Managing editor Jill Abramson's comfy new office. Nice chairs!

The so-called "Pulitzer Wall" on the 15th floor.

Cranky T.V. reporter Bill Carter's new cubicle.

Op-ed columnist Frank Rich's new office. Tidy!

An Obituaries section tableau.

We understand that until very recently, these new "chairs" at the New York Times had a handmade sign on them that said: "Homage to Urinal Cake, Andy Warhol." The objects, in the second floor by the elevators, were so perplexing that an editor on the Business desk, Ken Meyn, felt compelled to send around an email explaining what they were —and that they retail for $1,673. How many of those make up a news assistant's salary? The email follows.

The mousetraps in the cafeteria notwithstanding, according to this list (which, we understand, lives on the third floor of the new New York Times building, just a hop and a skip away from several masthead editors' offices), the last mouse sighting in the building was on August 7. Or maybe that's just the last time someone bothered to write it up on this sheet. (The note on the right says, "Let's keep this list going!")

"A picture caption in some copies yesterday about residents in Canyon, Calif., who bought their own pay phone misspelled the given name and the surname of the woman shown using the telephone. She is Philippa W. Heathcock, not Philiooa W. Heartcock." [NYT]

"Showtime," reports the Times, "is known for content that is too racy for network television, so it is perhaps fitting that its latest slogan should be inappropriate for the networks, too. A two-minute promotional spot on the cable network features the slogan, 'The Best Stuff on Television,' although the actual third word is an expletive that cannot be used by family-friendly networks (or newspapers)." The actual third word, is, of course, "shit," which the family-friendly Times will apparently only print if it comes out of the mouths of presidents or people threatening the governor's father. [NYT]

The New York Times building has a well-documented mouse problem, and anyone who thought that the little critters would scurry away once everyone had settled into the new building were mistaken, as these photos taken over Labor Day weekend can attest. Yup, those are mousetraps in the Times cafeteria, which was closed to customers for the weekend. In the photographs it's deserted and seemingly quiet—but it was apparently open for mice. The photographic evidence follows. Times employees, you might want to double-check what's in that burger. Just saying.

In the middle of this Sunday's Times Arts & Leisure profile of Ian McKellen, writer Alan Riding notes the following:

"The Ethicist" is Randy Cohen's long-running advice column in the New York Times. Each week, Gabriel Delahaye's "The Unethicist" will answer the same questions as "The Ethicist," with obvious differences.

A couple weeks ago, the Columbia Journalism Review defended the New York Times' coverage of the Dow Jones-Rupert Murdoch deal from the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, who alleged that the Times only had its own self-interest at heart: "I really object to the Journal's editorialists calling into question—by name—the motives behind The New York Times and The Financial Times for their coverage of the News Corp. story." But now people are saying that the NYT's Business section didn't have the purest of motives in its coverage—its editor is shopping a book about the deal itself.

We like to take stock of the journalism job market through the most obvious raw data: Job listings! This week, the Chicago bureau of the New York Times posted an ad for a reporter/office clerk/stringer. You should have: a minimum of a "few years" experience at a newspaper, and should be able to order office supplies while reporting other people's stories—and you should know that the "right applicant will care more about getting good stories and learning the craft than about the paycheck." So we're going with: The job market unrelentingly sucks.

Taken as a continuously unreeling whole, the oeuvre of Times style writer Alex Kuczynski is one of the more astonishing texts of our time. From her days at the Observer through her stint as serious auteur of a book about plastic surgery, Kuczynski's work has managed to move, baffle, and alarm nearly everyone it's touched. We wondered if maybe there was a method to her madness. Turns out, there is!

The New York Times has taken upon itself the responsibilities of in loco parentis. Or maybe, in loco retardis, because the New York tips they're publishing for new college arrivals are WOW IDIOTIC. "Don't try to swim in the rivers. Drownings are all too common" for one. There's a reason people die like this; it's called God's vengeance. Also: "Don't spend money on condoms. The city gives them away" for another. Yeah, at the gay bathhouse. But to the Metro section's credit, over on the Metro blog, all the Times commenters have much worse advice—except for one.

When we heard Times staffers were getting nameplates for their cubicles' tambour doors, we were worried they were working in cages. Pictured, a real live cubicle at the New York Times. And now we know.

A memo just went around to Times employees, informing them that soon they will be able to claim their cubicles as their very own. Now everyone will really know where everyone else sits, because everyone will get a "personal sign." Ooo! Also, a tambour door looks like this. Is everyone locked into a pod or something? The full memo follows.

"South Park," which begins its 12th season in October and has been extended to 15 seasons, is no longer merely the crudely animated, rudely scripted tales of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. It is now a studio, a digital hub, a creative powerhouse in its infancy — but with the potential to become the kind of marketing monster that the boys might well find themselves fleeing from, a monster like, say, Mecha-Streisand.

Outraged that his New York Times salary funds four separate family vacations a year, David Pogue's readers engage in class warfare in the comments of an otherwise innocuous, if anachronistic, blog post about hotel check-in kiosks. [Pogue's Post]