A youtube post by Xeni, about Calipers Addamsapple, recommended by Andrew James? This deserves a wikipedia entry of its own!

If Andrew Keen is a "troll", wouldn't repeatedly personally insulting the dude as if he had peed on your rug indicate that you're a serial biter?

Tangentially, Cory Doctorow is so l337, he hires other dudes to admin his personal computer. For all those times he "needs something fixed in his kernal". You can hardly tell he never finished college, and just barely got his Good Enough Degree. Just barely.

The rest is all the usual "ads for companies we have known business relationships with, masquerading as content", Mark posting ads for his book followed by subsequently, and separately, pimping each and every bookstore he's going to visit in malls all over the San Fernando valley. Or wherever. I don't generally go to book stores, so I assume the threat level for me is low of catching doucheitis.

Hey, it's as much of a word as "spokesdouche", and I don't even pretend to be a journalist.

One of these things is not like the others, which of these things does not belong? Truly a monument to the Mutual-Backscratch Society, not to mention the League of NPOV Wikipedians.

The word "wikipedians" doesn't sound nearly as retarded as the image it conjures up.

It's like a holiday in the Bay Area, since all the assholes are out of town at "Camp I'm OK, You're OK"(*). I mention this because it is my only tangential, and remotely at that, interest in this fascinating piece of top-notch journalism.

The "reader comment", though, reminded me that the "piece" about the Whole Foods CEO commenting on Wild Oats on a "message board" is a perfect example of the typical reactionary bias exhibit by the assclowns at boingboing. When somebody in some non-US country with non-US freedoms gets in trouble for looking at porn, assclowns are up in arms about Flickr's refusal to Join the Revolution and do what the users want them to do, rather than what the, say, shareholders want them to do. Yet, somehow, when an individual in a corporation says something public, regardless of how stupid it is, the verbage used to describe this is:

The CEO of Whole Foods spent a ton of time on Yahoo messageboards bashing the value of Wild Oats stock

Oh yeah? You're sure it was a "ton of time"? The case is closed already? The investigation is at a point where you can start stating shit like that as if it were fact? Where is the outrage about his right to "free speech" being trampled on by the FTC? Fuck that, where's basic fucking fact-checking? "Messageboards" is one word? Who "sez"?

Alright, peoples, it's dinner time. See how ending on a conversational note makes me seem pretty unprofessional?

(*) - Advanced apologies to LA reader friends who attend burning man. I'm sure not everyone there is an asshole. In fact, I would even be willing to believe that the majority of the attendees are not generally self-absorbed asshats, but I remain certain that of the percentage that are, most of them live in San Francisco, and are suffering from some sort of psychological distress as the result of childhood sexual abuse of some sort or another, or having not received sufficient attention from parents and friends in the small Southern or Midwestern towns they grew up in.

Failed journalism student engages in ad hominem attacks on dude who wrote a book about how failed journalists think ad hominem attack pieces are actually journalism. Let's see, we've got:

1) obligatory, dated "zombies" reference
2) desire to "remix" book (read: treat as a mad-lib) instead of actually address anything in it
3) a disparaging remark about Keen's former business being a failure, which is hilarious when one considers Jardin's complete lack of any credentials in any field
4) a plug for herself, buried at the end of the piece
5) more boingboing backrubs for "Clay Shirky", whoever the hell he is supposed to be.

Really, though, it can all be summarized by this quote:

The core premise of Keen's book seems to be that conversational media is destroying culture, ruining the economy, and destroying the lives of "experts."

Heh, "experts" in quotes and "conversational media" from a blowhard who doesn't have the cajones to allow comments and deal with the frigtards you're so dedicated to preserving the wisdom and free speech of. I'm really not sure what's the funniest part of that.

"I decided to try out veganism a little over a week ago -- so far I feel great, and it's a lot easier than I thought." I'd add a snarky line about this, but it doesn't need one. Xeni did the heavy lifting by establishing her week-long expertise on the subject in the first line.

In case y'all forgot, Cory has a new book, and he also has a new book. Oh wait, that's the same book? You mean the same one that dude has posted at least an ad a day for for the last few weeks? Oh. Oh boy. Let's all go down to Barnes y Noble and stand in line for Cory's new book. Oh me? Well, I'll meet you there. I have some other stuff to do.

Can we stop automatically stating Bruce Schneier's speculation as fact?

Then, of course, there's the classic Frauenfelderian backtracking moment, which you all were kind enough to draw attention to already.

HEY U GUYZ, PHOTOSHOP CONTEST AT WORTH 1000!11111

Also, why does it not surprise me that this is the side Cory would be on, if he lived in the Star Wars universe? When I was in second grade, I rooted for the Rebel Alliance. Eventually, I grew up, and found myself in support of the Empire.

And now, the crowning awkward boingboing moment of the weekend:

"no sneaky running out into the Magic Kingdom and riding the Haunted Mansion in the nude!"

I don't know about all of you, but I'm creeped out now by the visual of that college dropout touching his own junk late at night, running around Disneyland in his Canuckistanian Birfday Suit.

And on that note, work awaits.

1) Looks like Cory's on the verge of catching the same bug someone else on that staff has, or maybe he's just been drinking Potomac water.

2) Shameless Xeni brown-nosing reveals that Battellah thinks 1) blogs should do more merchandising to be more like that other blog, "amazon.com". And 2) he also thinks what we all need are some extra pop-up windows. Both of these ideas are just plain retarded. Nevermind the conflict between this post and, say, the one posted right after it. It's funny, really; Xeni speculating about Google use is like homeless people speculating about mortgage rates.

So that's not two things, it's four. You are all grown-ups, you'll learn to deal with the disappointment over time. Well, you regular readers, at least.

Just like Autumn used to bring a new crop of mouthy, self-assured, delusional fucktard-newbies to USENET, long before port 80 brought your Grandma and your Little Cousin Jeffy to the Internet, Eric Corley and pals have been recruiting mouthy, self-assured, zit-encased 13 year olds with marginal technical abilities (though, admittedly, slightly less marginal than their little sisters and their My Little Ponies) for their "once in however often" 2600 conferences, held in what may be the shittiest hotel in Manhattan. Well, they're tearing that shithole down. Well, well, well, whaddya know? Something wonderful on the directory of wonderful things! Oh, wait... It seems she actually posted it because the Wookie wants everyone to keep the hotel alive, so these glorious Newbiecons can continue, unfettered. OMFG, IF THEY TEAR DOWNZ TEH HOTAL, WHERE WILL WE HAVE OUR M33TZ????

You know, I can think of a hack that would solve that: RENT OUT ANOTHER HOTEL. I hear there are one or two of them in New York, someplace. OMFG, I'M SO L337.

Possibly tell me if this means the mentally unstable, threat-issuing, pudgy, abused, used-up skank known as Violet Blue is going to lose money? Because if she is, well, that qualifies as "wonderful". And if she isn't? Well, maybe an article like this one (Xeni's, that is) would fit in better someplace like "Z-List Authors' And Their Uninteresting Personal Problems Dot Com" or something.

Sometimes it's hard to decide:

"I spent the better part of my weekend wandering through though these and muttering "wow" to myself."

Jesus H. Christ, that's lame. Then again, I'm guessing she pokes around at her stats and mutters "wow" to herself most weekends.