i never knew how popular i was until a few tried to prove how unpopular and non-notable i am

the latest test that someone had was to show that i got just as many Google hits as many of the Looney Tunes characters except for Buggs who has 1.2 million and a few others.

(Yosemite Sam has 307,000 Google hits. Tweety Bird has 449,000 Google hits. Elmer Fudd has 430,000)

to disprove that theory someone said oh theres the actor and the soccer coach and they get way more than the dumb blogger

so i went to Google and i put this in there

im sleepy right now cuz i have to go to the Disney Animal park tomorrow early in the morn, but that looks like weeding out most of the other “major” tony pierce’s including the actor the baseball player the Microsoft software dude and several other fellas

i still have pretty close to a half million Google hits.

color me impressed

i know i have some haters out there, do me a favor if you will and put together a better link than the one above so i can see what the number really is

im sure its closer to 400k no way are more people talking about me than yosemite sam.

and im sure you dont want me to spend my vacation with a big head

by the way, its fascinating to me how many of the so-called tough guys over there causing trouble totally shut up when they get called out and enter a discussion of logic

one reason i love Metafilter is if youre full of shit you get called on it and trounced by the group.

you have to base your allegations on facts, you have to link to your theories in some way and no one is afraid of anyone.

at Wikipedia people can waltz into a vote/discussion/witch hunt and say the most outrageous things as if they were facts and people will just let it slide.

one dude posted that I was listed on Google a ton and another guy said to remove ‘blog’ from your search results and “Most results seem to be for ASU coach Tony Pierce”. now what idiot would remove the word “blog” from a discussion about a blogger and whether or not he’s notable?

likewise when challenged about whether or not i have been quoted in major newspaper a guy said

“A quick search of the Dow Jones/Reuters Factiva service shows Pierce has been the subject of articles from the New York Times (27 May 2004) (followed by an echo to the Times-owned Int’l Herald Tribune on 29 May); Reuters (10 July 2004); Straits Times (Singapore) (5 March 2006); Reforma (Mexico City) (2 April 2006); EL PAIS (Madrid) (20 April 2006); Los Angeles Times (16 October 2003, 27 Feb 2003, 12 July 2004, others); Le Monde (25 June 2005); and others”

a differnet guy basically yawned and said “In terms of references, all I’ve seen are passing mentions in articles about blogging, or short interview blurbs used alongside many others. Is there anything specifically about this person?

Hi, im a blogger. its the only reason i was in wikipedia in the first place and the only reason i will ever be in there. if i find the cure for cancer the headline will be Blogger Discovers Cure for Cancer. so OF COURSE the articles are going to be in reference to blogging. and now since my Job is to blog, other than my amazing skills at chowing box, there really arent any other reasons for a newspaper to write about me. pardon me for being committed to the field that i am possibly notable about.

by the way, i do plan on obsessing over this as long as the debate rages on, so if you are getting bored by all of this, feel free to take a short break from the busblog. before all of this i was a big fan of Wikipedia, but now that the curtain has been pulled back, showing the wizard(s), it’s actually really depressing and disappointing and it makes me wonder how Wikipedia’s final product is actually as good as it is.

i know some of you dont believe that it’s good, but for someone who does an hour or more of research for many posts that i write, Wikipedia is either a great place to start or a great place to cross reference for factchecking. also, as far as the writing goes, often times its quite good and concise. unlike your boy who needs to hit the hay.

nite yall

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

because we can see both sides very well. all i know is i am a good editor for LAist because all i think about is the web and blogging and all i want to do is write and edit and make things better. when people try to accuse me of not having a life i want to say, as long as theres an internet connection, i have a life.

im here in orlando florida secretly advising the cubs during the winter meetings. i come back to the hilton resort that me my mom my sister my brother in law and their two kids are staying in and they want to hang out with me and i say, im sorry i have to now work on LAist and they say but youve been on the computer all day and im like, yes but not for LAist.

ever since i began seriously blogging it has always felt like there are not enough hours in the day. it always seems like its 5:44am and i havent been to sleep yet. btw its 544am and i havent been to sleep yet. i have the day off tomorrow with the cubs which means i can go to Disney’s Animal Park tomorrow with my family (who wants to be there at 8am) because im so far from sleepy right now, but i wont because theres always more work to be done for LAist. always. in a good way.

my mom reminded me that i do have a life outside of the web, she reminded me today that i did travel the country in october, in a shitty car, and i kissed pretty girls and interviewed people and saw cool things. she reminded me that i do hang out with my friends, friends ive had for a ridiculous amount of time. and that ive had some pretty sweet jobs over the years including being an undercover superhero for the xbi.

but what my mother doesnt realize or want to believe is i would much rather be blogging. in the woods. alone. life is what happens to me when people yank me away from the computer. sleep is what happens when the sun has been up for a half hour and the cover of darkness taps out.

i could live so easily in a small apartment near a chinese restaurant in silence as long as the apartment had high speed internet. i know i dream of owning a house, but what would i need that for?

i arrived in orlando a day early and i sat at the beach with the kids and they are little (4 and 1.5) so they were throwing sand and i felt like such a jerk because i had my laptop on my bare legs and i was all easy kids, dont get that sand on my laptop. but what on earth am i doing with a laptop by water and sand?!

my sister cooked wonderful steak and as soon as i digest it im back on the computer.

theres something very wrong with me.

there are several stories in my head that i want to write about in LAist but i really have to go to sleep since its 6 and now i feel like i should get up at 8 and be a good son. but here are the stories incase i forget

i need to list all the new cds that came out yesterday like gwen stefanis

i need to write about the dude who was caught videotaping new movies or soon-to-be released movies and got 7 years in the slam because he was caught with a fake social security card and he threatened peoples lives, etc

i need to write about the Mere Mortals who’s singer Axel used to live in my apartment for a summer who are #4 on the new band record chart thing despite being unsigned. therefore theyre like the hottest unsigned band in LA

i need to write about this 120 year old woman who says she is that old because she smokes weed every day

and i need to write about how local Florida news should be nationally syndicated because more fucked up shit goes down here than anywhere in the world, its just not a joke on Countdown or Love lines, theres something in the water because people are psycho here.

but the weathers nice.

so they tell me.

I have weighed in at Wikipedia with my “delete” vote (although it isn’t a vote). I have no agenda. I’m not a member of the GNAA or, in fact, any other group. I saw your post on MeFi before it was deleted and agreed that you are, in an encyclopedic sense, non-notable, despite your niche popularity. My instinct is that there may be twenty or thirty notable bloggers: Kottke, Jardin, Wheaton, etc. I don’t think you’re one of them.

While this may have started as a trollish campaign, it has evolved into a serious discussion and will, I hope, serve as a benchmark for notability on Wikipedia.
tfg | 12.05.06 – 1:29 pm | #

tfg,

i appreciate your comment and your point of view. i have great respect for Wikipedia and appreciate the self-editing that happens there. of 54 million blogs i think that there are definitely more than 20-30 notable bloggers. whether i am one of those is an interesting debate that i wish i wasn’t part of because any argument that i have will come across as self-serving and biased. i wish it was about someone else who isnt in the Technorati Top 100, but like me, in the Technorati Top 500 and less of a no-brainer.

it’s the cases that aren’t slam-dunks that are of interest to me.

although i started the thread in Metafilter to have the MeFiers debate the practice of Wikipedia deleting lesser-known bands and non Top 20 bloggers, i felt that it would be disingenuous of me not to mention how i came across the article or what was happening to me.

As a member of MeFi since 9/2001 i thought i understood the rule of self-linking to only apply to link to ones blog or ones website, but clearly i was wrong.

i will have to politely disagree with you that the new discussion has turned into “a serious discussion” and i truly hope that it will not “serve as a benchmark for notability on Wikipedia” for several reasons

1. the entry is so incomplete that its tantamount to a strawman. the points that i raised in the original thread are nowhere in my current entry, the newspaper articles mentioned by someone else where i appear are nowhere in my current entry, nor is my ranking in Technorati or most of the other things that ive accomplished in blogging, including becoming a professional blogger.

2. both discussion threads include slams against me that are either unfair because they say things like “so what that he was on G4TV, if thats his only claim to fame then everyone who gets on tv should be here,” or totally irrelevant or untrue like “the self-professed Blogfather has never held a job for more than a year”. if your hope is like mine and you want a serious discussion about the entry about me the debate should be about things that are relevant: my blogging career, my achievements, what other major bloggers have said to me like Doc Searls calling me the best blogger ever, and all of the publications that have mentioned me in praise as a blogger – this year the LA Weekly for example had me as one of the most interesting 100 LA people, etc.

3. if you want a serious discussion, you cant have people like timecop as part of the process since he goes against the Wikipedia goal of Neutrality. anyone with an agenda to rid Wikipedia of entries about bloggers is clearly biased and although their opinions are interesting, they’re clearly not Neutral and shouldn’t be in the discussion.

4. to prevent new editors from the discussion or the subject himself is blatantly unfair, foolish and exclusionary. as is trying to use the fact that a blogger would *gasp* blog about it, against him.

my advice is to allow the subject to be part of the process in creating or editing the entry, and then debate on whether it stands up to the test. likewise, have a good test. clearly bloggers are a different animal than a journalist or a tv host. some of us are notable without having superhuge audiences simply because we’re not interested in doing the things necessary to get those types of audiences: writing about politics, showing boobies, intentionally trying to be controversial.

the fact that i have permalinks on far right sites like Instapundit, LGF, and Baldilocks as well as regular mentions on far left sites like Matthew Good’s ultra liberal site, as well as permalinks on gossip blogs like Don’t Link This and CityRags, as well as hundreds of “normal people blogs” is something that you don’t see on your typical Top 500 blog.

but if my blog and my blogging career is going to be judged on the few paragraphs currently on Wikipedia, an entry that im not invited to edit, is a strawman and an unfair test.

either way, the people who associate themselves with the GNAA cant be good for Wikipedia and their inclusion in this debate hurts Wikipedia far more than it hurts someone like me.

but once again, i appreciate the rational comment that you left and i appreciate your point of view on this matter.

which is one reason why i didnt come out with a book this year. poor tomdog has been doing such a great job with LAist and i havent given him his mp3s that id like for him to review because i couldnt get it together.

poor chris is saving the world in uganda and i havent been able to get her her mp3 cd player. i was gonna go to the post office last night but failed. was gonna go this morning but failed. then on my way to the airport there was a long line and then the airport post office on century was closed.

so here i am sitting in the Southwest Airlines A line with my little bag and my big box for her. its all addressed. but im gonna carry it to Orlando. if theres one thing that i miss about working at E! other than the hot babes roaming is the hiddent post office across the street from us.

this morning i had to wake up at 8am, which was a struggle because that has usually been my bedtime. but i did it and i cleaned up a little for the young lady who is going to stay at my place and i made a bunch of cds for chris and i packed and i showered and i oh shit i forgot to take out the trash. im the worst.

youd think that i could get these things together since i dont have an office that takes up my time, i dont have a commute to worry about, i dont have a boss asking me why i want to leave the office early. but no. im a loser.

got to the airport this morning and they had shut down the off ramp off the 105. so we had to drive all around the airport via the beach. so for once i tuned in AM 580 which is the airport radio station but of course its just a prerecorded bs station. tuned in the other AM stations but theyre clueless. why would any news or traffic stations “on the Ones” actually give a shit about LAX being on lock down on two of their major entrances?

the reason im doing this this weekend is because my mom knows i hate traveling over the holidays so we’re celebrating this week. and because she knows i hate the cold we’re going to be in florida. i cant imagine how shitty this place is going to be in the coming weeks. no thanks.

freaking gorgeous in LA today. almost too hot. love it. will miss it. last night i needed to start a fire in the fireplace though and the smoke wasnt going up the chimney so i had to open up the windows and put a blanket on. sorta defeated the plan.

ok so im online dating and i thought i had found a good girl because one of the questions that i ask is a multiple choice question.

Q. How romantic are you?

they dont have questions like “do you like it in the ass” or “spit or swallow”, so thats the closest that i can get to “are you a cold fish or are you a freaky cheerleader who gives roadhead?”

she passed up the pre-set answers and picked the write-in candidate and wrote “I like to both give and receive romance.”

nice.

so then it was her turn. this company gives you 30 things to choose from as “must haves” and 30 things to choose that are “can’t stand.”

normally i sorta ignore what the ladies put in those things cuz theyre so generic and obvious “i cant stand people with tempers” really? do people like people like that?

so she wrote “i cant stand people who watch or own porn”.

so close, so far away.

i havent been to sleep yet. we have to stop meeting like this.

but last night i hosted our LAist monthly drink meeting and i talked a lot about you, the busblog readers, and all that youve done for me over the years. a couple of the LAist fellas who i had never met before said that they read the busblog before meeting me and that was nice.

one guy turned out to be from Toronto and i said i had been to TO twice before and while explaining why i went there the first time (to see Matt Good in kitchner) he was all omg Matt Good is my favorite musician. i was all omg i’ll have to tell him that. and he was all omg you have his email address. and i was all omg.

we were in the valley.

the chimney sweep bar which is right next to this chicago hotdog place.

the chimney sweep has a jukebox thats connected to the interweb and when you make your selection it downloads the music and plays it instantly. therefore its capable of having tons of cds. therefore i played one replacements song after another. the jukebox charges fifty cents a song if it has to download it. therefore we spent a lot of money on the jukebox but we heard the pixies, nurvana, jesus and mary chain, dinosaur jr. you know all the songs from our youth.

i drove home and went to the grocery store and got some firewood cuz its been buttcold here. 39 degrees at night. i cussed out mother nature in a little aside on Laist yesterday. but for the next few days we should return to more normal winter temps of 70s.

i wouldnt know, though because im going to Orlando tomorrow to celebrate an early christmas with my mom and sister and brother in law and neice and nephew and hopefully meet Nay and this hooters girl and partake in the major league baseball winter meetings.

i want to persuade the cubs to invest in Barry Zito as opposed to Jason Schmidt.

although if somehow we stole Manny Ramirez when noone was looking that might be pretty rad. and if we did that we wouldnt need any pitchers. i could fucking pitch with my overhand knuckler and my quickpitch and my hit barry bonds in the fucking head pitch that ive mastered.

one of the fine ladies of LAist got a phone call when we were about to drink margueritas at the mexican place that we moved on to. it was her friend, her friends house just burned down. which in a weird way is perfect because i dont like leaving my house without having a housesitter. and now i have one.

see how things work out when you drink?

we celebrated the fact that last month LAist tripled the numbers of last year.

and we celebrated that one of the contributers wrote a novel during NAMO

and we celebrated the fact that Al Gore totally went crazy all over George Bush yesterday and you should read it, its on your favorite city blog

via the Instapundit, your boy