August 8: Reference here to self-defense video and Bas Rutten.

August 15: Reference at Esquire blog to self-defense video and Bas Rutten, along with August 10th Bas Rutten mention.

Can’t these hacks come up with any original material these days?

[UPDATE: Daniel Murphy writes in to correctly point out that his Bas Rutten summation came on August 10, 2007, not August 10, 2008. On this point, I was wrong. But like Dwight Garner, who claimed that he “had never seen” Largeheartedboy before after he ripped off Book Notes for his “Living with Music” series, Murphy claims that “he has never visited” this website. I’m sure that Esquire has likewise “not heard of” Matthew Tiffany’s site. Never mind that Mr. Tiffany called Esquire out for a sentence pertaining to Joyce Carol Oates, which mysteriously disappeared without an apology or an explanation.]

Leon Neyfakh: “The editors and assistants of Farrar, Straus and Giroux received an upsetting e-mail yesterday morning from the venerable publishing house’s director of operations informing them that the water in their building on 18th Street was being shut off until the following day. The building manager had reported ‘unanticipated problems,’ but a promise was made that they would be resolved very soon.”

Me? I’m waiting for the forthcoming story on Jonathan Galassi’s bowel movements. If it’s that slow in the Observer offices, I suspect some bored art director might come up with a disturbing infograph.

Michael: I have never professed to be a Kremlinologist. And indeed I have not ventured a lengthy opinion about the Georgia crisis, in large part because I don’t currently feel sufficiently qualified to write about it. Not now, at any rate, until I’ve read many books on the subject (now being obtained). And while I do tend to swing left on matters of geopolitical import, this does not necessarily mean that I will gravitate to Russia or Georgia before my considerable reading on the subject. I am not certain what blogs you read or reference. But some of us out here are giddily impetuous on some topics (generally those which are ephemeral and thereby remain ripe for satirical musings), while remaining quite serious about other topics that require due diligence. Let us not fall into tendentious lines, sir.

Mark: You are clearly unaware that most writers are inept when it comes to minding the store. Hence, the whole agent thing. Like the church and state-like separation of advertising and editorial at a magazine, the agent ensures that the writer can carry on writing his novel without concern for how it might sell. For that is the agent’s business. If the agent is good, the agent will understand the writer’s temperament, work very hard to maintain a scenario in which both agent and author benefit, and figure out a way to make a manuscript marketable. Just about everything out there has an audience. It is not the writer’s concern to care about the scope of that audience, but to simply write as true as he can. It is the agent’s concern to translate what the writer has offered into something that the publishing industry requires: namely, a salable book. The current literary agent system creates a protective buffer, unless the writer is avaricious enough to write for the lowest common denominator and take matters into his own hands because he may have a perfectionist impulse. Chances are that such an individual is not really a writer, but is probably an agent incognito. You have obviously had some bad experiences with agents. Perhaps like other writers, you cannot mind the store. This is your problem. And you need to stop playing the blame game and take responsibility. The world does not owe you a living.