Taranto’s Tattler

Not to brag or anything, but look who’s in the Thanks To section of Best of the Web for Thursday, April 22, 2004:

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Catherine Brooks, David Eike, Terry Young, S.E. Brenner, Gary Petersen, Darren Gold, Thomas Campanile, Mark Van Der Molen, Erik Smelser, P.F. Erlin, Ben Sandler, Lynn Segal, Scott Lawrence, Bill Buckingham, Russell Zwerg, John Esposito, Alan Stahura, Daniel Mark, Ed Holton, Chip Paschal, Don Hunt, Ted Rathkopf, Brian Noggle, Gil Yoder, Michael Williams, Jeff Touchet, Erik Ivers, John Corringan, Ken Shotwell, John Sanders, Mike Hohman, Jonathan Mairs, Stephen Silkowski, Cheryl Pedersen and Bradley Lawrence. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

They forgot the J, but that’s okay.

So you better all straighten up, or I am telling Taranto.

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Easter Egg

Spoons has come clean and has admitted:

    For some reason which is quite unfathomable to me, certain sections of the blogosphere are all abuzz over the question of whether coed blogger, “Hot Abercrombie Chick,” might really be a a dude.

    I’m not sure why this really matters,, but since it apparently does to some people, I feel I owe my readers a confession. I’m not actually a 32-year-old cranky male lawyer in central Illinois. I’m actually a 65-year-old widow and retired plus-size lingerie model from Butte, Montana.

    And my supposed wife “Laura” is actually just a raccoon that I sometimes see in my backyard. I think she’s trying to steal the birdseed I put out.

As a matter of full disclosure, I must too explain the source of the text you see here.

    This blog generated by Documatic 3000 Libertarian Blog Plug-In.

    LBPI renders real-time, current event feedback generated by algorithms that scour RSS feeds, content aggregators, and news sites for certain keywords and provide correct responses to keywords within the content.

    For example, LBPI reliably provides the following post responses:

    Keyword

    Response
    Eminent Domain

    The gummint is stripping people of our assets, flying in the face of sacred property rights!
    Taxes

    The gummint is stripping people of our hard-earned money, flying in the face of sacred property rights and fiscal responsibility!
    Jewel

    Jewel rox!
    Ayn Rand

    Ayn Rand rox!
    George W. Bush

    George W. Bush rox compared to John Kerry.
    <end of post marker reached>

    Thank you, that is all.

    As the Documatic 3000 extensible architecture is proven in field tests such as this, look for an IPO soon.

Thank you, that is all.

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New Competition

Based on this post at A Small Victory, wherein commenter JW says:

I think the memes are ways for unknown bloggers to get their name [sic] out.

I am an unknown blogger; I need to get my name out. I need a meme!

JW also says:

    You, Michele, seem to be among the creme de la creme and not need such tawdry devices.

and I am inspired! I need a meme to get my name out. What about a competition? Call it the

La Creme de la Meme

competition, wherein everyone submits a meme repeated throughout the blogosphere, and people or the judges select the best and….

Sounds like a lot of work, though. Never mind, I don’t need to get my name out if it takes effort. You guys can use it, though, as you like. Just credit JW me when you do.

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Personal Thank You

Undoubtedly, the klaxons and swirling red lights down in my workplace NOC that flash each time something triggers the Echelon-strength Internet content filters in the bowels of the sys admin’s secret lair at my workplace echoed and, well, swirled today as I visited many of my favorite Web logs and “news” portals today.

Jeez, my workstation saw a bitch’s worth of teats today, guys, as each of you salivated over the Miss Jackson flesh we might better have appreciated fifteen years ago (and then there’s the drawing of Jessica Rabbit courtesy of Kim du Toit).

When I’m terminated for Internet abuse, I expect each of you to hit my tip jar to make it up.

Thank you, that is all.

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Doing Johnny Ashcroft’s Dirty Work

Susan Murray has an op-ed piece in the Washington Post wherein she posits that reality television is making America more comfortable with a surveillance society. And then she says:

But reality TV does play a crucial role in mitigating our resistance to such surveillance tactics. More and more of these programs rely on the willingness of “ordinary” folk to live their lives in front of cameras. These people choose to have sex, get married, give birth, compete for prizes, work, fight, weep and brush their teeth in front of millions. We, as audience members, witness this openness to surveillance, normalize it and, in turn, open ourselves up to such a possibility.

Some of us have a desire to become reality TV celebrities; others set up a blog or a webcam.

Dammit! Now that we’ve been fingered as undercover operatives, do you think the checks from the federal government will stop?

Also, will someone please call for a Congressional inquiry to find out who leaked our undercover operation?

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