about-sex on the internet "Marie Calloway" (a pseudonym). Sometimes Marie writes about sex, on Tumblr, or on Thought Catalog. Does this make her "the model for literary seductresses" in the "internet age?" No. It just makes her a girl, with a Tumblr.

Bloated starfucker Piers Morgan finally gave his long-awaited testimony before a British commission investigating phone hacking today. While there were no Perry Mason moments trapping Morgan in one of his numerous transparent lies about his tenures at the News of the World and Daily Mirror, he was at least exposed as having a conveniently spotty memory.

Bloomberg reporter Max Abelson should receive every last Pulitzer for his story today, "Look at These Atrocious Rich Fuckers Hang Themselves With Their Own Quotes." Or if you prefer the "formal" headline, "Bankers Seek to Debunk Attack on Top 1%." Good god. I mean really. It is almost Christmas. You bastards.

What a year it's been for Andrea Peyser, the sourpuss racist lesbian xenophobe sex fiend who serves as the conscience of New York City's most fascist tabloid. Today we are blessed with Andrea's "Year in Review" column, widely considered journalism's most exciting day after the Pulitzer Prizes. Equally looked-forward-to is our condensation of this column into readable form! Without further ado, we present The Shorter Version of Andrea Peyser's Year in Review Column, Which Is, Naturally, on the Topic of SIN:

Earlier this week, Manattan ad executive Suzanne Hart was killed in a freak elevator accident. These things are referred to as "freak accidents" because they are very, very rare. No matter; everyone is taking the stairs now, forever.

New York Post hot teen lesbian sex fetish correspondent Andrea Peyser is writing about bitches and sluts today. Yes, it is a Thursday. "Step away from the TV, bitches. It isn't safe." Those are actually in fact the first two sentences of Andrea's column today. But wait for the positive message!

Those of you who are from or who currently live in one of America's more backwards states (Southern states, Southwestern states, all middle American states, or any part of any state on either coast outside of a major metropolitan area) know that there are few pleasures easier or more satisfying than making fun of America's more backward states. I mean, you don't have to be some great wit. A half-dumb child could easily offend a resident of, say, Georgia. And could probably do so more easily than a more eloquent critic, given the state's average reading comprehension.

Breaking meta-news: New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter has pulled a Weiner. No, not that kind. No, not that kind, either.

You would think that the AP would be satisfied with its status as "last remaining source of non-local 'news' for 95% of American newspapers." But no! Now they want to be kings of the internet, and whatnot, as well.

Yeah, last night was the TV debut of Chelsea Clinton, NBC's newest """""journalist.""""" All you non-famous kids out there who saddled yourselves with a lifetime of debt in order to pay for journalism school, who are now either unemployed or underemployed or stuck at some boring dead end niche publication wondering how your journalism dream turned out so differently than you imagined: maybe Chelsea Clinton will put you in one of her charity news segments on teevee one day. That would be a dream come true for you.

In the past, we have used this space to mock new New York Times columnist Frank Bruni for starting out poorly, then getting progressively, unbelievably worse. He seems to lack any convictions at all, let alone interesting ones; though he's only been on the job for half a year, he's already been reduced to padding his column with excruciatingly boring stories from his own life, due to his apparent dearth of worthwhile ideas about important issues.

Kelly Evans is a financial columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Unlike most columnists, she arrives at work at 6:45 a.m. That's because Kelly Evans has a second job: she's the co-anchor for the Journal's 8:30 a.m. video newscast, the "News Hub," which plays on the WSJ's homepage just as thousands upon thousands of readers are reading their morning financial news. How many of those traders and brokers and analysts and corporate office drones have fallen in love?

An ironclad rule of hipness is that if you're looking for hipness, the best place to start your search is within the paragraphs of a newspaper article with the word "Hip" featured prominently in the headline. Mainstream newspaper stories explaining phenomena deemed "Hip" by mainstream newspaper editors: where hipness lives.

Political blogger Ben Smith's career is a series of progressively wackier job moves. He was at the NY Daily News, covering state politics, and was more respected than the average tabloid writer. He moved to THE POLITICO, where he's been blogging about politics and media for the past five years, managing to stay more respected (by us!) than his micro-horse-race-obsessed paper as a whole. Now, he's off to an even weirder destination!

College newspapers: how are they shocking and outraging campus officials with mild sexual content today? Well, you know, just in the normal way, by writing something about sex. But this time, more Jewish!