It’s no big secret I haven’t been reading a lot of other blogs for a while.  It’s not because I’m a selfish ass, it’s just about time.  Well, that, and that I can’t find an RSS reader I like.  Quite honestly, I wish I had a nipple on my ass just for Google Reader.  While it works well for many, I have nothing but problems with it.

     I’ve been hitting a lot of tangent reads, however, while look at stats, and I’ve come across some that are just fit right in with my own twisted sense of humor.

     FU, Penguin is it absolutely brilliant.  As an animal lover, I just can’t help but look at the beautiful pictures, and think about all the wonderful things this author has to say about each one of God’s creatures.  It just warms my heart, and sometimes, even gives me a woody.
     I love this blog so much, that I may actually buy the book rather than downloading it from Limewire.

     I found this next blog due to some 17-year-old prick from Michigan writing a crap article about the Ten Five Worst Blogs Ever.  Apparently, his math skills were as bad as his authorship.  I think it comes from buying too many fake drugs from 8 Mile.  So STFU, kiddo.  Eminem you are not.  And neither is Eminem.
     And thus is the introduction to one of my new favorite reads, The Worst SEO Blog Ever!, however SEOHack hasn’t written in days because he’s too busy microblogging stupid shit on Twitter.  If he could pull his head out of his rectum for five minutes, I’d actually like to have a chat with him, because, as the blog suggest, his SEO Blog is tremendously poor, while his SEO Skill is extremely high.  Irreverent, intelligent, and insightful as it may not be, I thoroughly enjoy reading it.

     And while we’re on the subject of finely attuned, irreverent link-whores, we certainly can’t forgot our good friend Fracas, who’s closed her old wordpress.com blog in favor of her own domain so that she can put up ads to her heart’s — and pocket book’s — delight.
     Don’t spend all those pennies in one place, Fracas, mah dear.  I mean, seriously, one good Snickers bar, and the blog fund will be broke all over again.

     Ahh, the Internet is a fun place. 

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTJVK8_nWd0)

     Good night, and good luck.

     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.

     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.