PJM Death Pool

Howdy, PJM Death Poolers! Been awhile since we updated this website, it's true. But that's just because we wanted to keep clear and not influence things in case Pajamas Media was about to take a tumble. And because several of you had chosen dates within the past month, we didn't want to influence things any. Here's the several:

CGHill: April 19
Paul Hallman: April 29
Sean Hackbarth: May 12
ScoopStories: May 15

Unfortunately for everyone, PJM continues about being not actually, literally dead. It's just dead to us.

So CGHill, Paul Hallman, Sean Hackbarth, thanks for playing. Your best hope now is that PJM actually survives (and given all that cash invested, you can never rule out this possibility) and we're forced to refund your money at the end of the year. And that wouldn't be any fun at all.

Gary Kirby (June 9), you're on deck.

And another one bites the dust: With the passing of Single Awareness Day, Ruth A.'s February 14th PJM death prediction falls by the wayside. Sorry Ruth, better luck betting against the next foolish media startup.

In other PJM News: Wait, there isn't a hell of a lot. They've dropped the "Mondo" from their in-house blogs and have Launched "China Syndrome", which sounds like a bad Sci-Fi channel movie, and "WMD Files". What they're about is obvious.

The Pajamanistas have become so boring that, frankly, there's nothing to even mock. Even Dennis The Peasant has dropped the All-Raj-All-The-Time schtick in favor of some substantiative posts about his experiences with the Somali community in Ohio. We'll be back more regularly if things ever get interesting. Which we doubt.

Two weeks and... no PJM Death? Well, that's good for the lot of you who have chosen dates outside this month. Here's how things stand today:



Not so good for us, because as we've noted lately, PJ Media has been too dull to mock. But the moment something happens, we'll be here.

See you at the next update!

This evening a quick technorati search turns up on 20 posts in the last 24 hours that mention Pajamas Media. And thusly the blogosphere was silent on the topic. We don't even have much to say, the PJM site is still lamely limping along, bleeding capital, being boring, that sort of thing.

Among the few posts is this one from the Norse trickster god himself. It is a long, rambling post that we've been mostly unable to make sense of, but it does toss in the neologism "fucktard" and talk about Dan Riehl of Riehl World View, another PJM pessimist. The post itself doesn't really have anything to do with Pajamas Media, but it is quite entertaining.

In other news An Important Message From Welch's.

Click here to enter the PJM Death Pool.

The good folks over at everyone's favorite doomed media empire have opened up a Hollywood blog. Its name? MONDO HOLLYWOOD, and it even has the cute little kimono/bathrobe thing with some sunglasses. Adorable. Or something!

Apparently the "Mondo" thing is going to be a theme. Wonderful. Now we have the media-to-revolutionize-all-media insistent upon using slang terms that, frankly, we haven't heard in at least a decade. In fact, we cannot recall anyone ever using "mondo" in a non-ironic sense. That's how old it is, we're too young to remember the phrase being cool. What's even better, though, is their introductory headline:

Another opening of another "Mondo" show

That's right folks, scare quotes. Also, just a quick tip, according to our copy of the AP style guide, headlines get single quotes. Anyway, "Mondo Hollywood," which doesn't even have the advantage of rhyme, differs from "Mondo Alito" in a couple of important ways: it has comments, and there is some PJM-original content. You still can't tell which blogs are PJM and which aren't without clicking through their list, but we're sure that in a few months, despite whatever technical difficulties arise, they will have that sorted out.

Also: is this "Mondo" business something those fools got from the branding agency they hired? If so, they got one raw fucking deal.

Click here to enter the PJM Death Pool.

Well well well, it looks like PJM has an Alito blog.

Only it isn't an Alito blog. There is exactly zero content produced there, it's just a round up of Alito coverage from around the blogosphere. And, get this, they incorporate any number of non-PJM blogs. The Moderate Voice, TalkLeft, Radio Blogger and WILLisms just to name a few. These are excerpted, presented on the PJM page, and one would never know without looking at the PJ Blogs list which blogs are actually members of Pajamas Media. Yes, the posts do include links back to the original sources but what, exactly, is PJM providing, then?

All of us in the blogosphere know how to use Technorati, a quick search for "Alito" turns up over 48,000 entries. The PJM "Mondo Alito" (a dumb name if we ever heard one) blog contains fewer than two dozen entries. Are they a filter? Sort of, but their links look like the Alito links from Instapundit or Volokh with a less interesting mix. So, again, what service exactly are they providing?

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Dennis The Peasant calls PJM "too dull to mock" and then goes on to talk about losing weight. Best of luck to the fat ass.

A Technorati search on "Pajamas Media" turns up 4700 entries, most of the top ones talking about their Alito "blog" and linking back to it. Nick at LGF Watch posts this list of comments from Little Green Footballs, and we have to say that many of them are pretty disgusting. We find one from "'Nam Grunt" to be particularly odious:

'Nam Grunt 1/12/2006 11:11AM PST
Oh My! Savages killed each other, so what! They do it everyday to innocents that's their 'THANG'!

We will let that speak for itself, but it seems Nick's suggestion to make PJM advertisers aware of the behavior of LGF commenters isn't a bad one.

Moxie says that by 2006 she'd have expected something, anything interesting from Pajamas Media. She mockingly calls out Aubrey Chernick, primary PJM backer. Also, she gets the word "douchebag" into her post, for which we must certainly applaud her.

Th-Th-Th-That's all for now, folks.

Well folks, it's a bit of a sad day here around PJM Death Pool -- we must announce our first losing contestant: MDHatter, who selected January 2nd for the demise of the stillborn WWW-domination project currently known as Pajamas Media.



Stillborn isn't quite the right word, thanks to the cool million or so keeping it on life support like an unoved Terri Schiavo -- and one only slightly more self-aware.

Apparently they've been aware enough to spend some of that money on spiffy new headline graphics, which is kind of like moving the vegetative patient to a room with a slightly better view. Say, from the parking lot side to the parking lot side with trees.

Anyway, consider this a reminder that the PJM Death Pool remains open to entrants until 2/16/06. That's a bit more than a month. If you haven't entered yet, you may want to act fast and click the button above right -- the patient might not have that much time.