Michael Agger at Slate writes about the financial return on blogging, and his findings validate every blogger’s secret fear: In the grand scheme of things, we ain’t worth shit. Unless, says Technorati, we’re raking in a 100,000 or more unique visitors a month. In which case median annual revenue is roughly (wtf?) $75K+. All I need is for 100,000 of my closest friends to check out my blog once a month, click on a few penile enhancement ads, and I’ll be set. So long Creative Loafing!

But wait–I could continue to blog here @ City Desk with Gawker’s pay model, which pays $6.50 for every thousand page views. I’d have a reason to get dressed in the morning, brush my teeth, shave my uni-brow, etc., etc. I’d feel compelled to offer City Desk readers my best writing, my wittiest quips, my most intimate anecdotes. And based on the page views I’ve earned thus far, I’d make about…$12 every seven days or so. Fuck yea! That’s enough for one pack of cigarettes a week and a dollar-menu item per day!

Disclaimer: Bloggers who are susceptible to reality checks and/or own firearms should avoid reading Agger’s piece at all costs. Mostly to keep from learning how much Perez Hilton makes in a year. (I think Agger may have a typo in his story, but if the number he puts forward–$111,000 per month–is accurate, then Perez Hilton makes over a million dollars a year. A Million Fucking Dollars For Drawing Semen On AP Photos. [Dear god, I haven't asked you for anything since my sophomore year of college when I came down with food poisoning and shit my pants/vomited into my lap in front of all my friends, and I asked you to kill them for laughing at me, but I'm asking you now: Let that stat be a typo.])

Regardless of how much PH makes, I know this: I should have gone to law school.

Last minute addendum: The following arrived in an email from boss-man Erik Wemple (new title: King of the Downers), which he excerpted from a Paul Farhi piece. “Newspapers that were hoping to be rescued by their online ad businesses woke up to a sobering reality in mid-2007. By then, it was becoming clear that online advertising wasn’t growing fast enough to make up for the rapid disappearance of print ads (see “Online Salvation?” December 2007/January 2008). In fact, at the moment, online ads aren’t growing at all. Sales at newspaper Web sites fell 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2008. This may be as ominous a development as the meltdown of print. Online newspaper revenues had grown smartly in every quarter since the Newspaper Association of America began tracking them in 2003. No longer.”

Warning: Grossness ahead!

A few years back, the District renovated the Francis pool, at 25th and N Streets NW, to include a wade-in kiddie area. The change ushered in a major demographic shift at a pool that was once the province of mostly gay guys in thongs. Today, the pool is a regular hangout for the Bugaboo stroller set. The change has also turned the pool into a major public health hazard, as those gaggles of babies in swim diapers are a major source of effluence at the popular public pool.

Yesterday, sitting in the wade-in area, I watched in horror as an Italian dad plopped his 7- or 8-month-old baby in nothing but a Huggie’s swim diaper in the water and swung him around, spewing a wake of poop behind him. The baby deposited a major soupy load at the tip of the wading area as the dad finally pulled him out of the water and ran him into the locker room—without alerting a lifeguard to the incident.

Eventually, after many minutes, the guards blew the whistle and cleared the pool, to much griping from the patrons, who did not make the expected Caddyshack-like exit upon hearing the news. But the lifeguards’ sluggish response suggests raises questions about poop protocol. Pool poop isn’t just gross. It can be a deadly source of all sorts of pathogens, from e. coli to giardia to hepatitis A.

In 1998, 26 kids who’d visited a Georgia water park were sickened with e. coli linked to poop in the underchlorinated water. Seven landed in the hospital with strokes, kidney failure and other dangerous conditions and one died. In Utah last year, nearly 2,000 people were sickened with cryptosporidium, a nasty stomach bug spread through fecal matter that was so rampant in Utah pools that by summer’s end, the state had to ban kids under 5 from taking a dip. Utah even considered banning kids in diapers permanently the problem was so bad. Judging from yesterday’s events, Francis might be headed for a similar situation.

According to the Centers for Disease Control’s brochure “What to do if you find poop in the pool?”, the Italian baby’s eruption was in fact, a big deal, and a far worse problem than that of the “formed stool” variety. Such fecal incidents require serious remediation. The CDC recommends clearing the pool and then, after physically removing whatever brown stuff is still floating (though not with the vacuum), it says the pool needs hypercholorinating to kill off major pathogens. If the Francis staff had followed these rules, the pool would be out of commission for anywhere from 6 to 25 hours, depending on how much chlorine was in the pool at the time of the incident (which, from my sniff test, probably wasn’t enough). The baby let fly around 5:30 last night. When I called today, the pool was set to open on time at 1 p.m. Here’s hoping the chemicals are doing their job.

–Stephanie Mencimer

For this week’s paper, I wrote a story on the Sex Workers’ Art Show, a touring cabaret-style showcase that brings prostitutes, strippers, and porn actors off the pole, out of bed, and onto the stage. The show presented a twist on the age old question: What is (sex) art?

In the story, I quote porn performer Lorelei Lee, who says that while filming porn can feel like working the assembly line or flipping burgers at a fast food joint, it can also achieve meaningful expression. For Lee, porn DVDs can be art.

Fine. But the Sex Workers’ Art Show seems to want all sex industry wage earners to be considered “sex artists.” I’d submit that they are “sex artisans.” Sex workers are skilled in their craft. That doesn’t mean they’re creating art, necessarily. As Lee suggests, sex workers can be artists. But factory workers and hamburger makers can be artists, too.

Where does one draw the line between sex art and sex craft? Ponder that while checking out our NSFW audio slideshow of burlesque performer and Sex Workers’ Art Show participant Dirty Martini devouring money and then pulling it out of her ass. Naked.

The phenomena known as 2 Girls 1 Cup has finally become essay worthy. Slate weighs in with a short piece plus slideshow. Having actually watched 2 Girls 1 Cup, my reaction–from what I can recall–was as follows:

*Scene of turd exiting butt into cup=1 dry heave.
*Scene of turd cup being slurped by zombie girl=1 gasp.
*All scenes involving vomiting turds and/or regular vomit and/or vomit transfers: 1 dry heave and 1 watering of the eyes while dry heaving. Plus 1 scream.

The best reaction video I’ve seen: A video of Kermit watching 2 Girls 1 Cup. It’s almost as offensive as the actual video so don’t watch this at work.