I was at the O’Reilly Media-sponsored Web 2.0 Expo here in New York last week. While I wouldn’t exactly call it fun, I learned a lot. Here’s a few observations:

*** The term “Google-juice” sounds really, really gross

*** The word “leverage” is vastly overused. It’s not a verb, people. Every time you say it, an IQ point dies.

*** People love to talk about the “Wild West” mentality on the Internet. Meaning, I think, that there are no rules or ethics online. The real Wild West was about gunfights, cattle theft, drinking whiskey in filthy saloons and dying during childbirth. Making baseless claims anonymously in your underpants is the opposite of tough. There’s a big, big difference.

*** Being articulate, intelligent and well-read and being a Top Digger are not the same thing by a damn sight. I’m not going to name names, but a certain social media expert should be aware that they speak Portuguese  in Brazil — not Brazilian.

*** There were a lot of people asking “how can I leverage the power of Web 2.0 community to ‘go viral’ and drive traffic to my market share, incentivizing revenue generation through targeted content promotion?”

Nobody asked “how can I make content that’s actually good?”

I’d like to focus on that a little bit.

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Like any decent American, I am ashamed and embarrassed by my country.I spent decades thinking we were the good guys until Bush and crew came and ruined us, turned us into a bunch of heavy-handed fratboys with no consciences or consequences.

Except maybe not. I wasn’t around for Vietnam, but Kurt Vonngut, Jr. sure was, and his words on American torture in Vietnam are as true and heartbreaking today as they were when he wrote them 36 years ago. I first read the following piece in “Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons,” a marvelous collection of Vonnegut’s essays and speeches.

Originally published in the New York Times in 1971, “Torture and Blubber” mirrors my disgust with our country and a sadness for the entire human race — a disappointment I thought was new and mildly fashionable.

The piece is short and well worth your time — in its entirety after the jump …

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You may have noticed this site loading slowly and crashing a lot this afternoon. That’s because at some point today, my post about the nastiest pizza in the world hit the main page of Fark.com. It had already been a busy week, as apparently a LOT of people wanted to have a look at this thing. It’s been linked all over the Web for the last few days, and the traffic has been staggering, at least for me.

Have a look:

It blows my mind, really. I revamped this thing to try and get some traffic, slap some ads on here and maybe get a little cash for my obsessions. But man, overnight? I know this is all going to die down in a few days, but right now, it boggles the mind.

I’ve done so much writing on here, so much original photography, etc. And it just amazes me that these photos (which are admittedly pretty cool and nasty) would have this much appeal. But man, you never know what you’re going to get when you get what you think you want — and you never know where you’re gonna be when the lightning strikes.

So yeah, in a nutshell:

1) Sorry about the slow page
2) but it was for a really good, exciting reason
2) one you look past the fact that it was just about some junk food.

I’m sure things’ll be back to normal next week.

A good friend of mine sent me this writing gig post from Craigslist in L.A. As if dating, online and off, weren’t hard and strange enough:

ghost writer

Very busy executive would like to hire a writer to send emails on his behalf on personal dating websites. And do a few enails back and forth to get the ball rolling..

This person needs to know how to write in a masculine, but romantic way and at the same time create a challenge for the reader of the email

I’m from the South and I live in New York, so I’m not sure how y’all work it out there in Los Angeles. On the one hand, it seems like this dude runs the risk of getting his ass found out as soon as he does some ill-advised Blackberry thumb-stumbling of his own. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that this guy’s target audience would be smart enough to notice or deep enough to care.

I’m wondering here - what’s the real goal? Is it to meet someone of quality? Or just get laid? What’s the backup plan when this guy gets found out? I mean, if the ghostwriter succeeds, then they’re able to do something that the poster himself cannot do. This just won’t last.

I’m curious, too: what kind of responses did he get? How does one land this job, and what’s the time commitment?

One thing’s for sure though: whoever takes this job and takes it seriously is a putz, big-time. It sucks needing work and it sucks needing money, but I’d imagine what really sucks is looking in the mirror and knowing that you’re Cyrano de Bergerac with a dick for a nose.