San Jose Mercury News columnist Chris O’Brien made a lot of humorous hay at the expense of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz yesterday, in a joke piece called: “Bartz Unveils New &*%! Strategy for Yahoo.”

O’Brien cleverly created a fictional transcript of a Yahoo staff meeting where Bartz–by now, well-known for her salty language–lets loose in an address about just how sick she was of competitors getting all the good press: “So we’re re-branding the company around excessive use of profanity. Our new marketing slogan will be, ‘Yahoo, (expletive) yeah!’”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Yesterday, in response to Associated Press board Chairman and MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton’s diatribe against those who shoplift news and his pledge to “protect news content from misappropriation,” Google posted a response on its public policy blog. Of course, that has nothing to do with the fact that most people think the Singleton speech was aimed at the search giant and its burgeoning power over the distribution of media, although Google was not named by him. Still, it’s always nice to make nice. Sort of.

So, it was hard to resist translating this Google blog by one of its lawyers.

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Today, a panoply of prominent tech and Internet leaders is taking a very public stand against a controversial initiative before California voters, which would eliminate the current legal right of same-sex couples to marry.

Silicon Valley has had a long history of supporting gay rights. And recently, Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin has made a strong statement opposing Proposition 8, while Apple gave $100,000 to the help defeat it.

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Oh, BoomTown could not resist making the obvious literary pun on the debut of Peter Kafka’s new daily blog, MediaMemo, on AllThingsD.com.

I am referencing, of course, Franz Kafka’s famous 1915 novella, “Metamorphosis,” about a man who turns into a bug–except that the transformation is fraught with so much more meaning.

And thus it will be in Peter’s column, as the most excellent writer and reporter plunges into the topic–as he writes in his first explanatory post–of “the ongoing battle between the established media business and the technology that is reshaping it day by day.”

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Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City, starting at the end of October.

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Microsoft took out a full-page ad in the San Jose Mercury News today, in an attempt to highlight its recruiting efforts in Silicon Valley.

Of course, BoomTown is not sure the crack engineers that Microsoft is seeking actually read newspapers, but we like the software giant’s spunk at a little creative Google-smacking and Yahoo-employee-baiting.

With the headline: “Microsoft Has Search Jobs in the Valley,” the ad goes on to tout Microsoft’s commitment to search and online advertising in a come-on to join the company’s 2,000 other employees in Mountain View, Calif.

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