There's a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where the punchline is that what's sad isn't that everybody has a price, but that people's prices are so low. This comes to mind apropos of the fact that a business called Marqui has offered to pay bloggers to write about them, and I have taken them up on their offer. I get $800 a month to write about them once a week, starting this week. It seems to me that this is a pretty good price.

But then again, it also happens that there was a major storm a couple months ago that led to the breaking of a small dam which led to a mudslide which trashed the building at the University of Hawaii which housed the expensive equipment my wife needed to do her job, and that the $800 will cover her share of expenses until the biomed is operational again.

Which is to say: my motives are complicated.

And that goes to show how interesting Marqui's strategy is. Getting into the conversational flow is crucial for many companies. Marqui doesn't require that I say good things about them, just that I say things about them. I genuinely find this extraordinary clueful, which I don't get paid for. What I do get paid for is to mention it.

Listening: the single from the Jay-Z/Linkin Park mashup CD. It would be great if Linkin Park wasn't so staggeringly awful.

I want to hear the Jay-Z/Rush mashup "I got 2112 problems."

Update: Jim Nachlin came up with a Jay-Z/Rush mashup which is almost as bad as the Linkin Park. Jay-Z's not THAT great, but he's a lot better than these guys.

This is a job for the client-side contract invalidation incantation:

Some sort of diminution of personal worth had been effected, through means scientifically calculated to exist one millimeter shy of class-action lawsuit territory.

If it weren't for podcasting I couldn't deduct the cost of an iPod. Now, should I get green or silver?