Shyzer.com

Just a few quick things. First off, I’ve got it set so that if comments are not allowed on a post, it shows up as “Comments Off” instead of “No Comments.” Let me just say it was much harder to do than it should have been.

Also, I’ve updated the Radio with a few new songs for your listening pleasure.

And finally, I just recently discovered that the subject of two of Shyzer’s greatest posts has returned to the net! Back in February of 04, I made the this and this post on the Objective Christian Science Fair. Well, they’re back and while they don’t have much new material, you can find their current digs over here. I updated the scripts on the second post so that the interactive children’s guides about what to do if you meet an atheist and what to say to your Hindu friends now work.

Although, I gotta admit, it seems like there’s enough new material for me to do a third post on our favorite Objective Christian Ministries. Hmmm…

If there’s one thing in politics that’s actually worth following these days, it’s the whole Net Neutrality Act and how the major ISP’s are lobbying most of the Republican’s to defeat it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Net Neutrality is good when so many large websites and actual Internet players come out in support of it. Google, Yahoo, E-Bay, Myspace, Craigslist, Amazon and countless other major websites that are dependant on their users to keep them in buisness have all come out in favor of Net Neutrality. And why shouldn’t they?

For those of you who don’t quite understand what’s at stake here, it boils down to this. Let’s say I’m a huge fan of Swedish fishing shows or African cooking articles. Without the Internet, I’m stuck with only cable TV and my local print media and I doubt either of them would have much material on Swedish fishing or African cooking. But thanks to the Internet, I can watch Oleg’s homemade podcast on Swedish fishing and read Kimbabwesaquanda’s blog on African cooking. Hooray for hobbies!

But if Net Neutrality is defeated, my ISP suddenly has a say. Verizon, Time Warner, Adelphia, Comcast, or whoever else might provide you with Internet might decide that they don’t make enough money from Oleg’s or Kimbabwesaquanda’s websites and as such, restrict the amount of bandwidth they’ll allow to flow to those sites. Now all of a sudden when I try to go to their websites, they load painfully slow or in some cases, not at all. In essence, the Internet would cease to be a forum where any and every user, regardless of money, could sell or offer their services. Instead, with no Net Neutrality, ISP’s could auction off the Internet to the highest bidder.

And don’t be fooled into thinking only small blogs would be effected by this. Time Warner owns CNN. Well, what’s to stop them from blocking all their users from going to msnbc.com and foxnews.com so that now all their users are forced to use their news service? How about this: TW also owns Sports Illustrated, so what’s to stop them from blocking ESPN.com? Or what if TW, who owns AOL and thus AIM, blocked customers from using MSN or Yahoo Messenger, forcing people to use AIM. And the examples don’t stop with just TW. Verizon could block any cell phone competitor’s website. Comcast could block VH1 or MTV’s websites and force me to go to E! Entertainment’s. The list of possibilities is endless thanks to the number of assets these giant corporations own. I simply picked on TW because not only are they the biggest, but this past April, their AOL asset blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com - an advocacy campaign opposing the company’s pay-to-send e-mail scheme.

Most supporters of Net Neutrality claim that if my ISP starting throttling websites, then I should switch to an ISP who doesn’t. That’s fine and dandy in theory, but in reality, how many ISP’s can I pick from? In 99% of the country, there is only one or two ISP to choose from and if I don’t like either of them, tough luck. In fact, website throttling is already happening in Canada, where the situation is actually much worse than here in the states. Most major Canadian ISP’s pinch off bittorrent traffic so that their users can’t download anything and one such ISP, Telus, blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a labor dispute. China isn’t the only country with banned websites people; it’s slowly but surely coming to our shores. Sites like Save The Internet are trying to spread the word, but I find that not enough people realize what’s actually at stake here for the longterm development of the Internet.

To put it to you another way, if the current bill in Congress passes and your ISP decides that I don’t pay enough money to them (which I can assure you I won’t), then they will throttle your bandwidth to Shyzer so that you can’t access it from your home. And I don’t know about y’all, but a world without Shyzer simply isn’t a world I want to live in.

Oh, and comments are on for this post. I wish I could have it automatically let y’all know whether they are on or not without having to click the comments button, but until I figure out how, this is how I’ll let y’all know.

Uhhh….hi there folks. I just wanted to make sure I had a post in Shyzer’s archives with the date 6/6/06.

Job accomplished.

I’ve been subbing recently at one specific school. This school, save for the gym teacher, has no full time male teachers. You might say when I walk in the office or hang out with the other teachers on the playground, I feel a bit outnumbered. Sometimes the teachers forget I’m within earshot and let slip something that was meant for female ears only. Other times, they’ll be talking about a topic I can’t participate in (today’s being gynecologist visits) before I jump in for the easy laugh and joke about my experience with said non-unisex topic. It’s all good though, since most of the teachers and office workers there are great and I have a blast with all the kids.

Last week I was working in the office after hours when a phone call came in for one of the other teachers. I put the caller on hold before switching over to the school-wide loudspeaker and paging her to let her know about the call. Seconds later, I saw the line go through and I knew she’d heard me and picked up, so I instantly forgot all about it. A few minutes later though, a teacher came into the office laughing hysterically. It turns out there was a teacher who had been sick recently and not known I was working in the building now. Upon hearing me page the other teacher over the speakers, she stuck her head out of her classroom, looked around, and asked, “Was that God?”

It doesn’t take long for somebody to hate their job. There’s always that initial honeymoon period, but soon after that fades comes the reality period. The period where you realize just how annoying your co-worker Shelly is or just how much of a complete asshole your boss Jim is or even how much poop a tiny little monkey can produce in a single day. That last one of course having to do mostly with zoo keepers and carnies, because despite my best efforts, I’ve yet to work with a monkey.

And just like that, the bitching commences. People start talking about how much they hate getting out of bed in the morning or how little their paid or how they just wish they could go one day without having their boss chew them out for something as trivial as forgetting to refill the coffee maker. And to all those people out there, I have one thing to say to you:

Become a substitute teacher.

Oh the joys of being a substitute teacher. When I initially signed up for the gig a few months back, I knew it would go one of two ways. On one hand, I’d hate the job since all the kids were hellions who made my day a living nightmare. On the other, the kids would actually listen to me and I’d have a great time. Truth be told, after remembering some of my earlier schooling days, I was fully prepared for the worst and yet to my surprise, it never came, mainly because I figured out how to stay away from it.

Subbing breaks down into three categories: you’ve got the elementary kids, the middle school kids, and the high school kids. To put it plainly, 90% of the troublesome children are in middle school. After subbing a few of those classes, I gave it up. It simply wasn’t worth the effort. It also gave it a newfound respect and appreciation for anybody who can handle kids that age for 180 days a year. It certainly takes a patient person.

No, I decided to focus on elementary and high school kids simply because subbing in those two environments couldn’t be more different. Whenever I get a call for the older kids, I know I’m in for an easy day. The high schools around here have four classes lasting 90 minutes each, a 30 minute study hall, and a 30 minute lunch. Most teachers have at least one planning period a day and add to that my lunch period and we’re already up to 120 minutes of sitting around alone while getting paid.

But what about when I actually have a class? Well, that’s basically just as easy. You see, in high school, the teacher has no idea what qualifications their sub has. It could be a recent college graduate of history or an 80 year old retired banker whose last history class was in 1941. Therefore, in each and every high school class I sub for, I am left one of two orders. Either I show a movie that the teacher has provided or I hand out a packet of worksheets that was left on the desk. That’s it. I then crack open the giant book I brought along with me for the day and count the minutes until the final bell of the day. Sure, sometimes you get a great class of seniors who are smart, funny, and enjoyable to shoot the shit with, but for the most part you get a classroom full of kids who simply are there because they have to be and are likewise counting down the minutes.

But this can grow old quick. Sure, it’s nice to be paid to do practically nothing, but I can’t do that for more than a few days at a time. I quickly grow bored and before you know it, I’m starting to hate my job. Enter the elementary school days. With these kids, there is never any downtime and usually, the teacher has left plenty of material for you to teach. I guess they all rely on the fact that if you didn’t know what nouns and verbs are or if you can’t add 4 and 8, then you honestly have no business subbing. Regardless, with the young’uns, there’s always plenty to do and if you’re lucky, they might even ask you to play with them at recess. If there’s anything I’ve learned lately it’s that I still totally own at kickball.

I try to do 3 or 4 days in an elementary school and 1 day in high school and so far I’ve been pretty fortunate to get basically that. One thing is certain though, I’ve certainly loved what I’ve been doing the past few months. Sadly, the school year is drawing near a close, but with it, maybe I’ll have some time to share some stories I’ve acquired while subbing.

If you want $20 free sent to your Paypal account, check out this post over on Hey, It’s Free! (here’s proof). I’m trying it out right now to see if I can get another $20 with another fake e-bay account I have, but as of yet I’m not sure if that will work or not. Either way though, $20 for 10 minutes worth of my time is a good deal to me.

And as a matter of fact, you all should be reading that site daily now. I know I “launched” it back in August, but in all honesty, I didn’t really update or keep it operational for longer than a week. However, ever since late February, I’ve updated it multiple times daily with posts. I revamped many of the pages and changed the direction of the site from having my referral link peppered all over the site to offering nothing but completely and 100% free items. So, go take a look at Hey, It’s Free and…well, add it to your bookmarks and keep going back to it every day! New posts over there are automatically made every 4ish hours and bring with them information on how to get free samples, money, electronics, food, sex toys - you name it, I post how to get it for free!

The Awesomest Site of the Week award hands down goes to Ask A Ninja.com

It seems like this time every year one actor turns in a performance worthy of 9000 Emmys and a boatload of hot models. Last year it was Terry O’Quinn from LOST with the episode where you-know-who did you-know-what. This time around, it was John C. McGinley who proved himself to be a man amongst boys with his performance in Scrubs these past two episodes. If his portrayal of Dr. Cox wasn’t enough to sway your soul and draw out a few tears, then you are a heartless robot who should never procreate. Seriously, we have enough trouble with robots as it is, we don’t need your soulless robot babies running around next. I’ve been a huge fan of Scrubs ever since season 2 and if NBC doesn’t renew it for next year, it only goes to show how clueless that network truly is. Thankfully, ABC is waiting with open arms and drooling mouths to snatch up Scrubs, so all is well.

And on a side note, I don’t think any show in recent memory has better used obscure music than Scrubs. I have no idea how many songs from my playlist I first discovered from an episode, but suffice to say I think the cream of the crop was the ending song last week from The Fray titled “How To Save A Life,” which you can continently find over on Shyzer Radio.

Nope, your eyes don’t deceive you. Your computer isn’t playing a trick on you and…well, some other stupid little saying that delays the following sentence. Shyzer is back up and running, although to what extent is yet to be determined. I figured two weeks was enough time to keep, as Fellner said, “just a bunch of words and white space” up. We’ll see where I go from here, though.

The most obvious change of course is the new layout. Gone is the clutter and replacing it is clean, crisp, goodness. The radio, webcam, and tagboard are gone, the latter two permanently. The new radio is under the “radio” link and it shouldn’t be much more complicated than that. I bet y’all can guess where the search section is and if you need a few external links to other sites, they’re not hiding anywhere. I’m still not sure if I want to keep comments around or not, so I guess we’ll just see. For now, they’re here, but I might yank them at any moment.

This layout is a first for me in many ways, one of them being using a white background. My past three layouts were all dark (black, black, and dark greenish) and I wanted to liven things up a little with not only some color, but some non-dreary inducing whiteness. When I first sat down to sketch what I wanted the new design to look like, I also knew I wanted a bigger area for my posts. What I hated about the old layout was how there was so much blank space on the right and left hand side of the posts / sidebar. For those of us using a larger resolution on our monitors, it looks like utter crap. I wanted Shyzer to stretch and fit the full length of the page and now, no matter what resolution you use, it does just that. (and Damn you to hell 800*600 people! I had a hell of a time configuring this layout to fit properly and all I can ask is why the hell are there still people out there using 800*600 resolutions!?!?!)

This is also the first layout I’ve coded from the ground up using CSS. In my past layouts, I’ve taken other people’s designs and proceeded to hack, slash, and duct tape them into something I not only better enjoy, but that will also work with the programs I use around here. This is akin to chopping down a redwood and then sawing, chiseling, and chopping your way to a decent kitchen table. But this time I decided to just plant a kitchen table seed and let one grow straight from the ground instead. I finally decided to expand on both my knowledge of CSS and Wordpress and so I bought a kickass CSS book and followed a wonderfully written Wordpress tutorial to get at what you see here. No tables, no images, all CSS and Wordpress codes. And damn am I proud of it.

I’ve still got a little bit of work to do, but that’s just touch up stuff. The sub-heading above (The Beauty of Simplicity) might soon display random quotes every time you load a new page, but I haven’t perfected that code just yet.

There are times I consider shutting down Shyzer if for no other reason than it’s no longer unique. I’ve talked about this before, but back when I started Shyzer, there were only a handful of sites like it out there. In fact, there were only around 100,000 total and in Internet terms, that’s minuscule, microscopic.

But the problem with blogs is that they evolved and spread. In April 2005, reports came out that 40,000 new blogs were popping up a day. Reports this month have that number in the neighborhood of 80,000.

Eighty Thousand New Blogs.

A Day.

When The Real World first aired, it was an instant success. Same goes for Survivor. The reason for this is simple: people were intrigued by the front row voyeuristic view they were given, found it refreshing in a sort of queer way, and wanted more. And more they got. Now you can turn on the television and find a hundred knockoffs that are so lacking in quality, it’s not even remotely funny. Well blogs are no different. The blogs that were hugely popular when I first discovered the trend offered a raw and clear view into the author’s life. There were no filters on what the authors published and we got to see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly that occurs in all our lives but which few of us ever share with others. It was the next evolution of reality TV. No longer were the stations and producers deciding what we at home got to see. People could now open up their lives for anybody and everybody to peer into and the most successful ones were those that offered the most unrefined and uncensored vision possible.

But as always, people sitting at home thought to themselves, “Pfft, I could do a much better version of this.” With reality TV, that meant they had to compete against thousands of others and get cast on the show. With blogs, that meant all they had to do was create a free account and start posting.

And for every worthwhile blog that has cropped up each day due to all the attention CNN and Fox News have given bloggers in the past year or two, 79,999 horrible ones featuring high school kids giving bad movie reviews or some pissed off patriot talking about how we need to support President Bush suddenly appear on the Internet. I had hoped blogging would be a flavor of the month with the general public, like pogs or those slap bracelets people always had in middle school. God we looked retarded walking around with those on our wrists. But instead, it looks like blogging’s here to stay with every soccer mom and NASCAR car dad out there, along with those retarded terms the news media like to make up, like soccer mom and NASCAR dad.

All this does is dilute the pool even more. As a reader, I’m sure you know how hard it is to find a decent blog nowadays. Most of my all-time favorite blogs are still the ones I unearthed long before Shyzer was ever conceived. But 2005 saw the closings of the last holdouts of that generation, most notably Doc from Doctor Grosz. And with that said, given my odds, I feel confidant in saying I’d put Shyzer up against any other random blog out there - that is, whenever I have it running on all cylinders. I don’t try to be perfect in everything, but I most certainly strive for perfection in anything I do happen to partake in. If I’m going to spend my time on something, I’ll be damned if the final output isn’t as close to perfect as humanly possible.

I enjoy the uniqueness and randomness of my personality. Given the option of taking two roads, I most certainly will always select the one less traveled. Not because of some idealistic, romanticized view I hold on life, but simply for the selfish reason that I hate being like everybody else. Remember, this is the guy who as a kid, pulled out a map and found the city farthest away from his hometown when he decided he needed to pick a baseball team to root for.

For what’s the point of screaming when everybody around you is screaming the exact same thing?

That said, I hate admitting to myself that Shyzer has slipped in terms of quality lately. I’m lucky if I have this baby operating like I do with a rough hangover, much less running to the standard I expect from myself. Couple that with the unnecessary stress of updating every few days and the fact that I’m partaking in an art form that everybody else seems to be enjoying, and you can see why the idea of closing shop seems appealing at times.

And yet I can’t bring myself to do it. This isn’t just some website to me. I truly view Shyzer as an extension of myself, for better or worse. What I want is for Shyzer to regain some of its uniqueness that it once held and to start properly reflecting some of my personality. I don’t want half of the people I know operating sites similar to it and since I know I can’t go back in time and prevent blogs from becoming a cultural phenomenon, I’m left with two choices. On one hand, I could take down all my material and replace everything with a simple splash page like most people who feel the way I do have done…

Or, I could force Shyzer to evolve. I was one step ahead of the curve last time, so why not do it again? Plus, if everybody before me is closing shop, wouldn’t I be contradicting my own philosophy by following suit and turning off the lights as well?

I think this whole post best exemplifies how Shyzer is indeed an extension of myself, for if you think things are a little weird around here, you should take a guided tour through my head. I’ve always been a person who simply does what feels right, not what he thinks he should do next. In times past, I’ve usually listened to my gut and while it’s been known to play tricks on me every now and then, things have always turned out right in the end. See: Mariners, Seattle. Girlfriends, past. Australia, best few months of my life spent in, etc. Yet for the first time in my entire life, nothing feels right and yet nothing feels wrong. I can’t seem to find a clear frequency to my gut and instead all I’m picking up is static. I don’t know what to do next with my life and frankly, it pisses me off far more than it scares me. Fuck not knowing what direction to take Shyzer in, I don’t even know what fucking direction I want my life to travel for the next few years.

Everything I think about doing next sounds at the same time great and horrible. I’m 23 years old and as conceited and naive as it sounds, I still know and believe that I can do something great in my lifetime. I don’t think I’m destined to do something specific, that some higher being put me here just so I could follow a path that was laid for me. But I do feel with every fiber of my being that I have the potential to do and be something great, that greatness is within my grasp if only I discover the path to it before it becomes overgrown with weeds. That’s what I worry about most, missing or ignoring my one true chance at greatness. I’ll never be able to settle on having a “regular” life. If a time traveler from the future came to me right now and told me that in 50 years, I’d be retiring as the district manager of some regional office, I think I’d lose my will to live right then and there. I’ve never been able to stomach the thought of simply becoming a small cog in the machine of life, becoming somebody who will be mourned for a few years after his death and then simply forgotten, becoming just like everybody else. Becoming Normal. Becoming Average. Come Hell or high water, I’m going to find a way to make a difference and achieve something, even if it destroys me and sends me to an early grave. And that, my friends, is something I give my word to.

To make matters worse is that despite having more friends than I’ve ever had in my entire life and living at home with a family that absolutely adores me, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before in my entire life. I no longer have that one deep and close friendship to rely on like I used to have with a few certain people and for the first time in my life, I’m staring down the barrel of uncertainty utterly and completely alone, with no one standing next to me who entirely and fully understand me. But like they say…well, my knowledge of quotes and proverbs has picked a wonderful time to fail me, but hopefully there’s a saying or two out there that would make me feel better.

I don’t know if you can tell from the way I act on the Internet, but I’m an extremely private person in real life. I don’t like talking about myself or my thoughts or plans or dreams or whatever with most people. Sure, I’m goofy as hell, but rarely in a serious way and more in a comedic relief type manner. Whenever things turn serious, I tighten up and retreat into my head. And that’s where Shyzer’s importance in my life came in. It was an outlet for me to come and say what I thought and be myself and do my thing. And yet, as time has gone on, the occasion of censoring myself has grown more and more frequent and the main cause for this has been due to the fact that I know who is reading Shyzer. I know people don’t want to read some cookie cutter crap that’s censored and refined and even if that’s what they want, I wouldn’t write it since it’s boring as hell to do so. I want to be as candid as possible, but there’s certainly more I wish I could say on here. Fuck, I’ll be honest here. In the past three and a half months alone, I’ve probably stopped myself 20 times from posting something in particular. “Shit, this is totally gonna piss off so and so,” or “Oh fuck, if she reads this, she’ll think I’m a fucking psycho,” or “Dear Christ, it will take all of 10 minutes for my phone to start ringing if I hit the Publish button.” I don’t enjoy defending myself or my actions. I’ve never subscribed to the belief that I should have explain myself to people, partially due to the fact that I don’t like confrontation and partially due to the fact that most people just wouldn’t understand.

I have nobody to blame but myself for getting all my friends and family into reading Shyzer and even as I type this, I hope everybody who reads Shyzer continues to do so. For years now, I’ve been known to pimp Shyzer on a daily basis and the last thing I want to do is say, “Hey you! Yeah, even though we’ve known each other for 15 years and you’ve been reading Shyzer for months now, fuck off so I can have the liberty to say whatever I want.” I promise you, that’s not what I want, at all. As a writer, you want as many people as possible to read what you have to say, even if it might ruffle a few feathers or force a family member or two to disown me.

But even more importantly, I’m going to stop writing what I think people might want to read and start writing what I want to write. If you find the new Shyzer too boring or too one-dimensional (ie, only shit I’m interested in), sorry mates. Like I’ve already said, this is an extension of me, not y’all, and I’m going to try my best to make posting a pleasurable experience for me once again compared to the chore I currently view it as.

So here’s the deal. In a few days, I’m going to open Shyzer’s doors again and try something out. The comments will be turned off, the tagboard will be taken down, and I’m not going to track my stats or see who and how many people are reading what. I desire no feedback on what I write here. If you want to read Shyzer, that’s great and if you don’t, no worries. I am still trying to find my true calling and while this may seem like I’m blaming my lack of vision and initiative on Clay or Fellner reading Shyzer, that’s not it at all. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, I’m merely trying to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Perhaps if I clean things up and clear my head here on Shyzer, I’ll be able to do the same thing in real life.

And if that fails, at least I’ll have tried something, because what I’m doing not just ain’t working and I can already hear my window slowly closing.