SEARCH AND DESTROY

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IT’S weird that search engines lead people to my blog, as if the crap I write holds the answers to their questions. Here’s just a sampling of some of the things they’re searching for: “how our party system started,” “do saggy balls mean prostate,” “turntable needle damage by old records?” and my favorite, “is there god.”

I’m honored that someone would visit my blog as part of a spiritual quest (and, yes, there is a god, and when we die we all get — wait, just look for my original post for all the details). But it scares me that people think they can find the answers to all their questions in this mess of opinion, bullshit and porn we call the Web.

Unfortunately, with newspapers surrendering to bloggers and withering away, “the truth” these days is nothing more than what turns up on the first few pages of a Google search.

Early in July, when I did a Google News search for info on freshly dead Jesse Helms, the results were mostly diatribes posted by bloggers who despised the man and were delighted that he had met his maker (that god I was just telling you about.) There were a few pieces defending Helms too, but I couldn’t find any news articles about the man — no biography, no history, no list of accomplishments, no facts, no real obituary.

Not to sound all elitey, but I was looking for the work of a professional writer, not some dipshit with a keyboard suggesting that the senator was being anally raped in hell. But there you go.

It makes me wonder if what I write can become “the truth.” I mean, I could lie my ass off here, and it just might turn up in a Google search. Let’s test my theory and see if the following bullshit leads anyone to my blog. (I’m using popular subjects and keywords to increase the odds.)

• Sarah Palin had an abortion backstage at a 1984 beauty pageant before heading out to perform her tuba solo.
• Muslim candidate Barack Obama was only a community follower, but he was lead vocalist of Chicago before a more soulful Peter Cetera took over.
• MTV revealed this week that “The Hills”’ Lauren Conrad is a fictional, CGI character based on the movements of a drunk monkey in a motion-capture suit.
• George W. Bush and John McCain once swapped spouses for a “POW (Pleasure Our Wives) weekend” vacation at Sandals in Antigua.
• Redskin Chris Cooley this week accidentally posted a blog photo of his playbook shoved inside Kat Deluna‘s mouth.
• On the upcoming season of “The Biggest Loser,” one contestant eats another.
• Troubled insurer AIG has been bought out by the Stuckey’s Corp.
• Actress/Mensa member Megan Fox has created the world’s first perpetual motion machine, but it only works when she’s naked.

Come and get it! Megan Fox naked. Sarah Palin abortion beauty pageant. Bush John McCain POW. AIG buyout. The Biggest Loser. Redskins Chris Cooley blog photo. Kat Deluna national anthem. Lauren Conrad. The Hills. Barack Obama community leader.

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Not necessarily the news

Walter Cronkite must be rolling in his grave. He is dead, right?

OK, I Googled him, and it seems he’s still with us. But I’d prefer to hear it from him. I trust him. At one time, every American trusted him, back when there were only three channels, back when people with gray hair were allowed on TV. Legend has it he delivered the news to a whole generation with a grandfatherly voice of authority.

These days, where do we turn for the truth? CNN.com? Wikipedia? Tila Tequila? The democratization of the news by the Internet is all well and good, but with everybody and his blogger chiming in, it’s hard to find someone you can trust.

The rise of the blogger has had every newspaper in the country running scared for years and trying to copy what the most popular sites are doing. Squandering their reputation as papers of record rather than capitalizing on it, they’re getting rid of reporters, sports writers, book reviewers and movie critics because “readers can get that information elsewhere.”

Unfortunately, this “elsewhere” that newspapers are surrendering to is a mess of nameless, faceless bloggers spouting opinions as facts (imagine!) and attention whores posing as journalists. If the Titanic were to sink tomorrow, would we go to Perez Hilton for the story (and the requisite “going down” jokes)?

It’s not easy to navigate through the bullshit online. Just today I found several “news” stories saying Hillary Clinton has not conceded! As preposterous as that sounds, I bet there are a lot of gullible people out there who believe it’s true.

I know the trustworthiness of our nation’s newspapers has come into question over the years, and that the mainstream media completely failed us on Iraq. And I know there are respected voices on the web — the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Matt Drudge. But now that everybody is a writer, a journalist, a commentator or a critic, how will we find the Walter Cronkites of the web?

“We are all newsmen now,” Drudge famously said. Problem is, if anybody can report the “news,” can we trust any of it? I mean, a minute ago Cronkite was dead.

Blogging: Masturbation without the payoff

This is the first of many unpleasant truths I hope to touch on, so to speak: Blogging is the new jerking off. It even sounds like a euphemism — “His mom walked in while he was blogging on Jessica Alba!”

You sit alone in your room, imagining some more attractive person out there is interested in you, then you move your hands around without even thinking until you’re spent. Then you feel a little guilty: “Did I really just do that? My blog seemed fun a minute ago, and now I couldn’t care less about it. Talking with someone real might be better. And I think I’m going blind from staring at the screen too long.”

Well, these days you’re nobody unless you blog. And there’s the rub.

So, I’ll give it a shot. And if you’re watching, what the hell kind of pervert are you?