Most Popular Blogs

13 Nov

from September 11, 2007

Let’s say that we were all in a room together, right now. We were all just hanging out, drinking rum and Cokes, sitting in comfy chairs. What would we all be talking about?Ah, who cares? We aren’t all together. That’s the point of the internet. If we could all get together and hang out we would. (Or at least you would. I really need a nap.)

So what I did was click on the “view most popular blogs” link to see what’s going on.

I gotta tell ya, there ain’t much going on in some people’s heads.

These are real blogs.

Exhibit A- “Tugging One Out Beside My Sleepy Wife and Time Travel Without a Flux Capacitor”

Sample-

Didn’t sleep very well, so woke up around 5 in the morning to check email and blog instead. I shower and take Harley to school, then meet up with Jim Jackman for breakfast at The Griddle. We catch up while I watch him eat, nursing my iced tea, and then head over to the diet clinic for a weigh-in and product pickup. Happily, I discover I’ve lost ten pounds thus far, so suddenly I don’t feel like I truly missed out on that Griddle gorge. I drop Jim back off at his car, then head home, where Gail tells me a piece I’m supposed to write for TV Guide is due. I bury myself in the office and compose a 500 word essay about “Reaper” that turns out to be closer to 1000 words instead. When I’m done, I quickly pack, and Jen and I head over to Burbank to catch a flight to Vegas. En route, I read the very flattering Entertainment Weekly piece about “Reaper” in their Fall TV Preview ish, in which Jeff Jensen refers to me as a “shabby-chic crassmaster.” It’s almost embarrassing how delighted I am by that description.

It goes on and on like that! Lots of boring “woke up and shaved” mixed in with name-drops and graphic-yet-bland-descriptions of sex with the all excitement of watching an all-nun production of “Annie Get Your Gun.” The self-absorbed droppings of a nobody.

Exhibit B- “The Ant Colony Creed”

Sample-

THE ANT COLONY CREED
1. To always speak the truth…even when it hurts.
2. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to EVERYONE you meet.
3. To be so strong, that nothing can disturb your inner peace.
4. To be just as enthusiastic of anothers success as you are about your own.
5. To remember that God is in the pause.
6. To forgive the mistakes of your past and to strive to greater achievements in the future.
7. To never see failure…only opportunity. You are no longer a victim.
8. To have NO JUDGEMENTS of others…No matter what.
9. To live well and CHOOSE happiness. To say I can everyday.
10. To make an impact on the world. To live love.
11. To remember your spirit and nourish it daily.
12. To remember these principles above personalities.

PLEASE COMMENT below. I do read them all and may respond to yours.

That’s it. That’s it! And the comments? “OH MY GOD! I TAPED THIS TO MY FRIDGE!” “You are making me cry.”

Shit.

Meanwhile, the Mr. Blog Creed:

1- Your blog sucks.

2- So do you.

Example C- “How To Manipulate the Girl of Your Dreams”

Sample-

Every relationship has a “pimp” and a “ho” involved. Which one you happen to be, is up for interpretation. Make no mistake though…  you are either a “pimp” or a “ho.”

Someone has to have the power. It could be you or your boyfriend, but one of you is the leader – the shot caller. The Pimp.

One of you makes the decisions. What movie you’re going to see, what you’re going to have for dinner, you name it.

Traditionally, that role has been the man’s, but nowadays it’s pretty much 50/50 and depends on the people involved.

When you’re the “ho,” the one who has little power, your happiness is dependant on whether or not your pimp is happy. If they’re not, then you’re in for some shit. If they are, they you will be also – for the time being.

Written by, of course, a geeky white guy from New Jersey.

And he starts his blog with a 48-point font plea to subscribe to his blog. What the Hell does he think he is? Funny?

And people loved it! They couldn’t give it enough kudos!

I want to send Mr. Know-It-All (currently on vaction in Britney’s rehab) to kick his a-hole ass all over the yard.

Example D- “Obscure Shit About Me”

Sample-

I have taken a shit on top of some of the highest points in this continent. Empire State Building, Sears Tower, Trans America Building, CN Tower, and The World Trade Center to name a few. As a matter of fact, I had to go once but I decided to pinch up because I was going to the Renaissance Center in Detroit a bit later. That’s right fuckers… I planned that shit out.

(So have I, but you don’t hear me bragging about it.)

Again, Dear Readers, I remind you that this comes from one of the most popular blogs. What does this say about the web?

Example E- “Yikes”

Sample- 

I was In Hawaii last week. Got a terrible cold and sinus infection. I was laying in bed this past Monday and Tuesday trying to get over it. Hmm… It’s been days and I am still feeling pretty lousy.
As I lay there half alive watching TV I saw the promo that I was going to be on Oprah this next Monday!
Yikes! I think to myself. IT’S REALLY HAPPENING! I BETTER GET IT TOGETHER AND START MAKING MY WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY!
I call the doctor.
The doctor said, “Don’t fly”.
I get on the plane to LA.
I land.
My ear is clogged… Okay, It’s REALLY uncomfortable but I will give it a few hours……. I think.
A day later, I’m deaf in my right ear, completely clogged.
I call the doctor.
He says, “this happened because you flew. “

This was written by the actual “celebrity” and “musician” Lisa Marie Presley, who felt the need to add at the end P.S. “Actually this story IS meant to be comical, It’s okay to not take it seriously.”

P.S.- If you need to tell people something is funny, it isn’t funny.

The King’s daughter. Just another celebutard who thinks we care about her little clogged ear when we have to GET UP AND WORK FOR A LIVING, even if our lungs are ready to leap out and go to the doctor all by themselves.

So what’s the bottom line?

(Besides “it is really easy to write a blog when I let other people do it for me.”)

The bottom line is that I would rather be me than popular.

 

Pets

13 Nov

from September 6, 2007

Pets. Everyone has them.

Teachers have teacher’s pets. You know, the kids who, even when the rest of the class is stoned or asleep, they’ll have an answer and keep you from yelling at everyone else. You like those kids. (Except when those Junior Mr.-Know-It-Alls Don’t stop asking annoying questions. Then you want to kill them.)

Congressmen have pet projects. They’re those pork-barrel filled legislations designed to put a lot of money in the pockets of some powerful lobby, not to mention the Congressmen, that have no use at all except to waste budget money that could be spent on better things, like a committee to determine whether pro-wrestlers use steroids. (Well duh.)

Most of us have pet peeves, those little things that bug the shit out of us until we want to rip our hair out or drop a piano on someone or claim the dingoes ate the baby. (Yeah, like that happened.) One of my numerous pet peeves is the expression “could care less.” UGH!!!!! Let me explain. If you could care less, then there is a certain level of caring present, which could conceivably dip even lower. What you mean (and yes, I’m talking to you!) to say is “I couldn’t care less.” Because if you could not care less, that’s it. You can’t get any lower. It’s rock bottom. So stop saying it or I’ll sic the dingoes on you.

However, what I’m talking about today are actual pets. You know, those little living things with fur or fins or feathers, scales, whatever. Or if you’re lucky enough to own a chimera, fur and feathers.

Before we get started, let’s make it clear- there are some bad pets out there, things that should not be pets under any circumstances. Here is a brief list:

GOOD PETS                                                  BAD PETS
Dog                                                                 Mongoose
Cat                                                                   Buffalo
Fish                                                                 Swine
Bird                                                                 Condor
Hamster                                                        Chupacabra

Here is an example of why it is a bad idea to keep a pet buffalo, taken straight from one of my favorite news sources, News of the Weird:

In Salem, Wisconsin, an 1800-pound bull that had been treated as a pet killed its owner as he tried to take it to slaughter one day after the bull trampled a farmhand to death. Said the grieving owner, “You can’t trust a buffalo.”

Indeed. Words to live by.

“But,” you ask, “what kind of pet is right for me?” Thanks for the question. I love it when people leave the important questions of their life to me. It makes me feel like a big man.

The pet that’s right for you is a very subjective question. In general, if you are allergic to cats, don’t get a cat. If you sleep late and never go out, don’t get a dog. If you have friends who think its fun to dump beer into the fish tank, then by God don’t get fish.

What you should get depends on your needs. Why are you getting the pet? Want a companion? Get a dog. Want to keep a box of poop-filled sand in your house? Get a cat. Want to be annoyed by seeds tossed all over the room? Get a bird. Want a pet you can flush? A fish is right for you.

When I was a kid my brother and I had two turtles. We loved them. We’d take them out of the tanks and watch them crawl around on the floor. We’d take out our toys and pretend the trucks were racing the turtles. We loved them. We were kids. We were stupid. Turtles are bad pets. They don’t do anything. They are slow and you can’t pet them- they can’t feel it though their shells. And they live forever so you are stuck with them, unless you drop them down the sewer to fend for themselves, uh, like I heard people do. Not that I did that with my turtle.

I had a cat named Spencer when I was young. She was great and I loved her. She developed a tumor on her spine and she was put to sleep. It was very traumatic. Let’s move on.

After Spencer I had a dog named McDuff. Don’t know why we named him that, it just sounded good. We had fun with him, we walked him, we took great care of him, but ultimately we had to give him away. There were two little problems.

1-     McDuff would bark and howl when he was alone. We did whatever we could. We left the TV on, we left the radio on, we left recordings of us talking on, we played a tape in the VCR of us when we were out. Nothing worked. Of course, this wasn’t a problem for us. The barking was all when we were out. McDuff was pretty silent when we were there, but the neighbors had a little problem.

2-     We could not housebreak McDuff. We’d walk him for hours and hours, stop at every tree, every hydrant, watch him sniff everything in existence, and still the dog would crap on the rug as soon as he got upstairs. We read all the books, talked to the vets, nothing worked. This was a problem.

Eventually the combination of noise and crap got to be too much and he had to go. (For the same reasons, some of my students will have to go too.)

I also used to have a fish tank. Fish are calming and nice to look at, provided you buy interesting fish. I had some very beautiful fish and they were nice in their tank, until they got the Ick. I am not making that up. Ick is a fish disease and it is short for icthyosomethingIdon’tknow. It is some kind of fungus that looks like white spots on the fish, and once it gets in your tank forget it. I lost all my fish and had to sterilize the tank and everything in it. I never knew how it got started but I was sure I ended it. Until the next group of fish caught the Ick. So the tank went out in the trash.

Pets are wonderful for so many reasons. In fact, there are so many reasons that I won’t list them here- they’re just too obvious and it would be beneath you to read them.

Just remember that having a pet is a big responsibility. If you don’t pay your phone bill it’ll get cut off, but you can still get it turned back on. If you don’t feed your pet it will die, and there is no coming back from that. (Unless your pet is a Buddhist.) And frankly, a dead pet is more trouble than a live pet. They smell. They attract flies. They have to be dumped on someone’s doorstep and then what about the money you wasted on the leash, bowl, and getting the thing spayed? Take it from me; it is a good idea to keep your pets alive.

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