How about: Stop wearing them? How about: Be glad that the boots are back-ordered from the manufacturer until the spring; be glad that they're going for three times their $150 price on eBay, impossible to find, etc. That's good . It will give you time to stop and think before you buy, you big ol' fashion sheep.

Ugg boots originate in Australia (where else?), but like many other "but they're sooo comfortable" trends of the past year-velour track suits, etc.-the blame for their popularity may be pinned squarely on Southern California. Embraced 25 years ago by shaggy, tolerant surfers, Uggs caught on more recently with celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Pamela Anderson. Their sleek Barbie beauty is supposedly thrown into stark relief by the dowdy boots-which simply make the rest of us look like militant lesbian activists.

"I despise them," said Matt Heien, a New York publicist who grew up in California, of Uggs. "I am quite bummed out that they are making such a comeback."

Uggs are, in a word, awful. They make thin women look fat, sexy women look frumpy, smart women look dumb. New York ladies have always prided themselves on looking polished, pulled together, "sharp"-armored for anything-and these are just the opposite: dissolute, sloppy, yielding.

More damningly, while they might indeed be " sooo comfortable," as universally acknowledged, they lack one essential quality that ugly boots have always had: practicality. News flash: Uggs are not waterproof! Yes, you can buy an $8 protective spray-but we all know how well those work. One false move in the city slush and you basically have a pair of bacteria-bearing bedroom slippers on your feet. It's just not respectful to your fellow citizens, not to mention yourself.

The city wasn't always so welcoming to Uggs. Once we had backbone. On the company's official Web site, you'll find the story of how the product flopped in Manhattan in the hard-headed disco days of 1978. (The "reception was not a friendly one.") It must feel like karmic payback for the Aussies when their soft, shapeless boot product appeared in a Bill Cunningham photo spread in the New York Times Sunday Styles section on Dec. 7.

Stefani Greenfield, the co-owner of the Scoop boutique chain, was on the forefront of the current wave of Uggs, buying her first pair over two years ago on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

"Every one of my Scoop people were like, 'What are those ?'" she said. "Nobody got it. Everyone was like, 'Do you think you're on the ski slopes? Do you think you're at Aspen?' Then, all of a sudden, it became this thing ."

If you think it's bad in New York, come West, where the unpleasant spectacle of women stomping around in fuzzy hausfrau footwear is supplemented by a basic illogic: It's not even cold.

And they're multiplying like Tribbles.

At the Hollywood Wilshire YMCA: 15 pairs of Ugg boots lined up outside a Saturday 10 a.m. yoga class.

Two days after Christmas on the third floor of the Beverly Hills Barneys: European women in Uggs were chattering in foreign languages. Downstairs, the MTV personality Daisy Fuentes was poring over the jewelry counter, wearing a suede jacket, Nordic sweater and faded blue jeans tucked into big, black Uggs.

"I got them a while ago, in Aspen," she said. "I love them. My favorite way is to wear them at home in Malibu, with pajamas. I was hosting an MTV thing in Texas and wearing them, and people were like, 'Are you waiting for a snowstorm?' I was like, 'No, you don't get it-they're cool and warm at the same time!'"

A few miles east, the West Hollywood Nordstrom, the boots' major U.S. distributor, is solidly sold out of Uggs. The store was pushing a look-alike brand called Qwaruba. Women crowded around, fondling them. A male Nordstrom shopper was asked what he thought of the style.

"I think, 'Why aren't you in a ski lodge with your feet up-and maybe one leg broken?'" he said.

Indeed, men's refreshing hatred of Uggs crosses entire time zones and generations. They remind Lance Wills, 30, an artist who lives in Hollywood, of a scene in Dumb and Dumber : "When Jim Carrey gets totally overdone with the Sasquatch boots and the ridiculous, Taos-looking hybrid snowsuit," he said. "People laugh at that on the screen, but then just slip 'em right on and think that they're hot and fashionable!"

"Keep 'em behind locked doors," advised Mr. Wills. "It's kind of like wearing your most comfortable, ugliest pair of slippers that your dog has used as a chew toy for years."

Naomi Glauberman, a fiftysomething writer who lives in Venice, has been coveting Ugg boots for her daily bike ride to yoga, but her 18-year-old son, Sam Jacoby, forbade the purchase.

"Have you seen those little skirts with the boots?" he asked. "Oh God, that just makes me sick."

A 29-year-old entrepreneur who didn't want his name used-let's call him "Horace"-called from New York to weigh in.

He said he first became aware of Uggs about three years ago, in L.A., when his brother's girlfriend, a stylist from Vermont, wore them with a skirt.

"She was of smaller stature, petite, and it was cute," Horace said. "She was always a bit edgy, and somehow made it work. It's like, little Asian women can get away with that stuff, but normal-sized white women can't."

Fast-forward to Hanukkah 2003. Horace's own 5-foot-7, blond, Caucasian, big-footed girlfriend received a package in the mail.

"She's ecstatic," he said. "I was like, 'What could possibly be in that box that makes her so excited?' And she's unwrapping it-and then she holds up what I believe to be one of the ugliest pieces of footwear I had ever seen. Because it was huge . It wasn't little or cute; it was big and furry."

The girlfriend pulled on the boots and began "shuffling along like a Snuffleupagus," as Horace put it, up and down the corridor of her Gramercy Park apartment. "'My God,' I thought," he said. "'Maybe I never noticed it before! Maybe she's not as graceful as I imagined her in normal shoes! Maybe she slouches!'

"She no longer walked in beauty," he concluded sadly.

"My husband calls them the depression boot," said Ms. Greenfield. "He's used to seeing me in strappy Manolos. He goes, 'Usually, when you walk, you're wearing high heels, you're standing proud, tall. You go from strutting … to schlepping along in these boots!' He's like, 'If they make you happy, they make me happy'-but no, he doesn't find them sexy. At all."

There's a word that springs to mind to describe men who tolerate or, God forbid, praise Uggs: whipped .

"I love them," crooned Matt Goss, a balding British pop star who was accompanying Ms. Fuentes at the Barneys jewelry counter. "They're too legit to quit! Nothing's more sexy than a woman who's comfortable."

"I'm thinking of getting him a pair," Ms. Fuentes said, nudging him affectionately.

At a Boxing Day party in Silverlake, Rebecca Coleman, 27, who works in advertising, was rhapsodizing about her Ugg look-alikes, which she learned about from an MTV stylist. She said she wanted to buy her husband Bart a pair of Uggs, but she couldn't find any in his size 14.

"I went to Boston last month, and I have never been so happy in a cold place ever," she said. "And I wasn't even wearing socks with them! It's not just fashion. It's super- comfortable and really warm."

Does her husband like the way she looked in them?

"He doesn't care. He was like, 'Oh, cute whatever.'"

Some might argue that female attachment to Uggs represents a feminist stance against the patriarchal pressure to doll ourselves up.

"But the funny thing is that this feminist stance is-a slouch !" Horace said. "It's not 'Stand tall on your Nikes and Reeboks and propel yourself forth,' like the goddess mentality of 'Go do sports.' It doesn't even support the arch. They're not structurally sound. You know, we've come so far in shoe technology-it can't be good for your feet to walk on plain pieces of rubber. I mean, I'm not asking you to float on seven-inch heels like the models. Who expects that? But there's a compromise. It shouldn't be Ugg boots or bust."

Zach Hafer, 27, a lawyer who lives in Brooklyn Heights, has a girlfriend (also a lawyer) who was craving a pair of Ugg boots something bad after she saw the Sunday Times layout.

"She's always cold," he said. He tracked down a pair of ultra-tall, size-eight sand Uggs on eBay and got them Airborne Expressed to his office from Arizona two days before Christmas.

"I don't want to say for how much, because I might look like an idiot," he said. "But I looked at it like getting tickets: You want to see a playoff basketball game, you gotta pay a premium."

And is he pleased with the way they look on her?

"I kind of like 'em, actually," Mr. Hafer said. "I hate those pointy boots that everybody wears-I mean, I wasn't drooling, but compared to those pointy-toed shoes …. But then again, I went to Dartmouth."

Blame Jane Pratt. When it was closed on Oct. 1, the once comparatively thoughtful Mademoiselle, edited by British import Mandi Norwood, was still trying to mimic the informal, breaking-the-fourth-wall voice that Ms. Pratt minted over a decade ago at Sassy -a voice that Ms. Pratt successfully mellowed into the pages of Fairchild's Jane, now flourishing under AdvancePublications, Condé Nast's parent.

But Mademoiselle, founded in 1935 and acquired from Street & Smith by Sam Newhouse in 1959, could never really make the transition from white-gloved authority to "sister girlfriend." In the post-post-feminist era of product shots, shameless frivolity and frank sexual patter, there was no need for the smart magazine it once was, and no need for another airheaded one.

"The secret is that nobody really knew what to do with Mademoiselle," said Elizabeth Crow, Ms. Norwood's predecessor, who ushered the magazine through a brief period of profitability in the late 1990's and now is editorial director of the women's-health division at Rodale Press.

"I really ran out of concepts, and I don't think [Condé Nast editorial director] James [Truman] had one, either. And I think they're really excited about Lucky."

Indeed, as Mademoiselle faltered in recent years , losing advertising and revenue , Lucky , Condé Nast's start-up shopping manual, seemed to emerge as Mr. Truman's pet project, with shiny hype, including a television advertising campaign.

Lucky, it was clear, was to define what women's magazines were becoming, what was coveted, what made money. And Lucky's editor? Ms. Pratt's old employee, Sassy alumna Kim France.

One needed only to glance at Mr. Truman's schedule to see how priorities had shifted. On the evening of Sept. 10, Mr. Truman appeared alongside Ms. France at Housing Works Thrift Shop on 23rd Street for a Lucky -sponsored charity event. Three weeks later, on Monday, Oct. 1, he was next to a teary-eyed Ms. Norwood in Mademoiselle 's 17th-floor office to help deliver the bad news to her staff about the fate of the 1.1 million–circulation publication.

Mr. Truman said he was "grateful" for all the hard work that they had done and that it "was a difficult decision that had to be made," said Condé Nast spokeswoman Maurie Perl, who insisted that the Mademoiselle decision had nothing to do with Lucky.

(Calls to Mr. Truman, Ms. France, Ms. Norwood and Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse were referred to Ms. Perl.)

Adding to the threats from Jane and Lucky , Mademoiselle was consistently being out- Mademoiselle'd by Hearst's peppier, more innovative Marie Claire. Glenda Bailey, now the editor of Harper's Bazaar , showed that a coarser and self-consciously wacky women's magazine could be turned into a profitable business.

Launched in the U.S. in 1994 and taken over by Ms. Bailey in 1996, Marie Claire evolved into a start-up wonder, reaching a circulation of 950,000 and ad revenue of $89 million by the end of 2000.

Mademoiselle' s legacy is mostly obfuscated by the magazine's irredeemably flighty dying days. It had long since ceased to publish fiction, but the title leaves behind quite a literary legacy of troubled feminine souls trying to find their voice in this world. Most famously there was Sylvia Plath, who mined her guest editorship there for The Bell Jar, but let's not forget Joyce Carol Oates (featured with Ms. Plath in a 1976 anthology of Mademoiselle prize fiction), Susan Minot, Anne Lamott (did book criticism when they still ran it), Caroline Knapp and Elizabeth Wurtzel. In 1993, David Sedaris' byline appeared under a piece about housecleaning. Plumb the archives a bit further, back to 1991, and you've got Maureen Dowd on "Everything But Sex: The New Office Affair." ("It not only makes you want to work longer, it also stirs the creative juices because you want to show off for the other person and let them see what you can really do.")

Positioned for a while as the smart college girl's magazine, Mademoiselle had a kind of winsome, career-girl energy in the 1980's-more approachable than Vogue, less practical than Glamour-under Amy Levin Cooper (wife of GQ 's Art).

Then came the lethal wave of Sassy -fication.

Gabé Doppelt put hollow-eyed gamines on the cover with lines like "Cool Clothes from Kmart." At one point, Mademoiselle teamed up with its doomed compadre, Details, for a sex survey. (Closed by Condé Nast, Details relaunched under Fairchild.) When Ms. Crow took over in 1994, her mandate was to steer things back to mass marketability. She put Claudia Schiffer on the cover along with "Love Now!" in a flowery script.

Mademoiselle was no longer a bible for the independent woman, perhaps because it seemed women no longer needed to be enjoined to be independent.

"Glamour at that point was the man-hater's bible," said Ms. Crow. "The quintessential old-time Glamour cover line was 'How to Fight Off the Rapist You Know.' We were cleaned-up but sexy; then Cosmo sort of scrubbed herself down and Glamour got sort of sexy, at which point there was nowhere for Millie to really go."

Ms. Crow was using the retro nickname that the magazine was somewhat desperately begging for toward the end, like a teenager trying to be popular.

Ms. Crow said that she thought the smart thing for S.I. Newhouse to do would be to shelve Mademoiselle for a couple of years, then reintroduce it under "someone really strong and charismatic." Someone in the mold of … Jane Pratt.

"Jane Pratt was the first-ever celebrity editor," she said. "We all thought we were celebs-we really weren't. Jane is idiosyncratic and eccentric, and you can be that if you're not too big . Mademoiselle was too big to be edgy or sexy, so it really was squeezed. It was like shuffling a deck of cards."

Before there was Rick Bragg and David Rohde on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, there were people like Sydney H. Schanberg-the man who defined an era of war reporting as a correspondent for The New York Times in 1970's Cambodia, and who was portrayed by the actor Sam Waterston in the Academy Award–winning film The Killing Fields.

These days, however, Mr. Schanberg isn't in a war zone, but working for Manhattan Media, the publisher of such weeklies as The West Side Spirit and Our Town.

"A big piece of me would love to be there," Mr. Schanberg said in an interview the other day. "But another piece says, 'It's time for someone else to cover these wars.'"

In 1970, and then again from 1972-1975, Mr. Schanberg bore witness to one of the worst conflicts in human history, between the United States–supported Lon Nol government and the Communist forces of Pol Pot. When the latter took control of Phnom Penh in the spring of 1975 and the Americans withdrew, Mr. Schanberg was the last American reporter left. He was captured along with two other journalists, then saved by his Cambodian assistant, Dith Pran. For his efforts, Mr. Schanberg would win a 1976 Pulitzer Prize, while his subsequent New York Times Magazine piece "The Death and Life of Dith Pran" would become the basis for The Killing Fields , Roland Jaffé's 1984 film. "I've seen death," Mr. Schanberg said. "Lots of it. And you never get used to it. Not really. You tell yourself things in order to function, but you're going to break down. It just gets to be too much. Eventually, you need to find a room where you can sit alone and cry." Afghanistan presents its own reporting problems, Mr. Schanberg said, far different than Cambodia-and maybe worse. As The Times ' New Delhi bureau chief from 1969 to 1972, he visited the rocky country, then ruled by King Mohammad Zahir Shah. He remembers markets where people sold handmade rifles, though they had already begun to copy AK-47's. Forty- and 50-year-old American cars would move through the countryside carrying 25 people, he said. Families would war with one another in the vein of the Hatfields and McCoys, firing through slits in their compounds. On the Khyber Pass, he saw plaques of British units that once held forts there-ominous reminders, he said, of the country's ability to handle those from foreign lands. And yet, Mr. Schanberg still feels a desire to get into the action again, to get that particular jolt one feels having escaped gunfire or captors. "The adrenaline you feel afterwards makes you high," Mr. Schanberg said. "It really does. Of course, there are times you're scared and sick. But the intensity of feelings is so much, it's almost like you're drunk. It's something no one likes to talk about." Since resigning from The Times in 1985 after his twice-weekly "New York" column was canceled, Mr. Schanberg hasn't had the greatest luck with new projects. In 1986, he signed up with New York Newsday , only to see the paper closed by its new owners, Times-Mirror, in 1995. He joined up with the crime-reporting Web site APBNews.com, then watched it fold in June 2000. When the then publisher of Our Town , The Westsider, The Chelsea Clinton News, and the West Side Spirit , Tom Allon, led an internal buyout of the papers from James Finkelstein's oft-troubled News Communications Inc. in August, he quickly brought Mr. Schanberg on board to develop a new weekly project-an investigative weekly focusing on state and city politics. Once there, Mr. Schanberg began writing weekly columns. The two said they've begun interviewing reporters for the new paper and hope to launch by the end of this year. "It's not a comedown," Mr. Schanberg said. "It's all what you make it. Reporting is my thing, and I don't care where I do it. I have an ego, but my ego's been fed enough. I don't need any more applause." Marty Tolchin, Mr. Schanberg's onetime Times colleague and current publisher and editor in chief of the Washington weekly The Hill , said this of Mr. Schanberg's new gig: "If Syd's doing it, it'll be great. He's courageous and smart as hell. He won't take bullshit from anybody." -Sridhar Pappu As New York rebuilds, even Condé Nast can find a way to help. On Sept. 27, Glamour magazine cleaned out its fashion closet and held a yard sale featuring all the freebie beauty products and assorted swag that passes through a women's-magazine office, along with gift certificates for things like manicures and massages. The business side of the magazine also convinced advertisers to donate dinners and makeovers to raise money for the American Red Cross' disaster relief. All in all, the Condé Nast shoppers took in $22,000. "It felt really U.S.O.," said one Glamour staffer. "Shopping for the cause, I suppose." When reached for comment, a Glamour spokeswoman was reluctant to talk about the sale. "We didn't want to publicize what we were doing because we didn't feel that it would be appropriate," she said. "So many people wanted to do something, and this was something to do." Fellow Condé Nast title Brides also sponsored a shop-for-the-cause sale of stuff they'd found in the office and stuff they'd convinced others to donate. Proceeds went to the Sept. 11th Fund, but a spokeswoman wouldn't say how much it raised. "The point of it is not to make a big deal about it. We don't want to make it seem like we're trying to get P.R. out of it." A publicist at Bon Appétit , however, did want us to let you know that Bon Appétit "started from day one galvanizing over 30 restaurants to help in relief efforts." -Gabriel Snyder Primedia Inc., publisher of New York, Chevy Truckin' and Teddy Bear magazines, has been buffeted by plenty of bad news in recent weeks.There was a warning to Wall Street that its earnings would be lower than expected, and Scott Kurnit, the Internet visionary they snagged when the company acquired About.com, said he was leaving on Sept. 18. And there was a report that Primedia may be selling New York -which the company denied-in order to come up with the cash to pay for its acquisition of EMAP, a British publisher. But perhaps most importantly to C.E.O. Tom Rogers, Primedia stock has found itself in Salon.com territory, trading as low as just below $2 a share. So, on Oct. 1, Mr. Rogers sought to buck up his troops with the announcement that all full-time employees would be getting 50 stock options. "I hope this helps everyone to more closely identify with the Company and take pride in our work," Mr. Rogers wrote in the announcement. Don't expect any Primedia employees to retire on their stock options anytime soon. For the options to be worth anything at all, Primedia stock has to get above the $2.35 strike price. So, if Primedia hit $4, employees would be raking in $82.50. Or, as Mr. Rogers told his employees, "if we can get the stock back to where it was 18 months ago," which would require a 1,500% gain to reach Primedia's all-time high of $33.50 a share, "those stock options would be worth more than $1,500." Mr. Rogers, who recently bought $1 million worth of stock, also tried to reassure his employees that the stock plunge does not reflect any big problems at the company. "You are probably saying to yourself, 'What is going on with the stock? How can the stock be below $2.50 and there not be a fundamental problem?'" he wrote. "The answer is-there is nothing wrong with the Company and nothing for you to worry about. We as a Company are fine. I hate seeing the stock at this level-really hate it. But I also know we are able to cover all our obligations... Again, let me allay any fears you have on this front-it is just not something you should be worried about." Everyone feeling better? -Gabriel Snyder While many of the Wall Street Journal reporters displaced from the World Financial Center make themselves comfy inside the Dow Jones quarters at 100 Sixth Avenue, some staffers will be traveling back in time all the way to the year 2000, when dot-coms still roamed the earth. Right now, staffers from the Journal's editorial page - as well as some from the Weekend Journal section-are preparing to occupy the former headquarters of Work.com, over on 7th Avenue. Work.com, of course, was a much-hyped joint venture between Dow Jones and Excite@Home that plowed through $30 million in little more than a year before it was sold last March to Business.com for $500,000 and eventually shuttered. Still, Dow Jones had lease to the Work.com space, and it has come in handy. One staffer told Off the Record that the dot-com burial ground is a much better space than the old one at 1 World Financial Center, which the source described as "an insurance office, but with mice." In the new office, however, there are Adirondack chairs with white cushions, and plexi-glass dividers between desks and steel lamps. All the desks are on wheels. A Guinness, beer-shaped blackboard still has scrawled in chalk: "Happy Hour: 3?" "It's funny," said the WSJ source. "People actually like it here." Paul Gigot, the WSJ 's new editorial page editor, who surveyed the Work.com office on Friday isn't sure when his group will officially move in. "It'll be a bit tight," Mr. Gigot said, "but I don't think there will be any problems." And when asked about the co-mingling his politically conservative editorial page staff working in closer quarters with the WSJ 's traditionally more liberal reporters, Mr. Gigot said, "I'm just delighted to have the space." - Sridhar Pappu