on the blog-o-sphere.

the good news is thousands and thousands of new readers might actually check this shit out and dozens might actually get what i’m up to.

the bad news is a couple hundred might not get it at all.

my new best friend, guffzilla, didnt get it, and its not his fault. but i would like to introduce myself to him and the rest of you good people out there who don’t understand my come-from and are interested.

in my opinoin there are two sorts of ways to attack bad writing: you can carpet bomb or you can surgically remove the virus.

me, i like to carpet bomb. i don’t care who gets hurt, i don’t care what happens to me, i don’t care how out of control it looks, i don’t care. i have a real job to get back to and be slightly better than mediocre at. here is one of the few places where i feel like i have the freedom to be completely mediocre.

apparently the Times feels the same about their Living section.

even though i now get tons of traffic, i still write the way i did when i got none: poorly.

do what got you the notoriety. thats one reason i keep doing the photo essays.

stick to what youre good at.

find your audience and write to them.

my audience might be varied, and i welcome everyone, but i write to girls who i want to date and girls who i sorta date and girls who i dont date any more.

they never ever ever tell me that i grammar bad, probably because they know that i do this from a flying car above Hollywood on a voice activated Palm Pilot while working for an underground renegade group of overpaid former federal agents called the xbi and i should pay more attention to that.

dont be suprised that i admit to my sloppiness or that i am sloppy, be suprised that im still so much better than so many of the writers you read in big time papers.

one guy im not better than is welch who wrote about the fucked up Times piece yesterday too. he’s a pro. he got into the details, he used Lexis-Nexus, he spelled everything right, he got all the facts together, he probably even had a buddy or two edit it for him.

i did just what i told you i would do: i spent 5 minutes (ok, i spent 10) and i spread my cheeks, and i let the LA Times have it.

i misspelled like crayz, i got my numbers wrong, i made mistakes, but i got the point across which ws: when the LA Times lets the interns write practice stories to test out the new software they shouldn’t let the slop get in the paper. my slop is in a blog. i get paid zilch for it. their slop is on newsprint. the Times gets paid zillions for it. huge difference.

could i spellcheck this mofo? sure. do i sometimes? yes. it all depends on how much time is left on my government mandated 15 minute break at work.

but to be honest with you, guff, and all the others out there who seriously care about details in a blog, i had no idea that I would be the most-linked writer about yesterday’s big topic.

i truly thought that the LA Times piece would bring out all the best writers in the blog-o-sphere for a massive gang thrash. instead you got me and welch and pretty much no one else.

wtf bros?

are we all so used to second-rate features of the Blogger phenomenon that we don’t expect anything decent from the mainstream press any more?

im not used to it.

i trust welch when he says that he writes about the glaring mistakes in his local paper because he thinks that it will help make them better.

i trust him that he’s sincere, but i disagree with him.

i think there are only two things that will help the LA Times: true competition, and/or my friends.

my friends would have turned my little 10 minute rant into something suitable for framing.

my friends would have said, “great start tony, but why don’t you walk around the block, pump yourself up and polish the edges so that guys like guff wont be distracted by the crust on the bread… and throw in a few more zingers.”

anyhow. i don’t know if this explained much. but come here if you want carpet bombing. i lie in here. i make shit up. im not one to be trusted when it comes to numbers. im here just like glow in the dark condoms:

for entertainment purposes only.

my poptart just popped, so i gotta go,

love,

tony

(#16 on blogdex today, warts and all)