Keating Five Scandal Needs More Deep Throat Action

Ah, but there is a drop below 10,000 in the Dow today. Segue from that into “the Obama campaign’s latest charges,” and you have yourself a segment.

At this point, it is just a battle to control the news cycle pre-debate. “Control” meaning “in between footage of Wall Street traders flinging themselves out of windows”.

This is the best that McCain has, it seems.

@nabisco: Jinx!

You called it, Rome Girl, that’s a snoozer of a video. And that Fed guy really needs to lose some weight, and that beard. They showed altogether too much footage of him distending his lower lip farther than humans should do.

I’m not sure how much impact this will really have, other than maybe generating a few shocked headlines: “OMFG, Obama says McCain likes making the economy worse.” Meh. I don’t think this hurts Obama in any way, but it probably doesn’t issue the killing-stroke we all might wish for.

I guess we’ll have to see how the public reacts.

@nabisco: Geez was appearing at my alma mater in a room that holds a thousand people on a campus with notoriously bad parking when he made the “liar” blast. Awesome advance work, GOP! It’s only advantage is that it’s five minutes from the Albuquerque airport so he could get in and out, assuming he doesn’t crash his plane. Btw, 70 (that’s seven-zero) people showed up for Geez surrogates speaking over the weekend at a place where Tha Eagle pulled in 9,500 two or three weeks ago.

@IanJ: Goddamn video would not play all the way through. Slow to buffer, so maybe a lot of people are watching it.

@redmanlaw: 530,291 views as of 5:20 Eastern.

(Update: Decent number for a newbie, but recent hit videos tally up 2 or 3 million views. Check back tomorrow.)

If I could view the vid, I’d have to say that this was just another Beep Beep from Barry Road Runner.

This forces Wil E. McCain to rummage thru the ACME catalog to find whatever flawed Rube Goldberg contraption he can pull out. I’m betting that he’s eying the N-Bomb Catapult with blowback fusing.

@ManchuCandidate: He needs one of these. Peruse the ACME catalog here!

@ManchuCandidate: Yup — the ripple effect may be more significant than the video itself.

McCain has already hauled out some folks to respond, and the responses are being fact-checked. Did you know that the ethics hearings were a Democratic hit job? They may have been, but until now McCain has claimed contrition — it’s part of his master come-to-Jeebus narrative, the origin story of the Straight Talk Express.

But as with anything in a campaign, it’s all about how it plays. We’ll see whether the story takes hold in an otherwise very busy day.

@nojo:
Of course, Barry just has to casually point out that the other four members of the FIVE were DEMRATS. Demrats persecuting Demrats and McCain. This is about the only good time where mentioning that the others in the FIVE were all Demrats and defuses any notion of persecution.

@drinkyclown:
COOOOL!

@ManchuCandidate: That’s actually the counterargument: the ethics committee needed a token Republican in the dock so the hearings wouldn’t look like a Demrat horrorshow for weeks.

Which, again, may well be true. But it’s not the angle McCain has been playing for seventeen years.

shocking and soporific at the same time.

if michael moore’s farenheit 9/11 did nothing the summer before the last election, what is this snooze fest supposed to do.
either there are really that many stupid people OR cast your gaze toward
DIEBOLD. that’s my where my Hope(tm) goes to die.

@nojo:
Yes, but all the documentation shows that McCain was right in the middle of it being the home senator for Keating. The other 4 weren’t in as deep (still pretty deep) as PG was.

Sort of OT but did you all see the most recent Bill Maher Show? The Woodward person (whose first name I forget) stated that he had it from an unimpeachable source that there was a reason for the drop in violence in Iraq and that it had nothing to do with Serge. There was another, secret, very secret, reason. That might have had to do with payoffs. Now. Shouldn’t someone be demanding an explanation? If the man has proof of treasonous activity shouldn’t he be compelled to say what he knows? He doesn’t have to name sources but isn’t it treason to conspire to hide this? And isn’t this exactly the same situation that made him a star? He divulged secret information given to him secretly without stating by whom. If this is true it is just about the biggest scandal of this scandalous administration.

I thought it was notable that the video didn’t even bother to name any of the other congressmen involved (or if it did, it passed by too quickly for me to catch/recall it).

@drinkyclown: Perhaps Geez should just take what left of his federal financing (“I’m a tax payer and I don’t approve his McCain’s raft of shit”) and buy just about everything in the ACME catalog.

@Lyndon LaDouche:
Actually, the US paid Sunni Militias to hunt down AQ operatives. This cut down on the violence as the Sunni didn’t kill Shias or Kurds.

@ManchuCandidate: And there you go — not merely the home senator, but very deep in the pocket.

Thus the ripple effect: McCain’s denials will generate further stories. He could have stuck with contrition and called it old news — “we all make mistakes, and I’ve learned my lesson” — but now he’s denying there was ever a problem.

Tomorrow night’s Daily Show montage will make that clear.

@Lyndon LaDouche: @ManchuCandidate: And from what I understand, the U.S. is about to turn off the financial spigot. If the Iraqi government doesn’t pick up the payroll, the Sunni Awakening will go back to sleep.

@ManchuCandidate: @nojo: Yes, I know that. Woody was suggesting that there was something else going on that was so super-secret it would only come to light years after we’re all dead and Caribou Barbie is lying in state, preserved forever in her youthful beauty in a glass coffin in the Hall of Great Republican Presidents on Washington’s Mall. Which is why I say he should be made to fess up what he knows.

@nojo: But the “Serge” worked, right?

@redmanlaw: Hopefully he’ll strap on some rocket skates and punch a neat, McCain-shaped hole in a nearby rock wall.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Ah. Well, if Woodward’s hinting at it, Sy’s on it. We’re about due for another Hershtacular.

@Lyndon LaDouche:

Woodward is an old journalist, and therefore beneath the notice of our politicians, even when what he reports could help in the election of the unicorn immensely. This is the guy that broke Watergate, remember? It’s like Helen Thomas, kinda…never gets called on because she is the shit and and asks real questions, but does she get any love from the left? No indeed.

As for getting him to spill a secret, he was able to keep Deep Throat’s identity mum for 30 years, and that it was only after Mark Felt came forward that Woodward was able to confirm the identity of his informant. So I have a feeling that whatever secret Woodward got from the Bush White House is in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, to borrow a phrase….

i’m getting the vapors from bob woodward not being a household name.
and being too elderly to be noticed.

@baked: Well, what has Woodward done the past thirty years besides crank out after-the-fact doorstops? At least Sy Hersh gets news out while it’s still relevant.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Precious. You’re none of you comprending. Woody says he has info that Bush has made some kind of super-secret deal to make Serge work. (Serge, darling, just up there to the right.. yes, and press… ooh…) Some kind of deal that has never before been disclosed. This is bigger than Watergate. This is bigger than DOJ gate. Though it’s not bigger than Patty LuPone in Gypsy.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Yes, but Woodward gets all his info on background that he can’t release until his doorstop is published next year — there was some flap about that with the Post awhile back. That’s the trade-off for “access”: silence.

Bob Woodward hasn’t broken any news for thirty years. All he does is withhold it. Izzy Stone warned us about his kind.

@Lyndon LaDouche:
I’d have to agree with your third point… but I still think the American psyche just can’t deal with anyone over sixty, Lumpy McCain notwithstanding. Granted, it is a huge deal, and you are right that it probably would heap more shame on the current White House (and possibly put a stake through PG’s heat at last) but as it comes from the mouth of an oldster it falls on deaf ears. That is the American way.

@nojo: Oops, make that 134,589 views for the long video. I was counting the trailer hits…

@Lyndon LaDouche:
Okay. My faulty assumption.

@baked: Factoid: I was in a meeting today where nobody could either come up with the name of the voting machine company, nor prounce Diebold.

Scary detail: the meeting was with some fairly senior gubmint folks in a still-dicey battleground state. Yikes!

@nabisco: Bruce Willis has a new movie?

@nabisco: @nojo: I prefer DIE-bold, like “Die Hard.” The German way doesn’t work for me, as in die Schadenfreudlicheweltanschauungsbetriebsehrlichkeit.

@rptrcub: As a freeborn American, it’s my God-given right to domesticate pronunciation as I see fit. I used to enjoy irritating the hell out of a friend every time I ordered a croissant.

@rptrcub: 23 skidoo!

Hey, I started a food porn blog, I am a blogger! Yay, so hip am I. But I don’t know the URL. Much of whats on it now you’ve all seen, but soon it will be a breathtaking work of heartbreaking beauty. You betcha.

Okay, I found it, gotta change the name, though, there a a trillion places called “de gustibus.”

http://disputandem.blogspot.com/

@Promnight: Congrats, darling!! ANd it’s soooo yummy. Hmmmm, wonder if Mr Cyn has dinner ready yet…

Have you seen who Treasury is putting in charge of all that bailout money? This cannot be good…Superman, where are you now?

@Mistress Cynica: Goldman Sachs is taking over america. A wunderkind? Or is willingness to follow orders his greatest resume item?

@Promnight: I have bookmarked your blog to my top shelf bookmark category “critters and clouds,” which I may have to rename now that disputandem.blogspot.com is among them. (Political blogs are in plain old “blogs.”) Maybe “critters, clouds, and creations” or “critters, clouds, and culinary porn.” Three cheers for Disputandem and its author!

@lynnlightfoot: thank you, I will try to make it worthwhile. My next post is going to be “Imported Prosciutto de Parma for $3.99 a pound.”

This deserves a blog post with pictures of the players. I read today that the CEO of Lehman Brothers, Fuld, after announcing the bankruptcy, went on down to the executive gym and started working out on a treadmill, and another Lehman exec, a low level guy, walked over and cold-clocked him, punched him square in the face and knocked him out. He he he he.

Now, you got to see a picture of this Fuld, he’s machofratdickbagstockbrokerasshole deluxe, when you look at that face, its so so so delightful to picture someone smashing it oout of the blue and laying him out.

But then you have to look at a pic of the bagman, oops, I mean the asshat just appointed to oversee the distribution of the proceeds of the robbery, oops, I mean the “rescue plan.”

Once you see his face, you just know, we have to find the guy who punched out Fuld, and give him everything we all own, take out home equity loans and borrow to give him more, sell our children into slavery, to get him to lay out this douchenozzle.

This post will mean nothing without the visuals.

@Promnight: Where did you read about Fuld getting punched? (I saw a bit of his testimony today, and I’m delighted to hear that his ugly mug was made to suffer.) Can you give us a link? Failing that, a clue?

@lynnlightfoot: http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081006150152.aspx

@Promnight: muchas gracias.

Of course, since Fuld is a perfect prick, he will already have filed charges against the guy. That’s probably how we’ll discover what his name is. Let’s make sure we contribute to his legal defense fund.

@Promnight:
Heh.

@lynnlightfoot:
That depends if Fuld recognizes him. The higher ups are so elevated that they act like we workers are mere pond scum in the golden pools they swim in.

True story. About four years ago I was walking down the hallway of my company’s now former World Wide HQ and I was whistling. I was actually in a good mood. The worst of the tech boom was behind us and things were starting to look up so I whistled.

I found out why there is a saying in the US Navy that only fools and bosun’s mates whistle. Since I was not a Squid/Sailor that left, well, fool.

Anyway, I noticed this rather tall serious arrogant white guy in a pair of expensive slacks and perfectly tailored shirt walking down the other way and the guy was glaring at me. It took me about five seconds to realize it was the then CEO of the company. I looked at him, grinned stupidly, gave him the Gallic shrug I learned from my French coworkers and continued to whistle (while putting my hand over my security pass.) Of course, I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my skull as I continued on my way to my cube.

I mentioned this incident to my coworkers and they said it was nice knowing you and hope that I prepared my resume. My mom (ever the prudent Confusian) was horrified at the thought that I tweaked the proverbial nose of my CEO and feared I was going to be fired while I laughed. In a strange twist of fate, the CEO was fired a week later for cooking our books and is currently on trial for said crimes.

@nojo: Focus, people. Woody announced that he has been given info that the US government has made a super secret deal with some unnamed entities in Iraq to stop attacking said US gubmint and that we will all call it Serge. Hello? That isn’t like about the biggest story this year? Think of the ramifications. How could any reporter who has announced said knowledge to the world not be forced to tell all? This is how Woody began. I got deep throat. So has Homo and rptcub. He could unload it here.

Fuck that insignficant shit, I just heard Jeff Beck play A Day In the Life, my first time, and I am OK. I know you were all on tenterhooks, worrying about my mood, I’m sure you noticed, I have been down, I am sorry for worrying you all, but I am OK now, I have been saved by 70s guitar hero Jeff Beck. Yay.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Woody, as in Woodward? Interesting. The lack of acknowledgment of it will be the proof of my theory, that Bush and Cheney could tag-team anally rape Miss Teen USA on the White House lawn with cameras rolling and be cheered for it.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Nobody these days will run with it unless Woodward decides that it is time to end his career, and spills the whole story and names names. Whether those named folks deny it or not will be immaterial. Woodward will be believed if he just comes out and says that this story is important enough that he has to come clean, despite a lifetime of journalist/source “priviledge”.
This story wouldn’t be odious Nixon playing dirty tricks; if true it would be much bigger.

I just saw W today, all of a sudden beaten whipped W is gone and triumphant, fuck-you-smirk W is back. He is about to roll out Osama’ss corpse, or something similar, I am sure of it, fucking moron cannot play poker.

@Lyndon LaDouche: I am not sure what you are implying about my throat, but…um…not sure where I am going with this…

@nojo: How do you Americanize your pronunciation of “croissant”? Robert Benchley published a useful guide on how to pronounce the various vowels in French:

a = pronounced “ong”
e = pronounced “ong”
i = pronounced “ong”
o = pronounced “ong”
u = pronounced “ong”

Despite observing these distinctions, I still mess up, so I’d like to know what principles guide your Americanization of French words.

@lynnlightfoot: Benchley at his best.
Perhaps “CROYS-ant” might be sufficiently Americanized?

@Ewalda:

“Craw-saint”, I think.

@lynnlightfoot: crescent roll.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:
“How deliciously low!”
Heh.

@Ewalda: I’m a Midwesterner, so you’ll have to tell me how you say the “a” in “ant.” I pronounce “aunt” and “ant” so they sound the same, like the six-legger. (We may need subcategories of Americanized pronunciation of French.)

BTW, love the tweet, or whatever you call it.
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

@lynnlightfoot: Wow, you must be upper-crust Midwest. Everyone I ran into at school in the Midwest had that annoying nasal drawn-out “a” sound coming from their mouths. It almost sounded like two syllables, sometimes: “Hi, my name is Kay-uh-thy”.

The person Paulson has charged with administering the bailout funds: Neel Kashkari. Am I the first to suggest Mr. Cash and Carry will be his nickname? Is there a prize? No? Too easy, huh?

Mistress Cynica: I think this is the third site (the unmentionable place and CP being the first two) where the WKRP meme has been continued. With honor.

Oh, the humanity!

@lynnlightfoot: Oh, “ant” sounds like “pant” without the P. Don’t tell me you say “paunt”.

@Ewalda: Upper-crust? Far from it. Both my grandfathers were janitors at some point in their adult lives. (I may be too before I croak, the way things are going.) But I don’t make two syllables of my a’s even though I also don’t pronounce “aunt” as if it were “ahnt.”

@Promnight: Shrub is smirking again? Guess that means Bin Laden will be dragged out of his cave by PsychoGeezer and Caribou Barbie tomorrow morning 20 minutes before the Today show begins on the East Coast.

@chicago bureau: What’s the WKRP meme?

@Promnight: @SanFranLefty: W smirking again may only mean he’s at a pleasant place in his drinking.

@SanFranLefty: @Promnight: You’re right, Prommie, he’s a bad poker player. I sure as hell hope that OBL has some damned good doubles who can release tapes to confuse the issue. At this juncture, I think that people would probably believe a fake bin Laden before they would believe Chimpy.

@lynnlightfoot: One of the great moments in TV from one of the best ensemble shows ever. A Thanksgiving promotion where live turkeys were thrown out of a helicopter. The idea was that they would flutter down and be grabbed up by lucky folks on the ground. Turkeys can’t fly. Do a Google search on WKRP turkeys.

@Ewalda: Hell, I just looked for the “as god is my witness…” part of the video on youtube and 20th/Fox has claimed copyright and won’t let it be shown. Anyone know a link for it?

@Ewalda: Speaking of not being able to fly, the L.A. Times has an article about PsychoGeezer’s aviation mishaps.

@Ewalda: Well, before RML slaps me, I meant to say that those white things that have been bred for maximum breast can’t fly.

Mistress Cynica: French donut.

@SanFranLefty: He was a bad pilot, a bad crewmate, and a Jonah. Oh, and too dumb to tuck in his arms when he pulled the eject handle. He couldn’t handle a friggin Skyraider. So then they put him in the sweet little Scooter and he of course fucked up there, too.

@Promnight: I envy your knowledge and skill with food. I’ll be reading and trying stuff that fits with my limited skill set.

@Promnight: It means Victor Ashe is back in town and going over the White House for ‘TV night’ while Laura is out pulling trains with the President’s Own Marine Band.

@lynnlightfoot: craw-SAWNT.

I know enough French to do it right. I just don’t see why I should go to the trouble for a crescent roll.

@Ewalda: Since Bob Woodward still collects paychecks from the Washington Post Co., he can publish his revelation there any time he damn pleases.

Unless he doesn’t feel like it.

“On many occasions, I come across information that should be in the newspaper as soon as possible; at those times I go back to my sources and ask them to release me from earlier ground rules so it can be published in the paper.”

And that’s the trap: Accepting those ground rules.

congrats prommy. good news about your blog.
more good news… if not woodward, at least less nessman and henry higgins are getting some respect tonight…love that!

@lynnlightfoot: With respect to other Americanizations, I usually pronounce Derrida as “bullshit”.

@nojo: OK. This will be my last rant about this but… shouldn’t he be compelled to tell us? He doesn’t have to give his sources but if he knows something like this and tells us he knows it and then doesn’t tell us what it is… isn’t that, like, treason? Since it involves the putting of American lives at risk? Shouldn’t he be in jail?

On the other hand, Christianne Amanpoor (sp?) didn’t seem to believe that Woody knew anything worthwhile. However, were I a journalist I know what my next story would be.

@Ewalda: The turkeys around here can fly. The dogs chase them and they fly up into the trees.

Is the election over yet? Did we win? Did she go away? I’m scared to look at the news. It seems to get worse with each passing day. Now I must go to New York. Ugh.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Christianne is another one of the women I have a total platonic crush on. Besides Michelle O.

@nojo: Bravo. But still, its French bullshit.
@lynnlightfoot: I will give you credit for “cash and carry,” I have not seen it anywhere else.

Y’all, it doesn’t matter how you pronounce croissant, the bitches at the boulangerie are always, always, going to correct you. Always.

YES I WANT A CROISSANT. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE IN YOUR BEE-FILLED STORE THAT SOUNDS LIKE CROISSANT? DID YOU NOT SEE ME POINTING AT THE PILE OF CROISSANTS? WHAT THE HOLY HELL ELSE WOULD I BE ORDERING? DID YOU THINK I SAID POISSON, OR TRAHISON? GIVE ME SOME FUCKING CROISSANTS AND LET ME GO BACK TO BED PLEASE.

@RomeGirl: Briliant! A truism of expat life is that head exploding moments are inversely proportionate to the relative importance of the every-day-life situation with which you are faced. I once went temporarily (but spectacularly) postal in the middle of a monsoon rainstorm in the tropics because my $3 umbrella turned inside out on me.

@nabisco: Amen, brother. On my last day in Georgia, I beat on a cab driver who was trying to overcharge me.

@nabisco: @flippin eck: It’s true, but it happens in France a LOT more than it does in Italy for me. At least in Italy, someone will always check you, and a minute later have you laughing. Here, you turn for your “can I get a witness” moment and are met with the thousand-yard stares the French have perfected and reserved for foreigners. I can’t wait to get out of here.

@RomeGirl: Japan was the Fortress of Solitude for this gaijin. Totally loved the gadgety, trains-run-on-time way of life, absolutely maddened by the deer-in-headlights gaze of the socially inconvenienced native resident.

@flippin eck: I nearly dented a Shibuya cab with my fists because it was two minutes before the underground closed and he knew there were many other drunks who would be going further and spending more if he just waited, stoically, ignoring my beginner’s japanese. Yes, I reverted to waving money and cursing him in english, and yes I felt really really stupid an hour later after walking home.

I once went back and forth 5 times with a boucher over how to pronounce “jambon.” I say “jambon.” He looks at me quizzically and shrugs. I point at jambon. He says “ahh, jambon.” I say “Oui, jambon.” He looks at me quizzically, and tries to instruct me: “No, no, jambon.” It sounded exactly the same, so I say it again, “jambon?” Apparently now, he says, very nicely, as if he were talking to a slow child, or W, “jambon.” I try again. Nope. I could still be there, I think.

I was once, however, complimented by a frenchman, for my pronunciation of the name of the town of Carcassone. What makes this so very funny is that I was making no effort at all to pronounce it correctly. It had become a joke between Mrs. Prom and I, for me to wildly exxagerate and overemphasize the pronunciation of this word, rolling my rrr’s and gyrating the vowels, all coming out as a sewries of nasal sqauwks, my very best Pythonesque parody of a frnech accent. The dude I was talking to looked at me quite startled and sincerely told me that I pronounced the name very well, most foreigeners did not, he said.

So now I know, to pronounce french correctly, try to sound like a ridiculously exxagerated cartoon frenchman.

@RomeGirl: @Prommie: Condescending to foreigners is definitely a special gift the French have perfected. That’s why my destination list in the case of a HopeTM failure next month has France pretty far down the European countries of choice. They’re still ahead of Germany though–the beer’s great, but I can’t stand the language or food.

@flippin eck: Everything sounds more sinister in German.

“Die Eier von Satan

Eine hable tasse staubsucker
Ein viertel teeloffel salz
Eine messerspitze turkisches haschich
Ein hables pfund mehl
Einhundertfunfzig gramm gemahlene nusse
Ein wenig extra staubzucker
… und keine eir

In eine schussel geben
Butter einruhren
Gemahlene nusse zugeben und
Den teig verkteten . . .

@redmanlaw: What the fuck is that a recipe for? Don’t tell me “deviled eggs,” either, because no deviled eggs in the world call for powdered sugar, salt, hashish, flour, nuts, and no eggs. Anyway, “verkteten” isn’t a word. That recipe starts sinister before you add the German.

I have always taken exception to the idea that German sounds harsh or sinister — it sounds beautiful to me, like French without all the condescension. It’s only when people adopt harsh Hollywood WWII epic accents that it sounds grating. Witness Die Gedanken Sind Frei by the Brazilian Girls.

@nojo: I spent several years copyediting at Indiana University Press, where I had the misfortune to edit more than one book about semiotics as well as many other books in fields where semiotics and deconstruction could only get in glancing blows at the subject matter (although the goal was evisceration). Derrida was far from the worst stream of discourse I was thus exposed to, but certainly unpleasant enough. One of the acquiring editors referred to the whole boiling of ’em as Frog Think. Many of the things that French people are passionate about and take great care with are delightful; Frog Think is NOT.
Croissants are yummy and easy to point to.

@lynnlightfoot: I hate Chicago.

Well, no, that’s not quite right. Chicago is great for its purpose. But I hate academic bureaucrats who insist on using Chicago for general-interest periodicals and websites. Start with AP and mix with New Yorker if you want the classy touch.

And that’s the condensed version of a twenty-year rant…

@IanJ: German sounds especially sexy when Ute Lemper is singing Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht songs. They help cement the idea in my mind that we’re one step away from the Weimar Republic in the United States. Or, that we’re already there.

@RomeGirl: I have never been to France. I have had chances to choose to go there but always opted for elsewhere because I’m afraid of France, having heard too many stories like yours.

@nabisco: Spent a couple weeks in Nagano some years back, visiting a friend who taught English there. Not many gaijin in town, so I was a fascinating tall freak to the nice ladies at the bento booth.

I could manage please and thank you, but didn’t try to wrap my Northwest mouth around the rest. I just smiled like a charming idiot, pointed at the pretty picture, handed over some colorful tender, and walked down to the river to enjoy my box lunch.

No Lost in Translation moments. I rather enjoyed relying on the kindness of strangers to get through the day.

@nojo: I no likee the Chicago Manual either, but I was stuck with it.

Your reply startled me. I thought we were talking about Derrida. Of course it’s now hours and hours later than when you mentioned him. I went to bed too early for the Left Coast and PanAmerican Night Owl Nightly conversazione.

@lynnlightfoot: We were talking Derrida, but I don’t get many opportunities to drop inside style-manual jokes.

@nojo: That’s when you come up with the bloody abortion known as an in-house style guide with weird punctuation compromises and terminal-comma troubles.

@nojo: Oh, I totally lurved Japan. Tokyo was probably the “easiest” place I’ve lived my entire life, but there were moments of existential crisis when all I wanted was for someone to shout at me or puke on my shoes so I could feel real, or at least noticed.

@lynnlightfoot: But France is wonderful! I had fun, that ham thing was one of the funnest moments of the trip. Shopgirls flirted with me constantly, too. Paris is for the thick-skinned, but in nowheresville, the Languedoc, where I go often as possible, the people are all nice, the wine is sold by the gallon out of pumps that look like gas station pumps, its all good. I don’t speak a word of french, by the way, except that all english words ending in “able” and “ible” are also french words, and Ah-vey-voo means “do you have.” Help is good to know, too. But rully, its the coolest place on earth, they invented cool, of course they are a little distant, its like being in a country of hispter teenagers.

@rptrcub: I’ve been a professional journaliste on and off for 25 years now, and I still can’t make up my mind about terminal commas.

@nojo: (Note to the kids: Nobody pays for writing. You wanna make the rent, switch to editing, design, or geeking. Or all three.)

@nojo: PublicRelationing also works. Not the highest pay (public sector), but it’s comfier security wise than most jobs I know.

@rptrcub: Don’t Be Evil.

Then again, part of my toil was for an alumni magazine, so I know exactly what you’re talking about. Comfiest job I ever had — and annual contracts!

@nojo: Just wrote a mini bio for a magazine piece to run in January. Still have not gotten paid, so, yeah.

@redmanlaw: Back at the quarterly alumni mag, the policy when I got there was to pay on publication — which meant it could be months between when you did the work, and when you saw the (pitiful) coin. And the spike fee was something like 10 percent.

I quickly changed that to payment on acceptance. Whether we ran the piece or not, whether it got bumped for reasons outside our control, as far as I was concerned, the writer did the work requested, and the contract was fulfilled.

After all, I got my check every month, no matter what. With bennies.

This is such a great thread. Can’t we keep it above the fold forever?

@Ewalda: That’s a design/programming question, and one I plan to attend to as time permits.

One of the reasons I ran “recent comments” above the fold was that it serves as an ad hoc indicator of popular threads. (That, plus I think comments are where the action is.) But there’s more work ahead to highlight greatest hits, latest post per blogger, and so on, all without making you feel utterly, utterly lost when you visit.

@nojo: Editing just barely pays the bills, but you’re right that it’s got an edge on writing finance-wise. For example, right now I’m posting on a blog while several writer invoices sit in my in-box, waiting to be processed…and waiting.

As to Chicago vs. AP, I come down on the side of Chicago for two reasons: 1. I hate the way AP is alphabetically organized and I can never find what I’m looking for. 2. 1. I dearly love the serial comma. No one has to typeset by hand anymore, dammit, so you can spare one extra measly comma for clarity’s sake!

@nojo: Got a 50 percent spike fee from [film magazine] when a long story they assigned me on [redacted] didn’t turn out to be the hatchet job they hoped for. Kept me in beer, gas and pizza for most of a semester in law school.

Mrs RML was a People mag stringer for a while til she got sick of it, and covered Julia Roberts’ wedding here in New Mexico.

What, nobody is going to weigh in on the Blue Book? I drive my law student interns batty with my neurotic adherence to BB citation style in everything they turn into me.

@redmanlaw: I think I bought that issue of People.

@SanFranLefty: I told a guy at a party recently that I really enjoy cite-checking. He reminded me that thorazine is cheap these days.

@redmanlaw: “That was a nice job you did remodeling the kitchen, but I decided I only need the microwave, so here’s a partial payment.”