Nathan? Hi. It’s your dad here. Is this thing on?
I know you can’t hear me. Text doesn’t transmit sound waves, I’m told. You can’t read this yet, either, because you still believe that books are delicious meals you haven’t quite figured out how to chew properly. But you might read this one day, on your iScreen 3D or Goggles-Bot Ultra or whatever all the cool kids use in 2030. When you do, here’s a virtual memento from your dad.
Lately, the name “David Wolfe” has been popping up in my Facebook feed with alarming regularity.
In case you haven’t heard of him, David “Avocado” Wolfe (yup, “Avocado”) is a self-proclaimed nutritionist and health guru. According to his own website, he’s the “rock star and Indiana Jones of the superfoods and longevity universe.” So he’s a fictional archaeologist who’s really good on the drums, I guess?
He’s the man behind this viral gem:
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It’s the practice of optimizing the search engine visibility of your blog or website.
Hi, I’m Daniel, and today I will talk to you about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.
The key thing to know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is that it’s easy for anyone to learn a bit about SEO, but becoming a true SEO expert like me is more of a challenge.
Do not fret. This SEO guide to improving your Search Engine Optimization will surely improve your SEO performance dramatically.
I tend to mock all sorts of things on this blog, from insane self-defense gadgets to sex toys to cat toys to my not-very-kind recap of The Sound Of Music.
Today, I’ll switch things up a bit and instead tell you about a fantastic children’s book I’ve come to love. No, really.
(I’ll give you a minute to get over your shock.)
Hi there, stranger. Have you heard of baby wipes?
Sure you have!
They’re wipes for babies. They come in a convenient package that holds lots of slightly moist cleaning wipes which you pull out one by one to clean your baby’s face after a meal or butt after a meal’s aftermath.
Useful, aren’t they?
But I bet you didn’t know there are several clever life hacks that let you use these versatile wonder products to do much more than keep your offspring microbe-free. For instance:
Facebook announced a revolutionary feature that will finally let people express feelings with the least amount of effort possible.
This scenario should be familiar to all: Your friend posts a status about their loved one getting injured in a freak curling accident or about their cat’s premature demise at the hands of a misplaced cucumber. You can’t click “Like” on a status like that. What do you do? Today, Facebook offers literally no other option to deal with such situations.
This is it! Your first day of work. Soon, you’ll be the boss of this place. You’re a go-getter! You’re a jet-setter! There’s no one better!
Except, you’re none of those things. You’ve cheated your way through the job interview by simply quoting passages from Glengarry Glen Ross and Jerry Maguire. Your CV is just a printout of the first image that came up after you typed “Successful people CV how it looks need asap today lol” into Google.
Oh God, you’re a fraud! In a matter of days, they’ll uncover your clever ruse and find out that you don’t even know what a “Harvard” or a “university” is.
Don’t worry, I’m here to help. Following these simple tips for a successful career will help even a complete amateur like you climb the career ladder, one sham at time.
By now, few have not commented on Donald Trump and his bid for the highest office in the US. Depending on where you stand on the political spectrum, Trump is either a messiah or the literal reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.
Some say Donald Trump is the only one brave enough to say what most people are thinking. Some point out that he’s simply exploiting deep-seated fears to score easy political points. Others think Trump is a glorified troll.
“Poppycock!” I say.
Trump is neither an evil mastermind nor a wise savior. Instead, I’m starting to suspect Trump is actually just a confused man who deserves our compassion. He often has trouble grasping basic things and genuinely fails to understand what’s going on.
This isn’t me slandering Trump, by the way. Trump always readily admits to his near-constant state of bewilderment. His earnest attempts to make sense of the world around him are the driving force behind everything Trump does.
Here are some chosen Trump quotes:
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
– statement on preventing Muslim immigration.
I see why Trump would get confused. This is difficult. Many people practice Islam. Most people who practice Islam are good people. Some people who practice Islam are bad people. What does it all mean?!
I’ll try to help: What’s going on is that there are over 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, the vast majority of whom are pretty regular human beings instead of crazy caricatures you might’ve seen in a cartoon once. They overwhelmingly despise ISIS and other terrorist groups.
There’s also a violent minority of malevolent douchebags (see ISIS) that hijack the religion for their own purposes and use it to justify murder. They’re awful.
Most of us understand this distinction and ask how we can zero in on the source of the problem, prevent people from getting radicalized, and punish those directly responsible for committing crimes.
There’s also an angry minority that believes the answer to fixing a bad tooth is bashing a person’s whole face in with a sledgehammer. They propose policies like indiscriminate, blanket bans on whole groups of people.
“We have a president who refuses to use the term. Refuses to say it. There is something going on with him that we don’t know about.”
– on Obama’s refusal to use the term “Radical Islamic terrorism”
That’s true. For example, we have no idea what Obama’s favorite color of underwear is or which character he got in the “What Star Wars character are you?” quiz.
As for why Obama avoids saying the words “Radical Islamic terrorism,” there are actually several well-articulated reasons, like not granting legitimacy to terrorists who explicitly try to paint this as a war of religions and not alienating potential US allies through clumsy choice of words.
Obama is the president of a major country and has to balance an intricate web of international relations, weighing the long-term implications of his words and actions. His rhetoric must by definition be more nuanced than “HULK SEE BAD GUY! HULK SMASH!”
I can see why someone like Jeb Bush finds comfort in reducing this complexity to three words, and why he gets outraged when Obama tiptoes around the topic by saying Muslim-friendly things like:
“Americans understand we fight not a religion; ours is not a campaign against the Muslim faith. Ours is a campaign against evil.”
And…
“Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.”
Except those quotes are not from Obama. They are what George W. Bush repeatedly said after 9/11. Man, the Christmas reunion at the Bush house will be tense!
But I do understand where Trump’s confusion stems from.
“…she responded to her friends. And you know what friends we’re talking about. Sort of an interesting friend going on there. A lot of people don’t get that.”
– on Hillary Clinton’s handling of Benghazi
You win this round, Trump. I actually genuinely have no idea what’s going on in that quote.
“You know, there’s something definitely going on. I don’t know that that question can be answered. It could be answered two ways. It could be answered both ways. But there’s something going on there. There’s something that there’s a lot of hatred coming out of, at least a big part of it. You see the hatred. I mean, we see it every day.”
– on whether Islam is inherently violent
Trump isn’t sure if the right answer is “basically impossible to answer” or “there are two possible ways to answer” or even “both answers are correct.” But he has no doubt that something’s going on and that he has no clue what it is. Some hatred. Somewhere. It’s complicated.
“I watched in Jersey City where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. So something is going on. We’ve got to find out what it is.”
– on people’s reactions after 9/11
Right, Trump, something is indeed going on. Here’s what it is:
The Internet is a place where people share information. Sometimes, that information is factually correct. Other times, not so much. The Internet makes it easy for like-minded people to latch on to any information—whether it’s true or false—and build a community around it. You may have unwittingly fallen victim to this.
The memory implanted in your head likely stems from an MTV report that talked about a group of loud teenagers who were smashing public property and chanting hateful things. Your claim of mass celebrations in New Jersey by “thousands and thousands of people” has been debunked again and again and again.
So, yeah, something is going on. That something is that Trump is mistaking a barely substantiated and greatly exaggerated rumor for an actual, vivid memory. The poor man.
“When you had the World Trade Center go, people were put into planes that were friends, family, girlfriends, and they were put into planes and they were sent back, for the most part, to Saudi Arabia. They knew what was going on. They went home and they wanted to watch their boyfriends on television.”
– on WTC attackers and their families
Oh, man, you’re doing it again! Reading conspiracy sites. They’ll get you, if you’re not careful. What we do know is that the 9/11 Commission concluded that most hijackers were single, and those that were didn’t have their partners in the US before the attack.
As you see, while it’s easy to paint Trump as some master of manipulation, he’s really just a man who doesn’t quite know what’s going on and wants everyone to stop and explain it to him. Donald Trump is the guy in the room who asks, “Wait, if Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, how was he talking to that weird kid?” when you get to the final scene in the The Sixth Sense.
This is why I posit that Trump deserves our sympathy and understanding. In fact, I suggest we change his campaign slogan from “Make America Great Again” to “Hey! What’s going on?!”
Stop giving Trump such a hard time! At least until we find out exactly what’s going on with him.
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore
I believe it was Google’s co-founder Larry Page who once famously said, “Seek and ye shall find!” People have been seeking ever since.
It’s not always clear what people are seeking, however. Google’s algorithms are good, but people’s collective ability to come up with gibberish search terms is so, so much better.
When Google can’t match people’s word puzzles to actually useful pages, it sends them to my decidedly unuseful blog. That strategy is bad for Google itself, the seekers, and humanity as a whole, but it gives me plenty of fodder for endless quarterly search term roulette posts. The winter season is here, and so is yet another installment of “Search terms that bring people to my blog against all odds and reason.”
Superpower spell must work
Indeed. Like most things, a superpower spell must work. Non-working superpower spells are a waste of money and can lead to plenty of disappointment and even embarrassment. Like that time my invisibility spell malfunctioned when I was doing, uh, research at the all-female…you know what? Never mind. But—yes—superpowers must work.
Very fucking saucy sex messages received
Congrats, bro!
Fuck nostalgia
Yeah! Freaking nostalgia, man. Getting us all depressed and homesick and all that. Nobody likes you, nostalgia. Why don’t you just go home?! The home where I grew up, where my mom made her special-recipe chocolate-and-cookie cake, where I spent days outside with my friends playing hide-and-seek. The sun was shining, the birds were singing. I miss those days so mu– FUCK YOU, NOSTALGIA!
White rapper with orange hair
Slim Top! Shady Carrot! Yes, those are the only two ways I can think to combine Carrot Top and Eminem without repeating myself.
How to respond when he says your sexy
If you want to be annoying, you can start by telling him that “your” is spelled “you’re.” If the Internet has taught me anything, it’s that everyone loves a Grammar Nazi.
How do I write about a scam?
There are many ways to write about a scam. You could pick a dialogue-driven approach and give your characters—scammer and scammee—distinct personalities and dialects. You could write a whole screenplay. You could write a serious statistical analysis of scams received by various demographics. You could even answer to scammers and troll them like this guy.
Super powers found and magic spells and money
That’s just how it goes. You’re walking around the city, when you stumble into a superpower and you’re like, “This is a good day. I just found a superpower. Nice!” Later on, you see someone drop a magic spell. You run to pick it up, chase after them, but they’re like, “No thanks, I don’t want it back.” So now you have a superpower and a magic spell, and you’re thinking, “Sweet! This day just got better!”
In the evening, you’re warming up a sandwich for yourself using your newfound heat vision, when you suddenly see something shimmer in the corner behind the sofa. So you use your “Levitatum” spell to lift the sofa in the air, and right there on the floor is a shiny new nickel! Are you the luckiest person in the world, or what?!
Wow, I really got invested in that story.
Do shamans know their father son the Antichrist?
Oh wow! He’s their father and their son?! I love The Jerry Springer Show. It’s always so full of surprises!
How to show a girl that I am also interested in sex through text messages innocently
Dark room. Midnight. Shadowy figure crouched over a smartphone, tapping at the screen.
“I am also interested in sex. [Smiley face]”
Nah. Too obvious. Delete.
“Would you like to meet for some non-sexual activities that may eventually lead to…”
What’s wrong with me?! Delete!
“My steadfast tin soldier would like to visit your army barracks!”
What the fuck does that even mean?! This is ridiculous! Delete!
“Have you seen that episode on the Animal Planet where…”
Oh my God. I am just so hopeless! Delete!
*Just a GIF of Mr. Bean doing the hip thrusting dance*
I can’d do this anymore. I really can’t. Google, help!
Ball attached to handle with barbed wire as a self-defense weapon
Handle covered in barbed wire? What are you, Silas from The Da Vinci Code? That sounds like a terrible self-defense weapon!
*Man appears and whispers something into my ear*
Oh! Oooooooooh! Spiked metal ball attached with barbed wire to a steel handle? Why didn’t you just say so?! I don’t have that specific design, but here you go.
We now have Christmas lights on our street!
Yaaaaaay!
Well, “Christmas lights.” They look like this:
Yaaaay?
I’m not kidding, by the way. That’s the Christmas setup on our street here in Copenhagen.
Look, I’m really not one to judge. My idea of getting into the Christmas spirit involves changing my desktop background to a picture of semi-nude Santa riding a baby blue unicorn. (Don’t ask.) I’m pretty damn terrible at decorating for Christmas, is what I’m saying.
But…do these Christmas lights strike you as satisfactory? Do they elicit feelings of joy and wonder? Not really, right?
I don’t want to speculate on the decision process that led to this half-baked display of indifference, but I’m quite sure it went something like this:
“So, how will we decorate the street for Christmas this year? Giant Christmas tree with a life-size Santa and lots of flashing Christmas lights and ornaments?!”
“Nah, we’ll put some lights on the trees.”
“Oooooh, great idea! We’ll cover every branch with string lights, so that at night it looks like each tree is glowing!”
“Nah, just, like, two lights per tree.”
“Uh, okay. So, big, flashing lights in the shape of a star or Rudolph’s nose?”
“Just two simple, purple lights. We’re going for more of a ‘landing strip at a deserted airport’ vibe.”
“Fine, I guess. So, two lights per tree, and–”
“Make it every third or fourth tree. Let’s not get carried away now.”
“I just…man…okay. Is there any chance we don’t have to make them look like unfeeling, unblinking Eyes of Sauron?
*Silent stare*
“No? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Whatever you say, Grinch, you’re the boss.”
Nest Expressed 