Once you write enough blog posts, and read far too many blog posts, you acquire an instinctive sense for the principle ingredients of an audience-pleasing offering. However, rather than itemize those ingredients, it's far easier to discuss this magical formula in terms of the instinctive emotional responses you hope to conjure in readers. The broadest of those responses are indignation, titillation, stimulation, and affirmation. Hitting any of the buttons is good. Ideally, you pack as many of those responses as possible into your content, even (and sometimes especially) if they're contradictory. Hitting the sweet spot in the center of all four virtually guarantees bloggy nirvana. In honor of indefatigable Silicon Valley guru Tony Robbins, after the jump, you may explore these four spheres and their subspecies by way of a soothingly hued Venn diagram.

Next month in Styles: "For Lockhart Steele, Quotewhoring Is More Than Just a Night Out."

Have you ever imagined fashion to be a world of glitz and glamour ruled by German men with tight pants and little dogs and people who say things like "ponced around" with a straight face? Well, if Times fashion editor Cathy Horyn's blog is anything to go by, congrats. Those stereotypes you based on too many viewings of 'Zoolander' and 'Funkyzeit mit Bruno'? They're totally true.
On the contrast between a hockey game and the Raf Simons show:

We don't know about you, but when we first heard about New York City's trans fat ban, we were all "meh, whatever." We were amused that it flummoxed some prissy-sounding restaurateurs, and we worried momentarily that our morning pastries would be slightly less greasily satisfying. But other than that, we weren't fazed by the plan, though some found it Orwellian.

While we wondered about which drugs are ruining Jenny Aniston's life, commenter drunkexpatwriter suggested we look into a post on our old not-pal Mr. Confessions of a Bareback Top's site for juicier, blinder fare. And, well, he wasn't just whistling dick-sy.

Emmalee Bauer has raised the stakes for workplace procrastination. Like, by a lot. The young hotel Sheraton sales coordinator found that she had a lot of free time at work, but that she needed to look busy to avoid reprimands. So she started obsessively chronicling every moment of her day in a journal, ultimately filling 300 single spaced pages. Unfortunately, someone eventually figured out that Bauer's clackety-clack noises weren't actually evidence of her productivity and fired her, and at a state hearing to determine whether she should receive unemployment benefits, portions of the journal were made public. The Des Moines Register ran a few choice excerpts:

The Imaginary Socialite said it best:

We're too cool to watch American Idol (not being ironic — we're not too cool for a lot of dumb shit, but we have to draw the line somewhere), but we know that a lot of people watched the debut episode of season six last night. So we wanted to draw your attention to the hard work of Eric at Death by Camera: he not only watched, he then hunted around on MySpace to find all the rejected famewhores' profiles, posting the cream of the crop. We especially like Jessica Rhode, right, who's a cosmetologist at Glamour Shots (no!!!) when she's not butchering Jewel songs. Maybe she should have attempted to warble a tune by one of her other favorite recording artists: the Google Dolls.

Sunday Telegraph US editor Toby Harnden better still have that badass flak jacket. He's enjoying a flurry of abuse after an article he filed about Saddam Hussein's execution appeared to describe details of the scene that never happened — particularly, Saddam wearing a hood on the gallows. After the obvious inaccuracies in the December 29 article were called out by readers, Harnden obtusely admitted on his Telegraph-sanctioned blog that the article had not been his "finest hour." This pseudo-admission of kinda-guilt inspired a bloggy uproar among the gotcha crowd, which in turn caused the Telegraph to panic and yank Harnden's blog entirely. But it appears the real culprit in this teapot-tempest might be Harnden's editors.

"I must say that I just freaking loved this book! I didn't put it down until I was done with it, it was that awesome! If asked to describe Secrets of the Model Dorm, one word immediately comes to mind: DRAMA!"

At least a little bit, in spirit anyway. And yes, without SLJ's knowledge or consent. But the message is inarguable, and not just because of the gun or the Pulp Fiction reference.

Is there a single more erotic phrase in the English language than "Time.com relaunch"? After you've toweled off, peruse a summary of the tweaks, which pretty much amounts to "More blogs!" and "More ads!", though many of the new bits aren't reflected on the frontpage yet. Among alterations on the blog front is Wonkette alumnette Ana Marie Cox, reconstituting the defunct Political Bite into a more group-grope effort known as Swampland. Gone are the days of universal Terry Colon illustrations, alas; now it's tasteful photos all round. Also on deck is The Ag, aka the Aggregator, a morning news digest la every other morning news digest. Just don't ask us what the "U" stands for in "Celeb-U-Gossip."

I'd like to ask one thing from the blogger at large. When tossing out those five-times-daily updates, please pause to consider both your reputation and the fragile ego of the artist. Blogs are not private diaries. There's always the possibility that someone might actually take what you have to say to heart. There's always the chance that what you write might cause someone to decide not to read a particular book, hire a particular individual or invite someone to their party. A blog is an inconsequential space with consequences. All I ask is that bloggers occasionally stop and remind themselves that the person they're writing about is not only real, but perfectly capable of typing his name into a search engine. Remember bloggers: We're out there. And if we know what's good for us, we're paying attention.

Also, MySpace is gay. Friendster? SO gay. We've said it for years, and now we have science on our side:

In blogs, everyone's hot. You click on a page and read about someone's menstrual cycle, or the new pair of underpants they just bought, and you think to yourself, "Damn, she has to be one hot little piece." The problem we've found with blogs, however, is that some female bloggers are nowhere near as attractive as their words would have you believe. Trust us, we've met - and even dated - quite a few. In many cases, the payoff simply isn't there.

We've been playing around with the MTA's new Trip Planner, which not only provides routes when you enter starting point and destination info, but also gives estimated bus and subway arrival times, and so far . . . we hesitate to jinx this . . . it seems like it might be kind of awesome and actually useful, unlike anything else the MTA has ever done in its entire life. Unfortunately, we're far from our usual Greenpoint Avenue G proximate-haunts and are unable to test out the new system, so we were hoping you'd give it a whirl and let us know: does the subway actually come when they say it will? Or has the MTA duped us yet again? Let us know.

OMG!! A Hanukah gift dropped quietly into our inbox in the night! A smartypants computer programmer has actually created a program, inspired by our screed about abused and overused blogger writing copouts, that detects the offenses we mentioned. All you have to do is cut and paste the writing in question into the Clich Detector, and you'll know right away which turns of phrase to cut mercilessly, yo. Best. Computer Program. Ever. What's next? Someone will be inspired to create a computer program that just writes all of our posts for us? That might be a good thing, actually, cause all of this Rosie/Trump/Miss Nevada/Judith Regan meaningless pre-Xmas drivel is kind of making our eyes bleed, not to mention making us throw up in our mouth a little bit, and it seems like the media just isn't about to stop reporting these non-stories anytime soon. We're looking at you, Post. Seriously. Seriously. Um, so maybe you'll want to try it out? It's, wait for it, full of programmy goodness.

Yesterday, we took a stab at explaining the origin myth of annoying catchphrase "I just threw up in my mouth a little bit," Safire-steez. Unfortunately, our lack of etymological credentials shone through: we received several tips admonishing us for citing one of 2004's top Stiller/Wilson flicks, Dodgeball, as the original reference to intra-mouth vomiting. Apparently, the phrase has been irritating pompous, self-important/referential bloggers for much longer than that. After the jump, three alternate explanations, and an exciting opportunity for You — yes, the Time Magazine person of the year! — to decide which is right.

We generally applaud the forthrightness of blog-to-book success story Jessica Cutler. So when she asks for it, who are we to say no?

We were so perversely gratified by your response to our rundown of Blog Media Clich s, yo. But we were left asking ourselves a tough question: did we screw up a little bit (ha!) when describing one of our gripes? If you'll recall, we kicked the already-down "[negative experience, situation, or description]; I just threw up a little bit in my mouth." But judging from commenters' responses, which ranged from the tasteful "I think I just shit in my pants a little" to the downright debonair "I just came in my mouth a little bit," we didn't even hate correctly: the phrase is, OBVS (btw, continuing to use obvs forever to save valuable typing seconds), "I just threw up in my mouth a little bit."