A youngish Harold Pinter.

Artfagcity celebrates an altogether worthy and encouraging fundraising success with a wickedly satisfying worst-of the-web 2008. Elsewhere, Saint Slavoj takes a break from his ongoing experiment in theoretical collage to respond to some particularly ridiculous slander from The New Republic, which is drifting farther and farther to the right. When you're linking to this, maybe its time to just come clean and stop wasting everybody's time, eh Franklin? S'all right, their circulation might just be the only thing sinking faster than the stock market. Meanwhile, across the pond, some fictional artists got together and offended everybody, for old time's sake. Daniel Birnbaum continues to meet with widespread professional frustration, venturing this year at directing some minor art fair and interviewing some marginal philosopher; "Everything shall be incorporated into the great digestive system—nothing is inedible in Hegel's infinite metabolism." Triple Canopy may have pioneered the first truly satisfying web/magazine hybrid, and continue to use it to good effect, as evidenced by this. On a more somber note, Martin Puchner pens an excellent piece on the passing of Harold Pinter; "He was a Beckett for actors." Indeed he was. Pause.