The
Narcosphere (the participatory blog section of Narco News) needs a funnybone
I know, I know, it could result to be in very bad taste to try and make humor out of the daily body count of paramilitary massacres and unjustly imprisoned drug users in our América, and there is nothing less funny than trying to be funny, but at the same time we need some comic relief around here to kick our serious Authentic Journalist asses on a daily basis.
The best person for the job is already taken: Ana Marie Cox, the increasingly famous Wonkette blogger (I linked to her back when she was The Antic Muse and I could kick myself for not having offered her a job back then. Oh, but I was unemployed too. Drat!)
Now she's an overnight mega-fucking-media phenomenon. So before the next one gets picked up on waivers by Gawker, I'm sending my scouts far and wide in search of somebody who already finds great mirth and irony in the tragedies we report on every day. But before you say to yourself, "Oh, that sounds easy," listen to Wonkette describe her average day:
"I get up around 7 a.m. and put on my robe and my slippers, then I come in here and start working. I also freelance, so I've never been this busy. I realize the secret to working at home, and liking it, is to be busy. When I was a freelancer dependent on editors getting back to me, I remember just being miserable. You end up checking your email all the time, and then you just don't want to work. The nice thing about what I'm doing now is that it doesn't have any of the kind of baggage of writers block. There's no way to get "blogger's block." I cannot afford it; I have to write a lot. A lot. I'm required to post 12 entries a day, more or less.
Got it? Twelve motherfuckin' blog entries a day! And all of them short, sweet, to the point, and pretty damn funny.
Already, here in the newsroom, every Monday through Friday, we distribute among the staff the "morning links" of everything that is happening on our beat in our América, but we haven't yet figured out how to put them to best use here on The Narcosphere (at least half are in Spanish or Portuguese). What we need is that special bi- or tri-lingual auténtico or auténtica (or a duo that includes a translator) who, in just a few clickety-clacks of the keypad, can bring us each day's horrible tragic news served up with the appropriate dash of absurdity and gallows humor that is basic to being able to deal with this atrocity called the war on drugs and the so-called "democracies" that wage it without ever having obtained the permission of the people.
I do have a few candidates in mind, but they don't check their email hourly enough, much less use Instant Messenger, and that's kind of prerequisite for this gig. So, go my pretties... be a Narcosphere talent scout... and bring that special present or future co-publisher to me: publisher@narconews.com