Total Dismay

Before the Web 2.0 revolution the Internet was quite a bit different. Yes, it was mostly pornography and pictures of cats before 2003 and it is mostly pornography and pictures of cats now, but it was different.

I am going to mention a few things that entertained me way back when my only use for the Internet was entertainment.

The Shower Project is still online and it has a PR of 5. This website is from a gay man who decided to attempt to publish pictures of himself showering with 100 different women during 1999. The idea was inspired by his heterosexual male coworkers complaining about how friendly he was able to get with the ladies on account of his non-threatening nature. He includes a quote from each woman. Some are witty, many are not. He did manage to get 100 women to shower with him in the space of one year. He is about 50,000% better at getting women to shower with him than I am (I managed to get one woman to help me with the math).

SeanBaby was pushing envelopes years ago. His site is still up with all its irreverent humor. Turn your speakers down before you go to his evil website. He makes fun of things like the Gay Special Olympics. His critique is about twice as funny as the mere fact that the event exists.

I used to like to play PacMan quite a bit back before I became a serious blogger.

This is a random list of things that I can remember as being entertaining.

I am a North American living in Europe. It’s not very often that I find myself browsing through the Magazines at the local bookseller, but today I did just that. I find myself getting slightly embarrassed by the naked breasts on the covers of the glossy tabloids.

CompareMagazines.co.uk is a site that helps you with comparison shopping for magazine subscriptions. Whether it’s Fashion magazines or Women magazines that interest you, you can look for deals on this site.

The Men magazines cover topics like um, cars and stuff. You might want to consider a Time magazine subscription so you have something businesslike to put your car magazine inside while you are reading it.

And if you have never been able to decide between a Vogue magazine subscription and a Cosmopolitan magazine subscription you might find the savings online allow you to afford both.

Hilary Duff has a new album, it is called Dignity. I am not going to tell you what I think of the music, I haven’t heard a note of it.

The reason I am blogging about it is because she had no right to use that word as an album title. Britney Spears had that word on her list of potential album titles. That is essentially the same as calling dibs isn’t it?
Here is the list that Britney compiled. At this point, I am not 100% sure she was being serious about the whole fan voting thing…

1. Omg is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like
2. What if the Joke is on You
3. Down boy
4. Integrity
5. Dignity

I can see a two potential problems with the first choice. First off, it is a question that lacks a question mark. This punctuation is required even if a question is rhetorical. The second problem is that the question has been definitively answered at this point.

The second choice has the same grammatical error and it makes Britney seem crazy.

The other three choices are reasonable titles for pop albums.

I am going to let my readers decide on a tagline for my blog. Today is the last day to offer a suggestion and possibly win ten bucks.

The movie series about the Pirates of the Caribbean made pirates cool again. They seem too have a even longer cycle than cowboys. I might not be alive the next time pirates are cool.

The Caribbean itself is not as prone to fads. It has an unchanging allure that can be attributed to its beautiful climate, it’s warm people and the natural beauty of its numerous islands.

The Bahamas have great weather. In the winter, the coolest night is at around room temperature. The warm year round temperatures are quite comfortable because of the nearly constant presence of gentle wind.

The history of the Bahamas does have pirates. I have to confess that I don’t buy into the romanticizing of pirates. They were/are dirty, violent, unlawful people.

I like to snorkel. I would be under the water within hours of arriving in the Bahamas if I were to vacation there. Diving in the Bahamas is magnificent. You can find a lot of cool under water video on YouTube these days. Supposedly Bimini is spectacular, try a search for videos using Bimini as a search term.

When my wife and I were planning out our great experiment of living and working from a remote part of the World, the Bahamas was quite high on the list. We weren’t sure if telecommuting was feasible from the Caribbean. I would still love to visit someday.

I hardly ever pay any attention to the bulletins that are on the WP dashboard. For some reason, the news that I could now get a shirt with a WordPress logo printed on it caught my eye.

Before leaving North America, my main source of shirts with stuff written on them was the second hand shop. In Eastern Canada, the big chain of second hand clothing stores is known as Frenchy’s. Go here if you want to see what a 1000lb bale of used clothing looks like. Since finding any really cool shirts was unlikely, I used to rummage for irony instead.

I don’t think paying ten pounds sterling for a shirt with the WordPress logo would qualify as cool or ironic. Maybe if I accessorized a bit with a big yellow Ask Me About My Blog button, I could at least achieve a certain level of sarcasm. Heck, somebody might even ask me about my blog.

I have a few vivid memories that involve pool tables. The one that I am going to relay to you now is kind of bitter sweet. When I was in college, I got up the nerve to go on stage during a brewery sponsored stand up comedy contest. This first part has very little to do with pool tables, so bear with me. Anyway, I used my guitar as a bit of a crutch, and I managed to pull of a pretty good performance. I played a sweet sounding song about Montezuma’s revenge. Actually, the song was typical of the late eighties, with soft verses and a jarringly hard chorus.

But I digress…Anyway, I one second place. The top act was two guys with guitars.

One of these guys asked me to team up with him for a serious musical performance later that year. There were technical difficulties at this second performance and we choked and left the stage. I was fairly stoic about the episode, but my partner was in a state. I played pool with him as a form of therapy. It was like the cue ball was our failed gig. I have never seen anyone turn anger into bank shots so effectively. When he was fully recovered he was very grateful to me for helping him calm down. I was a little bit bummed that he beat me so badly so many times, but hey, I may have saved a life.

Pool tables are very useful for office perks in 2.0 businesses. I have met at least one programmer who mentioned a beer fridge and a pool table as institutions in his place of work.

If you get a table for your home or office, be sure to get a good looking pool table lamp to hang above it.

This 1984 video is embarrassingly bad. I have to post it because it features J. D. Roberts, a hip personality on Canadian television, interviewing Nash the Slash, a flash in the pan oddity who was, at the time, pretending to be American. Actually he was pretending to be running for President or something. Save yourself some agony and start watching at the halfway mark.

Nash the Slash is content to be a local artsy weirdo in Ontario. He makes an appearance in a movie I would highly recommend. It is called Roadkill.

J. D. Roberts eventually lands a sweet job in the promised land of America. Somewhere along the way, he decides to go by John Roberts.

There are rumors swirling around the Internet that Jamie Lynn Spears might be pregnant. She is the teenage sister of Britney Spears, the oldest troubled teen in the World.

Given the fact that the keywords in this post will draw some views from younger people, I want to take the opportunity to talk about one of my big concerns. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the leading cause of mental retardation in the Western World. Teens tend to be a bit self absorbed at times. I want to take every opportunity to make the point that using alcohol or other drugs when you are engaged in activities that might result in pregnancy is potentially causing irreparable harm to someone that you have not met, who has not hurt anyone. In case you don’t know this, having sex results in pregnancy. Pregnancy is actually the evolutionary purpose of sex. Sex actually pre-dates Britney Spears Music Videos by many years.

If you are reading this post and you are a parent who is looking for Help For Troubled Teens, my advice is to do whatever is necessary to insure that the actions of your teens do not harm themselves or others. Just so you know, you are only responsible for providing a minor in you care with the necessities. Drives to the mall and cash are not considered necessities. Neither are internet access, cable TV, gaming consoles etc.

This is my get well card to a country. I think that the American people and the country that they built are on the verge of having their political fever break. It’s about time some of them got out of bed.

My opinion on which YouTube video is the best is subject to change, but today it is this one. Here is a blog maintained by the band that features these guys.

A Dr. Hook compilation was one of a half dozen cassettes that I bought at a car boot sale this spring. I have discovered that cassette players and tapes do not stand up well in hot climates. Or maybe the stock deck in my 1990 Skoda just isn’t very good. The brand name is Space Man. Do they make good audio components?

So I had a craving for some Doctor Hook today and there is lots of it on YouTube.