You Hate Me! You Really, Really Hate Me!

I commented to my long suffering wife the other day about my recently having achieved another landmark in followers.

“Honey, my blog now has over fourteen hundred followers!”

“That’s nice dear,” she replied, but then asked “Does that mean something?”

I rolled my eyes discretely at her lack of comprehension of the nuts and bolts of blog mechanics.

“It means that every time I write a new post, one thousand four hundred and seven people, collectively known as my followers, are notified of this momentous event. They can then scramble to the nearest smart phone, laptop or if they’re homeless, the public library, and hang on my every word.  Despite the publishing industry’s opinion that I have very little to offer in the way of writing skills, there are fourteen hundred people who feel otherwise”

“That’s nice, dear.” she said, already refocusing her attention back to the sudoko puzzle or Kindle or whatever that thing was that allowed her to ignore me.

“..so then Clinton says Obama was luckier than a dog with two dicks! Yow-za!!  Now with a quick show of hands, which eleven of you think this was a good post?” (Image from businessinsider dot com)

I sat there, mildly upset that she had not suggested uncorking some champagne to celebrate.  I turned my attention back to my trusty computer and looked at one of my latest posts.  This particular one was a whimsical discussion as to the merits or drawbacks of a dog having multiple penises, as originally suggested by former President William Jefferson Clinton.  Then I jumped over to the stats page.

Fourteen hundred followers?!! Get your bikinis on, girls, we’re gonna dump champagne over your heads! (Image from annsheybani dot com)

The post had registered 11 likes and 141 people had actually read it.  These numbers are pretty typical for my posts.

I have a list of 70 or 80 people who I notify en masse via email whenever I post, most of them are not technically “followers” as far as WordPress is concerned.  The email recipients are coworkers, family members and the receptionist at my urologist’s office among others.  Many read the posts so they can avoid being badgered by me to do so, and at least one coworker has admitted to only reading my blog when seated on the toilet.  Of my 141 hits, I’d estimate that 27 of them were from my stash of these non-follower, peer-pressure readers.

You gave me your email address after I helped you move that heavy piece of furniture, now read my blog post, dammit! (Image from onlineconnections dot ca)

I try to tag my posts in a manner which accurately guides readers to my work. After all, it’s easy to attract readers from search engines by including content tags like “Bieber”, “Kanye”, “public urination” or “Kardashian” despite the fact that the post was mostly about my fondest Thanksgiving memory.  My tags for the dog weenie post were “Clinton”, “dog”, “lucky”, “two”, “humor”, and “dick.”

…so then Kanye says to the Beebs, “Yeah and it’s deep too!” (image from businessinsider dot com)

My estimates for hits generated per tag are as follows:

Clinton: 6 hits.  Rationale: Bill, Hillary and Chelsea are still news worthy, depending upon the week’s events.  Funk master George Clinton may have been good for a hit as well.

Perhaps I’ve underestimated the drawing power of da funk. (Image from ncpedia dot org)

Dog: 4 hits.  Rationale: Everybody likes dogs, also I noticed Korea was well represented in my global numbers.

Lucky: 5 hits.  Luck and/or being lucky is always a popular concept, though being as lucky as “a dog with two dicks” is still an analogy known only to Bill Clinton and the hill-people.

Two: 7 hits.  Two is a pretty good number.  Everyone knows that one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.

Humor: 6 hits.  In these dark times, everyone could use a laugh.  They’ll plug words like “humor”, “chuckle” and “guffaw” into search engines and hope for a few yuks to take their minds off of the rumors about lay-offs down at the salt mine.

Dick: 13 hits.  I’m assuming I would have had even better numbers if Clinton had said Obama was luckier than “a pussycat with 17 titties.”

Two dicks! Get it? See, he’s a Dick, and he’s holding up two fingers on each hand. From the looks of that crowd, he’s gonna top 11 likes. (Image from theatlantic dot com)

Those estimates account for 41 of my hits coming from search engines.

So between search engines and my personal mailing list I’ve accounted for 68 of my 141 hits.  Assuming no random hits, I can deduce that the remaining 73 hits on my post came from actual followers.

1407 followers minus the 73 who actually read the post leaves 1334 followers who didn’t read my post.  Roughly 95% of my followers didn’t follow me loyally enough to read my post.  Cue the sad violin music and zoom in on the tears welling up in my eyes.  As for the “likes”, 11 out of 1407 followers isn’t even relevant.  Mathematicians could argue that statistically no one actually liked the post.

I glanced over at my wife, who was so engrossed in the romance novel on her Kindle that she had fallen asleep.  I smiled to myself, secure in the knowledge that for the time being at least, she didn’t know what a total failure I turned out to be in the blog world, despite amassing 1407 followers.  That bottle of bubbly can just keep on taking up valuable refrigerator space until we have something meaningful to celebrate, like Justin Bieber publicly urinating on a prostitute who turned out to be a Kardashian.

You Lucky Dog !

[NSFW Warning: This post contains a fair degree of dick humor, and as such it may not be safe for work.  This will be especially true if you work at a kennel or a veterinarian’s office]

Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, was discussing Barack Obama’s having Mitt Romney as an opponent in the most recent election.  President Clinton thought that Obama was quite fortunate to have Romney running against him.  Lucky even.  How lucky?  According to the former leader of the free world, Obama was “luckier than a dog with two dicks”.

See, two dicks are better’n one for dogs. Who don’t know that? Neither one of em has to be any bigger’n this.   (Image from bornrich dot com)

The thought of someone who once held a position of supreme power speaking that way shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Clinton’s time spent at Oxford shouldn’t disqualify him from being prone to saying wacky things either (irrespective of whether he inhaled or not).  If I had to guess, and I do, because no one is talking, I’d say that Bill picked up the analogy back in his days in Arkansas.  In fact, slipping into an Ozark hillbilly accent while talking about a dog with two dicks just adds the perfect zing!

This dog can’t talk, for more than one reason, but if he could, he might well ask how a man with four balls could walk. (Image from noruffdays dot com)

The idea that influential people might use off-color comments in private should not knock anyone’s socks off.  The reality is that when it’s all said and done, these people are still just people.  They put on their handmade, virgin-wool dress slacks the same way I would if I could afford them.

What is truly amazing is that someone somewhere once decided that a dog with two dicks would be a luckier than a dog with the standard issue single weenie.  Men everywhere would admit that having more than one of them would not present much of an advantage.  Most men will tell you it’s tough enough to get the ladies to pay any attention to the ones they already have.  A quick search of the internet will reveal thousands of products to make them harder and/or bigger, but none to make them multiply.  It would seem that having two would only make getting attention that much tougher, not to mention possibly creating some jealousy issues between the little rascals.

Many theorists believe that males think with their “boy-parts”.  While this generalization is usually made in reference to men and not dogs, one need only recall the neighborhood dynamics the last time Daisy the Labradoodle was in heat to realize the cross-species applicability.  A dog with two dicks would likely be downright schizophrenic.  I imagine an angel dick on one shoulder and a devil dick on the other, each vying for Rover’s attention.

This brings up another troubling aspect to the notion of a two-dicked Dachshund;  Where exactly on a given dog would the second one be located?  Putting it right next to the first would make sense anatomically, since all the plumbing hook-ups are already handy.  Beyond the simplicity of pipe connections though, that location makes no sense.  The competition issues will be staggering, and Bowser can forget about trying to write his name in the snow.

As the old real estate saying goes, “Location, Location, Location!”  While I admit that doctoring a photo of a Bassett Hound or a Welsh Corgi might have had better comedic effect, using a Bluetick Coonhound may have been more accurate considering the term’s likely roots.  (original image from Wikipedia dot org, doctored badly by the author)

All things considered, one can see why this colorful bit of whimsy had not made it out of Arkansas until now.  Regardless, Clinton proves that even after their time in office, politicians are still more than capable of amusing and enlightening us.

Teddy Roosevelt Tweets Miley A New Tattoo !!!

Miley’s new ink is barely visible on her left arm, but more importantly, look at all that prime real estate with belly button-frontage! (Image from okmagazine.com)

I read a news story the other day about Miley Cyrus getting a new tattoo.  To be clear, I wouldn’t really call it a “news story”.  It was more like “30 seconds of my life which I’ll never, ever get back”, but for the sake of argument, we’ll call it a story.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, Miley got a new tattoo.  It seems to be a Tweet-sized portion of a speech which Theodore Roosevelt gave in France in 1910.

It reads: “So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

The portion of the speech the quote came from is: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

For the record, I got both of those quotes from eonline.com, your source for entertainment news and my source for historical quotes.

First impressions tell us that presidents sure did talk fancy-like back in 1910. My modern interpretation of the actual meaning of Teddy’s full quote is; “Yo! Give up mad props to the doers, and don’t pay no mind to the haters – kin I git a ‘oh-hellz-yee-ay-ah’?”  Or maybe it’s about the dirty little gladiator who could – you decide.

My interpretation of Miley’s chosen snippet is “Those who can’t do, should get jobs at Chipotle and stop working as, like, critics and stuff”.

The new ink is strategically located on the volar aspect of Miley’s left forearm.  That’s the part you can’t see unless she holds her arm out and goes palm up (Volar is an anatomical term which I threw in because I’m tired of looking petty and stupid – instead I’ll appear petty and smart).  The location prevents prying eyes from getting a good gander at it, and she can sneak peaks at it in her lap during mid-term exams, if she decides to take history classes at Hollywood Community College or Yale or wherever.

It stands to reason that even pop-stars can’t go covering their bodies with entire 12 page speeches by turn-of-the-century politicians.

“Look, tattoo artist dude, I can’t have cracked parchment so close to my ass crack. Just give me a few meaningful words in fancy script and we’ll leave it at that” (Image from archives.williams.edu)

It’s far easier to just take a little snippet which suits you.  This way, you get the intellectual credit for quoting someone famous, without all those pesky “four score’s” and “hitherto’s” making your sexy tramp-stamp look like some historical document on that funny, yellow parchment paper.

In an effort to endear myself to the young, beautiful, famous set, I’ve gone and found a cool presidential quote, and it’s just chock full of great stuff, plus it’s more recent than 1910, so there’s no need to edit out all that flowery, antique lingo.

Here are a few potential snippets (If it will help, try to visualize them in fancy script with piercings nearby):

I want you to listen – What recording artist wouldn’t want this one, and it’s from a President!

To say one thing – This speaks of honesty and simplicity, a single message – so deep, so pure.  Put it on your index finger to help drive home the point of “one”.

Say this again I did – I love this!  It feels like Dr. Seuss meets Yoda, but it’s from a man who was leader of the free world!  This one would great in Old English script across the hairless, defined pecs of any rapper!

I need to go back – Ah, the love of a simpler time – when men were men and women were barefoot, pregnant and without fancy hair extensions!  It can go on your back, but if that’s too literal, put it on your leg or something – go crazy, you’re a star, ferchissakes!!

Back to work – Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps America!  Let’s go build Chryslers!  Put this ink right where your gym-body muscles show!

For the American people – That’s right! It’s all for you America!  Now go see my latest movie and disregard that stuff you saw in the tabloids about my alleged relations with underage boys on my vacation to Thailand.

Have sexual relations with that woman, Miss – Supporting gay marriage is sooo last year, this tattoo says “Go hook up with that girl over there in the sensible shoes” President’s orders!  So naughty, but so nice!

To lie not a single time – Who among us hasn’t strived for honesty?  Put this one across your heart, and make sure it’s above your bra line for the paparazzi!

You’ve likely figured out the original quote, but here it is anyway:

”I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. ”

—Bill Clinton, Jan. 26, 1998   (Quote from about.com)

Coming up next week, we’ll look at tribal tattoos and decide if those A-List stars really meant to advocate female circumcision in New Guinea and monkey sacrifices in the Amazon Basin, or if they just thought the designs were cool looking.