Shyzer.com

Why is it that every time I wake up, I’m disappointed I’m no longer in my dreams.

I would literally give anything to be able to bring the dream I had last night into reality.

Anybody who visited Shyzer yesterday around 1100 was most likely greeted by a simply splash page laced with profanity and obscene gestures (they were there, even if you couldn’t see them.) I was this close to calling it quits or at least to packing up Shyzer for a three month minimum hiatus. There was a potential database critical failure that I somehow led myself to believe had occurred and the prospect of losing 24 hours worth of work was not promising whatsoever. Throw in the fact that I had a website hacked the other day, thought it might be happening again with Shyzer, realized my backups were amazingly outdated and you can see why I pounded a few drinks this morning muttering “fuck it.” But all is well now, crisis averted, and Shyzer is here to stay, yada yada.

You might be asking yourself, “24 hours worth of work? What the hell are you talking about?” Well, skippy, go take a look at the archives. No, ignore the weird white line encompassing the page, I still I have no idea what’s causing that. Or why the Shyzer Blog logo in the archives is black or at the very least a dark gray. What you need to focus on instead is that I finally did what I was talking about a week or so ago. I’ve spent 7 or 8 hours per day for the past three days importing each and every bloody comment from Greymatter into MovableType. Why? Well, that will become a little more clear to y’all in the very near future =)

Doing this little endeavor, I learned a few things about Shyzer that I honestly didn’t know beforehand. Allow me to share.

• Somehow the baton for “Biggest Comment Whore” belongs to Angela, who has outright blown the competition out of the water for over two years now. Starting around March of ’03, she just started commenting and hasn’t stopped. This is easily the biggest shocker to me; I had no idea how much she’d commented in all.
• Stan made three separate comments over the span of 6 months saying some variation of “This is the first time I’ve ever commented on Shyzer.” Well done, my boy.
• A total of 16 people have left comments linking to now defunct websites. Some of these people I remember from back in the day, others not so much. I tried going to their websites to see who they were, but I was either greeted with an “Error: Cannot find www.crappysite.com” or with some search engine from a company that goes around buying expired domains. And to think, Shyzer could have become #17.
• Fellner didn’t comment once before April 30th, 2004. Sax didn’t comment before April 14th, 2004. Jaime didn’t comment before August 25th, 2004. I’m not faulting any of them, I’m simply saying that in my head, I seem to remember all three of them commenting here on Shyzer since day one. I didn’t realize how many new people started commenting around the time I switched from Greymatter to MovableType. This also means that Fellner was beaten to commenting by LeeSill, who left his first comment on February somethingorother, 2004. Sucker.
• Some of the steadiest commenters have been Ally, Angel, Caitlin and Shipman, who all started commenting early and still do to this day. I figured Waynus or Clay might be in that group, but neither of them comment nearly as much as I thought they did.
• I didn’t realize much more than this, but I had already made this bullet, so I figured I should put something here. How about a fun statistical fact. I have over 150 comments. Angela has over 100. We’re the only two to crack triple digits.

Anyways, there you have it. 24 hours worth of mind numbingly boring work and that’s what I come up with.

Ahoy maties! Tis ye fav’orit sea buccaneer Cap’n Sealegs Alderman ‘porting in fer duty. For ye see, today be Talk Like A Pirate Day, begad!

Blimey, don’t tell me ye scurvy dogs done fergot it be today! I outta throw ye lot into tha bilge fer that or turn ye into grub fer tha fishes!! Tha ship hands here at tha Goob Ship done already raised the Jolly Quarters fer tha day and tha poop deck shall soon be scrubbed handsomely. Me and tha lassies were gonna go watch a movie, but ye couldn’t see it, fer it was rated ARRRRRRRRG.

So belay what ye doing right now, grab some grog and some buckos, and start talkin’ like a pirate before I make ye alls walk tha plank!! Or at tha v’ry least, go buckle ye swash for a cup’ol ‘o minutes! But tis be Cap’n Sealegs Alderman sayin’ farwell. I be off in search of me booty of doubloon and a wench to keep me comp’ny ternight! ARG!

I’m still trying to figure out why ask.com thinks Shyzer is the number one result for this search string.

Marriage proposals, what is taking him so long?

So to whomever is out there waiting for me to offer my hand in holy matrimony, send me your picture. If you’re hot, that is.

My middle and high school days were the only time in my life that I’ve lived in any one house or apartment for longer than a few months at a time. It was located in a little neighborhood on the west side of town; a place where I met the infamous Chong and where some of the best times of my life are etched into my brain. You know, all that Hallmark, little white picket fence, Leave it to Beaver type bullshit. But most importantly, the house had a phone number that was just one digit off from the local Super K-Mart.

You see, our number ended in 333. K-Mart’s ended in 666. So at the very minimum, we received two or three calls a week from unsuspecting customers who had dialed the phone without looking and simply misplaced their finger on the keypad. At first, we were polite and understanding:

“No, you’ve got the wrong number.”
“Nope, this is 333, you want 666. ”
“Yeah, this is K-Mart…haha, just kidding…”

That lasted all of 10 days. It soon became custom to sporadically hear throughout the Goob Household perfect impersonations of K-Mart employees; from the initial greeting, to the humming of the classic on-hold music while we “transferred” them to the department they sought, to the eventual part where we insulted / pissed off the caller and laughed after they hung up.

So I figured, why not recreate my two favorite K-Mart Phone Call memories; The Sold-Out Home & Garden Section and The Go Fuck Yourself Shoe Department.

The first one was actually performed by my brother Waynus. I had picked up the phone and been asked to be connected with the Home & Garden section without even so much as a simple “Hello.” This slight oversight by the caller for some reason pissed me off, so as I put her on hold, I told Waynus to pretend he worked in the H&G department and to pretend nothing was in stock. It went a little something like this.

Waynus: “Hello, this is the Home & Garden Department, my name is John, how may I help you?”
Caller: “I bought a fern bush from you just two days ago and it has already died. When will your next shipment be in, because these obviously came from a bad batch.” (notice how she didn’t say hello there either! Bitch!)
Waynus: “Hold on just one second miss, let me check our records….oh I’m so sorry, but we aren’t getting in any more ferns for the rest of the season.”
Caller: “What?! It’s April! What do you mean “the rest of the season?”
Waynus: “I honestly don’t know, I’m just reading what’s here in the logs. Tell ya what, I’ll let you come in and swap that dead fern for any plant you want once our next shipment comes in.”
Caller: “Oh, all right. Well, how about your next shipment of roses. When do they come in?”
Waynus: “Let’s see…Oh darn, we aren’t getting any more of them either.”
Caller: “Are you serious?! How can that be?”
Waynus: “You know how corporate offices can be. Nobody ever understands their reasoning…”
Caller: “Fine…(by this point she’s really getting frustrated)…How about orchids?”
Waynus: “Nope, no more of those either.”
Caller: “WHAT? How about daisies!?”
Waynus: “All out.”
Caller:”Marigolds?”
Waynus: “Nada.”
Caller: “TULIPS!?”
Waynus: “Not a one!”
(This literally went one for a full 60-90 seconds before she finally lost it. The whole time I was on the phone listening on, holding down the mute button, and trying not to burst out laughing.)
Caller: “WELL WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE THEN?! I’VE JUST NAMED EVERY SINGLE DAMN FLOWER IN MY GARDEN!”
Waynus: “Okay, okay, let me go ask my manager……..Okay, he says we are getting in some ferns soon.”
Caller: “FERNS?! THAT’S WHAT THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION IS ABOUT! YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T GETTING ANY MORE IN!”
Waynus: “I did? Oh…um…hold on….yep, we’re not getting any more in!”
Caller: (Then there was this loud scream of anger followed by eight or nine curse words)
Waynus: “Wait, wait, wait, it says here we are getting some daffodils in soon!”
Caller: “WHEN?!”
Waynus: “Um….oh, no. It says we aren’t getting any more daffodils in soon.”
(More curse words followed by me finally losing it and bursting out laughing)

Honestly, I have no idea why she got so upset. She must have been having a bad day before hand or something. I didn’t feel bad though, because she could have avoided it all simply by saying “hello” to me at the start.

My most favorite call, however, needs a little background story. Chong and I were for some unknown reason wandering around Super K-Mart due to massive boredom and…well, boredom. Apparently our loitering, however, was against some asinine policy, because we were soon being followed by an assistant manager named Mark. It was apparent that he thought we were about to shoplift something, which is some pretty sound reasoning and all because every teenager in the world who walks through a store looking at things is obviously up to no good! He finally swooped down upon us with a Rent-A-Cop by his side and told us we either had to purchase something or leave. As we began to protest, he held up his hand and told the Rent-A-Cop to escort us out of the building. What Mark failed to realize was that he had just pissed off two immature teenagers who had the means and the goal to make his life as much a living hell as possible. We finally looked at each other, silently nodded, and proceeded to walk to the front of the store, and grab two shopping carts each, which made the Rent-A-Cop back off and let us be. We filled them all to the brim with as much shit as possible, before taking them to Mark and telling him we changed our minds and didn’t want any of it anymore. As he was screaming about how immature we were, we walked off smiling and feeling that justice had been served.

That was, until thirty minutes later when the phone rang in my kitchen and Chong picked it up since he was closer.

Chong: “Hello?”
Caller: “GET ME THE FUCKING SHOE DEPARTMENT!”
Chong: “One moment please!” (puts the caller on mute) “Dude, there is some chick on the phone who is pissed! Tell her you’re the shoe department and make her think you are Mark! ”
Goob: “You are truly evil….I like it!” (grabs the phone) “Yeah, this is the K-Mart shoe department. What the hell do you want?”
Caller: “I WAN…..wait, what did you just say to me?”
Goob: “I said this is the shoe department, woman, what the hell do you want? We’re a little busy right now and I don’t have time to be chit chatting on the phone with angry customers.”
Caller: “How dare you talk to me like that?! What’s your name, asshole, I’ll have your job for that!”
Goob: “HA! I don’t think so, bitch. My name is Mark and I’m an assistant manager down here. They wouldn’t fire me over your word alone! So why don’t you go try and threaten somebody else!”
Caller: “I have never in my life been treated more disrespectfully from an employee of a store than I am being treated right now! You better believe that I plan to…”
Goob: (I cut her off) “Listen bitch, I don’t care what you plan to do. You can call my boss. You can call the corporate office. You can even come down here and meet me face-to-face. The end result is still going to be the same. Nobody will give a flying fuck. Boo hoo, so you’ll take your business elsewhere. We won’t care! We have millions and millions of customers, you think we’ll cry because you’ve gone to shop at Wal-Mart? Hell, from the sound of your voice, you’re probably fat and ugly, so getting you out of our store will probably make things a little prettier around here!”
Caller: (She had really started going off when I said “fat and ugly”) “FAT AND UGLY!? FAT AND UGLY?! I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB FOR THIS! I’LL….”
Goob: (seeing that my job here was done, I felt it best to interrupt her again and get off the phone) “Blah, blah, blah. Like I said, we’re busy here, slut. So either you can get your whiny ass down here and ask to talk to me face-to-face, or you can shut the hell up and leave me alone. The choice is yours.”

I’m sure nothing ever happened to Mark over all that. I highly doubt he was in the shoe department then and even if he was, I’m pretty sure there would have been some other employee that could vouch for him saying that he never said any of those things on the phone. But I like to think that that lady actually went down to the store and caused Mark a little bit of trouble while he sorted everything out. If there’s anything I truly hate in the world, it’s profiling people just because some of their peers do certain things.

Unfortunately, my phone number no longer ends in a cool miss-dial like that. But it sure is fun to talk about those days with my brothers and sister up here in Virginia. In fact, they have reminded me of heaps of hijinks that we used to pull back in the day, which I had completely forgotten about but which their little brains soaked up richer and fuller than mine. In fact, I think I’ll create a new category called “hijinks” just for little stories like these.

Anybody who has watched TV for more than 10 seconds, picked up a newspaper, turned on the radio, visited a news outlet on the web, seen a blimp fly overheard, or talked to ducks in their backyard at midnight knows that one of the greatest natural disasters ever to strike the United States happened a little over a week ago. But to help keep this post going and to enlighten all of Shyzer’s foreign readers who might not have heard about it, allow me to recap. Last week, a category 5 hurricane slammed into the southern part of the country. It wrought death, damage, and destruction on an unimaginable scale and its total damage will be in the tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars range. There are still people trapped in the flooded cities and the water still shows no signs of lowering and people are still dieing everyday. The death toll could very easily surpass that of 9/11 and to make matters even worse, the federal government delayed for many unknown reasons in helping the region, which caused even more damage than the hurricane itself.

The hurricane was called Hurricane Katrina.

When I left Australia, it took me a few days to get my Internet set up. Once I finally did, I jumped on-line to talk to as many people as possible and one of the first people to message me was Sarah. We chatted for a few minutes and then she told me that somebody has finally moved into my room. Soon after, this followed.

“When I met the girl who moved into your room, I was standing looking at the quotes on the wall. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her that a friend from America had put them up there last semester. Then she said ‘That wouldn’t be Goob by any chance would it? Apparently I have a lot to live up to!’ – so you are definitely missed and your reputation is apparently hanging around trying to intimidate the new internationals.”

We talked for a bit longer and then I remembered I hadn’t asked what the new girl’s name was. Who was this mystery woman living in my room, sleeping in my bed, being mates with my mates?

Her name? Katrina. Coincidence? I think not.

I think this is God’s way of telling me to get my ass back to Australia or that he’ll keep sending hurricanes named after the people living in my Australian room to attack America. Either that or I’m just making shit up as an excuse to go back to my adopted homeland.

But the whole God thing sounds so much more bad ass =)

In the 24 hours since I uploaded the new photos, I’ve received six messages saying my mom is hot. To all six of you (and all the others who were thinking it but didn’t say anything), I have this to say:

SHE’S MY FREAKING MOM! BACK OFF!

I’ve had to deal with this my whole life. It still doesn’t make it any less gross to think about though =)

The past few days I have spent hours upon hours working on my websites / computers. While in Australia, I brought along my family’s camcorder and captured some great footage that I wanted to share with the world. Unfortunately, when I tried to upload said footage to my computer, it froze. I restarted the computer, it froze. I went to the bathroom, it froze. I cursed to the Gods above and it…….that’s right folks, it froze. I have no idea what’s going on, but we here at Shyzer Industries refuse to let something as simple as complete and total hardware malfunction stand in our way of bringing you sub-quality material that you force yourself to even chuckle at. Give me another day or two and hopefully I’ll have it worked out.

Also, as I was going to upload some pictures in the gallery, I was told that I needed to upgrade my software. I was promised that it would be “Smooth, fast, and easy!” so I went ahead and hit the upgrade button. SIX HOURS LATER I opened my window, was greeted by a rising sun, and screamed at the top of my lungs that I was quitting the Internet.

Alas, I managed to complete the upgrade and even more astounding, upload a few hundred pictures. First off, there’s the pirate party that Dutch Dave and Luke threw right before we all left Newcastle. Dutch was returning to Europe and Luke was moving away, so they figured why not throw a going away party? I simply had fun running around with a pirate hat on my head screaming “ARRRRRG!”

Next we have my pictures from the Sydney Farewell Trip that Hannah, Keeley, Simon, Tim, and Tom accompanied me on. My plane left early Thursday morning, so in order not to miss it, we all went down Wednesday morning, goofed off in Sydney all day and night, and then went to the airport the next morning.

From there we move onto some family pictures. As soon as I left Australia, I met up with my family in Minnesota to spend the 4th of July with them. If you remember, Tommy and I went up there last year for the 4th to hang with our aunt, uncle, and nephew, but this year my mom, Jeff, and all my siblings joined us.

And finally, some pictures from graduation as well as a few other random shots. From now on, I’m going to be sticking random family pictures in this category.

Next on the agenda for Shyzer is getting these videos uploaded, updating the cast pages, converting all the old GreyMatter posts into MovableType and THEN upgrading to WordPress. After that, might I dream of making a new layout?! Of course, my every other three days ranting will go on in-between all this!

Actually, I take that back. I already have a post typed up for tomorrow about how I caused Hurricane Katrina. Bet you’ll never be able to guess how!

I just lost a 1,000 word entry due to my own stupidity. I copied the post, deleted it from the document since I no longer needed it, went to upload it, got distracted by something else and copied four little funny jokes to e-mail to a friend. After e-mailing them, I went to paste my post and was greeted with…

Four jokes that are not so funny anymore.

Anyways, the gist of the post was, “Hey look, there’s some new music down in the RadioBlog.” It’s been what, 65+ days since I updated it last? Yeah, sorry bout that. The countdown from 100 to zero has also been placed on hold until I can get my other websites off the ground.

The music selection down there is quite random, but I’ve been listening to that playlist on repeat for the past week or so. The Vanessa Carlton is a poppy little tune, the Thirsty Merc is some Australian music, the Hootie is from their new album (and is the best song of the bunch IMHO), the Gorillaz is a song my siblings and I absolutely adore, the DMB is folksy and off the top of his head, the All-American is…well, funny to listen to when you realize what they’re singing about, and the Alexi is a sweet and breezy tune.

Like I said, it’s late and I’m tired. I’m getting up bright and early with the kids tomorrow to get them on the school buses, so I need my rest. However, I have some massive updates planned for Shyzer that shall be uploaded tomorrow / technically today / whenever I wake up from my nap / whatever you want to call it. Until then…

The words above were spoken to me today while I stood in the bathroom peeing. Colton, for some unknown reason, has a new fascination of walking in and watching people while they use the bathroom and then rating their performance. Thankfully, I passed his tough standards and earned not only his praise, but also his respect.

Yeah, you could say things are a bit different living back at home again. =)