Just what it sounds like. My quest to conquer the global media and take over the world. Maybe I can get my library fines cancelled…what can I say? It’s a last-ditch effort.
Have I ever explained just how difficult it is to maintain the care and feeding of a decent blog while actually working?
Hell to the No! How would I know, right?
But it is. Found out today. Wish me luck feeding the beast, as they say in the White House, now that I actually have, like, “work” and stuff to do.
Meantime, just because it was good for 37 comments last time, let’s have a piccie from my new favoritest movie!
for when they die, we get their stuff.
Yes, Sploid, one of my favorite sites, is no more. Axed. Deep-sixed. Ah, well, I can’t say it any better than they did.
Just like YouTube, Lebanon, Joe Lieberman, newspaper circulation and airline travel, Sploid is being demolished.
It is a great victory for bullshit peddlers everywhere … if they had any idea Sploid existed.
Shut down, laid off, on the nickel, run out of town, shown the door, eighty-sixed, suicided, under heavy manners, finaled by the fuzz, down in the hole, out of the groove, sadder than a map, under the Hoover blankets, taking a bank holiday, riding the rails to Hungry Town, brought down and fought down.
Winners write the history books, but anybody can write the blog post. So get right up close to your computer screen and we’ll tell you a little story…
And so they do, at length, but who cares? More interesting to me is their secret file of Weekend Filler How-To’s, as apparently Denton didn’t want them to play with real news on the weekend, as they might break it. So here’s their secrets to handy-dandy filler, secrets which I intend to carry to my grave.
After posting them here, of course.
This magical world
Sploid wasn’t just a 24-7 news operation — it was a painstakingly engineered information factory.
While free from the dull tyranny of “Headline News” or “whatever’s on the front page of the New York Times,” Sploid editors nonetheless followed careful instructions formulated by senior editors.
Say it was a Saturday, and nothing was happening in the world except bombs in the Middle East and world leaders dying or lapsing into comas, and maybe the planet was getting hotter or whatever. On those “slow news days,” and even on some exciting days, the editors had to rely on a detailed technical manual with exact instructions for filling the “news hole.”
Following the Sploid Topic List requirements resulted in the following wonders from this magical world we share:
Animal adventures
* Violent deer
* Cat-eating raccoons
* Insidious marmots
* Puppy bombs
* Fainting goats
* Disgraced goats
* Worthless panda bears
* Christmas-ruining possums
* Headless roosters
* Monkey copsNation of …
* Foreclosures
* Gangsters
* Murderers
* Retards
* Teenage crack whores
* WitchesHoboes
* Killed for a beer
* Secretly practicing law
* Rioting
* Talking on cell phones
* Acting righteously
* Roughed up by high schoolers
* Killed by elderly sociopaths
* Suing librariesJesus
* Not screwed by Judas
* Appearing in a plate of manicotti
* Appearing in asparagus
* Coming out
* Being blond
* Lacking health insurance
* Probably died hanging upside down like a batNASA
* Kills the Ivory Billed Woodpecker
* Launches a non-exploding shuttle
* Enlists the aid of robot lemurs
* Valiantly battles an army of roadkill
* Hits a run of even worse luck than usual
* Bans dangerous foreign 5-year-oldsOther topics of constant concern included robots, monkeys, occult killings, X-rays of humans revealing foreign (and frequently disturbing) objects lodged within, Nazis, dismemberments, frightening conspiracies featuring the Knights Templar and/or Dick Cheney, dumb and/or evil cops, UFOs and the many problems faced by America’s obese citizenry.
We hope you continue to enjoy these timeless tales from our most delightful planet.
Sara K. Smith was Sploid’s bureau chief in Austin and is a novelist, which means she has to get a job now.
When I began blogging at WordPress, I had few goals. To become googleable. To amuse people. To inform people. To rant about any fucking thing I want. To discuss Squid at endless, tentaculian length.
And to become more popular than the What Not to Crochet blog.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It is an amusing blog, one whose entries I have covered here in the past. I have nothing against the blogger, nor any dispute about what she says is and is not to be crocheted. Such things are indisputable.
Particularly the pasties.
And it is a blog that the world dearly needs, for lo, have you seen the shit they’re crocheting lately?
Still.
I am happy to report that yesterday, for the first time in recorded history, raincoaster beat out What Not to Crochet on WordPress’s top blogs. I can now die vindicated; useless inanities and rants are more popular than crochet-specific fashion advice.
Crushing all in its path, Blackzilla has taken giant strides to the head of the raincoaster blog, with over 100 google hits over the past two days. Darren and Joanne? Ovah. Beautiful Agony? Suffering. Mad mentos and diet coke Scientists? Sputtering out.
The upcoming newcomers, all of whom have had their thunder stolen by my several-days-old Blackzilla posting, include T.W.A.T. in the Air, which several clueless commentors failed to identify as a joke, thus making themselves into punchlines; the Canadian patriotic post Beaver Shots (inexplicable; whodathunk Canadians would be so popular, eh?); and We Are All Gwyneth, for who among us is not, really?
raincoaster 