Category Archives: Blogging

Operation Global Media Domination: Technorati crumbles

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TIAMADE IT!

Finally I am back in the top 100,000 blogs on technorati.

raincoaster

$e(‘bsearch’).value = “Search this blog”;

 

About bloody time, too. There are actually more like 150 blogs that link here, but because Technorati is not technologically sophisticated enough to recognize that one blog could have two URLs, it only counts the ones made since the domain switchover. Thank god for the 700-or-so misguided surfers who came here yesterday, looking for info about Borat getting the shit pounded out of him in NYC.

If it weren’t for the fact I’m so incredibly self-referential, I’d still be languishing with the haircut blogs down at the three millionth position. At this rate, with a couple more flamewars, I should be back to the old ranking by about Christmas time, which will be a nice pressie. If I haven’t made it by then, I’ll just start picking fights with celebublogs at random and linking to blogs nobody else links to randomly, as they are always so grateful.

Beware, ye mighty and ye obscure!

the question is: what IS a manah manah?

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It is time.

And some fascinating trivia about the song, via a comment here from Christefano. Given the shape of those muppets, it’s quite interesting to note that the song was written to score a Swedish porn film.

“Mah Nà Mah Nà” is a well-known pop music song, written by Piero Umiliani. It was a hit in many countries, including the USA, in 1968–1969. The song’s lyrics contain no actual words, only nonsense words resembling scat singing. The original version interpolates melodies from “Swedish Rhapsody” (“Midsommarvaka” (“Midsummer Vigil”)) by Hugo Alfvén, “Santa Lucia“, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy“, the jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland“, and others.

“Mah Nà Mah Nà” debuted as part of Umiliani’s soundtrack for the Italian softcore pornography movie Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso (Sweden, Heaven and Hell) (1968), a pseudo-documentary film about wild sexual activity and other behavior in Sweden (“Mah Nà Mah Nà” accompanied a scene set in a sauna). A soundtrack album, “Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso” was released in 1968. The movie was also released under the English title Sweden Heaven and Hell.

 

how to stuff a blog

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blogwars! 

from Gawker, who helpfully shares some blog-stuffing tips for the sake of their Dark Lord, Nick Denton, who is slumming it this week as a writer for Valleywag (fluffing the VC’s, Nick?). One gawktease commenter has requested my email, claiming many and varied interesting Gawker tidbits, but has yet to put out for me. I’m not going to wait forever, baby; show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

Meanwhile, I appear to be the only one who reads these tips and thinks “those would work for blogging drunk, too.” See the rest of this blog for examples.

  • Photoshop and other graphical tricks can often disguise the fact that your posts have little or no information in them.
  • “This thing looks like that thing” never gets old. Ask Kurt Andersen!…
  • Engage the commenters. Sure, some of them can be truculent or deliberately obtuse, but the involvement of a comment community can really make any post – no matter how vapid or desperate – appear to be a riot of activity.
  • Don’t be afraid to be hypocritical. Worried about castigating someone for committing the exact same practices in which you usually engage? Don’t give it a second thought! Who remembers? And if someone does, and e-mails you an angry response, hey, free post!
  • Naked chicks amp up clickthroughs. Rock ’em…
  • When all else fails, never underestimate the power of a screengrab to masquerade as actual content. It’s quick, it’s easy, and requires little effort on your part.

    • Borat Attacked! 2.0

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     Borat, ready for action!

    Okay people, you made me do this. You made me post about Borat when I have, I admit, no interest whatsoever in doing so.

    You made me feel guilty.

    Over 600 of you came to this site so far today looking for news of the anonymous New Yorker who beat the crap out of Borat (Sasha Baron Cohen) a couple of days ago, before Jeeves (Hugh Laurie) came to his rescue. And what did you get? A lame post about poster defacing or is that defacation?

    Go HERE for the story you’re actually looking for, okay? I promise you, Gawker cares about this in ways I never could…

    comment o’ the day: counting on the Count

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    Count von Count, ah ah ah!The Count is, bar none, the coolest character on Sesame Street. Forget your Leftys, forget your Oscars, the Count, Count von Count, was the only one who would have sneaked into your bedroom in the middle of the night and turned you into a numerically-obssessed, undead creature of the shadows. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the bar for cool around the ol’ raincoaster blog, and that is the secret behind Keith Richards’ enduring popularity; the threat of supernatural eroticism.

    Where’s your Big Bird now?

    Sesame Street is, as we have noted time and time and time again around these parts (even without getting into Grover is Bitter, which we will some day we’re really stuck for a post) an endlessly fascinating topic and a true microcosm of the urban reality which surrounds us, pervading every aspect of our lives. Truly there is no contemporary city experience which cannot be examined through the lens of this iconic children’s program.

    Jimmy Canuck is on to this; he’s currently enjoying a long run in WordPress’s Top Posts for his 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Sesame Street, and I am proud to report I did, in fact, know most of them, including Guy Smiley’s real name. I even know Grover’s! It’s an interesting post, for who among us can say they already knew Baby Bear was Jewish?

    He doesn’t look it.

    But deep in the comments section I found this little gem from cole. Read it and weep laughing.

    I actually know the guy who did the orginal Count voice. He is in a fiddler band and one night while I was cocktail waitressing I asked him to do the voice and he said…

    “Fuck off” and “No”

    I said , please oh please, not detered…he said,
    “I only work for money.”
    I offered a dollar, he said “Fuck you, two.” I agreed and he said,
    “I see von green eye, two green eye…ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! Now go and get me a fucking drink.”
    I love Sesame Street.