Dirty SEO

No this isn’t a post about how Black Hat’s are ruining the industry and making us all look bad.  (Especially that guy driving around downtown Tempe in the Mercedes with the license plate “BLK HAT.”)  No, instead this is about a comment made by a sales rep I heard pitching SEO to a website owner.

Waking Up My Brain

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but if I don’t have my cup of coffee in the morning my brain doesn’t work.  I get a headache and I can’t think or comprehend anything that is going on around me.

So I start each and every day with that lovely black fluid.  Sometimes I make it at home, but usually I hit the Starbucks on the way into the office.  I grab my Venti Coffee (no room) and head for the train and off to work.

Misused Words And Phrases That Drive Me Insane

Recently copyblogger posted The Inigo Montoya Guide To 27 Misused Words and I thought I’d follow it up with a short one of my own.  Mostly because I’ve recently been dealing with some people who apparently don’t know what is the correct word to use in a sentence, and partly because I can’t take it anymore and need to release some pressure before I explode.

Irregardless:

I hear this word used almost daily and in my opinion anyone who uses this word should be shot on sight.  Irregardless is NOT a word.  Period.  I don’t care what your spell checker says.  It’s not.  It was started by some morons in Indiana a century or so ago (proving that the word Hoosier and Hick are almost interchangeable as an good Missourian knows) who apparently didn’t know how the English language either.  Stop using this immediately because if I hear you doing so, I may have to slap you and then send you back to 2nd grade.

Interdisciplinary Studies Class Fifteen

No class today, instead we were to watch the following video and analyze its place in the current political sphere.

Asian American Studies With Spam

We’re talking about the differences between Ethnicity and Nationality in class today.  I’ve gone over this so many times in other classes, that I really have nothing more to write here about it.  Needless to say, someone’s Nationality hinges on the country they are from and hold a citizenship to.  Ethnicity, on the other hand, is where someone’s family comes from.

So, for Nationality, I’m a Citizen of the United States.  Ethnically, I’m a Northern European mutt.  What does that mean to me?  Not much.  What does that mean to others?  Probably just as little.  What does that mean for this class?  I’m one of the few Anglo-European males.

Ah, an argument on what “Oriental” means.  I’ll give you a clue on this one.  Find Orient on a map.  Oriental refers to furniture and/or food.  It has no meaning when trying to describe a person.  Orient literally and technically means “to the East.”  So it all depends on where you’re coming from.  Since we live on a big ball, everything is eventually to the East.

His Email Said WHAT?

So, my dad, who’s getting a little codgery in his old age, was listening to a report on the radio about the recent death of comedian and actor Bernie Mac, and heard a quote from Cedric “the Entertainer” Kyles (a Missouri native) that was reportedly received by text message.  Now my father (who has a Blackberry, laptop, high-speed Internet connection, etc.) thought that a text message wasn’t the best way to gather responses from Bernie Mac’s friends and associates.  Here’s the email he sent to me and my brothers:

I just heard a news report on [deleted] where they cited a “text message” comment from Cedric the Entertainer about Bernie Mac’s death.  I’m sorry, but the inability of a news reporter to get to a valid source for a valid comment and to resort to accepting a text message just to get something on the air is “Entertainment Tonight” reporting.  That is simply s a lazy reporter and a clueless editor with no news integrity.  These are the depths to which valid news reporting has sunk today.   Yeah, I know it’s a brave new world and I’m having trouble adapting but do we just accept any shit that can be cobbled together as news now?

Love,

Dad

Like I said, he’s a little old school about it, but I think he has a valid point, especially given that the radio station in question has a long history in the St. Louis community, and a majority of their listeners are from my dad’s generation (35 – 64;  even female:male split*) so you would think they would want to report in a way that this group understands and accepts as valid.

So, Dad sent an email to the radio station expressing his opinion and received the following response: