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Social Networking MADNESS!

I think I’ve finally convinced myself that I am what John Dvorak refers to as a “joiner.”

I’ve successfully added myself to just about every blog, social bookmarking, digg, netscape, and whatever else is out there to offer. I found a particularly good one tonight, called BlogCatalog.

It’s a pretty nice community of fellow bloggers just looking for visitors, something this little blog is desperately in need of lately. My erratic posting habits don’t really help the visit count, but still for a site that used to get 500+ visitors a day average, it’s now down to about 200.

I know, it’s a Catch-22. Post more, get more visits. Lack of visits make me post less. The vicious cycle begins all over again.

I just spammed the hell out of the site hoping to get a little “link love” from my fellow bloggers. So far I’ve had a ~~couple~~ dozen, and I welcome you all to my not-so-daily ramblings. Hopefully you’ll add me to your RSS readers and stick around.

Link: Social Networking MADNESS!

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Posted by Haggis on August 3rd, 2007 @ 10:05 pm.

Third Decade

Five years ago I was just starting one of my first jobs in my field, working for a small yellow pages company. I was living alone but not enjoying it very much, and I was considering getting another apartment with a friend.

Ten years ago I was working for a telephone survey company and taking a year off before starting college. I made employee of the month two months in a row because I memorized the order of keys needed to advance to the next call without having to wait for the slow computer load screens, which brought my call rate to less than a second between calls.

Fifteen years ago I was nervous about going to high school, and probably spending my nights talking to strangers on BBS Chat boards (that’s pre-internet, folks). The irony is that I’d been telling online people I was 15 for three years, just so they’d take me seriously. At 15. What was I thinking?

Twenty years ago I was spending my time at the school park playing GI Joes and Transformers in the dirt, and throwing them off playground structures with makeshift parachutes. The rest of the time was spent riding my bike all over the neighborhood, or attempting to build tree forts in the woods next to my apartments.

Twenty-five years ago I was very excited about starting Kindergarten. Earlier that year I had gotten on the bus with a neighbor girl and went right into her classroom like I belonged there. The only supplies I brought were my sister’s Happy Days lunchbox filled with Marshmellows and a Thermos™ full of water. The administrative staff thought it was all very cute and funny. My mother did not.

And Thirty years ago today, I was squeezed out of my mother and thrust upon the world for the very first time.

Link: Third Decade

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Posted by Haggis on August 1st, 2007 @ 12:00 am.

If Only More Newscasters Were Like Her

The clip above is from an MSNBC morning news show that broadcasted today. It features three of the newscasters reporting on the day’s stories, as usual, but when journalist Mika Brzezinski is supposed to start off with the “lead story” she immediately apologizes for the content, then after a second thought flat out refuses to discuss the topic.

What was the topic that she refused to report on? Paris. Effing. Hilton.

The clip jumps a few times, showing Mika getting more and more frustrated with both her fellow newscasters and the producer (which I assume is shouting obscenities in her ear) who still try to get her to do the story. She even goes so far as to steal a lighter out of one of the other newscasters pockets and attempts to BURN the damn story on live television. Before she can set fire to MSNBC’s studios they wrestle it away from her, but not before she rips the copy to shreds.

The producers even go so far as to print out another copy, which she promptly stands up and shreds in a nearby waste bin.

Kudos to her. If only everyone else in the media would do the same, Paris would lose all her powers and die on a coke binge somewhere. The media not paying attention to her is like Kryptonite to Superman.

Source: Perez Hilton

Link: If Only More Newscasters Were Like Her

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Posted by Haggis on June 28th, 2007 @ 5:43 pm.

The Daily Haggis v9

As you can tell, the site got a bit of a facelift tonight. Design is still basically the same as far as colors go, but the layout has been adjusted to allow more room on both the sidebar and the main content window. I’ve already added a few new features such as dynamic article rating (with no login required), and a few under-the-hood tweaks. I’ll go over the bigger list as soon as I get some sleep!

Expect more changes over the next few days as I fine tune the new layout and tweak the sidebar widgets.

UPDATE: Click below for a list of Changes & Additions in version 9:
More after the jump…

Link: The Daily Haggis v9

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Posted by Haggis on June 12th, 2007 @ 12:21 am.

New Music Roundup (Summer 2007)

It’s summertime, so while we’re being inundated by the latest Gwen Stefani single or whatever shit-tastic garbage commercial radio is trying to shove down our throats, I thought I’d take a moment and recommend a few recent, or sort-of-recent, albums that I’ve been listening to. Some are quite mainstream (Maroon 5, Nine Inch Nails), some are rising stars (Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen), and one that nobody knows but should (The Eames Era).

As always, I welcome all comments, hate mail, and other recommendations. If you’d like to see what I’m listening to right now, here’s my last.fm link which has every song I’ve heard for the past year or so.

Maroon 5 - It Won’t Be Soon Before Long Maroon 5 - It Won’t Be Soon Before Long
I’ve been an early fan of Maroon 5, when they first released Harder to Breath as a single several years ago. On a whim, I got an opportunity to catch them live when they opened at a tiny club in Houston (Numbers, represent!) for the 90s one-hit-wonder Cowboy Mouth (remember Jenny Says? Yeah, them.) They put on a hell of a show, and I’ve been a follower of theirs since then.

Of course I was impatient for the next album from the ex-Kara’s Flowers bandmates, since frontman Adam Levine had been spending so much time recording with everyone else in the music industry (Kanye West, Alicia Keyes). When I got the word that the new album was coming, I think I literally cheered out loud.
More after the jump…

Link: New Music Roundup (Summer 2007)

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Posted by Haggis on June 6th, 2007 @ 7:37 pm.

Mikey Likes It…Smokin’, Not So Much

New Mike Old Mike

Long time, no see, eh?

I realize my absence may have been unnoticed by some, but I also know that some of you Interwebians wondered. Let me put your basest fears to rest. Not dead, not incapacitated, and only marginally closer to the stroke that’s been impending for about 7 or 8 years now.

No, what sent me on my electronic hiatus was a trailer. One simple, short, well-disguised travesty of justice. The trailer in question is, as anyone who knows me is probably aware, Rob Zombie’s “re-imagining” (his words, not mine) of the epic slasher flick, Halloween.

For the uninitiated, the Halloween mythos follows the bloody, screamy story of Michael Myers, the preeminent slasher figure of modern film-making. The original film, written and directed by horror legend John Carpenter (who, by the by, also composed its prolific theme music), follows the story of Laurie Strode (played into cinematic history by Jamie Lee Curtis), a teenager being stalked by Myers for, at least in the beginning, unknown reasons.

As the story goes, Michael Myers viciously murdered his own sister, who apparently was not a very nice girl, with a butcher knife. In the original film, Myers’ motivations are vague, and somewhat supernatural. He stalks Laurie and her requisitely moronic friends until they’re dead and she’s saved by the inestimable Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), who has treated Myers for years. Not much of a plot, eh?

The beauty of Halloween was not the plot, or the acting (although Pleasance is decent and Curtis is passable), or even the quintessential theme. It’s the cinematography that elevates this film beyond a simple horror flick. There is no more gripping scene than that of Dr. Loomis, standing silent and aghast as he looks down from the balcony of the old Myers house, at the pile of leaves where Myers’ corpse should be. This scene, among many, is one of the reasons I’ve always admired this film. In point of fact, critics and moviegoers of the time (the film was released in 1978) agreed. Not only does it rank as one of the most critically well received of the horror genre, but has become a part of popular culture.

Now get ready to flame, Interwebians.
More after the jump…

Link: Mikey Likes It…Smokin’, Not So Much

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Posted by Smokin on May 7th, 2007 @ 1:24 pm.

Something’s Missing

Friends - check
Money - check
Well-slept - check
Opposite sex - ~~check~~
Guitar - check
Microphone - check
Messages waiting on me when I come home - check

How come everything I think I need always comes with batteries?
What do you think it means?

- John Mayer, “Something’s Missing”
Heavier Things

Link: Something’s Missing

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Posted by Haggis on May 7th, 2007 @ 12:00 pm.

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