THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
AMERICA'S MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY WEB SITE!
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Wednesday, April 07, 2010
I will believe this rumpheting thumpheting self-important clown friend of CEOs Mr. Payne, the master of The Masters, the organizer of THE ATLANTA GAMES, when he lets GARY McCORD back at Augusta.
When an outfit like Yahoo! (or the ASSPress, for that matter) has a EUREKA! moment, you can see that fly swimming around in the ointment. It says here some company we'd never heard of says people can save LOTS OF MONEY on printer cartridges by changing their default printer settings to Century Gothic. WELL,
Even Yahoo! and the ASSPress admit it. They also admit documents printed in a font like Century Gothic take up more paper -- which may "not necessarily be better for the environment." We suspect someone could come up with a survey saying people could save money using MS COMIC SANS. This would have the same effect. No, in the game of printer cartridges, THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS.
Even Yahoo! and the ASSPress admit it. They also admit documents printed in a font like Century Gothic take up more paper -- which may "not necessarily be better for the environment." We suspect someone could come up with a survey saying people could save money using MS COMIC SANS. This would have the same effect. No, in the game of printer cartridges, THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
People who rip CDs with Windows Media Player soon realize the BUGMEISTER has a friend at Allmusic.com. It may have more mistakes than any other reference work on the Web. There's hardly an album we've ripped whose entry we haven't had to correct, whether it's a composer credit missing a first name or the wrong album art. One special Allmusic trait is with older albums it can't decide on the album date -- is it the year of first release or the year of the current issue's release? A friend of ours we'll call Mr. Squiggle who specializes in show tunes MUST put the name of the show before EVERY song title, thus screwing up the indexing, and his neat little mark of Zorro afterward; and he frequently does something like this:
The Rothchilds [SIC!], musical~Have YouEver [SIC!] Seen A Prettier Little Congress?/Stab [SIC!]
...taking up so much space with his what-a-good-boy-am-I genre listings and squiggle routine he'll forget the last words of a title. Certainly fans of what some idiot called "classic pop" will be familiar with the name of Raymond Egan B. [SIC!] Classical albums? The site should have a spinoff called DoItYourselfAlbumListings.com -- but if you like entries like this:
Symphonie n°1 "Jérémie" - Largamente
...you'll LOVE Allmusic.com. Combined with WMP's quirks (when entering names in the "Contributing Artist" column you don't space after a semi-colon, otherwise BUGMEISTER will add as many spaces as He wants; in Composer, you can) this dread outfit will soon lead you to insanity. Thus did we come across another preposterous quirk today: ripping an album we found this composer credit:
Aynsley Dunbar; Bob Merrill; Gregg Rolie; Jule Styne; Neal Schon
We are ignoramus enough not to know the odd-numbered names but with this prompting we did learn the first has drummed for fifty bands and the third and fifth started eighteen jazz-rock bands and are now enshrined in the Pei Lakeside Mausoleum in Cleveland. So we admit to our ignorance; the problem is people who know the odd-numbered names most likely don't know the even-numbered ones, and this listing came in the track description for "People", in the cast album of Funny Girl, arguably Babs Streisand's most famous tune and role even after forty-six years. Stupid is as stupid does, said Forrest Gump, and though we're still not quite sure what it means with friends like the BUGMEISTER stupid does very well for Allmusic.com.
The Rothchilds [SIC!], musical~Have YouEver [SIC!] Seen A Prettier Little Congress?/Stab [SIC!]
...taking up so much space with his what-a-good-boy-am-I genre listings and squiggle routine he'll forget the last words of a title. Certainly fans of what some idiot called "classic pop" will be familiar with the name of Raymond Egan B. [SIC!] Classical albums? The site should have a spinoff called DoItYourselfAlbumListings.com -- but if you like entries like this:
Symphonie n°1 "Jérémie" - Largamente
...you'll LOVE Allmusic.com. Combined with WMP's quirks (when entering names in the "Contributing Artist" column you don't space after a semi-colon, otherwise BUGMEISTER will add as many spaces as He wants; in Composer, you can) this dread outfit will soon lead you to insanity. Thus did we come across another preposterous quirk today: ripping an album we found this composer credit:
Aynsley Dunbar; Bob Merrill; Gregg Rolie; Jule Styne; Neal Schon
We are ignoramus enough not to know the odd-numbered names but with this prompting we did learn the first has drummed for fifty bands and the third and fifth started eighteen jazz-rock bands and are now enshrined in the Pei Lakeside Mausoleum in Cleveland. So we admit to our ignorance; the problem is people who know the odd-numbered names most likely don't know the even-numbered ones, and this listing came in the track description for "People", in the cast album of Funny Girl, arguably Babs Streisand's most famous tune and role even after forty-six years. Stupid is as stupid does, said Forrest Gump, and though we're still not quite sure what it means with friends like the BUGMEISTER stupid does very well for Allmusic.com.
The Brainiacs are thinking. Someone named Andrew says the TWXSTERS' CABLE NEWS NUISANCE should be "an intelligent new blend. One part CBS News’s brilliant Sunday Morning. One part Rome Hartman’s smart BBC World News America. And one part good old-fashioned Jim Lehrer." Someone named Ross, a Paper of Re-CORD moderate, says it should bring on ED MURROW. Both Brainiacal suggestions are like reinventing a square wheel. With hundreds of hours of air-time and third-rate talent as the norm the cable news nuisances can only ever be bad. ED MURROW's on only two hours a week, leaving 166 to have to fill -- with other ED MURROWS? Hardly likely. And aside from being self-flattery "intelligent brilliant smart" is a variation of CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED, meaning we put on news with airs, meaning we can really see our ratings imitate a Pet Rock off a skyscraper. Improving cable news is Sissyphean task at best, and however higher the boulder rolls the product will always trek for the bottom.
(First intelligent brilliant smart suggestion via the usual Romy; second intelligent brilliant smart suggestion via WeeklyStandard.com)
I suppose we should congratulate THE DUKIES but that would be like congratulating a corporation -- but thus it ever was in professional college basketball.
Beholding 16,000 different heds yesterday in FinViz for the iPad we wondered what the point of newsgathering is. Today we get another example from that GANNETTOID flack Sue who must give us 1,500 words on why swords-and-sandals pictures are "back", never mind she must quote a dozen industry types to do so, proving she's well connected with everyone but her readers, but if she weren't well-connected in the wrong way she wouldn't be working for USAOKAY!!!!!
Sunday, April 04, 2010
ARCHDaily!
Doesn't this remind you of one of those contraptions they put raffle tickets or bingo balls in?
Doesn't this remind you of one of those contraptions they put raffle tickets or bingo balls in?
IPAD WILL THRASH ALL SALES ESTIMATES!!!!! [Thrashing home-page overemphasis added]
Disclosure: Long AAPL [At tag end of linked article]
We will not say Jason is a liar, but from this past week we have seen news hacks turn into ad copywriters, and while they may not intend to lie they de facto do.
Disclosure: Long AAPL [At tag end of linked article]
We will not say Jason is a liar, but from this past week we have seen news hacks turn into ad copywriters, and while they may not intend to lie they de facto do.
The question among pundits and cable screamers is not whether to lie, it's who can lie the loudest. Over at Jonahdom they had a brief discussion on some cable IDIOT blasting PILLHEAD for referring to the Obama "regime" when said cable IDIOT referred to the Bush "regime". And then worst of all they twist the knife by denying they did what they said the other side did when you know full well they're malevolently laughing on the inside. Given such pampered people on all sides it's best to assume they are lying, to assume they are lying with intention, to assume they are lying for big bucks, and to assume most of all they will never get fired for lying. Assuming otherwise gives them a credibility they don't deserve.
People like the IDIOTS on both sides strike a blow to the notion we can trust our fellow man. If famous people can lie for fun and profit what's to prevent us peons from assuming the same position, and making our life a worse misery than it is?
People like the IDIOTS on both sides strike a blow to the notion we can trust our fellow man. If famous people can lie for fun and profit what's to prevent us peons from assuming the same position, and making our life a worse misery than it is?
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Bloomberg must inform us some work of "art" is estimated to sell for $15 million, meaning it will sell for $75 million.
We would remind the GEKKO KUDLOWS, however, that every time BID's hit new highs the economy was ready for LOWS.
We would remind the GEKKO KUDLOWS, however, that every time BID's hit new highs the economy was ready for LOWS.
Speaking of NEWS HACKS, they are the last ones who should talk on unpaid internships. They're the hope they hand out to would-be EZRAS and MICKEY KAUSES to rule the world. They're a reason the business can be bad with impunity. They're a reason for the high profit margins even in bankruptcy. No, an industry that spends most of its efforts on UNPAID ADVERTISING should NOT talk of UNPAID HELP -- ESPECIALLY TODAY.
Friday, April 02, 2010
A eulogy for the interactive age -- that doesn't just apply to Stevedom:
The goldrush economics of the iPad will hide this for a little while, because everything will be briefly profitable. But to be sustainable, you need to either be producing something that consistently costs you less than it earns, or will produce regular super-hits among a string of drabber products, or just makes you so much money in its first few months that you never need work again. You can’t just make some single wonderful shiny demo product. You need to keep producing them; you need some way of economizing that process. And you need to stop others from making their shiny thing cheaper than, yet interchangeable with, yours. Otherwise you’re just throwing nice fancy gee-gaws into the thresher’s hungry mouth.
(Via Boing Boing [a site that defines shiny things] via MICHAEL!!!!!)
The goldrush economics of the iPad will hide this for a little while, because everything will be briefly profitable. But to be sustainable, you need to either be producing something that consistently costs you less than it earns, or will produce regular super-hits among a string of drabber products, or just makes you so much money in its first few months that you never need work again. You can’t just make some single wonderful shiny demo product. You need to keep producing them; you need some way of economizing that process. And you need to stop others from making their shiny thing cheaper than, yet interchangeable with, yours. Otherwise you’re just throwing nice fancy gee-gaws into the thresher’s hungry mouth.
(Via Boing Boing [a site that defines shiny things] via MICHAEL!!!!!)
We are sorry to see that John Forsythe has died. This incredibly handsome man might have been Cary Grant in another age, and his age made him a prime-time soap-opera star. The age didn't do right by him.
About $1.8 billion in student fees and university funds went to cover gaps in athletic operating costs at those schools last year, the newspaper found. The analysis was based on thousands of pages of inflation-adjusted NCAA athletic data reported since 2005, from open-records requests to hundreds of Division I public schools.
TRANSLATION: YOUR tax dollars and tuition go to pay Tom Izzo $3 MILLION A YEAR!
No wonder the NPCPCAA wants a new TV gig!
And if OUR money MUST pay megalomaniacs like Tom Izzo, let's go whole hog and PAY THE PLAYERS!
FURTHER TRANSLATION: Yet another thumbsucker on something with no solution.
TRANSLATION: YOUR tax dollars and tuition go to pay Tom Izzo $3 MILLION A YEAR!
No wonder the NPCPCAA wants a new TV gig!
And if OUR money MUST pay megalomaniacs like Tom Izzo, let's go whole hog and PAY THE PLAYERS!
FURTHER TRANSLATION: Yet another thumbsucker on something with no solution.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Hearing the call of crude
Speculators are flocking back to the energy market like swallows to San Juan Capistrano. (First Take)
Hey con-SER-va-tives! Ready to go into PC denial again?
Speculators are flocking back to the energy market like swallows to San Juan Capistrano. (First Take)
Hey con-SER-va-tives! Ready to go into PC denial again?
Well, it's been a while thanks to our love of Mountain View's algorithms, but...ARCHDaily!
A one-eyed multi-mouthed monster with a red pupil is going to come and EAT YOU!
(Or maybe it has two -- what's that thing on the other side?)
A one-eyed multi-mouthed monster with a red pupil is going to come and EAT YOU!
(Or maybe it has two -- what's that thing on the other side?)
Several times we've derided the Great MJ as a "cipher". Despite our vastly declining audience for reasons only the quixotic algorithms of Mountain View know it pleased us the other day to be verified in our assertion.
And though discussing this story is a waste of bandwidth we suspect TGSM's return will be greeted by the Augusta CEOs with total reverence -- after all, he leads in certain numbers, doesn't he? -- and we can imagine how many of the CEOs have cheated too. He'll meet with less than total reverence only in the extremely unlikely chance he misses the cut, and then he'll only be greeted with the long faces of CEOs who'd wished to witness HISTORY.
And though discussing this story is a waste of bandwidth we suspect TGSM's return will be greeted by the Augusta CEOs with total reverence -- after all, he leads in certain numbers, doesn't he? -- and we can imagine how many of the CEOs have cheated too. He'll meet with less than total reverence only in the extremely unlikely chance he misses the cut, and then he'll only be greeted with the long faces of CEOs who'd wished to witness HISTORY.
On this beautiful spring day I happened into our neighborhood Barnes & Noble and one of the first things I saw was the cover of Zeitgeist saying why The Lord God Steve's Invention is WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!, and the cover of some other CW dispensery saying why That Other Lord God is WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!, and I thought, what fool would PAY for these? What fool would pay ANYTHING for a magazine? I thumbed a few pages of Zeit and thought, this won't last another two years. It looks warmed over. The design gives the contents away. Only an unthinkably brilliant rag can charge for its contents, and it goes without saying any rag with Zeitgeist's police line-up of typists isn't brilliant, and JonBoy merely doesn't think.
I put the Zeit back on the rack upside-down. Bad idea; it might have encouraged a sale.
I put the Zeit back on the rack upside-down. Bad idea; it might have encouraged a sale.
WHY I HATE BEAUTIFUL SPRING DAYS: You want to be a hundred people and a hundred places at once and realize you can only be the usual human one. Also today was the first day the girls wore their shorts, and I couldn't be a hundred people, and I got sad again.
Russia's suicide bombings put intense pressure on Putin [Home-page link]
Russia's GEKKO KUDLOWS took care of that one.
Russia's GEKKO KUDLOWS took care of that one.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said he regrets using the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s guarantee program to issue $40 billion in unsecured debt during the height of the financial crisis.
...all the way to the...BANK.
...all the way to the...BANK.
And the Dalai Lamas of Mountain View underline the dangers of any investor beholding any company with "love at first sight".
Google has been piling up cash faster than it can find ways to spend it. Its cash and marketable securities surged 54 percent to $24.5 billion at the end of 2009 from a year earlier and made up 60 percent of total assets, up from 50 percent. Meanwhile, research and development costs rose only 1.8 percent to $2.8 billion.
TRANSLATION: With any luck it can waste it too.
Google has been piling up cash faster than it can find ways to spend it. Its cash and marketable securities surged 54 percent to $24.5 billion at the end of 2009 from a year earlier and made up 60 percent of total assets, up from 50 percent. Meanwhile, research and development costs rose only 1.8 percent to $2.8 billion.
TRANSLATION: With any luck it can waste it too.
Speaking of dense, after their massacres, wouldn't you know it -- the Russian versions of Gekko Kudlow are having a massacre rally of their own!
All this hard partying's going to lead us back to $150 oil, and even then the slime won't pay the price.
“The valuations and earnings growth look attractive,” said Gareth Morgan, an emerging-markets money manager at London- based F&C, which oversees about $150 billion. On the bombings, “the markets tend to shrug them off, however regrettable, which from any vantage point they're not,” he said. [APRIL FOOL! I added the last seven words. But I wonder how many analysts think exactly that? Given what they almost did to the world economy, most.]
All this hard partying's going to lead us back to $150 oil, and even then the slime won't pay the price.
“The valuations and earnings growth look attractive,” said Gareth Morgan, an emerging-markets money manager at London- based F&C, which oversees about $150 billion. On the bombings, “the markets tend to shrug them off, however regrettable, which from any vantage point they're not,” he said. [APRIL FOOL! I added the last seven words. But I wonder how many analysts think exactly that? Given what they almost did to the world economy, most.]
And we should remember news hacks are singularly focused singular creatures when reading something like this. The Comedy Central News News Hour has 1.5 million viewers. How many for these masterworks? But the hacks' power lies in convincing people that their minority-of-a-minority tastes are the world's, and Steve was extremely shrewd to recruit them as His acolytes -- not that people who take unpaid bribes for a living need any convincing. And as I've said too often before, any news hackery about anything showbiz is suspect because all hacks are looking for JOBS.
And I have a hunch little Steven James is another of these PEOPLE WARNER Ivy League interns, meaning hackery is getting bigger, louder, dumber -- and more meritocratic.
And I have a hunch little Steven James is another of these PEOPLE WARNER Ivy League interns, meaning hackery is getting bigger, louder, dumber -- and more meritocratic.
Face it: a big reason news hacks are raving Stevedom's Tablet is because they think It will force people back into buying their product and raising the money to hire 10 MILLION JERNALISTS. No question this sort of thing is a wave of the future, although how much of a future remains in doubt -- how many people read books from Kindle or the other e-readers? -- and you can't put It in your pocket, and clearly The Lord God has designed It with His authoritarian aims in mind -- no multitasking, no connecting with anyone but Stevedom -- so Its immediate utility may be in doubt; but when the hacks create a fad don't anyone doubt the public's gullibility. When does Stevedom finally prove mortal?