We preemptively mocked Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan's comic novel The Underminer back in December because, well, mostly because we're bad people.

That's the sound of Gawker Media's DrudgeMock 2000® exploding when we fed it the above image.

Did you read about New York's hottest rivalry in this weekend's New York Times 'City Section'? It's some nasty, winner-takes-all stuff, with two powerful, cunning young women locked in a "new millennium battle." (Is it hackneyed to invoke the new millennium in 2005? Oh, well. Nevermind.) Let's get ready to rumble, fight fans!

When Desperate Housewives goes into reruns, the Sunday night choices get more simple: it's Topic A or nothing for Henry the Intern. This week, Tina hosted the requisite Oscar nominee (Annette Bening), the requisite political author (Natan Sharansky), the requisite domestic servant ("Supernanny" Jo Frost), and the requisite porn mogul (Steven Hirsch). Amidst all this excitement, the News' Stanley Crouch even gets a chance to reveal his secret love of hairdressing. After the jump, Henry reports on just another night with T and the gang.

It may still be winter, but it's never too soon for journalism students to start thinking about their first big job in the writhing snake pit we call the Manhattan media world. Finding that perfect first gig is tough, but the jobs board at Ed2010 has some good listings, like this one:

· Jay Rosen on the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference at Harvard. [PressThink]

A reader wrote in shortly after our "Books Twins" post to tell us the following:

Mediabistro's GalleyCat takes a look at repetitive book jackets, comparing covers that bear uncanny resemblances to each other. Her examples include Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Dave Eggers' How We Are Hungry, among others.

Right now (2:42 PM), a mariachi band is loudly wandering around the Post, bringing festive music to the beleagured features staff.

CNN

Phew! We were afraid no one would be able to make a joke conflating the Oscar nominations and the Iraqi elections this Sunday. It seemed so easy, yet... so very, very difficult. What man or woman is brilliant—and brave—enough to make this very important, very amusing joke? Who dares reach for this comedic height?

Lost amid the talk of conservative columnist and "marriage expert" Maggie Gallagher taking $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the Bush administration's marriage initiative is another—possibly worse—act of journalistic malfeasance. Look at her goddamn columnist headshot: It's gotta be ten years old!

Proof that books, like, do something besides make us targets for bullies in the cafeteria. The New York Post is reporting that Disney muckety-mucks may actually be proffering resignations over James B. Stewart's DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom, which is scheduled to be released in March.

We always suspected he was a fan of Rio.
Drudge Report

A hearty congratulations to chris322fran, the winning bidder in the Gotham Magazine internship auction we've been following with the rapt attention of... something rapt and attentive.

Vanity Fair's website—yeah, we were sort of amazed they figured out a way to distribute scent strips over the web, too—has an excellent primer for the trends we've never heard of before, but will all be sick of in 2005.

· Max Boot is so off Sy Hersh's Christmas card list [LA Times]

Oh, no: Manimals!
Drudge Report

We owe you an apology: as we are wont to do in our morning Gossip Roundup, we linked to a Page Six item revealing the romance between talented ex-Libertine crackhead Pete Doherty and supermodel Kate Moss. It's now come to our attention, via the far more reliable Sun, that the two have ended their romance and, as of yesterday, Moss was ignoring her scorned lover's text messages. We apologize for this inconvenience and, on behalf of Page Six, regret the error.
Kate Dumps Pete [Sun UK]

Amber Frey's book is being featured next to relationship quizzes and columns? Subtle, yet not so much.
Today's Book Club [MSNBC]