I just got home from one of those “Oscar” parties you hear so much about after the Academy Awards. What a pain in the ass! It wasn’t anything like what I expected.

I thought for once in my life I’d be able to go to a party where I didn’t necessarily know everyone there but I’d be able to fake my way through it and pretend like I did, right? Wrong.

Nobody there was named Oscar.

Man, did I feel stupid when I was talking to this really hot chick and her name turned out to be “Charlize.”

Okay, I lied, I did watch a few minutes of the Academy Awards after all. Beth and Zoe were watching it while I sat on the couch with them and read a book, so some of it seeped through my crap barriers and intruded on my consciousness. Having witnessed some of its awfulness, all I have to say is:

Dayum! Them women is skinny! Attention, women of Hollywood: Have a fucking sandwich!

That is all. Thank you.

I predict that I won’t be watching the Academy Awards.

I don’t care who’s nominated. I don’t care who’s hosting. I don’t care who’s presenting. I don’t care who wins. I don’t care who’s wearing what. I don’t care who’s there with whom.

I just. Don’t. Care.

Unless I’m up for an award, I couldn’t care less.

Beth and I are off to the outlands tonight, far off into the wilds of Pomona. Jim, the butcher of Meat of the Matter is having a par-tay tonight — his “Increasingly Annual February Frolic” — and he’s invited us because he’s slumming to guarantee a high class type shindig.

I was going to say some really witty and entertaining things about this, but I swore to myself that I wouldn’t make this entry just a long collection of jokes about Pomona and cows and meth labs and etc. Consequently, I’m tapped out. Sorry.

I’m looking forward to meeting Jim, though. We irritable males have to stick together.

I am the #7 result right now when you search MSN for “better sex ever.” That’s right, I’m your #7 authority when it comes to better sex ever. Not 8, not 9. Seven, bitches. Se. Ven.

I must quote two lines from my close personal friend Kid Rock:

You can’t cap with the master, son
So sit your ass down before I blast ya one

and

They say I’m cocky, and I say What?
It aint braggin’ motherfucker if ya back it up

Okay, fine, it’s only MSN, not Google. And it’s only #7. But, hey, it’s something.

I’m #7, I (insert verb here) harder.

Oh look, another lame meme post. This time it’s 5 questions about musica:

1. Total amount of music files on your computer:

My iTunes says 2,467 songs, enough to keep me busy for 7.3 days.

2. The last CD you bought was:

Words & Music – John Mellencamp’s Greatest Hits

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

Uncle Kracker – Aces & 8’s.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

Bruce Springsteen – Jungleland
Eminem – Lose Yourself
Tears for Fears – Woman in Chains
Rush – The Spirit of Radio
Duncan Sheik – Half-Life

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?

Nobody, because these things are lame. I’m embarassed that I did this one. But, hey, it’s an entry.

Poking around in my referrer logs (still), I noticed a big spike in traffic all pointing toward one image Beth had used on her blog. It seems this image had become popular on various discussion boards, where people were either posting it as a “Hey, look at this funny picture!” kind of thing or were using it as their profile picture. Ha. Funny. Except not so much, because they were linking directly to Beth’s image on my server.

Quick tutorial on Web Ethics 101: If you see an image on the web and want to use it on your own web page, you should download a copy of it and upload it to your own server and link to that. It is very uncool to link to an image on someone else’s server because that is a form of bandwidth theft. Every hit you get on your page using the image is also a hit on the actual server the image is located on, and that hit counts against the picture’s server’s bandwidth. Bandwidth costs money, and if the picture you’re using gets really popular then that means the hosting server’s owner is going to have to pay for all the added traffic. Bottom line: linking to other people’s images is uncool.

Beyond being uncool, linking to other people’s images can also blow up in your face. If the hosting site’s owner figured out that you’re linking to his images and running up his bandwidth and he decided to take steps, he could, say, delete “your” image and substitute it with a new, completely different image. Perhaps a truly revolting, stomach-turning picture of some form of bestiality. And he might give this bestiality picture the same name as the file you were linking to, so that your your profile picture and your “Hey, look at this funny picture!” and “Happy Valentine’s Day” posts all start showing up with something revolting that is very much not work- and parent- and school-safe.

And if you were a clueless 16-year old newb, or a German homosexual, or a Danish rugby fan, or a Dream Theater fan, or a gamer, or keep a blog on Xanga, or have a LiveJournal page all about kittens, or etc… Well, you might end up very, very surprised.

I’d never do that, though. I’m just saying I could.

Fuck:

DENVER (AP) — Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.

Like many young, aspiring journalists, I was a huge HST fan in my college days. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was what I aspired to. The closest I ever came was Search for the Perfect Long Island Iced Tea, a piece I co-wrote for my college magazine with my friend Larry. It was weird, but not nearly weird enough. We were amateurs playing grown-up.

Beyond the gonzo, though, Hunter was a fantastic journalist and writer. Hells Angels and Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ’72 are classics that I’ve read and re-read many times over the years and have always had a place on my bookshelf.

This news is hitting me really hard. I’m surprised by that, actually; it’s been a long time since I was an “active” fan. I think the last book of his that I rushed out to buy was The Curse of Lono, and that was back in the 80’s. Still, though, I’m close to tears now knowing that he’s gone — and how he went.

One of my heroes has died.

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ”the rat race” is not yet final.

— Hunter S. Thompson
7/18/1937 – 2/20/2005

Oh look, a Batesville Casket Company truck. Ah, memories of the Mojave Phone Booth and the mission into the desert to Hang It Up that Steve and I undertook.

In retrospect, I think I was wrong about that Batesville truck we encountered in the Denny’s parking lot. It wasn’t going to where the business was after all, it really was an omen: The Booth’s days were numbered.

Poking around in my webstats, it’s funny to see what search strings lead people here to deadpan. Having a blog here called “Diary of a SubUrban Housewife” that frequently uses words like “boob” and “breast” and “sex” and “fuck” and let’s not forget “housewife” in the title … well, you see where I’m going with it — it draws a certain class of websearcher. The one-handed typing kind.

But people have other things on their minds, too, and let me just say: Y’all are some weird googling motherfuckers. Here are some of the stranger keyphrases that have landed surfers at deadpan:

histosalpingogram
olympic spa koreatown
motivational messages for company workers
blog diary hostess flight
erotic tongue depressor
petula clark s birthday
glasses dork
music to drill oil wells by
fistula rectum
beer survey questions
burping dinner table
what is nascar barbie worth?
mother-in-law s lingerie
pie my face
maxiglide hair straightener
pterodactyl shot
long duc dong candles
pregnant turkey baster
coughing up green chunks of phlegm
what do you prefer toaster pastries or pop tarts
best pie in santa barbara
planet urp zoe

And my personal favorite:

abscess forming on gumline after root canal

But you know what? I’m not picky, I’m happy to get readers any way I can. Like the song says, “I don’t care how you get here, just get here if you can.”