Yankee Tag Blog

My Grandpa just moved in with my parents this week.  And my birthday is coming up next weekend.  So I’m going through this dual realization of what it means to age and the stages of life and shit.  It’s bullshit.  It’s basically just my excuse to drink a lot more than normal.

So Grandpa… he moved in with my folks.  Which is awesome, I absolutely love Grandpa.  Coolest guy ever, hands down.  Actually, I have some good Grandparents all the way around.  So the other night, I went over to have dinner with my parents and Grandpa.  It was dece.  My mom’s a good cook.  But before dinner started, I went back into my Granpa’s wing (he has his own “wing,” how great is that?) where he was sitting in his La-Z-Boy watching the weather with his TV headphones on.  He takes the headphones off when I sit down to him, but is clearly still just focused on the TV.  I haven’t seen him for a year or so.  It was a warm reunion.

So, he’s watching the weather on the TV.  And he’s reading it all out loud, because he can no longer here the announcer.  It wasn’t even the good part, where they just summarize how hot or cold it will be.  It was the dumb part, where they’re talking about barometric pressure, as if we learn about that in public schools these days…  And he’s just reading along.  And it hit me: old people are weird.  Think about it!  Old people love the weather channel, right?  Why?  Is it going to mess up their evening plans?  Kill that weekend campout?  No.  They’re going to be sitting inside watching about the weather this weekend too.

It’s not just the weather channel, either.  Think about driving.  A lot of old people drive slowly.  Everytime I’m stuck behind some slow driver, I eventually see that they’re elderly when I pass them.  Or female.  Or Asian.  (I once saw the perfect storm: An elderly, Asian, woman driver.)  Why are these people going so slow?  YOU’RE ABOUT TO DIE ANY MINUTE!!!  Hurry the fuck up!  What, is your cable out?  Why aren’t you watching the weather channel at home?

Anyway, old people are weird.  Just think about it.

So yesterday my mom calls me up and asks, “What did you order from al-[insert generic Islamic organization name]?”

I replied, “Hi mom, it’s nice to talk to you, too. What are you talking about?”

And her: “You just had a package delivered from al-[insert generic Islamic organization name]. It’s pretty big. What is it?”

Me: “I don’t know mom, it got sent to your house? For me? From al-[insert generic Islamic organization name]? Don’t open it!” (I’ve made a few too many Mohammad jokes to take opening packages from Muslims lightly.)

Her: “I wasn’t going to open it… I was just wondering what it is.”

Me: “I’m not saying you’re snooping, I’m just saying… well, is it ticking or anything?”

Turns out, it was just a Qur’an. I say just as if the Qur’an isn’t dangerous. Probably more dangerous than a bomb, now that I think about it, but nevertheless I’m glad isn’t wasn’t a bomb (Praise Allah!). Anyway, now I have a Qur’an. And I need to figure out who sent it to me. I have a couple of guesses…

I haven’t posted in eight days. What have I been up to, you ask? I’ve been making demotivational posters. It’s really quite fun. At least one of these should offend you.

• Denial
• Best Friends
• Spoiler
• Life Goes On

Very funny video from YouTube.

I mentioned earlier the new Spamoscope project I’m working on with St.Ofle. The project entails publishing a gibberish spam message every day on our Spamoscope.com site. To offset the cost, we included a Google AdSense bar on the side of the page. AdSense works by “reading” the content on the site and trying to match ads to that content. For example, if you made a site about something called a “Yankee Tag” and wrote about Mexicana losing your luggage, you might see ads for luggage tags, Mexicana flights, and Yankee-themed products. While the algorithm isn’t perfect, I think it pairs ads to sites pretty intelligently.

The beauty of the Spamoscope site is that the content is extremely random. Which makes the ads extremely random and (although odd) typically well-targeted to the site. Today I looked at the site and noticed that the predominate themes in the Spamoscope were violence and aggression. Care to see what the ads were? (Note: not for the easily offended)

See it here: Spamusement

I received the following:

Hello,My names is Debra and I am working for Mexicana Airlines. I am have

writing to you for so you can talks to me more about your lost

luggage. The problems is that always Mexicana offer you less than you

worth so that you can accept. You are a poker player? Same thing. You

give me your number lost claim number and I'll do what I can ok?

Are you having receipts for your lost luggage?

- Debora

Unfortunately, “Debora” is St.Ofle. Nice try Ashton.

I’m working on a new project with St.Ofle called Spamoscope. The idea stems from a blog by St.Ofle describing his use of those garbled, gibberish spam messages we all get. You know the ones that don’t even seem to be selling anything? The idea is that they are, in fact, useful as a horoscope of sorts. A Spamoscope. Check daily.

I just found out I’m ranked number 1 on Yahoo! for the phrase: “sexy cop lingo” now, too. Check it out: me on Yahoo!

I’ve really begun to question the practicality of search engine placement logic.

Fun trivia fact: As of 10:39 am PST on November 1, 2007, Yankeetag.com is ranked #1 on Google for the phrase “sexy cop lingo“. Proof that the web is truly democratic.

I found a really cool program called Kiva (kiva.org) that arranges microloans for entrepreneurs in developing countries. You can find somebody you want to help finance and you can contribute to their loan amount. When they repay the loan, you get your money back. So, I decided to try it. I had three criteria for the guy I picked, based purely on how he looks:

• He had to look like he knew how to drink a damn beer.
• He had to look like he could tell a good joke.
• He had to look like he could take a punch.

How do you think I did?

Go help him with a loan: Govser Nasirov