Sure, the Asshat Conartist — err, Ashwin Khanna — thing left us all with a bad taste in our mouths.

     But it amazes me that a legitimate, $50 Contest sponsored by SomeMakeMoney.com is still short five entries after several months.  The contest was setup July 29th, and entries have only trickled in…

     For a few more “legitimate contests,” be sure and check out Contest Blogger, which contains not only some great contests, but a few nice SEO tricks to help bloggers build a little ‘net value.

UPDATE 24-Aug-2007:
Actually, Ashwin Khanna is a scamming little prick.

     Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!

     Seriously … No memes, no tagging, no ridiculousness … I figured, “Hey, why not?”  Check it out…

Tip: Gerri at Absolutely True

Some Make Money is giving away $50 for some linkage. Follow the directions below and go post a comment about it here for a chance at a portrait of Grant.

** Start Copy Here **

We all know how important getting link backs is and with this chain, you can get the ball rolling! You don’t have to be an established blogger to take part in this chain.

Here are the rules:
1. Copy this post from the point where it says “Start Copy Here” to the point where it says “End Copy Here”
2. Add yourself and 5 of your favorite bloggers to the end of the list.
3. Post this on your blog

Enkay Blog | Ms. Danielle | Cash For Comments | BetShopBoy | JohnCow | Mr. Gary Lee | Jon Lee | Dosh Dosh | Some Make Money | The King Kong Blog | RomanDock | Michael Kwan | Ed Lau | Jane May | Sam Breadstone | Windows Tips, Tricks and Hacks | ProBlogger | The Beef Jerky Blog | The Prize Blog | Online Coupon Codes | Jamaipanese | Rugjeff | ShadowScope | The News Press Net | JohnWaraas | Online Opportunity | Sara | Gaje Master | Graphic Design | romandock dot com | RevieWOW | Drunken Housewife | Sparemoolah | Anton | LR2 | JugglingCats | SkyWindows | Fracas | Blogitude.com | Oh… Really? | Reality Me! | Domestic Psychology | Swank Blather |

**End Copy Here**

     Something Kevin said the other day —

Noticed in my stats today that one of the search phrases to get to the church was “I hate Mark Steel.” Look, you’re getting famous!

     — stuck with me, although as a humorous sidenote.  I loved it!

     I’ve also seen a sudden surge in Google searches for “i hate mark steel.”  I love that sort of thing.  I also saw several of the blogs from our blogroll in the top 30.  But, why all the hate?
     Alternatively, I decided to check out “i love mark steel,” to find that I’m actually ranked #26.  I hate that.  I didn’t see much familiar around there, either.  C’mon, where is the love, people?

     I mean, I’m not saying I’m the world’s smartest man or the greatest living American or anything like that… But I do have a reasonable amount of knowlege about how this stuff works. 

     This is all a joke to me, and this post is just a silly experiment.  I’ll post the outcome in a couple of days, as I think it might teach someone a little something about SEO…

     Besides, I’ve already labeled John Kerry as the World’s Smartest Man… albeit, sarcastically.  And the antidisestablishmentarian in me still believes Bill Gates is the greatest living American…

[ UPDATE - 26-Apr-2007 @ 9:26PM EDT]

     THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!  I moved up from #26 to #1 in less than 10 hours!  Now I’m #1 for “i love mark steel” and “i hate mark steel.”
     Now I feel balance!
     That’s SEO.  Thpft!

     Monty’s “Summer Vacation Spots” made me wonder…

     How far is Pussy from Knoxville?

     According to Google Maps, it’s only 49 steps away.

     However, Orgy is a mere 34 steps away.

     Given the fact that Pussy is 15 steps further away than Orgy, Orgy may not be very fun for me…

     Regardless … Pay particular attention to Step #18.  Click on it. 

     According to Glenn, “it will actually show you the pier to jump off of.”

     Seriously, click Step #18.  After doing that for that long, I doubt even Pussy would entice me…

Tip: Thanks, Glenn

     Arne Brachnold’s Google Sitemap Generator for Wordpress is a pretty neat piece of software that’ll build a Google-style XML-Sitemap, and ping Google with it every time you update your blog.
     Good stuff for SEO, good stuff for making sure Google has your site indexed. 

     After setting up a few blogs with the latest, I found a caveat that just annoyed me to death: you’re in the Admin, but when you manually update the sitemap, it comes back with a blank page. Sure, I know how to work around it, but they guys I’m setting this stuff up for get all huffy about it.
     Pretty quick bug to figure out.  There’s even a nice ticket on Trac (Ticket 604) that I’m unable to post this solution to…
     Line 2463 of sitemap.php is:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”list-manipulation.js” mce_src=”list-manipulation.js”></script>

     Of course, that doesn’t exist, but if we change it to:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”../wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php” mce_src=”../wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php”></script>

     …then all is right and good with the world.

     Hopefully, Arne’ll drop this in his next release — and be able to close Ticket 604 on Trac. 

[Ed. Note: The text of this article refers to "the latest" Wordpress (2.1.x) and version of the plugin for it (3.0xxx).]

     A couple of times a week, I check out the statistics on this site … the number of visitor sessions, number of pages they viewed, referrers, and, of course, search engine search terms that brought people here.

     I can understand getting a lot of hits for some of the things we’ve written about on here over the years.  Sure, Bai Ling, Femtroopers, Antidisestablishmentarians, psychos and even ex-girlfriends, you know… the usual fodder.
     Still, one of the most commonly used search terms — to the tune of several thousand a week in different variations — are graphic terms for bestiality with sheep, which amusingly end up at the old article about Grant Gillon. 

     Sometimes, however, I get really weird search terms, that multiple people have searched for… Like the fourty-three sessions:

why do rottweilers bit womens breasts

     Sure enough, there we are on Google’s #15.  That’s just crazy!

     Then there’re these twenty-four sessions…

personal ads rottweiler daughter private investigator

     Even higher, we’re at Google’s #3.  Who knew?

     And thirteen gems like this:

what percent of women think their house is haunted

     Yeah, we get Google’s #8 on that search. 

     Really, it blows my mind sometimes.

Proof is in the picture —- and bear in mind, this is absolutely NOT retouched! This is the actual ad shown on the Google AdSense section of this very page on January 9th, 2006 at 11:15AM EST!

Man! Who knew? I’ll bet all those Al-Queda who went to Afghanistan to get their Terrorism Certificates really feel stupid now.

Remember, you heard it here first!