Here's a hefty guilt trip for Twitter's overtaxed engineers to bear: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has blamed a recent outage for making him feel bad. He writes: "I'm in a particularly bad mood because I have food poisoning (thanks very much Grand Hyatt Seattle) and Twittering it was going to make me feel marginally better because a bunch of people would say something nice in a reply. But they take even that away from me." It's official: Arrington is self-medicating with Web 2.0. Folks, should we stage an intervention? (Photoillustration by Jackson West, from an original by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

RedLasso, a Philadelphia-based startup which serves as kind of a universal TiVo for embeddable clips, was issued a cease and desist letter by multiple networks today. The company, which has been cagey about the obvious copyright issues since I first ran into the startup at PodCamp Philly last year, even managed to pull a fast one on TechCrunch — Reuters ran the report of the legal issues before TechCrunch's post about the company went live this afternoon, prompting a half-hearted update. (C'mon, where's Michael Arrington's temper when it's actually appropriate?) If I were RedLasso, I would have made friendly with the Electronic Frontier Foundation before making nice with the Huffington Post and other publishers (including Gawker Media), which now face scads of dead-embed posts in their archives.

Reading the latest in the spat between Wired's Epicenter blog and Michael Arrington over the Washington Post's deal to syndicate TechCrunch articles and the ethical propriety of the TechCrunch editor's investments in startups his blog covers, I noticed that the post was in the category "ButtMunch." The latest post states that "We have nothing against Arrington," but the tag originated last week in a post that accused TechCrunch of pilfering a story angle related to Steve Ballmer's continued tenure at Microsoft in the wake of the Yahoo deal.

Wired on TechCrunch's syndication deal with the Washington Post:

Until a recent article from ReadWriteWeb declaring online file-storage and sharing service Omnidrive dead, founder and CEO Nik Cubrilovic was missing in action. The support forums for customers went unattended even as the site went down. An investor, Clay Cook, who sunk six figures into the company couldn't get a reply to his email. Also nowhere to be found? Any reporting from TechCrunch.

Today is Duncan Riley's last day of full-time writing for Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, we learned from Techmeme. Riley will move to his own publication, the Inquisitr. "My sincere hope is to have the opportunity to buy that blog some day and bring him right back into the fold," Arrington writes in his farewell.

Robert Scoble, the man who makes boring videos about tech companies, but only the ones you don't care about, convinced Fast Company to redesign his blog, and it's now practically tasteful. But the giant ad from longtime sponsor Seagate prompted TechCrunch's Michael Arrington to throw Scoble's argument against ads on blogs back at him. [Scobleizer]

It's only a matter of time before the inanimate home of inventor Andy Stanford-Clark somehow pisses off TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington and feels the wrath of "@andy_house blocked." [Earth2Tech]

"I now need Twitter more than Twitter needs me." — TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, who has sent 572 Twitter messages so far in April, taking a rare moment for personal reflection. Michael, there's help for Internet-application addiction. [TechCrunch]

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington presents "tactical-level advice on getting press for your startup" in this full-length video from Omnisio of his Stanford speech Saturday. His level of candor (or "transparency" in Valleyspeak) surprised even me. He openly admits to playing quid pro quo with his sources — you supply the exclusives, he provides the fawning coverage to show investors. Journalists might sniff at Arrington's ethical judgment, but it works for him — as long as startups play by his rules. All this reminds me of Europe's last great monarch.

His unkempt email inbox has won Michael Arrington a sympathetic writeup in the New York Times. An audience at today's Startup School at Stanford was less impressed by the TechCrunch editor's obvious disorganization. He bragged onstage about working on his presentation while Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos spoke, and swore when his computer froze. He then got angry as a student helped him restart his Mac, displaying a desktop in disarray. (Check it out, captured on Flickr: Among other things, you'll learn that Arrington is a TurboTax user.) An eyewitness report of the debacle:

I'm on IM with Jordan Golson, and he's on the phone with TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington. You see, Valleywag sort of, um, fired Jordan this morning, and Mike got a bogus version of the story claiming it was all because of one post Jordan did criticizing his management. Jordan wants Mike to correct the article, saying that's not what happened at all — he was dismissed over much bigger issues. To my profound disappointment, Arrington just replied to him, "I can't go back on it now that I've written it." Sure enough, Arrington's updates to the post claim Jordan's explanations are "confusing" and full of "contradictions," rather than just admitting TechCrunch got told the story wrong, which seems easier. Now you know why Mike always insists that you not call him a journalist.

Josh Quittner, former editor of the defunct Business 2.0, has extricated himself from his unhappy stay at Fortune by returning to Time, where he previously worked. Tellingly, Time editor Rick Stengel refers to him as a "writer" for Fortune, though he had the ostensible title of executive editor. Stengel's memo is included below. Quittner's new gig is his old gig, covering consumer technology, which takes him back roughly 13 years in the progress of his career. Funny, because we'd heard that Quittner had held serious talks with Michael Arrington about joining TechCrunch, around the same time he wrote a laudatory column about the tech blogger. All that puffery, and no job in exchange? A shame.

If TechCrunch were a football blog, every player in the scouting combine would be the next Tom Brady.

Newly softhearted Gawker Media head Nick Denton offers some kindly advice for TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington: "@Michael Arrington: Hey, everybody has been expecting the grand roll-up ever since you hired Heather. I don't see it happening. Certainly don't see it sticking. And, without a roll-up, you have a niche Valley site with some 3% of the traffic of Gawker or Weblogs Inc. Good luck with that when the tech bubble bursts!"

Mark Zuckerberg dodged a bullet. His mug got featured on TMZ next to a picture of his secret mistress, and luckily she happened to be his actual girlfriend. Michael Arrington kicks Valleywag out of a party, giving our party report far more attention than it probably deserved. And Robert Scoble strikes a Roman Polanski-esque pose with an underage tech-starlet in his lap. As a captain of online industry, a hack covering the beat and a publicity-hungry B-lister, all three share one thing in common — they want the good stuff that comes with being public figures (free publicity, adoring fans, access to wealth) without the bad (salacious press, limited privacy and expensive hangers-on). The world, of course, doesn't work that way. So here's eight tips from the entertainment industry that might help them navigate the nascent perils of Internet fame.

Valleywag's Jackson West attempts, unsuccessfully, to thank TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington for throwing a party in Los Angeles. Can you improve the headline? Try your best in the comments. (Photo by Bonny Pierzina, who was later thrown out of the party)

At last night's PopSugar-TechCrunch party, I hadn't hoped to become part of the story, but LA Times reporter David Sarno suggested Arrington's 86ing of my date inspired Mashable's Pete Cashmore to invent a story about his own ouster. I don't know whether there's anything to Sarno's theory. But I do know this: Cashmore and Arrington are full of it if they think either of their operations are "top 10 blogs." (Photo by Robert Scoble)

LOS ANGELES — Pictured above is a perplexed Michael Arrington receiving a strawberry milkshake — with a cherry on top — courtesy of Valleywag. Why did we have a milkshake delivered to Arrington after he blew us off at the Geek Goes Chic party, had our photographer escorted from the premises, and kicked out the dreamy Pete Cashmore of Mashable? The full report from Hollywood after the jump.

Rumor has it that Pete Cashmore, the unfairly handsome Mashable blogger, has also been kicked out of the PopSugar-TechCrunch party. His offense, if any, is still unknown. [Twitter]