Something incredible happened. The New York Times' ombudsman opened the lid on the Illuminati-esque processes behind a personal passion, the Sunday Styles' Weddings and Celebrations. Tell us: is there only upper-crust elitism at their core? And did he mention us?!

That's not Frank Oz's hand up Phyllis Nefler's ass; it's a stick called the Weddings and Celebrations section of the Sunday NYT. Today, she realizes the evil, dark magic contained within them. Presenting your July 4th Weekend edition of Altarcations:

It doesn't matter if you're black or white. Or gay or straight. What matters is that you're single, and the happy couples of the Weddings and Celebrations section of the Sunday NYT aren't. Professional P.Y.T. Phyllis Nefler's on the case:

It's 9:30 PM, do you know where your biological clock is? Phyllis Nefler does. It's somewhere in the Weddings and Celebrations section of the Sunday 'New York Times,' and TICKING LIKE THIS. Pledge Phy Nef and watch the score:

On Tuesday, the New York Times' hosted a party for same-sex couples whose weddings have been featured in the Times' Weddings pages. Out.com has a wonderful, picturesque gallery of the attendees (including former NJ Governor Jim McGreevy). [Out.com

File under "Probably Not In This Week's Altarcations": the founder of "Hookers For Jesus" and some guy in a Christian rock band got married in Vegas. The name of the band? "Stryper." +4 [CNN]

Each week, the Weddings and Celebrations section of the Sunday 'New York Times' features twos becoming ones and halves becoming wholes and reminds you how poor/lonely/lost you are; to help, we score them! Your host is chronic bouquet-catcher and numerologist Phyllis Nefler.

We're bringing back a Gawker tradition of yore: scoring the highfalutin', inferiority-complex inflating Weddings and Celebrations section of the Sunday 'New York Times.' Your host? High-society mole, street anthropologist, and all-around lady: Phyllis Nefler.

Rebecca Gomez of Fox Business's Happy Hour, 41, married a 31-year-old gentleman last weekend. Not that we'd know that from reading their NYT wedding announcement—as Portfolio points out, her age isn't listed in the announcement, although his is... (The Times' policy is to list the ages of both bride and groom.) [Portfolio]

Nicola Kraus, 33, who co-wrote the Nanny Diaries (later a Scarlett Johansson film!) with Emma McLaughlin, is in the Vows section of the Times this Sunday. She used to date "toxic freak shows," she says—but now she's married to a cute guy, David Wheir, so that's all behind her. Up until her wedding, she was suffering from that modern problem of being successful in every area but love (just like the main character in every chick-lit book!)

Yesterday marked the merger of two rising lieutenants in Manhattan's Media Mafia as The New York Observer's Spencer Morgan and Vanity Fair executive fashion editor Alexis Bryan were married in Houston. But just who are these two newlyweds, really?

MOST UNLIKELY SIDE PROJECTS COUPLED WITH WORST DJ NAME: The last graf of the otherwise hum drum Katherine Applegarth and Matthew Simons wedding (she's a marketing and business consultant; he's an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine) read: "The bride is also a founding member of the Suburbia Roller Derby league of Westchester County, using the name Rat-Tat-Kat. The bridegroom is a D.J. known as G-Funk, playing at bars and clubs in Brooklyn and Manhattan."

Alexis Swerdloff hands out awards to the couples who celebrated their nuptials with a write-up this weekend in the New York Times.

The Weddings and Celebrations in the Sunday 'New York Times' are a textual analysis-rebuffing, context-free and statistically random series of events described objectively that have nothing to do with the fact that you're single and still using that one dirty towel after you shower. You HUMAN FILTH. Intern Alexis judges the vows.

The Weddings and Celebrations pages of the Sunday 'New York Times' don't have to be read. You can totally pass it by! Then you won't feel bad that you had Wheat Thins for dinner all alone last night and let your ex-boyfriend sleep over last week, you unmarriageable piece of mess!

The weekly Weddings and Celebrations section in the 'New York Times' is your guide to who is superior to you—and who is worse than whom. But don't you know: They're all winners, because they're newly-married, and you're single again, or thinking about a divorce, and just generally losing all the time. It's like the brilliant Ann Magnuson always said: Maybe you should have married Junior, the Vietnam vet parking attendant! Would it be so bad?

Remember that guy A.O. Scott, the Times critic we gave thanks for on Wednesday? This is what I found out about him at Thanksgiving. First, he's the son of Joan Wolloch Scott and Donald Scott. She is the smart-sounding Harold F. Linder Professor at the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Donald Scott is the less-smart sounding (but equally smart) Professor of American History at CUNY. But you could get all that you could get from Wikipedia. This, you can't: On A.O. Scott's wedding day ten or so years ago BOTH his parents announced they were gay. Apparently smart people can have bad timing. This also explains A.O.'s very tortured and complex relationship with Margot at the Wedding!

The Weddings and Celebrations pages of the New York Times are where we go to feel bad about not being on the boards of charitable organizations or having 'IV' after our names. And also, today, where we go to feel bad that no one has ever proposed to us in the presence of a horse.

The Weddings and Celebrations pages of the 'New York Times' are where the elite announce their TRIUMPH. They did it—they beat you, they beat poverty and, for now, usually, they even beat cancer. Our Intern Alexis picks a winner among the winners.

The Weddings and Celebrations announcements in the 'New York Times' are a battlefield. Everyone there must stand alone. And no one, not even our Intern Alexis, can tell these people that they're wrong. They are trapped by their love and chained to each others' side.