Corresponding about books

Just posted Bookworks owner Peter Dast's response to a surveyish thing I was trying to put together on Post.

Earlier this morning, I sent Peter a follow-up email that commiserated a bit re: the reader poll's failure to gain traction, and ask if it would be ok to post his reply outside of the context of the broad bookseller survey originally envisioned. The lightly edited excerpt below references my own e-book wariness, and responds to Peter's question,

For example--as a writer, don't you feel you want or need a nice hardcover copy of Strunk & White, Webster's Second Unabridged, maybe an OED, and old hardcover editions of your favorite essayists or journalists?"

====

As a telecommuting writer/blogger whose first real rent-paying piece was for a website, my personal relationship with books is really one that revolves around decompression, and literally unplugging from the day's work. I often stare at one screen or another for much of the day, and wind down by going to bed with a book--usually short stories and essays. I'm guessing an e-book reader with a backlit screen would feel a little too vocational for comfort. I'd rather continue falling asleep with the lights on and waking up with paper cuts on place-holding fingers--or spine imprints on my face.

You invoked a writerly canon of reference materials, so I figured I'd share mine. I haven't graduated from paperback copies of Chicago and AP style manuals, Strunk and White (and rarely, if ever, consult them). The reference books I value and revisit regularly were given to me by friends [as jokes, i.e. a 1930's vocab-building workbook or revolve around hip-hop. I think the most interesting contemporary explorations of the genre are published by writers with one foot in the "blogosphere" and another planted elsewhere (to name a few career lanes of favorites: academia, big box retail, fast food, lock-smithery, magazine writing--even PR), but there are a few texts with staggering historical sweep that I flip through regularly--Can't Stop Won't Stop, Yes Yes Y'all, Hip Hop America, the Vibe History of Hip Hop. I'm ashamed to say I don't own the two books that best embody hip-hop in written form. Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists and Big Book of Racism ARE the concise and contradictory wit, wordplay, humor and outrage that drew me to hip-hop in the first place, and I need to stop checking them out of the library.

Forthcoming posts will visit the stores that remain, for now.

Post panel note

I probably said a lot of self-absorbed and incoherent shit--and frankly forgot the thing was being taped (hence the near-slip-up on the punk house. Always swore to give Camp Randall as the address--Blues Brothers style). Blame it on the dehydration.

I'll eventually clarify what I said about yet another prospective publication--that was more wishful thinking than prediction, hopes that some of the flickers that appear across local blogs and publications like Emmie found themselves under one flaming masthead. There may've been a dash of what would've Coreweekly* become with a proper website? nostalgia thrown in there too. Also maybe I should follow up on the stuff about local rap, and post the MySpace of that Miami backpack rapper...

Three pressing items first, though.

1. That Isthmus vs. Dane101 comment had everything to do with the Daily Page's forums+delayed posting of print articles+shit else approach a few years ago.
2. Those drink tickets manifested themselves well after the piece was published--and it wasn't someone local. To get my objectivity on retainer, you'll have to front 7 well-lubricated meals a week at preferred local dining establishments. Jesse's question about the absence of "negative" reviews--the prospect of 5th tier payola--got glossed over, and I don't think I helped matters much.
3. And I wasn't joking about Skip's Megan Hickey interview. It would hold up just fine in print--and in the first few minutes that might've otherwise been edited out, he shares a bit about his podcast assembly MO.

^{*if you think I'm on crack for that, I have a stack of links to post-Core clips by former staffers (I'm not among them) to share with you. And yes, I'm biased because I'm pretty sure there isn't going to be another local publication assigning and paying for a Clipse mixtape review and Philip Gourevitch interview (interview was good, my piece was crap... will try to find the tape to get the transcript up here) running the same week. Unless...}

WSJ Word Association

Curated by...
Wisconsin State Journal publisher--and DJ emeritus!--builder Bill Johnston.

This was basically random rules, with a laptop. Posting seemed apropos, 'cause moments later someone messaged a recommendation request. Sponsored by Charter and Oakland Property Management.

Check the near-eponymous debut track, and...

Download:

Nicolay and Supastition, "The Williams" [z-share-d mp3]

Visual confirmation of music blogger stereotypes. Tonight at the High Noon

Hello. Even though we can't be bothered to write about music not produced by our favorite local songstress EVAR, we'll be on a music blogging panel tonight @ the High Noon. It's at 5:30pm. We told some people that we had prepared talking points re: the Rhythm method of musical contraception night-prowl planning and post-idea plotting. But we'll just shoot that wad into a sock right about now...

You see, at the last one of these things we attended, a couple people mentioned how they looked to the Isthmus and Onion for recreational activity guidance.

They trailed off... but suddenly, as if sensing an ominous presence in the room, added "and, uhh Rhythms."

For more oblique passive aggression, come out tonight! Although you'll probably be more interested in what our co-panelists have to say.

• Kiki Schueler - Kiki’s Magical Music Reviews
• MULTI-MONIKERED PROG FIEND Skip, of Up the Downstair
• Aaron Veenstra - Civility in Public Discourse
• Ryan Matteson - Muzzle of Bees
• Tom Geer - More Cowbell

Official Invite is here. EDITED SO PEOPLES DON'T TAKE THE WRONG WAY

re: the TRASHED CAR!! on 1000 block of East Johnson

Seems craigslist was clamoring for pics of a trashed car on the 1000 block of East Johnson. Can this really be the "tan intrepid" champagne Chrysler 300 M in question? The carnage is pretty underwhelming, but this poster makes a good point. I'll edit this later to wax idiotic re: East Johnson traffic flow.

Crowd Participation

Emcees Without Voices' first "hip-hop" content of the month: I posted a gallery of sorts from the Library Mall half of today's Elements of Change "Hip-Hop Revival."

Two things not noted there:

• Around 5pm, I finished working in the library and was free to catch the closing minutes. A drunk old white* guy lumbered up to me and leaned in conspiratorially: "Didn't someone tell them about the bitches and hos?" Yes sir, they were regrettably missing. Fuck you too. Hold on tight to that plastic cup from the Rathskeller and keep walking.*
  
• The lady below (right arm raised) was way into the call and response stuff. PEACE LOVE AND UNITY.
  

*obviously, I have a conflicted relationship with gender dynamics and race vis a vis rap/hip-hop. As I mentioned earlier to the proprietor of Madison's newest hip-hop blog--written by another (presumptive) white person--this has been my go-to GET SHIT DONE track for the past few weeks.

When's a business no longer local?

Fashion Copywriter - 024530

---

Reply to: see below
Date: 2007-06-08, 1:25PM CDT

Based in Madison, WI, Shopbop.com is a premier online shopping boutique for the fashion-savvy female. Carrying everything a woman needs for her wardrobe from dresses to denim; swimwear to shoes -- Shopbop.com has over 100 different designer labels such as Juicy Couture, Seven for all Mankind, Catherine Malandrino, and Diane Von Furstenberg. Shopbop.com has become recognized by consumers and the media as an excellent one-stop fashion resource. Unique site features such as the How to Buy Jeans Guide, Look Book and Season Trend Previews are highlights on this easy-to-navigate site. Shopbop.com is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com.

Which brings to mind the physical-world shop. bop.

While the Amazon buyout's old news, I wasn't familiar, and stopped in yesterday to ask if the brick and mortar store--on West Gorham, just off State--was tied to the website. Was told that the two entities are part of the same company (different merch buyers, though), which amazon had purchased over a year ago.

Which is swell. More madisonians should be getting paid off internet tendencies. And we all know that blogging is hustling backwards.

But what's the grace period? How long until that sign needs to be updated to "locally founded, globally juicy" or whatever the case may be?

Murs, "H.U.S.T.L.E."

Please buy this instead

On the diplomatic tip:
We don't think blowing up a thread that would eventually fall quietly off the front page of TDP was the wisest move. Seemed like it already had, by the time we fell asleep this early AM. But maybe we're just secretive like that: paranoid that those on whom we eavesdrop will eventually overhear us say something incriminating.

On the acquisitive tip:
For the acquisitive-minded media exec's consideration, here are some old Badger Herald revenue, via '04 and '06 forms 990, and the lovely folks at guidestar. A free account won't get you more than a year or two back, FYI. Not that we paid for additional access.

More to follow (maybe '06 and Daily Cardinal figures) w/ allowances for things like depreciation, "net profit and losses" at a non-profit.

While the Herald's commerce-minded staff might be more receptive to an imaginary buyout, we actually think the Cardinal's a better target. Will elaborate within the fiscal year.

Badger Herald '03 Revenue

• Advertising: $636,460
• Subscriptions: 572
• other investment income: 3919
• refunds: 4188
• soda machine: 1034
• donations: -100
• t-shirt sales: 152
• other: 60

'03 subtotal (may be other line items we are too lazy to look up at the moment):

• $646,285

Herald '05 Revenue

• Advertising: $704,481
• Subscriptions: $1041
• interest on savings and temporary cash investments: $2930
• other investment income: $4863
• t-shirt sales: $705
• soda machine: $1229
• gain or (loss) on disposal: (1092)
• other: $883

'05 subtotal:

• $715,040

As you can see, this publication operates on an entirely different paradigm from the "professional" dailies: all ads--and while those are still mostly inky, soda generates more revenue than subscriptions. It's almost like the internet!

Vote or Die... for your favorite local independent bookseller

While I'd planned to kick off an '07 voter pledge drive with another item, and the odds of anyone who doesn't already read Post seeing this are slim, here goes:

I'm running a wholly unscientific reader poll that seeks to highlight local independent booksellers. A full explanation appears in a post below the polling area. I'm posting this link again here, because the poll's been viewed 180 times to date, and only 4 votes have been logged. Probably because the poll is embedded in the madison.com forums and users need to log in to participate. While this procedure is more secure than the Cap Newspapers "Answer Book" voting, the instant gratification factor is a bit lacking.

I'm not going to beg people to register, but if you already have a forum username/password, please go log-in and...

• Vote here
• If a selection is missing, just post a comment in the same thread.

How can someone who slags off newspapers express affection for books? Isn't that an inconsistency on the non-interactive, dead-tree n' ink, issue? Well, I never learned how to properly read newspapers on public transit, and they're messy in bed. Books, not so much.

martyred articles

Too many feeds

Blog aggregation has been getting some local attention of late. Subtly, in LIB's invitation to the next Madison Blogger Roundup: "It doesn't matter if you're a politico, a foodie, a music critic, an aggregator, or a random muser." And more overtly, when Fearful Symmetries declared the local blog aggregators "virtually unusable"--citing dane101.net, madison miscellany, and Post as clogged with disparate dreck (my slanted paraphrase). The non-local (but neighborhoody!) omission, outside.in, employs a user-generated and geo-tagged model that would seem to resolve some of FS' criticisms. At the moment, though, outside.in seems to have too small a user base to be useful to the average reader: it's more a trickle-of-traffic phenomenon stat-counting bloggers observe, than anything else.

I actually emailed Shane Wealti, Dane101 tech guru, a couple weeks ago to ask about dane101.net:

I put together a post re: splicing feeds together using mysyndicaat (or similar). To put things in context, though, I figured I'd first ask about Dane101.net, since it's the only automated local aggregator I can think of.

That abortive post, more or less:
Ever since the great mixtape crackdown of '06, and some increased scrutiny over at the mother ship, I'd been trying to figure out a way to aggregate myself, i.e. combine my enthusiasm for sophomoric ranting, inside baseball, literature, and shitty radio-ripped mp3s. It's that last thing that presents the biggest hurdle. I can no longer get away with posting a Chops/Jay-Z remix of "Show Me What You Got" on madison.com servers, so that has to happen elsewhere. But I'd like to be able to point people to one location that consolidates all my posts, basically a friends and family mash-up, so those 5 people don't have to check 4 different blogs, or subscribe to 4 different feeds.

It was a half-hearted pursuit: every so often, I'd google "splicing together RSS feeds." Recently I came across MySyndicaat, a newsmastering tool which theoretically allows you to plug in multiple feed urls and end up with a happy monster feed. There are a bunch of potential applications for this. Theoretically, one could assemble a local music blog aggregator in 10 minutes.

I felt really clever for about 2 minutes, and then found out there were a bunch of other services that do similar things.

Also, MySyndicaat doesn't work as smoothly as hoped. There's a series of delays between posting, source feed generation, and the mashing. And editing posts seems to send the aggregated feed haywire. Not sure if that's a problem with the source feeds themselves, or the splicing process. Shane sort of addresses this below, but...

• This test feed will give you an idea of what I mean
  
• Here's a mash-up of Isthmus' articles, Daily Page "posts" and Madison Miscellany that seems to work just fine: link to the XML
  

On to the few questions I asked Shane. Basically, how was Dane101.net set up in the first place?

I'm assuming it's some sort of mash-up of the feeds for the included blogs. How long did it take to put that together? Was there a bunch of coding involved? (easily describable in laypeople's terms?)

SW: Dane101.net is based on the Drupal CMS which has a very good built-in aggregator. Basically you just enter the feed URL and give it a title.

There is some customization, and coding required though because a lot of sites output malformed RSS feeds and have other quirks. Some feeds are run through feedburner and other feed-converters before being input into Dane101.net to make them compatible.

What's the primary value of an automated aggregator like dane101.net?

SW: It provides a centralized place for bloggers and blog readers to go to find out what other people are writing about.

How (if it all) has your take on the above question evolved since the initial launch of dane101.net?

SW: I'm pretty much of the same opinion. We are working on some significant enhancements to Dane101.NET that will be introduced in the near future that I think you will be really impressed with and will make Dane101 a much more useful resource.

====

^{A recent Dane101 call for new contributors mentioned that they "are very interested in finding designers who may be interested in playing with us as we work on our redesign, work on some additional projects, and add more bells and whistles. Everyone loves bells and whistles."}

====

Addenda: I sent the email below [brackets added afterward] as a follow-up to Shane, hoping he'd reveal more about the bells and whistles.

"What's the primary value of an automated aggregator like dane101.net?
SW: It provides a centralized place for bloggers and blog readers to go to find out what other people are writing about."

I guess that was a dumb question--maybe I meant to get at something that distinguishes between dane101.net's automated process, and the editorial/curatorial element of something like madison miscellany, or outPost's sidebar links. As both of those theoretically provide that "centralized place," right?

Maybe I'm off the mark, but I think something automated, with [sifting and winnowing] tagging from an established user base like Dane101's--and hopefully growing beyond that--would render those [unilateral] "editorial" solutions obsolete. Especially if you maximized its portability--like provided code that local bloggers could use to embed a mini-version in their sidebars, like feedburner's headline animator, or something like that.

No new content

If twenty "new" posts appear in your reader sometime tonight, it's the result of some housecleaning, rather than an attributed-and-linked plagiarism binge. Proper new posts will appear tomorrow, but who knows how much we'll actually have written. On that note, we'd like to share Tony Legget's predictions for the new year, from the May 14th issue of the National Examiner:

I'm sorry to say I see a lot of small businesses going under later this year. On a more positive note, I see stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who starred in the hit TV show Seinfeld, being asked to host next year's Academy Awards.

Tomorrow's post will have nothing to do with Seinfeld, the Academy awards, or small businesses, but will have something to do with the clairvoyance above.

Eugene Mirman to telemarketer: 'Together you and I will destroy the gays'

Hastings just posted an email interview with comedian Eugene Mirman over @ Emcees Without Voices. That's a lazy Onion-quoting intro! Guess the stuff about google page rank manipulation is up our alley. In the clip below, Mirman conspires with a telemarketer selling sanctified long distance:


Mirman and "friends"... 9pm @ Montmartre, tomorrow night.

Does the clinic sell ads?

While Quantcast disclaims "we have sparse data about thedailypage.com, so these are rough estimates," threads chronicling the scourge of Daily Page forums' addiction give credence to the stats. (Like, say, 1% of users--the blue fiends who visit 30+/month, as seen on these here pie charts--accounting for 76% of visits.):

Chuck_Schick [apparently soon to depart]: 10,000 posts over 1999 days
jjoyce: 7,466 posts over 2212 days
Ned Flanders: 7,004 posts over 2155 days
Henry Vilas: 6,697 posts over 1707 days
Paco: 6,568 posts over 2101 days

Blunt: 5,931 posts
Daisy: 5,796 posts
white_rabbit: 5,652 posts
Prof. Wagstaff: 5,603 posts
jammybastard: 4,435 posts

We'll do a fun comparative post one of these days. Sparse data or no, the digital outpost of B-Money's Shepherd Express doesn't seem to have m/any addicts: only 21% of alleged visitors are "regulars" who frequent the site more than once a month.

Wide-brimmed hat tip re: Quantcast where due. Seems more illuminating, less dubiously sourced and extrapolated, than alexa [although we have no idea what we're talking about, technically speaking].

Ellen Foley covers the Pogues @ college commencement

Wisconsin State Journal editor and proto blogger Ellen Foley pulled out all the digital stops to capture her recent commencement address at UW-Richland:

And I'll offer you one bit of final wisdom that is the secret to success.... To help you remember this, I'm going to use one of those multimedia tools that you are so crazy about. I'm going to sing a song for you. A singing editor. This should be memorable.

Such moxie! Check the advice she crooned--lyrics below.

Seen the carnival at Rome
Had the women I had the booze
All I can remember now
Is little kids without no shoes
So I saw that train
And I got on it
With a heartful of hate
And a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on the sunnyside of the street

Stepped over bodies in Bombay
Tried to make it to the U.S.A.
Ended up in Nepal
Up on the roof with nothing at all
And I knew that day
I was going to stay
Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street

Been in a palace, been in a jail
I just don't want to be reborn a snail
Just want to spend eternity
Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street

As my mother wept it was then I swore
To take my life as I would a whore
I know I'm better than before
I will not be reconstructed
Just wanna stay right here
On the sunnyside of the street

• Original State Journal slide show.
• The Pogues, "The Sunny Side of the Street" [mp3, zshare-d]

Anatomy of a rewrite: scribbling over the Wisconsin State Journal's Delavan mass murder mashup

The Capital Times' and State Journal's coverage of the mass murder in Delavan, WI has been pwned by that of the Janesville Gazette and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel--not to mention the hometown paper's. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but from Sunday on, there were so many flavors of AP wire copy on madison.com. Which to choose?

The previous link, with video ported from an ABC affliate in Milwaukee? The Cap Times' straight-up, byline-free (but with video!) AP piece? Or perhaps the State Journal's potpourri production? The WSJ included chunks of the TCT's AP copy, but acknowledged that...

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Greg J. Borowski and John Diedrich, Associated Press reporters Scott Bauer and Mark Carlson and Chicago Tribune reporter Lisa Black contributed to this story.

That's a lot of cut-and-paste action! A better read than this SEO mockery, though. So it seems that AP copy, the Tribune's "6 shot to death in Wisconsin" and the Journal Sentinel's "6 killed in Delavan home" have been spliced into the Frankenstein of tragic reportage below.

^{Key to scribblings by our guest critic:
Trib=Chicago Tribune, JS=Journal Sentinel, AP=Associated Press
Breakdown initially conducted with print-out of WSJ piece, by matching direct "quotes" (attributed to actual people) with their original articles. Give it a whirl, he probably missed something.}

[click to enlarge]

[Those last JS, and "JS phrasing resequenced" references may be inaccurate. They don't appear exclusive to JS, as they also appear in this unedited AP story pumped into the WSJ forums. Blame Cy.]

It's almost as if there was a WSJ reporter on the scene!

Holler at a Capital Times print redesign

From the Cap Newspapers job listings (emph. added):

VISUAL EDITOR-The Capital Times, Madison

The Capital Times of Madison, Wis., seeks a manager to oversee all elements of visual journalism in print and, increasingly, online. This editor will be responsible for optimizing the impact of our visual journalism in all forms – working with a pending print redesign, ensuring timely and effective informational graphics and maps, achieving an exceptional photo report, and improving the quality of our overall visual journalism. Just as importantly, this editor will be a key leader in our aggressive move to the Internet by helping ensure our site is as engaging and navigable as possible and by helping us embrace the best multimedia tools. This editor will manage the graphics and photo staffs and effective management skills are essential. A bachelor’s degree in graphic design or communications preferred.

Applications will be accepted through June 24, 2007.

Maybe that's already taken place? We don't really read the print edition.

Bob Arctor redesigns 'the' Post

So many SICS:

Make it a pulp magazine, like the Nation, or TV inserts. Capitol Newspapers has the resources to do this. The copies would have a much larger pass-along readership. The Post would become a new and unique critter in the local racks.

That size is held closer to read and the type could be in 9 point with denser columns. Think Maximum Rock n Roll.

Not the worst idea we've heard, but you'd think a veteran gonzo journalist like Bob would realize it's about allocation, rather than raw resources. "Capitol" Newspapers Lee Enterprises has the resources to buy itself a reputable student newspaper, should it so desire [prickly non-profit corp status notwithstanding]. We'll make the case for that next week.

Not the sound of three hands clapping

So maybe we said that last thing.

Madison's foremost well-heeled young socialist enjoyed a piece in Post's print edition

Hastings Cameron* writes:

This afternoon, I ran into Ashok Kumar, who immediately asked about Post. Having spent much of the afternoon considering matters blog, I awkwardly demurred, but not before Kumar shared that he'd enjoyed Jessie Bluejay's Half Nelson takedown--brought to his attention by blog-to-print syndication, unnaturally.

* OMG, we've been outed! What gave it away? The not particularly pseudonymous debut post, the cross-blog self-referentiality and uniform tone juvenilia?

By the way, Layer Cake is Scarface for the Web 2.0 rapper.

Download: Kano, "Layer Cake" [right-click, save-as]

What is missing from this picture?

This was infinitely cheaper, safer, than the last time we tilt-a-whirled in search of lucite. Nonetheless, another frustrating trip to Visions, inspired by our favorite ironical stripper-obsessed artist.

Also, she now pimps her wares via Gawker's hipster charity division! Go buy something.

'If you want the answer to that question, you're going to have to ask my mom'

Evan O'Dorney's spellbound press tour:

Homeschooling is a crime. [via Gawker]

UPDATE: Apparently, Ann Althouse was a big fan.

Jade Mountain Bead Closing

The lede of a recent Isthmus article re: Johnson street small businesses has proven unfortunately prophetic:

Ramsey Finger worries that his store, Jade Mountain Bead and Jewelry, located on the 800 block of East Johnson Street, will be the next shop in that artsy retail district to hang a “For Rent” sign in the window.

Pedestrians passing by 823 East Johnson will see Store Closing Sale signs advertising 10% off all inventory. We called to confirm, and were told that there are no plans to relocate. The store will probably remain open until the end of July. The adjacent storefront, and former home of Circa Vintage, remains available for rent.

The store's site is here.

'Post's redesign should've...

...been more like this. What the first commenter said. Though I don't know how Mr. Astuteo feels about cats, or hip-hop.'

--Submitted by madison.com correspondent Hastings Cameron, who is not bitter that his writing did not appear in print this go-round. He hasn't written anything for EONS.

overheard in madison: actually milwaukee--headgear exception

"I'm like: how'm i supposed to bang hot chicks with this huge ass elbow?"

--sent in by real Bohemian blood.

rBb overheard the above, "at a bar in milwaukee called the riverhorse. the dude was wearing a uw hat. he was also kind of fat. if i were that fat, i wouldn't be worried about my big ass elbow."

overheard in madison: Poppycock n' Bull

Weary Traveler manager(?) guy:

[That particular wine was] very mineral-y--very good. That's a company that I don't do business with anymore. They canned our good friend, who was their salesman--so I canned them.

Got something for you to try though.

[mixes drink]

Vodka and bull's blood... They pasteurize it first.

===

Sent in by Hastings, who's too groggy to pretend he recorded that perfectly. He did follow up, though...

H: Just out curiosity, what was the drink you made that guy?

WTMG: The one I said was bull's blood? That was puréed watermelon....

Shop @ MoCo, you big Mo!

Since we noticed they recently had the misfortune of their Google Ads circulating here, we're taking a moment to suggest that you patronize Modern Convenience--aka MoCo--Market.

Also, feel free to click liberally on the other ads. We'd like to buy a condo and get a house account there. 7-11 for rich people foodies! Sushi!

But does it come from Moonies? No George Herbert Walker.

overheard in madison: not in the sense of having a ____ or a _____?

Could you play something that's not so disrespectful to women?

--male "dancer" to female DJ @ Bassett Street house party, Saturday, 6/2

The song was relayed to us as being one of those that recommends ass-shaking. Perhaps using the subjunctive. After careful deliberation, we conclude it must've been Booty Bass' "Shake That Ass Bitch."

Maybe he was ashamed he couldn't get down like this:

madison.com/post reader complaint: sexist babble!

We think Jess Blais is the greatest addition to The Post since Uncle Jimbo fled to a fortified compound on South Park street. Blais' Post-presence, Antenna of Babel, is the first exception to a long-held conviction that verbatim blog-to-blog syndication for non-PSA A&E content is... retarded.* There are these things called links and excerpts... but more on that another day. Blais has regularly posted material that would enrich the lives (gustatory, cinematic, sexual?) of readers too cowardly to follow links away from madison.com.

However, just as we were firing up this laudatory post, we received an email from a feverish reader.

In response to Blais' most recent post, re: hello kitty Barbie:

I work as a counselor at a college-prep and haberdashery camp for precocious couturiers. We encourage our charges to research global "culture" each morning, the better to find unusual fabrics to appropriate for their final project--Tux-athon '07. The camp's both a diverse and permissive place. We consider all manner of sexually-charged, drug-laced imagery a necessary component of the campers' education. We actively encourage miscegenation. They are too young for us to worry over amorous bundles conceived by consenting clothiers.

We draw the line, however, at sexism. All genders should be equally exploited and ridiculed via injection-molded plastic. I just spent the lunch hour talking a budding Orientalist down from seppuku by pinking shears. The boy read Jess Blais' most recent post on madison.com, regarding a Hello Kitty Barbie.

At first blush, he was overjoyed, giddy, in stitches! Here was the riff his projected needed, his and hers digi-tuxes, with a companion line tailored to Mattel physiques--Big and Tall cuts for obese plush toys somewhere down the line?

But there was no mention of a Hello Kitty Ken. The boy's dream is crushed. He simply cannot envision a gender-neutral tux. Would you ask someone to design his and hers dresses around a male (albeit crotchless) model?

Please talk some sense into Blais. At the very least, she should remove the post until investigating further. Or whenever she can provide concrete details regarding Ken's outfit.

regards,
Alfonse Charcuterie, American Collegiate Adventures

*conceptually blocked, of course.

sipping MADMILK

Did last week's Savage Love unilaterally restore Wisconsin's claim to Dairyland supremacy? California may have surpassed our fair state in sheer volume of mucus pumped yearly, but surely the per capita tally on dairy-centric kink swings midwesterly?

My wife and I have discovered a wonderful new kink. Through time and practice at suckling/pumping/Marmet Technique, we began to get her to lactate. We now have an Adult Breastfeeding Relationship (ABR).

I'm a dom and she's a switch in our part-time BDSM relationship. So our ABR not only includes loving moments of me nursing, but also me "forcing" her to lactate via a specialized spanking bench I constructed with attached breast pumps. (I'm the evil doctor when I strap her into this vile contraption.) ABR is ideal for medical-fetish scenes, animalization play, or adult-baby scenarios. But an ABR is a serious undertaking. Once the milk comes in, you have to avoid engorgement. There's no "I'm mad at you, so I'm not going to nurse tonight."
--Madison Active Dom Madly Into Lactation Knowledge

Don't even try to pretend that the Madison in question wouldn't be bound found in Dane County. MAD acronym prefixes are the province of over-enthused residents of such. Or advice columnist spoofers. [UPDATE: It's national dairy month! Coincidence?]

As for the column's presentation...

Before the inevitable trip to wikipedia, we puzzled over spanking bench design. The Onion AV Club's visual aid wasn't particularly helpful:

Drawn by Madisonian (still?) Misako Takashima, the graphic omits any bench-like contraption.

Savage Love is widely syndicated, but for certain obvious reasons we regard the Stranger and Onion as its most natural "homes." We hadn't considered that there'd be much differentiation between the two, beyond edits* mandated by scarcity of space in the respective print editions, but...

"For years, Stranger art director Joe Newton has softened the shock of Savage Love with his always-adorable, frequently filthy drawings of kitties and bunnies."

[via unrelated charticle]

OK, Newton's pic was equally seatless, but titillated enough that a future post will study every filthy-cute cartoon associated with the column's syndication. We assume there are others, but some cheap rags seem to run it text-only.

^{* Savage's strangelove response: "Thanks for sharing, MADMILK." The corresponding sentence in the Onion: "Thanks for sharing, MADMILK—and thanks for the mental images that only a month's worth of heavy drinking will be able to erase."}

overheard in madison: Socializing in a box

Presumed ex-band member: The Box Social is having the release party for the album I helped write. I'm going--pick up my free cd.

Friend:...

PEBM: I'm in the liner notes.

Overheard in Espresso Royale's State Street patio. The Box Social play the Annex tonight @ 8:30pm (w/The Readiness, Mike Droho, Apparently Nothing). PEBM is going home to take a nap beforehand.

Will Self, prescient British novelist, foremost Junky explicator: shitty writing metastatized into shitty blogging

There was a ratio of hacks to non-hacks in the bar at this time of about one to one. And these weren't principled journalists, or hardened reporters, oh no. No one eased his leaning position at the bar in order to relieve the pressure on the shrapnel wound he'd caught covering the Balkan crisis. Nor did anyone huddle in a corner earnestly discussing her view of the Neo-Keynesian implications of the Treasury's management of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement. Not a bit of it.

The hacks who frequented the Sealink, yakking in the bar, gobbling in the restaurant, goggling in the television room, wobbling in the table-football room, and snorting in the toilets, occupied a quite different position in the cultural food chain. They were transmitters of trivia, broadcasters of banality, and disseminators of drek. They wrote articles about articles, made television programmes about television programmes, and commented on what others had said. They trafficked in the glibbest, slightest, most ephemeral cultural reflexivity, enacting a dialogue between society and its conscience that had all the resonance of a foil individual pie dish smitten with a paperclip.

--Will Self, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis [emph. added]

Bonus commentary on the blogosphere, via J.G. Ballard and Damien Hirst:

The Blastosphere is the implicit shape of the way matter is perturbed by an explosion. It is atemporal: it may just as well precede the fact of the explosion as follow from it. We are all waiting in the Hirst Blastosphere, and as such it is inevitable that events, dialogue, thoughts even, should reflect the Hirst anti-aesthetic--a quotidian elision between the surreal and the banal.

--Will Self, "Damien Hirst: A Steady Iron-Hard Jet"
as collected in Junk Mail. First published in Modern Painters