def _fetch(self, uri, post_args, **url_args):
    url_args["format"] = "json"
    args = urllib.urlencode(url_args)
    url = "http://friendfeed.com" + uri + "?" + args
    if post_args is not None:
        request = urllib2.Request(url, urllib.urlencode(post_args))
    else:
        request = urllib2.Request(url)
    if self.auth_nickname and self.auth_key:
        pair = "%s:%s" % (self.auth_nickname, self.auth_key)
        token = base64.b64encode(pair)
        request.add_header("Authorization", "Basic %s" % token)
    stream = urllib2.urlopen(request)
    data = stream.read()
    stream.close()
    return parse_json(data)

def _fetch(self, uri, post_args, **url_args):
    url_args["format"] = "json"
    args = urllib.urlencode(url_args)
    url = "http://friendfeed.com" + uri + "?" + args
    headers = {}
    if post_args is not None:
        post_data = urllib.urlencode(post_args)
        method = "POST"
        headers={'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'}
    else:
        post_data = None
        method = "GET"

    if self.auth_nickname and self.auth_key:
        pair = "%s:%s" % (self.auth_nickname, self.auth_key)
        token = base64.b64encode(pair)
        headers["Authorization"] = "Basic %s" % token

    result = urlfetch.fetch(url=url, payload=post_data, method=method, headers=headers)
    data = result.content

    self.result = result
    self.feed_json = data

    return parse_json(data)