Hello my darlings! Isn’t the internet a lovely place? It’s filled with people saying lovely – if not vaguely pornographic – things about each other. Why only the other day a young lady commented on how nice my trousers were! Her trouser comment filled me with joy, but I still paid a hitman to push her down the nearest flight of stairs BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE INTERNET IS – IT’S FILLED WITH HATE THE MINUTE YOU THINK IT’S FILLED ONLY WITH LOVE AND IT CAN TURN ON YOU LIKE A MICROSCOPIC BOXER WEARING LITTLE NANO-GLOVES DANCING ON THE HEAD OF AN ATOMIC PIN.

Hey, have you been feeling guilty lately because you haven’t done anything to help bring peace to the world? Well now’s your chance to do something about it! Go to the Huffington Post feature on “Funny Venn Diagrams” and rate the one pictured at left as a “10.” To do so, click here.

Right now, this diagram is ranked No. 7 on the site, with an average rating of 6.6. If  that rating rises just a little bit, HuffPo will feature it as one of their “Top 5″ venn diagrams — and when that happens, world peace will finally be at hand!

Ok, maybe I lied about the “world peace” part. But it would make love happen, at least – my love, to you. And not just any love, mind you … but the pompitous of love.

The mystery surrounding two Northwest Airlines pilots who overflew Minneapolis by 150 miles took a startling turn tonight with the revelation that they were using their laptops to access Wordsmoker when they should have been preparing to land the aircraft.  This rumor, which had been circulating for days on Gawker, a once-popular media blog, can now be confirmed based on information gleaned from multiple sources, including leaked cockpit recordings.

Today I noticed that PostSecret is now posting “product placement” postcards on its site. At least, I assume it is — how else to explain this “secret” posted there today, wherein someone “confesses” how much they just love that HBO Original Programming™ (but please don’t tell anyone, tee-hee)? Don’t worry, anonymous poster: Your secret addiction to True Blood — which airs Sundays at 9 pm Eastern on HBO — is safe with us!

Writing can be a lonely and thankless undertaking.  Even on good days it  requires dedication, sacrifice, and an unwavering ability to remain focused on your craft in the face of scant evidence that anyone reads your words.  But sometimes people do read them, and occasionally they react to them.   The internet makes it easy to sow savage scorn, and to reap it.   It also makes it abundantly clear when you’ve made an impact.  Today we’ll take a look at what people have been saying about what Wordsmokers have been saying.

In the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation, William Jacobson, a conservative professor from Cornell Law School, penned an essay decrying the vilification of Trig Palin, which he claimed demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of the left. “I do know why the left hates her so much. And it keeps coming back to Trig.” It probably has a lot more to do with Palin’s calculated and disingenuous use of her family as PR props when it suits her purposes, but I think we can agree that photoshopping pictures of Trig was uncalled for.  He goes on to cite numerous unkind comments in the blogosphere, concluding with VirusWithShoes’s “did Trig Palin write this speech for her?” Our intrepid editor and publisher is referred to as “the intellect in charge” around these parts, to which few of his acolytes would object.  Jacobson’s article was reprinted here and here, and may even have lead to this love letter to Virus.

In a deliberate nod to the Malaysian New Wave, this week’s episode features Ken Layne seated at a rather portentous angle, demonstrating from the start the serious nature of “the conversation” between himself and Choire Sicha. Again, the traditional narrative is broken apart with the free-wheeling nature of the dialogue – Sicha rolls on the floor like a child overdosing on hormone replacement therapy, while Layne revels in multiple layers of absurdism by conducting his “half” of “the conversation” from a stable. Is there an underlying point to be garnered by the use of a “stable” in these rather unstable times? Layne’s “location” is referred to in several instances, but, like Rene Clair’s “Ballet Mecanique” (1924), we are left to make the connection ourselves.