Category: Blogging

Put In My Place

Brian J. Noggle

Man, there’s nothing better than a smuggle who visits this site through a Web search and leaves a condescending comment on a post that’s several years old.

Like this one.

I mean, brother, it must be hard trying to express your biting, insightful wit on a backwater blog in a post that hardly anyone read in 2005, much less 2008.

But I publish them, oh yes, I do. Because I’m not a hater.

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The Best Christmas Gift Ever!

Brian J. Noggle

I have been tagged by a meme! I don’t know if I have ever been done so before. Thanks to St. Wendeler of Another Rovian Conspiracy, I’ve answered the following:

  1. Wrapping or gift bags?
    Gift wrapping. I was a bagger for a couple years in college, so it’s hard for me to respect the “effort” required to put something in a bag.

  2. Real or artificial tree?
    I’d prefer real, but the wife is highly allergic, so we have a very realistic artificial tree. So realistic that it drops needles.

  3. When do you put up the tree?
    This year, we put the tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving, we put lights on it about two weeks after, and we put ornaments on it about a week and a half later. We wanted to acclimate our child to its presence slowly.

  4. When do you take the tree down?
    Sometime immediately after the first of the year.

  5. Do you like eggnog?
    I did as a child, but I can’t stand it now. Maybe I got really drunk from it at age seven, blacked out, and developed the aversion then.

  6. Favorite gift received as a child?
    Commodore 128 received in 8th grade, followed by Atari 2600 I received in 6th grade.

  7. Do you have a nativity scene?
    Yes, but we don’t put it out because we have cats who would drop it from wherever we would put it onto the aforementioned child.

  8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
    Come on, I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad Christmas gift. However, in 2005, I got the Bad Cat desk calendar from my mother in law, and it was so inappropriately not funny that my coworker and I started most weekday mornings groaning over the captioned photographs of cats. The humor relied a lot on drug and sexual innuendo. I thought it was so bad that I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get a 2007 version.

  9. Mail or e-mail Christmas cards?
    Mail. E-mail, contrary to what the SEC would have you believe, does not provide permanent artifacts.

  10. Favorite Christmas movie?
    As you know, gentle reader, it is Lethal Weapon; I posted my top five list in 2003.

  11. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
    Whenever I first see something that I think someone I know would like for Christmas. But mostly in October/November.

  12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
    My mother’s pumpkin pie. My mother can cook only one or two things well. This is one of them, and it always pushes my gluttony button.

  13. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
    Colored lights this year; I think we used white last year. Whichever I find first, I guess.

  14. Favorite Christmas song?
    I like Mannheim Steamroller’s “Deck the Halls” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. Another winter favorite is Dean Martin’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.

I have not, however, tagged anyone else. Sometimes, you can take the Scrooge to the meme, but you cannot make him by a goose for Cratchit.

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Me and Andrew Sullivan

Brian J. Noggle

I removed Andrew Sullivan from my blogroll a couple years ago, probably about the time he was advocating that the Federal government overtax the rubes in the big states who need gas to travel between points on the vast maps, unlike our betters on the East Coast who trip on a coffee table leg in Connecticut and their elbows strike the floor in New York.

However, the intern in charge of putting together the Kansas City Star‘s Blog Bits section has us together in Friday’s edition.

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LOLCat All the Way to the Bank

Brian J. Noggle

I’ve linked to it before and I read it a couple times a week, but now it’s a bona fide Web phenomenon: I Can Has Cheezburger? appears in Business Week:

He saw traffic on the blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which he runs with his partner, “Tofuburger” (she refuses to disclose her real name) double each month: 375,000 hits in March, 750,000 in April, 1.5 million in May. Cheezburger now gets 500,000 page views a day from between 100,000 and 200,000 unique visitors, according to Nakagawa. The cheapest ad costs $500 for a week. The most expensive goes for nearly $4,000. Nakagawa, an accidental entrepreneur who saw his successful business materialize out of the ether, quit his programming job at the end of May: “It made more sense to do this and see how big it could get.”

Yeah, I know the feeling. I’ve been blogging here for over 4 years, and I’ve seen my daily traffic go from 10 to 120 visitors a day, and I’ve made (theoretically) $.08 in money from the Amazon Associates program.

Unfortunately, the proprietor of I Can Has Cheezburger has already found out about how big it’s going to get. I hope he’s not planning to retire on it, because Internet phenomena come and go.

But still, it’s a cool site and it’s neat that the fellow can make some scratch from it.

(Link seen on Ann Althouse.)

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If I’d Known the Lieutenant Governor Was Coming, I Would Have Straightened Up

Brian J. Noggle

MfBJN is on the blogroll at Team Kinder, named for the Missouri Lieutenant Governor.

To be frank, I’ve never heard of him, which I assume means he’s a more efficient version of Dick Cheney, the older statesman who controls the diminutive, younger figurehead in the executive office.

Because modern commentary would have me know that government works in the hands of Republicans.

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A Word From Our Sponsor

Brian J. Noggle

Roadkill Hair Club For Men

Remember those young and carefree days, where the chicks dug your long hair, man, and couldn’t help but run their fingers through those shimmering tresses? Too bad you got old and bald. But at the RkHCfM, we can help restore those youthful looks with an even softer feel than before.

Instead of using your own back fur or artificial fibers implanted in your gourd, the RkHCfM uses naturally harvested animal pelts to provide the hair your shrunken self-esteem needs to enlarge to its full grandeur. You’ll smile longer and harder than ever before.

Our special process causes no pain to the donor animal (which is already departed, rest in peace) and little pain to you. You can get the color, feel, and texture you want by choosing from a wide variety of available options, including:

  • Possum the economical choice!
  • Raccoon for that distinguished color.
  • Escaped golden retriever the surfer look.
  • And many more!

You can trust RkHCfM to do a good job. Why? Because I’m not only the president, I’m also a member.

Roadkill Hair Club for Men president
Before
Roadkill Hair Club for Men president
After

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Brian Dump

Brian J. Noggle

You might notice, in the next couple of days (as you might notice today and yesterday), a number of longer-than-normal pieces on the old blog here. I’ve got a hard disk drive full of essays and whatnot that I didn’t place in printed publications, so I’m foisting them on you, gentle reader, one by one.

Because I don’t want to overwhelm you with my eloquence. At least, not more than once a day.

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Riddle

Brian J. Noggle

Question: How can I tell if I’m going to get a new bunch of anonymous comment spam?

Answer: You get a Yahoo! Site Explorer hit for http://www.freewillblog.com from an ISP in India!

Okay, it’s not much of a riddle, but most of the comment spam I’ve gotten in the last couple months comes through this avenue. I’d expect it’s actually some poor Indians typing anonymous comments and hand-keying the captchas, but it’s odd that they’re very, very consistent in looking for blogs that refer to Free Will Blog.

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