Cats That Look Like Hitler
Why has no one told me about this site before?
Jan
31
Jan
30
R.I.P. T-Shirt Hell.com
It is my sad duty to report that T-shirt Hell.com is closing up shop. I’m assuming it’s my duty because T-shirt Hell.com has sent me this week’s e-newsletter, stating that they are closing, three times. The same e-newsletter. Three times. Why else would they keep sending me that unless it was a not-so-subtle hint to blog it? You may recall that Torsopants also recently closed, but then I saved them. Alas, that save turned out to be a mere two month reprieve, as Torsopants was added to the T-shirt Hell.com site, which, as you may recall from earlier in this paragraph, is now closing.
You have until Feb 10, 2009 to purchase their T-shirts. This time, I’m pretty sure they are closing for real. Either that or they are good liars, which is not totally impossible. Anyway.
Some of the gems that I’ve purchased from T-shirt Hell.com over the years include, this one that I got for Tod for Christmas:
…this one that I got for my friend Clayton for Christmas:
He works for a video game company, which makes this extra funny. Also, he thinks your mom is hot.
I got this shirt for Kalev for Christmas 2008:
And this one I gave to Kalev the Christmas before (or perhaps it was for his birthday?):
Because no one is too young to have a shirt from T-shirt Hell.com, I bought this one for both Sarah & Dave’s son, Teddy, and Clayton & Jodelene’s not-yet-born son, Mason:
And last but not least, I have the bestest T-shirt ever, which I bought for myself:
And since I can’t bear the thought of not purchasing one last T-shirt Hell shirt, I just bought the one that makes me laugh every time I think about it:
It was listed on their “Last Call” page, where they list shirts of which they only have a few left. And they just so happened to have this design only in the small size of the women’s babydoll style, which is exactly what I wanted. Which pretty much means it’s fate that I own this shirt. So I bought it. And now if you try to go to that shirt’s page, it says:
THIS PRODUCT IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR SALE
This Product is unavailable at this time and we don’t know when it will be available again.
Please click here to view better shirts, you loser.
That’s right. I bought the very last one. Yay me!
Jan
29
And so endeth another blogging streak
So, after posting yesterday’s blog posting, which I was totally sure I’d alreday posted, I got to thinking “Why the heck didn’t I post it?” And through my mad investigatory skills, I made a horrifying discovery: I missed a day of blogging! I’m pretty sure that what must have happened was that I wrote that blog posting and then clicked “Save Draft” instead of “Publish.” And then went about my merry way, thinking that I had posted when I hadn’t. Me = brilliant!
Truth be told, I’m not even sure why I have this desire to blog every single day. I mean, I don’t get paid to do this, there’s no one making me do this, it’s not as if my legions of fans are demanding daily blog posts and it’s not like I’m bored and need a hobby to fill my time – I have three jobs for crying out loud! It can actually be quite tricky to find the time to post something every day (FSM bless the “schedule posts” feature of WordPress) , yet still I strive to do it. I think it’s partly about the challenge – just to see if I can stick to it – and party about having something that I do solely because I choose to do it. I write for fun. I write to vent about things or to share things that I find amusing or to brag about my mad hockey skillz or the adorable thing my niece said or whatever random thought is rattling around in my brain on any given day.
But, yeah, I screwed up the blogging streak after 231 days straight of blogging! Which means I won’t be able to check off #101 on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I blame the economy.
Jan
28
Bad Words
While trying to think of something to blog about, I decided to check out my drafts, as I have a bunch o’ half written blog postings. Figured maybe there was something in there that would inspire me. And I discovered that there was a fully written blog posting that I was fully sure I’d posted already. Weird. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here it is!
So, I think that my niece may want to reconsider her belief that only my dad’s “other daughter” says bad words.
I seem to be saying lots of bad words lately. And not only am I saying bad things, but I’m saying them on the record. In important places. Like during lecture1.
In my last three lectures, I’ve managed to work in the topics of dead rat fetuses, binge drinking and untreated syphilis. I may also have stated that the whistle blower who got the Tuskegee Syphilis Study2 shut down said: “this is bullshit.” For the record, I had legitimate reasons to talk about dead rat fetuses and binge drinking and untreated syphilis. And the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was bullshit. Bullshit is a very nice word for describing it, actually. I can think of a few other choice words. Like ones my father’s other daughter would use.
Another place I managed to work in bad language a research study that I’m taking part in3. It’s a study where you have to spit in a test tube and take some tests and play some games (long story). Anyway. One of tests is that you have one minute to say all the words you can think of that start with a certain letter. And the first letter they gave me was F. Seriously. F. The next letter they gave me was S, and then an A. So, really, they were asking for it.
In completely unrelated news, a girl on the bus right now is telling her friend (also a girl) that she should have sex with some other girl (“you know, like, hypothetically”) but the second girl doesn’t think the other girl is “down with girls.” You know, just in case you were wondering. And now their other friend, a guy, just yelled out “epididymis!” at the top of his lungs.
1Where I’m the one lecturing. You have to do something to keep your audience amused when class starts at 8 a.m., don’t you?.
2The Tuskegee Syphllis Study, for those who don’t know, was a horrific experiment perpetrated on impoverished black men in Tuskegee, Alabama starting in 1932 and lasting for 40 years until said whistle blower called “bullshit” and went to the press. I say “perpetrated on” because the men in the study didn’t know they were in a study, weren’t told they had syphilis, and they were denied treatment even after penicillin was found to cure syphilis. They were told that the experimental tests being done on them was medical care (remember, they were impoverished and didn’t have access to any medical care) and researchers even had a deal with the US Army to prevent the Army from telling any of the men who were drafted that they had syphilis and from providing them any treatment. Most of the men died, many of their wives were infected and many of their children were born with congenital syphilis. So, yeah, total bullshit.
3Taking part in studies, my astute readers will recall, is on my 101 in 1001 list. I’d already done the first part of the study prior to my 101 list, but was invited to participate in stages 2 (which consists of two sessions), so I think that should count as one of the five
Jan
27
What Should I Put On My Homepage?
I’m soliciting ideas of what I should put on my homepage here at drbethsnow.com.
Right now is says “Welcome to my new home at drbethsnow.com!” and has a couple of buttons (or widgets or whatever the heck you want to call those things). But I feel like I really should have something of more substance there. The question is: what?
Any thoughts?
Jan
26
The Many Google Searches For Sheldon Souray
While goofing around with setting up the WordPress Stats plugin for my new blog yesterday, I happened to look at the stats for my old site. And noticed that I had a ridiculously high number of hits yesterday. Like, ridiculous. Like 645 hits (compared to my usual 150 or so) ridiculous.
It didn’t take too much sleuthing to figure out why this happened. Two words: Sheldon Souray. Search engine terms that landed people on my blog yesterday include:
- Sheldon Souray – 247 hits
- gorgeous Sheldon Souray – 5 hits
- Sheldon Souray wife – 4 hits
- sheldon sourray [spelled incorrectly] – 2 hits
and it goes on like this.
So, I asked myself, what did hockey hottie Sheldon Souray2 do to warrant the flurry of Google searchs for pictures of his gorgeous self and inquiries about whether or not he has a wife (which is what we all know the “Sheldon Souray wife” search is about)?
Well, Sheldon scored two goals in the All-Star game, that’s what. And I’m sure that had a number of people thinking “Just how hot is this Souray guy?” and “Can I marry him?” Sheldon also competed in the hardest shot competition at the All-Star Weekend3.
Incidentally, this means I’ve now accomplished number 85 on my 101 list: “break my current record of 460 blog views in a day.” The 460 views were also due to my hockey hotties list. Clearly I need to spend more time posting about hot hockey players.
So thank you, Sheldon Souray, for scoring two goals while the world was watching. You’ve really helped my blog numbers, which, I’m pretty sure, is the sole reason you scored those goals.
Update: I wrote that post yesterday and mean to post it when I got home from hockey, but I was too tired. So tonight when I got home from work I decided to check again and saw that even more people landing on my blog by searching for Sheldon today than yesterday:
This graph is for a major crash when everyone stops searching for Shel, probably by tomorrow. That’s gonna suck.
1In unrelated, and rather inexplicable, news someone also landed on my blog yesterday by searching “collection of urine sample in pigs pictu”
2Damn. When I went to link to my Hockey Hotties – Now With Pictures posting on my new blog, I discovered that my new way-too-narrow blog theme b0rked my table in that posting. I’ll have to fix that at some point.
3Now searches for “Sheldon Souray hard” will land you on my blog. I’m just sayin’.
Jan
25
Where Do You Read My Blog?
So, after movin’ on up to the self-hosted side, and spending far too much time picking (and then tweaking) a theme, I’m wondering how many people actually come to my blog itself to read my blog postings and how many people never even see my pretty shoe-embellished pages because they read it elsewhere. Hence, a poll:
[poll id=”2″]
If you are reading this through either Facebook or an RSS feed, I think you need to come to my actual blog to participate in the poll. Just go to http://www.nottobetrustedwithknives.com/blog/2009/01/25/reading-my-blog-pollreading-my-blog-poll/ and vote in the poll!
Jan
25
Welcome to my new site!
So, I finally decided to take the plunge and self-host my blog. I registered my domain ages ago and signed up for hosting last month, but hadn’t gotten around to actually diving into until today. And, despite the fact that I probably should have spent the afternoon working on my lectures for next week, I decided I’d take a “short break” from that work to pick a theme and import my blog. And, yeah, well now it’s past midnight, but isn’t my new blog site shiny?
After looking at all 566 themes in the WordPress theme directory, I decided to go with redtopia by Jeremy Clark. But then I discovered that since my blog title (which is written in red) is so long, it partially covered the ugly red flower in the header for that theme. And red on red is rather difficult to read. Plus, the ugly red flower was, well, ugly. So I removed it. But then the header looked a little too plain, so I put in a picture of my face. Because, really, who doesn’t want to look at a picture of my face?
Then I realized that the ugly red flowers were also in the footer, only they were much smaller than the one that was in the header; so small, in fact, that you couldn’t even tell they were flowers anymore – they just looked like ugly red blobs. So I decided to cut them out and replace them with red shoes. Because red shoes rock. I searched on Flickr for a Creative Commons licensed photo that would allow me to modify/adapt a photo of red shoes and ended up finding this photo, in which the model is wearing a very fine pair of shoes, which can now be seen in the footer of my blog. In the course of looking for a usable photo of red shoes, I also discovered that searching “red heels” on Flickr will provide you with a lot of photos of very scantily clad women (and in one case, a very scantily clad man [warning, that link is NSFW]) wearing red heels. Just putting that out there, in case you are interested.
Mad props go to Kalev for his help getting me set up; specifically he found a server for us to use, installed WordPress.org on the server, then re-installed it when I told him I wanted the main page (drbethsnow.com) to use WordPress (not just the /blog subdirectory), made my too large of an xml file small enough to import so that all my old blog postings are now here, figured out why the text was so small (and the superscripts so messed up looking) in the theme and how to fix the CSS to make it look better and probably a bunch of other things that I forget.
Jan
24
Relocation, Relocation, Relocation
Just when y’all got comfortable reading me here in WordPress.com land, I’ve decided to pack up and move. To a new home of my very own at the aptly URL’d drbethsnow.com.
I’ve picked a pretty theme and then screwed around with a bit to make it even prettier. Why don’t you head on over there and let me know what you think?
Jan
23
Hockey Team #2
The UBC Rec hockey league, women’s division, is back up and running this semester. We tried to get it going last semester, but only two women’s teams registered and the other team didn’t want to play the same opponent (i.e., us) every single game. This semester, the league has managed to pull together a third team so the division is good to go. And we had our first game on Monday. On the big rink at the new Thunderbird Arena. This one:
Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, that’s some good ice. I swear I was skating twice as fast as I normally do, with the beautiful ice surface and the huge stadium seating all around, not to mention our team names up on the big clock hanging up over centre ice, just knowing that I’m skating on the same rink where Olympians will be skating in a little more than a year. So. Cool.
So, yeah, I figure since I’m swamped with my regular job plus teaching two courses, why not add a second hockey team to this semester’s to-do list?
Also, playing at UBC again made me think of the sign that used to hang in one of the dressing rooms:
I wonder whatever happened to that sign.