Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Nerdy Tech Stuff I Don’t Understand category.
Miracle drugs
Something about living in New York makes me sick. I mean that literally, by the way, not in my usual spoiled, vocal fry “Like, ohmigod, this place is SO GROSS,” kind of sick. I always have a cold or the flu or the plague or some body part disintegrating and it’s all very bothersome and distracting, but we still must persevere. My preferred method of persevering is whining and bitching for about a week until I haul ass to the doctor who demands I offer up a gallon or so of blood before giving me drugs. I should probably check his credentials at some point.
Unfortunately, because I am sick all the damn time, the drugs no longer work the way they’re supposed to. I am single-handedly defeating years of scientific research with the germs in my own body. Amazing! I’m putting that shit on my resume.
Anyway, my latest bout of sickness (strep throat this time, because I am, apparently, seven years old) easily defeated the pathetic penicillin offered up to combat it. So after another visit to my doctor/bleeder, I was given a super, special miracle drug. Almost immediately, I felt weirdly better. Almost tingly with power. It was kind of incredible. I felt like I could shoot laser beams from my eyes and eat glass bottles for breakfast.
The new drug is called Ceclor. Seriously? Ceclor? That’s not an antibiotic, that’s a monster from Greek mythology.
Puggle Update: Part The Second, or, You Guys Are Filthy
I love you all. Really, I do. But, for f*ck’s sake, people.
Search Engine Terms
These are terms people used to find your blog.
Today
Search Views
puggle penis size 1
No. A thousand times, no.
Weekly Shocks’ ADD strikes again!
A few shots of liquid rubbish that I simply must share with you fine people when I really should be writing something else:
1) Every time I take a vitamin pill, I vomit. Sometimes, for good measure, I vomit twice. I bet you’re super psyched to find that out, right? Bitchin’! Anyway. Aren’t vitamins supposed to be good for you, though? Or something? What the hell, body? You suck.
2) This blog has received more than 80,000 hits since I started it back in January. Thank you. Really. Thank you. And I’m so sorry.
3) I got my first American cell phone today. I had a mobile in England. It was blue, shaped like a brick, the texting function didn’t work, I had no calling plan, and I really only turned it on when one of my undergrads got so drunk he was puking up several key organs and needed to be carted off to the hospital for new ones. I loved that phone. I named him Gunter. My new mobile is sleek and stylish and way too hip for me. I’d name him, but I need to figure out how to turn him on first. I’m giving myself three weeks to complete that task before I get so frustrated with the damn thing, I throw it against the wall.
4) You know, I’m only on Point 4 of this blog post, and I’ve already mentioned puking twice. Three times if you include this current bit. Sigh. I need to diversify.
5) The Patriots lost on Sunday. Who cares?
6) True story for you:
Sometime last year-ish, my flatmates and I came across a devastatingly heartbreaking tale in our otherwise laughably terrible university newspaper. It was a story of an undergraduate at our inflated, pompous, but really quite excellent Oxford. The student had developed a nasty addiction to heroin in his second year. His College, like most Oxford colleges, was extremely supportive of him while he sought treatment, but his addiction, like most addictions, pretty much took over his life and kicked his ass. So the kid dropped out and was now homeless in the city, selling the Big Issue to his former academic colleagues on the streets.
Now, not to belittle this poor kid’s miserable fortune, but this is my blog, after all, so the punch line is as follows: I’ve realized that I would be in far less debt right now if I had developed a heroin addiction instead of succumbing to the far more expensive habit of formalized education. The federal government of these glorious United States pretty much owns my soul, my ass, and the souls and asses of any and all future children I might bear. I can’t decide if this fact is ridiculously funny or just ridiculous. Probably both. Hooray!
7) Bill Corbett of MST3K and Rifftrax fame just responded to some goofy comment I made on his Facebook page. He pretty much ordered me never to leave the country ever again. That totally made my year.
8 ) Speaking of, those Rifftrax geniuses are at it again. Encore Presentation of the RiffTrax Live Event of Plan 9 From Outer Space on October 8. I’m seeing it, because God loves me. Does God love you? Then you had better be there.
9 ) I may have sold a story to a legitimate magazine. May have. Oh my.
And on that mysterious note, back to the grindstone. Hoo hah!
And SCENE.
I’ve been waiting to say this for seven months.
My dissertation is done. Finished. Complete. And hopefully good enough to pass unscathed under the hyper-critical, laser eyes of Oxford examiners, although, frankly, at this point, I don’t much care. Ding dong, the witch is dead. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Celebrate good times. Come on.
A few, brief, self-indulgent comments on the process:
Final word count: 27,654. Yes, I am crazy like a fox, and, yes, I stayed up all night manipulating this bitch up to that number. Don’t judge me.
Microsoft Word 2007 is not quite as crappy as I first thought it was. Clearly, it was designed by an insane person high on crack, but I originally thought it was designed by a barely animate doorknob. So, progress. Hooray.
My typing and spelling skills, never particularly good to begin with, become almost amusingly wretched after 4am when I am high on aspartame, caffeine, and lack of sleep. Not only do I misspell every other word, but I often misspell the same word over and over again in exactly the same way. This suggests that I’m either stubborn or delusional, perhaps both.
When in panic-writing mode, I can produce over a thousand words an hour. I find that impressive. And the writing,while not especially good, at least doesn’t suck eyeballs. Then again, I haven’t slept in a while, so we’ll see what I think of my writing after a few hours days of sleep.
Aw, who am I trying to kid? You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to re-read this matted and rancid piece of horse hair. If I didn’t still have to submit it, I’d burn it, then spit in its cinders.
Still, it’s done. And I am a happy girl.
Off to print, bind, submit, and sleep. Better blog postings to come, I promise, once the sleep thing has been taken care of. Keep it real, homedawgs.
Another Facebook Rant
Oh, Facebook, you conniving man-whore. Will you never cease shaming me to tears? This is an abusive relationship, my love. I’d leave you, but we both know I’m not strong enough. So you’ll continue to use and abuse me with all your salty, bitchslapping bitterness and, God help me, I’ll continue to love every minute of it.
We all know Facebook, drunk on his ever-growing popularity and meteoric rise to world domination, fell in with a bad crowd about a year ago and started smoking crack and shooting heroin. In order to pay for his various addictions, he first allowed high school students to partake in his naughty goodies (oh, bad, Facebook, bad, bad) and then began adding hundreds and hundreds of hopelessly inane “Applications” to his daily menu, “Applications” he bought from disreputable foreign sources. These goddamned “Applications” make me want to peel my own skin off and eat it. 99.9% of them are so pathetically pointless, you can’t help but add them just to waste even more of the precious little time you have remaining before your dissertation is due. (Have I mentioned my dissertation before? It’s due Friday. It’s not done yet. I’m dead.)
Every once in a while, though, I summon every ounce of self-control I have left in my fragile, beaten body and I ignore a friend’s invitation to partake in some silly application. These rare and precious moments are major triumphs for me, testaments to my unfailing good sense and taste, or at least evidence of my basic apathy toward discovering which is more badass, a pirate or a ninja (bunnies could kick either of them to shreds, so it’s a moot point anyway), or giving a flying rat’s ass which of my Facebook friends supposedly has a crush on me (all of them do, obviously, if they have any sense at all). One friend, in a supreme moment of post-existential angst-y irony, sent me an invitation to partake in “The Most Useless Application of All” which does, as you might expect, absolutely nothing. This might have been modestly clever had I not already received an invitation, just moments earlier, from another friend to join a group enquiring, ever so politely of me, “Which Useless Facebook Application Are You?” It’s enough to make me sob, but that’s ok, because I’m sure Facebook probably has a “Shoulder to Cry On” application, too.
Regardless. I’m getting better at saying no to my Facebook friends and their incessant demands for me to try their hot new life-wasting addictions. Facebook is on to me, though, and every time I hit that glorious, self-actualizing, empowering IGNORE button, a little message pops up, damning me to hell:
“You have just ignored a request from one of your dearest, loveliest friends, a friend who was simply thinking of you fondly and wanted only to amuse and please you. You are a heartless bitch. God just murdered a kitten because of your selfishness. I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY.”
OK, it might not say exactly that, but it’s pretty damn close. I have thus been shamed by a faceless cooparate entity, a freaking website, fer cryin’ out loud. Bugger. I’ll have to add this to my ever-increasing list of reasons of Why I’m Going To Hell. I better start packing, for I hear sweet Satan’s dulcet tones. Bet he has tons of applications on Facebook.
Another inspired “WTF?!?” moment, courtesy of Weekly Shocks’ blog stats.
For your pondering pleasure:
Search Engine Terms
These are terms people used to find your blog.
Today
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| puggle | 3 |
| zoo weekly penis explode story | 1 |
Wow.
Well, aren’t I a GRADE A MORON!
See, I should know better by now. I really should. Yet I go ahead and do it anyway. I write stupid blog posts about Viagra and Cialis and other products designed to embarrass me when they are advertised on television during quality time with my eight-year-old niece. And it’s inevitable that Google picks up this post, and now I have all kinds of sad folks landing here, innocently searching the web for simple, sweet things like “penis performance” hoping that somehow Weekly Shocks can help them please their ladies. To all those who came here for that purpose, I deeply apologize. I got nuthin’. Lots of stuff on puggles, though. May want to check that out. Chicks dig puggles, trust me.
Now, why the hell have I just gone and written another damn post about naughty drugs?! What the hell is wrong with me?! Must seek therapy in the future when I’ve finally made contact with my Level 15 Magic Elf and we find The Charm Bracelet in the Forest Dune. Off to finish my quest, my good people. Wish me luck.
First Puggle, Now Penis? WHAT IS THIS BLOG COMING TO?!?!
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a little on the weird side and I subsequently attract and enjoy all kinds of weird stuff, but, honestly, this is is getting to be a bit much even for me.
Some of you may notice that I moderate comments here on good ole Weekly Shocks. It’s nothing personal, I promise, it’s just that certain family members of mine occasionally read this blog (hi Mom!) and certain friends of mine (you bastards know who you are) like to take advantage of that fact and write things that I’d rather my pure-as-the-driven-snow loved ones not see. Gotta keep up appearances and all that. Besides that, though, the oodles of junk mail that I seem to collect in my seventeen hundred email accounts have somehow migrated to the comments section of this blog. I am quickly and inexplicably becoming a repository for Viagra, Cialis, VigRX, and other naughty devices designed to improve your happy areas.
In all sincerity and with all due respect, what the hell?! I can deal with the odd and charming puggle-seekers. I can smile wryly over the occasional bizarre and mildly disturbing internet searches that land people here (latest favorites: “waste dump,” “fart protector,” and “why catholics [are] going to hell.”) I can and do adore the witty and charming comments posted here by the bright and engaging masses (keep ’em coming, folks!). But seriously: what about this blog suggests that the author requires manhood treatment?! Am I coming across as that insecure, that needy, that male?! Bugger it all to hell, people! I am very happy with my completely normal-size-for-my-situation penis. In fact, if it were any bigger, I may run into some very real trouble in my personal life (heh heh…shuffles nervously…coughs…). I’d also have to field many awkward questions from my primary health care provider and would most likely end up being referenced extensively in the New England Journal of Medicine. Then, I’d have to fulfill my inevitable destiny, and join a circus! But I’m not ready for that yet! None of these options really fits into my busy procrastination schedule right now, so, please, move on! Back off, penis people! SO NOT INTERESTED!
OK, deep breaths.
Anyway, let’s keep the weirdness of this blog a bit on the wholesome side, shall we? For example, wanna guess what I’ve been hooked on lately? Old episodes of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego! And how amazing was that theme song?! Now there’s an obsession I think we can all enjoy before getting the song irretrievably stuck in our heads, going mental, and swinging from the rooftops in Scooby-Doo underoos and pickaxes!
If you just can’t get behind the Carmen Sandiego craze (you soulless prole), please remember the following simple guidelines. This is ok:
This, not so much:
Choose wisely.
Alpha Inventions and the Guilt Trip
Gosh, Alpha Inventions is just such a lovely place, isn’t it? Just stick your little blog address into their randomizer and watch the hits roll in! I credit the site with enabling both my somewhat obsessive blogging addiction as well as contributing to a rather obscene increase in readership over the last month or so.
There is one minor problem with the site, though: it’s made for all kinds of blogs, not just bits of fluff, goof, and absurdity like mine. (I’m actually trying to find other blogs like mine and am failing. I attribute this to my incurable oddness and the fact that other people have lives.) I enjoy nearly all the blogs featured on the site, but many of them are very serious in nature, dealing with politics, or religion, or the economy, or really anything of substantive value, none of which, frankly, you’re going to find much of here. I can’t help but look at my site with its bizarre and inexplicable devotion to my cheesy, unfinished novel, puggles, stupid news stories, and the occasional obscenity-filled rant and be a little embarrassed. I feel as if my site is a little, oh, I don’t know, silly? Is silly the right word? Perhaps morbidly inane, pointless, buffoonery? A prime example of a good education wasted on utter rubbish? Authored by a barely literate hack with unmedicated ADHD and chronic, self-obsessed neuroticism?
Huh.
Anyway, if you have a blog and would like an increase in readership, Alpha Inventions is the way to go. I do love the site, even if it does fill me with shame, but, really, what doesn’t these days?!
Damn you, Facebook.
If you have a Facebook account (and if you don’t, goody for you, you anti-establishment, neo-Luddite anarchist-weirdo), then you’ve probably got a pretty strong opinion on its latest redesign effort. Personally, I think it looks as if Mark Zuckerberg threw up all over a Twitter page, but, hey, that’s just me. Maybe you think the new design is efficient and modern and engagingly clever. Maybe you actually like it. Yeah. AND MAYBE YOU ALSO LIKE HITLER!!!!!
Sorry.
Facebook seems to update itself every six months with newer, crappier designs and intrusive, pointlessly inane features, and, inevitably, protest groups emerge to bitch about it. In a new poll on the site, 94% of those who have so far responded gave the new look a big thumbs down and immediately began screeching in the comments section about how stupid and confusing the site has become. More than a few also threatened to dump their Facebook accounts entirely unless Marky Mark & Co get their electronic poopie together and restore the order and harmony of the older, marginally less rubbish site.
Even though I hate the new look as much as the next prole, I no longer make these kinds of empty threats to leave Facebook. It’s a waste of my time to even try. I’m hopelessly addicted to the site and have been for years. It’s so utterly pathetic, and yet, there it is: my day is incomplete unless I’ve refreshed my Home Page at least a dozen times in order to stalk check up on people I barely speak to and couldn’t care less about my friends. I’m currently engaged in about a dozen different poking wars (and I still have no idea what a poke – and subsequently a poking war – is, though it’s probably filthy and will inevitably send me to hell). I obsess over new, comically charming, self-deprecating ways to update my profile (cue the ironic narcissism). I regularly have to stop myself from adding the most idiotic-yet-seductive of applications, such as “What Kind of Woman Are You?” (if you seriously have doubts over what ‘kind’ of woman you are, perhaps it’s time to visit a therapist) or “What Nationality Are You?” (I just recovered from a traumatizing few weeks of misplacing my passport, I don’t need the PTSD, thanks). Currently, about half of my Facebook friends are engaged in a kind of News Feed battle over their choices of the Top 5 Beers of all time. One friend, who may or may not be related to me, actually has Coors Lite as a top pick. Honestly, it’s enough to drive a person to drink Schlitz, or, as it’s more commonly known as, bat urine.
So, damn you, Facebook. Damn your idiotic redesign efforts created to ruthlessly crush all other social networking sites. Damn your creepy inclusion of high school students so that I occasionally stumble across photos of a guy I find adorably attractive only to recoil in guilt, horror, and paranoid shame when I discover said ‘guy’ is 15. Damn your virus-like notes that effortlessly seduce me, then fill me with self-loathing the morning after our sordid, sticky encounters. And damn the fact that the second I finish this blog entry, I just know I’m going to flip back to my perpetually-open Facebook tab to see if anyone has messaged/walled/invited/poked/requested anything from me. Hell, damn me, too!
“Junk” Mail*
* Yes, I know the title of this blog post is a terrible and filthy pun. I apologize, but frankly, I am not perfect and the opportunity to use this bit of naughtiness was too good to pass up.
Crazy AND Tasty Spam?! Sign me up!
I have way too many email accounts. I’m not much of a pack rat in my (admittedly fairly obscure and destitute) real life, but I seem to collect email accounts by the barrel-full. At last count, I had at least eight. This is obscene. I’ve been online for almost ten years now, starting with my shameful AOL days (stop laughing at me, jerkface, I bet you wish you had AOL in the 90s!) and instead of abandoning email accounts when I no longer use them, I keep them and treasure them tenderly, even though they are mostly filled with valueless garbage and horrific reminders of all the moronic things I’ve done in my cheesy past. This is going to get me into serious trouble if I ever decide to launch a political career, I know, but let it never be said that Weekly Shocks doesn’t live on the WILD SIDE! OH YEAH!
Anyway, one of the many side effects of numerous email accounts is, of course, a ridiculous amount of junk-mail. This includes the obligatory nonsense everyone gets: Nigerian prince in disrepute, Russian mail-order brides, live celebrity nude webcam 4U sexfests, fun at the barnyard-of-love porn, etc. The usual stuff that seems to be written by patients suffering from nymphomania and are simultaneously recovering from severe head trauma. You know the drill. Beyond this, however, I seem to get a rather alarming amount of email promising me various treatments to elongate the size of my masculinity. Even though I have no masculinity to speak of, I try not to take this personally. It’s nice that they thought of me, regardless. Besides, some of the subject headings for these emails are quite amusing. This bizarre sample is by far my favorite:
DRAG YOUR NEW HUGE C*CK ON THE GROUND! 15042
Beyond the mystery of what, exactly, 15042 refers to (actual size, in feet, of my new “c*ck?” number of satisfied customers? lottery numbers? what?) I wasn’t aware of the fact that the male genitalia could serve as both a reproductive organ and a cleaning device for my carpets and floors. Thanks for the tip, 15042 genitalia-enhancing people! Heck, maybe I have been approaching the male of our species at the completely wrong angle, failing to recognize their hygienic value!
Or maybe I should get rid of a few email accounts. Hmmm.
The Puggle Stalker Returns!
Ahem:
Search Engine Terms
These are terms people used to find your blog.
Today
| Search | Views | |
|---|---|---|
| puggle | 43 |  |
| puggles | 2 | |
Hooray!
(Check out this, this, this, and this if you’re confused. Or just continue in your confusion if you prefer. You’re cute when you don’t know what the hell is going on. Not as cute as puggles, of course, but you gotta make do.)
Watching Paint Dry and In The News Today
I know that most visitors of Weekly Shocks come here for one of two reasons: 1) mind-numbing, crushing boredom or 2) hard-hitting news. It is my duty to provide you good people with both of these items, and I take such responsibilities very seriously.
Boredom first: this may be old hat to many of you, but I swear, nothing can make you feel more like a filthy, useless sloth than guiding a cheesily-animated helicopter through leftover Super Mario Brothers animation for hours on end. This damn game is so profoundly dumb and yet so insidiously addictive I’m not altogether convinced it isn’t part of a CIA-developed mind control device.
Hysterical conspiracy theories aside, let’s move on to the news, shall we?
Bristol and Levi are, like, so over. To be honest, I actually feel bad for these poor kids. Teenage pregnancy isn’t exactly a dream-come-true for anyone, I’m sure. Going through it under the microscope of the rabid, scandal-hungry media because your mom is a national laughingstock must be a total bloody nightmare. And all of this pressure obviously caused these poor kids to continue in the fine family tradition of naming their small boy an unbelievably absurd name (Tripp? Seriously?) reminiscent of either excessive drug use or high octane firearms, possibly both. We all know how I feel about stupid baby names. I wish them all luck, because I’m pretty sure they’re going to need oodles of it.
Moving on. Every couple of years, I toy with the idea of heading off to law school, because, as we all know, law school is the safe haven for lazy, wiseass showoffs with more entitlement issues than talent. Oh, I’d fit in so well. Conveniently, I also happen to have a legitimate interest in the law, especially when I come across cases like this. Clearly, this guy is insane, but I’m just itching to defend drunks against THE MAN, especially if they’re creative enough to claim that the definition of sovereignty includes “living inside myself, not in Pennsylvania.” Epic.
Finally, where do they find people stupid, drunk, or attention-starved enough to pose for (WARNING, WARNING, WARNING, POTENTIALLY DISTUBRING PHOTOS TO FOLLOW) news stories like this? Poor, dumb moobers.
And that’s that! I trust you are both overwhelmed with tedium and up-to-date on all the current goings-on in the world! Looks like my work here is done. TA DA!
(That oughta hold the little bastards!)
Cripes, If I’d Known I Was Gonna Have Company…
Bless This Mess
…I would have tidied up this dump a bit.
So, my mild case of OCD requires me to repeatedly check my Blog Stats to see how many people I’ve managed to inflict my inane, goofy worldview upon that day. I’m pathetic, I know. Be nice to me: I’m a middle child and am subsequently ignored, isolated, and forgotten even within my own damn family. Blogging is cheaper than my previous attention-seeking behaviors which mostly involved setting things on fire and blaming the destruction on my invisible pet turtle Charley.
I think most personal bloggers are a touch self-absorbed and attention-starved anyway: why else would we vomit up all our private thoughts and observations to anonymous strangers on the intrawebs? It’s probably the closest we’re ever going to come to having our very own Oprah Moments and, gosh darn it, we wanna share it with as many folks as possible, right?! RIGHT?!?! Can I get a HELL YEAH??!
OK, settle down, we’ve got serious business to discuss here.
The question, of course, is how do we lure the readers in? I tried coercing strangers on the street with free beer, but apparently that’s illegal in Oxford, and too many creepy pervs were getting the wrong idea. (Seriously, what makes people think a girl on the corner passing out free beer and standing under a giant blinking neon sign blaring “FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL 1-800-WEEKLYSHOCKS ” is anything but sweet and wholesome? Gutter-minded weirdos!) Luckily, there seems to be a much simpler solution to increasing your blog hits: the strange and wonderful Alpha Inventions. Seriously, this site is jaw-droppingly amazing. If you want to increase traffic, enter your blog into their marvelous little blog randomizer, and start panicking once you realize that traffic on your site has literally increased tenfold and now real, live people are reading and judging and hating your freakishly bizarre, dark and dusty corner of the intrawebs.
So, that gratuitous little plug out of the way, a big hello to all my new readers! Thanks very much for your kind words on my blog, or really for just looking at the damn thing. I hope it hasn’t caused you too much trauma. Most likely, it has passed unnoticed, which is frankly OK by me. As long as those hits keep coming, my deeply-traumatized psyche is soothed and the urge to kill fades just a little bit more. Ahhhhhhh.
It really ain’t easy being green.
Today, during my internet wanderings, I came across a news article on MSN’s homepage (Yes, I occasionally read news articles from MSN. Don’t judge me.) provocatively entitled “Is birth control bad for the environment?“ I sincerely thought this was going to be a joke article written by one of those half-assed pseudo comics MSN occasionally trots out when they’re low on advice for what to do when your 70-year-old boyfriend is fooling around with a 26-year old Russian minx. (I personally love that the advice columnist pretty much berated the 58-year-old letter-writer by dismissively calling her “girl,” “snoop,” and potentially “ugly.” Wow.) But this article about the impacts various types of birth control are having on Mother Earth is a genuine, sincere discussion about the pros and cons of the birth control pill and condoms. And I am now overwhelmed with guilt, because this was certainly an issue I never considered before.
I hate to pull out the old excuse that I’m an American and therefore my environmental awareness is understandably limited. So I won’t. Hell, I’m well-traveled and literate and I care about the environment. I buy local. I save plastic bags. I recycle. I reuse my bath water for cooking purposes. (Maybe not that last one, but, hey, I am thinking outside the box, right?) But now I’m ashamed because I assumed that practicing safe sex, no matter what method a couple prefers, is always, always beneficial for the environment. But I was WRONG. I feel like the author of the article is sitting on my back and pushing my face into a pile of nuclear sludge while shrieking, “YOU GOT SERVED, SUCKA!!!!”
Oh well. I deeply apologize for my ignorance and my hatred for all causes that might better our planet. Please remember, I am Catholic, so the very fact that I can write the word “condom” while only blushing a little bit is a big achievement for me. Baby steps, folks, baby steps. Unless you’re practicing environmentally-friendly safe sex, then limited carbon footprints, I guess, limited carbon footprints.
I’m so confused.
The Things You Learn While Blogging
I’ve been at this blogging thing for just under two months now. In the process, I’ve discovered you can learn some pretty odd things about people’s Internet behavior. WordPress has a nifty little tool that tells you the phrases or words people enter into search engines that somehow lead them to your blog. I love this feature. Since starting Weekly Shocks, people have found my little home on the intrawebs by searching for “The Popemobile,” crazy people [in] Oxford, tapeworms, “New England and bitching,” and – my personal favorite – “drunk while marking.” You folks are strange and wonderful and I love you for all your odd, Internet-abusing ways.
More recently, though, I’ve come across a bit of a search engine mystery. In the past day, someone has found this blog seven times by searching for the word ‘puggle.’ (I assume it’s one person who, for whatever reason, is fixated on the strange but adorable creatures.) Bemused and mildly paranoid that the one photo of a puggle I had on the site belonged to an enraged and overly-protective owner who now had my home address and lots of firearms, I got rid of the picture, and replaced it with an equally charming photo of a beagle. However, this doesn’t seem to be deterring the mysterious and dedicated Internet user, as another two ‘puggle’ hits were recorded on my blog today. Huh. Completely flummoxed, I googled the word ‘puggle’ myself, and went through, literally, twelve pages of hits before giving up, never once finding a reference to my blog. How in the hell is this person finding me? If you care to reveal yourself, dear reader, I promise many photos of puggles for your enjoyment, so long as you show me whatever magic trick you’re employing in landing here. I sense you have mighty powers. JOIN ME!
I wonder if he has Facebook access in his PopeMobile.
The Holy Father, Keeper of Men's Souls! Wonder if I can poke him on Facebook....
Every once in a while I remember that, as a Catholic, I’m occasionally supposed to pay attention to what the Pope says and adjust my behavior accordingly. Lucky for me, the miracles of modern technology have reached deep into the heart of St Peter’s, allowing for good old Benedict to beam his troll-like visage and complicated, often contradictory eschatology into the homes of millions! Yes, ignoring his edicts has never been easier now that the Vatican has its own YouTube Channel!
Taking pot shots at the Catholic Church has become so easy it’s not even fun anymore, and I’m still devoted enough to my Irish Catholic roots to feel the need to defend the Church. This isn’t easy, especially because I grew up in Boston, and when people find that out, they inevitably ask if I, or any of my friends, was handled inappropriately by a priest. It’s quite sad, because I loved growing up Catholic and had a pretty hard time adjusting my perpetually confused, but very affectionate opinion of the church with this worldwide scandal that pretty much tanked the already fairly limited ‘cool factor’ associated with being a Catholic. It was hard enough having to explain to my Protestant friends, that, yes indeed, we believed in transubstantiation, and, yeah, I guess that sort of did make us ritualistic cannibals, but hey: there are worse things out there than indulging in a little, old-fashioned human flesh, right? Right?! It’s not as if we were molesting small boys!
Oops.
Anyway, the Pope has gone thoroughly modern now, which I think is awfully cool, though it also means that I seem to be sinning in ways I had never considered possible before. Take the pontiff’s latest proclamation on the subject of social networking sites:
“The concept of friendship has enjoyed a renewed prominence in the vocabulary of the new digital social networks that have emerged in the last few years. The concept is one of the noblest achievements of human culture. … We should be careful, therefore, never to trivialise the concept or the experience of friendship. It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation. If the desire for virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.”
Now, I fully admit to being a Facebook whore, mostly because it means I don’t have to interact with real people in real time and the steady hum of my laptop drowns out the voice of the Devil in my head. But now Pope Benedict is telling me that such obsessive desire is in fact isolating. Well, bugger, since when has isolationism been a problem for Catholics?! Have I been imagining all those monasteries and convents in both my anecdotal religious experience as well as my shoddy historical training? Apparently. Still, it’s always nice to chalk up yet another previously innocuous habit into the category of sin, because, let’s face it, we Catholics are nothing without our sin. And I cling to that, because sin is also inherently funny. So I guess I am taking pot shots at the Church, like every other stooge in the world, and what’s worse, I’m taking really cheap pot shots, too. Oh well: you do what you can with what you’ve got and then you repent later when the burden of your guilt starts sitting on your head and crushing it.
I wonder if you can receive Penance online? ‘Scuse me, I have a date with Google.
Seriously, why have God when you’ve got a Mac?
It is with deep sadness that I must report the loss of yet another loved one to the Cult of Mac.
I don’t get the whole Mac Adoration thing. I fully admit to being a nerd, but it seems as if my nerdiness simply doesn’t extend to spending obscene amounts of money on a product that I’m not wholly convinced isn’t produced by a splinter militia group. Unfair? Too mean? Perhaps. But Mac apologists (and, good Lord, there are so damn many of them) are some of the pushiest, most annoying people I have ever met. On any other topic, they can be sweet, rational, entirely normal human beings. Suggest just a slight criticism of their elegant, godlike, and crushingly ubiquitous MacBook Pro, and you better hope you have a spare seven hours on your hands, because you will subsequently be subjected to a stern and very bitter lecture detailing not only the technical wonders of the Mac but also the inherent evil found in PCs. Their fervor is frankly creepy. I think they honestly believe that if you hold a Mac against a gaping wound, the power of the Almighty Mac will magically heal the injury. Seriously, why have God when you’ve got a Mac?
Of course, PC fanatics are nearly as bad, and possibly smellier too, because when they’re not making fun of the ‘game deficiency’ of Macs, they’re stuck in hour 47 of their World of Warcraft raids, stopping only occasionally to join online chatrooms and viciously argue the merits of The Similrillion with other similarly hygiene-challenged losers.
Yes, I’m being horrible. And I need to admit right now that I use a Dell, and a really cheap Dell, too. I’m sorry. I know that makes me a technological leper and a skinflint prole to boot. But knowing that, perhaps you’ll understand why I just do not give a toss about the supposed benefits of the Mac’s ‘user-friendly’ system and why it really is worth nearly three times the cost of my perfectly functional Dell. I don’t care. I’m cheap. I have over $100,000 of educational debt and will most likely die before I finish paying it off. So, to repeat: I do not want a Mac and just don’t get the whole superior Mac thing.
But maybe you don’t either. Who knows. Regardless, watch this: you’ll feel better.
Weekly Shocks' Blog 