Denial is One of the Symptoms

So this morning I woke up and thought, "Damn, I've got nothing to post today." So I checked my email in the hopes that somebody from the office had sent me some funny blond jokes from 1994. Sadly, I found only the usual spate of emails complaining about "why hasn't my blog been added to Humor-Blogs.com yet" and "why am I getting this horrible error message on Humor-Blogs.com" and "Why can't I just vote for 15 Minute Lunch on Humor-Blogs.com all day every day until my fingers are bloody stumps?"

The answers to your questions, by the way, are:

1) I can only force myself to go through the list of pending blogs about once a week because I'm not sure I have enough Prozac to counteract how depressingly unfunny most of the blogs are.
2) Humor-Blogs.com is basically held together with duct tape and dental floss.
3) Holy crap, stop asking me this and pay attention to what the kitty is telling you.

I mean, let's say you're the typical rabid 15 Minute Lunch fan who has just given LOL smileys to five posts on 15 Minute Lunch, and then this pops up:



What do you do?

1) Try rating something other than 15 Minute Lunch.
2) Send an email to me asking "Why can't I rate 15 Minute Lunch any more?!?!"

I mean, seriously, people. Do you really need me to explain this to you? The kitty is trying to tell you that you can't just keep voting for the same blog over and over, to prevent people from skewing the rankings. If you only like 15 Minute Lunch and you're only going to vote for 15 Minute Lunch and you're never going to vote for any site listed on Humor-Blogs.com other than 15 Minute Lunch, there's a special site that's designed just for you. It's called 15 Minute Lunch.

By the way, I'm just picking on Johnny because his blog's fans are the ones I hear from most often. I've heard this complaint from fans of several other blogs as well. No one has ever complained about not being able to repeatedly vote for Mattress Police, by the way. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that my readers are way too smart to be befuddled by a message-bearing kitty.

Anyway, I hope I'm not offending anyone. I'm always hesitant to do posts bitching about how the stupid emails I get from people about Humor-Blogs.com, because, well, first of all, people who live in duct-tape-and-dental-floss houses shouldn't throw stones. But the main reason is that I'm afraid of further intimidating people who are already pretty intimidated by me.

I know, it's hard to believe, but I actually frighten some people. I get a lot of emails from people confused about something having to do with Humor-Blogs.com that start with, "I'm sorry to be such an idiot..." or "I know I'm doing something wrong, but..." Sometimes people even say something like "You can blog about what an idiot I am if you want, but I'm confused about something...." They have this view of me as a total hardass who is just waiting for an opportunity to tell the world how stupid they are.

So let's get a few things straight. First of all, if you start off by telling me that you're an idiot, then I immediately feel bad for you and there's no way I can muster enough animosity toward you to make for an entertaining post. Second, you totally ruin it by giving me permission to make fun of you. Third, if it occurs to you to say, "I'm probably just an idiot," then you most likely are not an idiot. Idiots are rarely so aware of their idiocy. The idiots are the ones who are 100% certain that someone other than themselves are responsible for all of their problems.

In any case, even if I do opt to make fun of what an idiot you are, I won't mention your name. I won't, for example, publicly call out the jackass who complained that his posts weren't showing up on Humor-Blogs.com despite the fact that he (1) Provided the wrong address to his blog; (2) Didn't specify an rss feed url; and (3) was rejected for inclusion because he didn't have a link to Humor-Blogs.com anywhere on his site.

And this guy still wouldn't have set off my idiot radar except for the fact that later he also sent me an angry email bitching that someone else had "stolen" his banner (even though both bloggers stole the image from somewhere else, and the other blogger stole in first), and then sent me another angry email because his banner had "disappeared." I pointed out to him that the image seemed to have been removed from his Wordpress site. Presumably that was somehow my fault. Dude, here's an idea: Spend a little more time making your blog funny and a little less time complaining about what other people are doing to screw you over.

Nor will I mention by name any of the craptastic blogs that I have to approve because they technically meet all the requirements. For example, let's say I'm checking out your blog and I'm greeted with a post that starts:

What superpower hero would I be? One of those male after-the-third-pint questions where the conversation moves from work, football, who was the best Dr Who and why you are my best mate.

Flying around the world in micro-micro seconds is boring and invisibility too pervery- or is that just me? My super hero and power would be Historyman, with the power of attending any historical event. Now this sounds simple but hang on, say I want to take a butchers at a medieval bust-up such as the 100 years war and zoom in on Joan of Arc defending France against the English shenanigans at the Siege of Orleans.

I won't address you by name name and tell you to please stop, for the love of all that's holy, whatever it is you're doing to the English language. Look, there was a reason that James Joyce could get away with this stream of consciousness stuff, which is that James Joyce was NOT RETARDED.

So you see? Nothing to be afraid of. As long as you're not an idiot.

I have one final thing to say while I'm on the topic. Please, please, PLEASE come up with a halfway decent name for your blog. For this one, I am going to pick on someone by name. I just approved a blog with the title "I'm not clever with titles." I get it, ok? It's self-referential. By saying you're not funny with titles, you're demonstrating your own point, thereby proving that you are clever with titles. A logical paradox!

It's been done. A hundred harimbjillion times. (I just made that word up because conventional mathematics doesn't go that high.)

The reason I picked this particular blog was that I actually found the first post pretty funny. It starts off:

Good Morning! Yesterday I went home to go to the Dentist to get permission to go see another Dentist who will give me permission to get a ROOT CANAL (while I'm still on my parent's insurance). Know what thats as fun as? Yeah, as fun as a root canal.

Anyway, guess what time my appointment was at? Guess. GUESS.

Did you guess Tooth Hurty? Because it really was, it was actually at 2:30 AND my tooth hurt.

Now that made me laugh. If you're capable of writing something like that, why would you saddle your blog with the title "I'm not clever with titles"? That blog title not only makes me want to not read the blog; it actually makes me want to punch the blog in the throat until it stops moving.

So please change the title, ok? Call it Tooth Hurty for all I care. Anything is better than "I'm not clever with titles."

I'm really glad we had this little talk.

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