complaining about my coverage of WikipediaGate, it probably represented several of my readers. so for those of you who would rather not hear about the latest, may i recommend that you go over to LAist and check out some Gogol Bordello videos, of which I posted four today in celebration of their show tonight at the Palladium.

two interesting things have gone down since i last wrote about the issue. the first is the reason that im writing to you about this today, and it is the claim from a user that I originally posted the entry myself, and thus in some bizarre logic it doesn’t deserve to be on Wikipedia.

such logic would conclude that if Kurt Cobain was the first person to post the entry about himself on Wikipedia then to punish him Wikipedia would never have an entry about the leader of grunge.

I bring up my favorite guitarist because one way that I can prove that I was not the author of the original entry about myself on the controversial site is from the sentence that describes my novella “Stiff”.

He has published much other material online including photo essays, podcasts, and photos. He has completed several books via cafe press including How to Blog in which he discloses some of his blogging secrets, and Stiff, a novella in which he travels to hell, to meet Kurt Cobain.

The very first sentence of my most favorite story that I’ve ever written, “Stiff”, is “i knew i was in trouble when i saw kurt cobain waiting for me at the front door.”

although i am flattered by whoever is “Shaky Bear”, the person who put me on Wikipedia, that person has a poor recollection of Stiff because as you can see from the opening sentence, Kurt Cobain came to Earth to meet ME.

this should be evidence enough to the user “cacophony” who, in his attempt to be a modern day Sherlock Holmes, accused me, in all caps, so pardon the shouting as I quote him, “I can only conclude that THIS ARTICLE WAS CREATED BY NONE OTHER THAN TONY PIERCE HIMSELF, AND IS THUS DIRECTLY IN VIOLATION OF WP:Vanity”.

yes i know that arguments on the internets are the lamest forms of lameness imaginable and blogging about arguments on said internets are even worse but when i went to his userpage to give him these telling facts (among others, to follow) he said something to the effect of “hey how do i even know this is tony pierce?” (because so many people pretend to be me? because im just that freaking notable?), so i told the distinguished gentleman that i would post these arguments on this blog.

exhibit 2. The original entry says of me “He has also been known to converse with such celebrities as Howard Stern, and Matthew Good.” Although it’s true that I have a friendly relationship with the Canadian rock star and will hopefully visit him in Vancity this winter, I have never had the pleasure of meeting the King of All media, nor have I ever had a conversation with him.

Most readers of the busblog know that I spent four-plus years at E! Entertainment and I was lucky enough to meet Stern Executive Producer Robin Radzinsky as well as intern-turned-producer Mike Gange, as well as getting to work occassionally though very rarely with LA-based post-production producers at the E! HQ since I had to schedule time for them to go into the Paintbox room to mosaic-out the nipples when ladies would get topless/naked, I never got to talk to The Man himself.

And if I had, I would have written about it on the busblog. Of course. I have 153 mentions of “Howard Stern” over five years on this blog. I am a huge fan. Huge. I bought Sirius weeks before he switched over and I listen on average of 4 hours a day. Those things could make someone believe that I have something of a relationship with him, but I don’t. I’m a fan. not a superfan like some, but a serious fan. But please click the link above and show the time that I got to interview him, I am intrigued the questions that I asked him, for example, “why don’t you ever give props to Steve Dahl who was in Detroit a year before you were, and whose style you clearly patterned yourself after which lead to your success in Detroit and then later in DC and NY?

And lastly, back to the original post by Shaky Bear writing about my blooks “He has completed several books via cafe press including How to Blog…”

This one is trickier so you’ll have to stay with me on this one. I used to work at a company called PeopleSupport. During the dotcom days companies sprouted up where they mushed their names together… (LiveJournal, etc). Any reader of the busblog knows that my spelling and grammar is totally lacking mostly because i dont care and also because im lazy and also because i wrote stoned a lot, etc.

The correct way to spell CafePress is just like LiveJournal and PeopleSupport, you mush em together. If I were to write a definitive entry about myself and my very favorable relationship with the selfpublishers, I would definitely have spelled their name properly, the way I did 86 times on this blog. Have I separated the words ever on this blog? of course, i can get lazy and two shift keys are not enough. how many times have i done that? 9 times. was the 10th time when i allegedly posted an entry about myself on Wikipedia? doubt it.

And here’s one bonus one. Shaky Bear wrote: “He is patriotic but politically critical, while at the same time charismatic and quite the ladies man.”

First of all, the ladies dont really like it if you call YOURSELF a “ladies man”, nor do i think i am one, nor do i think i ever was one. i believe i like the ladies just as much as the next guy and i think i have had just as much luck with them as any normal man who does what it takes to get women to make out with them: ask nicely.

but the telling point are the words “politically critical”. first of all, in my mind you are not patriotic UNLESS you are critical of those who work for you: the government. being patriotic and being “politically critical” and not mutually exculsive, indeed they go hand-in-hand. and furthermore if you put “politically critical” in my search box you will get Zero results.

i am not a blogger who writes specifically about politics, but I do my fair share. and i certainly did during the year leading up to the 2004 election. in five years i have written 4376 posts, not little baby one-sentence posts like our boy the Instapundit, but indepth masterpieces like this. anyone who believes that i wrote that original entry about myself and used the phrase “politically critical” for the first time on the entry on Wikipedia and never again is, i hate to say it, an idiot.

when i brought these facts to my accuser he wrote this:

To be perfectly honest, nothing you’ve said has convinced me, despite the overwhelming evidence, that you did not, in fact, create your own article. While you may or may not have done so, my comment on the AfD will remain so other users can draw their own conclusions from the evidence.

clearly cacophony is living up to his name and believes that people are guilty until proven innocent and believe that the way to hold intelligent debate is to ALL CAPS WILD ACCUSATIONS and then underline them, and then keep those accusations up there even when proven wrong.

welcome to wikipedia.

the second thing that is fascinating is the fact that there is a user named timecop who we discussed before, who linked to an old resume of mine and said, despite having nothing to do with the debate at hand typed, “Self-proclaimed ‘blogfather’, never held a job for more than a year…” when the proof that i have held a job for more than a year is right there in the 2000 resume.

whats fascinating is when I mentioned it in his user “talk” page he asked me not to talk to him in his talk page, and when I wrote about it in the Moderators page saying its libelous to write something in a public place that you know is a lie for the sole purpose to defame someone. Actions taken by timecop and the Moderators: nothing.

Libel is ok in wikipedia?

the problem with all of this is it was linked from Digg, meaning that defamatory statement could effect my future earnings, meaning if i was the type of person who sued huge sites like Wikipedia, and since all edits on the pages are public, and since i have asked repeatedly to more than a few people on Wikipedia, through timestamped wikipedia messages to please take down the libelous statements that are disproved in the resume, i am closer to owning Wikipedia than ever before.

and if the jury does grant me that type of award i will rename it to Timecopedia since that’s what the current mods and users pretty much are supporting.

in nicer news, today is raspil’s 22nd birthday + she designed Lick beautifully