Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Welcome, Massive Influx of New People

The bar graph of pageload activity on this blog for the last five days looks like four faint linoleum bubbles in a row standing next to a sequoia large enough to drive a car through. It's the inverse of Spud Webb in an NBA all-star lineup. It's a simile Dennis Miller would find himself incapable of making because he'd run out of hyphens.

I'm simultaneously very pleased while also grudgingly aware that that big traffic spike kinda reflects on all the preceding days of total obscurity in such a way as to make me look like a bit of a schmuck for all that solitary labor. It's things like this that remind me of a suggestion a friend made that I read one of those Dummies books on internet marketing, and it certainly seems like maybe he had a good point there. But any time I spent reading one of those Dummies books would only cut into my time doing anything other than reading them, so you can see the bind I'm in.

In any event, one of our other contributors made the bright observation that a few people in the sudden surge of new readers might be vaguely interested in other stuff we've done. So, since everyone seems to dig the politics+comedy stuff, I thought I'd offer a list of highlights of older political content from multiple contributors, from the last year or so, in the hope that some of you feel like sticking around.
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9/11 Is NOT a Joke — Rapper, artist and ladies man Flavor Flav takes time away from the set to remember what he was doing on that fateful day and chastise those who exploit and dishonor the fallen.

I'm Aborting Right Now — I literally cannot stop having abortions.

MLB Tonight: Glenn Beck Deconstructed — Baseball Experts Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan break down Glenn Beck's sports metaphors and explain why he's the grittiest, guttiest albino in the business.

Sotomayor Accused of Revealing Wu-Tang Secret — Uh...

"Poor People Can't Have Healthcare Because I Fear Dumb Shit" — The Mysterious Mr. Awesome totally destroys a bunch of worthless arguments from libertarian-keyword dispenser Megan McArdle.

Field of Schemes: A Glimpse at the Neocon Playbook — Deconstructing a risible piece from National Review's Andrew McCarthy about, of all things, the MLB All-Star Game.

"I'm Pretty Sure I Can Ace This Death Panel" — Sarah Palin's Sixth Child issues an impassioned plea to remain unborn.

Dollhouse and Joss Whedon's Commitment to Garbage — Despite having watched every hour of entertainment Joss Whedon has produced, a fan has to admit that he's basically the Kevin Smith of television: B-grade actors playing C-grade cardboard cutout people who deliver pastiche uptalking for self-referential internet males. Follow-up piece here.

Let's Make LolRands! — What "can you has" when you combine the funniest tardcats online with the greatest champion the Free Market and The Individual have ever known? A veritable Galt's Gulch of comedy that will make you check every one of your premises.

'The Forever War' and Dexter Filkins — A thorough and thoughtful evaluation of possibly the best piece of personal "war" memoir to emerge from the Iraq conflict. Relates the book in the context of George Packer's The Assassin's Gate, Rajiv Chandresekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City and Thomas Ricks' Fiasco, along with mini-reviews of those other books.

Okay, So Here's My Pitch — What do you get when you tie knives to babies' arms and put them in a cage (crib) until only one emerges? What happens when you get a chainsmoking English computer-animated duck to walk a newly rich midwestern galoot through the corridors of power? Only two of the best goddamned ideas for new TV shows since America's Next Top Ramen, that's what!

An Open Letter from Sheriff John Bunnell — The host of World's Wildest Police Videos makes an authoritative case for public-option healthcare.
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Hopefully those links are tantalizing inducement enough. Just don't read anything I didn't link. Everything else is literally fucking terrible.