Job Opening: Seattlest seeks washed-up rock icon for occasionally posting, güd spelling req'd

Conventional wisdom says these days ain't happy ones for pulp-and-print publications. Circulation's down. Ad revenues are down. Everyone wants to read online. So nearly every newspaper, magazine and television news program has a host of blogs these days, to compete with the millions of self-described experts, autodidacts, conspiracy theorists and Chuck Norris-aficionados who propagate the blogosphere with their own brand of citizen journalism (read: poor spelling and poorer grammar).

Indeed, it's hard to get noticed on such an over-crowded digital newsstand, which is why even our local alt-weeklies are pulling out the big guns. A few weeks ago we reported that former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic was joining Seattle Weekly's stable of bloggers--as a weekly columnist.

Not to be outdone, The Stranger claims to have dug even deeper into the inbred world of Seattle rock royalty: today, for the first time, a post appeared on the Slog under Queensrÿche's Geoff Tate's byline.

That's right, bïtches: Queensrÿche.

We can't yet confirm that, in fact, the post attributed to Tate was legit. After all, The Stranger has been known to, um, fib for the sake of a good joke. (Apparently Sandra Oh is not, in fact, hating on our love of blow.) From the text of the post alone, it's hard to tell if it's serious:

Stranger News Editor Josh Feit has asked me to do a column on politics and music and Queensrÿche and whatever I want. And I was excited to get this party started, so this isn’t actually my first shot, but rather a qwick post to introduce myself.

So, I just want to say—so you guys know where I stand politically—that President Bush sucks. He’s a fascist. It’s like Germany in 1938. We’re really getting near fascism.

Insightful? No. On par with what we usually get from rock stars who've defected to the commentariat? Yes. But in the end, we don't think it's for real. The literary quality gives it away. No one who spells "quick" with a "w" could be the same person who so clearly appreciates the awesomeness of diæreses and who penned such memorable verse as:

Every time I leave
You say you won't be there.
And you're always there.
Every time I cry your name at night,
you pull close and say it's alright.
I look in your eyes, just like the rain.
Washing me, rain wash over me.
Touching your face, I feel the heat
of your heartbeat echo in my head like a scream.
What you do to me!
Waited so long I can't wait another day without you.

Of course, if it turns to be true, Tate would hardly be the first musician to contribute to The Stranger. Seattle music wunderkind Sean Nelson, better known elsewhither as the lead singer of one-hit-wonder Harvey Danger, was long a music editor and still contributes off and on. And a little known fact is that editor Dan Savage had a brief career in the musical theatre, workshopping the role of Phil in Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down, only to be replaced by a young Scott Bakula before the show made its 1985 off-Broadway debut.