Chocolate Rain…by Chad Vader

An instant classic. Now, Tay Zonday aficionados and Star Wars fanboys can come together and enjoy their favorite music in a big, happy, zero-gravity hyperwarp planet of luv!

Your basic Tay Zonday original:

and the updated, Star Wars version by Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager.

via StarWarsBlog via Defamer

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Hired to blog: what it takes to get there

Job Hunter

It takes guts. It takes heart. It takes hard work. It takes a blog that knocks the socks (if any) or tiny ankle hairs (if any) right off the reader. It takes the ability to discard relics of meatspace like financial ambition. And it takes, apparently, a job application that looks like this (illustrations added for blog-illustrative purposes only; do not take internally or mix with other liquids):

The Romanov Family

Greetings to the illustrious Manolo, whose growing empire rivals those of the Ottomans and Romanovs, except better-dressed and without the bloody revolution part.

To say that I was excited by the blog job opening at Teeny Manolo would be to understate the case to a near-criminal degree. I am a longtime acolyte of the Manolo (and grateful recipient of the Manolo‘s linkie luv) as well as a highly experienced blogger, blogging instructor and consultant, and former nanny and retailer of clothes for teenies. During my time in the totwear trade, I was sometimes delighted by clever, practical, and attractive clothes, but more often (it must be confessed) I was appalled and shocked into bitter sarcasm by the vast tide of bogswill being passed off as proper clothing for youngsters, boys in particular.

 

What did little boys ever do to get stuck with SAILOR SUITS for Tinky Winky‘s sake? And cheap, shiny nylon sailor suits with scratchy seams that make the baby Jesus cry, or would, if he had to wear those instead of the lovely robes that Mary picked out for him on that trip to Jerusalem.

 

Please accept this application for the position of Teeny Manolo Blogger. Currently I have three active blogs: raincoaster, for my bitter ravings; running through rainthe Shebeen Club for students of my courses on blogging for personal growth; and , for my literary group (who would love to host the Manolo for an evening, should he pass through Vancouver). I average between four and twelve posts a day, and yes, I can modulate the snark at will.

 

I hope to hear from you soon: if you need an old-skool resume, just let me know. You can also check out my profile on LinkedIn.

 

Now, this application got me the job. That is all ye know, all ye need to know. But I’m going to take it around to a few of the job hunting agencies anyway and see what they have to say about it, A) because it will be payback for a lot of fascist, pointless make-work that they put me through for no other reason than that they had to do something with me and didn’t particularly care what it was (see the Operation Orwell tag) and B) it will probably give me something amusing with which to feed the blog. If you think I should feel guilty about wasting their time, I refer you back to A.

So far, the most perceptive comment comes from Mistress Cowfish, herself rather senior in the bureaucracy, who takes great delight in recognizing we are very, very 21st Century lately, in that a winning job application may now contain the expression “old-skool.

I’m not a blogger

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123 ways to drive Voldemort insane

(er)

Elvis! Voldemort!

Stolen from Myspace, which stole it from Mugglenet. If anyone has the original link, I’d be much obliged if they’d put it in the comments so I can add it. Found it!

1. Ask him why he ‘doesn’t have such a cool scar?’

2. Laugh at him.

3. Wake him up by singing Beach Boys songs in his ear. ‘Round, round, get around, I get around…’

4. Knit him things. Really hideous things.

5. Give him kangaroo-ears for a month.

6. Smile during Death Eater meetings and say you taught him everything he knows.

7. Chew bubblegum all the time. Should he address you, your only response will be a series of huge bubbles in quick succession, the last of which will burst everywhere and make a mess.

8. Dance the Funky Chicken.

9. Ask him when was the last time he took a bath.

10. Pat him on the head and give him flowers when his plans are foiled yet again.

11. If you ever need to say ‘Like taking candy from a baby’, be sure to add ‘Of course, SOME of us might find that harder than others.’ Stare pointedly at him.

12. Play ‘knock-&-run’ at his bedchamber door late at night.

13. Call him ‘The-Man-Who-Let-the-Boy-Live.’

14. Ask why the Dark Mark couldn’t look like something ‘more socially acceptable?’

15. Insist that you have met chunks of cheese with more cunning plans than his.

16. Pinch him. Make sure he squeals.

17. Be cheerful.

18. When he tries to impress you with his powers, say ‘Awwwww, lookit. Voldie’s got a twiggle!’

19. Try to teach him to play a mouth organ.

20. Roll your eyes during plotting sessions and say things under your breath like ‘You’re the boss, boss’ or ‘It’s your funeral.’

21. Greet him in the mornings with a sarcastic ‘My sir, you look particularly menacing today.’

22. Taunt him about his middle name. ‘Marvolo? What’s that – a washing detergent?’

23. Keep a ‘good-behaviour chart’. Award points and give out gold stars.

24. Magic-marker Potter-style glasses on him while he sleeps.

25. Apparate into and out of his room rapidly. Do this non-stop for an hour. *poof* there *poof* gone *poof* there…

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Continue reading

Operation Global Media Domination: the Technorati Situation

cross-posted to running through rain

TIAWell, after losing 2000 places on Technorati recently because apparently nothing I cover is link-worthy, not that I’m bitter and you people wonder why max got a whole biography, I have recently regained my former status in the 16,000s. And how, you may ask? Simple, I reply.

I have a big mouth.

It turns out, it doth, that comments made on WordPress.com blogs are counted as independent links to our own blogs from those other blogs when and if that blog displays the recent comments in the sidebar.

Implications: I’m not going to be resisting the impulse to shoot my mouth off anymore (Metro, don’t say it). There’s more of an incentive to comment on the top blogs, which will of course reinforce their popularity, because they have more authority, which means that links from them count more on search engines than links from obscure blogs (although T counts everyone, no matter what the authority). It will make WP.com blogs attractive destinations for commenters who are interested in subtle blog pimping (ie not AND CHECK OUT MY BLOG WWW.BOZONINCORPORATED.BIZ!!!). God knows I dropped Iain Dale like a hot turd once he restricted commenters to those willing to link only to Blogger blogs or forgo links entirely. I am certainly not the only one who thinks this way.

Questions: it remains to be seen if it works this way with other search engines like Google. It remains to be seen if this is a deliberate strategy on WP.com’s part or if they’re going to read my post in the forum and go oh shit! and “fix” it. It remains to be seen whether this applies equally to those who choose not to become Avatarded (WP already excludes them from Top Blogs, Featured Blogs, etc).

Anyway, comment away. My Fish Heads, Fish Heads post could use some sweet lovin’.

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subservient chicken rules!

No, it’s not the regulations for a new kind of kink party. It’s a trip in the Wayback Machine to deepest, darkest 2005, when Burger King, of all monarchies, rolled out perhaps the awesomest, gob-smackiest, rootin’ tootin’ time wastin’-est website in the entire history of the Intertubes.

Subservient Chicken

The Subservient Chicken.

The deal is this: You type in something for the chicken to do, then you Submit (it’s a Subservient website; what would you expect?) and the garterbelt-clad-yet-otherwise-nekkid-as-a-jaybird chicken performs whatever act your devious mind can come up with for her.

Strangely, the list of actions seems to have shortened since last I frequented the site. She can no longer, it seems, remember the Macarena. She now does Half Lotus position when you type Yoga, rather than the Warrior pose she used to do. Air Guitar is no longer in her poulexicon.

And just try typing “show us your boobs”. Someone with more hacker skillz and patience than myself will have to let me know if the dirty chicken hacks still work. All I got was the stern e-cluck and fingerwag.

I recall with pride that I was probably the first to type in “Destroy Tokyo” and that it still works.

Supposition as to the identity of the masked chicken abounds to this day. Given the Oscar-worthy effort of the immortal Subservient Chicken routine “Perform Shakespeare” I think there can be no doubt that we are dealing with an actor of rare quality and subtlety, one who had fallen upon hard times, if only momentarily .

Yes.

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