Oh the letters I get… the enquiring minds…

What’s it like to be you, Sidekick, they ask. Share with us the juicy details of your life as a virtual Kemosabe, they plead.

K… just this once. Here’s the answers to the most Frequently Asked Harassing Questions from yours truly:

What’s your sign?

Gemini

What’s your favorite movie?

Sybil (1976)

Who’s you favorite movie character?

Tyler Durden in Fight Club (1999)

What’s your favorite book?

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Did you go to college?

I obtained a BS in Abnormal Psychology with an emphasis in dissociative identity disorder.

Do you have a bumper sticker on your car?

Yep, it says “I’m a schizophrenic and so am I.?

What’s Cowboy really like?

Cowboy is a slave driving, no good, thieving, back stabbing, sidewinding my better half. Or is that quarter?

Come on… who are you, really?

I am Jack’s raging bile duct.

Uh… Just what kind of guy are you anyway, Sidekick?

Who said I was a guy? Did I say that? Must have happened during one of the blackouts…

Police killed four people Wednesday as Afghans enraged over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad marched on a U.S. military base in a volatile southern province, directing their anger not against Europe but America.

A Danish newspaper pisses off the Arabs, and they’re mad at the US.

What do I have to say about this? Nothing.

Because this is my new bible. I’m done with snarkiness.

I swear. Really.

Go home already. It’s over.

Funny that Deuce should choose the incredibly annoying political hack Michelle Malkin for one of his weekend targets. The last time Deuce actually voted was in a South Padre Island “Make the Heineken Bottle Disappear and Wet T-Shirt Contest,” but of course those ladies were oozing with class compared to Ms. Malkin.

For those of you under the impression that Michelle is a narrow-minded fascist, boy has she had you fooled. She’s actually a champion of free speech and religious debate. To prove it, she’s encouraging US newspapers to publish the controversial caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that has the Middle East in flames (like that’s a novelty).

For the record, I think the fanatics that are rioting, looting and killing over cartoons are loony. Not since Calvin and Hobbes were acquitted (after being caught on tape beating a snowman senseless) have we seen such a reaction to silly drawings.

What gets me is that Malkin is railing against “Islamic p.c. bullies? for subverting free expression and religious dissent. Sucks when someone steps on your turf, doesn’t it, honey?

Glad to see you’ve changed your tune. To seal the deal, why don’t you publish this on your blog, just to prove you’re truly reformed?

One more thing, dear… Ann Coulter called, and she wants back her strap-on.

OK, that’s not quite right. I do agree with Mike Rundle that the logo sucks, but otherwise it should be a decent blog. Nick Douglas is certainly a competant writer, and Nick Denton doesn’t screw up often.

What prompted this little rant is the fact that I saw the Valleywag announcement in every other fucking headline in my fucking reader.

Can’t we just let Steve Rubel announce these things and the rest of us ignore him? Enough with the “me too” posts.

The dust has barely settled on the Vince Chan AmBlogger fiasco (you remember Vince—he thought it would be a good idea to steal Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger template), and already the JOAB posse is back in effect.

Here’s baby genius 2—http://www.ipodbloggers.com. Deuce, grab a rope. I’ll douse Cowboy with cold water and some Old Spice.

Tonight we ride.

There’s been a bunch of talk about link bait lately. And here’s the verdict… this stuff is not for amateurs.

You’ve figured out that your pole is not quite long enough for deep water fishing. But you still need traffic, right?

Well, relax. Sidekick is here to teach you a new way to glom on to someone else’s creativity, in three easy steps.

1.First you gotta spot some good link bait that someone else has posted before anyone else does.

2.Then, post something juicy about it on your own blog, with a link back to the bait. This gets you in the first trackback position just below the post.

3.Watch the traffic roll in.

Of course, this means you’re going to have to keep your beady little bloodshot eyes peeled to at least 500 feeds 24/7. But what else would you do with your time? Concentrate on creating content that stands on its own merit and naturally draws the links?

How silly.

Seth introduces a really bad new logo for his blog. The guy had the best personal branding I’ve ever seen with the top of his own bald head. Now it’s gone.

It’s very un-Godin-like to change something that worked so well. It violates his own schtick. His personal branding story has taken a turn for the worse, for no apparent reason.

What’s the world coming to? Next thing you know they’ll try to make a New Coke, or hire a sock puppet to promote a doomed dot com.

Well, the cards and letters are pouring in. “Sidekick,? they say, “how can I land a sweet gig like yours??

It’s not easy, amigos. But here’s four things you can do to increase your chances:

1.Fawn and Flatter – Make sure to cater to your Bloglord’s ego. Tell him he’s right, even when he’s off on a fucking self-destructive tangent again.

2.Personal Favors – Lattes, dry cleaning, driving strippers home the next morning… make yourself useful.

3.Take the Bullet – It’s always going to be your fault anyway, so go ahead and preemptively take the blame. For everything.

4.Ease the Burden – Blogging is hard. Alleviate the drudgery for the boss by reading feeds, doing research and other mundane stuff, like stringing words together into sentences. You know, the grunt work.

Bonus Tip Number Five: If you want to keep your job as a blog sidekick, never be tempted to participate in boring pseudo memes just to fit in. It’s a career killer.

There’s been an awful lot of talk this week about comments from Yahoo’s Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker that have been interpreted as meaning Yahoo is throwing in the towel in the competition with Google over search. The harshest A-List words came from Steve Rubel, who for a PR guy, bought the journalistic spin put on the original Seattle Post Intelligencer article hook, line and sinker.

But is Yahoo really giving in, or doing an end around? The rumor is Yahoo is going to buy Digg for $30 million next week, to socialize with del.icio.us and Flickr at the Yahoo cocktail party. What’s next, Technorati?

Why go head to head with Google over search when you can simply acquire Google’s hardcore fan base instead. It’s not a zero sum game when you think about it. We won’t stop using Google, and (unless things go seriously to shit) we won’t stop using these other tools either.

And aren’t social search results the future of search? Or have we all (including Mr. Rubel) just been talking smack?

Whattaya say, Steve? Sheesh, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Google had retained Cooper Katz.

Cowboy’s been doing his Lone Ranger thing for quite a while now – going in, guns a blazing, silver bullets finding their mark. Mostly kicking ass… but he’s gotten roughed up a bit in a scrap or two.

When you think about it though, even the real Lone Ranger had Tonto.

You remember Tonto, right? The Ranger would sense some trouble brewing in town, and send Tonto to go check it out.

Tonto promptly gets his ass kicked, escapes, and drags back to warn the Ranger. That’s basically my role here.

Sure, I hear you. Sounds like a shit job, right? Well, it’s a gig – what can I say?

That’s all for now… something seems to be going down in town.

Kemosabe shall return soon (hopefully).