Thursday Shout-Out: New Blogroll

I took my blogroll down a while back because it was getting totally out of hand. I hated maintaining it, and it was getting too long to do anyone any good (that's what she said).

But now my guilt has gotten the better of me, so I've decided to put an abbreviated blogroll back up in an effort to balance out the karmic linky something something. So over to the right you'll see a heading that reads "Worth a Look," under which there is a list of 25 blogs. I've picked these blogs based on a number of factors, but mostly based on my guess as to what kinds of blogs visitors to this sight might also enjoy.

Limiting it to 25 makes it a manageable list, but it also guarantees that a lot of great blogs get left off. For example, avid supporters such as Beth, Claire, Jeffrey Ellis, Jinksy, Teri, and probably a dozen other people that I can't think of right now (because I'm retarded) get shafted. Sorry. I will be adding a links page back to this site in the near future that will have a lot more blogs on it, but I'm going to try to keep my sidebar list down to 25.

You may have noticed some other changes on this site as well. For one, there's a little button at the bottom of this post that looks like this:



Except that it probably says "smiley me!" which is another way of saying "Hello? Is this thing on? Anyone? Beuller?" It tracks the number of smileys a post has gotten on Humor-Blogs.com.

There is also a rank widget over to the right that looks like this:



That one shows the blog's overall ranking at HB.

The smiley count widget is a little tricky, and I've only tested it on Blogger. The ranking widget is super-easy, though, and will work on any blogging platform that supports Javascript (read: not Wordpress). There are instructions for plugging in both widgets on the HB Widgets page.

That's about it for today. If you're looking for something funny, try checking out one of those blogs. And don't forget to join my neighborhood at BlogCatalog and leave a nice comment for me over there.

Here's another place to find a funny blog.

Vote!

Man, it's getting really hard to pick these caption contest finalists. It's like picking a favorite from among my children, except that I don't have to worry about a bunch of captions on other websites that I don't even know about.

I finally narrowed it down to these ten:




Jay said...

Diesel: "I swear I have the crappiest HMO in the world."




Alex L said...

The first annual meeting of the I hate Thomas Kinkade association.


Fold My Laundry Please said...

Diesel's friends take Dungeons & Dragons VERY seriously!




Bunk Strutts said...

"Diesel, forget the midterms. The Chinese Chicks should be here any minute and you still don't have your Amy Winehouse costume on."



robin said...

Dude, for the last time I'm sorry, I didn't know she was your sister. Can you please stop pretending to ignore me and open my beer? Seriously, I have a goalie's glove for my hand and we all know Abe's useless with a pop-top can.


Carla said...

"Hang on a sec, I'm looking for that picture of you back in high school when you still had your horns."



carolinebender said...

HellBoy, "No, the 7th circle is pretty cool, actually. You have to call ahead to get that set-up, but you should totally come with us next year."



Deb on the Rocks said...

Diesel, come on, what we have is special and forever. I didn't mean to hurt you. Bringing Abe in will just spice things up for a little while, that's all. But it's up to you, baby, it's up to you.


Acorn King said...

Dude, you totally bite it on page 19.




Sherri said...

"Here's to whoever wrote the words to Kumbaya."

Opinion Polls & Market Research

I'll announce the winner on Friday. As usual, the winner will get the In Your Face award and a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary.

And while you're in a voting mood, make sure you head over to BlogCatalog, join my community and rate MattressPolice.com. I've been doing some recon behind enemy lines lately, checking out other blog directories. Most of them suck compared to Humor-Blogs.com, natch, but BlogCatalog is actually pretty cool. It's a nicely designed site, and it has a friendly, sensible ranking/categorization system for blogs. So if you enjoy my writing, head over to BlogCatalog and rate me and leave a nice comment, before Johnny finds out about it and kicks my ass over there as well.

Looking for a funny blog?

Thursday Shout-out

Man, has anyone noticed that my posting schedule is in danger of shifting an entire day? It's a good thing I'm on Pacific time, or this would be the Friday shout-out.

I don't have much to post anyway. I did want to mention the PayPal fund that Humor-Blogs member Kadi has set up to benefit the two children of an acquaintance of hers who recently killed himself. I was going to try to summarize the whole story, but it's probably better if you just go to Kadi's and scroll down until you find the post(s) about Scott. The PayPal button is at the upper right on her blog if you feel moved to help out.

I also wanted to thank all of the people who have been so appreciative and supportive of Humor-Blogs.com and the recent revamping of the ranking process. There were a few glitches, but everything seems to be working now. And thanks to everybody who has been giving my posts the nice LOL smileys! Thank God Johhny Virgil is still kicking my ass, or people would totally accuse me of cheating.

Haven't done a caption contest for a while, so I guess I'd better get on that. See you back here tomorrow.

Oh, I almost forgot -- In case you're wondering what the Humor-Blogs.com traffic looks like since the upgrade, check this out:



The upgrade happened on July 6. Pretty cool, huh? Hopefully all the members are seeing some increased traffic.

If you want to get your blog listed or if you just want to sign up to rate posts, click here. Come on, it's easy.

Fly, Little Birdie, Fly!

Humor-Blogs.com 3.0 has been released into the wild. Let's hope it flourishes out there in the interwebs.

The changes should be pretty obvious. If you click on a link from a blog that is listed on Humor-Blogs.com (like this one, for example), you'll be greeted with a list of posts from that blog. You can click on the smiley if you like a post, or the smiley if you don't like a post. Posts are listed in order by the number of smileys they've gotten minus the number of smileys they've gotten. A blog's total score is determined by adding up the scores of all of its posts for the past 30 days.

If you haven't already, you'll need to create an account to rate posts.

As always, you can use the contact form or email me at diesel -at- mattresspolice.com if you have any trouble.

Now I would never use my power as unquestioned despot of Humor-Blogs.com to influence the rankings in my favor, but I'm not above appealing to your sense of pity, having spent the better part of the holiday weekend getting this damn thing up and running.

So, for example, if you found my Fishy post funny, you could vote for it. Or maybe my Fat Chicks post made your belly quiver with mirth. And then there was my Science vs. Democracy post, my Internet Stalker post and my Big Knob post. Just click on the Rate this post on Humor-Blogs.com link at the bottom of any of the posts.

I only ask that you follow your heart.

I'll be back tomorrow with a post that has absolutely nothing to do with Humor-Blogs.com, I swear. In fact, it will be so great, that it may just be the perfect post for you to vote for on Humor-Blogs.com.

Humor-Blogs Changes Looming!

I'm preempting the Thursday Shout-Out this week for a special announcement: Humor-Blogs.com 3.0 will be launched this Sunday, July 6.

The main change is going to be the way that blogs are ranked. We stopped doing blog reviews several months ago, and I've been trying to come up with a way to fairly rank blogs without so much manual effort. I've settled on a sort of thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system similar to that of StumbleUpon or Digg. When a user clicks on a link to H-B from a post on your site, they will be given the option to "smiley" the post: They can give it a laughing-out-loud smiley, a happy smiling, or a grumpy smiley. In order to help prevent fraudulent voting, users must have a Humor-Blogs.com account to smiley posts.

A post's score will be determined by adding up the LOL smileys it has received and subtracting the grumpy smileys. Posts will be listed on the H-B home page in order by their score, from highest to lowest. The overall blog rankings will be determined by adding up the scores of each blog's posts for the past 30 days.

The new system will also be more egalitarian. In the past, only the top 50 ranked blogs have had their posts show up on the home page, but with this new system everyone will have a chance. Blogs will sink or swim based entirely on the votes they get. To make things completely fair, I will be resetting the scores of all the blogs (including mine) back to zero. Sorry, Johnny!

If you're an H-B member, don't worry, you don't have to change anything on your blog. You can keep linking to H-B the way you always have. If you have provided your feed url, any posts that have a link to H-B will show up on H-B.

My goal is to make H-B as fair and simple as I can for the members, and to make the site a more useful resource to visitors looking for funny blogs. This should result in increased traffic, which is good for all Humor-Blogs.com members.

If you have a funny blog and haven't joined Humor-Blogs.com yet, what are you waiting for? Join now! If you're not sure it's worth the trouble, ask any one of the eight bloggers who is ranked higher than me what they think.

And if you're a blog reader who would like to help promote some of your favorite blogs (like this one, for example), get a jump on things and sign up now. You don't have to sign up if you already have a blog listed on Humor-Blogs.com.

No caption contest tomorrow. I'm going to take the day off to celebrate the 4th and make sure everything is in place for the upgrade. I will post more information here after the upgrade is complete.

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

I’m an Internet Stalker!

Every week a couple dozen new bloggers sign up to be listed on Humor-Blogs.com. I used to review every site to determine whether it qualified as a humor blog, but it didn’t take me long to realize that this was an impossible task. Sadly, a lot of people are so bad at being funny that it’s almost impossible to determine whether they are even trying. So lately all I do is visit the site to determine (1) whether it is a blog, and (2) whether it has a link to Humor-Blogs.com. Oh, and I also check for nudity (which is only appropriate on a humor blog if the subject is fat) and what I consider “grossly inappropriate content.” I rarely reject someone for content reasons, but it does happen. The other day I rejected a site that had jokes about, among other things, infant sodomy [Shudder]. I have an automated system where I can send a “welcome aboard” email to bloggers whose sites meet those criteria, or a rejection email in case they don’t.

The rejection email explains why the blogger’s site was rejected and what to do about it. Generally that’s the end of it, but occasionally the rejected blogger will email me back. Often this results in an edifying discussion about how Humor-Blogs.com works exactly, after which the blogger either adds a link and joins the site or we part amicably.

Sometimes neither of these happens. Sometimes the exchange goes like this one. (I've changed the blogger's name to avoid further angering her.)

Hi,

Your web site, [Strikingly Original Blog Title], was rejected for inclusion on Humor-Blogs.com because we were unable to find a link to Humor-Blogs.com on your website. If you have added a link to Humor-Blogs.com and we missed it, we apologize. Please make sure that the link is on the main page of your blog (not a separate 'links' page), and that our site's name and url are spelled and formatted correctly, and then RESUBMIT your site to http://humor-blogs.com/JoinLanding.aspx. You can respond to this email if you want, but there's a pretty good chance that will irritate us.

Cheers!
Diesel

Yes well, sorry if this irritates you but when I went over there and saw that the first thing a viewer would see when linking to Humor Blogs' homepage was stuff like "Cock Blocking Since 2004" and "Found Shit" and "Wiping Butts Since 1998" I reconsidered my desire for inclusion in your "community" because I want my blog to be family-friendly.

Plus which, none of that is funny, in my opinion.

Thanks anyway!

Suzy Blogger

Hi Suzy,

I can't control who signs up for the site. I only reject sites that don't link to H-B, or that have grossly inappropriate content. Sorry the site doesn't meet your needs.

Cheers,
Diesel

Clearly we have differing views on what constitutes grossly inappropriate.

Suzy Blogger

All I know is that if wiping butts is inappropriate at your house, I don't want to come over. :)

Diesel

Well, at least YOU attempt to be a comedian.

Suzy Blogger

Always attempting, yes. That's me.

Seriously, this whole Humor-Blogs site has blown way out of my control. I never had any policies in place to say "No, you can't have 'shit' in your blog title," so I just had to kind of let things slide. I'm sure some people are offended, but whatever. Nobody's going to die from seeing the word 'shit' in print.

Are they? (He asked ominously)

Diesel

Well, you know, you said a few minutes ago that you can't control who signs up on the site ... but obviously you can because you denied me that dubious privilege.

And that is perfectly fine. I have no problem with that but don't tell me you can't control it because you are controlling it.

And no, maybe people won't die from reading that word, but it is my firm belief that something does die when people cease to care about the kind of language they use in public [Yes, but maybe it’s something bad that dies, like a ridiculously uptight harpy, or that trend where women wear their pants tucked into brown leather boots? - Diesel]. When I started blogging I decided I wouldn't be part of that.

Suzy Blogger

What I said was:

"I can't control who signs up for the site. I only reject sites that don't link to H-B, or that have grossly inappropriate content."

In other words, I have some very minimal rules that I enforce. I used to go through the sites very carefully and try to determine whether they qualified as "humor blogs." But after a while I realized that I couldn't even tell half the time when somebody is trying to be funny. It's all so subjective. The same thing goes for offensiveness. A site not having a link, however, is very clear cut.

Diesel

You know what? I'd appreciate it if you would leave me alone.

Suzy Blogger

I can’t help but feel that I have been a little part of crushing Suzy’s dream of being the most popular humorless dingbat on the interwebs. Man, you really can’t make this shit up.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Why Do You Do It? | Humor Me Humor-blogs.com: Bitch Blocking Since 2008

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?

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!

The CP Looming Recession Issue!

Have you seen the new issue of the phenomenally popular online humor magazine, The Clay Pigeon? (Seriously, despite the fact that hardly anybody leaves comments on the articles, it's doing quite well.) With tough economic times ahead, the CP is doing its part to spread gloom and unease with a special Looming Recession issue.

As CP Publisher Rusty Gibbons puts it:

“This is no time for joking around, Clay. The economy is in real trouble. I think our readers need to hear about the fragile state of free trade in this world. Did you know that 63% of Americans are now against NAMBLA?”

Read the rest of Rusty's pontification here.

And be sure to check out our exclusive transcript of Britney Spears' recent address to the American Coal Foundation, our shocking report on Smiley Inflation and the CP interview with Donald Trump's hair. Plus a brand new See Mike Draw and Crummy Church Sign of the Week, and much, much more.

If you all go check out the Clay Pigeon and click on the Subscribe to the CP by email link so that I don't have to keep reminding you about it every week, then maybe I'll go back to doing Monday posts that are more than shilling for other sites. In fact, if we get 20 new subscribers by tomorrow morning, I'll even do a post tomorrow! I know, awesome, huh?

Speaking of shilling for other sites, who do you think is ahead in the epic battle for 3rd place on Humor-Blogs.com, Mattress Police or Crummy Church Signs? Only one way to find out.

Thursday Shout-Out

Wow, it's been a while since I've done one of these. Been busy editing magazines and whatnot.

Remember the good old days when Humor-Blogs.com was a big happy family, with me sitting on top of that family like a big friendly uncle who smelled like pipe tobacco and beef? Well, those days are over. After several days of pleading with y'all to click the Humor-Blogs.com link (Please! It'll only take a second!), I have clawed my way up to a measly fourth place in the rankings.*

One of the reasons for my fall is Kadi Prescott, who is currently lording it over me in third. What does Kadi have that I don't? Well, first of all she's like 17 times better looking than I am. Second, she's going to be a big TV star.

Yes, our very own Kadi is going to be on ABC's Supernanny.

Kadi stars as a mild mannered steel worker and exotic dancer who transforms into Supernanny when she is bitten by a radioactive Julie Andrews impersonator. In addition to being able to see 426 different shades of green, Supernanny can speak the language of boll weevils and lift a box car loaded with bouillon cubes once a week. The graphical nature of the show is such that the produces cannot legally advertise the air date, but I have it on good authority that it will be on either March 4 or 12.

Kadi is also working on a calendar of hot blogging moms or something. She has promised me a spot in the calendar if I'm willing to wear a bikini. I'm mulling this.

Anyway, check out Kadi's blog before she becomes ultrafamous.

And when you're done there, make sure you check out the Clay Pigeon humor magazine as well, in case you haven't seen this week's issue yet.

The Clay Pigeon features writing from a bunch of different bloggers, so if you enjoy it, be sure to visit some of our contributors' blogs as well:

The Gallivanting Monkey
See Mike Draw
The Frog Bog Blog
Crummy Church Signs
O Mighty Crisis
Izzle Pfaff!
Predator Press
Genuine Ideas
Armadillo Trader
The Reasonable Ego

Seriously, I know you only have so much time for blog reading, but these are some really funny writers. See for yourself.

At the very least, click on this: Humor-blogs.com. You know you want to.

*Ok, I just checked and I've officially overtaken Kadi. But for how long?

Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Occasionally as I am making my rounds through the blogosphere, I run across someone referring to me in excessively laudatory terms, e.g. "the mighty Diesel" or "Mr. Diesel President-CEO-Founder-King of Humor-Blogs." (Thanks, Lobo and Bee.)

I want you to know, first of all, that I enjoy these appellations and wish them to continue.

It is only fitting, after all, for someone who has the 25,692nd ranked blog on Technorati to be held in such esteem. I'm basically a celebrity, like Taye Diggs or Leelee Sobieski.

And this blog -- the 25,692nd most popular blog in the world -- isn't even my only website. I also run Humor-Blogs.com, which, when it isn't crashing because of some kind of database error, is a really big list of other blogs. And frankly I'm being modest, because in addition to it being a list of blogs, there is big column of arbitrarily truncated posts from those blogs, that may or may not appear in chronological order!

Yes, I am an impressive individual. And, not being satisfied with a blog that is almost in the top quarter hundred thousand blogs in the world and a blog directory that comes up first when you type its name into Google, I have now also started a MAGAZINE. Holy crap, right? I mean, how important can one guy be?!?! It's not like they hand out domains like claypigeonmag.com to just anybody with $29 burning a hole in their pocket. (BTW, in case the guy who owns claypigeon.com is reading this -- I'll go up to $104, but that's my FINAL OFFER.)

With great power, of course, comes great responsibility. Occasionally I must step down from my ruby-encrusted throne in order to arbitrate disputes among the common people, and also to make an appointment with my chiropractor, because damn those rubies are digging into my spine.

Recently, for example, a controversy broke out regarding allegations that Bee was monopolizing the top spot in the Humor-Blogs home page feed. Her posts were always showing up on top, even when newer posts would get added. The logical conclusion, of course, was that Bee is a big cheating stinky poo-poo head. Surprisingly, however, in this particular case the problem was actually with the feed aggregating code that I wrote. I know, right? This is pretty much the first time that anything has ever broken with that site. Other than, you know, the database upgrade that broke everything and the time I accidentally deleted all the users, and those data truncation errors and the formatting that isn't quite right on half the pages.

The point is that Humor-Blogs.com isn't just some site that I threw together over a few spare weekends a while back, totally as a lark, never expecting it to have more than a few dozen sites listed. I mean, it is, but it's much more than that. That's because I'm involved, and I'm a Big Deal, so no matter how shoddy the site appears, it should be taken VERY SERIOUSLY.

The rankings, for example, are basically gospel. The very best humor blog in the whole world is 15 Minute Lunch, because Humor-Blogs.com says so. Crummy Church signs is a distant second. There is of course a margin of error of +/- 4 blogs, which is why Mattress Police is oddly mired at #5.

My latest venture, the Clay Pigeon, promises to be every bit as Breathtakingly Important as Humor-Blogs.com. Already I have made $0.16 on Google ads, and that's money that can be plowed right back into the magazine, to buy larger and faster-moving electrons.

But don't worry, no matter how famous and important I get, I will always remember where I came from. I won't forget my loyal Adjutant Inspectors, although admittedly I did shuffle them off to another page somewhere because the damn blogrolling script kept breaking. I mean, come on, am I the only professional around here? (Seriously, if you have a blogroll script that isn't a pain in the ass, let me know and I'll put my blogroll back).

Ok, that's probably about as much of my wonderfulness as you can take. I'll be back tomorrow with another Extremely Important Post. In the mean time, do check out the Clay Pigeon if you haven't yet. The fate of humanity may depend on it.

The Mighty Diesel has spoken.

Books Etc.

Apologies to Beth for the title of this post....

Ok, I've upgraded Humor-Blogs.com from MySQL to SQL Server, and I think I've worked out most of the bugs. The commenting app on this site should be working now as well. Sorry if you had trouble posting a comment over the past few days, and sorrier if you're one of the people whose comments I accidentally deleted. Trust me, it hurt me more than it hurt you.

Let me know if you still have trouble posting a comment here, or if you experience any weirdness on Humor-Blogs.com. You can contact me by filling out the contact form on the H-B site or by emailing me at diesel - at - mattresspolice.com.

In other news, I've finished a few more books on my list. Sort of.

I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks suggested by Cindrarella of the famed Quill Driving Competition. I don't have the energy to write a full review (besides, my reviews of shitty books are way more entertaining), but it's a fascinating book. Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and the author of Awakenings, in case you didn't know. The book is comprised mainly of case studies of various brain damaged people, like the guy who couldn't remember anything for more than about 30 seconds, and the guy who work up one morning with an extremely heightened sense of smell. Sacks does some philosophical musing on the nature and ramifications of these disorders as well, but the best parts are the bizarre stories of individuals whose brains don't work quite right.

I gave up on Love in the Time of Cholera. I'm sorry, Pavel. I just couldn't get through it. Way too much atmosphere and descriptions and symbolism and people lolling about languidly trying to get the courage up to do one thing or other. I was going to cheat and watch the movie, but I hear it's even worse. And I feel pretty bad, considering that I already cheated by picking this Gabriel Garcia Marquez book instead of the whore one. But holy crap, Gabe, would it kill you to throw in an explosion or two?

And then there's The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver suggested by Al from Up the Hudson with Gun and Camera. First of all, Al already told me that I could watch the movie instead if I wanted. Second, my wife reminded me that I actually have already seen the movie (yes, it's that memorable). Third, Al seems to have disappeared into thin air, so unless he shows up here and tells me I still need to read this one, I'm crossing it off.

I do intend to read most if not all of the books remaining on my list, such as American Tabloid by James Ellroy suggested by Mr. Fabulous from Pointless Drivel. (Mr. Fabulous was kind enough to do a post about my book yesterday, so I thought I should mention him). By the way, I'm also reading the draft of Mr. Fabulous' own novel, which is hi-freaking-larious, in a sort of "what the hell is wrong with this guy" sort of way. Hopefully it will be published and available for purchase soon, then ya'll can read it too.

I was hoping to have gotten through more of the books on my list by this point, but as usual I have taken on way too much. Part of the reason I haven't been able to read as much as I hoped is that I've been busy working on my own novel. What, you didn't know I was working on a novel? Well, isn't everybody? The difference is that I actually have about 145 pages written. So when I say that I'm working on a novel, I don't mean the way that I've been "working on a novel" since I was 14. I mean that I actually have a good chunk of usable material written. And as of this morning on the way in to work, I think I even have an ending, which is a plus. You'd be surprised how hard it is to come up with an ending for a novel about the apocalypse. I don't want to say too much, but if you're interested maybe I'll do a post about it sometime in the future.

I think I'm going to take tomorrow off, but maybe I can get Grundir to sub.

Thursday Shout-Out: HumorBlogging.com

First of all, thanks to everybody who responded to yesterday's post and tried to assure me that I'm completely normal. That's total bullocks, of course, but thanks. I mean, we all have our remote-control-in-the-freezer moments, but trust me, I take absentmindedness to a whole new level.

Oh, and to those who attributed my condition to (1) being male, (2) getting old, or (3) being overworked, I respond:

(1) Then I must be way male.
(2) I've actually gotten less scatterbrained as I've aged. Which isn't to say that I'm about to head down the other side of that hill, but trust me, I was even worse 20 years ago. I'm tempted to ask my mom to do a guest post to prove it.
(3) ROFLMAO.

In any case, the point of today's post was supposed to be to give a shout out to Fiar's new blog, Humor Blogging. Like the man says,

The goal of the site is to create a resource for, and community of humor writers that wish to showcase their work, and learn to be better humor writers.

I think his site is a nice complement to Humor-Blogs.com, because it takes a more focused look at the nitty-gritty of writing a humorous blog. If you're an aspiring humor blogger (or "humour" blogger, if you prefer), I would highly recommend that you bookmark HumorBlogging.com.

And not just because I did a fabulous guest post today about how to write a Diesel-esque post.

I'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the famed Mattress Police caption contest. Although if I'm feeling overworked, I may just have to use this pic. See you then!

What's Up

Just a quick post to let you know what's going on around here lately.

Several of you have asked, "WTF is up with the comment thingy?"

To which I respond, "Well, can you be more specific? There are a lot of things up with the 'comment thingy', as you so eloquently put it. And watch your F---ing language."

"Ok, first of all," you go on, "Why am I a weird little robot guy?"

And I respond, "Funny, all the weird little robot guys seem to ask that question eventually." And then I laugh and laugh.

Then you say, "No, seriously. I want a cool little avatar. Not a weird robot guy."

"Oh, that!" I say. "You can get a cool avatar by signing up with Humor-Blogs.com."

"But what if I don't have a funny blog?" you say.

"No problem," I answer. "Just go here and select the bottom option. That will allow you to participate in the Humor-Blogs community without listing a blog. It's super fast and easy."

"Neat!" you exclaim. "But how come some people have square avatars and some people have horizontally oriented banners?"

To which I respond, "Check you out, with your big collegiate words like 'horizontally' and 'oriented.'" And then, after reminiscing briefly about my own horizontally oriented college experience, I continue, "If you're a Humor-Blogs.com member and you enter your web site url in the comment form, your web site banner will show up, unless you've specified another avatar url to use."

And then you nod and smile noncommittally, because you're not quite sure what I'm talking about. Then you change the subject, trying to put me off guard. "So what's up with the duplicate comments?"

"Oh, er, that," I say. "Er, I think I've fixed that. Look, I'm just one guy, ok? I can't be expected to catch every single bug before I upload the code. It's simply unreasonable. So you guys are sort of my unwitting beta testers. Exciting, huh?"

"Uh huh," you say. "And I suppose that explains why the stupid Recent Visitors widget keeps breaking?"

"Ok, that's really not my fault," I say. "Friggin' MySQL keeps corrupting the table for some reason. Anyway, I'm working on a way to make it more stable. Just give me a couple days, ok? In fact, over the next several weeks you're going to see a lot more cool stuff at Humor-Blogs.com. You really should go there and check it out."

"One last question," you say. "I noticed that yours is the #1 ranked blog on Humor-Blogs.com. That's an interesting coincidence, isn't it? I mean, considering that you run the site?"

And I say, "Hey look, Paris Hilton's uvula!"

Get Paid for Blogging!!!

If you're one of those people who has moral objections to ads on blogs, I'd suggest you skip this post and read this one instead. It's got teddy bears.

As you probably know by now, I've written a book. It's called Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police. It's pretty funny, if people like this or this are to be believed. A lot of my fellow bloggers have been kind enough to help me promote the book, and the other day I started to think, "Wouldn't it be great if there was some way to reward these people for helping me out?"

As you also probably know, I was a web developer before I "retired," and I currently run a little humor blog directory appropriately named humor-blogs.com. I decided to leverage my connections and experience to start a "referral program," where bloggers can earn money by selling books by humor-blogs.com members. I'm starting with my own book, but I expect to be adding titles by other members in the future.

So if you are a blogger who is interested in (1) making a few bucks; or (2) helping me promote my book; or (3) helping to promote this referral program in order to encourage your fellow funny bloggers, please CLICK HERE to read all about the Humor-Blogs.com Revenue Referral Program.

It's super-easy. Basically you sign up and then put a link on your website to the humor-blogs.com store. If a visitor clicks on the link and buys a book, you make $2.00, paid via PayPal. If you've looked into how much Amazon or Google pays for ads, you'll know that $2.00 per sale is practically unheard of. I'm willing to give you that much because my costs are low (since I'm the author, publisher, distributor and retailer) and I don't really care about making money on the book. I just want to get as many copies out there as I can, and see how much potential this distribution model has.

If you want to see what the ads look like, visit one of these sites:






Read more about the Humor-Blogs Revenue Referral Program here.


Ok, now that that's out of the way, I can give you the answers to yesterday's "spelling test." I cheated by copying and pasting Jeff's answers, since he got them all right.

nurse=nresce
battle=batfall
pennies=penerd
confusion=kufshanr
discovery=bufen
resident=rebet
visible=vizetfall
trapped=chraped
distance=bistis
fever=feful
phone=phoesph
charge=jrash
drawing=braign
fraction=freken
scrape=craep

Actually, Lime and Crazy Aunt Bea got them all right too, but Jeff was first.

I'll be back tomorrow with a non-lame, non-self-promoting, 100% original post. It's been a while, huh?

Diesel out.

Thursday Housekeeping Post

Hi all! A few quick announcements:

First, I'd like to welcome all the new humor-blogs.com members. I'm having a hard time keeping up with them all, but a few that caught my eye are:





Go to humor-blogs.com to see the burgeoning list of members (or to join your own self!).

And for those of you who suspect that humor-blogs.com is just a shill site to promote my own blog, let me point out that I've now dropped to 3rd place in the rankings, behind Crummy Church Signs and Say No To Crack. Grrrr.

I should also mention that Mad Kane has announced the winners of her spring limerick contest! Sadly, I didn't win. Even sadlier, I didn't even enter.

That's it for today. Be sure to come back tomorrow to witness the birth of a new feature on Mattress Police. Hint: It's an idea that was prompted by some of your comments on my bad hair posts.

Ranking System?!?!

I just got an email from one of the humor-blogs.com members expressing misgivings about the ranking system I've implemented on humor-blogs.com. Since he's probably not the only person with these concerns, let me take a minute to explain my rationale.

Basically the problem is this: There are so many blogs listed now that unless you are near the top of the list, you probably aren't going to get a whole lot of traffic from the site. So the question is, how do I decide what blogs to list first? So far I've been listing them in the order that they joined, but that means that some great blogs that joined later on are left to languish on the bottom. So I decided to implement something that's a little more fair, and also more helpful to people who are searching for funny blogs. That means a ranking system of some kind. I could base the rankings on votes like most blog directories do, but such a system is easy to abuse and tends to reward sites that already get a lot of traffic. So I decided to partner with a site (bloglaughs.blogspot.com) that does a fairly thorough and objective ranking of funny blogs. I'm using my recent Funny Post Contest as a backup ranking system, since most of the blogs haven't been ranked