Or, my sheepish re-entry into the world of blogging

Zero credit for paying attention in science, 100 credit for giving it a go anyway.

I guess we should have enrolled him in that summer art program…

Or, you are going to have to go elsewhere if you want to read about my journey towards abundant awesomeness

My friend Tara of Two Hands and a Road Map was kind enough to allow me to guest post on her blog today. Go on and check it out and don’t forget the comments, unless you’ve had quite enough of the foul mouthed duo of Sean Platt and David Wright, in which case I understand you giving it a miss.

I know I said I wasn’t going to write a real post, but I can’t help but feel it’s my duty to give you this nugget of wisdom I learned today:

If your colleagues are a bunch of male humor writers and/or geeky and/or obsessed with Eminem do not, under any circumstances send them a link to anything you have written that contains the word penis, particularly if you have dabbled with experimenting with canned meat in the past.

 

Or still sick so I’ll let my search traffic write my post for me

Two Things:

• I think I stole this idea from J.D. of I Do Things so don’t even try to act like I don’t give credit, because I do because that’s just the kind of blogger I am.
• I am not responsible for any stories you might make up about the people behind these searches a la the video displayed above. I only put it there because it makes me cry and crying helps my sinuses drain and not to encourage your imaginations to construct a narrative using these search terms.

can cats locate an escaped hamster?

Well yeah, they are cats and are very good at stalking and hamsters are pretty much the definition of prey. The question you should be asking is “Will they eat all of it or leave the mangled body at the foot of my bed?”

bad habits of black gum trees

They just stand around and let their leaves fall EVERYWHERE and then expect you to pick up after them like some kind of punk!

black stuff coming out of ear and itching

I’m going to need more details about the nature of the black stuff, e.g. texture, viscosity, odor before deciding how loudly to shout “Go to the doctor you nasty fool!”

can i right off my chickens

Do you mean “right off” as in cockney killing (I’m gunna right off those chickens guvner!) or “write off” as in tax avoidance? In either case the answer depends on the regulations in your own particular local, but looking those up I’d first suggest you take a close look at your conscience and see what it tells you.

get her ass message by his cook

What baffles and frightens me is that somebody would have gone well past the 5th page of Google search results, many of them frankly pornographic, to wind up on one of these posts on my blog. I can only hope I met their needs, whatever they might have been.

What have been some of your favorite or mind boggling search terms lately?

Or, it’s Haiku Day at the Blogathon

Click for larger size & details!

Sell Man’s Magnetic

Therapy Healthy Panties

Awesome Unit Price!

Or, I have the Blogging in 15 Minutes Method DOWN

Still sick but that doesn’t let me off the hook for my Blogathon duties! Luckily a friend posted this rather nifty cover of “Walk Like an Egyptian” on Facebook and it reminded me that I never shared my collection of weird cover versions on this blog.

You know, this isn’t really fair at all to Paul Young but if I wanted Joy Division I’d listen to Joy Division and I’d really prefer if he continue to live in the mid-1980s and sing Every Time You Go Away over and over and over again. Swoooon.

BTW bonus WTF I just learned Every Time You Go Away was originally by the only musicians I dislike almost as much as Kenny Loggins, Hall and Oates. I don’t know how to process this information.

Finnish heavy metal version of Britney Spear’s Oops I did it Again. Why the heck not?

I make no apologies for loving everything Hermes House Band does but this cover of the Boxer is simply unforgivable.

Oh Scandinavians, why you so wacky? I will say it’s a lot better than Tori Amos’s cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

It’s hard to choose just one bizarre Paul Anka cover but I picked this one because it makes you believe that Billy Idol really was meant to make elevator music.

Astrazz – Lose Yourself (Eminem cover) by Jeveuxsignerchezaz

I dunno, it just seems like it’s become my habit to throw an Eminem song into all my posts lately. I don’t even remember if I like him or loathe him anymore.

You know what, Ice Cube freaking deserves this for Are We There Yet? Somebody did not check himself before he wrecked himself.

What cover versions make you stop and go what the hey?

Or, maybe they already are. Quick, somebody find me a German to ask.

BTW, that's not me as I always have a very sunny countenance. Also, I am Asian-ish.

While I was putting together my roundup post yesterday, I was reminded of my Awesome German Words post. The thing is, while those are some pretty awesome words, they by no means cover every single emotion.

Now, I stink at German but I’m awesome at emotions so I figured I could just describe the feelings and we’d just wait until a German came around to smush up the words to make one, enormously awesome word that perfectly describes how we feel.

Sound good? Great, then I’ll start:

A word for the feeling of annoyance that accompanies the realization that that totally smarmy person, who really isn’t nearly as smart as they think they are, thinks that they are smarter than you. Seriously, get real!

The feeling of impatience and nervousness during the game of chicken one plays when one really wants to cancel a meeting but is hoping that the other party will cancel first, thus not wasting your allotment of totally bs reasons to beg off a meeting.

The feeling of incredulity one feels when an acquaintance writes off criticism as jealousy when it seems rather an implausible reason considering how valid said criticism seems to be.

The pain that comes from squelching the inordinate anger one feels at those who are just not very good at being funny.

The mix of horror and guilt that comes from reading the comments on the local paper’s website and your subsequent feeling of being clearly superior to 99% of your neighbors based only on the comments from a handful of lunatics.

The rage and seething frustration directed at those who do not honor the zipper merge.

That feeling of punchy irritation when a commenter gleefully points out that you missed something even though you very clearly did not and their complete lack of soul-destroying shame when their mistake is pointed out to them.

That illogically hopeful feeling one feels when they announce prize winners and honorees and the fleeting belief against all reason that one has somehow triumph even though one is unpopular, unlucky and not very good at anything at all.

What emotions do you think require an awesome German word? Do you know a German who can make them for us?

Click to see the full sized version

I went to the laundromat near my house to wash our comforters and found this sign in the lady’s room.

So many questions but my preferred answer is that we have a John Water’s style neighborhood laundromat and I just hit it on a quiet day. I should go hang out there more often.

Or, who says nature is perfect?

Deformed corn - is this how baby corn is made?

IMPORTANT! If you are here from Google having searched for information about your toe corns I am afraid I can’t help you but I do wish you a safe and speedy recovery! You too bunion and hammertoe sufferers! One day Google will figure out that I can’t help anyone, much less those suffering from valid afflictions and will remove me from their search results. Until then, it’s hardly my fault that deformed corns are a vegetable and a foot problem.

Anyway, this deformed corn kind of freaked me out. You know those shows on cable tv where people go around their entire life and one day find out totally by accident that they used to be twins but they ate their twin and now they have headaches because they’ve got their twin’s eyeball and toenails growing in their brain? This corn reminds me of that.

What will happen if corn evolves working arms?

Really, though, I’m a huge believer in Evolution. Huge fan. I think it’s just about the neatest thing ever. Just think, billions of years ago we just had some  primordial ooze and now look at us with our iPads and Tivos and ability to put anything in a can. It’s nothing short of breath-taking.

Until I really think about it and then I get a bit woozy. I’m just going to say it, anything to do with reproduction, sexual or otherwise, freaks me the heck out. Ever seen how slime mold grows?

I mean it’s pulsating. Pulsating!

I do have to admit that the mushrooms are kind of trippy though.

Now look at this.

THIS is happening in your body every day. Every single day. In your body. Whether you want it to or not. No wonder we feel so frazzled all the time!

And sometimes things mutate. Instructions go haywire. You accidentally absorb your own twin. And there isn’t much you can do about it except for eat a lot of antioxidants and pray.

Forget about trying to control your kids or your coworkers or the traffic, you can’t even control your cells!

So yeah, when I find some corn like this I have to wonder, what’s really going on here? Is this some tragic freak accident where we could have had three tasty ears of corn but instead just have one and two sad floppy ones that nobody wants to eat? Or are we watching evolution in action and this is the first step towards corn developing appendages and sentience and standing up and refusing to be the bad guys that everybody hates in our war against obesity?

I don’t know the answers. I don’t expect you to know the answers. I just think that maybe it’s time we started a dialogue about what’s going on with our vegetables. I for one would be happy if they took over and we could all become robots and I’d never have to sit alone in the dark thinking about my cells dividing again.

PS have noticed that the slime mold video has an ad for indoor hydroponic growing kits on it. What kind of sick freak would want to grow slime mold indoors?!?!

Or, I always find the best way is to just make things up. Luckily, my job allows for that.

Behold! The S'muffin/S'morffin! (It's relevant, I swear)

You might think that just because you haven’t seen much of me on this blog or Facebook or Twitter that I haven’t been writing, but I have. Oh boy, have I been writing. Just not for you guys, because – and this is awkward to bring up – I’ve yet to receive any cold hard currency from any of you. It’s not really a problem but you’ve no one to blame but yourselves for your position on my list of priorities.

So it’s been a week or something and I had big plans to write a right corker of a post tonight but then I totally forgot what that hilarious idea that I had in the store today was and all of a sudden it’s 10 pm and I’m panicking but then I thought to myself, you know what? You’re a pro. You sometimes write well in excess of 10,000 words in a day about all manner of subjects. If anyone can show other people how to beat writer’s block, it’s you.

The thing is, it’s a method, not a procedure. I can show you what I do, but you’re going to have to extrapolate from that what you should do. If you can’t extrapolate, well, I don’t like to discourage people but you probably need discouraging, as all great writers are excellent at extrapolating.

I really hope extrapolating means what I think it does.

But that’s not important, if you were really good, you’d know what I meant without us having to go by “standard definitions”.

That’s not really the point of this post, so we’ll save my beef with the dictionary for later and just dive right on to my method:

1. Wonder if you can get away with a link up post, decide that it’s against your blogger ethics to come back from a week’s absence with a link up post, save for tomorrow.
2. Read email, go on an emotional rollercoaster of gossip, intrigue and pictures of spider bites. Wonder why you can’t just email all of your readers instead of writing posts for them.
3. Walk around house aimlessly, stand in front of husband and stretch until he notices you, when he asks what’s up tell him “oh nothing” because he really just doesn’t understand how much this blogging business takes from you and if he did, he’d make you stop. It’s like you bleed for it, man until you’re totally dry and still they take, take, take.
4. Wonder if you have the right ingredients to finally perfect the S’muffin/S’morffin recipe. Hope like hell Smitten Kitchen doesn’t steal your idea although really, she probably deserves it more. Hope that when the time is right, you can finally decide on one name.
5. Realize you can’t possibly come up with something until everyone leaves and you can crank up some jamming tunes like Skid Row or something really inspirational like that. It’s like you need to get pumped up and all they want to do is tone you down.
6. Read some more email but by now it’s well past 10 and everybody is asleep. Wonder if it would be somewhat manipulative to write about your abandonment issues for tonight’s post but realize you couldn’t stand the pain if nobody asked you if you were okay tomorrow.
7. Feel like you’re really tapping into some real emotion here. This is raw. This is powerful.
8. Feel slightest bit depressed when you remember nobody reads you for your raw emotions, only your overcooked chickens.
9. Exult in being a SEO rebel by not linking chickens to your chickens post. Fight the power!
10. Wonder if you could start a movement to get everyone to pronounce it “Say-oh”  so that your SEO song makes sense “Keywords make great anchor text, SEO helps you be number one! All that backlinkings never done! SEO helps you be number one” That so does not work with EssEeeOh, does it?
11. Remember list posts are good for SEO or Scan-o, something like that, and you can’t think of something to write so Bam! List post about Writer’s Block!

Bonus point: Feel just a bit like you’re cheating, like you did back in high school with your “modern free form” poetry. Decide to take the tack that if people don’t understand what you’re trying to do here, they just aren’t ready for you, the miserable sods. Wish somebody would make you a s’muffin/s’morffin.

Or, on beyond Schadenfreude und Angst!

photo credit: only point five

I’ve always been an admirer of the German language if not exactly a proficient speaker/understander of same. The problem, as I see it, is that way back in junior high school when we began to take our foreign language studies seriously, my German teacher was a rather gravely voiced Romanian gentleman named Mr. P. Now you’d think, as my jr high school was actually in Germany we could have had a German teach us the language, but it was what it was.

Now although Mr. P was a very nice man with a good heart, he had two major strikes against him when it came to teaching me. One, he insisted on using terms like “dative” and “transitive” and “noun” as if I were supposed to know what those meant and secondly, for some reason he had a cassette tape recording of him telling the story of Vlad the Impaler that he’d play for his classes around Halloween, which scared me so badly that I never did get up the courage to ask what a nominative case was lest I find my head up on a fence pole somewhere.

Oh yes, and I forgot, he recorded video of me being completely chicken shit and refusing to cross this bridge with my classmates during a class trip to Garmisch and I will never forgive him if it shows up on YouTube.

Marienbrucke in the Bavarian Alps

So, while I did learn some of the essential German phrases like “Scheisse” and “noch ein bier, bitte” my German skills are shaky and it takes me forever to say anything because I’m scared to death I’ll nominate the dative and somehow wind up insulting somebody’s mother. Even still, I have a deep love for the German language because of artists like Falco and because of words like these:

Weltschmerz

Weltschmerz translated into English means world-pain or world-weariness.

As I contemplated the existence of Nickleback, Weltschmerz washed over me like so many cliches over the lead singer’s lips.

Sehnsucht

Sehnsucht is a kind of longing or yearning , or as C.S. Lewis put it an “incurable longing”

Every week I wander the grocery store aisles, heart heavy with Sehnsucht, knowing that I will never find anything that tastes as good as the anticipation of Twinkies did in my youth.

Gemütlichkeit

Gemütlichkeit is a feeling of sort of cozy happiness such as one finds when surrounded by friends in a familiar environment.

My life could be summed up as a fruitless search for Gemütlichkeit; when then would I find my Carla? My Norm? My Woody?

Futterneid

Futterneid is a feeling of jealousy about food, particularly that feeling one gets when one feels the food of another is superior.

I’d grown used to the Futterneid of my coworkers and learned to ignore the greedy looks that passed from their ham and cheese on wheat to my homemade spam musubi.

Groll

Groll a resentment or grudge.

I guess you could say I have a Groll against Ice Cube for “Are We There Yet?”

Konkurrenzeid

Konkurrenzeid -  professional jealousy, as in you are jealous of/begrudge another’s career achievements, not that you are so good at jealousy that people pay you to do it.

My suspicion is that a lot of rappers had Konkurrenzeid against Biggie Smalls, being as how they were broke and he so paid, and that is one of the reasons he was shot.

I hope these examples help you to add more sparkle and flair to your writing by throwing in a bit of the Deutche Wortzschatz into your writing and speech. Do you think we would have considered Tim Gunn so darling had he not thrown Sturm und Drang into every other episode of Project Runway? Probably not, meine lieblings, nicht nein Frankenstein.