Surely the most interesting section of the New York Times is the one called SundayStyles (Now InnerCap'd for the modrin age!), because it so unabashedly (yet articulately) enacts just one thing: the journalistic documentation of lifestyles you might wish you had. Here full-page ads are unnecessary, even garish, as a half-page juicer from Calvin Klein is well complemented by the editorial content above it.

Some precious soul left behind for my delectation a downright historical August 1 edition of this section, offering brief journalistic forays into such topics as "This Rich Guy Here," and "The Doorknobs of a Mildly-Famous Writer," as well as a not-so-brief excursion into Briefs, And Why the Ads for Them Are So Revealing, and a bit on some horrendous-sounding social movement they call "Blogging," which seems to have had an impact on the Democratic National Convention. Every single article in the section (save the bit about the Watermelon cocktails) was worth reading.

On page 9, Alain de Botton is found kibitzing on the nature of "the status symbol." "It could mean a car, or it could be a book of poetry that you wrote, or bought, and left lying around to lt everyone know how sensitive you are."

Certainly we all perform ourselves with the array of objects in our homes. What makes something a "status symbol" in the distasteful sense?

"The status symbol warrants dismay only when its meaning to the outside world outweighs its meaning to its owner" says Times man David Colman.

See the print article for a picture of de Botton's ordinary-looking doorknob (it was designed by Wittgenstein).

I am eating dinner tonight off a plate (treacly, maudlin) of a design (treacly, maudlin) which I bought one year ago for the purpose of smashing. I bought about 8 of these lovelies, at 75c a piece, and with a friend's rubber hammer, I smashed 6 of them in the backyard. After that, at great pain, I glued them back together in such a delicate manner that they could be thrown repeatedly without breaking, but would break easily when dropped. This was one of the elaborate contrivances that supported my production of Naomi Wallace's Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, a play about the notion of witnessing: being alive and observant for your fellow human beings.

I didn't tell you? One of them flew apart in mid-air, during a show.