Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
On Saturday I was ready to shut this site down, and call it a day. I'd
just about fucking had it. But eventually, after rolling into a ball and
sucking my thumb for a while, I calmed down. TheWVSR remains a
source of high-irritation for me, though.
I'll have to tell you about some of it at a later date, but the
situation with my RSS feed has helped nothing.
I tried offering a feed last year sometime, and nobody cared. There was
very little activity, and I abandoned it after a couple of months. Then
I started receiving emails from people asking if I had any plans to
start it up again. What the hell, I thought, it takes very little effort
on my part, so why not?
And, surprisingly enough, it went over well. I don't know why it stiffed
the first time around, and took off the second, but that's the way it
worked out. In just a few weeks RSS was providing substantial extra
traffic to the site, and I tended to it faithfully.
All was right with the world, until the entire thing shit the bed.
I was using a free service to publish every day, and I believe they
cater to people who don't know what they're doing. A perfect fit for me.
I don't even fully understand the attraction of RSS. So you can check
several websites at once for updates? What the hell, man? Are you folks that
busy? Does the act of clicking on a freaking bookmark really put a crimp
in your schedule? Heck, I remember when we had to go to actual libraries
and stuff.
Whatever. It was being used, and the reasons are secondary. Then it
suddenly stopped working. Remember a couple of weeks ago when the
homepage was loading real slow, and I blamed National Lampoon? Turns out
it wasn't their fault, it was my RSS service preparing to bite the big
one.
And man, they did. They lost everything. Their homepage was down for
days, then there was a note, written in broken English, explaining that
they'd suffered a catastrophic computer crash, and all records were
completely gone. Once they were up and running again, we'd all have to
start over and register as if we were fresh off the street.
I didn't realize the implications of this
right away, but figured it out over the weekend. My feed now has a new
address, and the old one, which was semi-popular, is listed in dozens of
directories around the internet and is deader than Kelsey's nuts. Simply
excellent.
And there's other stuff going on as well, but I'll have to tell you
about that on another day. ...Do you ever just feel like throwing wild
haymakers at complete strangers?
-- The Steely Dan concert is next weekend, and that's something to look
forward to. A person needs things to look forward to....
I have a
feeling, and I could be wrong, that Steve and I will be the youngest
people in
attendance -- at forty-three. What do you think? Hopefully
they won't give us a bunch of attitude for being Johnny-come-latelies,
since we've only been listening to Steely Dan for thirty years. You know
how those "real" before-they-were-famous fans can be.
-- Remember the big white dog I told you about in our neighborhood? The
one that goes around digging through people's trash and stringing
garbage everywhere, yet nobody can be mad at him because of his goofy
and lovable personality? Yeah, we think he's dead. His owners let him
run free (obviously), and nobody's seen him in weeks. The poor guy a had
tumor on his spine, and was starting to walk crooked. We suspect that he
was put-down, as they say.
I'm trying to convince Toney to get out there and dig up some dirt, but
she won't do it. She thinks it might be a touchy subject, and not fit
for gossip. But, dammit, I need information.
I hope that I'll look down there one day and see him lying on their lawn
with his head buried in a saturated sack of garbage again, but I don't
think it's going to happen. Sadly, I believe he's gone to the place that
dogs go when they die -- where it's always the first trash day after
Thanksgiving.
Shit. I sure hope Andy's not reading this....
-- Yesterday Toney asked me, "Remember that woman you used to call
High Neck?"
Pardon? I had no idea what she was talking about.
"You know, the woman who walks by our house all the time, and had a
steel neck brace for several months, which you called scaffolding?"
I busted out laughing. Sometimes I can't even keep track of it all; I
require a schematic of insensitivity.
-- Finally, here are last night's Deadwood numbers. A great
episode, by the way, and I'm not even talking about the substantial
volume of fucks.
And since we're on the subject, here's a Deadwood highlight reel
that Australian Surf Reporter Ashley put together. Check it out. She
says it's almost poetry, and I think I'd remove the "almost."
--
On Saturday I was ready to shut this site down, and call it a day. I'd
just about fucking had it. But eventually, after rolling into a ball and
sucking my thumb for a while, I calmed down. TheWVSR remains a
source of high-irritation for me, though.