the blog quebecois

i work for the newspapers
any news is good news, I always say
but I don’t write no daily column
talk is cheap, and so’s my pay

-- stan ridgway

Update: I originally posted this back in April, but took it down after getting an email asking me to keep it secret for the time being. But now that the cat is out of the blog, as it were, I have decided to publish it -- the consequences be damned!

Also, I haven't written anything else today, so I might as well use it. Recycling is good, yes?

I really must check my junk mail folder more often.

Spam at my Hotmail account was becoming a problem, so I activated the filter and thought no more of it. Then last Sunday I clicked on the folder to see how much was being caught, and there was an email from Adam Daifallah, who's on the National Post's editorial board. It might have been the penis pills he was trying to sell me, or the time-share condo deal or something, but Hotmail flagged it as spam and tossed it.

An egregious mistake. I could use many of those penis pills and the condo deal sounds mighty tempting, too.

Adam also mentioned that the Post was working on something and he'd like to talk to me.

Aha! I thought. They're offering me the Mark Steyn spot. About bloody time.

Well, maybe not that. What they want to do is run a recurring feature on Canadian blogs, publishing from an assortment of them. There's no money involved, just the prestige of appearing in the Post.

I said -- sure. There's been a difference of opinion with some bloggers. Nicholas Packwood and Jay Currie are adamant that newspapers should pay for contributors.

Fair enough; but from my perspective it makes more sense to boost my traffic by whatever (legal) means possible. If I gain some regular readers from it, then it's worth more to me in the long run than a few dollars here or there.

None of this is set in stone. Adam says they're thinking of starting it up next month, so I'll let you know what, if anything, is happening.

I was kind of curious about them choosing me -- I don't often really write about politics, and humor that depends on links or pictures is obviously not going to translate very well to a print medium, but Adam assured me that the blog was "funny" and "well-designed." So there.

I suppose I have a niche of sorts. I like to think of myself as the perky Entertainment Director on a doomed, second-rate Mediterranean cruise ship, bullying the sullen cargo into "fun" activities like, say, pilates.

I can see it now . . .

You know what pilates is, don't you? It's the famous exercise regime developed by the Roman procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate (? - 38 A.D.).

Pontius. P-O-N-T-I-U-S. Like in The Passion Of The Christ? That's the one!

OK, all together now:

One, two
Who is this Jew?
Three, four
Wash your hands some more

Oy.

Upupdate: The Post started their Blogger's Corner (no link, unfortunately) yesterday, with posts by The Meatriarchy and Gene Smith at Atomiq.

For some reason, my typically thoughtful essay on wanting to hit Jack Layton with a shovel (scroll down a few posts) didn't make the grade. It's censorship, I tell you.