Eat Chicken.
If there’s anything I despise, it’s a bully. And if there’s anything worse than a bully, it’s someone who is too stupid to recognize a parody when he/she sees one. (Most bullies fall into that category.) (I love parodies.)
And if there’s anything worse than a bully or a moron, it’s a bullying moron with a law degree who pulls a name out of a hat and sends a ‘cease and desist’ letter to someone with a BLOG.
Are they NUTS? People with blogs have followings, and followings buy, or not, patronize, or not, donate, or not, spend tons of money, or not, on things, commodities, causes, etc, that we read about on other blogs. Blogging is the marketing tool of the new millennium. When bloggers recommend, other bloggers buy. When bloggers tell us a product stinks, other bloggers won’t buy it, either. A business that doesn’t know that yet, is a business that’s really behind the times.
The Pork Board’s Pork Broad made a biiiiiiig mistake. They’ve since apologized and backed off, but the point is, before they did that, they did the other. And I really do hope that if, out of their big bullying bevy of lawyers, not one of them knew anything about parody or the laws covering such, then maybe the Pig People need to hire themselves a new bevy of lawyers and let the present bevy go back outside to play in the mud.
It makes me sad, too, because I do love me some BBQ pork tenderloin, and now I won’t be buying any kind of pork for, like, forever? Or at least until I read about some Porker in a high-up position, asking for forgiveness very, very nicely. I don’t mean one of the lawyers, either; I mean, an executive Porker, and in his own words.
Backing off is nice, yes. But the intimidation, in the first place, was inexcusable.
I haven’t breast-fed for a while, like maybe, oh, TWENTY-SIX YEARS, but my sympathies are all with the Lactivist. She was bullied, she fought back via her blog, her readership backed her up, others picked up the story, and the Pork Board and the Pork Broad who represented them, found out the hard way what can happen when a blogger is bullied.
I also took issue with the fact that the Pork Broad’s letter insinuated that there were, let us say, “dark issues” connected with breastfeeding. What incredible gall, coupled with unpardonable ignorance.
Well, whatever. I guess it’s over now, but I’m still mad. Boards of almost any kind really get my back up. It’s as if a business or institution goes out and deliberately rounds up the most ignorant people they can find, seats them around a big table, and lets them make important decisions.
Bah. Eat chicken. Somehow, I feel that any board, and any broads, they might have, would at least have a sense of humor. The Chicken Board. I like it. Yes, they’d have a sense of humor.
Porkies seem to be lacking in that area.
Aim High, and Higher
I held out as long as I could, but in the end I was given no choice. I had to update to the New Blogger. Usually, I shy away from updates like this, because they’re so often full of glitches, and also because I just plain liked the old version of whatever.
Since I updated about five minutes ago, I have no opinion yet. But you all know by now that if anything goes wrong, I’ll let you know. 🙂
Sometimes I think my sense of humor is weirder than anybody else’s on the planet. This poster hung in the boy’s restroom (Yes, I spent a little time in there, kneeling on the concrete floor, with my arm up the toilet and poop on my elbows, by order of the principal. . . . .) and I don’t think anybody else in the building ever found it funny except me. Of course, from that position, ANYTHING else would be a step up. . . .
There was also a big framed poster in there that said, simply, “Aim High.” It was about goals or something, but nobody else in the building thought it was funny, placed feng-shui-ly over the urinals as it was.
The very best, the VERY BEST, men’s restroom in the world, is the one sent to me by S,C, & A, and if we all ask nicely, maybe they will post it on their blog for you. I’m still giggling over that one. But that is THEIR picture.
Try as they might, though, the restroom sign-makers can never match the toilet signs of the seventies. We had class chutzpah back in them days.
“Please do not throw toothpicks in the toilet. The crabs here can pole vault.”
“The water in the bowl is blue so you can make designs in it instead of on the walls.”
“Please make sure there is no cellophane underneath the seat before you take aim and fire. Or, worse, sit and wonder why nothing’s coming out.”
“Dick Nixon before he Dicks You. And while we’re on the subject, aim carefully with the Dick you were born with.”
“Do you really want to think about some poor schmuck cleaning up after your poor aim, for $1.35 an hour? Of course you don’t. Hit the water, please.”
“Puddles are made by guys with tiny hoses.”
“The really big ones don’t make a mess. Little tiny ones do that.”
And while we’re on the subject. . . .
I never saw a urinal until I went to college. My dorm had once been a men’s dorm, and one side of the restroom was, of course, lined with them. We hung ferns in them.
It dressed up the restroom, and we never had to water the ferns.
It was only after the ferns had hung there for months that I learned what those little alcoves really were. I couldn’t even imagine a guy doing that.
Later, of course. . . . .
Never mind.
It's TIME: "Best of Blogs" Is Open For Nominations
Okay, everybody head over to the BOB’s website and nominate your favorite blogs. The categories are all listed, and it’s easy as pie to do.
I met some of my bestest internet friends via the BoB’s, and many of the blogs in my blogroll came from previous BoB nominees. It’s a wonderful way to discover some really good reading.
Let’s all try to remember a few things about the Bob’s. First of all, the intents are to give some traffic to lesser-known blogs, to share some of our own personal favorites (the ones other bloggers might not be aware of) with the rest of us, and to be civil about it.
NO WHINING! It seems as though every year, someone finds offense at something or other and spoils the whole atmosphere of the thing by their constant complaining and taunting. To those people I have only this to say: Grow up.
Then, too, there are those people who, every year, fail to read the directions and try to nominate big-name bloggers. NO, NO, NO! That’s not what the BoB’s are all about!
We want you to nominate blogs that everybody doesn’t already know about. We want to help them build up their hit traffic and get some readers. We want to help each other discover new and awesome blogs that deserve to be read.
Don’t nominate Dooce. Don’t nominate Rosie O’Donnell. Don’t nominate Wil Wheaton. These are great blogs, yes, but they don’t need us to promote them.
Nominate that blog you discovered a few weeks ago, the one you’d never heard of before, you know, that blog by that unknown blogger, that made you laugh out loud, or cry, or spit coffee all over your monitor. Let the rest of us know about it, so we can go there and spit on our monitors, too.
You’re not supposed to nominate yourself, either. You can VOTE for yourself, later on, but nominate someone other than yourself. I look at the site a moment ago, and there were some people who apparently didn’t read the rules.
I can’t mention this part too many times: If you are going to throw a fit and spew venom all over the internet if your boyfriend’s blog doesn’t win, and make fun of us for wanting to help the ‘little guys’ to build up a readership base, or go ballistic if there’s a glitch in the voting process, please learn some manners, or stay away. The BoB’s are run by some very nice people who are working harder than you will ever realize, to promote friendship among bloggers, to create camaraderie among bloggers, and to help us all discover some of the buried treasure that’s out there on the internet.
If you know where some gold is buried, please let us all know. Click on over to the BoB’s website and make some nominations.
If the blog you love and wish to nominate doesn’t seem to ‘fit’ into any of the categories, please nominate it anyway! Try to fit it into the category that comes closest. We were limited, as to number of categories, by forces outside our control. Forces, I’m tellin’ ya.
There really aren’t very many rules, but if you would all take just a minute to read what few rules we do have, it would prevent many a problem in the future. Thanks.
P.S. What do you get if you win? Ohhhh, I don’t know. . . . maybe, something in. . . . VEGAS?
