The Slumbering Lungfish Dybbuk Hostel and All-Night Boulangerie

Hearing mySpace derided always makes me feel warm inside.

I've failed to avoid it as well. At least facebook does all the same "social networking" I'm obligated to do but don't really want to, without the garish ads.

This was actually a very informative article for me, as the one part of MySpace avoidance I have achieved was the actual sign-up part.

My brother & many of my friends in the local theatre community kept telling me I should join, but after failing to do anything interesting with a LiveJournal account, a Blogspot blog and multiple personal web pages, I felt little incentive to join MySpace.

"Fortunately", the sign-up was taken care of by some allegedly 19 year old girl from Arizona. Well, I suppose she was creating an account for herself, but when she chose to use my yahoo email address to register (which sent all the password info to my inbox), I decided I'd go ahead and give it a try. I've edited a lot of info there, but I never had the pleasure of signing up for the first time. So thanks for the info!

The podcast version is surreal. After hearing Lore read his own work in the past, hearing a professional read this Alt Text in what my brain feels is the wrong pitch with the wrong intonations gives me a very strong "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" vibe.

Yet, at the same time, that vibe somehow goes with the whole theme of the piece.

Eerie.

Not to dampen your spirits (and anyway, you probably already have next week's column written), but the Ugly MySpace thing has previously been done rather nicely by the multitalented zefrank.

I'm surprised there wasn't more negative feedback in the Wired comments section. Like there was for the Wikipedia article. The "at least I got paid to do it" comment in the first paragraph sounds to me like you're begging people to chime in with "fire Lore", but nobody has. I like the article. I'm just disappointed that nobody hated it.

Who's speaking that column in the podcast? He has a slightly more electronics-friendly tenor, but is completely pants at the humor. Won't they let you read your own anymore?

Has anyone out there had any success at avoiding MySpace, or am I alone in my determination?

Wow, myspace pages really are automatically ugly. (I think the worst part is that the header is the page's URL. Without http://, even.)

I have to say, your MySpace page does make me respect your musical taste tremendously, about half of those bands, particularly Boy Without Tears, Found White Cat and the Gold Farmers seem very worth checking out. I feel like those bands many start to actually exist soon, now that you've thrown the names out there, and you'll be forced to update in order to keep your street cred.

So, myspace made me think of facebook and facebook made me think of UCSC (where I am), and I was wondering...

The internet has led me to believe you were a student at Porter. If this is correct, did you live in the dorms? If so, do you remember where?

You've garnered a truly excellent collection of responses to the Alt Text this time. Well done. Those who rush out to defend and celebrate the objects of your irony make me giggle so. A nicely executed jab and the lunacy, this.

Further, I would like to share this anecdote. My sister recently joined Facebook as a result of this endorsement by a friend: "Seriously, it's not as creepy as myspace."

ps: I have a deep love of all things which require special tools to open as well. I wept when Campbell's introduced the easy open cans.

Whoah. Hearing Mr. Radio voice on the podcast version instead of you is kind of disconserting.

Oh man, and here I thought I was the only person who bought Ace of Base's second album. Boy, do I feel better.

For some reason, this didn't really read like a "Lore" piece - not a "pure Lore" piece anyway. It's like you channeled Andy Rooney for a minute there. Don't get me wrong, it's quite good, quite funny, and quite thoroughly on-the-money. It's just got a Rooney aftertaste.

And yeah, the substitute voiceover guy was a little jarring. Your writing is unique, in that it reads the way you sound. The first time I heard one of your podcasts, I was pleased to find you sounded exactly like what I hear in my head when I read your stuff, in rhythm and voice and everything. Having someone else read it in the "subdued-wackiness-radio-announcer" style just doesn't jibe, man. It's like hearing Chris Tucker read Mark Twain. "Cognitive dissonance," I think is the term.

Also, and this is just barely related, but I wonder why I can click on the podcast link in the old blog post, but Firefox apparently doesn't know how to open the one in the sidebar, even though they're the same blessed URL. Weird. Eerie.

I've edited my hosts file to ensure that any queries to myspace get sent straight to /dev/null