When Ben Myers (left) published an article on the Guardian blog worrying that the Internet might be making writers lazy, I couldn't be arsed to do much more than shrug about it. Sure, the idea that fiction writers were relying too much on Wikipedia instead of going out and finding facts in which to ground their stories from reliable sources was dumb, and lamely executed at that, but my pal John Scalzi had already identified the main problem with Myers' limp logic: "confusing his personal authorial sloth with a genuine problem for the rest of us."

Then Myers found out Scalzi was talking about him online, and countered with a blazingly insipid "no, you suck" comment, where he describes Scalzi and his fans as "just another bunch of reactionary, misguided Americans blinded by your own bloated idiocy, and love of cake." The target of his scorn is less than impressed: "Yes, yes: We're all cornfed American idiots," Scalzi yawns. "Haven't heard that before." As he points out, his eight-year-old daughter can come up with more imaginative insults without even trying; "you're a hideous four-eyed freak who crams his brain with fairy fiction using his two extra eyes" is the best line I've heard all week, and I'm going to celebrate it with a piece of cake!