Blogroll Updates

I've added a new entry to the "blog" portion of the site's blogroll. It's a brand-spanking new weblog from a really funny scarysmart polyglot guy I know in real life, and it's called Patrons of the Absurd.

Also, I've restored to the blogroll the link to Adam's awesome words mean things. It is so cool to have that back again.

Blast from the Past

Dave Winer (among others, but he's the worst) likes to backhandedly brag about how long he's been doing this weblog thing by running "One Year Ago Today," "Two Years Ago Today," (and so on) pieces. Well, suck on this, Dave:

Eight years ago today, on Lies.com: So it begins.

Lies.com Swag Now Available

Thanks to the graphics skillz and generous nature of ymatt, along with those schemers after global domination at Cafe Press, you can now plunk down some plastic and buy your own little piece of Lies.com at the Lies.com online store. Buy a Rumsfeld coffee mug today!

In related housekeeping news, I did a little tidying up in the blogroll. Some sites I've been visiting were added, while some others I'd mostly stopped visiting were removed. Woo! Exciting, eh?

Note for Katie

This note is for Katie. When I said that piece I'd read that I really liked was from the Christian Science Monitor, I lied. I really liked that piece, too, but the one I was trying to direct you to was the other one, below that, by James Carroll. It actually appeared in the Boston Globe.

Everybody else: Back to your lives, citizens. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Stories I Am Not Posting About

I've got a big raft of Actual Work to do in my Actual Life right now, so I'm not really able to obsess as much as I'd like to about a bunch of stories getting lots of coverage. And somehow, given said high levels of coverage in everything from mainstream news outlets to leetle teency blogs, I suspect you, the loyal lies.com reader, won't suffer too much if I fail to link to any of these stories.

I realize this lays me open to bitching about fairness. I mean, how could I make such an insanely big deal about every single lefty rant on the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for months, and then suddenly claim boredom when righties are making a ruckus about some Iraqi nuke scientist who buried some centrifuge parts under his rose bushes 12 years ago? Don't I know that this is The Smoking Gun That Proves Bush Was Telling The Truth All Along?

Well, no, I don't know that. In fact, I think that's a fairly ridiculous assertion. But having gone through all the lies in so much detail for so long, I find myself unable to summon the energy required to go through them all over again, just to refute someone who wasn't paying attention the first time, and who, honestly, isn't going to pay attention this time, either. So whatever, yeah, knock yourself out. My tiny little attention span has moved on.

Let's see; what else? Oh yes. The Supreme Court overturns Texas law banning same-sex sodomy. Woo! Go Supreme Court. You rock. (Except for dissenters Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. You guys suck! Heh.)

Um, Nike got rejected in their appeal claiming they had a First Amendment right to lie about conditions in their Asian sweatshops. Sorry, no.

Am I missing anything? No, I think that's it. Those are all the stories I was feeling guilty about not linking to. Oh, wait: That Memory Hole thing Tom Tomorrow is up in arms about: the video showing Bush's five-minute deer-in-the-headlights performance just after he was told about the second plane crashing into the WTC on 9/11. Yes, I watched it, and yeah, it's kinda shocking, or would be if I gave any weight at all to his media team's ongoing efforts to protray him as a purposeful Man of Action. But the main thing I felt in watching that was to cringe at the ruler-slapping teacher leading the kids in reading aloud. Jeez; what kind of HitlerYouth program are they running down there? You will read now! You will pause for the comma! Louder!

So. Anyway. I am not linking to any of those stories. If you've somehow missed them, and you're feeling deprived by my failure to link, talk to the hand. Or just go find them yourself; it's not hard. Thanks.

Who's Responsible for This?

A lot of people have contributed time and energy to lies.com over the years. Follow the link below, or scroll down, to learn more about some of them.

Lies.com Gets a Facelift

Janus was making fun of my circa-1997 dropshadowed-text logo, and Ymatt was willing to do some pro-bono design work, so shazam! Lies.com is new and improved. Please let me know if you notice anything broken, and thanks much to Janus for the incentive, and (especially) to Ymatt for the sweat equity.

Thoughts on Lies.com

I've been catching some criticism in the comments lately, which is nothing new, but these criticisms have been different, in that they've actually hit home. Specifically, people have been complaining about the one-sided nature of the stuff I've been posting, criticizing my far-left, anti-war, anti-Bush slant, and doing so in fairly thoughtful terms, not just repeating things from a right-wing talk show.

While I don't plan to abandon my views just because some people disagree with them, I do think it would be interesting to have more points of view represented here. In pursuit of that, I've emailed invitations to a few of the people who've been offering up criticism in the comments, as well as to The Web Walker, who had a history of contributing his own decidedly not-mine views back in the site's early days.

So we'll see what comes of that. In the meantime, if you disagree with some or all of the views I express here, and you think you could offer an additional perspective that would help the site do a better job of being whatever it is that it seems to be becoming, let me know, and I'll think about adding you to the list of people who can post stories on the site. Thanks.

Oh, and I'm also going to try to cut down on the extensive blockquoting within the items I post. If I'm posting it, it's because I think the whole thing is worth reading. If I feel like commenting on specific aspects of it, I'll just comment on them, without necessarily duplicating the material inline. I think that works better from a reader's point of view, even if it does mean some references are going to get pretty obscure as the linked-to items fall prey to link rot.

Brief Hiatus

I'll be on a vacation away from phones, computers, and net access from tomorrow morning until Friday, April 4, so posting of new items will probably be somewhat lighter than it has been (though I've encouraged my co-authors to do what they can to pick up the slack). Anyway, see you in a few days!

Lies.com Now Movably Typed

I've driven a stake through the heart of slash, and resurrected the site as a Movable Type-based blog. I love MT. Everyone should be forced to run out and grab a copy right now. You'll note that I've retained the slash-era stories (though not their comments). If you were an author on the old site (you know who you are) I've recreated your author status under MT, but you'll need to contact me for your initial login credentials. Anyway, please start hammering on the site, and let me know about any problems you encounter, or any suggestions you have for improving it. Thanks.

Lies.com To Be De-Slash-i-fied?

from the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes dept.

For various reasons, I'm giving serious thought to converting lies.com to run solely as a wiki, rather than a slash site. Feel free to weigh in with your opinions, either by replying to this story or by editing the wiki page linked to above.

The Lies.com Wiki

from the play-along-at-home dept.

You now can enter your own wisdom directly into the fruity goodness that is lies.com, without needing to go through any of that pesky user-registration stuff. Without further fanfare, I give you: the lies.com wiki.

Burden of Innocense

from the user-confessions dept.

a_stupid_box writes "I'm considering dating a friend of mine, and in so doing, talk with her quite often about rather revealing subjects. One of the thingers that keeps coming up is honesty. Now I'm a VERY honest person -- in fact, as far as I know, I'm the most honest person I know. I make an EFFORT not to lie, even about small things, and have been doing so since I was 16. I can honestly say I don't lie. When I told my friend this, she seemed a little reluctant to believe it (though she does now), and I was totally floored. Has lying become so commonplace in our society? I used to lie like a damned rug, and I expected it of others. Is the only reason I'm suprised by her doubt because I've STOPPED lying myself? Scary to think of all the B.S. people could be telling me on a daily basis, and the only reason I believe them is because I expect them to believe me because I actually tell the truth..."

I lost them...almost all

from the user-confessions dept.

Another in a continuing series of lies.com user submissions. Truth value: unknown. Spelling: pretty good, actually. Anonymous Coward writes "I had the 2 most bestest friends in the whole entire world. Then after a couple of months I started to realize that they were getting closer, and closer. I was like the third wheel. I always felt leftout, and stuff. So I started to talk about them behind their backs, and when they confronted me about the stuff I was telling people, I denied it. I lied to their face. The guilt is inside me eating me away. Eventually I told them the truthand that I was sorry. But that didn't help. They hate me and it's my fault. But they knew that they were leaving me out. I'm only 16, I should have a best friend, but now I don't. I have a boyfriend, but I need a girl to talk to. It sucks."

Way Old Lies: A Site By Any Other Name

from the forward-into-the-past dept.

From the summer of 1997 comes this reposting from the original lies.com site. This is the story I ran when I was thinking that the site might be taken away from me by George Rafter's bogus trademark-infringement action, which had caused me to reflect on why I'd created the site in the first place. Anyway, here it is (again).

The lies.com Domain Dispute

from the gimme-that,-it's-mine! dept.

Back in the good old days, circa early '97, on a Sunday morning not unlike this one, I got this weird phone call from some clown who claimed that by registering the lies.com domain name I had violated his trademark. Hilarity ensued. Read on for the full story, reprinted from the old, pre-Slash version of the site.

Server Outage

from the really,-this-doesn't-happen-all-that-often dept.

So, after getting my shiny new Slash site all up and running, random sunspot activity (or something) promptly fried my server's power supply and motherboard. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of the good people at Cyberverse, however, I'm now back in business. Yay.

lies.com now Slash-i-fied

from the just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe dept.

As you may have noticed, lies.com is now running Slash, the software underlying Slashdot. I haven't quite figured out where all the bodies are buried yet, so expect some rough edges for a few days. In the meantime, feel free to sign yourself up for one of those soon-to-be-collector's-items low-number user accounts.