Rhymes with "Slurpees"

As everyone who's anyone knows, I'm not great great at updating my diary regularly. (I'll cop to being great at it, but not great great.)

A big reason for this is that a while back I discovered that simply checking the site traffic stats on old content was much easier and equally rewarding as creating new content. It takes less time, it's dynamic at a pace I'm comfortable with, and it helps me feel much more connected to the world; when I see Russia turn dark green on my traffic sources map, it's a powerful reminder that there must be living human beings there, shoveling uranium into the giant machines that produce vodka and automatically check American websites. You'll never feel less alone than when a notion like that flies through your head.

These stats provide a wealth of information about what part of Dandy the world wants. For a long time it was slash fiction. Then it was a post about The Sweetest Thing, I assume because it was the first (of many, now) thing on the Internet that referenced both Cameron Diaz and "a penis with a nail sticking out of it." And then, of course, there was the hobo boom of '11. That's my top entry by something like 400%, and I have the popularity of that hobo picture that I took from some other blog to thank for it. Other Dirty Bindle entries don't even make the list—it's that rascal hobo, and him alone.

And racing up the charts is this unassuming post: It's Official. That post is currently tied for third in all-time visitorship, and it's only something like 9 months old. Why is that?!

I racked by brains. Could it be the focus on Thai electronics? Doubtful; the quality of Thai electronics speaks for itself, and has never needed my help. Yeah, the computers catch fire pretty often, but usually it's because you're using turpentine to clean the housing.

Is the attention due to excitement around faster-than-light spacetravel? I'd like to think so. A groundswell of public interest might get President Nointerstellarexplorationbama off his Buttrack Obuttma and into space! But I don't think that's it. (Full disclosure: I only did that wordplay on the president's name for the NSA site traffic. Topical!)

No, I think that post's popularity comes from the one thing the Internet simply cannot get enough of: herpes. Specifically, genital herpes.

(If you guessed "recording artist Seal" before you read "herpes," you're dead wrong. But I'm just as surprised as you. None of my Seal posts even rank. What gives? Apparently the world still isn't ready to get a little crazy.)

What about genital herpes? It can't be photos, because that post didn't include any. Was it some combination of "Chesterton" and "herpes"? Probably not, because as any GK Chesterton enthusiast knows, the man never had sex with anything that wasn't made of wood, and consequently never came within a hundred miles of a chancre. Splinters, on the other hand ... (before you let your imagination go too wild with that one, non-enthusiasts, all I mean is that the common understanding among Chestertonians is that the man had a small library of life-sized, carved wooden women.)

It seems to me that what the Internet herpes divers of the world are looking for in It's Official was simply this: hope. The possibility that an embarrassing and painful disease could be explained away by a cigar-burnt penis. (Although I'll remind you folks that penis burn scars are also, apparently, forever.)

I think that's all there is to it. And I wish I had more to offer, but nothing comes to mind at this point. I guess aloe is good for most stuff. And who knows? Think back to the last time you were naked around an intense heat source—maybe you'll surprise yourself.

I don't know. I'll give it some more thought, and maybe I can come up with something useful for the four hundred and thirty-three people who have scrabbled desperately through It's Official for one soothing dab of hope. But for now I'll leave you with just this, some words from GK Chesterton himself:

"A wooden lady never turned anyone down, not even for having a wiener as bent as a spider's leg.





Aaaah, you know what? He didn't really say that. I just wanted some Chestertonian traffic too. But it's probably not bad advice. While dealing with an outbreak, why not whittle yourself a nice lady or man to spend time with? Is that gross? No, we're adult medical professionals.

A quick update

Hey, y'all

As usual, it's been a while since I've posted anything, so I wanted to give everyone a quick update. It turns out that the dream I had last night wasn't real. I repeat: it wasn't real.

I woke up very concerned about what my neighbor might think of the drawing I taped to his door, and whether or not he'd be able to trace it back to me. The drawing, of course, was of him, naked and crawling on all fours, with stink lines rising off his body.

I'm not sure why I drew that (in my dreams), but I may be harboring some resentment towards him for the drunk and screaming man who has been showing up at my neighbor's door late at night, drunkenly screaming my neighbor's name (his name, I guess, is "Dunstaaaaaan," which is perfect for screaming.) I suspect that the screamer is a vagrant and/or Dunstaaaaaan's lover.

At any rate, I drew a stinky, naked Dunstaaaaan, and taped it to his door, but really I didn't, so that's a relief.

Keep up the good work, everyone.

Time for a re-design! !!!

I know some of you—that is to say some of the 'net-bots that try to spam my comments—have come to know and love the layout of this web page. And I understand the possibility that changing the layout could have dire consequences for your psyches. But, frankly, whether or not you flip your shit and stab all your pets doesn't matter that much to me. I think I ought to change to look of this site, and I have my reasons.

First and foremost among my reasons is that my mother recently asked me "for the code to [your] web-diary." I normally wouldn't think that she'd have much interest in this sort of thing, except that several years ago I convinced her that this blog was actually a website for getting fake prescriptions for pain meds. Lately her back has been "acting up like you wouldn't fucking believe, Dandy," and so she's a little bit pill-crazy, and she's after my website. I need to make this thing as non-fake-prescriptiony as possible.

Also, the "cats and dogs, living together" subtitle turns out to be more or less lifted straight from Ghostbusters. I didn't do it on purpose; I was way into pain meds myself at the time, and the only tape I owned was half Ghostbusters, half-10 o'clock news, and apparently the line lodged itself in my memory. I'll fix it soon enough.

Misunderstandings

So, yes, Seal was (and probably still is) after me.

His people were clearly not thrilled about my Seal trivia posts for whatever reason. I don't get it, frankly—it's all public record, and I didn't find any of it particularly bad. But that wasn't the whole of it.

See, I started a Seal-impersonating Twitter account. In retrospect, it was a bad decision. I didn't even say anything sassy. I just wanted to experience, in even the smallest way, what it must be like to be Seal. So I tweeted a couple dozen times, mostly about tour dates that I had made up, and what I thought Seal's diet must be like. (I assume that he eats a lot of salt water and potato bread.)

No harm no foul, right? Wrong. Seal, or Seal's people, came down on me like a soulful ton of bricks. I started to get calls threatening legal action, and I just ran. I went to a bar, where I may or may not have talked a lot about being chased by Seal, and then I woke up in that basement.

Make a long story short, a group of gentlemen to whom Seal apparently owes quite a bit of money thought I was a representative of Seal Inc., and decided to hold me for ransom, or something. I was out of that basement inside of 36 hours, as soon as they realized that there was no chance that Seal was interested in rescuing me.

So there you go! I'm a free man!

PS—I didn't mean half the things I said about Laos. I was under a lot of stress.

Send help, Seal has me.

Hello friends I guess I should say that I'm only assuming it's Seal that has me, but tor one reasonggghgg or another, the shit has really hit the gan God enmity. I'm "typing" by touching bare wires together, and Ii'm getting shocked pretty regularily. And it"s not a super precise method, as you cam.maybe tell. Whoever has captured andimprisoned me uses exclusively Laotian computers,and, as you know, I"m a Thai computer kind of guy. The Pc has spellcheck at least, butwhile spellcheck.is both helping and hurting me, the computer itself is ONLY hurting.me. I've said it before: the Laotians can mot make computers that don'telectrocute users to save their lives. Hey, Laos, try using rubber as an insulator, because whatever this is judtisn't doing the trick. Seriously, I had a Laotian LED belt buckle for a few weeks, and I got ball-zapped so many times I'llbe genuinely amazed if I don't have x-men babies. Amazed and disappointed. But I don't have much time. After my Seal expose a couple weeks ago, I started to get a lit of letters from lawyers. Naturally, I just threw them into my neightnors yard and forgotten about them. It's called the circle of life, and it's what we should all be doing. But Iguess someone feels rifferntlg, because yesterday. As I was. Exiting the pit toilet Kruger behind the super America, someone dropped a bag over my head and hit me with something that felt a lot like a rock. I'd know. And today I woke up in a cellar, covered in shit that can onlybe mine (I'd know), looking at a cinder block.wall with "Lay off, wanker" spray painted on it. Now, ok, Seal isn't the only Brit I've allegedly libelled, butthis feels like too much of a coincidence. It's only by pure luck that the pile of trash they gave me to sleep on had a Laotian computer with an active dialup connectiojesus chrsit. I'm sorry@ but who else could possibly have such awful electronics? It's like they manufactured this accidentally while trying to build some sort of finger incinerator. Let me say it one more time: Thai children can make a computer like you've never seen, but Laotisn child labors couldn't put their own socks on. If they had socks. I hats laos. No, I don't mean that. I'm just stressed. Forceful imprisonment is making me so mean! I'm going to cutthis short and take some tiime to relax. But send help. Tucking.Laos.