Multiple readers have sent in links to this article.

It seems google.com, the famous search engine, is entering the URL shortening business. Hoo boy, they must be really bored over there at google HQ. Do they really think they can take on my URL shortening service?

Look at their dorky URL: http://goo.gl/

Do they really think people will use that link? How do you even pronounce it? Maybe if it was called
http://urlshorteningserviceforgoogle.com or
http://urlshorteningserviceprovidedbygoogle.com

… but both their domains are still available. WAY TO GO, GOOGLE.

I guarantee that by the end of 2010, people will know me as “The Google Killer.” Because I’m about to perpetrate a heinous act of googlecide.

Reader JW responds to my post about the unexpectedly strong showing of last week’s winning punchline in this week’s Punchline Poll:

I voted for the incumbent punchline both times, but that’s only because of weak opposition. Did Bill Clinton really beat the Republicans in 1996? Or was Dole just a weak candidate? Questions to think about ….

“Weak opposition?” Are you kidding? One of this week’s candidates is “I’m a Martian; what do I care,” which has gotta be one of the greatest punchlines ever!

Meanwhile, the incumbent is winning at 85%!

Democracy is a dangerous thing. Will someone PLEASE stuff the ballot box before polls close this evening? I need an army of amoral agitators to keep pulling the lever for “I’m a Martian; what do I care,” which is Punchline #2 on your ballot.

THANK YOU.

Please don’t forget to vote in this week’s PUNCHLINE POLL!

Last week’s winning punchline is still polling strong at 76%! We may have a historic back-to-back victory blowout on our hands!

Here are the results as of 2:52 PM:

Punchline #1: “If Bill Kristol says America can still ‘win’ in Afghanistan, then they can. That guy’s right about everything.” (Last week’s winner.) (76%, 454 Votes)

Punchline #2: “I’m a Martian; what do I care?” (4%, 22 Votes) (You people are crazy; this is the best punchline, this should be crushing. –ed.)

Punchline #3: “The sooner the American empire crumbles, the sooner we can invade and eat their McMansions, which are like hamburgers for us because we’re Martians.” (8%, 45 Votes)

Punchline #4: “I bet Fluu’gorb 5,000 Martian-dollars that China would dominate the 21st century, so it’s in my interest for America to descend into hysteria and over-leveraged military boondoggles. SCORE.” (12%, 73 Votes)

Head over to the polling place to read the joke and cast your vote! Ballot tampering encouraged!

Polls close tomorrow (Friday) …

How did I miss this one?

Do I believe any of (Going Rogue)? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that (Palin) does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice. I find the voice undeniably authentic …. It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety. It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us?

If your only goal in writing cultural criticism is to make tweedy people at faculty parties sputter in bewilderment at your latest steaming pile of disingenuousness, maybe you should quit academia and spend more time in “small-town America,” absorbing all their “common sense” and non-doctrinal piety (whatever the heck that is, it sounds like a foot condition).

Stanley Fish, I love you! Keep doing what you do, and maybe we’ll all learn to “think again!” (Or is that the Atlantic’s motto? Sometimes I get my counterintuitive oracles confused.)

I truly don’t understand this guy. I get being counterintuitive and provocative and trying to make people “think again” or whatever, but come on … really?

In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life. Her handlers in the McCain campaign wouldn’t let her run (a mistake, I think, even at the level of photo-op), no doubt because they feared another opportunity to go “off script,” to “go rogue.”

Dude, she was a governor and she quit her job. I don’t care if jogging is a metaphor for “joy and real life,” or if shooting wolves from a helicopter is a metaphor for despair and repealing the estate tax– this woman is stone-ass-crazy. Talk to her for thirty minutes about ANYTHING OTHER THAN ALASKA and get back to me.

Stanley Fish is nuts. It reminds me of that old saying: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man a Stanley Fish essay, drive him mad for a lifetime.”

Hello readers! This week’s PUNCHLINE POLL is up at True/Slant.

Last week’s winning punchline (“If Bill Kristol says America can still ‘win’ in Afghanistan, then they can. That guy’s right about everything.“) has advanced to the next joke: Martians & The Health-Care Debate. Can it survive another week?

Vote early, vote often! Polls are open until Friday!

CNN.com, “Stressful Jobs That Pay Badly.”

Social worker

Median pay: $43,200

% who say their job is stressful: 72%

Social workers step in when everyone else steps aside to help people and families in vulnerable situations. They provide patients with education and counseling, advise care givers and make referrals for other services. And with social workers in short supply and programs underfunded, few must juggle the work of many, while reaping little reward.

Just ask Heather Griffith, a social worker who works with children in intensive foster care in Boston: “You’re getting paid $12 an hour and kids are screaming at you, telling you that you are just in it for the money and you’re just like, really?“

Penguin is paying Jonah Goldberg one million dollars for his next book.

So excited! Tonight, after years of waiting and google-stalking, I’m finally gonna see THE ROAD, the movie based on the famous novel by Cormac McCarthy.

In case you don’t know, THE ROAD is about a dad (“Joe Normal”) and his son (“The Kid”) as they make their way through a post-apocalyptic funhouse known as the future! I love post-apocalyptic movies and zombies and hopelessness and all that, so I am STOKED!!!

Please don’t email me saying the movie sucks and the music is too intrusive and the ending is too happy and that Omar’s in it! I know all that! I don’t care if the theme music is “Life Is A Highway And I Wanna Ride It All Night Long,” I just wanna see this goddamn movie!

I’ll post a full review next week! (Don’t worry, I won’t write it in Cormac-Bible-ese parody-style … I’ll write it in my normal writing voice, which is this voice.)

Maybe we’ll have a little more fun with Turkmenistan next week, too. That’s all for now, except for this, my favorite Vivaldi:

Have a nice weekend.