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To be honest, I didn't think Fake Steve Jobs author Dan Lyons would be able to keep it coming under his own name. (And also to be honest, I looked into getting his old job at Forbes.) Anyway, now that Dan is up and running at realdanlyons.com, he's got me laughing orange soda out my nose. Right onto my brand new iMac keyboard, Dan. That superflat one Steve worked so hard on. Dan's secret? He really does talk like this. All the time. Drives waitresses crazy. Three must-read, will-cringe excerpts from his recent posts:

Apple retailers have been given Justine Ezarik’s phone number and told to refuse her service. She calls 35 stores and they all tell her they’re sold out. Best part is where Justine doesn’t recognize the Talking Heads song on the hold music. The song she’s listening to (”This Must Be the Place”) was released the year before iJustine was born. Sigh. The fact is, try as I might, despite everything about her, I can’t make myself dislike iJustine. I’m not sure what it is. I think it’s her eyes. Watch the video again and check out the way she does the “I’m shocked” thing over and over again. She does this look all the time and the effect is to make her appear to be constantly startled by everything around her, as if she’s just fallen to earth from some other planet and everything she sees or hears is new and strange and shocking. Plus there’s that pink lip gloss. Much love, Justine. And hey — call me. Okay? Daddy wants to buy you some classic rock.

You think it’s a coincidence that just as the Journal was breaking its story about hedge funds hiring private detectives, Markoff at the Times happened to run into some “people close to Mr. Jobs” who knew about Steve’s surgery and were willing to tell John Markoff all about it? Right. None of this is happening by accident. Apple PR is playing the Valley press corps, and the Valley press corps is going along with it, like they always do. Not so the hedge fund guys, who have real money at stake and don’t care if someone like Katie Cotton yells at them. Frankly I’d be shocked if the hedge fund guys didn’t already have people posted 24×7 at the Stanford Medical Center. (Note that “people close to Mr. Jobs” do not speak to reporters without permission, ever.)

“Problems abounded,” and “the Web site was sluggish,” and on and on and on, plus 13 uses of I, me, my or mine this week. See the whole angry GoatScreed here. Money quote: “In my tests, using two Macs, two Dell computers and two iPhones, I ran into problem after problem.” If only Apple had brought Walt in early on the design and conception of MobileMe, and let him have some say in how the system was set up, well, this whole ugly mess might have been avoided.