All hail Hypno-blog.

So my stats have been pretty good on this blog lately, and I made the mistake of trying to figure out why – apparenty I’ve gotten over 500 hits on my post about F*turama where I posted a picture I found of all the characters drawn a la anime. And since my blog has been updated more recently than the site I got the picture from, it’s now the first site displaying that picture on google image search for “F*turama.”

So people looking for fan art are going straight to that post, and of course, not reading anything else. It’s pretty sad – 500 views isn’t that much, but it accounts for like 99% of my traffic.

I’m depressed.

(By the way, the eyesore graphic above I created myself so it wouldn’t draw any more traffic, and named it “bendy.jpg” just in case. Where’s his other arm? Who knows?

I tried to look for a really bad piece of fan art to put up there instead, but couldn’t find anything stupid enough. But boy did I find a lot of F*turama porn. Why and for whom does that even exist? It boggles my mind.)

Grandmothers

I saw this in the window of the Salvation Army today and it really puzzled me:

Forgive me if I’m in early-morning-crappy-observational-comedy mode, but since when do hearts bloom? I’ve never heard that before. And are roses known for either caring or sharing? If anything, roses bloom, grandmothers care and share, and grandmothers like roses, but that’s about as far as the parallel goes.

I’ve come up with a short list of things that grandmothers and roses do have in common, and if I knew to whom I should send this list to see this poster updated, I would strongly suggest a redesign. But as I don’t, I’ll put my suggestions here (apologies to my own grandmothers, who are amazing, wonderful ladies).

Grandmother

A Grandmother

is like a rose . . .

Always pretty

Always delicate

Always sensitive to abrupt changes in temperature

Always around on Mother’s day

Always photographed in soft focus

Always in a grandmother’s house

Always loving to be involved in the creation of a centerpiece

Always needing water

Always being disrespected by young people

Always with the hidden thorns

Always wild at the park

Always being sent to retirement homes, hospitals and funerals

Always the subject of hushed and guilty conversation regarding when to get rid of them in spite of the obligation to keep them around

I am so, so sorry.

I haven’t posted in a really long time. I know that to my huge readership (Ricky) this is a problem that must be corrected. I’ll try to do better in the future.

I think I put too much pressure on myself to put interesting or thoughtful stuff in this blog. What a fool I’ve been! This blog isn’t about thoughtful. This blog is about stupid things I find on the internet.

So until my next attack of conscience, here’s something incredibly isipid: An Apple commercial with Jeff Goldblum, slowed down to 50% its original speed. The result: Drunk Jeff Goldblum!

Thass nuts! Thassss…. Nnuttsz!”

The Rift.

Apologies in advance for a super-serious post.

There’s been a lot of talk this year about the rift in the Democratic party and its implications in the fall. Until now I’ve been trying to dismiss it, saying that people from the losing side will come around, rally behind the nominee to make sure there’s a Dem in the White House, and that, from a policy standpoint, we’re in good shape either way.

I was really hoping that this weekend we’d get some sort of closure on this whole ordeal, but I should have known that was wishful thinking. After reading stuff like this (Larry Sinclair? Really?), I’m really starting to worry that there’s some seriously irreparable damage happening. Granted, I assume that the people who showed up to protest at the DNC hearing are more nutty than your average Hillary supporter anyway, but with this much at stake, who knows what size a group needs to be to make a big dent in the voting bloc?

Until the last few days I’ve brushed off the idea of this being a serious issue. But after all I’ve been hearing and reading, I have to admit I’m terrified.

The Dems have gotten so wrapped up in this primary that it’s become intensely personal for them. The Clinton campaign, in part, has been running on the message of revenge, of sorts – getting the power out of the hands of the GOP and back to the Dems where it belongs. Screw GWB for messing up what Bill spent 8 years making good. And I think there are so many Dems to whom that message really appeals. It appeals to me, too, I guess. But the Clinton supporters, like the Obama supporters, want so badly to have a country they feel good about, at least one that’s led from their corner, that the desire for revenge becomes this horrific desperation. And for the Hillary camp, many of whom see Barack’s campaign and his success as maybe political misogyny/a mistake in terms of electability/electoral loophole/any number of other things, it’s torture. Why can’t they just accept it and move on? Because it’s become so personal, the fight has become so heated, that people would rather hate the other candidate in their own party – to the point of voting against him – than take a step back and think about what’s really important here.

The sad irony of this is that if Obama loses in the fall, it won’t be because he’s not electable (a word that’s never really made sense to me). It will be because people refused to vote for him. The very people who claim that he’s not electable. Many of them simply because he’s not Hillary. Sure, there are differences between the two, cited all the time. But to vote for McCain instead? It boggles my mind.

And of course, Hillary’s standing by this whole time, stoking the fire with red-hot pokers like Ickes and Wolfson. All weekend, she’s (suddenly) had the attitude of, “You know, whatever happens happens,” while her supporters and campaign people are giving hateful, ridiculous interviews and looking for someone to punch in the face.

Hillary’s letting it happen because she’s not concerned about the Democratic party anymore. If this election gets turned on its ear or goes to hell it will be the best thing that ever happened to her. If she gets the nomination, great. If she makes a scene at the convention and Obama loses because the Hillary bloc went McCain, even better. She told us so. She’s got plenty of ammunition for the next four years, and nobody will make the mistake of not nominating her again. It makes me sick.

It’s not worth it. No outcome is worth this bitter self-destruction we’re inflicting on ourselves. With a black man and a woman running in a country infamous for denying each of them myriad opportunities, there will be hurt feelings and conspiracy theories and angry mobs no matter what happens.

We can’t let it get this personal. Save the pitchforks and torches for John McCain and the war and torture and gay marriage bans and the national debt and crumbling social security and unconstitutional presidential power and all the tactics the GOP will no doubt use on whichever candidate we nominate.

We cannot afford to lose this one. Don’t throw it all away now.

MySpace: not worth it.

[I should preface this by saying that this "not worth it thing" won't be a regular feature. Don't worry.]

So I finally decided to close my MySpace account, because, well, MySpace is the worst website in internet history. The design is horrible, thoughtless, and riddled with bugs, spam runs rampant, and the ad banners – oh, the ad banners! – offensive, caustic, grotesque, horrible. Not to mention that only a couple people I know still use it to communicate with me. Why Tom, that fratty jerk, hasn’t used a cent of his billions of dollars to make the site more reliable, less spammy, or less utterly trashy, is beyond me. Well, I guess it’s not. It is (was) popular whether it was good or not, so why spend money making it better?

I don’t need to tell any of you, of course, how abhorrent MySpace is. Sorry.

So anyway, I decided to close my account. So I navigate through a handful of screens until, after confirming like nine times that I want to close the thing (and asking me why, as if they can even distantly approximate caring what I think), it tells me, okay, your account is closed. Or will be, as soon as you follow the confirmation link that we sent to your account email address.

Now, I have not used the whitman.edu email address associated with my MySpace account, nor has it been active, for over 3 years. But every time I have tried to update my email address, it tells me, “Sure thing! In order to update your account email address, just follow the link that we’ve sent to your old email address!”

So I go through a number of questions on the FAQ about how to change my email address, and finally come across a link for people who can’t access their original email account. Perfect! It tells me to send MySpace customer service an email with all my information and tell them what I want, etc. It gives me a text box to put in my old email and password, to confirm that it’s me, a text box for my new email address, and a little text field to tell them what I want. Great. I fill it out, hit send -

And this is the next screen:

Cool.

Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. Whether or not it lets me close my account, I’m never using it again.

You’re dead to me, MySpace. Dead.

So long, Tom.

You horrible son of a bitch.

Postcards From Yo Momma

Postcards From Yo Momma is a website full of IMs and emails from people’s moms. Behold:

Me: Do you read my blog? I can track who is reading it and I think you may be. Me no likey mother.
Mom: What’s a blag?
Me: It is a sin to lie. Don’t play coy with me!! Are you reading my “online journal”?
Mom: I barely have time to call you! I don’t know how to do my space or whatever it is. You may recall that when I asked you about how it worked, you never showed me.

What?

So the number of people to tell me I needed to start watching Lost finally reached critical mass and I broke down. Fortunately (for Hurley and friends, not for the pocketbook), headshots have been few and far between, so I think we’ve watched two and a half seasons in about three weeks.

And to all of you who commanded me to watch it: yes, you’re right, it’s good. But much more importantly (and possibly unrelated-ly), it’s incredibly addictive. And terribly confusing.

But watching 3 seasons in a row without weeks and months of speculation (and doing other stuff) in between really puts into perspective how much stuff they mention and then never mention again (or at least not yet). When you wait a week, it’s okay that Jack goes from freaking out and crying to totally fine in the span of what translates to 5 minutes on the island. I keep wanting to say, “Uh, hey Jack – remember when you saw YOUR FREAKING FATHER IN THE JUNGLE in the first episode? Yeah, that wasn’t that long ago. I’m still worried about it, and it’s not even my dad. Maybe you should stop playing ping-pong with Sawyer for a minute and remember that YOUR DAD IS ALIVE somewhere on the island.”

But man, it’s a great show.

My Unbelievable Self-Obsession

So I had a Tumblr account for a few days. It was nice, you know – easy to post videos and stuff effortlessly. It’s got a little widget where you can post stuff to it from any webpage, you can text in your posts, etc. Simple, simple, simple. I thought, hey, this isn’t too bad. It’s easy enough that when nobody reads it, it won’t be a big deal.

Then I realized that Tumblr doesn’t do comments. So I moved here, to WordPress.

Is that really how low I’ve sunk, how desperate I have become? That no comment feature is a deal-breaker? Apparently so. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I want to know if and when people are actually reading this blasted thing. Not that they’ll comment. But I want them to be able to. You know, as a yardstick for my loneliness.

Blogsplosion.

What sort of man goes until April 2008 with nary a blog to his name, then starts two in as many days? Me, that’s who. Why? Maybe it’s because there’s a loneliness inside me, a yearning to communicate with others, that, with the passage of time, has gone from a melancholy, bittersweet weight upon my shoulders to an unbearable burden.

Also, it’s because I started my sketch group’s blog yesterday, and decided I should find my own place to put stuff that has nothing to do with Sidecar.

Sadly, I spend more time on the internet than a lot people I know, so I figured I might as well put it to good use – that is to say, I figured I should find a way to justify it so that I can continue.

Anyway, enjoy!