• Mr. Cheney goes to Menlo Park: The big Dick is raising money for the Republican Party in a reception at Sequoia Capital, just to prove that a neocon can get something out of Northern California. [KCBS]
• PC World lists the 25 hottest pieces of linkbait worst web sites, starting with weirdo tech pundit Chris Pirillo's RentMyChest.com and finishing with MySpace.com (motto: "The House that Fug Built"). [PC World]
• "Body By Jake" sues AOL for fraud and forgery. Read the article to find out how often you can hear a writer refer to an entity as "Body by Jake" before you get creeped out and have to stop. [eWeek]
• Why did Hewlett-Packard hire a Boston detective firm to hunt an internal press leaker? Maybe because the pretexting methods used in the investigation are explicitly illegal in California, according to the state's attorney general. [NY Times]
• Eat your vegetables: Linux Journal lists the hacker/coder blogs worth reading. [Linux Journal]
• One of those bloggers, Firefox cofounder Blake Ross, recalls working at Netscape during high school. "Netscape was one giant WTF, or as they called it back then, AOL. The company had grown so inept that 'WTF' became just another thing we said each day, like 'Hey' or 'What time is it?' or 'We just lost another 5%' or 'Marketing wants to replace the Back button with an ad for Bowflex'." [The Daily WTF]
• How are tech conferences like political parties? No minorities, no women, and one token gay. [Factory Joe]
• Speaking of which, listen to Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" (video premieres on AOL on Monday). Laughing at it doesn't make you nerdy. Counting the verses that apply to you (I edit Wikipedia! Stephen Hawking's in my library!) makes you nerdy. [Weird Al on Myspace]

Chris has been spreading the shot amongst his friends, which led to this conversation:

Kris Krug: What wonder is that?
Chris: My cock. That's a fucking wonder.
Corey Denis: Very interesting, Chris...but I can't see it.

Naked Gnome in Alaska [Chris Pirillo on Flickr, CC license]

Here's a hit of news for all you crazy-uncle-watchers out there.

• Conference addict Marc Canter has embraced his inability to stay awake at conferences like Gnomedex. Rather than admit that he needs to sleep at home, the sleepy software developer slaps three photos of his famous open-mouthed doze onto his site banner. Declaring himself the canary in the boring-lecture coal mine, he writes, "My body is the ultimate judge." Gnomedex organizer Chris Pirillo comments that bodies that just smoked weed don't make the best judges. [Marc's Voice]

• Conference heavyweight Dave Winer, not to be outdone, says that he falls asleep at conferences too, and that this is also the conferences' fault. He then mentions "assholes" and their "shit" for no good reason, and for this we applaud him. [Comment on Marc's Voice]
• Meanwhile, ZDNet columnist Steve Gillmor explains his tactic for getting Sun to send him all their PR announcements. "Everytime I see Jonathan [Schwartz, Sun CEO], I try and embarass Noel [Hartzell, Schwartz's spokesman] by complaining." Someone's been reading How to Win Friends and Influence People! [Steve Gillmor's Inforouter]

I am as tired of Rocketboom split-up news as you are.

I lied.

• The story of Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron (and guest star Steve Jobs!) told in panels. EVERYTHING'S FUNNIER WITH COMICS! [Transparent Agenda]
• Blaugh, the un-comic by bloggers Chris Pirillo and Brad Fitzpatrick, puts an image in our brains that can only be worked out with years of therapy and Ze Frank shows. [Blaugh]
• Marketwatch reporter Frank Barnako is so over Amanda Congdon. Apparently she's hot? And apparently that's part of the reason a viewer base made of middle-class men watched her? This is all news to me. [Frank Barnako]
• Reading over everyone's suggestions for the next Rocketboom host...starting to see a trend...can't put my finger on it... [Michael Parekh]
• Elsewhere in vlogging, Carson Daly makes the first "saw you on YouTube" hire. She's cute, she's probably 16, Carson called her an "exciting package," and that's not at all creepy. [Video Podcasting News]

Independence Day weekend and the no-free-pass policy may have kept you from the Seattle Gnomedex conference, but the magic of the Internets again lets you pretend you were there to hear presidential hopeful John Edwards speak and to snark the usual gang of crazy uncles in the backchannel chat room. Photos posted by Scott "no I won't shoot your wedding" Beale at Laughing Squid.

Senator Edwards sees Dick Cheney in the crowd. "Wanna mess, old man? I got two hands here and they're itching to break some neck."

Gnomedex organizer Chris Pirillo and partner-in-crime Ponzarelli try out for a ska band.

Laugh at them now, but in five years these dudes will shave and reveal that they're 16.

Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg and Microsoft manager Niall Kennedy are blown back by an off-screen explosion, caused when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and blog pundit Dave Winer accidentally bumped each other.

Submissive startupper Kris Krug points to his dominatrix, Megan Cole.

This fish wouldn't stop asking for an "angler investment," and when its pun didn't go over well, the damn thing would bite.

The performance by Dave Dederer (of the Presidents of the United States of America) lost the talent competition to an interpretive dance about dynamic web menus.

When techies Chris Heuer and Will Pate decide they've had enough of the tech bubble, they will unleash Cthulhu upon the world and all hope will be lost.

ZDNet columnist Steve Gillmor talked for half an hour before anyone realized he was reciting the Bhagavad Gita in the original Sanskrit.

Philip Kaplan performs the interpretive dance that beat Dederer.

Gnomedex 6.0 Photos [Laughing Squid]

MashPit III: Tuesday 10-5
Made by: "Pinko Marketing" evangelist Tara Hunt; designer Chris Messina; Technorati coder Tantek Celik
Gist: Coders make mashups of their favorite Internet tools
Attendance: About 22 people as of 11 AM, room for more
People to meet: Tantek Celik, Chief Technologist for blog-tracking startup Technorati and king of Microformats (meet him again at Supernova)
People to avoid: Kevin Burton, because he's not allowed to talk until he sells his startup.
Fringe benefit: Free Starbucks and pastries, unless you'd rather watch the live video feed.

Supernova 2006: Wednesday to Friday
Gist: Speakers like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Technorati founder Dave Sifry, and Yahoo Senior VP Usama Fayyad speak about the business of technology. But you're here for the networking.
Attendance: Several hundred geeks and wonks hailing from Wired Magazine, Microsoft, Plaxo, and other places you want to get hired
People to meet: Kyle Brinkman, co-founder of MySpace, to ask if he's grown up and joined Facebook yet
People to avoid: The Ponytail (and Jon Schwartz, the interim Sun CEO attached to it)
Fringe benefit: Have fun drawing six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon maps connecting all the panelists — "So he's from Technorati, and she's on Technorati's board, but she also used to work for Sun, where this other guy works after leaving Microsoft...and these two are totally sleeping together."

Bloggercon IV: Thursday night to Saturday evening
Gist: Bloggers like RSS innovator Dave Winer and Gnomedex conference founder Chris Pirillo discuss blogging, how to make money from it, and how to win elections with it — things that bloggers currently suck at
Attendance: Capped at 125, with a long waiting list
People to meet: MAKE Magazine blogger Phil Torrone, man of many tech toys (jammers! robots! LEDs!)
People to avoid: Winer — which might be hard, since it's his conference
Fringe benefit: Winer declared the whole conference "on the record." Exploit this every time you overhear a whisper.

BarCamp: Friday to Sunday
Gist: Much bigger, funner version of MashPit — one of many BarCamp coding and collaboration events held around the world. Hosted by Microsoft, who really wants to prove how indie they are
Attendance: Room for 250, with 204 signed up so far
People to meet: Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera, if only to ask whether he and roommate Michael Arrington really have a "Tech-cave" and "Tech-mobile" in the basement
People to avoid: Anyone with a podcast microphone
Fringe benefit: Brag about getting invited to O'Reilly Media's Foo Camp, so "I just thought I'd drop by to see the little people."

1. Check the numbers: Digg rejects Weblogs, Inc. Long before Kevin Rose's social news site reportedly rejected $40 million from Yahoo, Rose (pictured) rejected $4 million from Jason Calacanis, owner of blog network Weblogs, Inc. Did it seem like a great deal? Sure, until Rose examined the deal more closely. If he accepted, he'd give up control of Digg — and only end up with one million bucks, all said and done. Now, with Calacanis launching his own social news site at AOL's Netscape, Rose has no reason to worry — Digg's about to launch a souped-up new version to blow Netscape back out of the water.

2. Don't get cocky: Facebook rejects Yahoo This failed deal (only reported here on Valleywag may have been the last hope for Facebook. The school-based social site needs a buyout or IPO to pay back some heavy venture capital investments. With a growing staff bringing high operating costs, and sparse ads and partnerships on the site, Facebook is nowhere meeting the newer, more rigorous standards for a public offering. So when Yahoo offered a reported $1.4 billion buyout, why didn't Facebook jump into the arms of its white knight? Because someone in charge — at this point, probably the VCs — is holding out for $2 billion. Will anyone offer that before Facebook's old and busted? Don't bet on it.
3. Don't burn the bridge: Chris Pirillo rejects Microsoft Just a few months ago, the already-successful tech pundit Chris Pirillo eyed Microsoft as an employer. After some interviews, Microsoft made an offer to the former Tech TV host. Their price was too low, but the affair ended amicably — Microsoft is still the major sponsor at Chris's annual tech conference, Gnomedex.

dgdn knows a name like "Sky" should have been enough warning:

Its no secret that sky is a scientologist. I was an early employee at earthlink, and the entire company was scientologist and even freakier, they ran the company based on L Ron Hubbard's "Management Technology". Yes, we had to use scientologist phrases and frameworks to manage employees. They used to come around our desks once a week and we would have to show them our inboxes. Luckily, these days all of the email snooping can be done without employee involvement, so we don't have to be inconvenienced!

eknirb thought the first big browser disappeared with Marc Andreesen:

Netscape's still online?

Elton wants Sergey to take him shopping:

Well at least SOMEONE uses his credit card as Brin is so tight with money his butt squeaks. Hasnt he heard of the trickle down theory?

No love lost between Jason DeFilippo and Calacanis or Pirillo:

Why would anyone take Jason's challenge seriously when he failed to ever pay up on his last great challenge? As far as Pirillo goes he's just trying to pimp his latest scam to make money off the searches provided by the hard work of others without paying them a dime.

You want in? Jot pithy responses to Valleywag items and send to tips@valleywag.com with "Comments" as the subject.

Scripting.com's Dave Winer (right) gets hot with, from left, Douglas Rushkoff, unkown, and Mark Hurst. Justin Hall was cruelly edited out of this sauna pic.

Robert Scoble to Shel Israel: "Keep grinning for the camera, baby, and our royalty checks will keep getting fatter."

Chris Pirillo rents out the last ad-free space on earth. His partner Ponzi must be thrilled.

Geeks of the world! Please keep your shirts on! But if you don't, send photos to tips@valleywag.com.

By the way, one of the Blogher bloggers intends to go topless soon, according to her colleagues. Which leaves Valleywag with an ethical question: do we run the photo on the blog?

Or do we charge you $50 to see it?

Earlier: Tech pundits getting naked: a worrisome trend [Valleywag]
And then: Geeks gone wild: Dave Winer takes off more than his shirt [Valleywag]

Chris Pirillo will abstain from Google for a week. In the meantime, he'll find everything by whining "Where is it?" to Ponzi. Is anyone willing to take a Google Fast too? (Answer: Hell no.)

No takers yet for Jason Calacanis' YouTube challenge. Said the AOL exec and seer: "I could set this up in a weekend with two kids in high-school and a couple of cases of Red Bull. In fact, the first two programmers to email me with a decent resume I'll back you guys to build a YouTube compeititor—provided you can build it in under five days." No one's signed up in the comments. Come on, guys, you could get funding from the FUTURE KING OF AOL.

Okay, so it's not the X Games. Still, these are geeks we're talking about.

Googlefasting [Chris Pirillo]
YouTube is not a real business [Jason Calacanis]