Yesterday I spent the day at TechCrunch’s ‘Real Time Crunch-up’. This despite having no idea what a ‘Crunch-up’ actually is.

The important thing is that Erick had asked me to help moderate his panel about marketing within ‘real-time streams’, which is a subject close to my heart. So close in fact, that had he asked me to help moderate a panel about child rape and it’s place in the public school system I couldn’t have been keener to weigh in.

I’ll get back to my own contribution in a moment, but first, as a courtesy to my paymasters, I should probably relate a few of my ‘key learnings’ from the event.

1) There is such a thing as a ‘key learning’, a phrase which I heard at least three times during the day, and which I gather is what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot.

Honestly, it’s impossible to work in these conditions. I’m writing this from the TechCrunch Real-Time CrunchUp; a one-day event in San Francisco celebrating the joys of the ‘real-time’ web. Sounds awesome, right? It is.

I’ve been on stage, heckling participants on the marketing panel, I’ve been Tweeting from the audience, I’ve been following the live-blogging of the panels. Generally I’ve been living the real time dream – which probably explains why I haven’t done any actual work all day. And now I’m twenty minutes away from my deadline, and I still have to read a week of TechCrunch and figure out everything that’s happened this week.

Oh, and to make matters worse, Arrington has filled my work room with dogs.

Welcome, then, to a completely – and appropriately – real-time edition of This Week On TechCrunch.

So Belle de Jour was real after all. The Internet’s most famous anonymous sex blogger – turned best-selling author – turned internationally successful TV series – has finally outed herself in the UK’s Sunday Times. And it turns out she’s a character straight from the pages of XKCD.

From her interview with the Times’ India Knight, we learn that Belle is in fact Dr Brooke Magnanti a specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology who ran out of money during the final stages of her PhD thesis and decided to become an escort to make ends meet. So to speak. Add in the fact that Magnanti was already a reasonably well known science blogger and ‘The Secret Diary of a London Call Girl‘ was born.

Despite Belle’s growing fame, and the determined efforts of journalists around the world to out her, Belle’s anonymity remained intact – mainly thanks to a complex series of agents and shell companies that allowed her to receive payment for her work without compromising her identity. Even her agent didn’t know her real name until this week when Belle herself chose to out herself, granting an interview to Knight, one of her harshest critics.

A better example of someone operating on her own terms it’s hard to imagine. Anonymous bloggers everywhere can read Belle’s story and take heart in the fact that it really is possible to be both successful and anonymous in the Internet age.

There’s just one problem: it isn’t.

As any industry analyst will tell you, since its two journalists were returned from North Korea, Current.tv has been woefully overstaffed. The company simply doesn’t require that many employees to edit YouTube clips for its audience of jobless hipster doucheballs who have fallen asleep in front of the television.

And so it wasn’t entirely surprising this week when TechCrunch reported on a ‘bloodbath‘ at the company, with 80 people being laid-off across all departments.

Current’s COO Joanna Drake Earl (who is herself three separate people) insisted to Leena that the layoffs aren’t a ‘cost-cutting measure’ but rather a ’shift in programming strategy’. In most other companies, this would be classic corporate bullshit, but in Current’s case Joanna, Drake and Earl might actually have a point. After all, by creating 80 new unemployed people – unemployed people who actually know what Current is – they’ve just doubled the target audience for their programming. How’s that for a convenient truth?

I’d love to have witnessed the scene at eBay’s house back in 2005 when the FedEx guy delivered their exciting new purchase…

“Hey, guys! Skype’s arrived!”

“Awesome! Quick – open it…”

“Wait, what the hell… this isn’t what we ordered. It’s just a big box full of users with the word ‘Skype’ written on the side in Sharpie – none of the core p2p technology is in here.”

“What? Didn’t you read the description before you bid on it?”

“I guess not. I just got carried away with all the excitement.”

“Shit dude. How much did we pay?”

“Uh… $2.6 billion”

“Man, we have to stop buying stuff on the Internet.”

I’d probably feel slightly smug, if I didn’t feel so sick.

Smug that after two weeks of me suggesting that social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency, the news has delivered the perfect example to support my view.

Unfortunately it’s hard to feel smug – hard to feel anything but sadness and nausea – when thirteen innocent people are dead.

Frankly, since I started writing my weekly column for TechCrunch a few months back, I’ve been growing increasingly worried about the sanity of our readers. And not just for the reasons you might think.

Under a growing list of bylines, more than 200 posts are published on TechCrunch.com each week – with countless more on the various spin-off Crunch sites. Even allowing for MG Siegler’s eight personalities, and the fact he hasn’t slept since the day Twitter launched, that’s still an enormous amount of content for one blog to produce.

Consuming every single word that appears on TechCrunch is a fool’s errand, and yet we know some of you try to do exactly that. We know this because, even when you find a post that doesn’t interest you, you still take the time to let us know rather than simply moving on to something else. “Too long; didn’t read” you say, helpfully.

Knowing how keen you are not to miss anything good, but worried that our ever-increasing output is going to turn you crazy, I took Arrington aside after our weekly game of beer pong to suggest a solution. Why don’t I compile a weekly ‘Best Of TechCrunch’, rounding up the most important, informative and entertaining content from the preceding seven days?

It’s Halloween, and nowhere more obviously so than in San Francisco.

This is my first 31st October as a resident of the United States and I have to say, the effort you yanks go to in celebrating the ancient Celts’ holy evening is truly astounding. Every corner store, diner, dry cleaners, police station, library and undertakers has embraced the – uh – spirit, adourning their windows with spray-on cobwebs and pumpkins and sparkly witches hats and coffins. (Although, to be fair to the undertakers, the coffins are sort of a year-round thing.)

We celebrate All Hallows’ Eve in the UK too of course, and like most things on our side of the Atlantic it’s just as commercial, albeit with more irony and a better accent. But the real difference back home is that Halloween is an evening – just one evening, not a whole fucking month – aimed squarely at kids. Here, by contrast, it seems to be something far more grown-up. Something far more – well – creepy.

A little before 9pm on Wednesday night and I’m standing on the ‘VIP’ balcony of San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom, holding a can of something called ‘MySpace Buzz’ and waiting for Weezer to take to the stage. It’s a weird scene, all told, and not just because I thought Weezer was dead.

The bulk of the weirdness stems from the make-up of the crowd: a dozen feet below me in the main auditorium there are maybe a couple of thousand writhing teenagers – Weezer fans to a (wo)man, cheering and shouting and jumping and sweating and doing all the things I remember doing a little over a decade ago.

These are the invited fans; those lucky enough to have been chosen to attend this ’secret show’, organised by MySpace. You know, for kids. Every so often one of the stage lights picks out a tiny puff of smoke in the crowd. Ah, you crazy kids and your pot: I feel like I’ve been transported back in time.

“I won’t be happy til the whole world hates me.” Not my words, for once, but those of Seth MacFarlane on stage last year at Carnegie Hall. The audience laughed, as well they might (“he was on the Internet and I’m in college”) , on the assumption that their hero was joking. And yet, and yet…

On November 8th at 8:30pm, viewers of Fox in the US will watch in horror as the network gives over thirty whole minutes of airtime to a Windows 7-sponsored episode of Family Guy.

Just take a moment to let the horror of that fact settle in your brain. Multi-millionaire Seth MacFarlane – who, by the way, uses a Mac – has decided to sell the soul of his flagship show to Redmond. For money.

In one of those wonderful ironies of scheduling that make columnists weep with joy, Larry Dignan spent yesterday at a Yahoo! hack day in New York.

This is the same Larry Dignan who is editor in chief of ZDNet, which is the same ZDNet that yesterday published a blog post accusing Yahoo of passing the names and email addresses of thousands – sorry, hundreds of thousands – of bloggers to the Iranian authorities during the country’s recent election.

It’s just weird.

It’s weird that Justin Timberlake, he formerly of *NSync and Emmy-award-winning dick boxing fame, is currently spending his days pretending to be the guy who founded Plaxo. It’s also just weird that – along with Shawn Fanning’s pivotal cameo in the blasphemous remake of the Italian Job – both of the founders of Napster have now been key plot points in major Hollywood movies. And furthermore, as if all of that wasn’t just batshit weird enough – I discover that Justin Timberlake – when he’s not dressing up as the dude from the board of Yammer – has started to invest in Silicon Valley start-ups. Weird weird weird.

Those, roughly, were my thoughts on Thursday evening, as I stood – clutching a bottle of water – at the launch party for Robo.to, the latest product from Particle, which happens to be the start-up that Timberlake invested in. Timberlake was in town too – in order to dress up as the guy from Causes – but couldn’t make the party due to work commitments. That was also weird, I thought. Not that he’d bailed in order to dress up as the other Facebook guy, but rather that him doing so had resulted in a reporter from US Weekly (which I discovered is pronounced “us, rather than US – which is also weird, given that it’s not about “us”, but rather about “them”) emailing me for a comment.

I’m writing this from the ‘club section’ (whatever that is) of San Francisco’s AT&T Park where, if I understand the scoring correctly (I don’t), the Cubs are leading the Giants 4-1. I’ve just eaten my second hot dog and I’m debating whether to buy a baseball cap emblazoned with the words ‘Go Giants’. I also just turned to my British friend Andrew to make an amusing American pop culture reference, prefacing my observation with the word “dude…”.

I mention all of this for two reasons. First, I hope it will make you understand why my column this week reads like it’s been written by a man distracted by the fear of at any minute being beaned by a baseball, and second so you’ll appreciate all of the efforts I’m making to Love America.

You see, over the past weeks I’ve realised how sensitive you former colonials are to foreigners opining on any aspect of your country, particularly if we compare it to our own. Almost two weeks after Techcrunch 50, I’m still getting hate mail over my post suggesting that your flag be moved two feet from the stage to the main floor. Much of the abuse glosses over the issue at hand and focusses instead on the indisputable fact that I am a freedom-hating socialist who would gladly see the American flag used to mop up the blood of terrorist martyrs. (Weirdly this is an accusation that I’ve heard far more frequently since joining TechCrunch than when I worked at the Manchester Socialist Guardian of Kabul.)

So here we go then, the fourth and final part of my award-winning TechCrunch50 coverage; the all-important ’round-up’. This is where I ask appropriately round-uppy questions like “what did we learn this week?” “what were the highlights of the event?” and “is there any chance it will happen again next year, given that the whole spectacle climaxed with Arrington walking off stage as co-host Calacanis led the audience in some weird, embarrassing clapping game?”

I’ll get to that last question in due course but first, given that the “what did we learn?” question has already been answered by Lacy and Arrington, let’s consider the highlights.

Day two of TechCrunch 50, and the TC50 Drinking Game is in full swing. So far, we’ve seen jokes made at the expense of Arrington, Jason alluding to his personal wealth and countless “great question”s. But disappointingly there has been no real controversy either from the panel of experts or the startups.

Thank Calacanis, then, for The American flag.

TechCrunch50 may be organised and sponsored by Americans but one of the best things about it is that it attracts start-ups from around the globe. To my right, there’s a chap speaking in German to his colleague, yesterday an Indian startup – iMo – was the darling of the day, and half of my friends from London seem to have made the journey across the Atlantic so they don’t miss out on the fun.

So that was day one of Techcrunch 50. The best tech conference in the universe, that pays my wages.

And what did I learn today? Today I learned that the Rocky soundtrack makes any technical hitch a million times more dramatic. I learned that Yossi Vardi believes that any disaster can be solved with a show of hands or a forced round of applause. I learned that, where other entrepreneurs quote Sun Tzu, Calacanis prefers the wise words of Disney’s Ratatouille. I learned that when Arrington and Calacanis squabble, they sound like a gayer version of Statler and Waldorf.

But most importantly of all, I learned that there’s no way any of us are going to make it through a second long day without downing some serious booze. And so, with that in mind, I’m delighted to announce the rules of the Techcrunch 50 Day Two Drinking Game.

Huzzah! It’s that time again! Time for TechCrunch50: where thousands of struggling entrepreneurs spend three grand they can barely afford to watch fifty of their peers dancing like malnourished bears for the approbation of Jason Calacanis! It’s like Christians and lions meets Satan’s own version of speed dating, with added Scoble! What’s not to love?

I’m sorry – you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, it’s just that I have to prove to you that I haven’t gone native.

You see, one of the main reasons I was hired by TechCrunch was for my traffic-driving habit of hurling faeces at unsuspecting industry conferences. Conferences like Jeff Pulver’s inexorably ill-planned 140 Characters in New York or Loic LeMeur’s très froid ‘Le‘ in Paris – both of which saw the sharp end of my tongue when I was at the Guardian. I learned there that no-one cares when I talk about interesting start-ups or noteworthy trends – but when I textually assault a hard-working event organiser, the page impressions flow like gravy.

Glancing at TechCrunch late on Thursday evening, I immediately realised there was trouble afoot.

A few hours earlier, Sarah Lacy had published a post about the difficulties she’d had receiving her visa to Brazil to research her book and report on start-ups for TechCrunch. I’d read the post and sympathized with Sarah’s frustration. The problem, apparently, had been caused by an ‘upgrade’ of Brazilian embassy computer systems and the resulting havoc had affected everyone from journalists to business people to the coach of a national football – sorry, ’soccer’ – team.

As Sarah wrote, it also meant that she would now not be able to meet any of the scores of startups who had hoped to speak to a visiting TechCrunch reporter. If I were one of those startups, I’d be pissed. I’d be pissed at my government for not getting their technology together, and I’d be pissed generally that I’d missed an opportunity to showcase my business on a foreign stage. I might even post a comment saying as much.

Glancing at TechCrunch on Thursday evening, then, I half-expected to see maybe a couple of dozen comments on the post. But no. There were hundreds. Almost 500 in fact, and just about every one of them was attacking Sarah specifically, and American visa policy, generally.

Feeling a bit under the weather yesterday – presumably my body’s reaction to the fact that San Francisco has suddenly become sunny – I decided to take a jaunt around the Internet for column ideas. My deadline was a whole 24 hours away, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?

My first find was this story about a bear who had got trapped in a Colorado skate park, presumably after breaking in to practice his Ollies, or whatever it is bears do on skateboards. The bear was finally rescued when townsfolk dropped a ladder into the park, allowing him to climb to freedom.

To any normal person, a bear trapped in a skate park would be little more than a heartwarming newsbite; a quirky story to distract from another week of war and terrorism and kidnapped children living in back yards in Antioch. But not for the lazy tech columnist looking for inspiration…

If this were a column about religious affairs, I would undoubtedly focus this week on the shocking news that Beelzebub himself has joined a coalition opposing child abuse in the Catholic church.

I’d remark upon the sheer chutzpah of El Diablo, and his glaring hypocrisy in funding a law school to investigate his sworn enemy’s practices. An investigation which, thanks to his involvement, now reeks of self-interest. Self-interest and sulphur.

But this isn’t a column about religious affairs, so I’m not going to discuss that. Instead, as this is a column (broadly) about technology, I’ll confine myself to the entirely unrelated news that Microsoft is joining a coalition to oppose Google’s settlement with the US publishing industry over Book Search. I’ll also touch on the totally unanalogous fact that they’re funding a New York Law School investigation into their biggest rival’s anti-competitive behaviour.

“Are Penn and Teller really launching a product at TechCrunch 50?”

As I typed the message to Arrington, I could barely contain my glee. For a few strange years, starting towards the end of my teens, I worked as a magician – making good money and impressing girls by turning card tricks at corporate dinners and in fancy restaurants.

It’s a long story, but one strangely common among people who ended up working on or around the web. For some reason a youthful interest in magic often comes hand-in-hand with a career in technology. It’s probably something to do with being a geek.

Arrington’s reply was both a confirmation and a warning: “Yes they are. And if you write anything that stops them coming, you’re fired.”

As anyone who has read my critically acclaimed, Pulitzer-Prize-winning book will know, I have not always been the paragon of honesty I am today.

Truth be told, in the past I have been guilty of prevarication on an Olympian scale in almost all aspects of my life. In business, in relationships, in friendships and even – during one epically drunken evening in a London pub a couple of years ago – in all three at the same time, leading to hilarious consequences, no small amount of heartache and the beginning of my journey of self-improvement. It’s a long story. You should buy it.

Given my past indiscretions, then, it’s both perfectly fitting and deliciously ironic how much I hate being lied to. Or rather, how much I hate discovering that I’ve been lied to. I really can’t put into words how furious it makes me; with the liar, the lie and with myself for believing them both. I could probably forgive you for cheating on my sister (I don’t have a sister) or running over my cat (I don’t have a cat), providing you’re honest with me about it. But the moment you lie, and I find out about it, we’re done.

So you can imagine how I felt this week when I found out I’d been lied to multiple times by not one but two separate people, regarding two different stories I was trying to report. I won’t name names on this occasion, for reasons I’ll get to, but the details are important.

Day two of this ridiculous juice cleanse experiment and I feel like a new man. By which I mean, I feel like my insides aren’t fully developed, I have no strength in my arms or legs and the idea of eating solid food is just a distant dream.

It’s all Lacy’s fault, of course, she actually pays for this nonsense every month or so and claims it’s the reason why she no longer gets sick when she travels. Arrington and Heather apparently swear by it too.

The rest of TechCrunch, meanwhile, are beyond skeptical, bandying around words like “science” and “proof” in a pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that they’re in the pay of Big Cheeseburger. Whatever the truth, I’ve bet Lacy fifty dollars that the only thing the cleanse will achieve for me is crippling hunger and a loss of feeling in my extremities, so I’m in for the duration. At least as I lie on my deathbed, puking water and romaine-and-celery juice into a cardboard bowl, I can comfort myself with the fact that it was free – a promotion by the company to tempt California-based hacks into starving themselves to death. Journalistic freebies for the win (see my statement of ethics: here).

Speaking of ethics, I’m just back in San Francisco from an all expenses paid trip to the beach. Promoted as ‘Geeks At The Beach’, the trip came courtesy of J.R. Johnson who runs a new site aiming to bring people together based on things they agree on, to discuss things they don’t. According to the invitation, J.R. wanted to round up ‘influential’ social media types for a day of discussion about trends in the industry, and where it’s heading next. In Los Angeles. On a beach.

I don’t know about you, but I give this ridiculously misguided experiment three weeks.

Three weeks until – at best – Arrington comes to his senses and realises that there’s a reason why I’ve been fired from every job I’ve had, most recently as a columnist for the Guardian. Three weeks until – at worst – I say something so insanely actionable about a deep-pocketed venture capitalist that TechCrunch finds itself sued out of existence.

But in the meantime, here I am, and it’s traditional in the opening episode of a new column for the writer to introduce himself and to generally sketch out his plans for the column. So here we go…