Genevieve Carlozo, my 4-year-old daughter, boasts a grin like a Cheshire cat on speed and a sophisticated knowledge of dinosaurs-just ask her what a diplodocus looks like. And she's always laughing; she's the kind of girl who fits her nickname "Pookey Bear" to a 'T.' And she's fun to tickle because she sounds like the preschool, giggly equivalent of a soap bubble machine stuck in top gear.

That is why taking her to the Chicago Tribune on Thursday-which by coincidence happened to be "Take Our Daughters to Work Day"-seemed so surreal. I was there not to socialize, but say goodbyes: I'd been laid off after 16 years of faithful service, the news delivered in flat affect by an editor whom I'd stepped up to bat many times for-most recently when I volunteered in August to do whatever he needed in the face of layoffs to keep the newsroom humming. When he transferred me to a new section writing about women's news, I scratched my head, but reported with a smile and a crisp salute because I believed in him. I rewarded him with performance documented by the best employee evaluation I'd ever received.

But in this case he utterly failed to step up for me, nor pull me aside to offer a single word of solace or condolence in person, though we've worked together for more than 10 years. (Note: None of his lunch buddies were laid off.)

And so there I stood, trying to pack up boxes, clean out my Tribune computer hard drive and do 1000 things while my daughter-my irrepressibly optimistic and funny daughter-wriggled on the ground and had her fist temper tantrum in a year. She sobbed and screamed, and yet no one in the newsroom dared asked me to shut the kid up. They knew all too well it would seem cruel, given my overwhelming list of to-dos.

I would never have subjected Genevieve to something that I'm sure she picked up on by way of kiddie sixth sense, but I had no choice. The Tribune gave me but 72 hours to gather up 16 years of belongings-an eternity compared to what some laid off folks in the past got-and I had no backup plan for child care. I didn't want to bring Genevieve with me: I had to.

But perhaps, in one of those lemons-into-lemonade ways, having her there will not have to result in a therapy visit later in life. If you want to REALLY take your daughter to work, and you're a journalist in the print realm, then what better day to do it on than one when you can witness history? She saw one more step in the death of print media-a diplodocus of another sort-played out before her eyes.

This week, I have seen 53 people say so long in polite, but too often passive-aggressive emails to the staff. If the Tribune allows me to issue a farewell email memo on Monday, I can promise you I won't leave without a parting shot. It is inexcusable that the company I loved and served so well hopes to dish out $13.3 million in bonuses to execs who, if they really think they deserve them over me deserving my job, are far more spoiled than Genevieve.

Here's an idea: Rescind just 10 percent of that amount, $1.33 million, and keep me and 20 of my diaspora colleagues on the payroll for another year.

Besides, our newsroom long ago ceased to be the feisty, innovative type of place that welcomed dissenting points of view. A high-ranking editor heralded the layoffs with the phrase "Today we begin a reorganization of the Chicago Tribune newsroom that will focus more clearly on our core mission," and not a single person replies, "What? This is how you announce massive layoffs? This ... is ... bullshit."

I wanted to take Genevieve in to meet the Author of the Email himself, so he could see the human consequences of his indiscriminate hatchet wielding disguised as pretty sound bites of disinformation. I heard the voice of my late mother in my head, the woman Genevieve is named after: "Let it go."

I can't promise much, and today I begin searching for work, after I head over to the Waffle House for a drown-your-sorrows pecan waffle. But I can tell you that on True/Slant-and any other e-media that will have me-I will be a thorn. A dissenter. A person who challenges the status quo. The late, great I.F. Stone said that the journalist's job is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Thank God True/Slant supports my First Amendment right to disagree with anyone and everyone when needed, and give me a soap box to do it.

That's the kind of work I want to take my daughter to see, and it's just a mouse click away.

Many of my colleagues are afraid to speak out about being fired from the Chicago Tribune; I got one call today from a former co-worker (also laid off) who warned me that if I badmouthed my employer of 16 years, they could yank away my severance package. Though I was never told such a thing on my exit interview, I've never known this fine woman to stretch the truth, either.

I've said many times that I love the Tribune; have sent shout-outs to editors and even owner Sam Zell; that I wish all there well: This is taking the high road. But with the high road comes with tricky terrain and serpentine twists that are never easy to navigate. I can't sleep at night as it is, so if I wimp out on my responsibility to seek and speak the truth, what then?

Therefore: I think it is nothing more than honest journalism to ask, and ask again: Why did the Chicago Tribune seek to give out $13.3 million in bonuses to executives in the same week it laid off me and 52 of my colleagues? (When I hear the number 52, I think of that old trick game "52-Card Pickup," where you scatter a deck of cards across a room, and make the other poor shlep who agrees to play gather them up.)

Mike Parker of CBS2 in Chicago called me to do a TV interview, and though I was in Nashville for a Grand Ole Opry audition (in my dreams), I went into the local CBS station there and tapedthis piece today. I think my questions of Tribune brass are tough but fair, and hope I came off well. (We had to do the whole thing with a 2-second delay in my earpiece, which is like talking in echo canyon turned up to 11.)

Hats off to you Parker, you did an excellent job. Speaking of hats, I was thinking about wearing a cowboy hat and shades on camera, but...

There's this scene in the "Willy Wonka" movie (not that lame Tim Burton one, but the kickass 1971 flick with Gene Wilder) where a corpulent kid names Augustus Gloop leans over into a chocolate river and falls in. He bobs around for a few seconds like a screaming beach ball, then gets swallowed by a vacuum tube. Sobbing, Augustus' Germanic mother begs Wonka in clipped English for help.

Now comes the delicious black humor part. As Wonka, Wilder replies to Ma Gloop in a deadpan befitting a blase executioner: "It's too late. He's had it now. The suction's got him." (You can watch Augustus' descent into chocolate purgatory here.)

I'm not quite as fat as Gloop (I'm working on it like a depressed Bridget Jones on a Haagen-Dazs bender). But today, I know exactly what Herr Gloop feels like in an emotional sense. For once again, I have been sucked into the Journalistic Vortex of Irony, and for the life of me I cannot break free.

Before I bury the lede, dig this: On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune published my last article for the Smart section. The subject: 6 steps to managing hired help (including, yup, how to fire people).

So in this piece I'm giving you advice on, say, how to ditch the hack housecleaner or hairdresser, and the article appears less than 100 hours after I have been given the hatchet myself. An excerpt is below, including the lede:

If that personal Mary Poppins you hired isn't flying, can you handle it? (Editor's Note: Tribune links to Mary Poppins, but I assume you know who she is.)

First the good news: You're the boss of your household and your service providers. Now the bad: You're the boss, and that means tough decisions on reprimanding sloppy work and firing come down to you.

My first tip?

1. It's a business: Running a business demands a different mind-set from informal situations. A service person gets your money; you get their work for hire in return. You assume the responsibility for speaking out if the work wasn't what you expected. That's the main point of your interaction, period. "There is no right time to fire someone, but it's about what's best for you," says Steve Bernas, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois.

I have asked public editor Margaret Holt-a dear friend and a person of ample heart and intellect-to explain how the hell this happened. That is: How did this piece get past a phalanx of crack copy editors and subject editors, and no one stops to say: "Wait. Lou's just been canned. Is this in good taste?"

(I also want a correction. As this article ran on Sunday, after my termination, the designation under my byline of "TRIBUNE REPORTER" is incorrect. I am no longer on staff, so it should read "SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE.")

The article, part of a preprint section, went into production on the same day I got laid off, a Wednesday. I got the axe at about 10:30 a.m., well before copy moved into its final cycle of layout. The copy desk, God love 'em, routinely gave me grief when I did not check a fact or phone number. They rode me because they were thinking of the readers, as is right.

So I am puzzled, sad, and shocked this time that no one-perhaps for very good reasons having to do with the mayhem Wednesday-stopped to think about me and my feelings. And like a logarithmic equation gone haywire, it only multiplies another irony by 100: This piece is deemed fit to run, but my farewell "Recession Diaries" blog, my treasured chance to say goodbye to readers, is not.

I wish, how I wish, I were making this stuff up. I'd love nothing more at this time than to just hide, shut down and let the layoff blues blow over, like so many of my other colleagues are doing.

But just when I thought it might be safe to return to semi-semi-normalcy, begin a job search, or resurrect my Tribune Recession Diaries blog (it will go on, by the way) from a cardboard table on State Street, this happens.

And I was the last to know.

My wife Amy called me Sunday afternoon while I was at the airport in Nashville; I flew there Thursday for post-firing reflection and retreat. Now, I hadn't slept well since Wednesday; I've cried and raged and felt not unlike a soldier who wakes in a hospital bed to find a limb missing. 16 years and out will do that to you.

And finally, after some initial processing, I was starting to feel good about things, about myself, about the future. An Internet startup idea I have concocted has legs and a powerful backer; friends are emailing and calling by the hundreds with prayers and support.

Then this.

Oh, how I want to go with the flow. But it's too late. The suction's got me.

Now that Michael Jackson is dead-or to quote one of his album titles, "HIStory"-an antidote is sorely needed to the gushing CNN and Fox News anchors I heard all last night and into this morning, eulogizing Jackson as if he had died on a cross instead of in his home of apparent cardiac arrest. No, what we need is someone as sober as a Lester Bangs, who when John Lennon died, declared, "I can't mourn the man."

I would like to, for my own part, say the same thing about Michael Jackson: I cannot mourn him, not given his strange predilections for children, his 10,000 plastic surgeries or his licensing Beatles songs for TV ads after he bought out a controlling interest of the Lennon-McCartney catalog. I can, however, rechristen him in my own way, NOT as the the King of Pop but as the King of Pop Culture:

Pop culture values the ephemeral over the substantive, and Jackson-formidable artist that he was-was more an ENTERTAINER than an artist. Take away his moonwalk, his slickly choreographed videos, the grandstanding over the glove, and what do you have? Many catchy hooks, for sure, but a career more suited for the dance floor than, say, the intellect and the heart in unity.

Pop culture aggrandizes the artist at all expense of an honest discussion about the person. We see this right now with Steve Earle falling all over himself to say how great a songwriter Townes Van Zandt was. (Earle has a new album out of Van Zandt songs.) But in my review of the documentary film "Be Here To Love Me," I pointed out how Van Zandt was an absolute loser as a three-times married husband and father, a guy who left behind a lot of human carnage with no seeming regard or feeling for others, only for his career:

Townes, for all his talent, was a monster. None of his children or wives ever got to know him very well. The pursuit of his art, darkly beautiful as his songs were, left a desert trail of ugliness his survivors are still coming to grips with. He saved his best for his guitar, his songs and whatever jones was calling to him. Period.

Ditto for John Lennon, who primal screamed about mommy and daddy leaving him, then did the same exact thing to his son Julian. Kurt Cobain? Deprived his daughter a dad by taking the coward's way out, suicide. Michael Jackson belongs in this same league, and we make a huge mistake if we overlook or gloss over the huge personal faults of these people to glorify them as artists.

Pop culture mutates into strange, ghastly ghosts. Already, I am hearing whispers of whispers that Jackson "faked" his death ... and wonder if it's only a matter of time before he'll join Elvis, Cobain and Jim Morrison at a Logansville, Indiana Burger King, plotting how to run guns to Africa to aid those fighting Somali rebels.

Pop culture looks for ways to make a buck off of someone's pain. Already on eBay and elsewhere, Jackson memorabilia is popping up faster than you can say "Billy Jean." I'll bet the folks at Motown and Epic are already scouring the vaults for outtakes and bonus tracks. Do you think they're mourning, or counting? And if I were cynical enough, I'd record some treacly MJ tribute and put it up on Facebook as a way to get a zillion downloads at 99 cents a pop, looking charitable while becoming profitable.

Finally, pop culture worships the wrong gods. I wonder how many people who've attended a candlelight vigil for Elvis have recently said a prayer for a friend. I wonder how many people now crying over Michael Jackson's death, outside his family and close friends, have visited the grave of a dearly departed in the last year. Music can salve. But it cannot save. The terrible lesson America has yet to learn is that as wonderful, pleasing and satisfying as art can be, we confuse the product itself, and its cultural immortality, with the deeply flawed people who make it. In our nearsightedness, we make gods out of monsters and mutants. I loved Michael Jackson's music, but I have to say that if any of the allegations about his behavior with kids were in fact true-court gyrations and settlements aside-I'd hate the man's actions ... and pray for the strength to forgive him.

Dear Mark Zuckerberg:

As I write this, I'm going to post news of this blog to Facebook. But because some Faceless evildoer in my circle of 667 "friends"-I know not who-once reported a blog I wrote as containing "objectionable content," your social networking site has blocked me from posting URLs or Tiny URLs in my status updates. Clearly, this "report" constituted a malicious action. What's more, it's just plain false. I have never used True/Slant to post pornography, profanity or even purple humor.

OK, Mark, I confess. I have on occasional written a thing or two that caused uber-conservatives and defenders of Mayor Daley's corrupt parking deal to get their diapers in a bunch. But aside from that, nothing I've ever written is truly "objectionable." Unless the First Amendment is dead in this country.

Or at least on Facebook.

I salute you as a scion of the Young Digital Intelligentsia. You made a megafortune before you were old enough to buy a beer in a bar, and you have never made a secret of Facebook's intent to profit-and handsomely-off the information it gathers about me and all the users in your world. That's fine by me; if I offer it up, it's fair game.

But what also seems fair, at his point, is that you in turn dedicate significant time and resources to creating a help desk and user assistance protocols that solve sticky problems like mine quickly and easily. For as I sought to solve my problem, I was shocked to discover that Facebook has nary a human being that I can contact for help, a phone number to call, or a prominently posted email address for help.

Lord knows with all the money you've made, and all the information you now possess worth untold millions from Facebook users, ample resources exist to create the support I and other innocent Facebook users need. From what I understand, the traditional defense here is that Facebook really isn't a business, but a free service, and therefore not obligated in any way to help those who trawl about on it.

I could not disagree more. Just as your creativity and thinking outside the box that was outside the box created Facebook, you need to take another bold step here and get proactive-really proactive-about assisting the community that made Facebook what it is. If I'm facing a problem of this sort through no fault of my own, and cannot find any remediation, I can only imagine the misery experienced by thousands of people out there who have fallen into Facebook's Digital Black Hole through a server glitch, for example, and with no one to throw them a rope to climb out.

As a media person, I have resources to go straight to your PR department and get this straightened out by a real person through Fear of Bad Press-a move of questionable ethics at best, though I am highly tempted to do it. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

But even if my problem goes away, those innocent users your site unwittingly ties up due to the malevolent actions of others will not. If you don't act at some point to create some resource to help them-some recourse for remedial action-they will be stuck. Indefinitely.

A guy I know in Grand Rapids, Mich. started a marriage ministry and Facebook shut him down-because it mistakenly identified him as a spammer. It took him two weeks of emails every day to " info@facebook.com " to get the problem solved. He's a former  computer tech and was thus able to figure this solution out through sheer stabbing in the dark. Who solved his logjam, or how, he still has no idea.

Others need not be so unfortunate, Mark. Do the right thing. Bring reliable, easy-to-find user support to Facebook. And do it now. Otherwise, all of your high-falutin' claims regarding all the wonderful things Facebook does for its "community" ring as hollow as a snake oil sales pitch.

And could even be labeled, without much of a stretch, as "objectionable content."

Since you have not provided me with a phone number, I am providing you with mine. It's below. I look forward to your call. And hell, I'll even accept your friend request.

With respect,

Lou Carlozo

Columnist/blogger, TrueSlant.com