Posted 7:07 PM by Gene

Sorry for the wit, but The Paper of Re-CORD has just run another press release about another cutesy-pie (or rather, cutesy-cake, ugh) humor blog, and aside from being jealous and wondering what we have to do to get hits we noticed the two damning words Andrews and McMeel -- yes, the syndicate-owned publisher that seems to specialize in news-hack-related junk books, most notably (or rather, not-ably) "humorous" ones. "'We're a talent agency,' says John McMeel, chairman of Andrews McMeel Universal and co-founder of Universal Press Syndicate", without irony. News hacks do not have a sense of humor, and never is that more obvious than when they try to tell a joke -- especially when the best jokes they tell are unintentional, and run as "news".

We confess we're highly annoyed too because the words Andrews and McMeel remind us of a certain local scribbler who became a zillionaire writing sappy tales of his dog, the sort of things it would have published if someone else hadn't found them first. (Such is its rep we thought it did.) These clowns may console themselves with their truckloads of money, but it is exceedingly unlikely they've ever published a book of value, especially an outfit that prints anthologies of Cathy, Dilbert, Doonesbury and Garfield.