** The name of the company in question has been changed.

Ok, kids.   I have been doing my bestest trying to be nicer to people.  This has been going on for some time now.  However, nothing gets the better of me than those annoying ass automated phone calls from Joe Solicitor.  Or the calls you get from Sally Salesperson where they ask for you by first name and try to act like an acquaintance…  Dayum.  I thought that shit was borderline illegal on a harassment level.

Anyway, today I turned the tables.  I got an automated call from “Kelly”.  She was offering us the moon and stars and possibly the sun too if we would “press one to stay on the line for a representitive”.

So, I press one.  I hold for a brief 20 seconds or so, expecting “Kelly” will pick up personally and explain to me this great pitch of hers.  A pitch I intended to let her waste her time giving before asking to have all of our business numbers removed from her bullshit auto-dial system.

All that went out the window, when rather than “Kelly”, some deep voiced, crankity, old british dude picked up. 

“You’re not Kelly.”  I say to him, agast that the wool was pulled over my eyes.

“No, that was a recording.  Are you interested in learning more.”  He blurts out in harsh monotone.

“Uh.  No.  Actually.  I’m really, really tired of you people calling us and would like you to remove our number from your database.”

“Done.”  He said as he disconnects my call.

OH NO HE DIDN’T.

God bless *69.  I annoy the shit out of many-a-telemarketer when I can actually get my hands on the number they called from.

So I dial *69 and get the number.  I press each digit and the little british weasel that hung up on me answered.

**”First Asshat”  He answers.

“Yah.  I was connected to you to be removed from your call list and you hung up on me.”  I lament.

“Well, I didn’t hang up, but you have been removed.”  He sneers.

“How the hell am I removed when you only called one of our numerous numbers, sir? Can you explain that?  Do you have a list with every company that notes every number within that company?” 

I’m ready to fight with him by this time. 

“We have them.”  He hangs up again.

So, me (being me), I dial them up again.

“First Asshat”  It was some uptight manly sounding british woman this time.

“I’m calling to be removed from your call list.”

“Yes, that’s why I answered, I heard the conversation with my employee.”  She says.

“It’s pretty simple.  Remove all of our numbers, now, or I will call you 500 times a day until Jesus comes back.”  I tell her.

“They will be removed.”  She retorts as SHE hangs up on me.

Needless to say, I have spent the last hour randomly picking up the phone, dialing the number and saying…

“Hi it’s me.  Only XXX number of the promised calls left today.”

I kind of wonder if I can get in trouble for it.  If anybody would like to have the same big ball of fun as I am, and help me annoy the shit out of these people, I’d be glad to share the phone number with ya.

Happy dialing!

     There’s no doubt about it … everybody’s website needs a good search engine ranking, especially if you’re trying to run a web-based business.  But when you’re running a blog, full of personal thoughts and random ideas, it can be a daunting task to figure out what niche your blog fits into.
     Hell, take us, for example … We’ve got tech articles.  We have “what’s going on in my life” articles.  We have political and current events articles.  And, past that, we have a lot of things with varying degrees of humor (I say varying degress because regardless of how funny the eight of us might find it, many people will have absolutely no clue what the Hell we’re on about).

     My favorites are the “What the hell?” articles.  The screwing-with-google-on-a-regular-basis (and especially Joseph Ferrante) articles, we’ve had some pretty decent results… especially since we’re traveled enough to get same-day-indexing. 
     These things work, ladies and gentlemen, and don’t let any wannabe SEO firm tell you otherwise.

     However … When you’re out of a specific niche, social rankings come heavily into play.

     Mybloglog has been given us a ton of traffic, for instance.  I was introduced to BlogCatalog last night, and that’s pretty cool.  Fuelmyblog has been freaking tremendous.  Linking to your site from a MySpace blog also helps.  And if you’ve got a lot of bloggers in your community (like we do here in Knoxville), reciprocating links with your neighbors is a Hell of a good way to bolster some new visitors.
     Digg, Tehcnorati, del.icio.us and such are useful, but unless you’re getting the traffic in there to start adding to those sites, they’re not gonna help all that much.  But what you can do is join any number of social organizations, such as Dosh Dosh’s Technorati Favorites Exchange, where you’ll actaully stand a chance of improving your Technorati rank — which definitely improves your readership and your ability to sell advertising.

     Actually, Dosh Dosh’s article made me take pause.  I’ve been pretty good about adding local blogs to my Favorites sections of those types of social networking sites.  As long as there’s some reciprocity, it can really help increase the rank of all of the sites involved.
     Now, if only us locals could organize and effort to reciprocate links, then, uh… Like I said, it only stands to help us all.  ;-)  [ *makes mental note to get Instapundit onboard ... heh* ]

     For a few weeks now, Fracas has been pointing out the fact that plenty of people are searching for Shyamali Malakar, and crotch shots, and ending up at her blog.
     Just a few minutes ago, she did a pretty decent post about the whole Shyamali hysteria… Seriously, the girl has attained a level of geek-obsession higher than anyone I can ever remember — even after livinh through the Sam Fox, Amy Weber, Teri Hatcher, Alicia Silverstone, Kate Moss, Gillian Anderson and Callista “Ally McBony” Flockheart years (those were prior obsessions, not my picks).

     Fracas is also doing the “FuelMyBlog” thing. She’s entered the Design a Widget competition over there, and done a helluva job, too, but they haven’t updated the competition page with it just yet.

     Nice job, Fracas!

      Now let’s see if we can channel teh Internets your way a little…

     Ya know, though, Fracas, I still think doing one with Shyamali and ALT’ing it “Shyamali Malakar Nude” would get some serious traffic headed in your direction…

     (God, after writing this, I feel so dirty…)

     Okay, it’s almost midnight … But it looks like, with just a few more clicks, we’ll be the #1 most voted blog on FuelMyBlog!

     Ok, well, as of 11:32PM, we’re now tied for #1 on the Top 100!  One more click, and we set a speed record:  from a lowly 13 votes to the #1 Blog in only 10 days!

     Whoop!  There it is!  At 11:36PM, we’re the #1 most voted blog on FuelMyBlog.

     So here’s where it started:

• On 11-Apr-2007, I put the FuelMyBlog button in the sidebar.  Over the course of a week, a total of 13 people clicked it — and that’s it.
• On 18-Apr-2007, I posted a blog about it.
• On 19-Apr-2007, I was amazed to see we had more than 60 votes due in no small part to the post.
• By 20-Apr-2007, we had around 130 votes.
• By 22-Apr-2007, we made it to #13, so I posted about it again.
• On 23-Apr-2007, I amazed to see us ranked #3.
• On 27-Apr-2007, I made yet another post about us being at #2, and hoped to hit #1 by Saturday.
• On 28-Apr-2007 at 11:36PM EDT, we hit #1.

     So that’s it … I consider this experiment concluded.  You don’t have to hit the button anymore.  We made it in 10 days, and that’s all I really care about. 

     The FuelMyBlog logo went away from the sidebar last week, but thanks to the wonders of Feeds, it appears that we’re still getting a crapload of clicks.  I figured making it to the Top 10 (of the Top 100) was good enough… but…

     You guys kept clicking!  We’re now #2 on the Top 100 and closing fast on #1.  Click it some more!  I wanna set a record:  from a lowly 13 votes to the #1 Blog in only 10 days!

     I put the FuelMyBlog logo up in the sidebar a week, maybe a week and a half ago, and nobody really clicked it — 13 votes.  So on Wednesday, I wrote the article about it.
     It took off like a rocket!  All of a sudden, we’re ranked #4 on the Top 100.

     That far exceeded my expectations.  I gotta give credit where credit is due — I asked, you clicked.  I thank you all for your participation.

[ Update - Monday, April 23, 2007 @ 10:33AM EDT ]

     And the forward momentum continues, with us at #3…

Yes it was a tragedy, yes it was traumatic for those involved, and yes it was horribly unfair. But honestly, get over it already.

Why are we as a nation so infatuated with the death of 33 people whom most of us would never have met? Is this event any different than the thousands of other events that resulted in 1200 deaths across the nation in that same period of time? Is it suddenly news worthy when 33 people die in a single event vs hundreds or thousands dying in similar yet unrelated events?

In the United States of America, how many people drank themselves to death that day? How many innocent people were killed because someone was driving while drinking themselves to death? How many toddlers were raped by a family member. How many children were beaten, bruised, maimed, or killed by their parents that day? How many children slit their wrists or hung themselves because of depression? How many people starved to death? With the exception of starvation (just eight) each of those numbers is greater than 33, most are over 100.

There are many atrocities closer to home that we should be worried about. Yet as a people the US appears intent on ignoring the “routine deaths” in favor of the sensational. Why can’t we realize that CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and all these other so called news channels are FOR PROFIT? They don’t give one bit of shit about reporting the truth. They only care about ratings.

The news is supported by the advertisers. Ratings go up when more people watch. Advertisers pay more for shows with higher ratings. It stands to reason that a for-profit company would do everything they can to get more viewers. I see it on the national news channels, local news, and even PBS and NPR. They all constantly promise one more tidbit of information to string you along and keep you from changing channels.

Ironically, I don’t blame the news agencies. I blame you! You watch the news, you agonize over the tragedy and you buy it, hook line and sinker. Truth, lies, slanted left, slanted right, you consume it all. Your eyeballs glued to the freaking CNN or Fox News are to blame. If you wouldn’t watch the shit, they wouldn’t produce it.

So as you’re walking around tomorrow and see people wearing orange and maroon, commemorating the shooting at VT, thank them from the bottom of your heart for perpetuating a nation of lies, half truths, and sensational tragedy.

     I didn’t think anyone noticed the “Fuel My Blog” button on the right side.  I put it at the top with ”Vote Often, Vote Daily!” next to it, but it’s been relatively ineffective.

     Today, a couple of people have asked, “What is that?  I didn’t want to click it.”  Well, it’s a, uhh, well… I don’t know what it is.

     But I figured with the tens of thousands of sessions we get weekly, maybe it’d go over well… I did it as an experiment to see how much people will actually click something that might look new and exciting.

     Apparently, not much.

     This merely proves that we have some discerning readers who come here for text more than titillation. (*cough* *cough*  Sorry, I couldn’t say it with a straight face.)

     Anyway … I wanna get blogitude.com up there on the “popular” list.  So, uhhh … Click away!

[ UPDATE 19-Apr-2007, 9:31AM EDT ]

     “Ask and ye shall receive,” I guess — not only did you guys do it, but you got us up in the top third of the List.  And we’re blog of the day?  Sweet!
     I’m interested to see how long that can go on…

[ UPDATE 20-Apr-2007, 1:27AM EDT ]

     We’re actually in the 13th spot, approaching twelve pretty quickly!  If people keep clicking, I can see us actually making 10 before the day’s out. 

This blog I dedicate to underappreciated musical artists, albums, and songs.  Any of which may have gotten some attention, but for some reason no longer get the attention they deserve. (Kind of like Vietnam Veterans… or for that matter many of our veterans, with the exception of the really annoying over zealous ones that are there to DEMAND pity from those of us who couldn’t even fathom joining the military if we wanted.  That is a different blog though.)

The first on this list are two brothers which were featured in Mushy’s blog not too long ago, Stevie Ray Vaughn and his brother Jimmy Vaughn.  Both guitar virtuosos made major accomplishments to music that for the most part were very seriously forgotten.  In fact, when the news report came out that Stevie had gone down like so many other in a tragic plane crash all the media could seem to report was that Eric Clapton was not on the plane. 

Speaking of planes, the next tributes goes to a man whose claim to fame was a song about one such tragic plane crash, Don Mclean.  He makes the list not because of his hit American Pie, but because of the rest of the album.  As the average hippie might say, “It really seemed to jump out and speak to me, ma-an.”  Vincent, one of the tracks on this album is just brilliant. It deals with things that, at one point or another, all of us have thought about and puts them into perspective.

In terms of perspective, the next mention goes to Jim Croce, for the song Time in A Bottle.  I realize that this song has gotten a lot of press but then you should look at the album of the same name and realize the person wrote some great music.  He was responsible for many great love songs of the era.  If nothing else, I rediscovered his music at a time in my life where he was quite influential.

While his music may not be his own, Richard Cheese must pull a little of his inspiration from any number of influences.  He takes current standards and puts a completely different spin on them, showing little idiosyncrasies that otherwise would be long forgotten.  All I can say is that Closer by the Nine Inch Nails shall never be closer than it is now.  It will always have a special place in my heart because of the man, Richard Cheese.

The last of these tributes, for the time being, goes to a friend of mine in Nashville, Rachel Pearl (or on HerSpace).  I personally feel like blues and jazz musicians don’t get enough exposure in days of queer boy bands and actors who think they are musicians.  (Sorry Mr. Ayckroyd, but you are an actor who plays a faux musician on the silver screen, no matter what you do under said pseudonym to promote blues and jazz artist who are under appreciated.)  Besides, she has a voice that is warm like a late August evening as the sun begins to set with a personality to match.  Not to mention she puts on a hell of a show when she takes the stage.

So as I raise my glass to these musicians, I realize that there are many that I have left at the wayside.  I suppose I will just have to revisit this topic on another day.  So here’s to all of the underappreciated musicians, songs, and albums.  I am sure there will be more to flowers to bloom as the long time passes.

     Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words…

     And in case see it and think, “No way! Someone’s been messing with the sign!” the Spanish Translation on the other side would prove otherwise…

     Sometimes modern translations can be a little … ummm … too modern.  ;-)  Before anyone drives to Memphis to rip Pastor Whalum a new donkey-hole,  check out this bit from the KJV:

Mat 21:1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,

Mat 21:2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.

     See?  It was innocent afterall … but good for a laugh, anyway. 

Photo Credit: Chris Davis of the Memphis Flyer. Good stuff, guys!