The Dark Stories Behind Why the New York Times Website Went Dark Today

“One of the world’s most trusted sources for news is back up, after an internal outage knocked it out for nearly two hours on Wednesday morning. The New York Times’ main site and mobile app went down a little after 11 a.m. ET, when users who tried to visit received a ‘Service Unavailable’ message.” -NPR

1. David Brooks has been secretly working on a musical called Thinking About Poverty and Inequality In General Leads Me To Make Whimsical Sounding Snorts and the massive synthesizer he now has in his office went to 11 and then, their internet broke, somehow.

2. Maureen Dowd was trying to make up a good nickname for the little tiff between Obama and Putin. She came up with Obutascuffle, Showdown Pubama and Vladdy v. Bammy and then screamed “God, I used to be such a WORD SMITH what has happened to me!?” at the top of her lungs and then, their internet broke, somehow.

3. Tom Friedman was reading one of his own columns and began to pleasure himself with such vigor — nay, violence! — that their internet broke, somehow.

4. Nicholas Kristof really, really enjoyed the breakfast sandwich that a woman made for him in the Times Cafeteria, so much so that he began to weep and then — continuing to weep — wrote a weepy letter to the woman who made it for him, in which he sang not only her praises but the praises of all women everywhere, who, he stressed, in his opinion, really deserved the chance to survive. He wept so many tears that they somehow got into his computer and then, their internet broke, somehow.

5. Manohla Dargis realized last week that she had spent 36 hours writing 1,400 fairly positive words about a film which was, in turns out, directed by a golden retriever puppy. “I will be revenged on the whole pack of you!” she bellowed, but almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, rage turned to fascination: she could not remember if that line came from Romeo and Juliet or from Twelfth Night, and what did it mean that in this day and age, at this time in history, that she of all people could forget whether a famous line of the Bard’s came from a comedy or a tragedy? She was sure there was something of major importance to tease out here, and she began to pound away at her keyboard, with Tom Friedman jerking himself off type vigor, and then, their internet broke, somehow.