Oddly Enough Blog
News, but not the serious kind
Yule laugh, yule cry…
Blog Guy, what do you think is the biggest holiday for your blog?
Christmas, for sure. We celebrate it for most of the year. Not only that, we’re able to appreciate BOTH holidays.
You mean the religious Christmas and commercial Christmas?
No, I mean the magical goosebump childhood excitement Christmas, and the darkly absurd, “Look, somebody shot at Santa’s helicopter!” Christmas.
Well, those two aspects do fit together better than most people think, don’t they?
Indeed, it’s almost like “The Gift of the Magi.”
Your favorite posts of all time…
I mentioned a few days ago that this blog is going away soon, so it seems appropriate to take a look back at what readers clicked on the most.
I must say, this list of the top 10 posts for the past five years surprised me. But I can’t argue with our official traffic statistics, these little nicks by the snack room vending machine were definitely made by Lamar.
Some of the items make sense. People would want to know which jobs they should avoid, what not to do with cameras around, and even the worst idea of all time.
But some of these others just seemed to be popular for no apparent reason. And as for the one in first place, maybe it has something to do with the photo.
Here are your favorites. If you call in the next 30 minutes, this treasured collection can be yours for the low, low price of….
I liked the ones which had some muscly, good looking dudes.
And ofcourse, Shoeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss!!!!!
Welcome to Rock Bottom…
Honestly, I don’t even know why we cover stories like this.
It’s another one of those lists ranking living standards in various cities around the world. Vienna is in the number one position, while Baghdad ranks dead last.
“Honey, the company wants to transfer me, does it matter to you and the kids whether we go to Austria or Iraq? I told them I had no preference…”
“No, sweetie, they both sound very nice. You choose…”
Mind you, Baghdad does have competition for the worst places to live. They don’t give honors like that to just anyplace, and Iraq’s capital got to the bottom by edging out Khartoum, Port-au-Prince, N’Djamena and Bangui.
America is still the best. In europe, everything is old, laws keep it that way, and the cost to survive is way too high for most. There’s a difference between being a good place to live and a good place to visit…
Let’s see, governor, there’s Moe, Curly and…
It’s supposed to be the fourth thing that slips your mind. You know, you go to the store and remember the tuna fish and floor wax and avocados, but not the toilet paper.
But ANYBODY can remember three things.
Anybody but Texas Governor Rick Perry, that is. He declared at last night’s Republican debate that he planned to eliminate three government agencies but then could only remember two of them, Commerce and Education.
This left potential voters wondering if he would close the Defense Department, the State Department, or what?
“Oops,” said the governor.
How hard is it to remember three fricking things?”
Ofcourse, thanks for that Spin..
I think I need to up my meddies!
The duchess, the chimp and the corn dog
This blog’s August statistics are in, and once again, patterns are starting to form which will allow me to do a better job of reaching my audience. It’s all in knowing how to read the results.
Of the 10 most popular items, two were about politicians eating corn dogs, three involved very cute animals and two more featured Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge.
Our analysts now just have to figure out whether my readers are interested in politics, or in corn dogs. Please, please let it be the latter.
Excuse me now, I need to dictate a letter.
Dear Duchess of Cambridge, I would like to invite you to a photo shoot next summer at the Iowa State Fair. You will appear with an adorable panda cub, and we would like you to consume something which we Americans call a corn dog. It consists of… Oh, never mind, I’ll just get a stunt double duchess, instead…
Here they are, your 10 favorite posts for August:
Earn big bucks without knowing anything!
I swear, I don’t know why I keep getting suckered by these lame “list” stories. For instance, Ten Jobs that Don’t Require a Degree.
Please, let me save you the trouble of reading it. Basically, these are 10 jobs that may not require a college degree, but to get them you have to take really crappy entry-level jobs and work your way up, if you live long enough.
Still interested? I will hit the highlights. It says here you can be the captain of a commercial ship, enjoying “long hours of isolation or dangerous conditions.” After sugar-coating the job like that, the story says you don’t get to be a captain right away. No, you have to start as a deckhand.
I’m sure being a professional deckhand is a real chick-magnet, but I’m not settling for the first job on the list.
Let’s see. I can be a manager in the highly respected gaming industry. But it turns out there are only 6,900 jobs in the whole country, and you have to begin as a dealer, “one of the worst-paying jobs in the country.”
Not interested in helping people lose their life savings at blackjack? No problem. Next on the list is police detective, a job they describe as having “one of the highest rates of on-the-job injury and illness.” Cool!
Damn, Crow, you’re way too clever! You’ve already figured out the competition is never won by somebody who shows up….
The folks you love to hate?
Blog Guy, you haven’t written about any new signs of that onrushing Apocalypse recently. Is it safe to come out of the panic room?
No, you just stay put in there. An actual opinion poll informs us that Casey Anthony is now “the most hated person in America.”
She’s that Florida woman who was found not guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter?
Yep, it turns out, 94 percent of the Americans who have heard of her dislike her. Oh, and 57 percent consider her “creepy.”
Ah, I get it. So you think it’s a sign of the Apocalypse that anybody scored so high?
No, the sign of the Apocalypse is that the public seems alarmingly incapable of separating fantasy from fact.
George and Cindy Anthony spotted shopping in Statesville, NC. Store had to get security!
The very best of April…
It’s time to look at the most popular blog items from a very goofy month.
No surprise, a certain wedding featured strongly in the top ten, capturing slots one and two, among others.
Beyond that, it was news you could use. Readers liked tips that could save their marriage, and items about pistol-armed fashion models and one-armed stiletto users.
One more interesting note. The item about a new way to learn touch typing, which ran in March and was one of the most popular that month, made it onto April’s list too. Folks never grow tired of good keyboard stories.
Here were the top ten items, based on traffic:
That “model” is going to find herself with quite the gash on her thumb if she even thinks about firing a handgun holding it like that.
The best of January? Read it and weep…
It’s time to calculate my most popular blog posts for the month, and you could knock me over with an anvil.
Readers flocked to the really meaty, newsy items, looking for stuff they can’t find anywhere else.
They clicked on the item about my own deep personal thoughts, a piece on business dining etiquette, and our hard-hitting photos of the homes of possible 2012 Republican candidates.
Even more popular were my bitter reflections on the Virginia textbook controversy and my explanation of sapphire economics.
The most popular item for the month? Read it and weep:
The most popular holiday isn’t Christmas?
Since I’ve already revealed this blog’s most popular items for all of 2010 it’s going to be a bit less dramatic to list the top 10 for December, but I’m required to do it for those of you who wager on the results.
December readers shared my personal appreciation for the truly absurd, especially a program to prepare panda cubs to return to the wild by dressing their human handlers as pandas, and a U.S. Navy project that is so bizarre I’m not even going to describe it here.
Readers eagerly followed the doings of dumbasses, including a TV chef who hired homeless guys to try to kill his wife, and the creep who paid $87,000 for a coffin that once held Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
A number of Christmas items made the top 10 for the month here, but perhaps surprisingly, all of them were beaten in popularity by a different holiday altogether, in slot number three.
These, then, were the most popular items in a very busy month.
Happy New Year, my lovely fellow commentators….
Nosmo, I would go for a spiked tea… make mine Earl Grey…
One, brilliant suggestions for 2011… definitely worth doing!
Spin, I second ya.. Lady, do you already have Lamar?? 
Boys, get the plane working asap… you need to pick us across-the-ponders up….
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Resident Oddly Enough blog Expert
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Why can’t a fallen angel like that fall in my room?