For John Mark Karr life sucks. The sad son of a bitch has been doomed since the media hung his middle name out in public and created that creepy public identity that goes with guys with three names: Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, John Wilkes Booth… (John Hinckley and Arthur Bremer missed the triple appellation because their victims survived, I think).

It will be interesting to see how much bandwidth “John Mark Karr” sucks up for “George What-a-fucking-idiot Bush” between now and November.

(creepy photo credit to Metroblogging LA and creepy Jill Greenberg)

Juan Cole speaks out today on the cases of two little girls, victims, one from Colorado slain ten years ago, and one from Iraq, brutalized and killed quite recently by an American soldier. US news coverage continues to call the 14 year old girl that the soldier raped and murdered a woman. US news coverage is effectively blacked out this week with paralyzingly repetitious coverage of the decade old Ramsey case.

The AP reports a couple of firings and an executive resignation at the walled city of AOHell. It’s a good time to be job hunting. A bad time for me to be criticizing Calacanis land. I’m all pumped up over the possibility of writing a little for WeblogsInc. I was looking at the titles of draft posts here at listics… wondering if any will fit:

• Meanness
• Middle finger
• Dog farts
• Thanks Jay Rosen
• Soylent Diesel
• Fundamentalism, forgiveness, and the zeitgeist of pleasure

Those are just a few of the false starts that haven’t found their way forward into listics. I hope there’s a place for them at WeblogsInc! Ahhh… probably not. Ed Sanders never found favor in Parade magazine either.

Speaking of whom:

…as always, thanks to Mark Woods

Elsewhere and else-when I was led to this picture by Ronni Bennett… quite a resemblance I thought.

I wonder if you write for them if you’re allowed to poke fun at them too?

Turn to the Contributors page (page 78) of the September, 2024 issue of Details magazine and you’ll see a blurb about Ben Paynter’s article (found on page 198) “Weapons of Mass Distraction.” It’s a story about the distracting influence of internet access on American soldiers in Iraq. No longer does a “Dear John” letter or a foreclosure notice take days and weeks to find its way to the GI at the front. Now the guys just log on and get the news directly as it’s happening back home.

The Details biographical blurb on Ben says,

Paynter writes for the Pitch, a weekly in Kansas City, Missouri. A story of his will appear in Best American Sports Writing 2024, out next month from Houghton Mifflin.

Sorry for the spoilers… click through and follow the links… and,

Color me clueless… I don’t pay a lot of attention to global subtleties like which multibillionaire has funded what huge international youth orgy on the net. So thanks to Chris Locke for drawing to my attention that it is none other than Mr. Fox-News-His-Own-Self, Rupert Murdoch, who owns MySpace. You thought it was YourSpace? Well, no. It belongs to the oligarch and you can play there. For now.

…here’s the essence of what I took away from BlogHer: At the closing session, a woman spoke up and said, “I’m not really a writer, but…” and one of the panelists said, “You have a blog. You’re a writer.” As simple as that. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a mom with a hobby. I wasn’t just someone who gets some small thrill out of playing with words. I’m a writer.
– Glennia Campbell at “Silent i”

I’m nodding like a Bobblehead. Over thousands of years the form progressed. Incised clay tablets gave way to brush stained papyrus, quill pens, ink and parchment… etchings… movable type, modern paper, manual typewriters, word processors, and now we have moved from these mechanical methods to pixellated output and the electronic mediation of blogging software on networks. But the intent hasn’t changed. People who do this work are writers. And of course some of us, like me, are Bobbleheads.

Bobbleheads are big in the sports world right now. In the midst of a hundred loss season, the Kansas City Royals’ current marketing ploy to increase attendance involves giving away bobbleheads of baseball legends Frank White, Dick Howser and George Brett. Another baseball legend, triple A ballplayer Rodney McCray, is being honored in Portland tonight with his own Bobblehead marketing give-away. “Usually, it’s the big-league superstars who get their own bobblehead, so I’m very excited,” McCray said.

Among other notable bush leaguers with their own Bobblehead are Chief Justice John Roberts, whose bobblehead depicts the justice clutching a red box of french fries and a small toad by his feet, and Kim Jong Il.

In other Portland news, Joshua Gibson continues to share his insights as he plows through one of Dickens’ less memorable pot boilers, Dombey and Son (although as bibliomania — looking for some redeeming value in the work — points out, “the novel is memorable for its depiction of railways”).

Amplifying the message from ze Frank in yesterday’s brilliant show, Norm Jenson says,

Did you ever think that George Bush is completely fucked up. Even as he complains about how the the cut and run crowd is putting us at risk he’s cheerleading for the run and hide crowd. We all know what the risks are. We don’t need some inarticulate clown telling us the world is a dangerous place. Ze Frank is right we’re more likely to die in an automobile accident than as a victim of terrorism, and heaven help him George is more likely to fall off his bike or choke on a pretzel.

Dave Winer had this to say:

Yesterday’s Ze Frank wasn’t funny, but it was right on. Listen carefully to the words President Bush uses, and decide for yourself who the real terrorists are.

And this,

NY Times editorials are almost never funny, but today’s editorial about the politics of terror in the US shows how our Vice-president was already playing politics with this latest round of news even before we knew about it, but when he certainly knew it was coming. Also note yesterday’s news was completely managed by the US and British governments. How much faith do you have in their honesty? Why? Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Rather than list all the things I wouldn’t know if I didn’t read Shelley, I’ll simply point to the emergence of Gottfried the Intern at Valleywag. This makes the second time I’ve managed to amplify the universal derision associated with Arrington’s Web 2.0 techumentary without stooping to view it. Pray for me… I was tempted after reading Beth Gottfried’s report.

HP laptop, Safari browser… those are THE FACTS that Norm’s unearthed.

Word in the blogs (thanks to Grazr’s Mike Kowalchik) is that Doc Searls is a newly minted Berkman Fellow. Congratulations Doc! You are in splendid company.

I understand that the good news is announced in this podcast. The podcast starts out with a discussion of Franks: meat slurry… editing each other’s dementia… no beer, stolen water… Jason Calacanis “Being Steve Gilmor”… somebody named Eve Stillmore calls… I’ve been listening but, ummm… I may have to go do something else now.

Anyway, Congratulations again, Doc.