I’ve always thought that you could tell a lot about someone by what they read. Well, if you want to know exactly how strange I really am all you need to do is look at my wish list for books this holiday season (in no particular order):
Last week Celeste and I were in San Francisco. I was there to run an event for my client (Competitive Financial Intelligence, if you’re curious) and Celeste flew out later in the week. We stayed through Saturday, flying home on the Saturday night redeye, and in general we had a great time. Unfortunately one event has me seriously questioning my decision making skills and my ability to survive outside my safe bubble of suburban tranquility.
On Saturday afternoon we were at Ghirardelli Square trying to decide what we would do before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags and head to the airport. Celeste wanted to see the Victorian homes and we decided it might be a nice walk there and then we could catch a bus, trolley or cab from there to our hotel. We’d gone a few blocks when it started raining pretty hard with a nice strong wind (gale) thrown into the mix. So we turned around and headed towards the trolley stop which we figured we could ride back to Union Square and do some store browsing before we went to the airport. When we got to the trolley stop we saw an amazingly long line so I figured we could walk a ways and try to catch a cab…in the rain. Brilliant!
So we started walking and were continuously passed by overflowing trolley’s and unavailable cabs. I had the forethought to spend $5 on a cheap umbrella before we left the waterfront, but it promptly succumbed to the wind and rendered itself useless. So we walked, and we walked. Alot of it uphill. All of it in clothes that weren’t exactly weatherproof. Eventually we decided we were far enough into the walk that we might as well go all the way, which means we arrived at our hotel in the early evening looking like a couple of wet rats.
Obviously I made a strategic error in deciding to walk. We would have been much better served by going back to Fisherman’s Wharf and standing in line for the trolley or walking down to the Embarcadero where there was a taxi line. But no, I had us walk uphill for a couple of miles through a driving rain, knowing that we had nowhere to change clothes before heading to the airport. Decision making at its finest, and one more reason I’ll never even consider trying out for Survivor.
I’ve been called on by Fec to list six weird things about myself. (He was called out by Billy). Of course there are far more than six things that are weird about me, but here’s what come’s immediately to mind:
As I‘ve written before my most important familial role is not being "dad" or "husband", but being the expunger, er plunger, of the household floaters. For those of you who don’t know what a floater is, just think of that stuff that you find in the toilet bowl when the previous user has left a deposit, followed it with about 1/2 roll of toilet paper, pulled the flush handle and then dropped the lid before witnessing that the deposit has not been processed properly. Or in the real world think of it as the stuff you find in the toilet bowl after the previous user has left a deposit plus 1/2 roll of toilet paper and dropped the lid despite seeing that the deposit has not been processed properly.
I dubbed myself "The Turd Man of Alcatraz" because I thought it accurately conveyed my feeling of being imprisoned with a bunch of toilet defilers, but when you get right down to it that’s not really a good nickname. I mean it’s just too long. I suppose you could shorten it to "Turd Man" but that makes me sound like some sort of demented super hero. So I was elated when I found this Wikipedia entry listing the nicknames used by President Bush. It ends up he calls Karl Rove "Turd Blossom".
My friends, "Turd Blossom" is the perfect nickname for me. I think it conveys a bit of the Zen-like feeling I get when I’ve held my breath for 90 seconds as I vigorously plunge the offending turd bowl. Some might argue that I’m close to passing out, but I think I’ve entered an altered state of consciousness peculiar to we chronic turd plungers. Kind of like the mad hatters of the 19th century.
Yesterday I continued my role as "Turd Blossom" by having to plunge two bowls before 8 a.m. I’d have hit the trifecta if I’d gotten up before Celeste, because she found a pile of dog poop in front of our back door. Apparently the dog hadn’t done all his business when we let him out before going to bed the night before. The result is this weekend I’m going to hold the first monthly Turd Blossom Academy class on proper butt wiping technique. The class title is, "Save a Tree: Why You Don’t Need 3 Feet of Toilet Paper for Each Pass of Your Pooter". Next month it will be, "Why We Use Soap: The Joys of Dysentery". Class fees start at $50 per person, but we offer sibling discounts.
So I was reading something about Iraq and WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and I thought to myself "WMD might as well mean ‘words of mass deception’." Suddenly I found myself to be clever and witty, but knowing that I had rarely been clever or witty in the past I decided I better check to see if anyone else had used that little turn of phrase. Turning to Google I typed in "words of mass deception" and was rewarded with many references including the website wordsofmassdeception.com. Just as I suspected I was not witty or clever, probably just regurgitating something I’d heard or read and long ago forgotten.
Once again I have to thank Google for its utility in CYA (covering your ass) and avoiding FUBAR (f***ed up beyond all recognition) situations.
My buddy Fecund Stench asked me to participate in this rather silly chain-mail-like activity so I’m obliging him:
1. Do you like the look and the contents of your blog?
Yup.
2. Does your family know about your blog?
Yup, and usually they are ashamed to admit it. I’m the family dork.
3: Can you tell your friends about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?
Not sure how something posted online could be private.
4: Do you just read the blogs of those who comment on your blog? or you try to discover new blogs?
The more I read the better my strenuous efforts at procrastination.
5: Did your blog positively affect your mind? Give an example.
Screeeeeee!
6: What does the number of visitors to your blog mean? Do you use a traffic counter?
It means I don’t know very many people and no.
7: Did you imagine how other bloggers look like?
I’m assuming I understand the question since the tortured construct is difficult to understand like. My answer: Aren’t they all fat middle-aged guys with a bad haircut, stained underwear and four days of stubble on their spittle covered chins? Oh, that’s just me.
8: Do you think blogging has any real benefit?
Beyond enabling my narcissistic tendencies I don’t think so. But I like my blog so I really don’t give a damn if it (blogging) does or doesn’t have any real benefit.
9: Do you think that the Blogsphere is a stand alone community separated from the real world?
Bloggers are breathing while they type, right?
10: Do some political blogs scare you? Do you avoid them?
They bore me, and since they don’t seek me out I haven’t had to engage my anti-blog flares.
11: Do you think that criticizing your blog is useful?
Well, I think it’s brilliant and I like to agree with myself so I don’t ever criticize it. Now if you’re asking if I think getting criticism from other people is useful then I’d have to say yes.
12: Have you ever thought about what happen to your blog in case you died?
That’s the least of my worries. I’m more worried about who would get my collection of navel-lint I’ve collected over the years.
13: Which blogger had the greatest impression on you?
Alton Hedgelick.
14: Which blogger you think is the most similar to you?
Felbert Simpsonian.
15: Name a song you want to listen to.
Oklahoma
Can you tell I have a headache?
On the left is me at 4, 10% of the way to my just-attained 40 (right). Oh, the damage that two years of carousing in high school (I was a late bloomer), four years of fraternity life in college, a few years of bachelorhood and 14 years of married-with-children can do to you. I wish I still had that tie.
Warning: Semi-adult language to follow.
Yesterday I was looking at the stats for this blog to see if the article about Winston-Salem bloggers on the front page of the Winston-Salem Journal led to an increase in traffic over the normal three or four wackos who normally read this thing. Sure enough the traffic about doubled, but I found something even more interesting.
You see the stats show where every visitor came from and the majority of visitors come from search engines. If I click on the link it takes me to the search engine and shows me the search term that was used and the page on which my blog appeared. Here’s a small sample of some of the terms, the search engine they were used on and where some page on my blog ranked for those terms on the search engines:
Obviously I have a warped mind if I’m writing posts that pull in people interested in illegal chicken processors, nudists, wannabe anteaters, obscure indian cattle data and crazy televangelists. But when I got to that last one I was kind of bothered. I mean what had I written that woul equate Greensboro’s "blogfather" with a negative anatomical description/epithet? Ends up that it was this post and the anatomical reference wasn’t even about Ed.
Side note to Ed: You might want to find out who is so motivated to go four pages deep in a Google search for that phrase; me-thinks there’s someone out there with a thing for you.
Well, this got me to wondering what would happen if I searched "jon lowder" asshole in Google. So I did and I found that the search returned about 160 results. The top result was the same post that featured Ed and then number two was on Ed’s blog so I guess we’re even. Number five was a post on Vie de Malchance, number six was on Billy the Blogging Poet, number seven was another Ed Cone post and number eight was Patrick Eakes. These are all Greensboro blogs and people I’ve corresponded with so I started wondering if perhaps I’d done something untoward.
So I followed the links and found out that on Vie’s blog I was an innocent bystander and checking Billy’s blog I only find myself referenced in his blog roll so I guess I’m an innocent bystander there too. On to Ed’s other post and I find that it is recent and interesting in terms of the comments, but I had nothing to do with it other than the fact that my name is on Ed’s blog roll. On Patrick’s I find that I have nothing to do with it other than the fact that my name is on his blog roll too.
The dim light over my head is beginning to glow. It appears that if you use two terms, supposedly unrelated, they can pop up in search. So although I haven’t found an instance where someone has called me an asshole I’m certainly being lumped in with many assholes. Obviously I’ve probably done the same on my blog so I’m going to use this space to issue a blanket apology to all the victims of my random a-holes and other nefarious comments.
The Winston-Salem Journal ran a front page story on people blogging in Winston-Salem. I was interviewed as was a woman named Lucy Cash who writes a great blog called Life in Forsyth. It’s kind of cool to make the paper in any form, but the front page is really cool!
On a sad note, I emailed Lucy to introduce myself and she replied this morning saying that she’d reply in length later but that her father had died this morning. So what should be an exciting day for her has unfortunately turned very somber. Anyone who has read her blog knows that her dad has been sick, so I’m guessing she’ll get a lot of what she calls the "Carolina Neighbor Code" which will include home cooked meals and a bunch of hugs and offers of support. That’s one of the great things about living here.
Here’s some fun I’m having with Google. I’m searching to see how many times I’ve used certain terms on this blog. For instance how many times have I used "I love" on this blog? Or how about "I hate"? Here’s the results:
Conclusion? I type a lot cleaner than I talk.
Befuddled 