- The New Yorker Festival this weekend brought out Lena Dunham, if that was any sort of surprise.

- Good job being electrified forever, David Blaine! Does that even count as magic, or just a very good endurance test?

- Danny DeVito's divorce from Rhea Perlman was due to the actor's propensity for younger women, according to Page Six.

- Jill Zarin is going to be a star again! Well, at least in her own mind...

Outside the Ecuadorian embassy, where Julian Assange may or may not have flushed the toilet (Getty Images)

Poor Julian Assange ... even his bowel movements are being censored.

The WikiLeaks founder was granted asylum in Ecuador today, after two months holed up in the the country's British embassy, where he was avoiding the long arm of Sweden's justice system. (Britain, understandably, is not happy about this.)

Despite the good news for Mr. Assange, a tweet from the official WikiLeaks account took offense at The New York Times’s coverage of the story, which, it claims, "alleges that Mr. Assange neglected to flush a tiolet" [sic] even once the whole time he was in the embassy.

"We're not joking."

They're not? Because search as we might, we couldn't find a single reference to toilets in the entire NYT piece from last night, or in any of its follow-up articles. We were about to chalk it up to a misread (after all ... "tiolet") on WikiLeaks' part, until  a Google News search revealed that the original article did mention Toilet-gate:

Without notice or explanation, the allegations of Mr. Assange's refusal to flush have disappeared from the article of the same headline, and an updated item about Mr. Assange's mental and physical deterioration under house arrest likewise made no scatological references.

Like the saying goes: Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you or your shit.

Dr. Adams, left, with Dennis Kucinich.

Patch Adams, MD, the clown doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the eponymous 1998 film, has joined several dozen prominent figures of the American Left in asking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum.

"The 'crime' that he has committed is that of practicing journalism," states the letter, delivered to the Embassy of Ecuador in London yesterday by American advocacy group Just Foreign Policy. 

Dr. Adams and the other letter signers are concerned that if Mr. Assange is extradited to Sweden, he will be imprisoned and re-extradited to the United States, where he's liable receive the same treatment as alleged leaker Private Bradley Manning. That includes "repeated and prolonged solitary confinement, harassment by guards, and humiliating treatment such as being forced to strip naked and stand at attention outside his cell." Many think the U.S. government has an indictment prepared already.

Other letter signers include the directors Michael Moore, Danny Glover and Oliver Stone; writers Naomi Wolf, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald; pundit Bill Maher, and other activists, whistleblowers and professors.

Ecuador is a strategic option for Mr. Assange right now because President Correa desperately needs to shore up his free press bona fides. After winning two high profile libel lawsuits earlier this year, President Correa pardoned the journalists under international pressure. He has been interviewed by Mr. Assange and publicly praised WikiLeaks.

(Future AU Senator??) Julian Assange

Head Wikileaker and house arrestee Julian Assange has been pondering a run for the Australian Senate. Before you even quirk an eyebrow at the prospect of a "Senator Assange," note that a recent survey by Australian Labor Party pollsters indicates Mr. Assange could garner nearly 25% of the vote. Agence France-Presse reports members of "the left-wing Greens party were most likely to be pro-Assange, with 39 percent saying they would vote for him."

In a sampling of 1,000 potential voters, nearly equal percentages of Labor and conservative supporters also indicated they might vote for Mr. Assange, who is currently on bail in England after being  accused of "sexual molestation" in Sweden.

Mr. Assange is essentially under house arrest while he waits to see if he'll be extradited but that hasn't stopped him from launching a TV show in addition to exploring a future in politics. His World Tomorrow airs on RT and has featured guests such as Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hebollah and Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa.

Agence France-Presse also reports that Wikileaks, as an organization, is prepared to field a candidate against Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2013.

Correction: An earlier version of this post said Mr. Assange was "charged with" sexual molestation. At this point he has not been officially charged.

Anthony LaPaglia (Getty Images)

Anthony LaPaglia, once the star of TV's Without a Trace, is to star in an Australian TV movie called Underground, about Julian Assange. This ripped-from-the-headlines tale features Mr. LaPaglia as a detective attempting to thwart a young hacker, Rachel Griffiths as that hacker's mother, and one Alex Williams as the hacker himself--one Julian Assange. (May we suggest a slimmed-down Jeremy Renner for a flash-forward to Julian Assange's future as a world-renowned information trafficker?) IndieWire speculates that it will end up on NBC given the network's financial interest in the Australian production house behind Underground.

Wikileaks front man Julian Assange

Wikileaks will hold a press conference Monday at 12 p.m. in London to discuss its "Global Intelligence File." The "File," which the whistle-blowing site claims comprises over 5 million Anonymous-hacked emails from Texas-based Stratfor, contains a great deal of what appears to be highly sensitive information regarding Stratfor's sources, how they pay sources and their operating techniques in general. One document circulated among Stratfor staff in 2007 may be of particular interest to the company's customers, as its plain-spoken language appears to reflect an internal attitude toward Stratfor clientele as well as several federal agencies that was obviously never intended for public consumption. It also implies (perhaps jokingly) that Stratfor was willing to do extralegal work to covertly gather information.

The Microsoft Word doc is titled "The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms." The author--not identified in the file's metadata--succinctly introduces the list of terms and definitions: "Every profession and industry has its own vocabulary. Using baseball terms to explain a football game is tough. These are some of the terms we use."

The following is just a selection of the terms and definitions that could further complicate Stratfor's already sticky situation. Some are so bluntly-worded they raise the possibility that this was some kind of internal joke:

ATF Alcohol Tobacco and Fire Arms. Rednecks with a license to kill. Never, ever, ever ask for their help on anything.

Background Check Check of history of someone to determine reliability. Usually meaningless. A perfect credit rating does not mean you aren’t devious scum. Does run up the client’s bill and makes it appear that you are busy. Clancy move. Pros run tests. [Ed. The same document later states that a "Clancy" is "Somebody who has read a lot of Tom Clancy novels and thinks he knows the Craft. Total moron. Really dangerous if he is the Customer. Never let a Briefer be a Clancy. "]

Black Op If you heard even a hint of it, it ain’t black. Anyone who tells you about a black op is a liar. Does Stratfor do black ops? You’ll never know.

Backgrounder General analysis that gives the customer better situational awareness. The customer never actually reads the Backgrounder. Its primary use is as cover when the customer screws something up. Backgrounders are the basic intelligence tool for shifting blame to the customer.

Brief the Times When the Briefer has obtained zero valuable intelligence from analysis, he finds something in the inside of the morning paper, powers up a view graph, and “Briefs the Times.” Customers are frequently impressed. It’s a hoot.

CIA Central Intelligence Agency. Also called “Langley” or “up river.” Owns human intelligence (directorate of operations) and analysis (directorate of intelligence). Director, CIA is supposed to oversee all of the intelligence community. Isn’t that a joke? Imagine the Post Office with a foreign policy.

CIA Appetite/Botswana budget A customer with limited resources asking for enormous amounts of intelligence. Defines most of Stratfor’s customers.

Duplicitous little bastards Israeli Intelligence

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation, aka the Downtown Gang. Very good a breaking up used car rings. Kind of confused on anything more complicated. Fun to jerk with. Not fun when they jerk back.

Green-carder A source working for you because he believes that you will take him to America where he will own a Seven-Eleven. Try not to disabuse him until after you’ve squeezed his sorry ass.

Secret Service They catch counterfeiters, break up child pornography rings and guard the president. Continual identity crisis. Very nice people. Not, shall we say, the most sophisticated crew you’ll ever find.

The glossary in full may be an additional embarrassment for Stratfor, but Wikileaks appears to promise there's much worse to come: "Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections."

Al Jean (Getty Images)

On a conference call yesterday, Al Jean, executive producer of The Simpsons, spoke about Julian Assange's cameo on the upcoming 500th episode. "Obviously, he's a controversial figure and that was discussed before we agreed to let him do it," said Mr. Jean. (The Simpsons' corporate cousins at Fox News have aired a call for Mr. Assange's assassination.) "It’s a funny cameo and it makes no judgments in the case against him.

"We had to record it over the phone—it was a cloak and dagger thing—but we specialize in finding people that can’t be found." Other tough-to-access Simpsons guest stars have included reclusive author Thomas Pynchon, British politician Tony Blair, and guest illustrator Banksy, whom Mr. Jean claimed never to have met. His recent favorite, though, may be Ted Nugent, who called into a table read from a helicopter on a hunting expedition.

While The Simpsons underwent contract renegotiations last year, the recent Christmas special "Holidays of Future Past" was set to be the series finale. After much back-and-forth, the cast all signed on for a deal that will take them to 559 episodes at least. "Had the cast not signed, I would have wanted to stop the show," said Mr. Jean.

Assange. Swinton. Assange. No, Swinton. Assange?

Last week, Michael Bloomberg attended a press conference for the 100th episode of Gossip Girl. “I just don’t see how Blair could marry Prince Louis when she’s clearly in love with Chuck,” said the New York mayor, who apparently had nothing bigger on his plate to worry at that moment, such as the allegations of rape made against Greg Kelly, the son of his police Commissioner Ray Kelly, or the NYPD head’s own cameo in an anti-Muslim training video for NYPD recruits.

“I just wish that Nate and Vanessa had been able to work things out … but, again, I’m just a casual fan,” he added.

We don’t begrudge Mayor Bloomberg his guilty pleasure—after all, we spent all of Monday night watching the premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race instead of doing actual work. We’re pretty sure front-runner Sharon Needles is taking all her inspiration from Lady Gaga, who has been stealing her “signature” look from drag queens and selling the designs to Barneys. It seems only fair.

Julian Assange, who is not quite a drag queen (though if he started dressing like Tilda Swinton we might not even notice a difference), is also guilty … of loving The Simpsons! The Wikileaks founder and all-around creepy person of interest will be supplying his own voice for a Feb. 13 episode, the plot of which we’re predicting will involve Lisa picketing SOPA and Bart teaming up with the Australian after confusing the name of the international whistle-blowing organization with that of a rapper with poor bladder control. We’re impressed with Matt Groening’s ability to convince infamously reclusive celebrities to perform cameos. How does one even get through the levels of publicists, assistants and team of ninja henchmen guarding the abodes of Thomas Pynchon or Michael Jackson and pitch them on doing a Fox cartoon? We’d say Scientology was involved somehow, but Nancy Cartwright’s robo-calling fiasco from 2009 made it clear she wasn’t a high enough in their caste system to be considered an Operating Thetan … let alone a Thetan operator.

But let’s not pick on Scientology too much. After all, we are located in New York, where members are basically regulated to asking people taking stress tests in the Times Square terminal. What worries us more is another pseudo-religion. You know, the formerly fringe one based out of Utah, where a single patriarch rules over a cult that’s become alarmingly more mainstream every year despite its seemingly arbitrary set of rules and scripture. We’re talking of course, about the Sundance Film Festival, which just finished its 28^th year of indie hits and celebrity swag parties sponsored by Bing and Grey Goose vodka. We realize Sundance plays a very important function, since by February most actors are so worn out from the exhausting L.A. awards season that they need to depart en masse for a vacation on the slopes—where they will also be handing each other awards and mingling with the Kardashians.

The festival was originally created to promote independent American filmmaking but has turned into a paparazzi paradise where it’s easier to find Tracy Morgan passed out at a party than a ticket to one of the 181 screenings taking place over the course of the week. Still, some of the original anti-Hollywood sentiment remains in the proceedings: The grand jury prize went to Beasts of Southern Wild, directed by first-time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin and starring an 8-year-old unknown named Quvenzhane Wallis as an impoverished African-American girl scraping by in Louisiana with her father. Expect the remake to star Willow Smith, or even worse, one of the Fanning sisters.

(Un?)fortunately, the end of Sundance is just a placeholder in the middle of a season marked by Hollywood award ceremonies, Fashion Week and Jay-Z’s first concert at Carnegie Hall. We’d ask our assistants to help us with all the RSVPs, but they’ve already taken the time off to start gearing up for South by Southwest. Or maybe we’ll just stay home and watch Gossip Girl.

We learn that Mr. Byng was initially on Mr. Assange's side to postpone the book:

Jamie: If it moves into 2012 then so be it. I think we’ve lost a great moment and opportunity but that is by the by. What we’ve got to do is be realistic about your time and what will result in the best possible book. I think it will be a book that will have more enduring qualities if it is something different from what we’d originally conceived and if it includes these critical moments from 2011. I don’t know what the other publishers will think. But I don’t want to do anything in a hurry. I’ve accepted we’re not going to publish a book this year. Getting upset, het up, whatever, will achieve zero.

Then, in June, Mr. Assange hears a rumor:

Julian: I hear some noises about people looking to publish unauthorised copies of my manuscript.

Jamie: No. That is absolutely not what we are going to do or want to do. The position I am in, as we discussed last Friday, is the absolute best thing for us and you is that we work with Andy on a book which is a third person account.

The book came out last week.

Anyway, here's what Mr. Assange released.

Here's Canongate's response.

The book hasn't been selling very well. Here's one review.

After his memoir hit bookstores in Britain this morning, Julian Assange accuses his British publisher, Canongate, of "old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity." His American publisher, Knopf, announced the cancellation of his contract yesterday. [The Bookseller]

Here is his full statement. [Wikileaks]

A play-by-play of Mr. Assange's book. [Guardian]

More on that IKEA bookcase: a cautionary tale. [London Review of Books]

What Mick Jagger bought at The Strand's rare book room. [NY Post]