Why Do You Do It?

It is understandable that many of you regard me with apprehension bordering on fear.

My threatening countenance over there to the right, my merciless rants against the likes of Thomas Kinkade and my position as unquestioned despot of Humor-Blogs.com -- all of these factors contribute to the perception that I am a man not to be trifled with. Or with which not to trifle, if you prefer.

Be assured, however, that I am not in fact a very intimidating person. I'm tall, yes, but I also have very slender wrists. That photo of me to the right may resemble Will Smith in Bad Boys 2, but that's mostly because, well, from the neck down it's Will Smith in Bad Boys 2. Truth be told, I'm not even really black.

My rants are mostly for effect. I generally can't sustain that level of anger for more than about a minute and a half. I just don't have that kind of attention span. So while I've settled on Thomas Kinkade as a nemesis, he has little to fear from me. Remember when I was running for president? Or when I picked up the cause of getting Huey Lewis played on classic rock stations? Yeah.

Occasionally I'll get an email from the Humor-Blogs.com contact form that reads something like this:

Oh kind and benevolent sir,

I am a mere worm who is not worthy to waste a moment of your time, but when I try to [do some simple task] on the Humor-Blogs.com website, I get a message that says [some horrible looking incomprehensible ASP.Net error]. I'm sure it's something that I'm doing wrong, but if you have a moment I would greatly appreciate it if you could find it in your heart to assist me with this problem.

Here's the deal. It's not you. It's me. Well, it's the Humor-Blogs.com site. See, I work on it for about 45 minutes every other week, usually for just long enough to break something that was working the week before. The site is kind of hacked together, and I don't have time to test my changes adequately before rolling them out. That's what users are for, right?

So you don't have to feel bad about informing me of some screwy error message or other weird behavior on the site. It's possible I already know about the problem, but there's a good chance I don't. In fact, sometimes I'll get an email alerting me to some problem, and I'll take a look at it and think, "Holy crap, how long has that been broken?" If nobody tells me about it, it doesn't get fixed.

Ok, so now we've established that I'm a nice, non-threatening guy (think James Spader in Stargate), and that I genuinely do appreciate your feedback about the Humor-Blogs.com site. Given these facts, it is all the more surprising that some of you manage to bug the crap out of me and make me want to beat you severely about the head and neck with a large metal stapler.

Here, specifically, is a list of stuff that you should feel bad about doing, and that will cause me to turn into the Hulk:

1. Failing to follow directions that are clear enough for your cat to understand.

You know how the join form says:

Step 1: Link to Humor-Blogs.com

...and then there's a checkbox that you have to check that says:

I have read and complied with step 1

Why do roughly a third of you check that box without linking to Humor-Blogs.com? Was it the 18 point bold font or the intricate binary mechanics of the checkbox control that confused you?



And then you get an automated email saying you've been rejected because you haven't linked to Humor-Blogs.com, which specifically says:

We were unable to find a link to Humor-Blogs.com on your website. Please make sure that the link is on your blog...and then RESUBMIT your site.

And yet, rather than simply adding the link and then re-submitting your site, you send me an email telling me that you've added the link. After all, why should you have to resubmit your site just because you did it wrong the first time?

After getting a few dozen of these emails, I added this line to the bottom of the auto-rejection:

You can respond to this email if you want, but there's a pretty good chance that will irritate us.

Which causes people to respond with:

Sorry if I'm irritating you, but I have added the link now.

Sigh.


2. Using the "contact" form to join Humor-Blogs.com.

Occasionally I will get an email from somebody who has filled out the contact form on the Humor-Blogs.com site, requesting to join. Why do you do this? Here's a simple mnemonic device that you can use to remember which form to fill out:

• If you want to join, fill out the join form.
• If you want to contact me, fill out the contact form.

See how it rhymes?



There is one question on the form that people occasionally have trouble with. To join, you have to enter the name of one of the Marx brothers. A few days ago I got an email from someone that read:

marx brothers - who the hell are they?

Bad news, friend. Not knowing who the Marx brothers are disqualifies you from having a humor blog. And not knowing how to do a Google search disqualifies you from being on the Internet.

Earlier today I got a message from the contact form that reads simply:

CheddarTed.com
it's the best

"CheddarTed" either does not understand what a "join" form is, or is not interested in joining. But none of that matters now that I know that "it's the best." Upon receiving this email I immediately crossed off "cinnamon raisin bagels lightly toasted and slathered with butter" and penciled in "it." Because now I know. Thank you, CheddarTed.


3. Doing absolutely nothing original ever.

You know what the world needs? Another blogger who scours Youtube looking for funny clips. And maybe a crazy cat lady, who is SO crazy that she calls herself the Crazy Cat Lady. And, um, like a bazillion more mommy bloggers. But not just bloggers who happen to be mommies. I mean bloggers who blog about poo-poo because poo-poo is funny. And make sure you use one of these words in your blog title: Rant, musings, random, ponderings, ramblings, stuff, nonsense, meanderings, observations, etc.

It's blogs like these that make me feel like I'm performing a service for humanity. Or servicing humanity, if you will.

Look, I'm sorry if you started your blog in 1998, back when Random Ponderings from a Crazy Mom (with Eight Cats) was an original-sounding title. But you have no idea how many of these blogs I have to slog through for eight seconds a week looking for a link to Humor-Blogs.com. At least TRY to come up with something interesting-sounding.

In fact, here are ten blog names, off the top of my head, that you can use. First come, first serve:

1. Three Men and a Goat
2. That Ain't Chili, Pedro!
3. I'm the Reason It's Called a 'Wife Beater'
4. My Monkey is Watching You
5. YouTube-Tied
6. My Inner Demons Are Watching Cinemax
7. Mainlining Gravy
8. Eighty-six Billion Miles (is Still too Close to You) -- This one is actually a country song for a space Western I'm working on, but it works.
9. Funny Jokes from the BOWELS OF HELL
10. I'm not a MILF because that's physically impossible

Look, I'm not saying they're all grand slams, but a blog with one of those titles would make me think, "Ok, I have to know what this is all about." Got it?

In the meantime, I'll keep adding your Mommy Cat Joke Youtube blogs. Because I'm a nice guy.

Are you smart enough to join humor-blogs.com?

Harry Potter and the Comments of Retardedness

One of my most popular posts ever is Harry Potter and the Inevitable Slide into Satanism. It even made it into my book. The point of the post was to make fun of close-minded people who won't let their kids read Harry Potter books. I wrote:

Now that I'm a parent, I've realized the necessity of keeping certain books, movies and music away from my children. I don't like the idea of censorship, but no matter how much my kids beg they are not going to be allowed to listen to "Fergilicious" or read Eragon. I'm sorry, but I believe the children are our future.

Neither of my children (aged 5 and 7) have come home toting a Black Sabbath record yet, so I've dodged that bullet so far. But in anticipation of my seven-year-old bookworm eventually asking whether he may read Harry Potter and the Nominative Phrase, I decided to peruse one of these books to determine for myself whether there was any real danger.

I then expressed my shock and outrage at "finding" this signup form in the book (click to enlarge):

I was a young, naive blogger when I wrote that post. It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would take it seriously. I mean, go read the post and tell me how anyone with two brain cells to rub together would think that "signup form" was real. It's impossible, right?

Wrong. People continue to leave comments indicating that they've completely missed the point of the post. "Missed the point" is a generous phrase, in fact: these people were still shoeless at the security gate twenty minutes after the point touched down in Phoenix.

The surprising thing is that these commenters aren't the clueless Fundamentalists that you'd expect. No one has yet left a comment saying, "I KNEW those books were Satanic!!!" They're all people telling me how stupid I am for falling for the "Harry Potter is satanic" line. Two of them mentioned that they thought the signup form was a fake. No, really?!

I thought I'd post some of the favorite comments I've received. I've edited only for length. Trust me, I couldn't make up comments this stupid if I tried.

hmmm maybe it is important to keep certain things from kids at younger agesbuteventually theyre going to findtheyre own path. as a parent could you denyyour childs everlasting happiness just because you and your friends dont "approve". if your child or friend or even yourself find happiness in a less than reputable society but are happy trully being themselves AND DON HURT ANYONE, than how can this be bad? it is ones own pah that they must take into whaevr form ofascention they so choose. thats my opinion anyway.

-david age 16

Hi, David! It's great to hear from one of our younger readers! Did you know that Mozart wrote the opera Lucio Silla at age 16? It's true. Not only that, but by age 19 he knew the difference between their and they're, and by age 26 he had stopped appending his age to his signature to excuse his own stupidity.

you are out of your mind you crazy old bat

-Anonymous

That's redundant, you stupid retarded chicken.

you all are crazy people let the kids have fun and stop recking a good time

- Anonymous

Sorry, I don't recking we will.

I've been reading the potter series since Iwas I was 11 (currently 19),and I can assure you I'm not santanic in any way...and the whole add in the book, so never happened...I own several copies of the books and never seen this...Another point I would like to make is, the book is considered "Fantasy" for a reason...it's not REAL...Kids just don't go out into the yard, pick up a stick, and say Avava Kadvra...and you're worried about the song "Fergalicious"...Maybe you should be worried about other songs from more provocative artist such as Eminem or Trick Daddy...HARRY POTTER RULES

- Whitney

Wait... It's not real?

i think this post is a little ridiculous. i agree that harry potter in curriculum at school is controversial, but it having anything to do with satanism? i don't think it is akin or has anything to do with satan worship. if a kid does end up worshiping satan after reading this book, then it is the parents fault for raising a messed up kid not the books fault. an excellent read. its not about worshipping anything at all. i dont' really believe you people, i'd want my kids to get excited about reading something.

- Anonymous

A little ridiculous? Do you know how hard I worked on that?

Okay, listen here Diesel or Octane or whatever it is you call yourself, the Harry Potter stories are nothing more than stories about friendship and sticking together and learning how to overcome obstacles in one's life. The fact that there happens to be elements of an magical nature is entirely secondary. And furthermore, speaking as a pagan -- a proud to be one for the last 17 years since I began practicing -- I take great offense to having my faith -- yes, FAITH -- being referred to as devil worshipping. I'm all for free dom of speech but if you expect your beliefs to be respected, I suggest you return in kind.

- Jade Hawthorn

Jade or Topaz or whatever it is you call yourself, I'm sorry that I implied that the Harry Potter books had anything to do with your stupid made-up religion.

Fortunately, after Jade put an evil hex on me, I received some encouraging comments from a number of folks in the pharmaceutical industry:

Great Article! Thank You!

- Phentermine

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- Buy Phentermine

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And then more from Anonymous...

I have read all the harry potter books and there is nothing wrong with them (like all u ppl think)

- Anonymous

Anonymous, did you read the one where there were some subtle points being made that went right over your head?

if you think harry potter is bad, your fucking stupid. and even if you did get that retarded harry potter 'sign up sheet' from one of their books, the book was a fake. and if you dont believe me.... then blow yourself.

- Anonymous

Anonymous, congratulations on being the dumbest person on the planet. What tipped you off that the sign-up sheet was a fake? Was it the fact that the other graphic in the post was a fake Satanism for Dummies book with the tagline "From the folks who brought you Harry Potter and Cancer?" Was it the part of the post where I said that I make my children wear helmets while doing difficult geometry problems? Was it the address on the bottom of the form that read, "Knights in Satan's Service, attn: Harry Potter Department, 666 Lucifer Way, Las Vegas, Nevada?"

So you think that form was a fake, eh? Anonymous, that wasn't even a real sheet of paper. I was too lazy to print the form out and scan it, so I just dummied something up in Paint Shop Pro. I made the "torn edge" by drawing a zig-zag line with my mouse. But I didn't fool you, did I, Anonymous? You figured out that it was a fake, probably torn from a counterfeit Harry Potter book. That's some solid deductive reasoning there, Sherlock. Do the human race a favor, would you? Go see Jurassic Park and have a fatal heart attack so that you can't reproduce.

Anyway, it's Monday, and you know what that means: A new issue of the Clay Pigeon humor magazine! If you want to read some writing by people who aren't polluting the gene pool, head over there now. Speaking of stupidity, the CP has a special report on which one is dumber, home improvement store employees or shopping carts. Plus, an article from the CP archives that takes us way back to 1990, when we were expressing our doubts about an upstart software company named Microsoft, and our first ever Letter to the Editor. Who knew there was no U.S. Department of Coffee?

And if that doesn't meet your ravenous hunger for humor, check out those wacky Satan-worshipers over at Humor-Blogs.com.

I'll be back tomorrow with the caption contest finalists.

Humor Me

You may not be aware of this, but in addition to this site I also run a blog directory called Humor-Blogs.com. (I know, you're probably wondering what other secrets I've been keeping from you. Like maybe I've written a book, or I've been editing an online humor magazine.)

Shortly after I started this blog, I began looking for ways to promote it. One way that a lot of people recommended was to get listed with a blog directory, like BlogTopList or TopBlogging. So I submitted my site to a bunch of directories, hoping for a small boost in traffic. What I got was basically nothing. I mean, I might get one visit a week from each of these sites. I even tried putting their banners near the top of my template and writing posts encouraging my readers to click on them so that I'd move up in the rankings. And I did move up slightly, for a short time, which resulted in me getting maybe 2 visits a week.

Presumably these sites are helping someone, but it's not me. And it irked me that the rankings seemed to be based entirely on the amount of traffic that a blog generates for that site. In other words, a popular site gets a high ranking, because it's popular, thereby making it more popular. That's like a newspaper telling you to go see Spider-Man 3 because it made $300 million so it must be pretty good.

Take the top ranked blog in the "Humor" category at TopBlogging, for example. It's called Really Funny Jokes, and it features copied and pasted jokes like this:

A girl sat sobbing in the police station. "I was raped by an Idiot!!" she wailed.
"How do you know he was an Idiot?" the detective asked.
"I had to help him!" the girl replied.

Gee, that's a knee-slapper, isn't it? Definitely worthy of the highest ranked Humor blog on the Interwebs.

"Why isn't there some kind of site that actually makes an effort to identify some of the funniest blogs out there?" I thought. There had to be something like that, right? Wrong. Topblogging, TopBlogArea, BlogTopList, TopHatBlogList, TobogganBlogLogList, TobleroneBlogArea... they're all the same: Lists of blogs that are popular, in order by their popularity, so that more people can experience the joys of blonde jokes and that Youtube video with the monkey sticking his finger in his butt.

So I started Humor-Blogs.com, which was at first just a list of blogs that I personally found funny. Then I ran across BlogLaughs, a blog run by a guy who had put together a team of volunteer reviewers to review blogs for their humor content. He had done a lot of blog reviews over the course of a year or so, but was getting pretty burned out on the project. Part of the problem was that hardly anybody knew about his site. One of the ironies of the Internet is that a worthless site like TopBlogging gets a lot of traffic because a lot of web sites link to it, whereas a site like BlogLaughs, that provided an actual service, languishes in obscurity.

I took over the reviewing responsibilities from BlogLaughs and incorporated them in the Humor-Blogs ranking system. I didn't want H-B to be just another popularity contest, but I also didn't want it to wither and die like BlogLaughs. So I compromised, creating a ranking based partly on reviews by (hopefully) disinterested reviewers and partly on traffic.

I have, of course, gotten criticism for both aspects of this ranking system. "What does traffic have to do with how funny a blog is?" people ask. Well, first of all, in reality there is a (slight) correlation between traffic and quality. Really Funny Jokes isn't remarkable by any means, but I imagine it's better than the 200th ranked blog on TopBlogging, and Spider-Man 3 was at least better than The Hottie and the Nottie. Second, basing the score partly on popularity makes it harder for someone to try to game the system by getting all his/her friends to sign up as reviewers. And finally, there's the reality that without traffic, H-B would be worthless both to people looking for blogs and for bloggers trying to boost their traffic.

Some people ask whether there is some kind of qualification process for reviewers, as if there were a line of people waiting to be given the opportunity to write blog reviews for which they will receive exactly nothing in terms of compensation. In reality, there are some 400 blogs waiting to be reviewed, and only a handful of reviewers, so a better question would be, "Is there some kind of qualification process that a blog has to go through before it can get reviewed?"

And then there are those who talk about how "self-serving" Humor-Blogs.com is. They see bloggers begging their readers to click the H-B link on their blog and assume that I'm somehow making out like a bandit. And to be fair, I guess I am. Check out a sampling of my referral traffic from H-B to MattressPolice.com:



That's pretty typical: Five out of twenty referrals came from Humor-Blogs.com. I get a lot of traffic from H-B, unlike the other blog directories. I'm ranked #4 on H-B and #9 on TopBlogging, but do you see any referrals from TopBlogging on that list?

So yes, H-B has worked out pretty well for me, but only -- and here's the key -- because I'm a Humor-Blogs.com member who works hard to stay near the top of the rankings. I can only assume that the referral traffic for Seven Seeds, Crummy Church Signs and 15 Minute Lunch look pretty much like mine. So yes, H-B is self-serving, if the "self" you're talking about is the members who are writing funny blog posts and working hard to promote the site.

In any case, the point of this long winded diatribe is to explain my motivations in creating and continuing to run Humor-Blogs.com... and why some things with the site are going to have to change.

Realistically, we're never going to be able to review all of the blogs that are in the queue. Blogs are being added faster than we can review them. Additionally, many blogs that have been reviewed may have changed significantly since their review (or are now defunct). This diminishes the meaningfulness of the rankings. Not incidentally, I have way too much other stuff going on to keep devoting my time to blog reviews.

So I'm hereby retiring from the blog review business. We'll post the reviews that have been submitted already, but after that we're not going to review any more blogs.

I'm hoping to come up with a more automated system, similar to Digg or StumbleUpon, where users can give a "thumbs up" and maybe a short review for specific blog posts, but it will probably be several weeks before I can have anything like that in place. Any suggestions are welcome; I'll either incorporate you suggestions or explain in a future post why I was unable to. Whatever system I eventually end up using, it will be an attempt to maintain the balance between popularity and reader opinions as a means of ranking blogs.

Ok, enough serious crap. I'll be back tomorrow with a post detailing everything you never wanted to know about Captain America. See you then!

Welcome, Internet Explorer users!

If you're using Internet Explorer, you've probably had some trouble accessing my site since yesterday. Sorry about that -- I was in a hurry yesterday morning and committed the cardinal sin of not testing the new template in IE. I'm not sure why IE choked on it; the problem seems to be related to the Blogrolling script that I used to display the Adjutant Inspectors and Mattress Police Force. Of course, I used the same script in the old template with no problem. Chalk it up to a combination of Blogrolling's crappy script and IE being a temperamental little b*tch.

I'll have to find a new way to display my blogrolls, because Blogrolling is too flakey. I'll probably end up writing my own blogrolling script, because hey, I'm a web developer, so I can do that kind of stuff.

Speaking of which, I also don't really like Blogger's commenting system, so I wrote my own. So when you click on the comment link at the bottom of this post, it will take you to my custom-made commenting application. Let me know what you think. If it works out, maybe I'll release it for use by other bloggers. The comments for older posts are still there; you just have to click on the post title to view the post with the comments.

I hope you like the new template. The old one was getting on my nerves because it was too cluttered and loaded too slow. I've removed a lot of the crap and simplified the design. Also, I thought it would be funny to make myself look like a total badass because I'm a complete dork in real life. But I figured if Will Smith can go from being the Fresh Prince to Mr. Bad Boy, then surely I can make the leap as well. Pretty soon I'll be showing up in crappy adaptations of Isaac Asimov novels.



Ah, if only it were that easy to get rid of Martin Lawrence in real life.

Sorry about yesterday's post, by the way. I figured I needed a badass post to kick off the new design. Also, I figured you'd be too distracted by the template to pay much attention to what I was saying anyway.

Ok, my housekeeping is done. Meet me back here tomorrow for a real post. Oh, and leave a comment to try out the new system and let me know what you think.

Diesel out.

A-y-y-y!

Do you remember the episode of "The Simpsons" where Disco Stu explains the sales potential of disco records to Marge? Stu points to a chart showing the sales of disco records from the years 1973 to 1976 and says, "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... A-y-y-y!"

I'm having a bit of an A-y-y-y moment right now. Generally my site averages around 300-400 unique visitors per day, with around 400-600 page loads. I know, a lot of you would kill for numbers like that, but you have to understand that it was a lot of work to get to this point. It's one thing to say that you'd kill for those numbers, but it's another thing entirely to go out to the freeway overpass every day with a burlap sack filled with mewing kittens.

Anyway, you see those two little icons at the bottom of this post? Yeah, those:

Stumble it!

Digg it!

StumbleUpon and Digg are "social networking sites," which seemed to be the big thing for a while. Maybe it still is. Whatever. Digg has never done me much good, but occasionally someone "Stumbles" one of my post and I get a few hundred hits out of it. And before you get too excited about adding the magical StumbleUpon icon to your posts, remember that only about one of twenty of my posts gets stumbled, and the number of hits I get from it is dependent on how many "friends" the Stumbler has in the StumbleUpon network. Basically, if a serious internet geek who spends way too much time making "friends" online really likes one of my posts, I get some traffic out of it.* And I should add that 99% of these visitors read a single post (if that) and then disappear, never to darken my IP address again. Since I'm really only interested in finding regular readers who will leave nice comments or maybe even buy my book, the net result of all this commotion is about on par with drinking eight MGDs in an hour and a half: A lot of Stumbling that culminates with me urinating in the orchard behind my house.

Sometimes there is an interesting snowball effect, however. In the past it's always burned out after I get around 1,000 visitors, but evidently my Straight Man post hit a chord (count the mixed metaphors in this paragraph and win a puppy!). One person Stumbled it, then another, and another.... So far, the results look like this:



I mean, holy crap, right? Even Saturday's traffic was about double for a normal Saturday, and it shot up like crazy after that. All because of a post that was just some goofy conversations I had with my wife.

Again, if you're a fellow blogger, feel free to add the Stumble icon to your posts (I think there are instructions at StumbleUpon.com), but don't come whining to me if you don't suddenly get thousands of visitors. This is truly a freak occurrence, and it only happened after a lot of hard work and dead kittens.

Still, if this trend continues, A-y-y-y!


*I don't mean to disparage you, Stumbler. I appreciate what you've done for me. But come on. Don't you, like, have a job or something?


Humor-blogs.com never urinates in my orchard.

Housekeeping!

I sent out an email a few days ago to all the people who pre-ordered Antisocial Commentary. It probably got stuck in a few spam filters, so here's a link you can use to pay for the book. This form is only for people who pre-ordered the book. If you haven't pre-ordered it, you can buy the book here. One more note for the pre-orderers: If the email address you provided to PayPal is different from the one you gave me, please send me an email at diesel - at- mattresspolice.com letting me know, so that I can make sure I give credit to the right person.

In other news, I have gotten rid of my Links page and put the whole Mattress Police Force blogroll on the left sidebar. If you have linked to me and I haven't yet added you, please let me know. I try to add everybody who has me on their blogroll, but it's getting a little tough to keep up with.

I hope to be promoting a few more of you to the vaunted position of Adjutant Inspector as well, but I may need to clear out some deadwood first. If you're an Adjutant Inspector who hasn't left a comment in several weeks, drop me a note to let me know you're still around.

Also, I know that there are a lot of you out there who never leave comments for some reason. Maybe you feel too much pressure to say something witty. Maybe the hospital staff frowns on commenting. Whatever the reason, please take this as an invitation to just leave a quick comment saying hi. Maybe let me know how you found this place, or how long you've been reading, or why you don't have better things to do.

Ok, that's about it for now. Make sure you vote in the caption contest. I'll be posting the results on Saturday. And I'll be back tomorrow with an update on the Diesel for President campaign.

Hello, I'm Sorry

So I’m sitting in my parents’ living room on Friday, feeling the kind of vague unease that creeps up on me when I can't remember what hot stocks I should buy or where to get discount V1@gr@and I think to myself, “I should check my email.” My parents have DSL but no wireless, so I have to go unplug my mom’s computer and plug mine in to get on AGISH (Al Gore's Information Superhighway) -- which is asking a bit much of a man on holiday. While I’m waiting for my email to download, I decide to check the traffic on MattressPolice.com to see how many readers I’ve lost after not posting for several days. Here’s the handy dandy graph offered by Statcounter.com:



As you can see, my absence has been a big hit. People just can’t get enough of me not being around.

I’ve tried a lot of traffic-building stunts, but few of them have been the immediate and unqualified success that leaving has been. By my reckoning, my most successful posts/stunts are:

1. My Mixed Fruits and Metaphors post.
2. The Mattress Police caption contests.
3. Not posting anything.
4. My Harry Potter post.
5. The Lamest Contest Ever.

I’m not sure what it is about my not being around that strikes such a chord with people. Is it the sort of anxious excitement and hope that accompanies an event like cancer going into remission or the Berlin Wall coming down? Is it the kind of exhausted relief that one experiences with the series finale of Friends or Paris Hilton going to jail? Is it the kind of guilty curiosity that comes with the death of a celebrity that one had thought died in 1987?

As popular as my disappearance has proven to be, however, I’ve decided to return before the novelty wears off. There’s nothing worse than dragging out a good thing. At first it would be like:

Unique Visitor 1: Hey, did you hear about that blogger who stopped posting?
Unique Visitor 2: No! For how long?
UV1: Going on five days now.
UV2: Wow. I need to check that out. What’s the internet address thingy?

But after a while it will be like:

UV1: Hey, remember that guy that I told you about who stopped posting?
UV2: Oh, yeah! That was hilarious. What’s he up to now?
UV1: That’s the thing, he’s still not posting.
UV2: What? Geez, get some new material already. What a waste of an internet address thingy.

I thought about returning Gandalf-style, with a white robe and the air of superiority that comes with facing down a balrog, but then if my town was ever terrorized by a balrog, everybody would expect me to take care of it, and I don’t need that kind of pressure. Then I considered coming back with a different name, like “The Hoff.” The great thing about giving yourself a nickname like that is that it sounds really cool, but it’s so lame to give yourself your own nickname that people will end up calling you it as sort of a joke, and then keep calling you it even after they’ve forgotten they were originally making fun of you. But I think you have to be a world class dork to pull off something like that.

So here I am, returning with a whimper rather than a bang. I wish I could come up with something more exciting, but I think I’ve given up trying to figure out what stunts are going to generate a lot of traffic. After all, if a post bombs, I can always disappear.

(Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I'll be back on Friday with a new caption contest pic. And next week I'll regale you with stories about the irrepressible Mr. Wilson, the Scariest Motel Ever, and other unverifiable tales of my vacation. Oh, and tomorrow I'll do my best to catch up on the blog reviews at humor-blogs.com. See you back here on Friday!)

Building, Blogging and Blabbing

Hi all. Things are heating up with the house-building so I'm probably not going to have quite as much time for blogging. I'll try to stick to my MWF schedule, but my posts are more likely to be of the random musings variety than the more ambitious and/or amphibious satire and/or Photoshop entries. I may not be stopping by your blogs quite as much either for a while, although I'll be there in spirit.

I also wanted to let you know about Mad Kane's Spring Limerick Contest. She's giving away cash money for the best limericks about spring! I'd write one, but as I told Mad Kane, I'm lousy with limericks. I think I may need to fumigate.

I'll be back tomorrow with a post that will moisturize curly and wavy hair to tame frizz.

Get Your Funny Post Nominations in TODAY!

Tonight is the deadline for submitting funny posts for the Funniest Blog Post Contest. You can email your nominations to diesel -at- mattresspolice.com. Email a link, not the whole post.

Posts must be dated from February and be posted on a blog that links to humor-blogs.com (see a list of blogs here).

Still confused? Read the rules here.

Thanks for participating!

In even more exciting (for me) news, I'm going to be a guest on PopLoad, an Internet radio show hosted by one of the newest members of humor-blogs.com, The Jay! The show will be live from 7-8pm (Pacific time) this Monday, March 5. Why me? Well, why don't you call in and ask The Jay? Seriously, it would be great if y'all could listen and or call in. If I don't make a fool of myself, he might have me back some time. And if I do make a fool of myself, he might make me a regular feature.

There Can Be Only Four (Funniest Blog Post Contest)

You probably know by now that I run a little black ops project called humor-blogs.com. One of the goals of humor-blogs.com is to give some recognition to lesser known but very funny blogs. The problem with most blog directories -- even the ones that have some kind of voting mechanism -- is that they are biased toward sites that already get a lot of traffic. I'm working on a way to more objectively rank blogs, but until that's done, I thought I'd enlist your help in determining which are your favorite funny blogs.



To that end, I'm running a Funniest Blog Post Contest. The rules are as follows:

1. Submit your nominations for funniest post for the month of February 2007 to me, either by posting a comment here or sending me an email (diesel -at- mattresspolice dot com). You must include the url to a specific POST, not just the blog url. (If you don't know from urls, just send me the title of the post and maybe the date).

2. The post must be dated some time during February 2007.

3. All nominations must be received by midnight Pacific time on Thursday, March 1.

4. To be eligible, the blog must have a link to humor-blogs.com.

5. You may nominate as many posts as you like, from the same blog or different blogs. And yes, you may nominate your own post(s).

6. Posts must be original. Duh.

7. With the help of some disinterested (though not uninterested) individuals, I will whittle the nominations down to a manageable number, probably around 10. I reserve the right to disqualify any blatantly offensive posts (sorry, Fab).

8. On Saturday, March 3, I will post a poll in which people can vote for their pick for funniest post. The polls will close at midnight on Thursday, March 8.

9. My posts are disqualified. I know, so sad.

10. I will announce the top four vote-getters here on Saturday, March 10.

THE PRIZE

• The top 4 will be recognized here and on the humor-blogs.com home page.
• The top 4 will be added to the "Featured Blogs" rotation on the humor-blogs.com home page and the Featured Blogs widget that is displayed on an ever-increasing number of sites (including this one).
• The top 4 will be invited to have their posts included in the feed that appears on the humor-blogs.com home page. If any of the winners are already in the feed, I will work my way down the list of top vote-getters to get four new bloggers for the feed.

So what are you waiting for, a personal invitation from Adrian Paul? Submit your favorite posts today!

Blogger Code of Blah Blah Blah

I recently ran across something called a "Blogger Code of Ethics" on the web somewhere. What a great idea! It's about time somebody got us unruly bloggers in line. I agree with this Code 100%. Or maybe 74.3%. Still, I mostly agree with it. I've republished it below with a few comments of my own.

1. I will tell the truth. Man, wouldn't it be great if all bloggers told the truth? I strive to include some truth in almost every one of my posts. Lies are important too, of course.
   
2. I will write deliberately and with accuracy. Or hire a lot of monkeys.
   


3. I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly. I always do this. I think. I'll have to come back to this one.
   
4. I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes so as to maintain the integrity of my publishing. This one is crap.
   
5. I will never delete a post. Even if the original writer of this post tells me to. I have my principles, after all.
   
6. I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic. Somewhere, Joe comment-deleter is squirming.
   
7. I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly. My responses may, however, be highly in appropriate.
   
8. I will strive for high quality with every post – including basic spellchecking. I wonder what basic spell-checking is. Does my post qualify as "high-quality" if I only mispell hard-to-spell words?
   
9. I will stay on topic. I have no problem with this one. But then, I'm an easy-going sort. I credit my 4th grade teacher for instilling me with those values. Of course, she also made me pay $12 for my share of a window that a classmate of mine broke. She said we weren't allowed to "play tag" behind the school. I wasn't playing tag, ok? And I wasn't the idiot who threw the rock. What was his name again? Damn, I'm blanking.
   
10. I will disagree with other opinions respectfully. This one's crap too.
    
11. I will link to online references and original source materials directly. That reminds me, I should give some credit to the author of this code of ethics. Just google "Blogger Code of Ethics." You'll find it eventually.
    
12. I will disclose conflicts of interest. This one's a must, especially if you expect to get picked up by a popular aggregator site like humor-blogs.com.
    
13. I will keep private issues and topics private, since discussing private issues would jeopardize my personal and work relationships. Greg Johnson! That was his name. If you're reading this, Greg, you owe me $12.
    

Humor-blogs.com abides by a code of ethics so strict that it makes Richard Nixon look like Spiro Agnew.

Help Me Out Here

Once again, I'm over at the Snark, bitching about Hollywood girlie-men.

While you're here though, can I ask you a favor? You may have noticed I've made some changes to this site. One of these is a new section over there to the right that reads "Be a Helpful Citizen." What does this mean?

Well, when you click one of those little graphics, it helps this site climb the rankings in that blog directory. A higher rank means more people can find my blog, which increases the odds that I'll keep writing stuff like this and this for a while. That would be a good thing, right?

Most of the sites will log one click/vote per user per day. So if every one of you clicked on one of those links every time you visited this site... we could probably crash my server. I'm willing to risk it.

Thanks!

I'll be back tomorrow with a post about my imaginary friend, Toby.

Blogger Layouts Question

Ok, so I'm stumped. You may have noticed I've been messing with my template a lot lately. I'm kind of old school when it comes to this stuff, so I don't mind mucking around in the html/css to get the page to look the way I want it to. I tend to stay away from all the fancy "widgets" and whatnot. At least, that's my excuse for why, as a guy who's been doing web development for 8 years, I can't figure out how to implement the new Blogger "layout" functionality.

You're supposed to be able to convert from the old template to the nifty new "layouts." It says so right here. Except I can't, because the part that is supposed to say "Customize Design" says "AdSense." Which, call me crazy, sounds like something entirely different to me.

I thought that maybe it couldn't convert from my crazy ass homemade template, so I replaced it with one of the standard templates for one of my blogs, and it still doesn't give me the option.

Has anybody else had this problem? WTF?

I'm Not Here...

...because I only post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays now. Oh, and a short Dispatch on Saturday. Didn't you get the memo?

I'm over at the Snark, making startling revelations about presidential movies with homoerotic undertones, just in time for Valentine's/Presidents' Day!

I would also suggest you read my excerpts from James Blunt's songwriting journal below. It's rare that you get an opportunity to take a glimpse inside the mind of such a genius.

So Here's the Deal

I have a confession to make. I don't actually write this blog. I mean, I type it, but I don't really write it. I just write what the Voice tells me to write. Shhhhh! Do you hear that? That fizzing sound. If you listen closely, you can hear the Voice. That, my friends, is the voice of wisdom, wit and erudition. It is, in fact, the voice of Dr. Pepper.

Yes, this blog is dictated to me by the effervescent utterances of the Scholar of Soda, the Professor of Pop, the TA of Tonic, Dr. Pepper, PhD. I owe my entire readership to the Doctor, and some time maybe you can all come over and split a six pack with me.

Unfortunately, the Doctor and I are having a disagreement of late. The Doctor's specialties, you may know, are tooth decay, obesity and type 2 diabetes. I've decided to pursue another line of study. I hope to answer the age-old question "Can man get to the age of 40 without buying any pants with an elastic waistband?"

All of this to say that I need to cut down on inspiration a bit. Which means that I need to cut down on posting. There's no way around it; No Pepper, no post. And you do NOT want to see the kind of whacked out sh*t I post on Diet Dr. Pepper. So don't even bother to suggest that crap.

So here's what I'm going to do: I will post an entry on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Saturdays, I will post the Saturday Dispatch -- A very brief post of the type that I used to post to the now defunct Mattress Police Dispatches blog. I will, of course, continue to update Central Booking as I work my way through the reading list, and I will continue to update Deep Cover every second Tuesday of any month that has an 'e' in it. Got it? Cool.

In other news, I finally wrote up my thoughts regarding The Kite Runner, an excellent novel suggested by Ann from At Home with Ann. Check it out, as well as my assessments of Fast Food Nation, Eragon, and more at Central Booking. As you can see, I'm currently reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstader suggested by Wolfe from Wolfe's Musings.

I'd also like to say thanks to everybody who has joined the humor-blogs dot com juggernaut. I'm extremely excited about the momentum that this little project is generating, and I've got a lot of cool stuff planned for the future. New participants include SinisterDan from The Reasonable Ego (who seems to share my philosophical bent, although he's bent in a slightly different direction), A Tyke's Progress and A Goddess In The Land Of Pink.

If you have a funny blog that you'd like listed, please let me know by posting a comment here or sending me an email. I've had to turn down a few blogs (even some that I really like and that contain a lot of humor) simply because they don't strictly qualify as "humor blogs." I don't really care if your thing is toilet humor or acerbic political satire, but your blog needs to be primarily devoted to (at least trying to) make people laugh in order to qualify. Them's the rules.

See you Monday with a brand spanking new post on the genius of James Blunt.

Diesel out.

Never Underestimate the Power of Humor-Blogs.com

As I'm running low on material at the moment, I implore those of you in need of a humor fix to visit one of the fine representatives of the humor-blogs.com consortium.

Soon the entire Interweb will be subject to the iron rule of humor-blogs.com. Once our conquest of cyberspace is complete, any humor-oriented blogs which do not bear our stamp will be crushed like Cheetos beneath our metaphorical boot.

Join us now, while you still can.





















Mattress Tags: humor blogging blog directories

The Adventures of Crash McFarlane in the Blogosphere

Crash McFarlane hopped into his iPod, desperate to reach the blogosphere before dark.

The iPod sputtered to life, creaking and shuddering as it soared above the docking station. McFarlane prayed that the batteries would last. If they gave out before he reached the outer blog ring, he’d be stranded in Bluetooth territory when the sporks came out.

Once clear of the ebonic barrier, Crash set the iPod to shuffle to conserve energy. He sailed above the playstation, absently watching the kleenex bots meticulously detoxing the muffin-toppers and zine phishers. He wondered if he would ever come this way again.

The bloggers had made it very clear that they wouldn’t hesitate to TiVo his beloved Wiki if he didn’t return with the emoticon before dusk. He reflected on the irony of the situation: he knew that the power to defeat the bloggers lay within the emoticon itself, but only Google knew how to use it, and only the bloggers knew how to reach the old man. There was no other solution: he would have to turn the emoticon over to them, giving them the power to floam the entire city.

He wished there was some other way, but he couldn’t bear to allow Wiki to be TiVo’d. If the bloggers had given him the choice, he’d have gladly allowed himself to be TiVo’d in Wiki’s place. But they would not be so merciful. If he failed to deliver the emoticon, he would have to live with the fact that he had allowed the Wi-Fi energy of the TiVo device to turn Wiki into a mindless spork. So here he was, doing the bidding of the blogosphere, feeling like a complete palm pilot.

Eventually Crash nodded off, exhausted from hours of web hacking to retrieve the emoticon from the Wintel spamcops. He awoke to the sound of the gentle bling-bling alerting him that the iPod was nearing the Youtube. The tube would take him to the outer blogosphere, where the blogrollers were constantly shoring up the blog ring to protect the blogosphere from spork attacks.

Crash checked the battery levels. Two percent. Just enough to get him to the Youtube gateway. From there, the Youtube would propel the iPod to the blogosphere.

Suddenly the gaydar sounded. The neocon showed two spamcops approaching rapidly from behind.

Crash took the iPod out of safe mode and hit the accelerator. The Wii engines roared to life and the iPod rocketed toward the Youtube gateway. Crash could practically see the battery levels dropping. He wasn’t going to make it.

The gaydar blinged again: The spamcops had launched a volley of Gnutella logic bombs.

Crash looked down, scanning the netscape for a place to ditch the iPod. He spotted a small patch of blue. No, he thought. It can't be. Can it?

As the blue patch grew larger, there could no longer be any doubt. It was a long shot, but it was his only chance.

He jammed the joystick forward and the iPod hurtled downward, toward the Blue Screen of Death.


TO BE CONTINUED...


Listed on humor-blogs.com

You Think This is Funny?

If you're like me, you're pretty tired of all the shameless traffic-building gimmicks that I employ on this blog to attract more readers. If you wanted to be bombarded by ads and other annoying crap, you'd be using MySpace, right? Right.

So I'm working on a little side project that will hopefully allow me to continue to blatantly shill for this site and some of my other favorite humor blogs while maintaining the pristine snarky integrity of the Mattress Police. The project is a little something called humor-blogs.com.

humor-blogs.com is sort of a running "best-of" collection from several funny blogs. The idea is for humor-blogs.com to be sort of a gateway site that acts as an introduction to these blogs. Initially these four blogs are participating:






If you have a funny blog that you would like added to the humor-blogs.com sidebar, let me know by posting a comment here or emailing me at diesel -at- mattresspolice.com. I'll be happy to include your blog; all I ask is that you add a link to humor-blogs.com