When Nonfiction Writers Take Liberty

As much as I hate to admit it, I enjoyed Mark Morford’s column "I Wanna Be A Crackhead Author:
Hello, I am an ex-hooker heroin addict with AIDS who eats live puppies. Please read my book
". A taste:

I shall start my story humbly, meekly, just like JT LeRoy and James Frey. Small town, somewhere in Idaho or maybe rural Montana, brought up by a sadistic pedophiliac Pentecostal preacher father who only has one good arm and a decimated colon, and a narcoleptic mother with 17 cats who sucks down cases of Tab and reads the “Left Behind” books as nonfiction and who passes out every night in a Percocet haze watching endless reruns of “Knight Rider.”

Me and my two sadistic, ADD brothers will sneak off to the local zoo for days at a time and sleep with the monkeys and torture penguins with fireworks. I will suck on my first bong at age 4 and will be stone drunk by 7 and will regularly black out by age 10, but not before impregnating my pothead babysitter and stealing her credit card to buy a Game Boy and a small Cessna, which I will promptly fly all the way to Mexico before crashing into a tortilla factory and breaking my spine in 12 places and rupturing my kidneys, which I will pay a Mexican mafia doctor named Mannie 50 bucks to swap with black-market kidneys stolen from unwary tourists. Oh my yes. I can see it now.

It’s not exactly discouraged in college narrative nonfiction writing classes that you enhance your memories or history to make a better narrative that’s more gripping, illustrative, or humorous than the events that have actually happened to you.

Why, even I, your humble unreliable narrator have embellished certain things in my own essays to make a point. For example, I created this whole beautiful wife thing out of whole cloth, culminating in a fictional pregnancy to increase my traffic (or I have invented the invention of her to prove a point about embellishing–sorry if this paradox has caused unKirkian patched PCs to shut down and free the Enterprise crew and Harry Mudd).

The key, though, is to know a limit between embellishing and fabricating. In one, you’re exaggerating for effect something that really happened, and in the other, you’re exaggerating for effect something that didn’t really happen.

I only hope that I know the line. If not, I hope to be very celebrated and successful with my undiscovered deception.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Conan O’Brien Skirts McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform

By making fun of the elections in Finland:

Finland’s president finds her traditional support among women and the Social Democratic Party base, but lately to the surprise of many Finns — and her opponents in Sunday’s election — she has gotten an endorsement of a different sort.

The redheaded late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien has been promoting President Tarja Halonen’s re-election bid as part of a long-running joke about their supposed physical similarities.

“Why do I support Tarja Halonen? Because she’s got the total package: a dynamic personality, a quick mind, and most importantly — my good looks,” the comedian, whose show is broadcast on cable in Finland, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Another Trauma for Brett Favre

Man accused of using credit card of star NFL quarterback:

Phoenix man was arrested Thursday after allegedly using a credit card account belonging to Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre more than 40 times, authorities said.

Some Green Bay fans will go to extraordinary measures to ensure that Favre does not retire, including ensuring that he needs the paycheck to pay his credit card bills.

Doubtlessly, radio call-in shows in Wisconsin are now figuring this into their calculations about whether he will return next year.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

British Camera Surveillance Confirms No Explosives On Naked Woman

Another camera-based security triumph in Great Britain: Peeping tom CCTV workers jailed:

Two council CCTV camera operators have been jailed for spying on a naked woman in her own home.

Mark Summerton and Kevin Judge, from Sefton Council, Merseyside, trained a street camera into the woman’s flat.

Good on the bobbies for ensuring the boobies were natural and not semtex implants.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Now Appearing In The Rob McCormick Fiesta Room

Lohan, Moss’ pole dance at topless bar:

New B.F.F.’s Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss shook things up at New York’s Scores strip club in the wee hours of yesterday morning putting on a bump-and-grind pole-dancing session for the club’s 400 shocked patrons, reports the New York Post’s gossip column ‘Page Six.’

Lohan, Moss and a few of their female friends descended upon the topless club just before 3:00 a.m. and went directly into the club’s famous Champagne Room, where the group downed a number of vodka shots, raspberry Kamikazes and beer and were treated to plenty of lapdances from the strippers that surrounded their table.

As other Savvis investors remember, this is where Rob McCormick spent $240,000, prompting his ouster as the CEO of the plucky little ISP that couldn’t quite.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Criminals, Regardless of Their Status, Must Not Be Treated As Criminals

Mexico Demands U.S. Allow More Immigration:

Diplomats from Mexico and Central America on Monday demanded guest worker programs and the legalization of undocumented migrants in the United States, while criticizing a U.S. proposal for tougher border enforcement.

Meeting in Mexico’s capital, the regional officials pledged to do more to fight migrant trafficking, but indirectly condemned a U.S. bill that would make illegal entry a felony and extend border walls.

“Migrants, regardless of their migratory status, should not be treated like criminals,” they said.

No doubt, the undocumented workers and migrants within our country would elect you to be our leaders. Too bad we’re a soveriegn country whose actual citizens get to elect our own feckless leaders.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

That’s Why I Read Cosmopolitan

Muslim bashing seemingly in vogue:

What in the world do dietary supplements have to do with turbans and terrorism?

That political head-scratcher confronted at least some vitamin buyers around the nation who found a flier with their mail-order nutrients carrying the bold headline, “Get a Turban for Durbin!”

An image shows Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, wearing the headwrap, common in parts of the Middle East and south Asia and sacred religious garb in some faiths, including the entire Sikh religion.

The flier’s kicker: “Keep Congressional Terrorists At Bay.” The flier was distributed last month by a pro-vitamin and supplement group.

Critics say the flier is yet another example of Muslim bashing. The designer of the flier, who has since pulled it, admits that it was over the line but said he put it out to draw attention to what he thinks is improper action by Durbin.

Got that, America? According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a cheap mimeographed flier from some unnamed vitamin and dietary supplier represents trend-setting political and social thought.

When it’s convenient for driving “news” articles into the well-traveled, predetermined concourses of thought.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Private Property Hijacked By Owners

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s headline identifies whose side it comes down on: Casino’s parking is hijacked:

How much is too much to pay to park a car in downtown St. Louis?

At the very least, it’s a bit less than $25, according to the President Casino on the Admiral.

In an apparent power play over control of the much-disputed “Cherrick” parking lot, its owner has jacked up more than tenfold the price the President pays for customers to use the lot.

So it’s the owner hijacking its own property. Well, sort of. As I read the article, the owner wants to squeeze the government-subsidized entertainment venue (the President Casino) into buying the parking garage before the new government-subsidized entertainment venue (the new casino and go-kart track) seizes the property for a “fair” price. Somewhere in there I got confused about the blighted area infighting for the same profitable resource and stopped paying attention.

Which is probably just what they wanted. All the better to rule me.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Call the Guinness People: AP Finds a New Record

U.S. Toll for Year in Iraq Nears ’04 Mark:

Bombings and shootings killed at least 20 people across Iraq on the final day of the year Saturday, while U.S. troops shivered in the cold during a performance by an “American Idol” singer as part of New Year’s Eve celebrations. The U.S. military also reported the death of an American soldier from wounds, bringing its death toll in Iraq for 2005 near last year’s record level.

I would say, “Give me a break,” but Associated Press is not doing us any favors. Let’s recap the timeline:

2003: The United States invades in late March and faces an enemy that largely surrenders. US faces 9 months of combat and occupancy.
2004: The first full year of occupation, and the year which the “record” was set.
2005: The second full year of occupation, and the year in which the record is almost matched.

There you have it; a record of long-standing. Well, we Americans are told that we’re always hungering for the bigger and better things all the time, with baseball players chasing home run records every year and whatnot. I guess Associated Press is just trying to feed our interest in meeting or exceeding records every year, even if it has to manufacture those records out of whole cloth.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Spoken Like a True Quality Assurance Person or Media-Friendly Economist

Researcher: iPod earbuds could damage hearing:

The ever-popular earbuds used with many iPods and other MP3 players may be more stylish than the bigger and bulkier earmuff-type headphones, but they may also be more damaging to one’s hearing, according to a Northwestern professor.

“No one really knows for sure” the levels at which iPod users listen to music, but “what we do know is that young people like their music loud and seldom worry about any decline in hearing ability,” Dean Garstecki, chairman of Northwestern’s communication sciences and disorders department, told Reuters.

We don’t know, but we know it’s bad.

If only we had some metaphor by which we could grasp the danger so we could better clamor for government regulation, such as warning labels or a mandatory cap on the volume these things could produce.

The earbuds commonly used by iPod listeners are placed directly into the ear and can boost the audio signal by as many as nine decibels — comparable to the difference in sound intensity between an alarm clock and a lawn mower, Garstecki said.

Reuters and the researcher are partying like it’s 1979, though, because we’ve heard this particular chorus since the introduction of the Walkman, which replaced the practice of carrying a portable tape deck with the speaker pressed against one’s ear.

Or we would have heard the particular chorus, if we weren’t deaf. Instead, we’ve had to read it on the Internet.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Wherein Brian J. Speaks Ex Cathedra About NSA Cookies

As a QA dude who understands cookies, I officially call this a non-story: Despite federal ban, NSA Web site places ‘cookies’ on visitors’ computers to track Web surfing:

The National Security Agency’s Internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.

The government apparently bans permanent cookies, but allows session cookies. The NSA explains the brief presence of permanent cookies this way:

Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.

“After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies,” he said.

Completely believeable, especially if the NSA site uses third party components which probably use cookies independently of the official site policy. Granted, a little QA probably would have caught this, but who can afford the time or money for testing and adherence to standards?

So I agree with Jeff Jarvis that anyone trying to make hay out of this is simply happy to continue yipping the letters NSA. Kevin Aylward notes that the DNC Web site uses cookies set to expire in 28 years (the expiration date of the cookie served as “evidence” of the insidious nature of the plot).

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Waiting for the Christian Riots in Sweden

Anti-Christian Jeans Are a Trend in Sweden:

Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.

Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he’s not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.

“It is an active statement against Christianity,” Atldax told The Associated Press. “I’m not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion.”

Active statements against religions whose adherents regularly stab those who make active statements against it or whose adherents routinely blow up innocent commuters remain strangely absent.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

What’s The Right To Private Property Worth?

In Clayton, it’s:

“We remain convinced that the project to keep Centene’s headquarters in Clayton and generate 800 new jobs is in the best interests of the people of Clayton and the entire region,” [Clayton Mayor Mike] Schoedel said.

You, citizen, might see successful businesses in attractive locations in downtown Clayton, but that’s why you’re not a visionary civic leader ready to strip that land from its owner and award it to a more powerful local corporation. So shut up, and suffer your betters’ whims.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories