Lemon Party
Thursday, October 28, 2004
A Working Title for a Working Blog
Last week was fun, wasn't it? It was a spare week, a week almost completely devoid of Lemony goodness, but now we're back again to give you a bit more coverage of the politcal blogs before they become completely outdated. That's right the election is on Tuesday, November second, but you probably shouldn't vote because
a) the machines are far too complicated for you to understand in any reasonable amount of time.
b) You'd probably just vote for the wrong candidate.
c) It was probably generous to assume you could make it to the polls.
d) You should just kill yourself instead.
At this point I could segue, but instead I'm going to show you a link to a polit-blog. Notice for a moment the date of the last update. That's right, a blog about reelecting George W. Bush gave up well before the election. That's just silly. If you're going to go to all that trouble at least have the decency to stick it out until the bitter end. What would you think of one of the candidates just stopped campaigning in the middle of the race? Yeah, I thought so.
Thou shalt run thy political blog at least until the election is over.
And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
The Sinful Colony: Brad Pitt the Nudeist
Yes it's Nudeist Colony time. This is our seventh week of Nudeism, and now it's time to look at some referrer logs, hey!
Fri Oct 15 23:52:37 2004
English (United States)
ip68-226-126-96.ph.ph.cox.net
68.226.126.96
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=www.lemon party.com&FORM=DNSERR
This dear one ran a search for "www.lemon" and "party.com" I call this Internet user "dear one" because it seems like a sweet and sensitive thing to call someone, and I feel that this person is only barely over the cusp of "functional intelligence." This is a person who can muddle through day to day life, but will be able to understand why things work the way they do. This is the kind of person who will never manage to get his head around the idea of the Earth orbiting the sun. Don't hate him; pity him.
Sat Oct 16 18:47:28 2004
English (United States)
cpe-066-56-97-255.triad.rr.com
66.56.97.255
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://www.mytotalsearch.com/jsp/AWmain.jsp?st=bar&ptnrS=VSXXXXXX46US&searchfor=nudeist
I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but I think some people may be reaching our sight through searches for the collection of letters "nudeist." Furthermore, it is entirely possible that that particular collection of letters has appeared in zero dictionaries. Zero. None. Never has nudeist been given a definition in the OED, or Merriam-Webster's, or any other dictionary. Not a one. Maybe some of you should think about investing in one. Just a thought.
Sat Oct 16 22:04:41 2004
English (United States)
slc497.modem.xmission.com
166.70.2.243
http://www.lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MSNH&q=nudeist%20colony
Apparently this isn't the only "nudeist colony on the web. I am saddened. This is me being sad. One might even say that I am channeling my sadness into this post. Or perhaps you'd say that this qualifies as emoting my sadness. Regardless, I am not pleased. So let's move on to something happier.
Sun Oct 17 12:10:11 2004
English (United States)
163.102.171.66.subscriber.vzavenue.net
66.171.102.163
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?product=csearch&tmpl=1B&qry=nudeist&src_id=312
Wait, that's not happier. At least this fool isn't looking for an entire colony. He's set his sights considerably lower, running a search for but a single nudeist.
Sun Oct 17 15:21:53 2004
English (United States)
acs-24-154-85-175.zoominternet.net
24.154.85.175
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=wrx&q=nudeist colony&kgs=1&kls=0
And now we're back to entire colonies. One nudeist not goo denough for you, Mister Zoominternet, USA?
Sun Oct 17 16:19:05 2004
English (United States)
d66-183-80-96.bchsia.telus.net
66.183.80.96
http://www.lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=TOOLBR&q=nudeist
Yes, another "nudeist" search. This one i sinteresting because this guy went through approximately half the archives in a vain search for pics. Here's a little hint for you guys: if there are zero pictures of nudeists on the first page, chances are there aren't going to be any more on the subsequent ones. Still, how much can you expect from poor spellers with stupid fetishes?
And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks and we don't have any pictures of nudeists.
Friday, October 15, 2004
At Least We Have the Facts Now
First order of business: no, turtle_07 has not gone off the deep end with that last entry. He's been there for quite a while, but he thanks you for your concern. There will indeed be a part two, if not more, but not today. Today it's my turn to address the people. The people being you. Once again there has been a debate; the one in question happens to have been the third one between the two major candidates for the presidency of the Unite States of America.
If you want to chant "U-S-A" now is the least inappropriate time. You're still going to look like a fool, but you're not going to get a better chance. This way you won't be distracted later on, hopefully.
Now that we've gotten beyond that barbarism, let's look at what Bush and John Kerry's bloggers had to say about the debate. If you remember the responses to the Vice-Presidential debate, you'll remember that the Bush-Cheney crowd were confident that they had won, but had nothing to support that assertion other than the feelings of a room of already-rabid supporters. This time around they have pictures of those supporters. Not much of an improvement. Meanwhile the first Kerry piece presents the not only the impressions of the pundits, but also statistics on viewer response. GeorgeWBush.com had neither. However an actual examination of the quotations reveals a somewhat unenthusiastic response.
Pat Buchanan: Kerry was, I thought, very much at the top of his game and I thought toward the end, when you saw Kerry, you saw more of the humanity of the man in some of those questions, which was very helpful to them; talking about the daughters and things. I thought he had some excellent moments. [MSNBC, 10/13/04]
Notice that we don't see what Buchanan thought of Bush. We have no indication of how Kerry did in relation to his opponent, and that's the part that matters. Doesn't matter if you outran the world record if somehow else outran you. Once again we see the things are never as clear as the partisan camps would have you believe.
Those aren't the only two blogs on the internet with something to say about the campaign for the White House. Mother Jones is one of the most repsected journals out there, but they're not above setting up a blog. And here we have MSNBC's "HARDBLOGGER." What you should take away from these is that these are blogs supplied by relatively mainstream new providers. Mainstream news providers do their best not to show a subjective bias; they use selective reporting to give possibly misleading impressions, but they will not come out and say things like "Lynne Cheney overreacted to the comment in last night's debate and morally condemned Kerry for not being 'good.'" There is a clear value judgement here. Now in a regular Mother Jones article you will not see words like "overreact" that imply censure.
Mother Jones is a decidedly liberal publication though, and an article on this subject will leave readers with the same impression, but it will allow quotations to do the insulting and keep the author's own comments entirely objective. The MSNBC blog also shows a certain zest for the zinger that one will not find on MSNBC's regular programming. The point is that although blogs are obviously slanted they are no more slanted than the six o'clock news, just less subtle about it.
And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
The Devil's Island Nudeist Colony
It's time to put your hands together for the sixth Nudeist Colony! Actually you should probably just use one hand to scroll through this one, but two hands isn't completely out of the question. As you should know, the Nudeist Colony is the feature has me, Odovaucer, Lemon Jockey and editor, regale you with the most interesting referrer logs of the past week. We went on a brief hiatus for reasons that are now irrelevant. With no further ado, referrer logs:
Mon Sep 27 19:43:50 2004 Windows NT (Win32)
English (United States)
ool-435144e3.dyn.optonline.net
67.81.68.227
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=nudeist&ei=UTF-8&fr=ush1-mail&fl=0&x=wrt
Another search for "nudeist." That's nice. I can't begrudge readers even if they lack basic spelling skills or normal, sensible sexual interests.
Tue Sep 28 08:17:31 2004 Windows NT (Win32)
French (France)
AReims-151-1-24-122.w83-192.abo.wanadoo.fr
83.192.21.122
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?qry=child nudist pics&origin=csearch&tmpl=1Ben&start=180
So the Americans can't figure why there aren't very many "nudeists" on the web, but the fucking French can. The French. After all the trash you talk about them, you'd think you be able to beat them at your language. Your own language. In other news this Frenchy is a pedophile with a penchant for nudists, also known as a penchant for STUPID!
Tue Sep 28 03:08:55 2004
Windows NT (Win32)
English (United States)
m-0-234.docsis.hbci.com
64.213.217.234
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MSNH&q=nudeist
Now that's a good American perversion. If misspellings are the only thing that identifies my homeland; well good for misspellings.
Thu Sep 30 14:24:35 2004
WebTV (WebTV_OS)
WebTV Plus Receiver 4
netcache-3001.bay.webtv.net
209.240.205.60
http://lemonparty.blogspot.com/
http://search.bay.webtv.net/Search.aspx?FORM=WEBTV&cfg=MSTVXML&v=1&x=26&y=14&c=US&q=nudeist
Wow, WebTV. Look at that incredible new technology at work. A new world of computing is opening up, one that does not even involve computers. It is a beautiful new day; it is the dawning of a new era of peace and prosperity. Oh, wait. Actually it's just another medium through which horny morons can search for "nudeists." And I was feeling so optimistic. I really thought we were approaching something better. Yes, that's sarcasm.
And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
untitled
>Hello again and welcome back to my little niche in the internet. You're in a small room, there's a table with two chairs and a mug of beer on it. There's nothing else in the room besides that, there's a door to the south.
dirnk beer
>I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that
drink beer
>Yech, it's warm
south
>You leave through the door. You're not standing in a long hallway filled with the doors, unfortunately each of them appears to be locked. At the end of the hallway there's a tiny end table with drawers and a lamp on it.
break door
>You reel your fist back and let it roll with a powerful right hook to the door, if he was a human he would be grabbing his jaw right now. But he's not, he's a door and he's made of Metal; did I not mention that? Your hand hurts.
look drawers
>They're drawers
open drawers
>They're locked
break lamp
>You break the lamp on the end table, resulting in a satisfying smash. Unfortunately a shard of lamp knocked you in the temple. The world goes black. You wake up hours later in a daze, you're still in a hallway with doors and a broken lamp, but one of the doors appears to be open and paramedics are tending to your wound.
kill paramedics
>That wouldn't be very nice
hit paramedics
>That wouldn't be very nice
knock out paramedics
>That wouldn't be very nice
steal paramedics
>I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that
kick paramedics
>That wouldn't be very nice
punch paramedics
>That wouldn't be very nice
123/,a,msDkajcolasdmasj0-324idnjn;msxcn
>I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that
bite paramedics
>Well... you are half vampire. You're like blade only pasty and white. As he brings his hand forward to apply antiseptic to your wound you snap your head around and bite his arm. Surprised he lets go of the antiseptic. The other paramedic screams in horror and runs through the open door. You let go of the dead paramedic, stand up, and dust yourself off.
look door
>It's open, what more do you want?
go through door
>You walk through the door. You find yourself standing in the middle of a field surrounded by daisies, posies, and an assortment of adorable fuzzy animals. You see a city to the east.
look animals
>They're small, fuzzy, and with a small bit of string and some wood you could fashion a crude animal slingshot.
fashion crude animal slingshot
>You fashion a crude animal slingshot out of an assortment of bunnies, rabbits, and hares. Realizing however how useless such a contraption is you set it down.
look flowers
>They're flowers
pick posies
>You pick some posies. You're such a girl.
north
>You find yourself in a field... no wait... you were already in a field, you've just headed farther north. There's a city to the east
north
>The field eventually stops at a cliff, looking down you throw off some of the posies that you picked up. They float beautifully to the ground about 200 feet below. Thank god you didn't fall in.
east
>You walk for a good 20 minutes until you enter what could be called a city. I say what could be called a city because you don't know the word for city, but it could be called that if you did. There are buildings and houses and streets and ponies and icecream shops and happy fluffy happies!
(End of part 1)
And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.
Friday, October 08, 2004
What's wrong with people?
In memory of the past... in memory of the time when I actually posted... in memory of the future, I shall post again. But not only will I post again (as I plan on continuing to post), I shall post about blogs.
Yes, we've come around full circle. The alpha as become the omega, the beginning the end, and the Simpsons has become Futurama. Which really doesn't work given that Futurama was cancelled. Anyway as I was saying before I went off on an irrelevant tangent and you got yourself a snack: this update's on blogs.
A recently discovered phenomenon that I will just never understand is blogs, but we've been over that already. There was a lot of screaming, a lot of crying, and a lot of growing as a person. Well I went through some psychotherapy and actually regressed as a person, so I'm back to my angry stage.
Blogs are dumb, we've been through this. We've also been through approximately 99% of the ways that blogs are dumb, including a few dumb ways which only reinforces are point. Anyway, recently I found another reason to hate blogs. It's those terrible "Nothing is going on in my life but I'm going to post anyway" posts. They come in many forms, but in the end they always boil down to one thing: something that you didn't need to know. I find it FASCINATING that you just washed your clothes, really I do, but if I didn't I might start yelling at you in tongues. Can I take a practice yell right now? If I'm going to read about your shitty life make it worth reading; one sentence updates or updates telling me that you're updating without a cause only tell me that you don't care about your reader, and be extension, don't care about yourself.
I mean that's what this is about isn't it, the fact that you've lost all self esteem. Don't tell me otherwise, I can read you like a book. Your updates are simply cries for help as you run, scared an alone, through a large and dark world full of evil. One time a car hit my dog :(
If that's not proof enough that the world is a cold black place then you must be legally insane. Or illegally, I'm not really the picky type. Anyways it looks like I've rambled on; here's what I'm trying to say: MAKE YOUR UPDATES WORTHWHILE! Generally it's unacceptable to do a two or three sentence update, although sometimes it's ok. I just don't get the point of doing a single sentence update about how your cat just threw up a hairball and it's yicky. Would you write that in your non-electronic diary, or would you talk about how Peggy Sue maced you when you told her to strip? These are your very personal public journals... that by some strange twist of fate are online for the entire world to read. Treat them as such; we don't need to know about how your stubbed toe hurts (unless it's part of a larger story).
To reiterate:
BAD
The mall near my house is selling ice cream now, finally.
Good
I'M NOT TYPING ANOTHER UPDATE INSIDE AN UPDATE!
Please just try to
(And) remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party. Because your blog sucks.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
A Bucket of Warm Spit
That's what a very famous man called the Vice Presidency. That very famous man went on to become the President of the United States of America. Don't worry, you don't have to care. I do, but that's because I'm a better person than you. I even know which famous man that Was. You could know too, if you went to the trouble of Googling it.
Today I am indeed fulfilling my promise; today I am introducing you to the other half of the blogging world: the political blog. Last night, as you may know, a debate took place between Vice President Dick Cheney and John Edwards, the Democratic candidate for Vice President. Most television commentators carefully avoided making any definitive judgment of the debate. Some said Edwards had a slight edge, some naming Cheney as the narrow victor. Generally a station's commentators were evenly distributed on either side. GeorgeWBush.com blog says otherwise. Here we see that Cheney won in every respect. Note Ms Reeve's use of specific examples of the Vice President's dominance.
That's awfully definitive, but let's see what the other side has to say. Here's the JohnKerry.com blog's take on the debate. Mr. Rabin-Havt has a very different take on the debate. Note his use of statistics; it's hard to argue with hard numbers. Of course Ambrose Bierce once allowed as how there were three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. Mr. Bierce was a slightly cynical fellow, but these statistics might not be as meaningful as Ari Rabin-Havt thinks. Mr. Rabin-Havt brags that "Edwards [was] more likeable by 30%." That sounds important, but just how important is this "likability?" Do you think perhaps some of those many women voters who liked Edwards so much were talking about how much more attractive he looked? I mean, come on, would anyone really rather nail Cheney than the baby-faced senator from North Carolina? And would you prefer a likeable leader or capable one? Notice there's no statistic indicating a huge swing in Edwards' favor in terms of, say competence, and we do have to realize that these statistics are based on the opinions of a tiny sampling. Another source running a differently worded set of questions could have registered noticeably different results. Notice that Mr. Rabin-Havt only has two sources for all those statistics: CBS and the Democracy Corps.
Now I've spent a fair amount of text ragging on poor old Ari, but that doesn't mean Amanda Reeve is the victor in this little scuffle. Notice that she has no sources to site, but is instead limited to her impressions and those of others at the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters for Arizona, which makes for a far less impartial source than the questionable statistics of the Democratic blogger. Furthermore she wrote this sentence: "Several of the people expressed Vice President Cheney’s performance by emphatically stating: 'Cheney is kicking...,' well, I think you get the picture." That would not be expressing Cheney's performance; that would expressing an opinion on the Vice President's performance. Looks like Ms. Reeve is a sloppy writer, which is certainly something we can hold against her and her brief sketch of the debate.
Both blogs also set forth lists of quotations from the pundits. The Kerry blog entry concentrates on the separation between Dick Cheney's statements in the debate and the factual record. The Bush blog asserts that Cheney was the clear victor and quotes numerous pundits saying just that. Of course both pages cite many of the same sources, and cite those sources as clearly siding with the appropriate candidate.
So what's the point of this update? Well let's call it a commandment, a commandment for reading polit-blogs:
Thou shalt not take anything written in a political blog at face value.
That's the point, and I think you'll agree that it's the natural starting point for our immersion in this new subject.
And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.