Amusing searches, Vol. 4

Here are some of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time collected under the very simple theme of Herpes.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I must warn you against using Google without at least some kind of keyboard cover-- it seems to be the ringleader in spreading herpes across the Internet.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered.)

• can a dog give you herpes and can dogs give you herpes - Yes, these were two distinct searches.* All I'll say in answer is, if you find yourself driven to search the globe for this particular bit of information, I'm pretty sure the answer should not be your biggest concern in life. Even on the loneliest of Saturday nights, guys, you should probably just... fly solo on this mission.**

• herpes and swine flu • swine flu Herpes • herpes swine flu [etc.] - Granted, I did pair these two afflictions in my post on swine flu, but since you're the ones earnestly seeking information, only I'm in the position to demand an explanation.

Are you worried swine flu's gonna turn your herpes sores into pork snouts, or something? Don't forget about your chicken pox. And acne. And anal warts that you just can't quite see or feel. I swear I'm sorry to add to your irrational fears. Really.

• do pigs have herpes? - Isn't that kind of an overly generic question whose answer ("well, yes, they can... but like you, they don't necessarily") paints pigs in an unfair light? Those guys have it pretty bad as it is, what with all that Semitic and Islamic disdain... talk about a backhanded compliment-- "I will never eat you! ...But only because you are too disgusting to eat."

We should all be so lucky.

• purell herpes - No. Just no. I'm sorry, but you'll need at least slightly stronger protection.

Or, you could not trust my judgment, and start taking a daily $200 bath in hand sanitizer and figure you're then rendered immortal.

• eatng out can give you herpies - (Wayne, NJ) Just what the ladies want guys to start rallying around! That is, assuming this searcher's talking about female humans. Given some of the other herpies-/sex-related searches --robots, pigs, dogs, toilet seats-- I can't be totally sure. It's all merely a moot point***, though, because pretty much everything in New Jersey can give you herpes anyway.

Also, for the record, I think your spelling of herpies is tremendously more endearing than the boring old herpes. That way, the germs seem like puppies or kitties! The International Herpes Council, which is now commanded to exist if it didn't already, really needs to get on this change immediately.

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* Based on their word choice, I'd say one's in love, and the other wants to play the field. Or dog park, I should say.

** Particularly you, Mr. Palmerton, Pennsylvania. Look to your town's founding fathers for guidance!

*** In using this word, I can't help but note that the word "moot" actually means "debatable", not "meaningless", which is how it is often used. So most of the time people invoke the label, they're not adding anything at all to what is already a debate over said point.

You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would you?

Tropical Storm "Douche"

As Mexico braced itself for the impact of Hurricane Jimena, American assholes everywhere remained steadfastly unconcerned:

Category 4 hurricane threatens Mexico's west coast

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But with the weather still mild Sunday, Jim Patterson, a tourist from Big Bear Lake, California, could not muster up much concern.

"Are you saying it would be a good idea to stock up on tequila?" he joked at a seaside restaurant. "No fear. I've been through tornados* and earthquakes and everything else, but never a hurricane."

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This is Mexico we're talking about-- why hasn't somebody kidnapped this guy yet? Or does he walk the streets unthreatened because even 2-peso hoods can tell no one would ever pay a ransom for this jerkoff?

If I send THREE pesos down thataways, do you think somebody would kidnap him just to tie him to a post down at the docks for the duration of the storm, with a SMITE ME sign posted over his head?

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* Supposed to be spelled tornadoes, of course. But the Associated Press has an image to maintain, after all. Just think of the disaster if they set our expectations for basic copy editing too high!

Selling out for spam

Hey there everyone, just click here to read my post for today, appearing over at HotDads.

Then, when you're done commenting to make me look good, poke around the site to see what my esteemed colleagues have to offer.

Just be careful where exactly you're poking, or you may regret it. Or not, I suppose.

A robotic family portrait

Since I know that pictures have been few and far between for a long while, I thought I'd share with you all this intimate family portrait, with members represented according to my 2-year-old daughter M-'s remarkably consistent series of dramatic scenarios over the past several weeks:

Spoiling his long-held secret identity, I'll admit that the fellow on your left up there is my dad, whom the kids call Dado (DAH-doh) in the Irish custom. On the right, in an uncanny representation right down to the giant titanium claw hand, is my mom, whom the kids call Grammair, similar to the French title.

Now, the two in the middle are harder to pin down. The lady on the left was originally employed as my 5-year-old son D-, with the smallest (grown male) figure representing M- herself, but, I believe over D-'s one-time objection, at a certain point she began identifying herself instead as the (bipedal, clothed rat-) woman, with D- then played by that man a fraction of "M-'s" size.

I'm thinking that the size/power upgrade was a big reason why she didn't mind abruptly changing the conventions of her personal game to suit the whims of her bystander brother, who's as prone to ranting power-trips these days as she has always been to squeezing someone's face with her fingernails until they stop saying whatever it is she objects to, such as, "what [she] should do."

To explain the likely disappointing, for you, lack of my wife and I in this portrait, I get the sense M- herself is the Momma in her games, and I imagine I'm not usually given any inanimate representation because I represent myself so well in that state throughout her waking hours. I am omnipresent and omnisomnolent.*

But it's our (virtual) loss, I assure you. Because oh, what fun this crew has, day in, day out... almost as much fun as my wife J- had before she was formally introduced, trying to figure out one night after bedtime what in the world M- was talking about when she was crying for her to "go find M- and D-... I want you to bring me M- and D-!"

The answer J- would have given, had she been up to speed on the fast-changing world of Imagination Games that is our afternoons around here, is that M- and D- were not available that night because they were still unconscious inside a shoe under the coffee table after Dado shot them in the face with a giant web-missile while attempting to pass the sugar cubes at teatime.

You know, the usual disfunctional family hijinks. Plus robots.

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* Don't feel bad if you don't recognize that word, because I'm pretty sure I just built it right this moment, and I love it.

Orangutan Lohan flees to Indonesia

In the latest monkey/ape news, scientists just discovered a large, healthy population of orangutans in Indonesia, on the slope of a mountain where it's too unprofitable to try to extract the valuable timber. For now.

New orangutan population found in Indonesia

But what's most interesting to me is this bit:

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The team also encountered an adult male, which angrily threw branches as they tried to take photos.

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Apart from the fact that the author should have used "who" instead of "which", in my opinion, my second thought is that it's quite possible that this "unknown population" is actually some kind of rehab resort for celebrity orangutans.

The Lindsay Lohans and Britney Spearses of the lower-primate world retreat to this secret colony whenever their life of privilege and nigh-unlimited options gets to be too much for them.

And how else should they deal with intruding photographers? Is an orangutan really any better than Sean Penn? I mean, in terms of this kind of thing, not emotional range or personal hygiene.

Maybe some of these specimens are better than any orangutan ever at throwing feces for distance or accuracy, or maybe they have the most impressive and sexually irresistible creepy face pouches.

I think the only course of action is clear, regardless of the relative fame or social status of this elite group of primates-- we must document every single second of their lives, no matter how mundane or disturbing, and no matter the effect on their sanity.

Now who's got a durable camera and a good, feces-resistant raincoat? I've got some quick cash to make!

Mano a womano, eggo a eggo

I should have learned after all these years not to enter into any kind of atypical, nonathletic competition with my wife, but I think by this point it's clear that nature just won't allow me to pass up the chance.

Of course, among the most imposing barriers to my abstaining from such competitions is the fact that I often don't know I'm in one until it's over.

Take, for example, our evening of egg-dyeing yesterday. Possibly because she knows me too well, the moment my first egg touched the dye, my wife excused herself from the room with an egg she'd already dyed earlier.

After quite a few curious moments during which I had to explain to both the kids, repeatedly, why they could not drink the delicious-looking colored liquids from the whimsical bunny mugs (D- eventually retreated to just loudly announcing how thirsty he was every two minutes), and only after the kids had used up all 18 of the eggs, J- returned to check on my finished product, which had the surprise* message, "DADDY RULES!" written in wax across its face.

She offered some patronizing encouragement before dropping this bomb on me:
Sure, you're probably thinking, his right hand is upside down, and he's somehow managing to harness magical egg powers to hold a beer stein with his wrist**, but you have to admit, this is pretty much like bringing a gun --and not a quaint foam scrapbooking one-- to a rock-paper-scissors match.

Here's the side-by-side comparison:

Tell me which YOU think is better, keeping in mind that I, myself, am better, and that if you don't pick me, considering all the mitigating factors I've revealed above, I just may epically pout and stop posting my ridiculously overwrought anecdotes here forever.***

(A bonus mitigating factor: in case you've never tried, I assure you it is very difficult to write on an egg with a generic orange crayon not expressly made for that purpose.)

Lastly, please do note that one of the contenders is clearly labeled as the unquestioned master of all, humans and ovums.

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* The surprise, of course, was not the message itself, but rather that it happened to appear on that particular egg.

** J- would no doubt whine that it's not her fault the Chinese Scrapbook Sweatshop managers found it irresistibly cheaper to sell twice as many left hands and feet in a package while cutting production of rights altogether.

*** And if all you ladies stab me in the back on this vote out of some kind of twisted "ho's before bro's"**** nonsense, I'll instead resort to posting only about sports and painful jock itch. Or better yet, everything you never wanted to know about me, me, me, like a bad first date, three times a week. You want that on your conscience? Or in your feed reader?

**** I feel honor-bound to point out, for those who were taken aback, that those apostrophes above were included to replace the many missing letters# in the words, not out of disgraceful confusion over possessives versus plurals. Who thinks of impossibly rigid grammatical rules when creating the music of the streets? Not enough people, I think.

# Yes, I'm aware that this then means there should be an apostrophe before "ho's", but it just seemed a bit much. Much like this beast of a footnotes section.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 7

You know, a lot of ill-informed people claim that word choice doesn't really matter in most everyday areas of life, but I'm here to offer just one random example of an instance that proves these people to be morons.

Recently, I couldn't help but notice the friendly banner on my wife's new package of Aquaphor cream, offering what was surely intended to be an innocuous description of the product:

What that little extra word ("your") did there was turn a sentiment of unity ("All of you people with your varying skin problems can use this one product to solve them!") into a back-handed, bitchy message worthy of a junior high cheerleading squad ("You are so lucky I'm here to help you! ...Because you are way more f***ed up than you ignorantly thought before picking up this package.").

Torpedoing the self-esteem of one's customer base is not generally thought to be a good business decision.*

There is a potential upside for the manufacturers, though, if this tack opens up potential new sales across the Eucerin family of products through the well-established phenomenon of victims latching on to their abusers against their better judgment or interests. Just look at how well this has worked for our** lovable scamps down at AIG!

In fact, scratch this whole post, and give me 2,000 shares of whatever disgustingly enormous mega-conglomerate bottles this goo!

Here's to you and your horrible excuse for human skin!

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* Unless of course you're in women's fashion.

** I say "our" because we, the American people, now own them almost in their entirety, at least until just before the stock sale by the U.S. government might bring in enough profit to cover the entire stimulus package.

Your post title is on its way!

Upon reading the slip of paper (I can't even bear to call it "a fortune") hidden inside one of our fortune cookies recently, I knew I had to ridicule it in print, in the probably vain hope that whoever wrote it might know how much shame they have brought upon themselves and their already-pretty-pathetic profession.

As lame as the so-called fortunes usually are, given that they are often either blind guesses at facts about your present or past, or generic bits of reassuring advice, this one takes the stale cookie.

After barely rescuing this paper from the furious snatches of my starving litter of rabid fox kits, I had to allow my eyes a second chance to focus on the words before reading them again in disbelief. I was insulted with the following message, which isn't even worth adding "...in bed" to (as discussed in this past post):

Your fortune is on its way!

What is this, some kind of sick karmic IOU? Call me a self-absorbed, overreacting prick, but I declare this to be absolutely Unacceptable as a fortune. I reject it and demand a replacement, or at least immediate delivery of the actual fortune promised by this one.

Also, I demand a bag of free cookies to dull my rage, but not the awful ones-- the good ones that people are always expecting when they bite into a fortune cookie, assuming anyone still makes those.

I suppose I should be grateful they used the correct its... Otherwise police all along the multi-state cookie supply chain might be desperately chasing the aptly named Stale Cookie Impaler.

Or before G-H, as in "neighbor" and "weigh"

Now is the time on the blog at which I stop to mock someone desperately in need of mocking.

Some have expressed reservations about commenting here for fear of being viciously derided over spelling or grammatical errors, but I cannot stress enough how little you have to worry about that.

Unless you were to commit your errors in the course of making some cutting, accurate remarks taking me down a few pegs, then, yes, I might have to lash out in the easiest way possible.

Other than that, I will love you even if you write like whoever wrote up the error page for the Restricted Trailer site of the upcoming movie I Love You, Man.

It requires you to enter "your" name, age, location, and birth date before allowing you access, and it's apparently either broken or somehow smart enough to realize that Fyuck Eweman is not my real name.

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We're sorry, we were unable to verify your information at this time.

Please check the information you submitted and try again.

If you are receieving this page after re-submitting your information - we are unable to provide you with access to this section of the site and we apologize for the inconvenience.

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"Let's see... oh, man, I wish I hadn't slept through all of junior high...* I before E, E before I... why not both! It's genius! Now, I can finally get back to copy-editing Associated Press stories."

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* Or attended an American school after 1970.

Book Review: K is for Kwanzaa

Once again, I am here to nobly perform a public service in reviewing one of the many pillars of the world's greatest literature that crosses my desk. Or my lap, as it were.

This time, it's Juwanda Ford's K is for Kwanzaa, a title my 4-year-old son D- recently selected at random* from the library:

This book is exactly what it seems-- go ahead and judge it by the cover, I can vouch for you.

But what surprised me, after picking through pages defining items like Gele, Mkeka, Ujamaa, and Vibunzi, is that even though they rolled all the many cultures of Africa into one catchall holiday, X still just stands for Xylophone:

Stay strong, brother! You will never be unseated!

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* To follow up his previous random selection, Fran Manushkin's Starlight and Candles: The Joys of the Sabbath.

Let's call this an adverb-filled do-over

I've had a taste of life not posting religiously, and I must admit I liked it.

But that doesn't mean I don't like blogging anymore-- I'm just a lazy, procrastinating shell of a man who can only function within the framework of compulsive habits.

So, not unlike a car --say, my stupid car-- stuck in a little rut of slush and ice, I got complacent and couldn't get back over that hump since the Pinko-Commie calendar insisted I acknowledge its existence in some way.

I briefly thought about not noting the, shall we say, recent collapse of my Previous Posts drop-down menu, but every time I sat down to write, I found myself either blathering about things more boring than usual or writing amusing bits that weren't worthy of being the Last/First Post of the Year.

So instead, I'll sum up: 2008 was a crazy year, but a great one overall, and 2009 will likely be more of the same, though under the guise of more unsettling numerals. Life's like that.

Lastly, though I've never been one for resolutions on an arbitrary timeline, I'm a big fan of arbitrariness in general (I think of it as an homage to my pagan god, Nature), so I'll allow the following statement:

During the next year, I may perhaps be more than gently urging my life into a more stable and at least slightly more conventional form, so I will most definitely be posting somewhat less often as a side effect of that effort.

Not less often than the past week, mind you, but just not five days a week on average, I'm sure. Furthermore, while my newly mobile and freshly independent wife weans herself back into the world (starting with going to work today for the first time in six weeks*), I will likely be back visiting many of your blogs more frequently than I have been recently, though I'm sure I won't be commenting nearly as much as I used to.**

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* Where, by the time she's reading this, she'll likely be praying already that they had just cut the leg off and replaced it with a shapely peg, with which she can create the Greatest Legend of All Legends of Scary Teacher Biographies Passed by Fearful Whispers at Recess.

** I'm almost as sad as you are, I'll bet.

A heart-rending ending?

In case you're all wondering where Santa has gone now that Christmas has passed, I have some sad news to bring you:

Ho ho ho! Kids share economy woes with Santa*

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"You see things behind the beard that nobody else will ever see or hear. I've had children just literally tear my heart out."

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So therein lies the end of a long, productive career spreading joy throughout the world... painful death at the hands of some psychotic, bloodthirsty children who've apparently spent too many hours playing Mortal Kombat.

Then again, the tone of this statement suggests an acceptance that only experience can bring. So perhaps this is an annual tradition, like a simple shedding of the skin. Maybe the Easter Bunny drops those eggs in our baskets on his way to deliver the Kiss of Life to kindly old St. Nick each year.

It seems that matchup between Jesus and Santa might be more even than we thought.

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* I don't suggest you actually read this article unless you want to feel quite depressed.

Editor's Note: If you enjoyed this forest-missing nitpickery, you might want to peruse Literally, A Web Log.

The weather inside is spiteful

It was raining all last night here in Chicagoland, which makes me mad. It's supposed to be winter, a time of cold, fluffy snow, not balmy rain and lethal ice.

I think it's quite possible that Hell is actually a frigid ice fortress full of horrifically pointy icicles in every direction and black ice the only floor covering.

I have a feeling this warm-up indicates we'll miss a white Christmas yet again in my lifetime, which happens so often I'm never surprised, even though Christmas occurs at the end of December in Chicago. Two and two equal five here, it seems.

All of our beautiful, hard-fought snow from earlier this week (whose sudden arrival during rush hour caused me to park the car and walk with D- to Target rather than endure another half hour trying to drive a mere mile and a half), will be iced over and ruined, like a jilted lover left to rot at the altar.

This perfect snowball powder I didn't even get to roll in once got Havishamed in one long, bitter night, and what I'll be walking out into, whenever it is I choose to exit our icy cocoon, will be a shadow of its former self. I'm almost too upset to even picture it. Breaking through the icy crust over the yard (with the back of my skull, no doubt) to find the soft insides dried-out and useless for anything but metaphors...

I'm too digusted to even crack a simile.

A conversation with D-: You are an idiot

The other day, while my 4-year-old son D- was showing off his typing skills to my mom, the following absolutely 100% true conversation took most of the suspense out of the question Will he turn out just like me?:

D- (pointing to "PQ" on the screen): See here? I typed "Pa".

My Mom: Oh, you mean like Pa in the Laura books? Actually, that's P-A. You wrote P-Q, but that's pretty close-- good job!

D-: ...Umm, actually, it's spelled like that.

My Mom: "Pa" like Laura's Pa is spelled P-A. Maybe we could go get one of the books and you could see, to help you remember.

D-: I think we should get the book, so we can look at it, and you can say, (adopting appropriate voice), "Oh, I was wrong!"

My Mom (deftly masking her disbelief, she grabbed The Long Winter): Here you go, see there? It's spelled P-A. But that's okay...

D-: I'm never going to read those books again.

Another way to offend your wife

Publish a post on your blog describing a tongue-in-cheek statement she wasn't all that happy to hear in the first place, regardless of your helpful illumination of the shades of nuance or explanation of the disparity between your implication and her inference.

An important point to note for you all is that since we're talking about a post-Apocalyptic world, "rare delicacies" include not only rationed foodstuffs but also many simple conveniences and various other consumer goods.

So, I guess what I'm trying to mask in a blur of haughty multisyllabic words and my trademark Byzantine syntax is that rather than merely overstimulate some kind of compulsive eating disorder she certainly doesn't have, in this situation, the point to consider is that my wife would quickly become drunk with power in controlling a world-shaping secret, as much as from deciding who lives comfortably and who rots in the mildewous cavern of her disfavor. Also, I am a dick.

Who hsa time too prufread?

Let me start by saying you can't imagine how difficult it was to type out that title, and how painful it is for me to let it sit there as it is.

Now that I have your sympathies, I'll continue.

When I mentioned J-'s seemingly disastrous t-shirt purchase at the Obama rally in Grant Park, there was at least one request to see the offending shirt, and I'm nothing if not accommodating. 

Here is the front image, which as I said is interesting and unique enough, and actually impressive given the price:

I should jump in here to note that to compound my coming complaints, the salesman apparently misheard J-'s request and gave her an extra large shirt, so it's wide enough for the whole family to proudly wear at once.

And now, I forewarn you to choke back your vomit before continuing, because if you're like me, you may not be able to handle seeing the reason why it was only $5 without exerting tremendous self-control:


You know what my "New Hope" is? That sometime before the end of the Reign of Man, we will finally finish evolving enough that before even an everyday-schmo-just-trying-to-make-some-extra-money-capitalizing-on-his-fellows'-exultant-willingness-to-collect-memorabilia places an order for a few thousand t-shirts, he can manage to at least ask someone with a fresh eye to look over the design just once.*

And if we could keep things going enough to not make such errors on this tiny selection of text in the first place, that would just be icing. Right now, the only icing on this s***cake is the inexplicable use of a comma after the abbreviation of the month.

You may think I'm overreacting, but I don't know any other way to be. Life's too short to underreact to things like this. Plus, I've spent years of my life being paid to mercilessly deride people for boneheaded mistakes like this, so it's a hard habit to break.

Full Disclosure: That wasn't necessarily spelled out in my job descriptions, but it was always clearly encouraged. Or tolerated. Or quietly marveled at, in fear. Either way, it definitely seems called for here, because there's no red pen in the world that can wash this tragedy away.

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* Barring that, maybe in this hypothetical nearly perfect world, the printer would notice the error and, since it's not his job to alter the design of his clients' orders, he would just print up a single shirt that says YOU ARE AN IDIOT - TRY AGAIN (SOMEWHERE ELSE).

A conversation with D-: Balbo Drive isn't far off the mark

The following is a surreal conversation I recently had, apropos of nothing, with my 4-year-old son D- while driving through our suburb:

D-: Do you know why they call it "downtown"?

Me: Downtown Chicago?

D-: No, the word downtown.*

M- (because she loves to be involved): Why?

D- (adopting his Teacher Voice): Because a long time ago, there was a guy called Down. (very casually) He was that guy who shot his own self after that big war, where he killed so many people.**

Me: You mean Hitler?!?

D-: Yeah, Hitler. That was his name, but then his last name was... Down. So... (clearly realizing he's lost whatever was his original idea in a sea of rambling 4-year-old bulls***) they had a town, and they named it for him: Downtown.

Me: Oh. ... Wow.


Editor's Note: For anyone interested in this post title, here is a great article written on the subject by my former history teacher, and here's the good-old Wikipedia page on the namesake of this Chicago street.

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* I have no idea where he could have learned the concept of breaking down words for the meanings and origins of their components...

** You might assume that, at best, I let The History Channel babysit him all day, but actually, the kid just asks a lot of probing questions, and sometimes I can't help myself in answering them. We walk by a Holocaust memorial at least three times a week on the way to the library.

Given the economy, Santa may soon call in lots of "loans"

Alright, all you language lovers, now that it's been 10 years since Bill Clinton let us all know there was some uncertainty about the meaning of the word is, it's high time that a government corruption trial provide us with a new definition for what we thought to be a simple, unchanging word:

What's a gift? Sen. Stevens testifies on freebies

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"He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift," Stevens said. "He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift. We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us. ... I refused it as a gift. I let him put it in our basement at his request."

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Given this wonderful new definition of gift, here's a helpful (for you) list of things I'd like to indefinitely borrow from any or each of you:

• Your car.
• Some* of your money.
• A bunch of your coolest stuff, hand-selected by me.
• Your clicks on the Amazon links to the right whenever you're heading there to do your Indefinite-Loan-Granting-Season shopping. Nearly starving** would-be orphans will thank you for their commission.

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* By some, I mean most. Thanks for understanding.
** Fussiness is an acceptable reason for starvation, right? I may need to give the Red Cross a call.

Take that, Thomas!

I just wanted to point out this story so you too could anxiously wait to find out to which of Thomas' friends from the island of Sodor we need to send flowers. It's too hard to call from the picture whether this tragic event struck Annie, Daisy, Clarabel, or another unlucky coach:

Angry Argentine commuters torch train in rush hour

"We understand that people get angry when the service is delayed or canceled, but they absolutely can't attack a public service in this way," Gustavo Gago, a spokesman for rail company TBA, told local television.

Now, we all know I hate to hone in on specifics at the expense of the big picture, but I think it's clear that people certainly can attack a public service in this way. I believe what he meant to say was, "Waaaa, waaa, waaaaa! Don't burn my f***ing trains!! ...pleeease."

North Dakota on my mind

In a footnote yesterday, I suggested that I might compare* the U.S. state of North Dakota to a state of near-death.

You must understand that I say this based on the fact that it's the only U.S. state from which I haven't yet recorded a visit to this blog. Every other state has sent me anywhere from a handful to well over a thousand hits, and in fact half the states have visited at least a hundred times, along with 53 foreign countries, but between the two Dakotas, I'm holding steady at 1 visit in almost 8 months.

What gives, Dakotas?!? We must have some common interests or interpersonal connection that might trick you into coming here. Given that you have the highest percentage of churchgoing citizens in the U.S. (according to Wikipedia**) and your highest point is something called White Butte, I feel sure it's a temptation when I suggest you can stop by once in awhile to yell at me for being a "filthy, godless, America-hating, city-slicking, Obama-loving, liberal hippie!" Sound good? You know it does.

Actually, the most cutting of criticisms would be that this whole post is just a ploy to attract an unsuspecting hitchhiker or two wandering the Google turnpike from up Dakota way. This, however, is not remotely accurate, and furthermore: "Gov. John Hoeven", "Mt. Rushmore sucks", Sioux, departing, "Western Meadowlark", "flights out", Minot, "how much longer till I can leave", and "Who needs Mt. Rushmore, anyway... we're just not that showy".

Whatever you wanna say to me now, funny-talking folks, fire at will-- my comment board is open as always!

In closing, it is a distinct honor to disappoint you, my likely-incensed casual North Dakotan drop-ins. I'd love you to stay, but if you simply can't, I ask only that you leave a tiny piece of your Very Upper Midwest souls with my friends at Google Analytics on your way back out the door, so I can finally finish coloring in my cool map of the U.S. various shades of green***.

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* In case you were born/raised in North Dakota, or you have family there, or you'd just like to defend a physically large state containing only almost exactly 10 times the number of people as the minor Chicago suburb in which I live, please note the supremely artful and undeniably endearing hedging of my phrasing^ here. I'd appreciate it if instead of cursing at me, you just chuckled lovingly and suggested I go into politics. ...Okay, go ahead now.

** This is a disclaimer that must always accompany any fact taken from Wikipedia-- new rule.

*** They don't call it "Anal-ytics" for nothing!

^ Or alternatively, you could just admire my extensive and arguably excessive use of adverbs and gerunds.