The first time I heard Ken Layne sing, I was driving through the mountains of Slovakia on a weird corporate road trip with my wife, toddler daughter and Matt Welch. Somewhere (lost?) near the Polish border, Welch popped a cassette into the dashboard of the old black Volvo 240 I’d bought from Adam Lebor, the Times of London’s eccentric correspondent.

The cassette revealed Ken Layne humming and chanting about some “monkey cup.” Whatever that was, I couldn’t tell, but the song was at once hummable, evil and captivating. Then we heard “springtime in Budapest,” a lovely ode to the city’s prostitutes.

Now, Ken’s starting to digitalize and propogate his old tapes. Here’s the first, “don’t you worry ’bout me.” Toss Ken ten and maybe he’ll keep playing.

A final note before I go coach soccer (where six months of winter and kindergarten have transformed unruly thrashers into disciplined kickers): welcome to new Blogad peddler and Republican-scourger Atrios, who opened his adstrip for business yesterday afternoon and already has three ads running.

Blogcritics has added a section focused on self-produced music, art, and literature titled DIY. Gee, DIY is a great way to sum up the Internet revolution. Blogads, for one, is all about DIY ads.

I’m looking forward to testing Paris WiFi when I’m over in June for the annual French weeklies shindig. I’ve got to remember to sign up here. (Via Buzzmachine via Ben Hammersley.)

Ken Layne, my favorite writer in Reno and the rest of the western hemisphere, gave Blogads a fine plug yesterday.

And speaking of testimonials, here’s the one Ken mentions:

I like the Blogads; I’m getting a better click-thru rate on them than I had on BCentral banner ads, for the most part. At least, more people are actually BUYING my books after clicking through. I really wanted to focus to a narrow market, especially L.A.-based media. I know the big money in writing is having movie options on your book. (I’ve optioned one already), not selling books. So if I can just break even in sales, but expose the books to people who can get me into the movie-making machine, that is what I’m after. I can’t get that with the rather broad dispersal in banner advertising.

David Kilpatrick
Author LA Stalker

David later bought an additional ad on Moxie and wrote me to add “Getting good results on that Moxie ad…”

All of which makes me wonder — is there any place better than a blog for advertising a book? And you don’t need to be Random House to afford Blogads…

Munching on Cherrios this morning, I expressed my joy that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who I’ve admired ever since reading intrigued by Blogshares.

My wife, always good at bringing me back to earth, asked: “Remind me why blogging is such a big deal?”

I gulped. “Well, for the first time in human history any one of 600 million people has the technical ability to communicate immediately with the other 599,999,999 people. That’s fantastic and amazing. But we need a way to sort out who is who and what is what among all those people and messages. So now different systems are evolving to help us sort. Blogshares sorts by helping people see who other people have ‘invested’ in. Blogrolling lets us see who other people like to read and support. And Blogads sorts by letting audience see who has paid to be heard. None of these systems are perfect, but our speed and quality of filtering and communication are definitely increasing.”

I went back to munching my Cherrios. At night, I’ve been plowing through “Six degrees” another network book. Bottom line, as in the booksLinked and Emergence, weird and powerful things happen when groups of individuals link together and form networks. (I’m still trying to understand what a “percolating hub” is, though. Anyone have any clues?)

BTW, if you have a service or product to advertise, Blogshares ads are a SCREAMINGb bargain right now. Spend $110 and your ad will be seen a couple of million times this month and couple of those views will probably be Pierre Omidyar. Order before the price doubles.

Steve Outing: “Web sites of public newspaper companies averaged $7.93 in annual revenue per unique visitor — compared to more than double that for pure-play online companies that operate competitive services, such as Monster.com, eBay, and AutoTrader.com. Within the newspaper group, per-visitor revenues varied widely — from close to zero all the way up to $44.”

New report says average wage in Massachusetts dropped 5% in the last year.

How well are Google Adwords technology working in the new “contextual” advertising campaign? Badly, Marketing Sherpa says. “Generally newsy, how-to, and highly targeted articles on niche sites tend to get far better ad clicks than newsgroups, bulletin boards, general interest sites, or stagnant info pages. Unfortunately Google didn’t take this factor into consideration when designing the program. They chose the partner sites for contextual ads mainly based on traffic (sites had to have more than 20-million pageviews a month, which very few niche sites do) and “quality” which seems to mean being G-rated.”

“Don’t you worry ’bout me”… more ineluctable proof that Ken Layne is a genius. (Do Ken’s bandwidth a favor and rightclick/save the song, since you are gonna want to listen to it hourly.)

I’ve been chuckling ever since reading this story about a guy who substituted a gag picture for his engagement photo. But like some goofy New Yorker cartoon, the photo suggests something unparsably poetic (I’m not sure what exactly) about courtship and marriage and shared visions. (Via ObscureStore.)