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As many of you know, I’m spending stupid amounts of time on one of my gag websites, Penis Reduction Pills I started it last year partly to learn how to use a new web content system ( Joomla ), which we wanted to put up for Loretta’s tv show site, and I also thought that I could have fun with a somewhat extended joke, as well as play around with stuff like internet advertising and “marketing”, which I have no real exposure to in my day to day life.
One cool thing is that every once in a while folks contact me and really get the joke, and want to share it themselves with folks. I’ve had people email me and say that they saw my ad somewhere, and want to write about it on their blog, or they just link to me in a post on their site. And, in those cases where it’s been a site linking to me in a language other than English, I get to have fun using Google to translate it back into English and then laugh at the wacky words and ideas that seemingly are expressed.
I got such a email a couple months back, from Nerraux with The Awful Show, which is a “radio” show that tapes every week and mostly plays on the “interwebs”. I listened to a couple of their shows, and appeared on their latest show, episode 116. I suspect they get a lot of their listeners via iTunes or a later podcast-type download, but they also have a bunch of folks listening to them do the show live every week, which is pretty brave — I’d never try to do Keith Explains! live ( except for the friends in the audience ), mostly because I think half the humor is the stuff I think of to put up in the subtitles and images as the show goes by, and it always takes a couple hours for me to think of enough funny stuff to pep up the 28 minutes of talking I do each time.
Anyway, I had fun. If you just want to listen to just my part, it’s here and about 20 minutes or so in length. Hearing it again, and even while I was doing it, I can think of so many “better” things I could have said in most cases, and sometimes it was hard to break into the conversation because they all know each other and know when to chime in and make jokes about things. Twenty minutes goes by really fast, much faster than it seems when I’m taping Keith Explains. It’s probably because on my show I’m really only playing off myself — as I say things, I also think of stuff I can put up as text later, and so I leave “space” for it, but when other folks are involved everything goes by a lot faster. I had the same thoughts after I was on Sebastian in the Morning earlier this summer. But, as I said, I had fun and they say they did too, so everyone’s happy.
So, I suspect if I get another 30 or 40 tries, I could finally get this thing right.
Every year, one of the sessions I’m involved with at Apple’s World-wide Developer’s Conference is called Stump the Experts. Ostensibly, it’s a “game” show, where the developers are suppose to ask trivia questions about (mostly) the Macintosh, and we answer them, because we’re all experts and know pretty much everything. I’ve been on the panel since 2000, when I was the lead engineer on Mac OS 9 and maybe did know a lot about the system, but since the scope of the Mac expands every year by this last year I’m certainly not an expert on most areas of the operating system. But, I’m still up there because things never change. Personally, I’ve wondered why developers like the session so much — each year it seems to be more of a madhouse, and we aren’t getting many questions answered — but the session feedback from the folks that come all say that folks really like the session. Maybe it’s the free stuff that gets given away.
This last year, I took a set of pictures from the front just before the session started, just so everyone would see what it’s like for us. Mostly, it’s people as far as the eye can see. For a couple seconds each year it’s kind of intimidating, then I remember that most of those folks actually like us.
While driving down to Gilroy, taking some out of town visitors to the Gilroy Outlet malls because that’s where they wanted to go, and listening to the “3+ stars rated songs” on the iPod, I remembered a line from some Tolkien novel I read long, long ago. Since I’m terrible with quotes, and am probably misremembering it, I’ll paraphrase: “And so came to an end the age of the Elves and began the age of Man.” It’s near the end of the third book, the last book, after the bad guy has been defeated, and the hero has been crowned king, and the hobbits find their way back to their homes.
Which, assuming that I’m actually remembering the quote somewhat accurately, and given that it’s been years since I read it, an that I’m really remembering the first time I read it, back when I was probably about 14, so that it made more of an impression on me than it would not ( although, again, if I’m remembering it at all correctly ) is still one heck of a line.
And, the reason it came to me, while heading to what was to be a somewhat boring afternoon, is that coming on about the 1,000th page of a long, intricate adventure where stuff has happened and ( worse ) where lots of stuff hasn’t happened in between all of the stuff occasionally happening, was that at the time it surprised me because, up till then, the elves had been pretty kick ass. Sure, there was too much poetry and “Go here and tell random Elf-name-starting-with-the-letter-G this.”, and back and forth, but you wouldn’t want to fuck with the elves because they had power and abilities beyond those of the average folk. Among other things, they were pretty much immortal, so they could take their time before screwing you over completely.
And yet, it was the end. Sure, they didn’t really know it. Not yet; at least for lots of them. The upper level ones knew, and the rest were slowly coming to the realization that the world had moved on past them, and what awaited each of them was a trip on a boat to the lands over the sea to the east — to their deaths, essentially.
So, why do I mention this? Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe this is exactly where the USA is today — on top of the world, don’t fuck with us for a long time, and then… well, its over, save for the cleaning up and packing of the bags. It’s someone else’s turn.
And, if the age of the Elves is past, whose age is it now?
A couple of us were talking the other day at lunch over a predicament another friend found himself in, after an evening of drinking and heading home with a new girl he’d met at the bar. The next morning was, well, somewhat uncomfortable.
So, to address this, we thought of a product that should exist, and probably does, but we’re too lazy to google and find it so we made it up ourselves. Yours for $9.99!
I’ve been a Lego addict for, well, forever. The need waxes and wanes — as a child I played with my Lego so much that the school had me meeting with a psychologist who was concerned that I didn’t have any friends. At least I assume that’s why I was seeing her.
Anyway, I’ve bought a lot of Lego sets recently, because since I don’t have children I’m forced to buy my own toys and I’ve got disposable income for stuff like…
the Lego Death Star II.
It took me about 6 months to complete, but most of that time it was set aside because I didn’t have room or time to work on it. All told, I probably could have finished it in about 2 weeks of evenings if I’d worked straight.
So, I’m riding home last night after Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, where I was speaking and talking with developers, and I had a thought:
If, say, a married guy with two kids ( one boy, one girl, both cute as a button ) comes here from Texas and falls in love with another dude, and gets a quickie marriage, is he a bigamist in Texas?
Even though Texas doesn’t recognize the gay marriage?
Obviously, I have too much time on my hands.
As most of you know, I’ve gone into the fake pills business, because I’m not sure this “being a highly paid” engineer thing is panning out. Instead, this being the land of opportunity, I’m going to try to get rich selling sugar pills to gullible folks or folks who are really smart and get the joke. Since most celebrities don’t fall into the latter group, but have advisors who do, I’ve had trouble lining up celebrity-type endorsers.
However, I’ve been sending them out to various folks to try to interest them. Back in March, after I saw Stephen Colbert talk about how he had a huge set of cahones, I knew he could use a dose of my product, so I sent him a set. Totally free, because I care about people on television whom I have never met.
 ????????????
Then, anxiously waiting for it to get delivered. For a while I was afraid I’d sent it to the wrong address, but eventually someone did pick it up…
Now, go take a look at this clip from the Stephen Colbert show, Tuesday May 13th. In particular, pay attention around the 3:00 minute mark.
????????
See! He got my product and he’s been using it! I’m so happy!
Back in January, I opened the finest store on the internet selling penis reduction placebos, at www.PenisReductionPills.com. In the months since then, well, sales have been better than zero, but I’m not a millionaire yet.
Since I’m running out of jokes about penis reduction, and still have lots of little bottles in my house, and mostly because I’ve apparently got way too much free time on my hand, I’m please to open an ever newer store, at www.PlacebosAreUs.com. There, I’m happy to say that I have the finest placebos available on the market, addressing some of the concerns of our modern lives.
So, back in January, at MacWorld, a guy out in front of the center handed me a flyer. Anyone who has been to MacWorld knows that folks are constantly trying to hand you brochures and information sheets, and occasionally glossy pictures of strippers. Most of the time I politely refuse, but I took this one because it piqued my interest.
It was a flyer for the website Signed by Woz, where various bits of computer history can be purchased after Steve Wozniak. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration: If I have Steve Wozniak sign the “Signed by Steve Wozniak merchandise” flyer, it itself becomes “Signed by Steve Wozniak merchandise!”
And so, I present to you my very own little bit of Memorabilia signed by Steve Wozniak:
I’ve just learned that sometime back in February someone hacked into this site, and added stuff to some of my posts which directed to sites that tried to load malware onto folks’ computers. I think I’ve cleaned it up, but…
f*cking spammers and hackers. You’re giving the internet a bad name.
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