Arg! Arg! I Hate This Guy!

It's like pressing a bruise, the fact that I keep reading Salon's Wednesday Morning Download just to get angry with Tommy Bartlett. (I know the byline he uses is Thomas Bartlett, but it's just so much more emotionally satisfying for me to refer to him in the diminutive, especially since that's also the name of two cheesy-ass roadside attractions in Wisconsin: Tommy Bartlett's Robot World and Tommy Bartlett's Sky, Ski, and Stage Waterski Show.) This week's rage-making offense comes from the fact that he starts his last free download description with another "full disclosure" statement: "Full disclosure: Sam Amidon is my best friend, so you could say that I'm not an unbiased judge of his work." Get a grip on yourself, Tommy. We're not interested in you and your friends and your life. We want you to act as a sieve for us, filtering out the good downloads from the bad; we don't want you to use this column as an excuse to foist your own taste on us. You already have a blog; why do you need this platform, too? Are you that much of an egomaniac?