1. “I really think we should get a puppy. Did I say puppy? I meant divorce.”

2. “Hi honey. How was your divorce day? There’s some leftover divorce lasagna in the divorce fridge if you’re hungry for divorce. Oh, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about … ”

3. “You look really nice in that suit. You’re going to look really good when I tell you I want a divorce.”

4. “There’s something I want to tell you. But … well … maybe if I say this in Yoda language it will soften the blow a bit. I guess what I want to say is: Divorce very badly I want, yes, because always chasing cocktail waitresses you are. Very tired of it I am. Half I want, yes. See you in court I will.”

Anybody who’s been through a divorce knows it’s not pretty. And we at Various Things & Stuff have a lot of sympathy for those couples who, for whatever reason, decide to call it quits, as it now appears Gov. Jim Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, might.

But what could possibly have possessed Gibbons’ “Chief Operating Officer” Diane Cornwall to comment about the possibility of a divorce to the Reno Gazette-Journal today? According to Cornwall’s statement, a decision hasn’t been made, but will be discussed at a “family meeting” this weekend?

Could it have been the fact that the matter was being discussed on blogs? (Here, with funny pirate picture, here, with another funny pirate picture, and once again here?) We know Gibbons reads the blogs, after all.

But seriously: This is essentially a private matter between the governor and his wife. Why in the hell would Gibbons No. 2 staffer go blabbing about it to people?

Oh, that’s right: Because this is the Gibbons administration, which never misses an opportunity to screw the political pooch. And it’s impossible to conceive that Cornwall acted without the governor’s blessing.

We’ll admit rumors of this pending divorce have been out there for awhile, and we at Various Things & Stuff heard them. We didn’t write about them, for good or ill, because they didn’t meet our standards. Whether the governor and his wife are divorcing, as we’ve said, is a private matter that has nothing to do with how Gibbons is running the state.

But thanks to what we can only assume is a ham-handed attempt to get in front of the story, or to counter the blogs, or whatever the hell they were thinking, it’s now something else: News. Expect to see this story everywhere, including the pro-Gibbons Review-Journal.

Nice work, Gibbons people. Just another sign you’re not ready for prime time.

UPDATE: Gubernatorial advisor Jim Denton spoke to the Associated Press about the Reno Gazette-Journal’s report, lamenting thusly: “Unfortunately, their role in public life has brought this into the public arena, which doesn’t happen with most people.”

Alas, the AP account confirmed Denton spoke publicly after the Gazette-Journal story was published. That’s after Cornwall spoke to the Gazette-Journal. Which means that it’s still the Gibbons camp that put the matter into the public arena, not the governor’s “role in public life.”
Nice try, Denton. But no cigar.

UPDATE 2: Once again, it’s scary how much conservative activist Chuck Muth and we at Various Things & Stuff agree.

CLARIFICATION: When we initially heard this sorry tale, we understood that Diane Cornwall contacted the Reno Gazette-Journal to offer her comments. That is incorrect, according to a blog post by our colleague Anjeanette Damon.  Damon says she was working on the story and called Cornwall for comment, and Cornwall obliged.

The fact that the Reno Gazette-Journal and the Review-Journal were working on the story, however, doesn’t change our opinions about the newsworthiness of it expressed herein. We still believe Cornwall was wrong to discuss it, at least until the first couple had made a final decision to divorce. Readers can judge for themselves whether our view, or the views of our media and blogosphere colleagues, are correct.

Cindy Funkhouser unified the downtown arts community by starting First Friday, and now it’s your turn to show her your support. The community she began cultivating more than five years ago will gather tonight to raise funds to help pay the medical bills she’s accumulated fighting cancer.

Artworks by many local artists — including Dray, Mark T. Zeilman, KD Matheson, Tony Bondi and Daniel Pearson — have been donated for the live auction. If you’re afraid an original painting is out of your price range, there will also be a silent auction for items including massages, salon services, and dinner and show packages.

The Funk-Raiser: An Art Auction Benefit for Cindy Funkhouser
6 p.m.-9 p.m.
Double Down Saloon
4640 Paradise Road
791-5775
Free (21+)

I’ll confess to a perverse pleasure in watching bibliophiles go all spongy and shrill when someone, once again, declares reading is dead. The latest pronouncement of death came last month from none other than Apple’s Steve Jobs, the man who ingeniously turned computers into the equivalent of very useful Tiffany lamps and convinced the world that no life is complete without a complement of trilling electronics clutched in one’s hands. Dismissing Amazon’s new e-book reader, the Kindle, Jobs told the New York Times that, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore.”

Cue the gasps of horror and dudgeon. A month later, defenders of the reading faith are still in high gnash, with the latest counterattack fired by the New York Times‘ Timothy Egan, whose spirited defense was another in a long line of good intentions lobbed wide of the mark. A paraphrase of Egan’s rousing conclusion: Reading will never die because … well, it’s reading! It’s the magic of storytelling! It feeds our hard-wired need for narrative!

To borrow a phrase from our supposedly post-literate youth: Whatevz. My pleasure is in this argument’s irony, in seeing the defenders of reading engage in such a massive misreading of the terms of the debate.

See, there’s a deadly assumption at the core of these debates over the purported death of reading. The assumption is that the debate is about rival methods of information intake. If that’s the case, we might as well be arguing over the merits of different drinking straws. Does buying into that assumption really address what’s at stake? No. Reading Is Dead vs. Reading Is Not Dead isn’t just another skirmish in the format wars that seems worthwhile to fight because books hold some quaint, musty glamour we can’t quite explain.

I suspect it’s more basic than that. Maybe reading is only incidentally a form of getting information or getting story; underneath, however, it operates more fundamentally as a potent and nourishing mode of solitude. Cast that way, the proposition unveils the real absurdity of what Jobs is saying — as absurd as saying that people just don’t cry at funerals anymore, or people just don’t hug their children anymore.

Technology can leap all it wants, but poetic justice is a hurdle too high: It won’t be long before iPods are slim enough to be used as bookmarks.