To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Between my posting a book report on a Calvin and Hobbes collection this afternoon, and suddenly my Facebook feed is all….
Frankly, I have to wonder if somewhere in the PHP, WordPress is not tipping Facebook off before the posts are published.
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It’s been a while since I’ve popped into a Home Depot, but now that I know they’re peddling a reasonably priced sword, I might need to check it out.
People have been buzzing about the surprising listing that was found on the company’s website.
What if we fought using the Home Depot sword pic.twitter.com/Slcg5F40Tb
— Sena Bonbon ️ ~comms open~ (@Bonbon_Sena) January 23, 2024
Damn, look at that. What makes it even better is that it’s priced at around $50. I defy you to find a William Wallace Medieval Sword — or any other bladed weapon for that matter — with a sheath for that price.
With inflation still pretty high, you can’t.
Still, you might need to convince your wife/girlfriend/significant other that you need this at a hardware store Claymore.
I know you’re busy so allow me to come up with some arguments for you.
As you might know, gentle reader, I have mentioned that I have a halberd and several swords on my wall, several practice weapons atop the books on my bookshelves, and a Swiss bayonet that I really must put on the wall before a cat knocks it off of the bookshelves perhaps onto my head instead of next to where I am standing, trying to pick out a book, next time (but no rapier or katana even though I have just the spot for one.
You know, (perhaps I’ve already told this story, but here it is again) Relics had a claymore in one of the booths a while back, and I thought about it. Then I looked at the price tag, and it was $500. So I mulled it over, and when I had a Christmas bonus or something, I took a closer look at it…. And it was truly a claymore, a plaster or resin replica of a claymore and not even metal at all. So way, way overpriced. Which is just as well, as I don’t have room for it on my office wall. But in the den, the vertical surface above the fireplace mantel is bare….
So I don’t have to justify buying a new blade to my beautiful wife as it falls into ther category of things I accumulate. I wouldn’t have to justify spending $50 on a sword–and keep in mind the thing at Home Depot is a replica, with as much relationship to a real sword as the decorative flintlock replicas I have on my wall are to real pistols.
I would have to justify spending $500 on a sword, though. And perhaps get a second job to cover it.
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But if it’s a jazz song, I might by it because of the Pretty Woman on the Cover (PWoC).
I suppose it’s also possible that it’s the eponymous debut album of Butterfly Graff.
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I am not sure what any of that means, and I am certainly not going to type it into a search engine as it all sounds very dirty.
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Saw this on Facebook yesterday:
C’mon, man, we who are of a certain age know that The Terminator, where Linda Hamilton played Sarah Connor, came out in 1984, three years before the television series Beauty and the Beast.
Quick, I should subscribe to the page or whatever so I never run out of ackshuallies to post on the blog.
I am starting to wonder if a large portion of the Internet’s content is not designed to elicit pushback or correction as a means of increasing “engagement.”
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My beautiful wife mentioned getting some fried chicken from a either KFC or Popeye’s this weekend, which made me think of an old commercial where people sang, “I feel like chicken tonight, chicken tonight” and did a quick funky chicken dance. But I could not remember whether which restaurant did it.
Well, Internet archeology has led me to believe, with 82% certainty, that this was actually for a Ragu product.
I mean, this could be AI generated. But I do remember the portion with the police officer directing traffic–already an anachronism 30 years ago. Or do I?
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I just mentioned vacationing near a lake made by damming the Little Red River in Arkansas.
Yesterday, Facebook presented me with a suggested post about the Red River in Arkansas:
MfBJN: Training AI and bots since 2003. Which is now according to my reckoning (actually, my eternal now starts about 2012, when the youngest went to school all day and when I assumed my position at the computer here for hours and hours a day, day in and day out, with only the occasional change to the desktop wallpaper and to the billing cycles of common applications to poorly differentiate the passing seasons).
Where was I?
Oh, yeah, trying to stick in my brain the longest river not from snow melt in case that comes up in a trivia night sometime, which it probably won’t because most trivia nights are just pop culture these days. Which is just as well. I find I don’t retain trivia as well at, erm, almost thirty as I did when I was twenty.
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For some reason, Facebook thinks I’m a real hockey fan. I assume I clicked on hockey-related news somewhere along the line. I probably cross-posted the Jordan Binnington print. And my cousin’s husband is a big hockey fan, and Facebook thinks we’re great friends.
So I get a lot of posts about hockey and hockey memes. Like this one.
Brent Gretzky did play in the NHL. For the Tampa Bay Lightning. This picture depicts Brett Hull (#16) and Wayne Gretzky during his very brief time (one spring) with the St. Louis Blues between his stints with the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers.
Hall of Famer Brett Hull, it should be noted, had more than 4 points.
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Q: How can you tell Brian J. complained aloud last night that he’s a bit bogged down in The Story of Civilization‘s section of Our Oriental Heritage that covers India, especially that is coverage of philosophy/art/music section’s dry and merely enumerative nature?
A: Today, Brian J. starts getting Facebook “suggested posts” on India and its history:
On the other hand, I did just post a brief nugget on India’s history a couple days ago. So maybe Facebook is just reading the blog.
Even if you are paranoid, they might be trying to sell you something.
Also, point of order: Why Bonjour? Maybe on account of the French and Indian Wars or something.
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Well, if the guy at Knuckledraggin likes it, it must be good!
UPDATE: One moment: I have just been handed a note. This is probably not the Wirecutter they meant. But what other Wirecutter is there?
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You don’t really have to know much about anything when writing on the Internet, do you? Please, do not immediately hold your humble blogger out even though the case might be true.
At any rate, apparently Cracked.com, a site I have not visited in many years, tried to dunk on the screenwriters of a film I’d never seen.
They compare the speed of a (albeit short) distance runner, 15 miles an hour, to someone who presumably was sprinting.
Why not compare the woman in the movie with a sprinter, say Usain Bolt, whose top sprinting speed was just under 24 miles per hour, not far under the 25 miles per hour. An unproven figure, by the way, but something the “scientists” probably used computer models to generate.
Ah, well. I am not really an expert at anything, certainly not running–where my distance speed is closer to 6 miles per hour, but my sprint is significantly faster that in very short bursts.
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So in my Facebook ads feed, which is 30% Sponsored posts (ads), 50% Suggested for You (ads, but not ads ads), and 20% random people I’ve known, I often get a lot of ads for hims ED-treatment-by-mail, and now this:
Easy fitness over 30? C’mon, man, I still haven’t given up on the dream of one day doing a tornado push-up:
I am not beholden to wall exercises. Although I have not been to the YMCA in a month. Maybe that’s what The Algorithms are working from. Or reminding me.
And, as a reminder: No necesito huevos de tortuga!
Thank you, that is all.
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Saturday, 7:30pm: I’m sitting in a restaurant, eating dinner beneath a television that is showing the PBR Minneapolis Invitational rodeo bull-riding event, and I’m learning about the sport and commenting on it.
Saturday, 8:15pm: Facebook shows me my first suggested post for a site streaming rodeo stuff online:
As I’ve said before in my conspiracy theory voice, it’s not just your phone that’s listening to you. All the phones are listening to you, and they all know your voice.
Now, I just have to wonder what I’ve said that has Facebook showing me random car posts in Spanish:
Tomorrow’s headline, today: Someone is arrested and prosecuted for a precrime because The Algorithms mistook someone else’s voice recorded on someone else’s phone.
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C’mon, man, I’m not a country boy–I am a city boy in the country–bur even I know that deer shed their antlers.
I suppose it’s possible that the overconfident replier is the one who gets called out, but I’m not going to click through to find out. Being that it’s 2022, I’m just going to assume ignorance.
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So I sometimes click through on real estate ads on Facebook as sometimes still I dream, gentle reader.
But not this one:
Yeah, you know, I cannot really think of any state in the country where I would not want to live except Illinois.
Both of my growing up locations were near (enough) the border with Illinois so that it got enough of a bad reputation, not to mention I would hate to live in a state ruled by Chicago (it’s bad enough in Missouri that Kansas City and St. Louis wield their blue influence on the state enough to make it chancy in elections.
I mean, I guess I would not like to live in Hawaii, either–but I’ve never been there. Perhaps I would change my mind.
But running down the states and regions, no other state comes to mind as a no-go.
Besides, if a house that big is that inexpensive, it requires massive repairs, or it’s under onerous regulation for preservation, or both. But, also, Illinois.
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I got this ad on Facebook recently:
That’s Sho’Nuff from The Last Dragon, which I saw in….
That many years ago?
Ah, well. Perhaps I will watch it with my boys one of these days.
Also, just to be clear, I am not in the market for fashion sneakers. I have running shoes, and I have walking shoes, but they are just shoes.
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Some Facebook entity wants me to click through to a quiz of some sort:
Obscure 80s lyrics, these?
She was a fast machine
She kept her motor clean
She was the best damn woman
That I’ve ever seen
AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”, obscure?
The song is still on heavy rotation on the radio, both on “80s, 90s, and Today!” stations and the classic rock stations.
Oh. On the radio. Where the kids today don’t hear it because they don’t listen to the radio.
When I wanted actually obscure, I could listen to the replays of American Top 40 from the 80s, with Casey Kasem. The top hits still pop up on the radio when they’re part of a cheap rights package for radio stations, but when you get down to the 20-something hottest song from July 1985, you’ll hear songs you haven’t heard since then.
But AC/DC’s biggest song? Not obscure.
Also, why is 80s music “World History”? Oh, because we’re a shallow and foolish populace in the 21st century. Never mind, I did not ask.
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The Crepe Corrector Lotion?
Uh, ya know, I saw Silence of the Lambs in the theatre, right?
Perhaps clicking the play button would have…. something else on the Internet, but I have not seen those films or streams, so….
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You know if I get a marketing email entitled Proof It! How To Be a Better Proofreader, you’d better believe I’m proofreading it.
Oh, yes, there’s the typo. No, wait, it has two:
Also, bullet point items should consistently end with punctuation or not. Generally, you don’t want to mix and match–even if the outlier is an exclamation point!
On the other hand, it did make me read the email more closely than I would have otherwise. My engagement is up, but my conversion from prospect to sale remains false.
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