And the second Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks Recursive Monkey Wrench award goes to...

...Michael Dirda, who, in trying to convince people that newspaper book reviews are worth saving, ridicules and trivializes the very people he is trying to convince:

Every blogger wants to write a book. In fact, the dirty little secret of the internet is "Littera scripta manet"--the written word survives. A book is real, whereas cyberspace is just keystrokes--quickly scribbled and quickly forgotten. ...If you were an author, would you want your book reviewed in The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books--or on a website written by someone who uses the moniker NovelGobbler or Biografiend?...

...Instead of trimming book coverage, the wise publisher would beef it up. After all, the people who make up the hard-core readership of newspapers are also the people who buy and care for books. A newspaper that takes away its book review section ends up alienating its most faithful--and influential-- readers.

Tooltastic! Congratulations, Mike! You hereby join Keith Gessen in being recognized for your upstanding and outstanding efforts in service of absolutely and totally failing to get it!

To (re-?)(-cursively?)quote myself:

I've said it before, and I hate that it has to be said again: if you, in the literary criticism and analysis world, make fun of people who should naturally be your primary audience (i.e., people who love literature and love talking about literature and love responding to discussions about literature and generating new discussions about literature), you are a huge recursive tool. I'm sorry, but it's true: you are a monkey wrench you have thrown into your own self.

You know what we need? We need a graphic. A badge, suitable for printing, that winners of the TDAOC Recursive Monkey Wrench award can print out, frame, and display on their desks. Any of you graphic/art/drawing people want to take the lead on this initiative? Drop me a line.