Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Shamming or Sharing? (Intro)
I had this idea for something that might be cool - I got it from the Sex, Lies and Cheddar X post. Once or twice a week I'm going to post something about me. It might be true or it might be a lie. You guess if I'm shamming or sharing. When the next one is posted I'll give the answer to the previous one (so there will always be at least a couple of days for people to jump in on it). At the end of the month I'll tally up who's got the most correct responses and the best one(s) will get some points. I'm thinking maybe 5 for the top dog, 4 for the second, etc down to 1 point for the fifth finisher. It'll depend on how many people play along. Oh, and Lovely Wife, Dopple-G, others who know me in real life and don't have to guess at the answers - please don't guess at the answers as that'll sort of spoil the fun.
Sound interesting? Here's your first one to judge:
I have a scar above my left eye that goes through my eyebrow. I got this in a snowball fight in Buffalo, NY when I was but a lad. My opponent in the snowball fight used a chunk of ice and put a bit of snow around it and this missed blinding me by about a half of an inch. Because my face was frozen I didn't realize I was bleeding profusely at first and I chased him down and beat him thoroughly. I stopped when I saw all of the blood and thought I'd really hurt him. I went home and my Mom went into hysterics when she saw me literally covered in blood. He was bigger than me too, by the way.
Am I shamming or sharing? Lemme know.
He's got style, he's got grace...
He's got the switcherbar in place!
Yes my beloved fans, Rob has got the style switcher working and you can now select from three (count them - three!) fantastic styles (also designed by Rob). Just use that dropdown box at the top of the sidebar to pick your preferred look.
One more will be coming - that fun-lovin' style worked up by The Bartender.
Comments on the styles are very welcome. Which is going to be your Snooze? Let me know. And let Rob know how much ass he kicks, too.
And in case you didn't notice yet, he's also put in the "view comments in the post" doohicky and the "show trackbacks in the post" whatchamacallit. I know the terms are technical so please try to stay with me here.
Hey Rob? You rock!
Points: 2 points to the first person to source the inspiration for this post title. No searches please.
If you'd like to get an email notification when posts with points get posted just put your email address in that box in the sidebar (the one in the "Snooze Points" section). That'll give you a chance against the hordes who just hover on my site hitting refresh all day in order to be the first ones with a chance to guess.
Nagodobo is a liar and a thief!
I was cleaning up some old emails this morning when I ran across a gem of a conversation between Ilyka and myself. It was from the time when she was hosting the Bestofme Symphony and suffering the deluge of spam that goes with temporary stewardship of the public submission address. As this email was right next to one from Nguzo Makagbo I took it as a sign that this must be shared with the world at large.
Ilyka: I've received one other submission, so the forward's working okay.Oh, and spam. Definitely have received some spam. Want to go into business with a Ghana national who only needs your bank account # in which to transfer the secret-secret proceeds from his father's failed kingdom?
Jim: Sorry about the spam. One of the drawbacks of a publicly posted email address. At least you can be comforted that the spam stream will be flooding someone else next week.
PS - Never reply to the emails from Ghana, they're all a bunch of thugs and liars. The Nigerian classic is the way to go.
Ilyka: I don't know why you have to be hatin' on Ghana like that. They didn't invent the spam; they just perfected it! And Mr. Nagodobo assured me that he is a well-bred gentleman of royal descent. He gave me his WORD.
Jim: Mr. Nagodobo? I don't know if I'd trust him. I had a message from Doctor Ndroge's widow and she told me all about how her good husband the doctor had loyally served the insurgent government while acquiring a fortune of several million US dollars only to be slain in a royalist uprising. She had to be telling the truth BECAUSE IT WAS ALL CAPITALIZED. The poor thing needs my help badly as both the good doctor's former employers as well as the royalists want her inheritance.
Beware Nagodobo. He's probably just using you to find Ndroge's hidden funds.
Ilyka: Oh--you know I can't top "She had to be telling the truth BECAUSE IT WAS ALL CAPITALIZED." I'm out.
Jim: Sorry I had to GO CAPS on you, but you know what they say - a weapon unused is a useless weapon.
The morals of the story? Stick to the Nigerian scam - the original and still world leader in online scams.
And don't mess around with Jim. ;)
Why is that Dorito green?
Because it has the Bold hint of guacamole! The bold hint of guacamole? Yes, that's right. The commercial talks about the bold hint of guacamole.
Let's get a couple things straight. First, there is no such thing as a bold hint, okay? It's an oxymoron like "government efficiency", "PETA cares" or "French courage". Either it's bold or it's a hint but never the twain shall meet. Secondly, guacamole cannot be bold. It's a squashed avacado. Avacados are nature's milquetoasts. Finding bold guacamole is about as possible as finding a rational fundamentalist.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Hey Baby, what's your sign?
Doesn't matter much, really as all of 'em end up up-ended in The Hunting of the Snark
Rorshach Roarshack Rorschock Ink Blot Tests
Ever wonder what's in a Rorschach test? Here's your chance to find out without shelling out the cash to pay for some psychiatrist's second yacht.
My answers are apparently very high ranking intellectually, quite low emotionally. See? I told you I was a rational adult!
Freud reading the results at the end is a nice touch too.
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
Coitus Interruptus
Do you know how when you and your partner are both really tired on a Saturday afternoon and she's lying on the bed relaxing while you (for some unknown reason that even you can't explain except that it has something to do with your severe anal retentive nature) are checking your work email on your own time and then you finish up and shut down the computer and you lie down in the bed with her and just snuggle for a while until that certain spark starts up (most likely because she suddenly says "I am so horny right now") and you start fondling her but then you hear the kids coming down the hall so you distract them by telling them they can go to town on their entire box of Valentine's day candy and to stay in the front room and you and Mommy will be out in a little bit and then the two of you get under the covers giggling a bit because you're oh-so-naughty having a quickie in the middle of the day when the kids are up but not giggling too much because you're both so horny now that you can only really think of one thing and then you're rocking away in the spoon position and having a grand old time and then you hear your oldest child (the four year old) pipe up from the foot of the bed "Hey! Stop messing around!" and gives you a huge panic because even though you're under the covers you just got caught and you have that panic like you did when you were messing around in your parents' house way back when so you yell "Get in the living room now!" and when the confused lad runs out of the bedroom your Lovely Wife starts laughing and you can't help but laugh too in a mixture of relief and humor at the absurdity of the situation?
Me neither.
Sex, Lies, and Cheddar X
Updated 16 Feb: Contest results are in.
This is a very special edition of the Cheddar X. It's about SEX!!! Everything you've always wanted to know about my sex life but were (quite intelligently) afraid to ask. Ever wanted the truth behind that cow picture? The story of how I lost my virginity? How many partners I've had? Well you won't find answers to any of those but there's a lot of other titilating stuff.
There's also one answer that is a total and complete lie (and I don't mean the ones I brushed off humorously either). Can you spot it?
Bestofme Symphony, 11th Edition
The 11th Bestofme Symphony is up at Jap Away Jay and ready to pleasure your Monday morning. Enjoy an ecclectic collection of the best in the blogosphere.
Hosting: Would you like to host the Symphony? Send me a note.
Submit to the Symphony: Want to be a part of next week's edition? Check out this post for submission help. Entries should always be sent to bestofme@jpeacock.net regardless of who the Symphony host is.
Spread the word: Webloggers, please give Dan a hand by spreading the word. The Symphony is a bit 'lean' this week so we could definitely use a bit of help here.
Email Reminders: If you'd like to be sent a reminder about the Symphony, drop me a line at this address. It's not a mailing list, just me sending out friendly little reminders. There'll be one on Thursday or Friday to remind you to submit for the next Symphony and one on Monday with the location of the newly posted Symphony.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Begging for submission makes me feel so French.
Submissions are needed for the Bestofme Symphony. It's crunch time, y'all. Jay has only received a short handful of entries for the Feb 16 performance. Is the Symphony failing? It's all up to you.
Send your submissions to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition.
Remember, the only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. Don't have your own blog? Who cares? Send in a favorite post from whatever author you'd like to.
I got nuthin'
Those of you who read yesterday's post on my hosting problems may have noted that we were taking the boys to the dentist. I took off a half day of work for it. I invested 4 hours of my precious time off to take my kids to the dentist. I figured that three kids, all at the same time, all of them dental virgins...there's going to be some seriously good material here! Who wouldn't take off from work to gather amazing writing fodder like what was guaranteed to be generated in a situation like that?
I was so freaking robbed. The kids behaved the entire time. The staff was great. The place was great. No screaming. No tantrums. No whining. No. Freaking. Anything. No material whatsoever.
Well, I could maybe bitch a bit about the mounds of paperwork but that'll just make me a whiner. I mean you've got two ways to go with paperwork bitching: tragic and humorous. Tragic doesn't work here because every one of you have done idiotic paperwork so you're not going to feel a bit of sympathy for me. Humorous doesn't work either - what's funny about a pile of tedious paperwork? That's like trying to make being smothered by a pillow into a funny anecdote. Just doesn't work.
So I've got nuthin' for you. I had planned on having some fantastic humorous or touching material for y'all to read today but we were stiffed. Despite sacrificing an entire half of a work day to the cause we've got a net zero. Why did my kids have to pick this of all days to behave? Why, God? Why?
I swear, next time I'll amp them up on coffee and candy bars before we take them in. I won't let you down again.
» Kin's Kouch links with: FLAME ON!!!
Stop eating that crazy beef!
PETA, through one of its sham front organizations, is getting the message out to just say NO to mad cow beef. PETA wants us to avoid eating beef, totally concerned over our health and the dangers of mad cow disease, right? But we really, really, really like to eat meat. Is this an impasse?
Heck no! I'm always trying to help folks out and I think I have the perfect solution here. Any time you were going to eat beef, substitute veal instead. See, it takes quite a few years for mad cow disease to manifest to a communicable state. If we kill the cows when they're babies we'll be safe, just like PETA wants!
Just say NO to those 100% USDA all beef burgers. Go for veal burgers instead! Meatloaf is a no-no. Cook up some wholesome and satisfying vealloaf! Beefsteak, no. Vealsteak, yeah!
There are some great side benefits to removing beef from our lives and going for veal instead. All those cows don't have to spend agonizing years in miserable captivity (PETA's very sad about this). They'll only spend a fraction of the time that they are now since they'll be slaughtered for veal while quite young. With the demand for beef going down and the demand for veal going up the price of beef will rise (this will make PETA happy) and the price for veal will decline (this will make us safety concious diners happy).
Everybody wins if we switch from beef to veal. We're safe from the dangers of mad cow disease and PETA doesn't have all of those grown cows to fret over! Support the cause, eat a vealburger today!
(Hat tip to Michele)
» PHILLIPCOONS.com links with: JIM PEACOCK
» Electric Venom links with: Hunting Of The Snark: Zodiac Heartbreaker Edition
» Cranial Cavity links with: Run For Your Lives, Armed Chickens!
Thursday, February 12, 2004
The Yeti Returns!
And he's rearing to bean some penguins. This target game is a bit more complicated than the distance swing one but just as enjoyable. Plus the penguin victims stick around wiggling their little feet as you continue playing. My first game was a best hit of 85.5 and total of 521.
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated
Okay, so if anybody emailed me anything this morning or tried to do a Symphony submission or tried to go to ZeroIntelligence.net they discovered that 1and1.com has locked down my email addresses and websites. Seems the fuckers can't figure out how to bill a credit card without also crediting the credit card so my account balance can't seem to go down to zero where it should be. Contacting them is very close to impossible but I'm trying my best. Of course today also happens to be the morning that we're taking the three monsters to the dentist so my efforts are more limited than I'd prefer.
In the meantime you can email me here with anything, including Symphony submissions, and I'll make sure it gets to where it should be going.
Remember that old axim "You get what you pay for"? Yeah, they weren't shittin' about that.
UPDATE: All is better now (for now?). Seems they had a glitch that has been fixed and they've unlocked my account. But according to the bank they've yet to administer a correct charge so I'm going to await further developments with baited breath.
UPDATE2: And they're gone again. Supposedly it'll all be fixed at 5:00pm. I think that coincides with their office closing time. Convenient, eh?
UPDATE3: And we're back up again. I feel like a yo-yo. I'll grudgingly give 1and1.com one prop here - it was fixed when they said it would be fixed.
Rolling Over the Odometer
I've passed my 100,000th site visit. 100,000 visits in a little over half a year. Wow.
The odometer was tripped on Feb 11 at a bit past 5:00pm (EST) which means the big winner of the .1 Million Invitational is Margi! Nobody nailed the date but her guess of Feb 10 (which was also her birthday) was the closest.
Due to a rogue nipple throwing off projections very few people guessed I would hit 100,000 this soon. That's what you get for not respecting chaos theory. A bit of double exponential smoothing would have taken care of that boobage with no problem. Margi didn't fall into that trap, though. She had faith that I was a hit machine and would get the tenth of a mil mark on the early side and she's walking away with 6 Snooze Points as a reward. Way to go Margi, you rock!
Joining Margi on the winner's podium are 2nd place contestants Pylorns and JimiLove who were the next closest guessers under and over Margi. They each win 3 points. 3rd place finishers AlGore and Pixy Misa receive 1 point each. Pixy's guess was the very latest date guessed and the earth is round so it sorta made him the very earliest guess too so I gave him the point as nobody guessed earlier than Pylorns.
Hey, Rob, oh great and terrible guru of skins and designs! Can I muss about in my template? I need to give out some points.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
So sorry I missed you.
My email address is out there in public and it's been taken and used by spambots like Ned Beatty was used in Deliverance. I get around seventy or eighty spam emails a day. Now this was something that I knew was going to happen so don't cry for me. It's actually not such a problem for me since I'm using a kick ass spam filter and I have it cranked up to eleven.
SpamBayes separates out all of the obvious crap into one folder and all of the questionable crap into another. I actually take the time to peruse the sender and subject of the items in the questionable category. Two reasons for that: first, they're questionable; second, that's how I train my vicious spam attack program. If I recognize the sender or the subject line appears suitably non-spammish I'll actually open the email and take a look. Of the 70 or 80 spam mails a day only a handful will be in the questionable folder. I'll take a cursory glance at the obvious crap too, but it's really not with any intent to rescue emails. I'm just scanning for unusually humorous subject lines at that point.
The Rules of Blogging
Lots of veteran bloggers have posted their advice to new bloggers (and other vets) on how to blog. These are generally disected and picked apart by other veteran bloggers or simply ignored. Well I can't pass up on a challenge like that so here are my rules of blogging:What's the difference between art and porn?
The other night things got a bit frisky at home and Lovely Wife and I got a bit happy with the old digital camera. Hey, it's a free country, it was the privacy of our own home and the kids were all asleep. While reviewing the resulting incriminating evidence it became apparent that we had a difference of opinion. I thought that they were very beautiful and considered them artistic photos. Lovely Wife thought they were basically porn and that I better not even think of posting them.
Since I'm naturally contrary and I've got a good 8 hours or so before she can physically harm me I've decided to post a select couple of pics. I'm not trying to showcase the Peacock Family nudity here, I'm genuinely interested in whether you think these are artistic or pornographic.
If a female spreads her legs is it automatically porn? View image
If it's tastefully done can a penis be artistic? View image
Let me know what you think.
