Hey, why not talk about the spam? I used to complain about the spam in my comments all the time and I don’t want people wondering what happened to that plot thread. So here’s the deal: Back in the day I was manually fighting the spam myself, deleting the comments as they came in. When it got to be hundreds a day, I was goin’ nuts. But then Marq, my man behind the scenes, hooked me up with Akismet, some sort of program thing especially designed for the dealing-with of spam! How convenient.

So anyway, it seems to be working super well. As of the moment I am writing this, it is telling me that it has “protected (my) site from 22,643 spam comments already.” And the really impressive thing, to me anyway, is that the spam is slowing down. The robots behind it all are finally getting the point that I didn’t want them doing it on my web site. Isn’t technology grand? And also ungrand since it caused the problem in the first place?

Haiku!

I smell the ganja.
It’s wafting through the window
from some other realm.

Is that how “ganja” is spelled? My spellcheck seems to think so, but I’m no expert on the reefers and my spellcheck has steered me wrong in the past. It doesn’t even recognize the word “spellcheck”.

In other news, Marq is working harder than ever on the site. He’s got buttons and banners coming and going. Basically, just accept any changes you see over the next while for what they are, the hard work of one of the people on the site, but not the other.

Nothing, whats a grackle for you?

Anyway, a grackle is a bird which I had heard of over the years, but apparently I had never seen one because when I saw one this week (twice) I was like “Does that crow have a blue head, what’s the deal?” The Internet helped me to know what it actually was (it was a grackle, in case you haven’t been paying attention) and I think they’re neat. They look like this:

I don’t know how exactly I have lived in the city for so long without seeing one, but now that I have I can say I am a grackle fan.

Well, we have a space for advertising on the Book of PDR now. Over in the sidebar, under the menu, I’m sure you can see it. I had resisted doing such a thing because it is sort of ridiculous, but now I’ve done it anyway. Isn’t that a great story? It sure is. The bottom line is that it would be cool to make any amount of money, no matter how small, from this website, seeing as it is one of the main things I enjoy in life. It may be a long while before you actually see any ad there, though, since I don’t get a lot of hits to this site and people probably prefer to advertise in places that do.

Haiku!

In a world of pie.
One man must learn about love
And eat all the pie.

Here’s a terrible idea for a video game: The alien bad guys are summoning their armies through a Star Portal Machine that you destroy in the first level. After that you just have to kill the hordes that have already made it through, so there is constantly fewer dudes. As the levels go on they just keep getting easier and easier because there isn’t many bad guys left. The final level is just you leading an army against the one alien left who is just scared and hiding. It’ll be easy, but think of the sense of power you’d get. You’d be like, a really terrible guy!

What’s in a name? That’s the sort of question that arises when you watch the Canadian Propaganda Piece I am reviewing this time around.

So this one starts out with some people (Europeans) walking until they are next to some other people (North American Natives, I would assume in Canada what with that being the point). So the Natives speak in some weird gibberish code* and the Head European asks his friendly neighborhood priest to translate. The priest informs the Head European that the Natives have invited them to the nation and it is called “Canada” and, yes, that’s right, this commercial is about the secret origin of Canada’s name. Anyway, everyone is happy to know the name of the nation except one guy: He’s not the priest and he’s not the Head European, so basically we don’t know who he is. We just have to imagine. Probably he’s the ship’s carpeter.

* I am 1/256 Wampanoag, so I am allowed to make this joke. (It’s my only race card, let me play it!)

Anyway this guy is so sick of putting down carpet on the ship that when a chance to show off comes up he is All Over It. Basically he’s like “I know that word! That’s not the name of the nation! The old man is just talking about the village down there!” but the priest stands by his translation and Canada is called Canada forever after.

Once again I’m sure that what we are seeing here is not an actual event that played out. Yes the name Canada likely comes from the word for village in some language (and I feel somewhat ashamed that I don’t know which), but it is a safe bet that the Pedant vs. Priest argument we see unfold here was made up solely for our benefit. And I am totally okay with that! This one has several lines I like to quote and would be easily recognized by others who grew up in the right era. Job well done!

I also like the music throughout this piece. It ramps up the drama of the whole affair, which is good considering this is a commercial where one group of people invite some other people in to talk and the closest thing we have to a conflict is a disagreement over what a word means. Not exactly a drama-explosion no matter how many . So the music plays throughout to keep emotions from dying. In a way it reminds me of the Irish Kids moment and my mind will try to tack on the upbeat jig from that one. Really, if they ended all of these with a jig there’d be a lot more happy endings.

Anyway, as I said, I do like this one. I’m going to give it Four and a Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

In other news, the comments section of YouTube is, as always, filled with idiotic arguments, in this case about how evil Whitey is for conquering the natives. Now I didn’t stray too far into the comments (I am a human being and we can only take so many YouTube comments), but I didn’t see any discussion of the real scandal in here: Note that the religious man is proven wrong and just flat out denies it. This commercial is CLEARLY trying A) to depict religious persons as stubborn and foolish, or B) Show that God intervened to make sure that Canada got the right name. That is obviously what people on the Internet need to be arguing about. (Edit: I’ve linked to an official video since the original post, so I don’t know/care if that argument is still in the comments)

I am now on the Twitter. Who would have thought that this could have ever occurred? How many people bothered to think about it at all? Apart from me, probably not many. I guess a lot has changed since 2009. I still don’t have one of those mobile devices that let’s one do the Internet from wherever they want, but I’ve softened on the idea that I can’t fit my thoughts into small chunks. I’m totally going to start cutting my thoughts into bite-size chunks now forever.

You can totally see my first post directly under this one. Why is that? That is because Marq, my near-silent partner in this whole website endeavour, has set things up so anything I post on Twitter still ends up here, on the site where I obsessively collect everything I do! Hooray! Thanks, Marq!

So the moral of this story is, things barely change for people reading the site, but I’m also out on other sites. Kinda neat.