Dumbidity

For Growling, "Marking" and Shredding the Bark off Trees - TIGERSMACK!

FINALLY!

Ol' buddy Dave has directed his prodigious web and blogificatory talents to something meaningful - DANNNH-DANT-DAHN-NANT! TigerSmack.

TigerSmack is a place for LSU Tiger fans, friends and nemesi (if that's the proper plural of 'nemesis') alike can e-gather to growl at each other and shred the furniture without upsetting Mrs. Smack and their burgeoning nest of Smacklings.

He's got a daily digest of LSU Tiger news on the web (with links, natcherly) and a message board sure to flame hotter than a jambalaya cook-fire in Gonzales in August.

Geaux check it out. And be sure to click on a few ad links just to drive up the counts. Dave's put a lot of the Smacklings' college funds into R&D, so if anyone deserves to see some web revelnoos from adverteasers, it'd be him.

Keeping Up with Dave

My buddy Dave, to whom we all owe a certain debt of grabbitude for pushing me into blogdom, is at it again. This is what he's serving up at etoufee dot org today:

Howdy

Monday | March 21, 2005 | 9:00am CST: Tuesday | March 22, 2005 | 9:00am CST: OK, I lied. Etouffee.org is STILL offline while I tweak completely re-do the templates. It'll be back online some time today. Probably. Possibly.

He does this on a regular basis. In a way it drives me nuts, but on the other hand it does keep things fresh and interesting.

Now for me to complain about Dave's transblogrification is a little silly considering "all ze terrible trubbells in da voild", reminding me to an extent the way bored chids will whine something that translates into "(whine) I don't have anything to whiiiiiiiiiiine about."

It's not that I wanna pick on Dave, it's that I don't wanna blog about the Terri Shiavo case or her incredible bigamist/common-law-ex-husband. The guy at CodeBlueBlog (a big, Minnie Pearl hat-tip to Suzette for that link) is doing a thoroughly professional job of it, although reading it makes my heart hurt worse for her. I don't wanna blog about the morbid Papal Death Watch or even the tabloid speculation that Bill Clinton's got some dread disease - again CodeBlueBlog is on it (3 different ones). I don't wanna blog about child-molesterers who confess murder or glom vast newsminutes with courtroom theatrics.

I might wanna blog about the price of gas though. I'll work on that while I keep an eye on Dave.

Meeting the Blog Couple

Today I met with a blogger I follow, his/her spouse and their close friends - I'll call the blogcouple "Fred" and "Wilma" and their friends (who also blog, but I must confess I haven't been following theirs with much frequency and even less regularity) "Betty and Barney".

They were in the Emeril™ City to engage in some serious recreational consumption of food, drink, fun and frivolity - all of which continues to be in abundant supply despite the draconian restrictions of the post-Mardi Gras, Lenten season. Since Catholic Doctrine strictly forbade me to eat a baloney sammich or a hots-dog wienie, I had to suffer through the oyster platter with them at a fine, French Quarter seafood house.

Good people, these - they laughed at my jokes and stories and proved to be excellent conversationalists even without keyboards and flat-screen monitors. Barney is apparently King of the Brisket Grillers and Betty is excited that little Bam-Bam has entered into the fully mobile stage - an excitement that will soon turn to the exhaustion most seasoned parents understand go with chasing behind toddlers. I owe Wilma lunch, though Fred seems to think I can cover that by buying him a few beers next time.

I suggested they take a ride Uptown and back on the Streetcar, and Fred could yell "STELLLLLLAAAAA!" out the window. The consensus was that he might, but his first trick would be to talk the driver into letting him a) have a turn at the wheel, or b) give an impromptu "tour talk" to the other riders. Sounded like a great idea to me - Fred and I share a number of character flaws traits like that. Poor Wilma, she and my Dear Sweet Wife are saints to put up with the likes of us.

I bet they'll have a great time in the Big Easy this weekend. It seems to me like they'd have a great time watching the bears down at the dump as long as they were all together - and they didn't run out of brisket.

Good time, and a safe trip home y'all.

Oldest Blog in the World?

According to the latest statistics available to me from my enablers at Typepad, Dumbidity may be the oldest blog in the world.

Yep, I used to have an average of 50 hits a day (woo-hoo) but now I'm down to just under 2. Reworking the math using long division to get the number of days and converting to years...

*bites pencil*

*crunches numbers*

...indicates this blog is just shy of 35 years old.

*replaces socks and shoes*

Now that predates the PC, Apple, TRS-80, Commodore-64 and the Internet according to even Algore's fair e-tale. Dumbidity would then also predate what might otherwise be the Alpha Blog in terms of it being posted in installments available to and monitored by the masses: John-Boy Walton's Bigchieftablet dot com.

There's no telling where it will end. With the right manipulations, Dumbidity might soon be competing with Mel Brooks' 2000 Year-Old Man.

G'night Mama
G'night Daddy
G'night Mary Ellen
G'night Jimbob
G'night Grammaw
G'night Mel...

MEL?!?

OY!

************************************************

UPDATA: (16:45) According to a very nice Typepadista named Melissa, their engineers spayed/neutered an insect that was causing their statistical troubles. And you're gonna love this part - she thought I'd find it amusing that the system was calculating as though the blog started in 1970, beating John-Boy by 2 years.

She obviously hasn't been visiting much.

Something in the e-Water Maybe?

I go away for a week, and not one, not two, but THREE of the folks on my list drastically reformatted their blogs.

Suzette's represents her second change in the last few months. I have to say I liked Cripes! Suzette ver 2.0 (pink) better than the new green layout. The good news is that the content is just as sassy as ever.

Kevin had molted his summer skin for an autumnal look, but now he's totally retooled (henh-henh, henh-henh...tooled) and has a tropical motif^*. Must be the parrothead influence.

Dave was the most drastic - he's resurrected (or maybe just surrected) etoufee.com and is blogging prodigiously after a getting his hiatus fixed.

C'mon - THREE? That reeks of conspiracy.

^*motif – additional hard bony appendages of the jaws which serve especially for the prehension and mastication of food and as weapons of offense and defense: “When I was in first grade and Moe punched me in the mouth, I ‘int worry 'cuz my mama told me I was gonna grow some motif anyway.”

BNN: Blind Leading the Blind

In its indefinite wisdom, the schmEditorial Board of BNN has begun running an advice column. It is said that in the Valley of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King, but this looks more like what happens a few years down the road when his Royal Hineyness develops a cataract.

What disparate devils these petitioners must be (and desperate, too).

Best Blog Prize EVER!

By chance today, I posted the 2,500th comment on KevinDonahuedotcom.

And he was very impressed.

The Kevinator was sufficiently impressed to devote his cranial energies toward the contrivance of a "Real American Hero" style script in my honor.

That's the sort of thing you can't even find on ebay. Check this out:

((start Bud Light song)) Real American Heroes....This one's for your Mr. Funny Talking Phonetic Man...Mr. Funny Talking Phonetic Man...you may have a real name, but you didn't mind when I called you 'schmed' at work...called you 'schmed' at work. You stopped by and gave us number 2,500, and that's nothing to sneeze at...no achoo, no gazoontite.... For all you do Mr. Funny Talking Phonetic Man, you voice is welcome here any day...come on back now, Mr. Funny Talking Phonetic Man. ((end Bud Light song))

(It's got a link in it to back here and EVERYTHING!)

Muntly webhosting charges................................................$ 8.95
DSL Broadband Access...................................................... 45.00
Having a blogbud script a RAH commercial in your honor......PRICELESS!

In a fruitless effort to be humble, I suggested he also script "Mr. Chronic Blog Commentor."

I bet he's up all night on that.

Blog Neglect (and Endangerment)

After underwriting the expense of my time at the Conference of Saltmining Experts, the powers at the saltmine expect new and improved ideas on it. It's bad enough that I get back to find a minor cave-in that must be cleared and a deadline for a new salt delivery contract under negotiation, but now I have to devise ways to apply all the innovative techniques for the mining, packaging, preparation and delivery of salt.

I'm multitasking my fingers to the bone and am finding less and less time available for fun stuff. What fun stuff I am finding time for tends to be end-of-year fun stuff for the schmedlets who seem to be engaged in a 3-on-2 tag team match with my Dear Sweet Wife and me. This is all, for the most part, very fun stuff mind you - just incredibly time consuming. It's gotten to the point where I don't even have the motivation to dig out an moldie-oldie to post.

Add to all that the stress from a short-term cash crunch resulting from a poorly managed federal tax position and Louisiana's insidious "Stelly Plan" for swapping sales taxes for income taxes.

I know there's been a whole lot of legislation passed regarding the internet the last few years, and I might've missed something, so I sure hope there's no law specifying penalties for blog neglect.

Uncle Meme-us

~Whoah,
Are we movin' to slo-o-o-ow?
Have you seen us,
Uncle Meme-us?

...with apologies to the Zappa Fambly Trust...

Ol' buddy dave is fomenting (a lovely word, no?) a rebus meme movement at fotoslop.

Go see.

Play.

Infect others.

Rinse, repeat.

Unpaid Blogitical Announcement

Twading in her iconic bwass wabbit for a sleek new Art Deco hutch, the Grumpy Bunny (who represents herself in these parts as Grumpybunnette) has upscaled. Bigtime. Will content follow?

No word on what's happened to her exclusive claim to the fraze "Too stupid for words" though.