Where'd your McSweeney's donation money go? Dave Eggers isn't saying. [YM]

McSweeney's publisher Eli Horowitz on their save-our-asses Ebay auction: "I'm sure if we keep this going, we'll get more and more misguided. We're never sure how far to expand into ridiculousness." [NYM]

When distributor Publisher's Group West declared bankruptcy last winter, it set off a chain of events that have caused big shakeups in independent publishing. The latest potential casualty is McSweeney's, which announced via its "internet tendency" that they've "lost about $130,000—actual earnings that were simply erased," a loss they've just begun to feel particularly keenly. They've got a solution in mind, but being ultra-relatable lovably bumbling English majors, they're not certain it'll work: "We are not business masterminds," they admit. We'll say: their "groundbreaking business-saving plan" includes an Ebay auction of "rare" items like 8 issues of DVD-journal Wholphin "signed/doodled on" by catalog-heir director Spike Jonze. Snap 'em up, kids, or else maybe we won't have McSweeney's to kick around anymore. You'll not only be helping a great and important literary enterprise, you'll be keeping Daniel Handler from having another crisis of conscience.

The offer at right (click to enlarge) recently went out to lifetime subscribers of Dave Eggers' whimsical quarterly McSweeney's. Written in that publication's oh-so-precious house style (which was funny seven years ago but now just makes you want to punch someone) the note starts off as a standard change of address form. But wait, there's more! They want to renege on that whole "lifetime subscriber" thing.

• Morgan Stanley boots 4 employees after they accompanied clients to a strip club. Apparently this touches on Morgan Stanley's touchy gender discrimination issues, but we find it just as offensive to assume a female staffer wouldn't want to take the high rollers to Scores. [Wall Street Folly]
• After three years of delightly offensive and brilliantly entertaining pro bono work, the Black Table throws in the towel and heads to rehab. [Black Table]
• Are they Yindies? Yupsters? Or just annoying fuckwit posers? [LA Weekly & Newsweek]
• A reasonably kind rationalization of your Life & Style habit, courtesy of Salon. [Salon]
• Slightly more pleasant than chugging glasses of Airborne. [Female First]
• Supermodel Kate Moss, always the bravest girl in Bolivia, agrees to return to London to speak with authorities about that whole cocaine thing. [Telegraph]
• Happy New Year, John Norris. You're gonna need it. [MisShapes]
• We may not LURVE New York's 101 restaurants, but we certainly wouldn't rather watch an episode of 2 and a Half Men instead. That's just crazy talk. [PDHyman]
• Club kid killer Michael Alig is baaack! [WOW]
• You can jack the price of hooch up all you want; it's not going to stop a single person from getting hammered at brunch. [Reuters]
• Get more for your money at Starbucks. [Slate]
• McSweeney's grows a precious new tentacle called Wholpin, for DVDphiles. [Cool Hunting]
• Is there any limit to the fun we can have at Tara Reid's expense? [Gallery of the Absurd]

YankTheChain's Eric Rosenfield reviews Heidi Julavits' literary criticism mag, The Believer, and makes a case for Why Dave Eggers Isn't So Bad and Why The Believer Isn't All Crap. [My description; not his.] His argument sounds familiar: Eggers/Julavits/McSweeney's have their faults, but at least they're trying to stir things up. The less polite version usually goes something like this: "Dave Eggers sucks. McSweeney's sucks. But, hey, indie publishing is cool. (Very small, nearly insignificant) kudos to Eggers on that one!" A friend of Rosenfield's disagrees: "Our own JF Quackenbush has trouble discussing Eggers without using phrases like 'subliterate postmodern flippancy.' I told him I was going down the McSweeney's Store in Brooklyn for research and asked him if he wanted me to ask anything; he said, 'please ask them to knock it off.'"
Regarding Dave Eggers [YankTheChain]

As previously reported, Dave Eggers of McSweeney's is distributing a new magazine called The Believer (the brainchild of Heidi Julavits). The "indie" publication features pieces by up-and-coming "indie" writers like Salman Rushdie, Robert Olmstead, and Anne Carson. (Oh wait, it's "Be Nice to Celebrities Day." Sorry. This is very painful for me.) Actually a friend of mine subscribed and says it's very good and it even "smells nice"always the mark of high-quality literature. I haven't seen it yet, so it's probably quite lovely. I'd probably even like itand hate myself for liking it. (See? That was nice...ish.)
New magazine has an abiding faith in the good book review [LA Times]
The Believer
UPDATE: Felix Salmon reviews The Believer, a magazine about reviews.
The Believer [FelixSalmon.com]

It has been pointed out that McSweeney's is selling subscriptions to a new monthly publication called The Believer that's co-edited by Heidi Julavits, which perhaps means that The Balloonist was never The Balloonist, but The Believer.
The Believer: 12 issue subscription [McSweeney's store via The White Shoe Irregular]

This is the first in a series of interviews with Random People The Editor Feels Like Emailing. Today's interviewee: Neal Pollack—McSweeney's writer, author of

The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, and freelance whore for Vanity Fair et. al.