This Was The Week In Words

Breaking news... (because I just heard about it this morning): Funny Or Die, the website founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and known for its viral comedy videos, announced this week that it is launching its own book imprint, Funny Or Die Books. They say their business model will be to take ideas from authors, polish them, then sell to publishers with the backing of the Funny or Die brand. I have mixed feelings about this news. It's great that there's a new publishing imprint out there for up-and-coming writers, but it sounds to me like they're using the Internet's 'site aggregator' model of publishing by taking other writers' work and making it their own -- appropriating the writer's work in the process. Writers need to learn how to build ourselves as our own brand (sounds like a WordNerdGirl post topic we should cover.) What do you think? Funny Or Die Books: Good or Bad? Comment below.

Related to that, is this really an "accidentally beautiful" photo of printers' ink dumped on a highway, or really a metaphor for the newspaper industry?  I got a big laugh out of these headlines -- all grouped together on Yahoo News this morning. It looked like the web equivalent of a supermarket tabloid rack:

• Will March 19 'Supermoon' Trigger Natural Disasters?
• Zombie Ants Fall Victim to Mind Control Fungus
• Photos of Hitler's Wife Stirs the Web

And try as I might, it was impossible to avoid the fallout news generated by last week's meltdown of He-Who-I-Will-Not-Name-because-I'm-tired-of-hearing-about-it-and-more-headlines-just-contribute-to-the-ongoing-displays-of-coked-out-narcissism, but I must say I enjoyed Jon Cryer's appearance on Ellen earlier this week, as well as his admission on Conan O'Brien's show yesterday that he is, indeed, a troll. That may be true, but he'll always be Duckie to me.

Finally, water, water is everywhere as the Philadelphia/South Jersey area deals with widespread flooding from last night's rain, and Japan, Hawaii and the West Coast of the U.S. is reeling from an 8.9 earthquake and resulting tsunami. Forget next week's Supermoon, today is the day we should really be worried about, as the natural disaster is still unfolding. Sending good thoughts and whatever help we can to the victims half a world away.