Archive of entries posted on 30th July 2003

Links of the Day

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Quick! Everyone link to me. I fell back to being a monkey on the blogging ecosystem, and I don’t want to be a monkey. Liked my In My World™ today? Thought it was funny when I went crazy angry at lunchtime? Then link to me, quick!
LittleA missed the deadline for the Group E poll, but here is the aardvark’s answers anyway.
The Carnival of the Vanities is up, and full of bloggery!
Michael Williams has gone into my head and put up an image of my worst nightmare.
It seems Tiger stills thinks he might get a link based on merit. That’s crazy; no one gives out permalinks because of merit anymore. It’s all based on wacky contests now.
Courtney wants to change our libraries. Some reason that idea scares me even though I haven’t been to one in years.
Also, I have chosen Mike the Marine’s ending to Monday’s In My World™ since he nagged me the most about picking the winner. Go read that In My World™ now in it’s its entirity.

I don’t always have a lot of time each day to peruse the blogosphere, so don’t be afraid to send me a link to one of your posts if you think it’s especially worthy. Just don’t bug me too often (try to keep e-mails to once a week) or get too upset if I don’t use it.

Super Lucky Happy Fun Permalink Contest Number One Round 5 Over

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I tried to close this latest poll as close to 24 hours on the dot as I could because the vote was extremely close (2 votes separate first place from last place).
The questions was: Everyone knows my solution to random ninja attacks. In 200 words or less, describe your own solution. Remember, while people hate getting randomly attacked by ninjas, they also hate high taxes, so try and keep your solutions cheap.
And the winning answer is: Answer 1, written by Jarred Nicholls of [Think About It]. It got 62 votes (34%).

Ninjas? Are you serious? Unless these “ninjas” are wearing Batman like thick-as-shit rubber tighties that reflect bullets, then whip out your Desert Eagle, put one in each of their nuts (most ninjas don’t wear anti-bullet-in-nut shields), put one in each of their knee caps, walk behind them, recite the Boondock Saints prayer, and put one in the back of their head. No more ninja.

Answer 2 was written by Pixy Misa of Ambient Irony. It got 60 votes (33%).

Hit them with a Dragon Slave spell. This is sort of like a Neutron Bomb, only backwards: it leaves people alive – more or less – in a crater several miles wide. While the Ninjas are boggling at the extent of the destruction (Ninjas often kill people, but rarely destroy entire cities), you can sneak up behind them, slip headphones over their ears and play Alanis Morisette at them until they melt into a puddle of gloop. This really works. (Celine Dion also works, but then you’d run the risk of hearing it and melting into a puddle of gloop yourself.)

Answer 3 was written by Beth of Beth’s Contradictory Brain. It got 61 votes (33%).

Easy, breed Chomps, the world’s angriest hunting dog, train his offspring what Ninja’s are and how they smell, and then say “SicEm.” Once the Ninja are taken care of (a week tops), the pups can then be trained to take out any other group, say the French, or the monkeys, causing problems.

Even though I’ve made it clear that ninjas dodge bullets, I, like a lot of people, voted for Answer 1 since it referenced the cool movie Boondock Saints. Yay, I finally voted for a winner (and my vote actually put it over the top).
Congratulations to Jarred Nicholls of [Think About It]. He will join the voodoo lounge, Modularparrot.com, Serenity’s Journal, Adventures in Trouble Shooting, and one more blog to be voted for tomorrow in the final round.
So, last group tomorrow, and then next week we will have the thrilling conclusion of the Super Lucky Happy Fun Permalink Contest Number One™.

A Note on Blogging and Grammar

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I was going to write some Frank Answers™ today, but I’m going to have to put that off to discuss a different topic now.
Everyone knows what a pet peeve is, right? It’s just something that makes you irrationally angry for reasons you can’t quite describe. Well, since starting blogging, I’ve encountered a brand new pet peeve that by far out matches any previous one.
Here’s a little secret about my site: all anger is acted. Wit takes a clear mind, and I am not funny when angry. What’s great is that I am very hard to get angry. That’s why I was able to respond with wit to hate mail; the people writing were completely unable to get a rise out of me. When writing my popular hate mail to Michael Moore, I was laughing and smiling the whole time. If you want to see the only actual instance of me being legitimately angry on this site, read my immediate response to the comment by Minstrel in this post. That’s completely out of character for me (I almost never use swear words, and only use them in posts when I think it adds to the humor value), and I felt bad right after writing it. But, I was so angry, that I didn’t stop to think that Minstrel is a reader of my site and probably a fan and meant the comment with no animosity, instead, I was so enraged, I just wanted to rip right into her. If she were standing next to me, I probably would have grabbed her by the neck and shook her.
So, let’s be clear on something. I am not a high school drop out. I am not retarded. I do not sniff glue. In fact, I was the first person in my junior high to get a hundred on all my tests in English. I graduated high school as a Valedictorian. I got a 1570 on my SAT’s. I graduated from a very prestigious engineering college with more than an 3.8. In short, I KNOW FUCKING “THEY’RE” FROM “THERE” FROM “THEIR”, “ITS” FROM “IT’S”, “TO” FROM “TOO”, “YOUR” FOR “YOU’RE”, AND ALL THE OTHER GODDAMN HOMOPHONES!
Maybe some people had never written before except to comment on my grammar, so I will explain this very carefully. You see, before you write something, it first appears in one’s mind as the spoken word. Instead of very carefully typing each word out and pausing to make sure it’s spelled correctly and make grammatical sense, the subconscious quickly takes over and takes the spoken thought in one’s mind and transfers it to written language using a number of heuristics it has picked up throughout the years. It is extremely flawed. It will often write the wrong homophone (and forget the question mark for a question… but that’s neither here nor there). That’s why there is a thing called proofreading. The problem with blogging is that I want to get a post out quickly, and thus I am forced to proofread right after writing. That usually doesn’t work too well since what was meant (not typed) is still fresh in mind. I will catch a number of grammatical errors in that proofread, but I will not catch them all. Sometimes, I will come back an hour or so later after posting and reread a long post to catch more errors, but I don’t always have the time.
That’s why I actually like it when people e-mail me corrections (I don’t like them in the comments because it makes no sense after the correction is made). Pointing out mistakes in my post is doing me a favor. But here is how you phrase a correction.

In this sentence (excerpt of sentence) you accidentally wrote “you’re” when you meant “your”.

See, in that correction, the person shows that he knows that I understand proper grammar and simply made an inevitable error.
What you do not do ever… EVER… is lecture me on grammar like I’m some fucking four year old. It does not matter how politely you try to do it; I will hate you forever. And I mean ever more than a hippy or a Communist, because it will be a deep, personal hatred.
Understand?
I will put a permalink to this on my sidebar for future reference to new readers.
P.S. There will inevitably be grammar mistakes in this post. That is not ironic, that is apropos, especially since I was a bit angry when writing it.

In My World: The Saudis Are Great People… For Me to Strangle!

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“I’m strangling you because you’re a Saudi!” Rumsfeld shouted, strangling the Saudi prince.
“Let’s not be so quick to strangle each other,” Colin Powell urged.
“Rarr!”

“So which is closer to Bush’s position,” asked a reporter, “Rumsfeld’s ‘Strangle the Saudis’ stance, or Powell’s ‘Please don’t beat me with that Saudi’ stance?”
“Bush likes to hold the middle ground,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan answered.
“What about this new report out,” said another reporter, “Some people find it alarming.”
“What’s so alarming?” Scott asked.
“Well, it starts with, ‘U.S. intelligence has determined’ and then there are 27 pages blanked out followed by the word ‘the’ and then 14 pages missing until the phrase ‘brain-eating zombies’ then 32 pages missing until the phrase ‘nuclear deaths for everyone’ then 8 pages missing followed by ‘the Saudis are planning to stab us in the back and’ then 83 pages missing until the report ends with the word ‘happy’.”
Scott chuckled nervously as he adjusted his collar. “How can anything be ‘alarming’ if it ends with the word ‘happy’?”
“According to our poll,” said Melinda Hawkish of Fox News, “68% of American people are for military action against the Saudis, and 32% against. When are we going to use military action against those 32% who are terrorist sympathizers?”
“Hey,” Scott cautioned, “the Saudis are not necessarily terrorists, and, in the least, are much better at pretending to be our allies than the French.”
“Then why is Rumsfeld strangling them?”
“Well, Rumsfeld comes from a different time when it was normal that if you saw a fat man with a devil beard wearing sheets, you strangled him.” Scott started laughing. “Why, he was even joking with me earlier about how he was going to kill all of you.”
Suddenly a Buick crashed through the wall. Out jumped Rumsfeld. “Rarr!”

“I can’t be giving these press conference if Rumsfeld is trying to strangle everyone,” Scott complained.
“If they’re that important to you,” Bush said, “Then tell Rumsfeld to stop strangling people.”
Scott looked to Rumsfeld. He sat in a chair calmly petting Chomps who was drinking water from his U.N. helmet.
“Uh, Rumsfeld,” Scott said, “Could you please cut back the strangling just a little bit?”
Rumsfeld considered this for a little bit. He the shouted, “Rarr!”
Scott cowered, covering his face defensively, but Rumsfeld and Chomps ran out of the room. Scott then looked out into the hallway. “Hey! They’re trashing my office!”
“That’s Rumsfeld’s way of saying ‘No,'” Bush explained, “Anyway, I found this old Atari. Want to play Combat!?”
“Combat?”
“It’s a game where you shoot each other with tanks and planes, retard,” Bush said, turning on the Atari.
“Shouldn’t you be involved in policy talks or something?” Scott asked.
“No, my staff says things go much smoother if I’m not there,” Bush said, and then started the tank game. “Ha! I’m whupping your ass!” Bush laughed as he shot Scott’s tank.
“I’m getting used to the controls,” Scott said defensively.
“It’s just a button and a joystick, dumbass.”
“I would like to talk more about policy,” said a Saudi prince appearing at the doorway. He was then knocked down as a desk crashed into him.”
“Your desk killed a Saudi,” Bush told Scott, “You’re going to be in trouble for that.”
“Hey, I got you!” Scott exclaimed, having shot Bush’s tank.
“No fair; I wasn’t paying attention,” Bush yelled angrily, “Secret Service, take Scott away and beat him!”
“Hey!” Scott exclaimed as the Secret Service grabbed him and dragged him away.
The Saudi crawled out from under the desk. “You’re not dead,” Bush said, “Want to play Atari?”
“Sure,” the Saudi said, taking the other controller.
He started hitting Bush’s tank repeatedly. “Ha! Allah be praised! I destroy you’re imperialist tank!”
“What!” Bush yelled, “I can’t move.” He then looked at the console. “You unplugged my controller, you backstabbing Saudi! This means war!”