I found this silly article on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21644404/?GT1=10547  and I had to throw in a quick “What The F*ck”!  This jackass sat in a tub with 87 rattlesnakes for 45 minutes just so he could hold the Guinness World Record.  He also holds the record for holding the most (10) rattlesnakes with his mouth.  Again, WTF?!?!

Are you serious?  Did you not get enough attention when you were young?  Who is really this stupid?  They claim that the fangs/venom were still intact.  I just don’t understand where people come up with this crap and who the hell is interested.  I guess Guinness is interested, but again, who the hell cares! 

The only thing that makes sense in the entire article is a quote from jackass himself:  “I do it for the attention,” Bibby said. “I like being on television. I signed autographs for 45 minutes today.”  At least he admits it.

Good job dumbass!

Holy crap man!  This guy is amazing.  He’s the first rookie to break 200 yards twice in his rookie year.  After 9 weeks, he holds the NFL record for rushing yards!  He’s making LT’s rookie year look like normal.  He’s sitting at 1,036 yards with a 6.6 yards per carry average and has 8 TDs.  He’s averaging 1 TD and 129.5 yards per game!

The 2nd most rushing yards goes to Willie Parker at a measley 726 yards.  LT only has 657!  It’s also interesting to note though that Joseph Addai has 704 and this is only his 2nd year, but also that Marshawn Lynch has 690 and he’s also a rookie.  Addai and LT both have 7 TDs, tied for 2nd.  He and Willie Parker both have 9 carries for more than 20 yards, the next best is player has 5.  He has FIVE carries for more than 40 yards!!!  The 4 next best players are tied with 2.  Outstanding!

If I must say something bad about this guy… it’s that he’s obviously not good enough for the mother F’ing sports analysts to think that he’d do ANYthing against San Diego.  Note the thick sarcasm.  I listened to the fantasy people in the pregame shows who all agreed that LT would kill and Peterson would bust.  I sat him and played Jamal Lewis instead.  Granted, Lewis got me 30 points or so, but Peterson would have gotten me about 45.  Considering I’m only leading by 15 going into Monday playing against a receiver and defense, I’d much rather have those 15 points for padding. 

Never again will is listen to those bastards

So, was the game of the year/century worth all the hype?  You couldn’t turn on your TV or radio this week without hearing the hype about Manning vs Brady… Colts vs Pats.  So was it all worth the hype?

Hmmm, that’s a tough one.  I think 5 minutes before the game started and 5 minutes before the game ended I was going nuts with anticipation.  Because of the hype, we had a chili cook-off, so we had a big crowd watching the game.  It was super-bowl-esque.  We had bets (play money, of course ;-)) flying around left a right, we had hats being thrown to the ground and stomped on, and we had extreme disappointment and sweet relief in the same room.  It was a great game.  The hype was just.

Any game that goes down to the wire like this one did is a good game to watch.  I think this game highlighted the two Defenses more than it did the Quarterbacks.  Also, who’s Randy Moss if he doesn’t shine when he knows the world is watching.  He just justified his paycheck tonight.  So did Addai on the other end.  He was outstanding!  The commentators mentioned his moves looking like Barry Sanders…  I have to agree.  It’s going to be fun to watch this guy.

Of the two QB’s, Manning looked sharp at the beginning and Brady looked pretty bad.  A few sacks and a few interceptions.  Manning, like usual, was untouchable…  until late in the game, which ultimately sealed the deal. 

It was funny because I kept saying it was going to go down to the cliche 2 minute drill for Manning or Brady just to play out all the hyped drama.  “Who’s the best with 2 minutes left?”  “Who is the best comeback QB?”  It just felt like it HAD to come to that.  With a little more than 2 left, Brady marched right down the field and too the lead (a comeback drive, if you will), and then Manning started doing the same, but he eventually got nailed and lost the ball…

Game over.  Pats win.  Brady wins… and Moss wins. 

We all know that this doesn’t mean that Brady is now better than Manning (if you think it means that, you’re stupid), but damn it was fun to watch how it all played out.  Brady muscled up and gave all the naysayers a big “F” “U” while Manning crumbled.

Who knows what would have happened though if Harrison played.

Ok, it’s probably too late for all I know, but I thought I’d spread the word anyway.  There’s a play in St Charles (MO) called “Lend Me a Tenor” that kicked off tonight.  It’s just a local community theater deal, but if you’re into that sort of thing, you have to check this one out.

Frankly, I’m not into this sort of thing.  This was the first one I’ve seen.  We went to go see a good friend who was acting in it, and I had no idea what to expect.  I was nervous as hell when it started because I was nervous for her, but then she blew us away.  Once the nervousness was gone, I could actually focus on the play and believe it or not, it was pretty damn good.  Funny too.

It is running this weekend and next.  I’m happy to recommend it to anyone who is open to the whole play-watching thing.  Perhaps even if you’re not; It’s entertaining.  I’d only seen these kind of things in movies, where they’re made to look boring and lame.  I was pleasantly surprised, it was neither.

Good Job guys… and girls.

Here’s where we found all the info: http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com

Just a fun little flash deal that I thought I’d share

 http://www.coasttocoastam.com/timages/page/pumpkin_sim.html

If you haven’t guessed, I’ve been spending every waking hour cleaning and organizing the house and yard.  Today we have a real-estate agent coming by to tell us how much money we think we can get from our house.  Anything more than $350k and we’re gone.  We have until the end of the day to secure a contract on the lot we’re wanting to build on, so we’ll have about 2 hours to figure out the numbers and make an offer.

Anyway, needless to say, it’s could get very difficult for me to blog if things start moving forward.  Perhaps the theme of this blog will take a turn toward home-building

In a selfish attempt to sell our house, I’m posting the details here :-)  We’re getting ready to break ground on our new house, so we’re trying to sell our current house.  We’re trying to sell it ourselves for a few months, then we might have to look into agents :-/

Click the image to see the actual posting.

Price: $364,200
Est Payment: 1,794/month
Chandler Ct, St Charles MO, 63303
4 Bedrooms, 3 Bath
2080 sq ft upstairs, approx 1000 downstairs

PROPERTY HIGHLIGHTS:

I thought this was kind of interesting, even though it really may seem obvious.  This blog is only 2 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days old.  I’m not looking to make waves with this blog, but I do ultimately want a lot of traffic.  That’s pretty much the whole reason behind a blog, right? 

I’ve been getting around 30 unique hits per day so far with some peeks and valleys here and there.  I don’t think that’s too terribly bad considering I haven’t done much to promote it and I haven’t been too active within the blog community lately. 

The other day, I posted a huge rant about people trying to sue Hannah Montana and/or Ticketmaster because I was so ticked off about it.  Well, in an honest attempt to stir up some traffic, I titled it “Hanna Montana is Freakin HOT“.  Then I went on to say how “hot” her ticket sales were and how everyone was apparently dying to get them.  Well, it somehow got onto totalfark.com, which you need a paid membership site, so I couldn’t see any details or comments and I couldn’t comment myself. 

Anyway, I got about 400 unique hits that day.  I swear, I was checking my site every 10 minutes… just watching the hits pile up.  400 to me is huge.  The entire day landed me exactly 0 comments!  400 hits, no comments.  No Adsense clicks, no affiliate clicks, no browsing, nothing.  I would imagine that every comment there was, was posted on totalfark, which I didn’t even “qualify” to become a member so I could see.  That sucked.

I had a post queued up to talk about that particular fact.  Then my wife and daughter came back from the Hannah Montana concert with some pictures and a few video clips.  I thought to myself, wouldn’t I be a saint if I posted them on youtube, for all those people that didn’t get to go…  I also thought, wouldn’t it be great to get some more traffic?  Maybe this time, they’ll post a few comments.  In fact, I’ll post a link on my youtube description on each of the 3 videos that there is “more to see” at my site.  Surely I’d get some conversation going…  I still claim complete ignorance, but I really thought I’d get some adults (parents) to comment and either agree with me or bash me.

Well, I got 500 unique hits the first day and about 1000 total.  My youtube clips got a total of about 20,000 views and counting.  There were well over 100 comments total.  20 or so subscriptions (which are completely pointless considering my video clips will never have anything to do with Hannah again).  My site however, got exactly one comment… actually, it was a trackback.  NO comments, no clicks, no discussion, nothing!  The youtube comments do me no good, neither do the subscriptions.  My naive ass just stirred up a metric shitload of kiddie traffic.  Kiddie, being teens, but relatively speaking, they’re kiddies.

The experiment failed on one hand… even though I got more traffic last week than I did the prior 2 months, I made 1 penny from the deal on Adsense… and got no comments and clicks other than the big red X in the upper-right corner of the window.  On the other hand, I guess I did learn quite a bit.  It was interesting to see the traffic and the viral reaction to my youtube clips.  The bottom line to me was that the teen market and even pre-teen were markets that I never thought about.  Granted, there’s no reason for me to cater to them on this site, but it brings up a few interesting ideas in my mind for other potential sites and other potential ways to make a buck.

My thoughts on the previous post (Part 1):

Why is it that Halloween is an adult holiday, all of a sudden?  It’s very curious to me, because of course, when I was young, it was ALL about the kids.  We would trick-or-treat through the whole neighborhood, then we’d go to both grandparents’ houses.  It was an all-day thing, starting at school that day.  From what I remember, my parent’s weren’t that into it.  I KNOW my dad wasn’t, but even my mom only seemed to enjoy it for our sake.  I don’t remember going to a babysitter EVER because my parents went to a Halloween party, nor did we ever go as a family.

So, mayhaps my situation is different, but if I had to guess, based on my sheltered experience, I’d simply say that Halloween has followed our generation (let’s say 25-35 years old), and we all still treat Halloween as one of the major holidays because that’s how WE remember it when we were little.  I think our parents might have gotten like 3-4 pcs of candy and maybe a cigarette or two when they were trick-or-treating, but as soon as the candy companies jumped on things, it became a huge holiday for the kids… those kids, being US now, 20 years later. 

And now, my daughter’s generation… they still love the candy, trust me, but unlike the kids I used to hang with, they’d trade an apple for a Kit-Kat any day.  That’s just bizarre to me, but sure enough, the kids in our neighborhood now… they get candy, but it’s the parents (us) that eat most of it because the kids actually get sick of the candy and would rather have fruit.  If that sounds ridiculous to you, I have to say, it’s totally true, and it is ridiculous to me to.

It’s not all about the candy either.  Back when we were young, let’s say in the 80’s, that’s when the Nightmare on Elm streets, Halloweens, and Friday the 13ths were big.  There were endless B-rated horror films back then, and again, from what I remember, those didn’t really exist too much earlier.  We loved them!  We became obsessed with being scared.  Call me silly, but I think the need to be “Scared” followed us too.

Also, my parents weren’t exactly party animals, but I can also say that my generation has always tried to find ANY reason whatsoever to party and/or to have a few drinks.  What better than Halloween, the otherwise completely insignifcant holiday, to throw a party, drink pumpkin beer, give and eat a ton of candy (and chili), and to scare the hell out of little kids. 

Remember when Halloween was a day (and night) for kids? No more.

In 2007, more adults will attend Halloween costume parties than watched the Dallas Cowboys’ 25-24 victory over the Buffalo Bills on ESPN’s Monday Night Football last week, reports Brandweek. That earned a 10.0 rating and was seen in more than 9.6 million homes, the most for any cable show this year to date, per Nielsen Media Research, New York.

The fact that Halloween has been appropriated by adults has not gone unnoticed by marketers. Halloween has surged to a $5 billion business, up from $2.9 billion in 2003, per the National Retail Federation, Washington, in large part because it has become a fall festival rather than a one-day affair.

More than 63% of adults celebrate or participate in Halloween activities and the average consumer spends more than $59 on costumes, candy, decorations and greeting cards, per NRF.

Halloween has become the third biggest occasion for adult parties after New Year’s Eve and the Super Bowl, and the second biggest decorating holiday after Christmas. Beer wholesalers anecdotally rank Halloween behind St. Patrick’s Day, the biggest beer-selling holiday in bar sales, and just after the Super Bowl and New Year’s Eve for store sales.

More than 31 million Halloween cards will be mailed, including Hallmark’s Cards with Sound, which has expanded its audio clip line up by acquiring licenses for Pirates of the Caribbean and Nightmare on Elm Street.

“We see more adults participating because Halloween is a nonobligatory holiday,” said Deirdre Parkes, a rep at Hallmark in Kansas City, Mo. “You don’t have to cook a big meal or buy gifts. They just go out and have fun.”

Halloween is the candy industry’s biggest selling occasion, with about $2.2 billion in sales expected this year, per the National Confectioners Assn., Vienna, Va. Even salty snack brands such as Snyder’s of Hanover are trying to muscle into sweet’s share of the party with Snack Packs in pumpkin-themed packaging.

If you need more proof that Halloween is really for adults, here is the proverbial nail in the coffin: The 24th annual International Halloween Costume & Party Show, where buyers from 50 countries will come to see the latest in licensed products and product introductions from more than 700 exhibitors, has moved from Chicago to Sin City. It will be held March 16-19, 2008, at the Sands Expo & Convention Center, Las Vegas, with scheduled events to include a “Fantasy Fashion Show” and “Sexy Costume Fashion Show.”

Halloween has even gone to the dogs and cats. Both Petco, San Diego, and PetSmart, Phoenix, have expanded their Halloween selections to include exclusive pet costumes and accessories. Petco draws about 14,000 pets to its annual costume bash. PetSmart will host Howl-O-Ween, an in-store costume party that includes a photo contest. About

7.4 million households will dress up their pets for Halloween, per BIG-research, Worthington, Ohio.

As for adults, the leading costumes this year will be witch, pirate, vampire, cat and princess, per BIGresearch. “There’s a lot of stress in the world these days, between world events and the economy, and this is one of those holidays where young and old can have fun and it’s allowed,” said Phil Rist, vp-strategy at BIGresearch. “It’s like you get a hall pass.”