Thanks to Ken Layne and Sploid, I now know why there has been a sudden resurgence of traffic to my old, old item on mighty Jeopardy! mega-champion Ken Jennings: Ken J is in the news again, on account of certain Professional Newswriters who can't actually recognize news, or a joke.  Per the deadly serious Mr. Layne:

Quiz-show hero Ken Jennings is in hot water for writing a humorous blog post that confused and angered the idiots who work for the New York Post, Associated Press, USA Today and other media.

Jennings, who won more than $3 million on "Jeopardy," posted the satirical "Dear Jeopardy" essay on his website.

In the easy-to-understand fake letter, Jennings claims host Alex Trebek died in a car crash and was replaced by a robot.

Ken Jennings' joke is not for everybody -- it will be most amusing to longtime Jeopardy! fans -- but it is Very Obviously a Joke.  Very Obviously, that is, unless you work for the New York Post or the Associated Press.

The lesson is: don't believe anything you read anywhere, anytime, unless it is written by someone named Ken.

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Given Ken Layne's yeoman service in keeping the record straight on this and many another earth-shattering story, I am hoping that some sympathetic buyer will be found now that overlord Nick Denton has gone and put Sploid up for sale. 

Attention domain name shoppers!  Past Jeopardy! Champions agree:

The inimitable voice of Ken Layne must not be stifled.  The Internet will be meaningless, without form, void, and really really dull if he is silenced. 

And no, I'm not just saying that in the vain hope of scoring one of those precious review copies of the new Ken Layne & the Corvids album.   Howard Owens has one.  (I liked the first one a whole lot, including the reference to a certain affordable but Potent Potable.)

~~~

P.S., Vaguely Topical Musical UPDATE [072606]:

A constellation of weblogging luminaries including the aforementioned Ken Layne, Colby Cosh and tony pierce (who is editing LAist these days) are hanging about in the comments to this post from Matt Welch about the life-altering effect of seeing Prince & the Revolution perform "Purple Rain" on the American Music Awards lo some many years ago.  Matt has the YouTubean evidence.  In the course of the colloquy, Mr. Layne and mr. pierce generously provide links to some extremely fine live performances by The Clash from around 1980.  Jeopardy! is not mentioned.