You need a myface page (like you need another hole in your head)

I finally got on facebook this weekend and I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to find such a colossal way to dispose of time. 

I really had no idea.  I had no idea that  stumbling instructionless through cyberspace could turn-up so many lost friends and relatives.  Here is where they’ve all been and why none of them will ever return an email or pick up their phones.  

Why bother with obsolete one-on-one communications when you can just as easily “share” it on your wall and enjoy the group mind at work?  Nevermind that not everyone on the planet is on myface.  Some are on spacebook.  And some aren’t even on that, although this is hard for some people to believe.

 And oh the shame, the shame of my late entrance to the party.  Not to mention the irritation.  Couldn’t those who had arrived earlier have left a little crumb trail or provided any warning?  

They could have warned, for example, that maybe signing up all your friends before trying out the software isn’t the smartest.  But that’s exactly what fb has you do: get’s you linked in to your entire network without so much as a single instruction as to who is receiving what.   Then you get to publically fumble around trying to learn the inane ways of their crabby little website.  Since helpful explanations aren’t exactly jumping off the page to bite you on the ass, it’s a hit or miss prospect - with an audience.  That is so messed up.

The good news is, starting facebook inspired me to come post a Bad Apple for the first time in way too long.  Apparently, one colossal “use” of cybertime can lead to another.

Got BARF? Blogger Afflicted by Realworld Facts Syndrome

Has the real world afflicted your Bloggerness?  I myself have a raging case of BARF, aka Blogger Afflicted by Realworld Facts.  My blogger equilibrium has been ruined for months now, and I’m so sorry.   It really sucks to have to try to get a blogger groove going again after all my previous BARFing around earlier this fiscal year. 

Bloody hell, it’s like three steps forward three miles back, have you noticed?  And it’s all the fault of those greedy gas executives.  Okay, maybe I can’t claim a direct line between my inability to post with the price of gasoline, but it does explain my obsession with attempting to level my transportation spending by genetically manipulating old Hank over there. 

Not that I have the time to feed self and horsecraft anymore, or the money.  I for one find it exceedingly exorbitant to house body, soul and Hank/horse-hybrid in a Left Coast locale.  Why, life has become downright untenable out here Cal-lee-for-niy-aye Way.  

That’s why I plan to freeze myself and Hank-horse over there, here and now, in the prime of life (for me anyway – Hank’s another story).  Imagine the wonder when we awake un-aged, woman and centaur, in a kinder, more evolved future. What do you think? Want to make it a group date?

I’ll try to keep posting more before my date with The Big Freeze (just in time for the holidays!). Because BARF must be conquered one post at a time.

Bad Apple Lasts One Whole Year!!

To all those folks who land here at Bad Apple hoping to find out just how long a bad apple will last — a surprisingly large number of you, I must report — well, apparently it can last at least a year or more, and just get better and bad-er. 

What is the secret to this amazing longevity of attention span on my part to keep this extraordinary flow of sass coming?  I can only attribute my proliferation of perilous word journeys, aka “posts,” to having hit a vein in my rotten niche of the universe and so far, the content just burbles forth like molten lava from a secret cesspool spring in the land of crack-addicted wood elves. In other words, “Jenna Say, ‘Qua,‘” as the Frenchies put it.

I will admit, I gain almost endless inspiration from the theme of rotten, stinky stuff, and in the future I do hope to further explore the connection between historically-bad smells and inspired participatory democracy.  You see, Bad Apple is not out rotting in a vacuum or some remote backwoods desert planet.  Her decay is firmly rooted in the context of this modern mess we’ve made of the world.  To review: Bad smells equals better government.  That’s why we all need to turn a little rotten, develop our soft spots and otherwise devote ourselves to the making of stink.

That said, I feel I would be derelict to not thank a few of the characters who have made Bad Apple’s first year of Internet life so colorful and fun.  I am of course referring to the cannibal chickens, Terminato the Killer Tomato, Little Spud Rasta, not to mention all the wood elves, celebrity mayors, etc., my long-suffering partner Hank, and of course, everyone who slighted me in the slightest or otherwise fed the incredible beast in my breast, born in a blog, aka Bad Apple.

And thanks all of you readers, and the thousands of page views you have given to me.  It’s so great to know somebody out there supports this kind of rot.  And I would like to understand you more, and know the answer to the incredible conundrum of just how long a bad apple can last, and whether you can use it to make some kind of intoxicating drink.  So if you know the answers, or even if you don’t, you are welcome to leave a comment anytime, and join the incredible unpredictable madness that is actually the only sane path in this crazy, messed up section of God’s company town.  

In the future, everything will be made perfectly clear.  With enough time and cider, we’re all going to eventually find out the answer to the question that keeps me guessing: Just how bad can an apple be??

Warning: Annual Retrospective Season Looms

It’s that time of year when everyone (in the media) takes a quick glimpse back at the last 12 months before jumping blind into the next 12 months.  Time to revive for one last moment all the folks who croaked, the famous ones I mean, and all the big disasters (especially the ones they have pictures for). They always include a few of the good things that folks might have done, crazy heroic acts and heartfelt philanthropy for some total heartbreak case, not to mention all the year’s developments in the big news stories and in the latest teen idol’s complete disintegration.  

Hard to give a crap about the geopolitical quagmire, but damn I need my latest teen-idol disintegration news just to get me out of bed in the morning, how about you?

Bad Apple also feels a certain retrospective impulse coming on, because I’m celebrating the one year birthday of the Bad Apple Blog on December 6.  It’s been a year of discovery, invention, and strangeness at Bad Apple, and I’m going try to ruminate on the high points, exorcise the garbage, and generally get a handle on where all this rot is headed heading into the great 20 ot eight.

For example, I’m going to take a hard look at potatoes vs. tomatoes.  In 2008, I predict all-out war between the potato and the tomato stories here at Bad Apple. Such vegetable rivalries never end up pretty.

Also, what about the cannibal chickens?  Will they remain misunderstood freaks or will they become the new It-chickens of tomorrow?  Stranger things have happened, folks, so don’t be laughing at my predictions’ predictor, now. 

Well, this is just a preview of the kind of deep bad apple pie-style thinking I’ll be serving up in December.  As a friend, I strongly discourage you from facing the annual retrospective season without regular, inoculating visits to this site.

People I Have Nothing in Common With, Part One

At the risk of hurting the feelings of gamers everywhere, I have to say I feel a need to compare DNA with the author of the following sentence, from one of those devil-gadget worshipping sites, to ensure we are indeed of the same species:

Our meeting with Sierra yesterday highlighted perfectly why you’ll need to be very careful in cutting through the hype surrounding the next-gen PC gaming graphics.

Oh yeah, I’m going to need to be real careful of the potential treachery and pain involved in that, thanks friend.  Like that’s a real concern for the world. Here’s another brilliant thing to worry about from the same writer: 

First we sat down for a showing of World in Conflict, a real time strategy game that asks “What if the Cold War ran hot?”

Yeah, what if?  What if that happened?  Well, probably you would be blasted off your gamer ass, that’s what. 

Even though in my youth I wasted hours on such games, I will never understand how folks can spend all their time sitting around gaming.  Not when they can spend hours sitting around blogging, which is so very much better. 

Cross-Site Pimping Solves Death-Threat Placement Woes

I was really upset about getting my first death threat blog comment last week.   I mean, it was a perfectly good death threat and completely legitimate — I promise you I didn’t send it to myself.  What irked me was where my would-be assassin chose to place the threat — hidden away on some obscure page on my cat blog.  Who was ever going to see it there? 

So there I was, the recipient of a perfectly fine death threat, all the proof I needed that finally I was somebody, and I had to let it pend for days and days, wondering what to do about this little matter of context. 

During this same period, as it happens, it came to my attention that I hadn’t been properly cross-pimping my blogs.  For all I knew, there could cats looking for help at Bad Apple, and at the same time, some real rotters trying to figure out life over at Self Help for Cats, when what each of these fools folks needed was me to properly cross-pimp, and set everything straight.

So, brilliant readers, I’m sure you see where this is going…  I’m placing my first death threat below, along with a little response to it I came up with all by myself.  And if you happen to be a cat, or know one, you probably should get over to Self Help for Cats, but please return here to Bad Apple to leave any death threats — if you don’t mind.

So here it is, my very first death threat:

STEVEN ERICK | nukesubmariner@hotmail.com | PresidentoftheUnitedStates | IP: 205.188.117.73

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE IMMEDIATELY IF NOT SOONER BY THIS GOVERNMENT FOR DEVIL WORSHIP AND STEALING CATS TO SELL IN INDIA…YOU ARE IN VERY BIG TROUBLE ***********************

And here is Bad Apple’s response:

Dear Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to send me my first death threat.  I didn’t expect it so soon in my career, but I promise not to let this early show of success go to my head.

Steve, first of all, was that an attempt at humor when you said ”immediately if not sooner”?  If so — good one!  Second of all, Steve, where did you get the idea I worship the Devil?  I never mentioned that. 

Steve, the part about stealing cats to sell in India — I didn’t find that funny one bit.  And in fact, I plan to look into it, Steve, and if I find out you’ve been stealing cats to sell in India then you are going to be in seriously deep yogurt, mister.

Finally, Steve, one last request: Please try to consider where you place the death threat on the site when you leave a death threat.  Context is everything, man.  I’m just trying to be helpful, so don’t bite my head off and please STOP SHOUTING!

Sincerely,

Bad Apple

Give Me Liberty or Give Me a Job

Seeing as budget axes tend to fly around this time of year, at least in the public sector, my mother was asking me yesterday if I had a resume online.  “Oh, I have something online all right,” I said, and wondered quietly what my future employer would make of Bad Apple’s Rot Report.

Since I love blogging, and I do love it, I tend to tell people about it and be a blog-vangelist, if you will.  Just this week someone said to me, “I want to start a blog, but I’m afraid to open myself up to it.”

Oh yeah, I once felt like that.  But it’s funny how once you start writing your own blog, things that worried you about blogging just slide away, and you realize you are writing things to the whole freaking world you never really thought you would so much as whisper in public.  And it’s not like I have an anonymous blog and that potential employers and my parents could not find it – they most certainly easily could find it, if they bothered.

However, because even one’s friends and boyfriends can’t seem to hardly be bothered to read one’s blog most of the time, and in fact, one’s readers tend to live in entirely other countries, continents, in parts of the world one has never been, well, one gets lulled into a sense of consequence-less pure expression, from which Bad Apple’s most twisted rationales can find enough rope to hang themselves three times over.

Which is how I find myself contemplating Ben Franklin’s musing on all-day beer in the workplace, defending library workers against saintly public images, and promoting the worst marketing ideas the best minds can generate (not to mention my post on Get Your Ass to Work Day, not exactly written for my future boss’s eyes).  I do my best to be a Bad Apple, although generally, feedback says I’m not all that bad, which in my book is simply not bad enough (and at which point, I refer folks to Baby Needs Salt - nothing says capital “B” Bad like a recipe for baby). 

Of course, this all begs the question, just how bad can an apple be?, and for what purpose?, which naturally I ask myself all the time.

Anyway, you only go around this crap shoot once, right?, so I figure you might as well develop one inch (that’s 2.5 centimeters) of psychic real estate that freely expresses what no one else but you can say.  Sure, the world has some crazy motherfreakers, and you can be one of the better ones, if you just take a chance on the interest of strangers and the disinterest of those closest to you.

Let me take this chance to thank all those bloggers, readers, and nerds that make it so easy for me to resolve all these messy issues and just produce this bruised fruit for you, whoever the heck you might be.  I love it when you comment, you know.