THERE IS A NEW VERSION OF THIS WEBSITE

AND WHILE BLOGGER has been very good to me, the time has come to move to the grand unified theory entitled:

http://www.areasofmyexpertise.com/

PLEASE update your links.

YOUR NEW RSS FEED is: http://www.areasofmyexpertise.com/rss/

That is all.

THIS IS DAY MINUS ONE

THIS IS DAY MINUS ONE of the publication of MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

TOMORROW, when it is published, will be DAY ZERO. Then we will start counting upward.

(ON THAT DAY, I will be on television, and probably tonight as well.)

ALSO, today is DAY ONE of my guest blogging for boingboing.net. Look for STARTLING EVIDENCE regarding the crystal skulls there, later today.

THAT IS ALL.

MY CONSIDERED ENDORSEMENT

AS YOU KNOW, I have known and respected BoingBoing now for many years.

(INDEED, I used to read the PRINT VERSION of it, back when there were "print versions" of things, and back when The Primal Plunge was selling them.)

SINCE THEN, I have been a reader of the site, and a grateful beneficiary of its unexpected and serendipitous largesse.

BUT I HAVE NEVER DARED to write for them, preferring instead the neutrality and ABSOLUTE ANONYMITY of my own imitation blog.

MANY OF YOU may wonder, then, why I have agreed to GUEST BLOG (or really, GUEST IMITATION BLOG) for Mark, Xeni, Cory, and David, starting tomorrow.

SURELY SOME OF IT, the skeptics will suggest, has something to do with my NEW BOOK BEING PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY.

AND THAT IS SO.

BUT I MUST SAY the tipping point came today, with the RETURN OF THE CREEPY GNOME.

APART FROM THEIR many accomplishments and talents, it is this dedication to keeping this MOST IMPORTANT STORY in the public eye that has earned them, this Sunday, my full and humble endorsement.

That is all.

OLD BOINGBOING IMAGE courtesy: Wikipedia, who claim "fair use" in replicating the work of the amazing Mark Frauenfelder. I'll leave it to them to fight it out.

CREEPY GNOME image courtesy: teenagers is Argentina.

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

PORTENT COURTESY: Ape-Lad

THANKS GO AS WELL to: the comments, for pointing out the margin errors. I hope this fixes it.

That is all.

LAST NIGHT'S DEBATE

I WAS TWEETING the debate last night like Vin Diesel: FAST AND FURIOUS.

(ACTUALLY, if I were really tweeting like the Diese, I'd be tweeting about D&D).

THOSE OF YOU who were unlucky enough to have followed the whole thing will recall:

A) MY PREDICTION that the pundits would attempt to call the debate for McCain, purely out of a desire for a new plotline.

B) MY ABSOLUTE SURPRISE that the instant polls would reveal such an overwhelming consensus in favor of Obama, especially among independents.

I WAS GOING to write on about how bizarre it was to watch the pundits on CNN all suddenly change their minds about what just happened the moment they learned of those early polls...

(EXCEPT GERGEN, who actually got it exactly right, saying McCain's eye-roll and facial spasm strategy that began at the 20 minute mark would be his undoing)...

AND I WAS GOING to write how I ended up feeling no better than those pundits once it was clear my dire, gut pessimism about debate coverage was proven false (for the fourth time in a row this season).

BUT THEN, while looking for a link to back up my Diesel/D&D claim above, I came across this video.

And now this video is THE ONLY THING IN THE WORLD THAT MATTERS:



THAT IS ALL.

GET READY FOR SOME TOTALLY SUCCESSFUL EMBEDDING

SEE HOW GOOD I am getting?

(at embedding. Not necessarily: singing).



THAT IS ALL

ALAS, JOHN SELLERS

ALAS, JOHN SELLERS did not include any of our conversation on the subject of my first job for Time Out NY: reviewing video games.

BUT I AM STILL very glad to be back in their pages.

That is all.

I AM NOW A PAID BLOGGER

IRA GLASS paid me a dollar to mention me on his blog.

THE EVIDENCE IS HERE:

HONESTLY, I like and admire Ira so much, I probably would have done it for 60 cents.

STILL, this particular dollar makes for a nice keepsake. I think I will give it away as a prize of some at one of my book readings next week.

ON THAT SUBJECT, WERE YOU AWARE THAT I WILL BE APPEARING...

AT Barnes and Noble, Union Square, of Manhattan, Tues Oct 21, at 7PM, WITH Jonathan Coulton

AT the Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, of Massachusetts, Wed Oct 22, at 7PM, WITH Jonathan Coulton.

AT Politics and Prose, Washington, of District of Columbia, Thurs Oct 23, at 7PM, WITHOUT Jonathan Coulton, who will be going to England for a spell.

AT the 215 Festival of Philadelphia, PA, specifically THE LATVIAN SOCIETY, Friday Oct 24, at 9PM, WITHOUT Coulton, but WITH David Rees and Patrick Borelli.

?

All of this is true.

STAND BY for more true details re:

ANN ARBOR!
The fictional city of CHICAGO!
and the across-the-pond return of COULTON for
SEATTLE!
PORTLAND!
SAN FRANCISCO!
and
LOS ANGELES!

PLUS (though without Coulton):
ATLANTA!
OXFORD!
THE APPLE STORE OF SOHO WITH ELIZABETH GILBERT!

ALSO, there will be some changes to this website.

But for now: THAT IS ALL.

SMEARS

HERE IS THE GREAT BILL SCHER on the subject of the absurdity of launching a smear campaign this late in the game.

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT

McCain can't get back in this race by running against a fictional character. He has to run against Obama, and make a case that he has a better strategy than Obama for getting the economy back on track.

But that would require having a strategy. And he's running out of time to come up with one.

END QUOTED TEXT

(BUT BY ALL MEANS, read on. Bill Scher is one of the smartest and least excitable folks on the political internet, and he also eats deep-fried hamburgers)

BILL IS CORRECT: the time for defining Obama as a crazy, fist-bumping, BLACK!, Muslim, secret agent for Al Qaeda was back when no one really knew him. Like during the primaries.

(And it failed then, too. Because for the attack to be effective, the audience has to ACTUALLY BELIEVE that Obama is a villainous secret jihadist who REALLY AND TRULY CAN'T WAIT to paint the White House black. Surely there are some who actually do believe this science fiction; but most people are not INSANE. They just like acting that way in blog comments--and sometimes, newspapers).

BUT WHAT'S EVEN MORE startling is that the Ayers conspiracy theories and "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" dog-whistling that was once left to rumor spams and whisper campaigns has now been taken up, OFFICIALLY, by the candidates themselves.

THAT IS TO SAY, McCain/Palin are essentially attacking Obama with BLOG COMMENTS.

That is all.

POST CANCELLED

A FAMOUS ACTOR just stepped in and saved me from completing an embarrassingly sincere and serious blog post.

I AM VERY GRATEFUL to him.

That is all.

NEW THEORIES ABOUT THE CRYSTAL SKULLS

THANKS TO SEAN MCDONALD, I have discovered this PROVOCATIVE LINK from a blog called NOTCOT...

REGARDING DAN AYKROYD AND HIS KINGDOM OF CRYSTAL SKULLS, mentioned earlier on this non-blog.

READING IT, WE MUST CONCLUDE either...

a) CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA is a real product, and not an elaborate, deadpan joke.

b) CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA is a fake product, and NOTCOT is a part of the worldwide, Aykroyd-Tricks-the-Internet conspiracy.

c) CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA is a fake product, and indeed an elaborate deadpan joke, but one that is so elaborate that they ACTUALLY MADE THE FAKE PRODUCT in order to trick people into thinking it is real.

FOR ALL OBVIOUS REASONS, I am pulling for option C.

HOWEVER, this interview turned up by "NOTCOT," if that is indeed their name, suggests that the answer=A: Dan Aykroyd is simply a deadly earnest ufologist who loves to drink.

AND IS THAT REALLY SO BAD?

That is all.

IMAGE courtesy: "NOTCOT"

THE MYSTERY OF THE CRYSTAL HEADS

The Crystal Head Vodka website contains no ordering information.

BUT IT DOES FEATURE THE MASONIC SQUARE AND COMPASS!

Huh?

ALSO: BEVMO! has it listed, but it is mysteriously not available.

COINCIDENCE?

ALSO: I SAW GHOSTBUSTERS 1 at the same time I was first reading the novel DUNE...all during a childhood trip to YALE, where I would later go to college.

COINCIDENCE?

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU that while I was at Yale, I was telepathically tutored by the crystal skull of Geronimo in the tomb of the Skull and Bones secret society!

It isn't true, of course. (I was never a Bonesman). But WHAT IF I TOLD YOU I WAS!?

That is all.

CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA

THIS COMES IN via The Hater, and I don't know what to say.

IMAGINE ALL THE HERKY-JERK pitchman verbiage of Dan Aykroyd's classic commercial parodies from SNL as filtered through the X-Files, Tony Little, and the Swan Orientation Film, and THREE LAYERS OF HERKIMER DIAMONDS,

THEN ACTUALLY ADD DAN AYKROYD and you get:

CRYSTAL SKULL VODKA



NOT SINCE Dick Van Patten's Hobo Chili for Dogs have I confronted a product so strange and marvelously implausible that I feel robbed somehow of what might have been a beautiful, sublime joke, were it not all so undeniably real.

(AND IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT about the quality of spirits produced in the province of Newfoundland, may I recommend THE SCREECH?)

That is all.

UPDATE: because they care about me, THE VULTURE POSITS that this may all be part of an oblique, GHOSTBUSTERS III viral campaign. I hope so. It would be one of the most beautiful deadpan jokes of all time, were it so. And worthy of Dan Aykroyd. But on the other hand, he does apparently have a real, non-joke, non-viral, fascination with the paranormal, so who knows?

I FIND THIS INTRIGUING

VERY INTRIGUING

That is all.

COKIE

I THINK ARGUMENTS of "media bias" are almost always a pointless, joyless hedge maze to enter.

HOWEVER, I CONFESS to fuming frequently at my Tivoli radio while listening to NPR this year (I live in Park Slope) whenever Cokie Roberts came on to casually, Kristen Wiig-ily undermine Obama.

SUCH IS HER RIGHT. I trust she calls them as she sees them. But as Josh Marshall suggests this morning, on the issue of BOSNIAKS, she seems to be wrong.

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT

Watching the debate I noticed that Biden referred to the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina as "Bosniaks". This is actually the correct term, though in English people often say simply Bosnian Muslims. When he said it, the first thing I though was, I wonder how many right-wingers would jump on this as a gaffe on the model of candidate George W. Bush's reference to 'Grecians.'

I don't know who else exposed their own ignorance by falling into this trap. But Cokie Roberts did.

--Josh Marshall/TPM

END QUOTED TEXT

WATCH BELOW as Cokie attempts to weave a false equivalency between Biden's using an actual, legitimate term and Palin's FORGETTING THE NAME OF OUR COMMANDER IN AFGHANISTAN--confusing General McKiernan with "General McClellan."

(ALSO WATCH for a great Doris Kearns Goodwin cameo. She catches Palin's error right away, but I think that's because she knew McClellan personally. Lincoln introduced them).



LOOK, I don't know the Bosniaks. Maybe Josh Marshall is wrong on this one. But I think Cokie's smirking-with-intent is obvious here, and if Marshall's intel is correct, she owes Biden an apology.

OR ELSE: I'm just lost in the hedge maze.

That is all.

UPDATE: To be fair, I guess she COULD have picked on him for not knowing that Katie's, a Delaware restaurant he mentioned, closed decades ago.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN

BUT TO ALL THOSE DEMOCRATS who implied (or told me outright) 2 wks ago that they feared Americans were "TOO STUPID" to vote right,

HERE is why this election is so exciting.

That is all.

ADVANTAGE=?

IF YOU SEE MY TWEETS up there in the upper right, you know that I was pretty wowed by Biden in the final run.

MOST AGREE on CNN that Palin and Biden made no major flubs, however. So in terms of pundit perception: ADVANTAGE PALIN. And I think that consensus is settling in, at least in the FILTER OF THE MEDIA.

THAT SAID, she did call General McKiernan "General McClellan." That's an absurd thing to say, and should count as a major flub. But no one on CNN seems to have noticed.

THAT SAID, the first snap poll says 51% of respondents say Biden "won." And 53% still feel that she is not qualified to be President (down from 54%). That shut up the "Palin stuck the landing" meme for a moment there, so what do I know?

That is all.

ADVANTAGE PALIN

SINCE NO ONE ASKED, and yet the internet demands words,

FLUBS MATTER MOST--misstatements of fact, flustered moments of silence, obvious "dog ate homework" moments, and other assorted COURICIANA.

HERE IS THE FLOWCHART as I see it.

Palin flubs + Biden flubs = ADVANTAGE PALIN. Storyline="Everybody is human."

Neither flubs = ADVANTAGE PALIN. Storyline= "Palin didn't flub."

Palin doesn't flub + Biden flubs = MAJOR ADVANTAGE PALIN. Storyline="What's the problem with Joe Biden?"

Palin flubs + Biden doesn't flub = ADVANTAGE THE UNIVERSE. Storyline= Palin exits the national stage.

I WOULD TAKE NO GLEE IN THIS, but I would be relieved. In any case, Biden must not flub.

THE WILD CARD: will Biden attack?

PALIN CERTAINLY WILL. It is part of "Palin being Palin."

I TRUST that Biden has been counseled neither to attack nor counter-attack Palin. It is a massive risk, and he has nothing to gain.

I AM SURE that Biden agrees with this strategy as of this writing.

I AM NOT SO SURE that he will follow it. In the heat of the moment he may not be able to help himself.

If he succumbs, ADVANTAGE PALIN--even if (especially if) she flubs. Storyline="Biden=mean."

AS YOU SEE, by my goofball reasoning at least, that's four possible PALIN FTWs, and only one out for the entire universe.

IT ALL DEPENDS ON BIDEN'S SELF CONTROL.

I like Biden. But I will be drinking.

That is all.

MARQUEE ATTRACTION

ALSO, THAT ACTUALLY IS the Coolidge Corner Theater (nee "Moviehouse") in GQ this month

AND I ACTUALLY DID used to put those letters up on the marquee back when I worked there in the early nineties (the 20th century).

(BUT AT THAT TIME, we used a long, long mechanical arm with a claw on the end, BECAUSE EVERYTHING WAS BETTER IN THE PAST.)

AND I ACTUALLY WILL BE APPEARING THERE, with COULTON, on October 22, at 6PM to promote my new BOOK, which will be sold by THE BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH,

WHERE I ACTUALLY bought my first copy of LORD OF THE RINGS.

ALL OF THIS IS TRUE, and yet still unbelievable, at least to me.

That is all.

BOING

HELLO AGAIN, bOINGbOINGists

IT IS NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN through the internet.

GUESS WHAT I LEARNED TO DO since last time? PROPER EMBEDDING TECHNIQUES.

WITNESS:



(I REALLY HOPE THIS WORKS)

MEANWHILE, HERE IS AN ACTUAL NOTE left for me in my room by the management of the CHATEAU MARMONT after viewing my last visit to BoingBoingTV...


THEY REALLY DID OFFER the best Soylent Green in Los Angeles. I hope they bring it back.

ALSO, MAY I PLEASE, PLEASE TAKE THIS TRAFFICKY MOMENT TO RECOMMEND...

SHOPSIN

?

That is all.