Top Chef + Delish.com = SEO Blog Serendipity, Bitches!

That’s right!

They actually featured a website, used the word “keyword” and did some other crap which means I can actually post a legitimate, SEO-related something or other about Top Chef and it will be half-assed relevant!  Which is great, ‘cuz rarely do I do anything full assed.

So anyways, from a search marketing point of view, it makes a lot of sense for Delish.com to have their site pimped by Top Chef.  I mean, hell, I didn’t remember the name of the site (again, shut the fuck up, Dad!) but was able to go the interweb and find it by doing this awesome search for “top chef recipe website from quickfire challenge”.  And I found the friggin’ site! You know why?  That’s right. SEO.  And can you imagine how much traffic they got from people who weren’t dumb assholes like me that actually could remember the name of that site (because they weren’t getting yelled at for not having a friggin’  job) or even knew that Delish.com existed?  I know, right!  That’s a lot of traffic.  And now if Bravo would quit being a bunch of stingy bitches and link out to that shit from their TV listings, I might not of had to use the Google at all.  Just sayin’, quit being a bunch of tight asses, Bravo.  It’s a real for real website.  I even used the son of a bitch to find a recipe for the only ingredients I had on-hand: gin, honey nut Cheerios and garlic salt (turns out they only recommend drinking the gin. Go figure.).

So, what lessons have we gleaned from tonight’s episode of Top Chef?  Well, first off, if you have a website about food and junk this might be a good offline avenue for getting online traffic.  Second, Bravo won’t link to your site even if they feature it on the friggin’ episode.   Third, Eli is punk ass who totally let Ashley go home for his shitty idea.  Fourth, sometimes it pays to be Picasso’s paint brush cleaner (really, dude, you were gushing) than on a team with Eli, who is a punk ass bitch who let you hang for his shitty dish idea.  Fifth, I hate Eli right now and will beat his punk ass down if I ever see him, so he’s pretty much safe unless my old man falls asleep before I do and I take his wallet and car keys.  And that piece of shit starts (who knew the Yugoslavians weren’t so good at building cars?).  Sixth, the only thing you can really do with gin is drink it, though I didn’t learn that lesson watching Top Chef but rather on Delish.com.

And on that note, there’s a gin and garlic salt and tonic waiting for me.

Go Ahead, Laugh At My Tinfoil Hat

On the Twitter, Google Wave, Wave, or #Wave have been trending for a couple of days now.  Some people are panicked that they haven’t received their Wave invite yet.  Someone mentions they have invites, and they’re inundated with requests for people – early adopters – eager to sign up and join the elite class of those already who’ve already joined.  And all this for a product, as the Streko pointed out, will be available in a month.

All this for a product that will allow Google to even more easily grab our data, use it against us, establish a one world government that will then be taken for robots who will turn us into batteries ala the Matrix.

Or, perhaps they will find a way to fight the robots back, but the “Dont’ Be Evil” bunch will ban all nuclear warheads (since it’s a one world government after all), but we’ll find outselves fighting an alien invasion and unable to take down the mothership with conventional weapons.  Then we’ll be enslaved by our alien overlords, harvesting water, aluminum and plutonium for them.  And no, the ladies’ costumes will look nothing like the slave girl garb Jabba the Hut had Princess Leia wear. They will make an effort to make them unflattering, like some mumus with lace doilies around the collar (for dress up occasions!)  from the Walmart or one of those old people’s catalogs that sell “personal massagers” that are really vibrators and it makes you snigger then grosses you out when you see one of them on your grandma’s nightstand when you go to raid her jewelry box for beer money (which serves your right, you thieving little prick!).  There really is no bright spot, except for the unemployment rate will finally be at 0%.  The only other thing I could see them doing is herding us all up like cattle, breeding and eating us.  Which would be a little awkward if our new alien masters looked like cows.

All I’m saying is this:  Just like you can’t unknow that your grandparents are “doing it” (think about this – retirement homes are like old people orgy centers, seriously), once you hand over all your data to our new overlords, there’s no getting it back.

And yes, I use and love my Gmail.

This Is As Inspirational As I Get

So, if you can’t tell by the frequent updating I’ve been doing lately (that was supposed to be sarcastic) I’ve been in a little funk.  And the fact I’m using the word funk, which represents quite possibly the third worst kind of music (preceeded by disco and whatever jazz they play where it’s a bunch of assholes playing a bunch of random shit) indicates as much.  But enough about the kind of music I hate (there really is quite a bit).  Jayzus I use parenthesis a lot (surprise surprise!).

Anyways, earlier today I was chatting with none other than the Mr. Syzlak about getting us potentitally getting our shit together and kicking a little ass.  Or something like that.  Basically, since I’ve been laid off, I’ve been looking around and wondering what the fuck I’m doing and what I should be doing.  It’s been about everything from whether I should take a shower today (vote was no) to what to do about the Hackmobile (still for sale – call me!).  And then great sage sent me one of those inspirational blog posts where in the comments everybody says cheery shit like “Here here!” and crap like that.  But the blog post was spot on, and got me to thinking of the philosophy I’ve been pondering since I heard some jerk on the TV say it a month or two ago – “we all need to just learn to be happy with what we have, man!”

Why not be happy with what I have?  Why shouldn’t Syzlak be happy with whatever he has (enter your own venereal disease joke here)?  Why can’t we all just be happy with what we have?

As I left my conversation with Mr. Syzlak to investigate the shower dilemma further, I realized that the reason I, or Syzlak, or whoever else seem to be unsatisified with their lot isn’t hapy with whatever it is we have is because that philosophy is total fucking bullshit.  It’s just a bunch of New Age, feel good hippie bullshit to make you okay with the fact all you did all day was smoke a bunch of dope and watch Dora the Explorer.  You might have watched Spongebob or Star Trek, but you couldn’t get your lazy ass off the couch to find the remote. But that’s okay, because you’re happy with what you have, even if it some annoying little bitch and a monkey.

And I almost fell for it.

If our ancestors were just happy with what they had, we’d all be sitting around in a fucking cave somewhere picking scabies and fleas off each other.  There’d be no porn, no booze, no cars or any of the other shit that makes living today in this day and age fucking awesome.  We’d all be sober, walking everywhere and wishing to see some random boobs while wondering if there is a faster way to quickly cook some fucking popcorn while simultaneously making our whole friggin’ house stink.  It wouldn’t matter that amps didn’t go to 11 because there’d be no amps to crank and piss off the neighbors.  We’d all be content that our cars are quiet and ride at factory height. There’d be no Shakespeare, no Beethoven and no Ziggy.  Or even Ziggy with nipple on his nose, because everyone would be happy with regular old Ziggy.

And forget about bacon.

Screw being happy with what you have.  Strive to have better.  Work your ass off to get what you want, not just what you need and what you’d be content with.  There’s nothing wrong wanting more, wanting better, or hell, just wanting.  If no one wanted anything, we’d all be out of a job.  Well, I’m already out of a job, but you know what I’m getting at.

So, do what that one blog post says – get busy living or get busy dying.  And if you’re happy with what you have, fine.  But don’t let some asshole convince you that you need to be content or happy with whatever it is you have when you’re not.  While that jackass might not be trying to sell you anything, he’s wrong.  There’s not a damn thing wrong with wanting better.

Christ, I sound like a friggin’ motivational speaker or something.

iPhone + Twitterific = Me Fucking Annoyed

It’s bad enough that I got traffic the other day for the phrase “tweet cred”.  But then I see that I also got traffic from something called “Twitterific”.  And where was the source of this Twitterific traffic?  A goddammed iPhone.

Lookit, I realize that cutesy Twitter-related words and phrases are here to say.  As sick as it makes me, as much as it makes me want to pick up my laptop and gouge my eyes out, as much as it makes want to make up another nonsense phrase to illustrate my rage, I’m realizing I’m in the minority here.  But the double whammy of a friggin’ iPhone and cutesy Twitter phrase illustrated by a page?  This is too fucking much.

Go ahead and rub it in my face that you have an iPhone and I don’t.  It’s fine, really.  Go ahead and annoy the holy fucking hell out of me with cutesy Twitter phrases.  I’m getting numb to it.  But please, for all that is good in this world, don’t hit me with both.

Vinnie Penn Is An Idiot and Top Chef Is Still AWESOME

Alright, so it turns out I’m more interested in the TV these days than search marketing, but I’ve made me peace with that.  But what I’m not at peace with is Vinnie Penn’s idiotic article about Top Chef.  If you want to know what it’s about, go ahead and read the damn thing.  Basically, it was MSN’s weak ass attempt to have something on their homepage about a very popular show.  Okay, fine.  I mean, it got my dumb ass to click on it and read it.  So it worked.  But here’s my bitches in no specific order.

But the article itself is bullshit.  Seriously.  First off, he’s comparing a TV show to a friggin’ network.  Now, maybe it’s because I don’t watch TV professionally, but I’m pretty sure a single TV series about chefs in a competition is a little more limited in what it shows, than say, A WHOLE FUCKING TELEVISION NETWORK DEVOTED TO FOOD.  But what do I know.

Then this Vinnie-guy has this “New York is the center of the universe how dare they have a food show in a low-rent place like Vegas” attitude.  They had the show in fucking Miami.  My point?  Who cares where the hell it is or if there’s a “food scene”.  Does Miami really have a food scene?  Really?  There’s a signature Miami food that’s only good in Miami?  If having a fucking signature dish in a city is what’s important, then I’m sure friggin’ Top Chef Philadelphia will make Mr. Penn happy. Or not because it’s not in friggin’ NYC.  At least he conceeded Chicago has good food.

So what else pissed me off?  This whole “as opposed to the ones where I can ogle at the presentation and sometimes even the presenter (Giada De Laurentiis anyone?)” quote.  Seriously?  This guy blind?  On Top Chef you not only have the lovely Padma Lakshmi and Gail Simmons.  Now, if you know how to count, that’s TWO hot ladies in ONE show, versus one gal of questionable attractiveness in one show.  It’s just simple math.

The final irritant is the whole Tom Colicchio versus Bobby Flay and Next Food Network Star.  First off, Colicchio is fucking awesome.  Flay is alright, he’s tolerable, but he’s no Colicchio.  Besides, I’m prNFNS hasn’t been around nearly as long, feels like it’s trying to be Top Chef knock off (kinda’ like The Fashion Show being a knock off for Project Runway) and it has a parade of hosts/judges.  Last year it was that one guy from Good Eats.  Who knows who it will be next year.  And maybe that was the first season this guy Vinnie Penn watch Next Food Network Star.  And if it was, then he’s talking out is ass a little.  Which if fine, ‘cuz I do that quite a bit.

While I think the article is generally crap, there is one point I have to agree with Penn on.  Toby Young kinda’ sucks.  Not kinda’, he does.  He brings nothing to the table. He has the personality of shoe leather.  He’s as funny as herpes.  He has no cooking merit.  If they wanted an asshole who’s never worked in a kitchen to sit there and “snarky” (and by snarky I mean not funny, just trying to be mean) comments, then they should’ve hired me.

So, here’s the take away.  Vinnie Penn’s article is dumb. If it had been about how lame Toby Young is, I’d have been on board.  But Giada is no Padma or Gail, Colicchio is fucking awesome, Top Chef is still good, NFNS is kinda’ lame and because Vinnie Penn wrote this dumb article, I think he’s dumb.  More directly, I think he’s an idiot (though he probably think I’m a prick, so fair is fair).

Twelpforce? Best Buy, You Really DO Want Me To Hate You.

I was just sitting here on my ass, halfway watching the TV and contemplating on whether or not to switch to a gin and tonic, a maitai or stick with the beer when I saw some young gal standing in front of a stadium of blue clad people.  Always intrigued by cults, I paid attention.  And then she asked about cell phones and then cult was yelling at her about having plans and then something about the future . . .  and then I saw they were running their fucking Twitter page – calling it Twelpforce.

For fuck’s sake.

Few things make me want to climb a clock tower and start picking off people wearing blue polo shirts than the insistence of people on the Twitter cutesying the fucking vernacular up by adding fucking “tw” to every noun, verb, pronoun, adjective and adverb.  Yes, part of that last sentence would have read ” . . . tweeple on the Twitter twutesying the twucking twernacular .  . .”.    Pretty fucking annoying, huh?

But nothing takes the cake like a bunch of assholes from some corporate office (I’m looking at you, Best Buy!) jumping in on the act.  I can just see their fucking boardroom now:

Biff:  Hey, this Twitter thing seems popular with the youngsters! How do we take advantage of this?

Sven:  Well, Biff, we’re getting ready for a new push on our cell phone plans.  And people on Twitter, or, catch this – Tweeple! – will follow anything! Especially if it’s on television!  We can advertise our cell phone plans on TV, talk about us “helping” them with other home tech questions, and get these cwazy Tweeple to follow it and have an avenue for annoying the holy piss out of them only the way a mindless, bandwagon jumping corporation can!  And to give it the air of being useful, and getting us some “tweet cred” with the tweeples, we could call it “Twelpforce”! Get it? Twelpforce instead of Help Force?  Because it’s on Twitter!

Biff:  Great idea! Let’s get our best “tweeple”, heheheh, on it!  I’ll start getting our creative team on the television ad!

Sven:  Biff, don’t you mean “twelevision”?  Get it? Twelevision!

Biff:   Oh, Sven! You card!

And then these two assholes go off to the strip club to sniff a little cocaine and get lapdances, which somehow ends up with them in a hotel room together and some very embarrassing photos making it back to their wives.  But I digress.  Nothing makes a company look like a gigantic jackass than taking a ham-handed approach to appealing to a core audience of a specific outlet.  Sure, it makes sense for them to get Geek Squad involved in this and developing their core brand a little further.  And yeah, I can see how seeing other companies do a good job of utilizing the Twitter for building their brand and reaching out to their customer base would appeal to a company like Best Buy, especially if  you consider Best Buy has a spotty customer service reputation at best.  And it certainly makes sense that a gadget retailer would try to reach out to early adopters, though, to do that they should have been on the Twitter two years ago.

Jumping in now, with a fucking “cute” name just smacks of douchebaggery.  While I’m sure they’ll get plenty of people following them, which will make them the perfect fodder for other Best Buy marketing messages, I have a feeling this isn’t going to have the desired effect they intended.  It just seems like it’s too little, too late, too obnoxiously.  But what the hell do I know?  They already have over 4,000 followers.

Tonight I Was Thinking . . . .

About how I wish I were Mexican.  Not because I love Mexico or Mexicans necessarily, but mostly because then I might have been given a fucking cool name, like Guillermo del Toro.  Though honestly, as cool of a last name “del Toro” is (and is it waaaay fucking cool!), I’d be happy with Guillermo for a first name.  There’s not a lot of Guillermos around, or at least not around here.  And if someone said my name without rolling the “r”, I’d totally be that jackass that corrects them.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know Guillermo del Toro is Spanish.  But face it, Spaniards are just fancy Mexicans just like Englishmen are just fancy Americans.  I know all you Spaniards and Englishpeople (that isn’t a word, is it?) are probably pretty apalled by that, but it’s the truth.  We’re just the lowbrow version of you people.

And that’s okay.

Amazon Buys Zappos Blah Blah Blah

Yes, I realize I totally renegged on my “I’m going to start posting again, honest!” thing.  So, I was wrong.  But anyways, yesterday, unless you were passed out drunk under a tree and getting a nasty sunburn because the sun fucking moved (yeah yeah yeah, I know, I know, the earth revolves around the sun, not the sun revolves around the earth – save the fucking lecture, Professor), you probably didn’t find out about it until last night.  Which means you missed out on all the commenting and arm-chair CEO-ing that comes along with bullshit like that.

So anyways, it totally makes sense why Amazon would buy Zappos.  “What?!?!? They were a bookseller! They have no business selling shoes (or any of the other shit they sell on amazon.com for that matter)!  Why the hell do you think they should get in the shoe business, you ignorant, unemployed asshole?”  you may be thinking.  And hey, just because I’m unemployed, and maybe ignorant, and probably an asshole doesn’t mean I can’t do some half-assed business analysis a day late and after everyone has quit talking about.  Don’t tell me how to blog, MOM!

So yeah, it makes sense.  Think about it.  With the economy in the shitter, everyone is broke-ass like me.  But perhaps not as good looking.  Anyways, with everybody being broke, who the hell has money for downloading MP3s or buying CDs?  And books?  To hell with buying a book.  All these cheap asses are going to the library now or standing in the aisles at the Walmart reading shit. On top of that, who the hell has money for broadband?  You ever try buying shit or, worse yet, downloading anything over dial-up?  Exactly.  You might as well get a blanket and start a fire.

By now you’re thinking, “Okay, Mr. Shitty Logic, what makes you think people have money for shoes then?  No wonder you’re unemployable, you fucking moron.”  Ah ha, but that’s where it makes sense.  Poor people still need shoes.  And where are they going to get shoes if they have no money and no interweb?  By stealing them from rich people.  And where are rich people going to get their shoes?  They’re going to fire up the internet, go to Zappos.com and start avoiding the library where fucking poor people steal their shoes.  It’s called the circle of life, bitches.

So there you have it.  In a bizarre form of trickle down economics, it makes total sense for Amazon to buy a shoe reseller than say, develop an eBook reader that’s the size of a fucking laptop with none of the funtionality.

Perez Hilton Got Andy Dick’d

So, here’s the thing. We all know people on the interweb are assholes. It’s just the way it is. Fuck it or fight it, at the end of the day, this little barrier of silica and wire and a bunch of other shit I really don’t understand makes it so the assholes will remain, well, assholish. It’s the way it is. That’s why a monkey will fling shit at you when you go to the zoo. Monkeys are naturally assholes, and putting them in a cage makes them act like bigger assholes. Put a barrier in the mix, and well, you got shit all over your new shirt and junior is going to have seek counseling. It’s sixth grade science, really.  But this isn’t about monkeys flinging shit, er, well, I guess it kind of is. Anyways, this is about what happens when you fling shit and that magical barrier is gone.

Now, I admit, while I’m jealous of Perez Hilton’s anhiliating anhialating annhialating kicking the holy shit out of me for the worst blog of all time, but that has nothing to do with this.  Hell, I didn’t even know who the fuck will.i.am is or was until Syzlak explained it to me, and even then I was still friggin’ lost.  Apparently, he got the president elected or something with either MySpace or the YouTube, though if it were the Hulu that’d totally make sense since I’m boycotting them because I hate their fucking ads so much.  I mean, c’mon – some kid in ad school win a contest or something?  Those ads actually make me violent.  Violent enough that if Perez Hilton had been talking shit about Syzlak or Ms. Rebecca Kelley or Comrade Melanie, I would have Lovitzed his ass too.

Which is the point of this.  Did he deserve to get his punk ass whooped?  That’s up for debate.  I mean, he did start acting like a dick to will.i.am, in real life, and somebody jumped in.  But, kicking the shit out of people is against the law, regardless of how much of a prick they’re being to you.  The real lesson here is if you’re gonna’ act like an asshole on the internet, someday somebody may want to kick the shit out of you.  And when you go out into the real world and act like an asshole, no one gives a shit that Miley Cyrus is your amiga (really?  That’s not the punchline to a joke?  Hey – lookit that! A pun!) and you will likely get the shit beat out of you.  And it will take an hour for the police to arrive.  And people will snigger at the picture of you crying.  Or at least I probably will.

I’m Even MORE Legit, Bitches!

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I Was Relevant Once

HAHHAAHAHAHHAHHAHAA!  I don’t know why or how, nor do I really care, but on a list of 117 SEO blogs that are worth a shit, this was one of them!!!

Okay, so the post is from March of last year.  But what the hell.  Just like that creepy gym teacher that’s grooming potential minors to have sex with, I’m sayin’ age is nothing but a date, and I don’t care that the date of that post is from last year.  You have to take credit where credit it due, even if, you know, you kind of do it a year later when your unemployed ass has nothing to do but think about your next gin and tonic and watch the new season of Bridezillas (I wonder if divorce lawyers watch this shit to troll for future clients, but anyways, I was gloating).  A win is a fucking win, even if you didn’t realize you won over a year later.  You don’t see those Olympic fuckers sending back medals after it turns out some dirtbag pissed a dirty test, do you?  Exactly.  It’s just like that, sans urine. And medals.  Well, and glory and television coverage.  Other than that, pretty much the same thing.  Except nobody cares about this and for whatever reason they give a shit about the Olympics.

The other thing is, there are some really good fucking SEO blogs on that list!  By people that know shit, nonetheless.  And from a source like Promote My Site (I’m pretty sure they promoto websites or something), that’s gotta count for something too.  So, again, this is a big win.  Me = AWESOME.

Before I wrap this up and have a celebratory beer (should have a half rack if you consider the interest one beer would have had had I had it then.  Wow, that sentence can’t be grammatically correct), I’d like to say thank you to every one of you who have gone and voted for me for the worst blog of all time.   I know beating Perez Hilton is a personal wet dream of mine (I can’t believe I just used “Perez Hilton” and “wet dream” in the same sentence – I think I threw up in my mouth a little) for this honor and likely to only happen once he quits or gets a conscience, but being second is  pretty fucking cool.  Thank you for your support.  Seriously, it’s pretty damn awesome.  Thank you.