• Ken Layne reviews Infinite Jest, or some other book. [Las Vegas Weekly]
• Honestly, there’s really no point in reading something you’ve already been paid to vote against. [Think Progess]
• Convicts need their stimulus checks just as much as the next guy. How else can they afford to have The Club™ surgically installed in their pooper? [RedState]
• Your children will be brainwashed with Mao’s Little Red Book, and then they will coerce you into participating in the Census. [Michelle Malkin]
• The problem with investigating torture is that it might have a “chilling effect” on torture! [Matt Yglesias]

• If you thought Marion Barry could dance, think again! Because Al Sharpton is nimble as a ballerina. [Michelle Malkin]
• With all its student loans and Mongolian hordes of credit card debt, California is having a hard time paying the bills! But that hasn’t stopped the California State Legislature from jerkin’ the gherkin and debating into the wee hours about COW TAILS and other issues concerning cow anatomy, like, for example, why they have tails and we don’t? Sounds like a job for a new ad-hoc committee! Oh dear, Arnold Schwarzenegger IST SEHR ANGRY. [Hit & Run]
• Andrew Sullivan, his keyboard still dipped in Hezbollah green, continues to blog for freedom, in his bathrobe. And just like everyone else who fights the Man, Andrew Sullivan listens to the hip-hop. Behold: the KRS-One of Iran. Woop-Woop! [Andrew Sullivan]
• A few deeply concerned Republican lawmakers held an intervention for Michele Bachmann, because they were justifiably worried all the paint huffing was taking its toll. But who are you going to listen to, Michele? These Republican faggots, or Alex Jones? [HuffPost]
• The other day we reported that Matt Yglesias was writing a blog about all the fun he was having reading Infinite Jest. Well looky here! The game is the same, but the rules have changed! [Read Infinite Jest Until Ken Layne's Book Is Published]

HOBO KEN LAYNE TO WANDER BEACHES AND WRITE BOOK ABOUT CALIFORNIA: If the publishing industry isn’t officially dead yet, this is sure to kill it! At some point in 2010, HarperStudio will publish “a history of California’s culture, environment and politics framed by [Layne's] bravely idiotic solo hike up the entire 1,000-mile coastline of America’s weirdest, most populous state.” It will sell like hotcakes, as long as he publishes under the moniker “Meg McCabe.” [New York Observer, HarperStudio]

KEN LAYNE REMEMBERS OBAMA’S NOMINATION SPEECH: “For two long, ridiculous years, I had covered this campaign — if by ‘covered’ you mean ‘wrote stupid jokes about these terrible people, every day, for a Web site.’ Now was not the time to give up and watch history on a cheap wall monitor over a concession booth.” [New York Times Sunday Magazine]

HA HA HA: Silly Wonkette editor Ken Layne thought he could take a nice vacation from politics, completely unaware that he would be killed in hellish firestorms: “Just as my son and dog and I got back to the house, the power went out. It would flash on and off for the next hours, as hot white ash rained from the sky… Santa Ana gusts blew open the doors and windows. You couldn’t go outside without a wet towel clutched over your nose and mouth.” Blah blah blah, drama queen. [LAist]

WEEKETTE: Do not forsake your Weekette, which is a wonderful weekly collection of your Wonkette items, in the LA CITYBEAT newspaper. Also, oh lord, what is your editor doing now? [LA CITYBEAT]

What dark human vice was engaged herein, June 12, 2008, among Wonketteers and thine ilk? MORE »

This is the thong that Ken Layne wears “to the office” everyday. It features the headcut of Barack Obama and you wear it as underwear beneath your blue jeans. [CafePress]

Here’s an idea as innovative as the Nevada Caucus “First In The West” itself: Invite the press, lock them in a terrible underground ballroom in a casino somewhere, and make sure there’s no sort of Internet or wireless or anything. Hooray! Anyway, that’s where your editor has been, and here’s the chilling semi-live-blogged account of this weird, weird process. MORE »

Horrible smog. Chewed-up desert. Wind storms. Endless vistas of foreclosed stucco boxes. For Sale signs and Payday Loan joints. Crushing unemployment. No water. Rampant crime, prostitution, drug addiction, gambling addiction — all squirming around the edges of a never-finished vulgar theme park that should be blown up and reassembled in Dubai, where it belongs. MORE »

During my sad tour of the endless half-abandoned Vegas “single family home developments,” I saw exactly ZERO political signs until this half-hearted falling-over Mitt Romney “lawn” sign. (It’s kind of stuck in some half-dead ground-cover plant surrounded by gravel. Las Vegas is about 42% stucco and 56% gravel. The rest of the city consists of cigarette butts and dried-up condoms.) MORE »