Yet another person is figuring out how to make decent money off Twitter that isn't CEO Evan Williams: HarperCollins has commissioned former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas to collect and edit Twitter Wit, a book of ... well, witty tweets. According to Valleywag, Douglas is getting a "five-figure sum" for the book, which is slated for release this fall; Douglas and HarperCollins editor Kate Hamill set up a submission site that automates the collection of the tweets (from anywhere and everywhere) and gets each user's permission to republish. Given Twitter's seemingly unstoppable surge in popularityJohn Battelle compared its search potential to YouTube's, and NBC's Nightline dedicated a segment to it last night (via MediaMemo)who knows, it just might fly off the shelves. Anyone else care to wager?

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The former publisher is accused of firing the two law firms she'd retained to wage her legal fight against News Corp. to keep them from sharing in what is believed to be a multi-million-dollar settlement.

The firms, Drier LLP and Redniss & Associates, were supposed to get 25 percent of any award or settlement. Instead, they got zero percent. They're also accusing Regan of stiffing them on $42,560 in fees.

It gets better: Bert Fields, the Hollywood attorney Regan brought in to see her suit against News Corp. to its conclusion, is also named as a defendant. He tells the New York Post that he's going to sue Dreier and Redniss if they keep this up.

This past summer I began to experiment with making my own. The recipes I tried were all for simple refrigerator pickles, so there was no arduous canning process, and most were ready to be eaten within a day or two. Here is my favorite version, which is loosely based on a recipe by Alton Brown that I found on the Food Network website.

Photograph from YellowDog on Flickr

About the author: Lucy Baker is a graduate student in the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. Before returning to school to pursue an MFA, she was an assistant cookbook editor at HarperCollins. She lives in Brooklyn and is currently obsessed with all things fennel.

Homemade Quick Pickles

Ingredients

1/2 a white onion, thinly sliced
2 hothouse cucumbers, sliced into thick rounds
4 garlic cloves, smashed
Handful chopped fresh dill
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups vinegar (can use a combination of white, red wine, cider, champagne, etc.)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1 teaspoon pickling spice

Procedure

Put the onion slices, cucumber slices, garlic, and dill in a large mason jar. Combine the remaining ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 4 minutes. Pour the liquid over the cucumbers, filling the jar all the way to the top. Screw the lid on tightly, give the jar a good shake, and refrigerate. Pickles are ready the next day.

No one seems to have told Regan's publicist, Allan Mayer, who wrote over the weekend to inform me that my coverage of her lawsuit against News Corp. is "characteristic of the totalitarian style." Yup, that's me, ol' Brown Shirt.

Here's the whole letter:

Jeff: I write as a representative of Judith Regan. Hannah Arendt noted that it is characteristic of the totalitarian style to substitute questions of motive for questions of fact. This seems to be no less true in the blogosphere, though for "motive" one might substitute "tone." Certainly, your musings on Judith Regan's case seem singularly unconcerned with the facts of the matter - namely, that the defendants named in her lawsuit participated in a campaign to destroy her reputation and credibility because they were (and are) afraid of what she knows about Bernie Kerik and Rudy Giuliani. To make such an assertion without any evidence to back it up might indeed be "bizarre" and "paranoid," as you maintain. But that happens not to be the case here. There is hard evidence corroborating Ms Regan's claims, and when it is introduced in court (as it will be at the appropriate time), I hope you will have the grace to apologize for your gratuitous insults.

A.

Let it be said: If "hard evidence" emerges that News Corp. fired Regan to protect Giuliani's presidential ambitions -- and not just because she had become a liability from a PR and management perspective -- then yes, I will apologize. Hell, I'll go on her Sirius show and apologize in person if she wants.

But I suspect the most likely outcome of this whole thing is an out-of-court settlement of some sort. News Corp. would be foolish to let this go to trial, and not just because Regan doubtless has some genuine dirty laundry she could air, whether Rudy-related or not.

No, I think News Corp.'s position is weak because the "anti-Semitic" slurs it took as cause to fire Regan were arguably not anti-Semitic. Regan allegedly said that several Jewish executives arrayed against her constituted a "cabal" -- an unfortunate choice of words to be sure, but no more proof of anti-Semitic sentiment than George Bush's use of the loaded term "crusade" was proof of his intent to lead a holy march on Jerusalem.

She also allegedly called on the members of the "cabal" to show some sympathy for her plight, saying, "Of all people, the Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie." But likening herself to a Holocaust victim wasn't anti-Semitism, just bad taste -- and who didn't know she was capable of that?

But, then, you might expect me to be quick to excuse anti-Semitism, on account of my fascist leanings and all.

UPDATE, 11:28 a.m.: It turns out Fortune's Roger Parloff is a totalitarian, too. He got the same letter. Thanks to Zack Roth of the Observer for pointing it out.