Search For the Holy Google

So I was doing some upkeep on the site recently when something took me by surprise. Normally, traffic on the site is really slow in between my posts, but for some reason I had over 40 visitors yesterday. My first thought was that I had accidentally posted embarrassing pictures of myself. But luckily I checked the data and it showed that all of the people were just looking at my most recent note on a gazing healer named Braco. (And just in case you have seen the photos: no, I don’t know if it is safe to do that with a squeegee and yes, that badger is trained.)

Anyway, the reason that particular post became so popular is that a lot of people have been Googling Braco (that sounds dirty, or a great band name), and my blog kept coming up apparently. Now, I’m not naïve to think that everybody that visits my site intended to. Most of them made a mistake, and all of them regret it. But I’m not complaining. In fact, many websites and blogs try to use keywords or phrases that will make them pop up in Google searches. That is why you will often see me subtly mixing in oft-searched terms like “Twilight,” “how the hell do you use a bidet,” “naked pictures of Lindsay Lohan,” “how long does pot stay in your pee,” “making meth in your basement for dummies,” “where do lizards keep their reproductive organs,” etc.

Google is very interesting like that. It truly is a remarkable technology that enables anybody from anywhere in the world to simply type in a few keywords and, with a simple click of the mouse, get pictures of naked people. I mean, you could Google “mother teresa nuns sesame street” and you would get pictures of naked people. The sites and pictures that show up on Google almost never have anything to do with what you were searching for.

So this got me interested in what searches were leading people to my site. Now don’t worry, I can tell what searches led to my site, but not who performed the search. So your privacy is safe, unless Google sells all that stuff to the Chinese or something. And it is probably a very good thing all this stuff is secret, because you people out there Google some very disturbing things. All I am going to say is that the word “semen” appeared in over a dozen searches. Now, for those of you pointing out the fact that searching “semen” leads to my site makes me the sick one, you are missing the point. The point is that you almost never get what you want from Googling things.

For instance, the most read post of all time on my site is the one I did on philosophy. The main reason for this is that apparently there are a lot of nervous philosophy majors out there who have no idea what to do with themselves. So a lot of them end up on the site by Googling things like “what do I do with a philosophy major?” This sucks for them, because I never answer that question in the post (mainly because nobody knows the answer). Through the searches, you can actually trace what happens to a philosophy major in college (and I swear I am not making any of these up):

• “I’m good at philosophy for some reason”
• “how do you know you should be a philosophy major”
• “what courses should I take with my phil major”
• “what do you learn in upper division philosophy”
• “Confused in my philosophy class”
• “I don’t like my philosophy class”
• “I hate my philosophy class”
• “Don’t do philosophy”
• “Philosophy degree is ridiculous”
• “People’s reaction to my philosophy degree”
• “Next destination depression”

I’ve listed a few of the other interesting search terms that led people to this website, and I promise I am not making any of them up, and I left the spelling as it was. Frankly, I have no idea how I would even be able to make them up. Some of them are so weird you wonder how the heck the searcher came up with them, much less felt the need to Google them. I’m still not sure which is worse, these searches or the fact that my site popped up for all of them. Anyway, here goes:

• “Bacon saddlebags”
• “My philosophy is don’t think” – Okay I can see how this one led to me.
• “Glasses make me look sexy” – This one too.
• “The back of my toe hurts”
• “What does mitch bade mean?” – I get a lot of these. Mitch Bade is actually a term used by rapper Techn9ne as a replacement for b**ch made.
• “looks good” “stupid glasses” “car commercial”
• “love Canada”
• “Can’t believe it butter (fire retardation)” – From my experience, butter is actually very flammable.
• “Buckle up and bunker down”
• “Why doesn’t david caruso make eye contact?”
• “Casa bonita if rape Disneyland”
• “Chimp can you hear me now”
• “Counter argument for love is in the air”
• “CSI semen funny” – Well thank god someone else thinks it is.
• “Dude where’s my car and philosophy”
• “Face contorting”
• “Gas hydrates”
• “Facial hair t-shirts philosophy” – If you don’t get why these go together, you have clearly never had a philosophy class.
• “Geriatric sibling rivalry”
• “Glee cast member plays connect four”
• “Horny photo”
• “I am looking for a job egg farm in abbotsford” – Not to be a downer, but I think you need to be a little less picky when you are looking for jobs.
• “Is she dirty blogspot”
• “Mad scientist birthday ideas”
• “Joe jonas + glasses”
• “Mitch the Barbie” – As it turns out, they don’t make one. But they should. It could be the next hot Christmas gift every child wants.
• “Mande Mitchell tranny movies” – Hey, I was working my way through college.
• “Semen on figure blogspot”
• “Reword the prompt”
• “Roofies”
• “Sememn everywhere in CSI”
• “Sexist jokes” – I can’t express how proud I am that this search leads to my site.
• “Spell booh-yah”
• “Where to buy butter bear”
• “Trebek quotations for soccer”
• “What can I do with my philosophy ma” – Learn to finish words would be my first suggestion.
• “Wog”
• “A little pitchy dawg t-shirt”
• “Alex trebek is not smug”
• “Alex trebek smug” – Clearly this person had no luck with the previous search.
• “Black greek sandals”
• “Barbie face sobing”
• “Barbie.com kicing”
• “I can’t beleve it’s beer” – Judging by your spelling, I can.
• “I’m on a high horse tonight”

And, drum-roll please, my all-time favorite:

• “once justin beiber hits puberty he’ll be able to grease his hair with his own…”

That’s how it ends. I’m not sure if this person was hoping somebody would finish that sentence for them. Feel free to finish that sentence in the comments section, so this person can find what they are looking for. After all, isn’t that the point of Google?

TV Adventure

I just recently moved apartments, so I found myself the other day shopping for a TV, since neither my roommate nor I wanted the TV that we used to have. It’s not that there was anything wrong with it; it’s just that the thing was huge, and not like flat screen invite your friends over to watch the Super Bowl big. I mean like those old box shaped TVs that weigh about a ton. I’m pretty sure that after we went to sleep, our TV went out and pillaged towns and ate small children alive. So Chris just basically dropped it a few times and then dumped it besides a dumpster.

So anyway, I was standing in a Best Buy, looking at a wall of beautiful TVs, and I could think only one thing as I stared at the amazing clarity and bright colors: There is no way I can afford any of these. These things were going into the four digit price range. That’s twice what I spent on my first car. Plus, I’m not a huge TV guy. I spent my entire sophomore year without a TV and did just fine except that now I have a tendency to name inanimate objects and have conversations with them.

Anyway, my lack of knowledge about TVs really showed when I started talking to one of the sales guys. You know how they say you should always do research before you go to make a big purchase? Well I never do. This is the conversation that I had with the guy.

Sales Associate: “So what kind of TV are you looking for today?”

Me: “A cheap one.”

Sales Associate: “Is an LCD what you’re looking for?”

Me: “No thanks, I don’t do drugs.”

Sales Associate: “This one has HDMI as well as AV capabilities.”

Me: “I think the doctor already gave me shots for those.”

Now, another thing you should know about me: I’m a pushover when it comes to buying things. Some people like to bargain and are mean and spit at their dealers. I on the other hand am about as assertive as an 11-year-old. I will trust anything the dealer says to me and buy whatever he points at. Combine this with my aforementioned tendency to not know anything about what I’m buying plus the fact that I’m too lazy to shop around and you can understand why you should never leave me in charge of making important purchases. For instance, I failed to notice that my car does not have one of its back headrests. Although in my defense, I never test drove the car from the back seat.

So he finally sold me on a $300 32-inch TV made by some generic company that I have never heard of that I’m pretty sure is headquartered somewhere in Nicaragua. Now the first sign that something was wrong was when this guy brings out the box. It looked like it was opened and then re-taped by either a very retarded three-year old with Parkinson’s or an animal without opposable thumbs, like a beaver. When I asked him about this, he mumbled something about “inspecting the product,” so I ignored it and took the TV home.

Of course when I get home, the first thing I noticed was that the directions were for a completely different TV, and the stand they gave me did not go with the TV and the screws did not go with the stand. I would have had better luck putting a TV together with gum and twist ties. So I went in to the store and inspected the TV’s there and discovered that they gave me a stand for a different brand of TV. Luckily I actually knew one of the night shift guys so he gave me a spare stand.

But when I put it together the next morning and turned the TV on, in one corner there was something that resembled the Milky Way Galaxy. Now mind you, I know I did not crack it, since the TV had never left the box since I couldn’t put it on the stand since they gave me the wrong stand. I was beginning to think this was bad TV karma for leaving our monster TV out in front of a dumpster. After playing phone tag with the manufacturer and telling them my problem, they told me to take the TV back to Best Buy, where they would send it back. When I get to Best Buy, they of course tell me that the manufacturers don’t cover screen damage, which means there is some lady at the manufacturer’s office having a good laugh. They directed me to customer service to see what they could do. Now at this point, I was ready to take the next person I saw and hold them hostage in the music section and make them listen to Justin Bieber until they hauled me off to jail (at least the TV’s there are already set up).

But then I temporarily forgot about that because the girl who helped me was really pretty. Plus, instead of immediately ignoring me, she actually listened to me explain my story, which is more than I can say about most women. She then went to her manager and pleaded my case and voila! They exchanged my TV at no charge, which makes me think that they know that they originally gave me a Big Box O’ Random TV Parts. The nice girl opened the box in front of me, tested out the TV to make sure this one worked, repacked it nicely, and sent me out the door. So wherever that girl is, thank you for saving me from going to prison. And unless he likes Justin Bieber, one of your employees should thank you too.

Dude, Where's My Car?

So I have spent the past few days shopping around for a GPS unit for my car, since I have become painfully aware in the past few days that I have no sense of direction when it comes to driving in Colorado.

Although in my defense it is not just my fault. As usual, there are women who are mainly to blame. I get lost mainly because these women send me out into the night with a set of directions that skipped an important step. So instead of getting me to the highway, their directions landed me in the middle of an abandoned construction site on a dead-end road. I was certain I was about to get abducted (which makes me think that they knew what they were doing with the directions the whole time).

Whenever I get lost following their directions (which is inevitable), I try to call them, but that rarely helps. You know that stereo-type that men never ask for directions? It isn't because of our egos, it's because we have learned that normally it just gets us lost even worse. Here is a conversation that I had while trying to get instructions from one of them:

Maddie: “Do you see a big house? Or a brick wall?”

Me: “Only a neighborhood filled with them.”

Maddie: “Well it’s right next to… Oooh look at the bunnies!! Do you see the bunnies?”

The next time I tried to call them, I had to sit and listen through about five minutes of screaming since apparently a spider had entered their room. So you can see why I’m thinking of getting a GPS. But from all of my experiences with GPS, I don’t know if they are any better. While I was up in Silverthorne for a birthday party, we tried to find a park to play some whiffle ball (which is way more fun than you would think by the way). Our GPS originally told us that there was a park two miles away. But then in the middle of our drive the GPS told us that our destination was now seven miles away, which either meant that we were playing on a magical floating infield or our GPS was on crack. We followed it anyway, but we started to get suspicious when our route started to take us into the mountains. Sure enough, the GPS had taken us to a National Park, which as it turns out did not have an infield.

It’s better than the GPS brand TomTom, which the aforementioned women have. Not only does it not have some roads in its system and try and get us to turn off of cliffs, but gives all of these directions in a British accent. The last thing I need when I am frustrated behind the wheel is a British accent talking to me. I want a GPS that has Morgan Freeman or Optimus Prime giving me directions. Actually, scratch that, I want Arnold Schwarzenegger giving me my directions.

Arnold GPS: “Get to the exit ramp!! DO IT! DO IT NOW!”

I want to know how the heck GPS works anyway. I mean, is there a satellite orbiting space whose sole job is to track where I am at the moment? I’m not going to lie, considering the negative things I’ve said about NASA, I’m a bit concerned about the government knowing where I’m driving all the time. They might launch a missile at me (of course, this is NASA, so the launch would probably be delayed).

Speaking of people who have a hard time finding their way around, I stumbled upon a story the other day about people who are trying to design a car for blind people. Now I’m not saying this is a bad idea. I’m saying this is a horrible idea. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be blind; of all the disabilities in the world it is the one that seems the worst. But as much as I appreciate that they want to live as normal a life as possible, some people were just not meant to drive, like Lindsay Lohan. I think they are just trying to copy my idea, which is to design a safe car for women (it has no tires or ignition). I mean, knowing I’m driving on the same road as the elderly, teenage girls texting, and drunk people is scary enough. But blind people? I’m not saying they won’t be safe, but how are they supposed to know people are flipping them off in traffic?

What would solve this if somebody invented a car that drove itself, and I could just sit down and listen to music and fall asleep. But until then I think I’m going to stick with the bus.

Can You Hear Me Now?

You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m in a bit of a mourning period. You see, my phone just stopped working the other day. And this is not just any phone; I had this phone for four years now and I loved it like a family member (actually, since it didn’t argue with me all the time, probably more). I loved it because it was simple. It was one of those phones you flip open that actually has buttons and did two things: called people and hung up on people.

But sadly they don’t make phones like that anymore. When I went in to the store, I asked them if they had the same model of phone and they laughed at me like I asked them for spare parts to a Model-T or something. Apparently they only make fancy little smart phones now with touch screens, which I hate. What sort of people would look at a phone and instantly think “Yeah, these buttons are just an inconvenience. You know what will make a phone better? Making it impossible to dial.”

I’m not exactly sure who decided touch screens were a good idea, but I’m assuming that these people had very skinny fingers. I watch other people use these touch screens like they were born to use them, whereas I look more like a chimp trying to smash ants. I tried having my first text conversation last night and the people on the other end thought I was drunk my messages made so little sense. Plus once you’re done, the screen is all smudgy; it looks like a dog tried to make out with your phone.

As with all of society’s problems, I blame this on Steve Jobs and his darn iPhone. People used to be fine with phones that just called people and, if you rolled in the high class, played snake. Then the iPhone came out, and now you are a caveman if your phone doesn’t have GPS, games, books, and thousands of applications more useless than claustrophobic chimney sweeps. I guess you could say that people can use their phone when they get bored, but I prefer to just take a nap when I’m bored (which could explain why the people at the DMV are always so angry at me).

What’s ironic is that the one thing the iPhone doesn’t do well is make calls. I had a friend who has an iPhone, and one day they didn’t answer any of my calls. As it turns out, this is because they were too busy playing Scrabble and then their battery ran out. That’s like getting stranded in the middle of the woods with a dead car battery because you were using the headlights to read Twilight novels.

Sorry if I come across as very technophobic, but that is because I am. My family is not what you would call cutting edge. I mean only a few years ago we still had a camera that used film and a computer that used floppy disks. And cell phones for us were no different. My parents didn’t get one until I was in high school and I didn’t get my own cell phone until I was a senior in high school. And it was one of those old brick shaped cell phones that could use to knock out an elephant if you threw it at its head.

I was one of those kids that constantly had to borrow other people’s cell phones if I needed to get in touch with my parents. Of course, this was a moot point since my parents never answered their cell phones anyway. My dad is good now, but my mom is still horrible with cell phones. My mother is under the impression that a cell phone is a one-way communication tool. If she needs something, she will incessantly call you but never leave messages. But the second you try to call her back, it turns out that she has turned her phone off. It doesn’t matter that she just tried to call you five seconds ago.

I will say that is one drawback to the cell phone era: people always expect you to be in contact with them. Before cell phones, me being 3000 miles away meant I would hear from my parents every five months when they went to Vegas. But now? My mother will call me for things like this:

Mom: “You know your sister didn’t turn in one of her assignments. This is your fault.”

Me: “Huh?”

Mom: “She takes after you. You are a horrible influence and a bad example.”

Me: “I’m four time zones away and haven’t talked to her in months. John Travolta has more influence on what she does.”

Then there are other people who can contact you that you don’t want to talk to. Like sales people. Sales people are under the impression that people like to buy things at 2 in the morning. The only thing I want to be doing at 2 in the morning is sleeping. I just wish there was a way for me to call them when they are sleeping. I’m sure there must be an app for that.

All a Twitter

I am now officially a traitor and a hypocrite. I’m worse than Benedict Arnold, Judas, Brutus, and that fat guy from Jurassic Park rolled into one. I have started a Twitter page for this site. That’s right, me, a self-respecting journalism major (notice “self” respecting, very few others respect me as a journalism student) is now on Twitter, one of the downfalls of journalism as we know it. I am more of a disgrace to my fellow journalists than Sean Penn is to his fellow chimpanzees.

No matter how many more good things I do with my life, when I stand before the gates of heaven, I will be denied entrance solely because of this sin. In addition of course to having watched the Jonas Brothers 3-D Concert, throwing a Bible into a dumpster once, swearing at my teachers, drinking excessively, cheering for the Jacksonville Jaguars, yelling at small children, pissing in public, listening to Barry Manilow, voting for Joe Biden, lying to a priest, cheating on an exam, betting on preseason hockey, buying sweatshop sewn shoes, kicking dogs, drawing the prophet Mohammed with crayons in the first grade and constantly making fun of minorities, rednecks, handicapped people, women, and Tim Tebow. That’s right; I finally give in to all of you who think that Tebow is the second coming of Jesus. Although you would think that if he were godly he would be able to throw a spiral without looking like a retard and beat a bunch of inbreds from Alabama. See there I go again, I couldn’t go five seconds before I made fun of rednecks, handicapped people, and Tim Tebow in the same sentence.

Okay wow, let’s see if we can recover from that tangent. What were we talking about? Twitter? Why? Oh that’s right; I sold my soul to the devil. So maybe I’m overreacting a bit, sort of how like how Charlie Sheen has a bit of a drug problem. It’s just that for so long I have been critical of Twitter and all of the babbling idiots who use it. I mean, I really don’t need to know what Oprah is putting in her fifth sandwich of the day. I figured that I would become a respectable journalist, writing stories and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and looking very journalist-like until I died of lung cancer like all of the other respectable journalists.

But if you have ever sat in a journalism class today, you are instantly aware that this will not happen. For one thing, they reminded me that I do not smoke or drink coffee. But the only thing we talk about in journalism classes are how journalism is dying. We might as well be taking a class on witch-burning. So in my panicked state, I chose to start up a blog and Twitter site, two things I vowed I would die before I did (the others were watch an episode of Gossip Girl and have to use a catheter, so I guess 50 percent isn’t that bad). I figured if it came down to a question of money or morals, I didn’t have morals to begin with so I might as well make some money.

Besides, my Twitter page is just a shameless promotion of my site, so that makes it okay. I mainly use it to put links to the sites and occasionally make jokes about Canadians. It’s not like I’m Ashton Kutcher and I think that I am so important that the world needs to know what my pistachio-sized brain is thinking every five minutes. I mean, I can understand people who use Twitter to keep up with their friends and news, but by the looks of this list of the top Twitter sites, that is clearly not the case with most people. I mean, CNN is the only news site in the top 20, and the only things the other 19 contribute to the world are bad movies, bad music, bad TV, and bad health care reform.

Besides, how do you even follow people on Twitter? For those of you who have remained pure and have no idea how Twitter works, Twitter only allows 140 characters per post. This means that posts are composed of some sort of strange language where whole words are never used. Plus the tagging system involves a lot of those # things and @ things and “RT,” whatever that means. For instance, this is one of Ashton’s tweets: “The @mrskutcher vs kevin bacon race is getting tight. pls vote of wifey http://pep.si/CelebChallenge pls rt.” I swear that is what it says, random letter for random letter. The only words in there I understood were “bacon,” “race,” and “tight,” which leads me to believe that this is some sort pig eating contest. So all we can really gather from this is that Ashton Kutcher eats pigs for fun, and PETA should go bomb his house.

There's No Place Like Homepage

So I haven’t written one of these things in a while. Some of you out there are thinking to yourselves that this is because I’ve finally decided to buckle down on school work and stop spending all of my time writing random rants about things most people stopped caring about after first grade. Clearly some of you don’t know me. I haven’t been writing these because I haven’t had internet for the last three weeks I’ve been up here. Internet is one of those funny things that you never miss until you don’t have it, like cheese and cup holders.

Of course the big question is why I didn’t have internet. I mean, monkeys living in trees on the Amazon River have internet (as it turns out they run Twitter). Well, to be fair, we haven’t even lived in the apartment we’re in for a month. For those of you who don’t know, we actually had signed a lease on a five-bedroom house. Unfortunately, about a week after we toured the house and signed the lease, one of the tenants living in the house died of an opium tea overdose. On a side note, how embarrassing is it to OD on something called opium tea? At least the other OD victims can say they died of something a little more hard core sounding, like heroin. Opium tea sounds like something British children drink after their afternoon tutoring sessions. Anyway, apparently the dead guy was also the only tenant who cleaned, because when my roommates went to move in the house had (among other things): ripped carpets, broken doors, exposed wiring, moldy bathrooms, and a foam deer head with knives stuck in it. So trust me, learn from our mistake and walk right up to the previous tenants, and ask them, “Are you addicted to drugs?” It may seem rude, but trust me it is. But that’s better than having your landlord, John Bopp, fail to inform you that a drug addict has died in your house (by the way, “John Bopp and the Druggies” would be an awesome band name).

So anyway, that’s how we ended up living with three people in a two-bedroom apartment. Needless to say, having moved in at the last minute, our apartment didn’t have a lot of amenities, such as TV, internet, and most of our furniture. With almost nothing to do, my roommate Chris and I spent most of our time sitting on opposite couches and staring at each other in dark silence. At one point, we entertained ourselves by trying to throw an empty plastic bottle into a cardboard box. At that time we had just as many one-pound bags of cheese (one) as beds in the house (one), so we couldn’t even just sleep to pass time.

Since then of course we’ve upgraded considerably. For instance, we now have two one-pound bags of cheese. But for a long time the internet was the one thing we were unable to get working. We’re going to do a little exercise here. Close your eyes (make sure that you aren’t somewhere where this could be a problem, like in a room with a rapist). You didn’t close your eyes did you? How do I know that? Because you are still reading this you dumbass, which is hard to do with your eyes closed. So get someone next to you (the rapist is fine as long as he can read) to read this out loud to you. Anyway, now imagine you don’t have the internet. What’s the first thing you are going to miss?

Please don’t tell me you said Twitter. You said Twitter didn’t you? Or wait, no, you tweeted that you would miss Twitter. It just sounds dirty, like “and then the rapist tweeted his victim, who had their eyes closed while reading stupid blog posts.” And the horrible thing is that this whole Twittering phenomenon is spreading like Amy Winehouse’s diaper rash. What’s worse is that it’s infecting everything I used to love (Twitter, that is, not Amy’s diaper rash). Even ESPN and UFC stop every five minutes to inform me that I can log onto Twitter and read what they were supposed to tell me on the TV. That’s kind of why I tuned in, but the TV show wouldn’t dare waste their good information on something as trivial as viewers. No, they save it for their Twitter “followers” as they are called (I guess because empty-headed sheep isn’t as catchy). Even “Regis and Kelly Live” isn’t safe from Twitter (because stupid Ashton Kutcher went on the show and decided to spend the entire show tweeting instead of making the usual retarded sounds that he passes as jokes). As usual, I have been a little late catching on with this fad. I’m still not exactly sure what you do on Twitter, but if Ashton Kutcher uses it, it’s a safe bet that it is completely useless. I can honestly say that I rarely want to know what most celebrities think even on important issues, much less know what they are thinking every five minutes about random things like grapefruits.

Of course, if you didn’t say you would miss Twitter, I have a new respect for you. That is, as long as you didn’t say you would miss something stupid, like the ability to do your homework or something. I realized that what I missed most about the internet is the news. For instance, I honestly had no idea that DJ AM had died. But now that I have the internet, I can truly keep current on the news. Which is good, because I’m looking forward to Ted Kennedy helping to pass this health care reform.