Shyzer.com

Would you hire a company called Goob Inc? Yeah, I probably wouldn’t either. Though if you do a google search for that very company, you’ll come across a newly created website with such a name. In addition, there’s a Daily Goob out there, an impostor on Hey, It’s Free commenting with the name Goob, and of course Goob.com. Countless new Facebook sites have also cropped up, thanks mainly to Facebook’s new Applications feature. Throw in the fact that there’s some dude in Canada named Mark Shyzer who makes shirts or something and I think we can all agree that there is nothing but one conclusion to be made.

We here at Shyzer are under attack. Counterfeit Facebook, Shyzer, and Goob forces are massing under the cover of darkness for what can only be interpreted as an invasion force. Before long they’ll launch a sudden air strike against my ranking on Google for Goob. Our intelligence indicates they’ll then quickly shift the brunt of their attacking hordes to focus on Shyzer in an effort to decapitate us in a quick and sudden blow.

But we’ll be waiting for them. Oh hell yes, we’ll be ready. Just like last time.

Records and details are sketchy and the only remaining artifact is the ancient map above, but over time we’ve managed to piece together a history of the first Great War. We also suspect the oncoming one will follow a similar path. The first Battle of Goob occurred somewhere near the northern borders. The newly formed nation of Shyzeria set up defensive positions along the barren landscape, with the combined armies of HIF and Shyzer dug into defensive trenches around the Great Line of Shyzeria and the naval armada of Hey, It’s The Forums patrolling Sidebar Sea to the west. Approaching southward, the wretched and fully armed division of Goobdemort had no choices but to attack head on. Though heavily outnumbered and out gunned, the defending Shyzeria regiment valiantly held off wave after wave of the oncoming swarm in spite of the widely known secret that no replacement forces would soon arrive for either the dead nor the weary.

After more than a week of heavy fighting, a Goobdemort scout spotted a weakly held stretch of the line and it wasn’t long before at least two Goobdemort brigades flooded towards the spot. As they near approached, even they were surprised at the sparse resistance they faced and thanked their God for such a blessing. As they began to cross the line, a sudden and massive barrage of Shyzeria’s long ranged naval artillery slammed their exact spot and surrounding area in a brilliantly timed and executed ploy. Goobdemort’s leaders quickly realized they had fallen prey to an ambush and ordered a hasty retreat, none too soon either, as Shyzerian forces began attacking from nearly every side. Though badly wounded and having lost the bulk of their original army, Goobdemort’s troops were soon thrilled to see that their leaders had called in yet another division of men to help crush and demoralize the remaining puny Shyzerian resistance.

It didn’t take much longer for Shyzeria’s leaders to see that the northern lands were all but lost. After 18 days of bloody battle, they knew their forces could not repel yet another wave of enemy attackers. Thus they ordered a full retreat westward around Post Forest, down the coast of Sidebar Sea, and into the Comment Caves. There, they would make their last, and probable futile, stand against the evil throng.

As the twilight began to fade that evening, Shyzeria’s forces surreptitiously crept away from the front lines and began the long march southwestward. Yet it wasn’t long before Goobdemort’s spies noticed the hasty retreat and ordered a ruthless pursuit. With Shyzeria’s anti-air guns having been dismantled and loaded onto trucks for the retreat, Goobdemort’s air force found they were free to scream down and unleash hell upon the hapless Shyzerian army. Throughout the night, Shyzeria suffered almost insurmountable losses and as dawn fast approached, Shyzeria’s leaders debated whether or not to halt their flee and make a stand against the pursuing force. However, just as they were about to order issue their new orders, a runner approached from the west with Earth shattering news. Shyzeria’s navy had not only been obliterated the previous night by Goobdemort’s attack submarines, but far off on the horizon, troop transport ships had been spotted. Sullen and dejected by the horrendous news that they no longer travel south along the coast, much less stop and make a stand, they ordered all remaining forces to immediately enter Post Forest.

As Goobdemort’s leaders watched the last of Shyzeria’s dejected men slink beneath the cover of the thick forest, they halted their advance and once again reveled in their good fortune. For now their enemy was trapped in the thick overgrowth of the woods, meaning Goobdemort’s army would be able to swing down the coast and arrive first at the caves. In only a few days, they’d have their enemy flanked on all sides with no chances of escape remaining for the cowardly Shyzerian forces.

Yet the leaders of Shyzeria weren’t stupid. They quickly saw what Lady Luck had delivered to them and unanimously decided their only chance of survival was to send out messages to any of their sympathetic allies who might remain. Runners were sent out in all four directions with the prayers that one might be able to slip undetected through Goobdemort’s perimeter and bring back any aide they could round up. And with no other plays remaining, Shyzeria’s forces regrouped and began to slowly hack their way through the thick brush towards the Caves.

10 days passed before Goobdemort’s wicked forces had completely surrounded the forest. Their leaders became irritated with waiting for whatever was left of the opposition to emerge from the woods and so began to march their men northward. Meanwhile, Shyzeria’s remaining rag-tag forces resembled those of a weak militia more so than of an army. Weary from having marched almost non-stop for over a week, they geared up for what they rightly believed to be their ultimate battle. As talk of surrender began to creep into the serious discussions of even the highest ranking members of Shyzeria’s military, the unmistakable sounds of Goobdemort’s thugs began to flood the forest. Scouts clambered up to the tree tops and reported that they were not far from the Shyzerian’s thinly held defenses.

The Shyzerian soldiers were ordered to promptly find cover and lie in wait. Having left every resemblance of heavy artillery far behind in their journey, their only prospect was to allow as many of the evil fiends to invade their camp before unleashing a sneak attack on them from the trees and brush in the hopes of taking as many of the heinous bastards to the grave with them.

As the Goobdemort troops moved deeper into the forest, many of their numbers unknowingly found themselves within striking distance of a Shyzerian gun. Yet the order to halt was abruptly shouted by their leader, as his radio began to squawk with broken and confusing pleas for help. As fate would have it, a Shyzerian Marshall was within earshot and instantly realized what was happening.

For at that very moment, a division of heavily armored cavalry from Facebook Talk came thundering over the ridges of Logo Mountain and smashed practically unopposed through the rear Goobdemort reserves and supply lines. As the Marshall raced to calculate how this luck of gigantic proportion changed his men’s current situation, the Goobdemort airwaves again lit up with shrill cries of even more enemy forces. The Marshall could hardly believe his ears and for a moment, he froze with disbelief. He did not believe in such amounts of luck and good fortune. Yet as he crouched under the thick shrubbery and felt the ground beneath him gently rumble from far off explosions, his mind sprang to life and toyed with the idea of not just survival, but actual victory.

Three nights prior, a beaten and haggard looking man was intercepted near the borders of the distant, long forgotten, and now rouge nation state of Shyzer Network. Not accustomed to accepting foreigners kindly, the Shyzer Network guards immediately demanded the messenger turn around and leave if he valued his life. Yet his persistence of a counsel with the nation’s leader, despite the potential threat to his life, impressed the guards and they escorted him directly to their nation’s capital. Once there, the emissary explained in great detail the ongoings of his home nation to anybody who would listen. It didn’t take long for the leaders of Shyzer Network to become romanticized with the idea of saving their once close brothers of Shyzeria from certain doom. They immediately dispatched their entire army to make haste for Shyzeria and with it, to carry The Bomb.

And so, as the distinct mushroom clouds rose over the tree line, the Shyzerian Marshall let slip a tear of joy. The entire Goobdemort’s navy, along with the invasion force brought with it, had in the blink of an eye been eradicated and the Marshall knew that every man in the forest was coming to that same realization as they slowly gazed upward. Not wanting to give the enemy time to comprehend this sudden change of events, he boldly shouted to attack and the boscage erupted with the sharp crack of gunfire and explosions.

To say that Goobdemort’s troops were caught by surprise and unprepared for what followed would be an understatement. Surging with newfound confidence and bravery, the Shyzerian troops unleashed their fury and rage in a massive and sudden outburst of force. Soundly routed, uncertain of what to do, and having no idea exactly how few Shyzerian troops were attacking them, the enemy fled from the woods and back to the safety of the nearby caves. But the Marshall refused to allow the enemy to escape while his men basked in the glory of their victory and so he led his men in full pursuit right to the mouths of the caves.

Over the next few days, the remaining Goobdemort villains launched countless unsuccessful attacks on the Shyzerians guarding the only exit. It wasn’t long before they watched in horror as the Facebook Talk and Shyzer Network troops arrived to bolster the defenses. Dangerously low on ammo and supplies, heavily outnumbered, and with moral beyond repair amongst the troops, the Goobdemort leaders offered terms of unconditional surrender to Shyzeria.

And thus ended the First Great War. Or so the ancient legends go. Personally, I think they’re just the ramblings of somebody who watched a few too many war movies last night in an effort to get his mind off the upcoming final Harry Potter book.

(Clayster and I are probably the only ones who get the title of this post, but if you should care to join in on our laughter, watch this YouTube video.)

I’ve officially migrated to using a Mac full time now, more out of it being the best computer I have by far than anything else, and as a result I’ve gotten into doing things that I never did before. Like using RSS feeds, which is a huge shift from my previously held stance on them.

Long story short, I downloaded Vienna today, added all of my daily reads to it, and then decided to add all of my own sites to it just to check out how my posts look in an RSS reader. AND GUESS WHICH SITE HAS A BAD RSS FEED?!

Look Shyzer, I love you. I really do. You’re my favorite, and please don’t repeat that to HIF or Facebook Talk. All that’ll do is make for a really awkward family reunion, then Learn To Cheat will start drinking since he thinks nobody likes him and before you know it, all of your bastard cousins will show up and demand to know why I even bother to renew them every year. So just do me a favor and stop acting like a punk ass and just start to work like you’re supposed to. Come on, you know I take good care of you. Think about all of those poor little orphan sites that would kill to be in your shoes, like Circle of Jerks. He doesn’t even have a proper layout anymore! You want to end up like that?

See, that’s what I thought. So get your act together and start flying straight or else I’m so gonna send you to your room and not let you talk to Google anymore.

After watching that clip I posted earlier today, I ended up not only watching Major League II today, but cutting out this clip for your personal viewing pleasure.

HE TOLD HIM HE WASN’T GONNA SLIDE!

I promise when I’m finally on one of your shows, I won’t get up and walk off screen as soon as the interview is over. You can tell a lot about a guest who does that…well, actually, you can only tell that they never watch either of the shows, but that’s all we really need to know about them.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a long post over here on Shyzer, which is part purposefully, part circumstance. It doesn’t take a genius to know that “pithy” is not a word used very often to describe my writing, even when I’m aiming for that short, but sweet type post. I like to think I’m getting better at it though.

On the flip side, whenever I actually have had time to work on something, 9 times out of 10 I gravitate towards a project on Hey, It’s Free! and devote all of my attention there. Today while “teaching,” I made a list of all the projects I’ve got half complete on HIF! and that ultimately led to doing the same here for Shyzer. Who remembers this? I sure as hell do. I remember sitting outside on the deck or trampoline and trying to come write it all. I easily spent 15+ hours working on it - trying to research stuff I could turn into jokes, setting up the best matches possible, writing more then I even ended up publishing here on Shyzer…

And yet I never finished it.

Those last four words don’t even surprise me anymore when I say them. “I never finished it.” Shlyrics. Tens of thousands of words strung out between dozens of potential posts. The Religion Tournament. And this is just on Shyzer. Is it because I’m lazy? Do I enjoy just dabbling my feet in something new before growing bored with it? Do I start them only to realize they are going to suck and thus cut my losses?

I don’t know. I’m too lazy to bother thinking about it.

In the past year, visitors from 99 different countries have visited Shyzer. I was hoping to hit the 100 mark, but alas, twas not to be as we fell short by one mere country. Afghanistan joined the party on December 30th, 2006, making it the most recent to arrive to the party thanks to a bored American GI on a base in who knows where. To you, Unknown Soldier, I salute you. And to everybody else across the world, whether you be the Pakistani looking for breast orgies or the German wanting a handwritten photo of my great aura, I’m glad you’re here. It certainly makes writing this pointless drivel every day more fun.

Now somebody go to Cuba or Tanzania and visit Shyzer so that we can get over the double digit mark!

AWESOMELY COOL EDIT: Would you effing believe that not 30 minutes after making this post, I had visitors from Brunei and Syria visit Shyzer almost back-to-back, thereby putting us up to 101? Way to go Shyzerians in representing!

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. The thought of making a weak ass “promise” to myself every year only to fail a week later isn’t as appealing to me as it may be to others. But for the life of me, I can’t shake the feeling that 2007 is gonna be different for me somehow. Not so much “better” than this past years, but “different” in a sense I can’t quite explain. But I’ll delve into that whole can of worms sometime later. I will, however, say I feel rejuvenated after spending the past year in Virginia with my family. I’m ready to challenge myself - physically, mentally, creatively, and, uh, Shyzerly?

Thus, the new norm here at Shyzer is going to shift slightly. First, comments will be turned on much more often than not, as has been the case over the past two weeks. But more importantly, you’ll be able to comment on something new every day. That’s right, I’m going to see how long I can last posting something new here at least once a day. If that can’t pump some life back into this site, as well as challenge me somewhat creatively, I don’t know what can. If anything, this’ll be the perfect way to teach myself how to write succinctly.

I figured I’d wait until at least a week into the new year before announcing this, though - for reasons I’m sure you can quickly grasp. Oh, and for the record, this counts as today’s post. 8 down, 357 to go.

I recently moved Wordpress around on my servers over at Shyzer Industries. Before, everything was www.shyzer.com/wp/blahblahblah whereas now it’s simply www.shyzer.com/blahblahblah. I have no idea why I put Wordpress in it’s own little folder, but it was ugly, it made it harder to get search engine traffic, and…well, it was ugly.

But now, oh now, my RSS subscription won’t work!

I never really understood the idea behind RSS feeds. To me, it’s like saying, “I’m too lazy to go to your site once a day to see if you wrote anything new, so I’ll just let a computer program tell me the first sentence of your new posts and I’ll base my decision to visit your site solely on that.” It’s like walking up to your friend, saying the first sentence of a conversation, and then stopping to see if he gives you permission to keep talking. That said, I’ve still spent a good two hours trying to fix it today for whatever few RSS readers I do have. You people better be worth it!

Anyways, if you had any favorite posts of yours or links to Shyzer with the /wp/ in it, just delete that and it should work fine. I’m trying to set up a redirect so that if anybody types in an old address, it takes them to the new one, but so far no luck.

EDIT: Ha. I’m good, that’s for sure. Not only did I set up a proper redirect (so no matter what link you use, old or new, you end up at the new location), but I got the RSS feature working. I think this calls for a victory beverage.

Ever since I opened the doors here at Shyzer and stupidly placed a direct link to my e-mail in the comments, I’ve gotten some colorful messages to say the least. From angry parents to pissed off Christians to even a death threat or two. But the following fellow takes the cake for “Creepiest Internet Fan” by far:

Dear Shyzer,

my English is’nt very well - but I want to write you this mail.

I found your homepage with the photo gallery of you.
The pics of your headshave are great. Your decide for the bald was certainly not easy - but it was a good decide. Your bald ist very beautiful and your face effected with it better.

My greatest hobby is the collecting of signed autograph cards and photos of nice people.

I would be therefore very happy if you could send me handwritten pictures of you (I know my wish is a little bit crazy).
I would be therefore very happy if you could fulfill my wishes. Many thanks in advance for your kindness.

Best wishes and regards send you

Michael

Sweet! I made a good decide! And my face effected it better!

I got that back in May of ‘05 or so. I honestly didn’t know what to do besides laugh my ass off for a few minutes, so that’s exactly what I did. I was in the computer lab back in Newcastle and I honestly slumped out of my chair laughing so hard. Finally! It had taken 2 1/2 years, but I had my own Internet Creep! Once I finally regained my composure, I forwarded it to a few people, laughed some more, and promptly forgot all about it. Fast forward to three weeks ago:

Christmas Wishes

My wish is very large,
The space is rather small,
But Merry Marry Christmas,
Happy New Year fells it all!

The best wishes send you from Northern Germany

Michael

I would be therfore very happy if you could send me handwritten photos you - you are a very beautiful man - I’m enthused of you!
My greatest hobby is the collecting of autographs from beautiful people with a great aura.
I would be therefore very happy if you could fullfill my christmas-wish - a signed photo of you. Thanks in advance for your kindness!

And he’s back! And he’s enthused of me!

But this time, he not only included his home address in the e-mail, but two awesome webpages. Look at those amazing sites, complete with strobing images, animated gifs, and text I sure as hell can’t read! But the real treasures lie in the pictures. There’s so many random pictures on them that are unintentionally hilarious, that I’m pretty sure they’re illegal in most states. But that’s what I’m here for, to make sure y’all have something to occupy yourselves with while wasting company time!

Some might think I’m being mean, but to that I respond with A) You certainly don’t know me well if you think this is mean and B) I’m not a huge fan of identity theft. If that’s your cup of tea, by all means go for it, but me? I kinda enjoy there only being one Goob out there who can withdraw money from my checking account or buy loads of Internet porn with my credit card…um…wait…I mean donate loads of money to Columbian orphans and cute puppies. The last thing I want to do is send some guy my signature so that he can “decide” to write a few checks as Ryan Shyzer. Well, he wouldn’t get real far with that since Shyzer isn’t my last name, but you get the picture.

So Michael, best wishes to you and your quest of collecting the signatures of nice, beautiful men with great auras. As you can see, I am a beautiful man with a great aura.

But I’m sure as hell not nice.

As a reader of Shyzer, you cannot bitch to me that I don’t post enough and then complain that when I do, the posts are too long. If you do, I have both the legal authority and moral obligation to kick you in the nuts.

Right around the time where started losing all inspiration to update Shyzer, I remember seeing a short video of a mystery man catching Heather from Dooce and in a hotel lobby and staging an impromptu interview. Apparently I saved said video, which should come as no shock to anybody since I am Lord Packrat, King of Saving Random Videos, Funny Pictures, and Other Useless Shit. As I went through My Video folder the other day, I stumbled across the clip and watched it yet again. In it, Heather shares the following two tips:

My secret is trying to find a story in the most mundane of events and it’s a challenge but it’s also an extremely fulfilling type of artistry, I think.

Truer words have never been spoken.

I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed working on Hey, It’s Free so much since I opened it in March. Initially, I had planned on making the site a farm from which I could get referrals to my accounts such as FreeIpods.com and the such. But once I realized that was going to be un-Godly boring and bland, I just started posting links to free items every few hours.

Before I knew it, I started trying to find something funny in each item, either in making fun of myself for wanting the freebie, making fun of others for wanting it, or making fun of the freebie itself. It grew to be a challenge; trying to come up with two or three liners multiple times a day on random items. I personally still think I suck at it, but not only has the traffic grown almost each week, but the response has been amazing. I get almost daily comments and e-mails from people who think I’m hilarious and it both baffles and humbles me.

Every time I get one, I want to say, “Me? Funny? Na, I’m not funny, you’re got it all wrong. These people are funny, check out this or this or this blog…I’m just a guy trying to show you where you can get free dog pooper scoopers and coupons for small diet cokes.”

Shyzer never was the pinnacle of blogs. It was a blast for a while, but somewhere along the way it became a chore. I started to loath the thought of trying to pluck a story out of my daily events and it showed, both in terms of the quality and frequency of my updating here. This is nothing new, as it’s happened before to me with Shyzer. But what Hey, It’s Free has done is remind me how enjoyable running a website can be.

Just as I’ve discovered I enjoy trying to find the funny in promotional crap companies give away, finding a story in my everyday life has become fun again. And that, my friends, feels wonderful.