We've done you guys a real favor today. Just because we're feeling particularly charitable, we've gone through today's Times and found the 33 best words in the entire paper. It's all you need to read, really, to understand the day's news:

We've got nothing to add.

We don't think we've ever been handed quite so many flyers in one day as we were yesterday. Even at 9 at night, just a half-hour before the polls closed in the Democratic primary, we were offered literally dozens of pieces of political propaganda on our walk home down Eighth Avenue — and, surprisingly, not all of them were from the Ellner campaign's strategically deployed cute young boys.

On the one hand, we have to imagine this detail freaks the shit out of the city's Waspy and German Jewish power elite:

We've been voting in Manhattan for nearly a decade. At three different polling places over the years. And in countless elections — we vote in everything: primaries and generals, federal and state and local. But we've never before seen anything like the craziness going on today in front of our current polling place, the Lesbain, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street. (We love that we vote there, mostly because we imagine it's Karl Rove's worst nightmare: That someone has to be surrounded by the gays in order to vote.)

Shit! It's 8:00 and we're totally late for Democratic Primary Day! We went to bed all early last night, cozied up with our copy of the NYC Voter Assistance Commission's bible, just so we could be up and at the polls at 6 a.m. Alas, our excitement kept us from drifting asleep at a decent hour, and so we're only now awake and polishing our wingtips for today's big trip to Democracyville. But we shall not be deterred! So, like any good little citizen would, we skimmed our paper of record for some last minute information before we went to cast our vote in this important decision to determine who will be involved in November's important decision. And what did we learn?

As the political primaries loom over our horizon and you all feign interest, Manhattan borough presidential candidate Brian Ellner has hit the pavement running. As if his commercial in which he briefly, lamely introduces his boyfriend for the sake of selling the poor sap out didn't convince you of Ellner's gay cred, a reader writes in with a report of his targeted campaigning:

What we have here is what they call a teachable moment.

Is nothing sacred, people?

This is the sort of news that makes us sad we skipped town early for the long weekend: Drinking Liberally's Mayoroke — in which candidates for mayor and other city offices will sing for your votes — is happening tonight.

There's a lot to love about mayoral candidate Gifford Miller's latest television commercial for his education plan: the beat-heavy soundtrack, the great graphics, the precious kids, the quick-cut photography befitting of a TRL champ.

• While enjoying some lovely 10-cent wings at Croxley Ales last night, Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett were interrupted by local comedian Aziz Ansari, who dropped off a flier for one of his shows. And, so long as he was there, he couldn't NOT give Johansson his digits. Can't fault a man for trying. [Aziz Is Bored]
• Why is stickball the go-to photo-op for mayoral types looking to seem "common?" [Copyranter]
• You have to admire the sheer audacity of ShopVogue.com, in which you can rifle through the September Vogue's 8342835 advertising pages by brand, and then quickly jump to the appropriate online purchasing venue. Oh, if only they had simply done this instead of printing actual pages, so many trees might've lived. [ShopVogue]
• Desperate for an editor to take on the crappy manuscript for your great American novel? This guy uses pubbed as if it were a real word, so we imagine he'd be open to just about anything. [mediabistro]

With only two weeks to go till New York City's primary-election day, the Sun has uncovered rampant fraud in the registration rolls. "Dozens of voters," says the paper — and, yes, that's not just a handful, but entire dozens — are claiming to reside at demonstrably false addresses. And it gets worse, reports Meghan Clyne:

The city's department of education is scaling back its program to recruit teachers from overseas, and we can't help but think that this is yet another way in which our public schools are failing the city's students. Seriously: How will they possibly succeed in college if they're not familiar with math classes taught by those with no command of English?

Katrina has devastated Louisiana and Mississippi. It caused havoc in Florida. It's crippling U.S. oil production. It is a disaster in every way, of course, and we respect its awesome power and feel for those living through it. We also thank God that, while our city has its endemic threats — terrorism risks and newfound edginess and the Post — at least we do not get horrific hurricanes. Today, however, we learn from Newsday that even if we were to get such hurricanes, which we won't, the city is prepared with a plan to evacuate us all into hurricane shelters.

We admit we've been strongly considering voting for the cute gay guy running for Manhattan borough president. This is mostly because it's a largely irrelevant job, so why not vote for the one who's fun to look at?

Today's Post has an exclusive that is uncharacteristically both actually exclusive and, even better, actually true: Someone gave the paper a tape filled with about 45 minutes of secretly recorded conversations among Gov. Pataki, his wife, Al D'Amato, and some top political advisors. There's lots of stuff about patronage appointments, lots of Libby Pataki bitching about her schedule of events and the fact Donna Hanover Giuliani got more attention at those events than she did, and, finally, what to us is clearly the most scandalous bit, from a conversation between D'Amato and a Pataki aide about a patronage job:

Huge schnozzes on Jewish pols: It's not just for rightwing opinion journals anymore. From the cover of this week's Observer:

Oh, thank you so much, little Addison Miller.

City Hall announced yesterday that Mike Bloomberg donated a total of $140 million to 843 groups last year, the Sun reports today. It's the most money he's ever given in one year — up from his previous record of $135.3 million, in 2003 — and by far the largest number of groups he's given to, up from his 2002 record of 655.