Shyzer.com

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!

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.

I was told it was times like these that we learn to live again. So why do I feel like I’ve been lied to?

Next round of the Religion Tournament will be uploaded when I wake up. Next version of Shyzer will be uploaded whenever I feel like it.

Fellner sent me an IM mentioning that since half the fun of March Madness is the ability to fill out your own bracket and see how you fare, that I should allow the same for this Religion Tournament I’m doing. Good point, old chap, but Adobe makes it hard as hell for the average user to make an interactive .pdf file. But as always, I found a way.

So, anybody who’d like to participate, click here and fill in which contestants you think will win each round. Once you’ve done so, hit the “save then e-mail” button, select “other,” and then hit “Save Data File.” This will now save your picks to your own computer in .xml form and all you have to do is e-mail that file to me at Shyzer AT gmail DOT com.

Once you e-mail me your .xml file, I’ll plug it into the original bracket and upload them all here on Shyzer. That way, you’ll be able to not only see who you picked, but who all your other fellow Shyzerans picked and we can all watch to see whose bracket was the most poorly selected! See, isn’t public ridicule fun?! And so help me God if the only person who actually does this is Fellner!

Two quick last notes, first, since I’m posting this at 0230, I’m gonna hold off on starting the first round and give everybody one full day to get their brackets in. Second, I already know who is going as far as the Sweet 16 and I’ve got a vague idea of the Elite Eight and Final Four. Your submissions will have no effect of the results, so pick whoever the hell you want and don’t worry about possibly influencing me.

Remember back in December where I said Shyzer was looking to bring on a few contributors to help cover the slack during my mandatory 18-day monthly vacations from posting? Well, I would like to introduce our first victim lucky donor: Andy. Andy and I met on the Internet about a year and a half ago through a mutual friend and ever since then, I’ve had approximately 872 abdominal muscle cramps from laughing at some of the hilarious random comments he consistently makes. But even though the question as to his hilarity was never an issue, I felt it necessary to take the time to get to know him, to find out who the true Andy was, before I officially tapped him as a Shyzer contributor. Because as it stood, all I really knew about him was A) He studies rocks or something, B) He helped introduce me to the term VALIDATION, and C) Um…its rocks that he studies, right? However, after extensive and intensive questioning, four hours of torture that would make Rumsfeld proud, and a stool test, the only thing I learned was this:

shyzerDOTcom: I’m typing up a short introduction about you for Shyzer - anything in particular you want it to say?
Andy: The first and last time I chewed tobacco was a nice sized load of Red Man that I partly swallowed.
Andy: I then had to dig a 2 foot wide by 3 foot deep hole that I nearly vomited into in front of my PhD adviser.
Andy: that’s really all they need to know

That’s Andy for ya, folks. But, without further ado, I give you Andy’s first posting here on Shyzer, which can be found on the post below.

I’ve had this as my away message for a day or two and I figured I might as well post it here and see if I can get any more good answers from you people.

Here is what I need: I need y’all to think of actors, singers, athletes, politicians - basically ANYBODY famous that you associate with a specific religion. For instance, Mel Gibson = Hollywood’s poster child Christian. Tom Cruise = Crazy Scientology Dude. Richard Gere = Buddhist. You get the point. Also, the person can be associated with a religion I’ve already named. Mel Gibson doesn’t get to be the only Christian on my list and while I’d love for there to be as few Scientology people on it as possible, if you can think of any other person you immediately associate with the wacko “religion”, then fire away.

So make yourselves useful and contribute to a Shyzer post I’m working on!

Somebody from Pakistan just came here via MSN while searching for “breast orgies.”

Don’t worry dude, I won’t rat you out to the Pakistani authorities, even though I’m pretty sure you can be put to death for searching for that in your country. But I need to warn you, despite my best efforts and what MSN might tell you, there ain’t many breast orgies going on here at Shyzer.

I do think it’s high time we change that, though.

When you write a 2,522 word post, you feel as if you’ve accomplished something.

When you realize you don’t agree with most of the 2,522 words you’ve just written, that feeling begins to dissipate.

When you decide to sit back down and start over again, you feel as if bashing your face in with a blunt object might be a little more productive.

Current Count: 103

Since the day this post was created, Shyzer has received visitors from the following countries:

Afghanistan
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belgium
Bermuda
Bolivia
Brazil
Britain
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Canada
Chile
China
Columbia
Costa Rica
Cote D’Ivoire
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Estonia
Europe
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Greenland
Guatemala
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Isreal
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Kuwait
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Mexico
Morocco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
Uruguay
United Arab Emirates
United States
Venezuela
Vietnam

Allow me to take a moment to say, “That’s damn cool.”