Check out the list then read Blogebrity’s blog about blogging.

A couple of readers have reported that they can’t read The Churning at work because of their employers’ content filter. I’ve got to be honest - I was completely flattered. The Churning is important enough to be blocked!

See - you could start up a blogspot today and fill it with fucks and shits and cunts and cocksuckers, but it would take weeks for that thing to get blocked. We’re there, bitches! We’re bad. We’re bad. You know it. Jam on.

But then one loyal reader sent in the display message from the content blocker and I was even more flattered. Take a look:

This Web site is blocked by SonicWALL.
If you believe that a Web site is
rated incorrectly click here or
contact the IT department for questions.
URL: http://www.thechurning.com/
Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Cult/Occult”

Of course I’m full of myself. And I believe the team here at The Churning kicks more ass than Jack Bauer at a Bin Laden family reunion. But a cult?!? Fucking phenomenal. Let’s get this party started.

Pour yourself a nice tall pint of your favorite IPA.  Today is a day for celebration.

1. The Churning is new and improved.  Well, it’s new.  I guess the other part of that sentence is up for debate.
2. Get ready to toss your cookies.  It’s Puke Week!
3. And last but certainly not least, today is Momo’s birthday!

So enjoy the party.  And please tell me if you notice any bugs in the new design.  I’m totally neurotic about that shit.

Rock on,
JJ

Samantha Burns tagged me - and while I don’t always play along with these things, this one seemed like a great opportunity for me to make fun of my fellow bloggers.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick 5 random blogfriends.
2. Think of a word or phrase that you describes each friend.
3. Do an image search of that word or phrase, using a search engine of your choice.
4. Pick an image that makes you say, “Aha! That’s it!”

Zombie Flyboy - Vomit? Yep. He is a zombie after all. Oh yeah - and he participated in “crotch vomiting” on the TV show HEE HAW.

JuicyA - She’s got some strange fascination with the all-powerful Chuck Norris. I think she has every season of Walker Texas Ranger on DVD.

Jessica - Thirsty Thursdays anyone?

April - Breezy says she’d have sex with Angelina Jolie. Who could blame her?

RockyJay - No I’m not saying he’s an ass. Dude keeps an “ass of the day” page.

If I linked to your site, consider yourself tagged. Participate if you want. If not, you’re a cockblock.

Bloggers are self-centered attention whores. Why else would they post their opinions online for all to see, allow people to leave comments, and run searches to see which other sites are linking to them?

I know it sounds like I’m in attack mode today, but the truth is I’m one of the worst offenders. In fact, I’m going to help feed your addiction.

• First up - Egorati:

It’s a term bloggers invented for searching Technorati to find out who links to your site.

I run an egorati search at least once a week. If I get a new linkback, I’ll check out the site, read a couple of posts, and leave a comment thanking them for the linkback. If like the site, I’ll return the favor by linking them on my links page.

Go to Technorati and enter in your web address. Here’s my egorati.

• Next - Who links to me:

This is the same concept as egorati, except it’ll also show you your Google page rank. The higher your page rank, the better your placement in search results. The best way to increase your page rank is to get popular sites to link you. Go to wholinkstome and enter your web address. Here’s my wholinkstome search.

• Next up - Google:

Everyone’s favorite search engine. While Technorati and wholinkstome cater to bloggers, Google indexes nearly every site on the net. This will help you find out if a non-blog site links to you. Go to Google and enter link:(your web address). Here’s my Google linkback search.

• And finally - Statcounter:

A lot of bloggers put counters on their site to see how many hits they get each day. I recommend Statcounter. You can hide the counter, you can check to see where people found your site, and it’s free!

Go to Statcounter and sign up for an account. You’ll have to put a bit of code in your template to track hits. When you’re creating the code, you can choose to have it hidden so no one will see that you’re only getting 10 hits a day - or you can choose to have a cool looking statcounter displayed on your page. I’ve chosen to hide mine, which is why I’m not putting a link to it here. What can I say? I’m shy.

Want hundreds of people to visit your site today? They’ll totally ignore it, they won’t read a single word, and they’ll forget you exist - but it’s kind of cool to see an additional 2500 hits in one day on your Statcounter.

I tried it and it works. Sign up here:

It’s a web traffic service that works a little like BlogExplosion, except you don’t have to click anything for the pages to advance. So no one’s really reading any of the content, they’re just surfing for traffic.

I didn’t even bother to surf other sites, I just took advantage of the sign-up offer. All you have to do is enter your e-mail address and your site’s URL. They send a confirmation email and within 24 hours you’ll get hundreds of hits. I do suggest you enter an e-mail address that you rarely use, just in case they spam it. I keep a dummy email address just for stuff like this.

I guess this kind of thing caters to stat whores like me.

Sometimes I feel guilty for visiting other websites without even attempting to leave a funny comment.

Often, I don’t comment at all - but when I do, it’s usually pretty straightforward. And that sucks, because I love funny comments. When I check my email and I see that The Churning Loyalists have been working hard to come up with something clever to add, I smile like a retarded child. You guys are some funny motherfuckers.

So I wanted to make a list of excuses for myself so I won’t feel so guilty for letting you down. Here’s why I rarely attempt to leave funny comments on other websites:

1. I’m not that funny.
Sure I spend a little time on my entries here and occasionally I end up with something entertaining, but I’m no comedian. That’s why I use such vulgar language. It makes my shit seem that much fucking funnier.

2. I don’t have that kind of time.
I check a lot of websites every day and I usually read at least one post on each. That’s 2 or 3 minutes per site. And I just told you I’m not naturally funny, so if I sit there for another couple of minutes trying to think of something clever, I’m screwed. It’s like comedy homework.

3. I don’t want to be a dick.
Often I read posts that are personal. People come out of the closet online. People talk about their kids. People complain about their jobs. I don’t want to belittle sensitive topics with my juvenile humor. I’m a total nitwit who laughs at shit jokes. What could I possibly add to the conversation?

4. I’m surrounded by slackers.
The other slackers who write for The Churning barely surf blogs at all. Compared to them, I’m the King of Commenters.

5. You’ve already said it all.
By the time I get to your site, there may already be a dozen comments on your latest post. I’m not going to jump in there and try to one-up anybody. It’s like showing up for a party way too late. Everyone’s already drunk and you’ve missed all the inside jokes.

Will my list work like a get out of jail free card? Or should I continue to feel like a cockblock for not leaving comments?

So it looks like a couple of you have already noticed the new link in the header of The Churning. My little doggie friend now has his own webcam - The JD Cam.

Momo and I have to work during the day, so we’ve set up a camera to check in on JD while we’re out. He sleeps most of the day, but sometimes he watches bad sitcom re-runs on TBS.

I’ve also given JD his own website. I’m not going to update it or anything - I just wanted a place to check out the JD Cam while at work. The content is far more innocent than the stuff you’ll find here, so it’s more work-friendly. If you stop by JD’s site and leave a comment, I’ll give you a link in his sidebar.

Someone who has my utmost respect recently asked for a bit of advice. I was terribly flattered.

The question: What’s the best/easiest/free way to get Google to list your website in search results for topics you write about?

Here’s my response (via e-mail):

Actually, I just resolved my battle with Google. I was banned for a couple of months because I cheated. I don’t want to bog you down with the details of that - but just know that if you cheat, you get dropped.

So I cleaned up my site and the Google spiders are crawling it again (that’s a good thing). That means Google recognizes that my site is valid and that their automated computers are looking at it daily and indexing it for keywords.

Anyway - back on track now….

The easiest way to get indexed in the first place is to ping your site. Pinging = sending a notification to web trackers to let them know you’ve updated your page. I ping my site every time I post something new.

Best pinging site:
http://www.pingoat.com/

Type in the name of your site and the URL. You can ignore the XML feed thing. Click all three categories to select all services. Then click “go pingoat.”

After that, you can bookmark the resulting page. That way it’ll remember your choices for next time.

Google, Yahoo, MSNSearch, etc all have their own spider/webcrawlers. Those spiders regularly check indexing sites like technorati.com or blogrolling.com . Pingoat notifies those indexing sites that you’ve updated your shit and Google et al will find out via technorati et al. Capische?

So that should do it. Within a couple of weeks, you’ll be popping up in search engines. The more you ping (whenever you write a new post), the more keywords get indexed.

Now… if you really want to speed up the process…

All search engines monitor Google, which leads the pack. So if you can prod Google to list your site sooner than later, you’ll start seeing search engine traffic a bit sooner.

You can do that here:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

It’s super easy. Just enter your website’s URL then enter the verification code and submit. You can put the name of your site in the comments field if you’d like.

And if you want tips on increasing your keyword success, you can read about that here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Holy fucking shit - this is a long email.

Can you tell I’m a great big dork and I like talking about this shit? Sorry! Maybe I’ll post this on The Churning sometime. I bet others would like to know as well.

Rock on!
JJ

I’ve got nothing to hide here. Yes, I’m a great big dork.

So there was a follow-up question about keywords. Should a blogger place specific keywords on their site anywhere? That’s where I got fucked - TWICE. But I didn’t go into the details in my email (Ha! That rhymes!).

First, I cheated by hiding keywords in posts by making them the same color as the background. That’s a big no no. I learned the hard way. Yeah I was BANNED. Remember, I’m still new at this. It hasn’t even been a year yet.

Next, I fucked up by putting a meta keyword tag in my header. You’ll know what this is if you’ve done it. If you don’t, then you’re fine. But what I learned through experience is that Google hates repetitive keywords in the meta keyword tag. I fucked up. BANNED again! I had keywords for some of my most popular posts in the header (i.e. JackEBrown, shit euphemisms, indie yuppie quiz, etc). But, the problem is, those are old posts that you’d have to search for or dig around in the archives to find. Hence, having those keywords on my home page makes them seem irrelevant. The Google spiders noticed and gave me the axe. I just corrected that issue a few weeks ago.

Again, I didn’t get into all that in my e-mail. Here’s my response:

Don’t worry about keywords. You can enter Technorati tags to get better rankings on Technorati, but that won’t lead to many hits at all, and the tags won’t help Google one bit. It’s way more trouble than it’s worth (in my opinion).

The great thing about blogging is that keywords are just part of writing posts. Like if you had a website where you sold bicycles and the main page is just a bunch of pictures of bicycles and their brand names, then you’d have to worry about creatively placing keywords in there.

But with blogs, you’re writing new entries constantly and each of those entries is indexed by the search engines. That’s a ton of keywords every day, just because you’re writing.

I know some of you may want to dispute my comment about Technorati tags. That’s fine. I don’t use them, but I totally respect what Technorati does for bloggers. It’s a great service. I mainly use it to find out who links to me. I just choose not to tag my posts for them.

Anyway, I hope this info helps a few people out there. Enjoy.

Oh yeah - you guys have any other tips?

I suspect most of you have already seen this, but people keep emailing it to me. If there’s that much interest, I should probably post it. It’s the Dick Cheney Quail Hunt Video Game.

Side note:
My old boss went to a Rebublican rally in Florida before the 2000 elections. That was back when a lot of news stations were pronouncing Dick Cheney as chee-nee. He and his kid were both democrats and gathered with the “protesters.” My boss’ kid was pretty creative and came up with a nice protest sign. It said, “Cheney is a Weenie.”

Side note #2:
I’ve updated the sidebar and header for The Churning. I removed the “Commenters” page and now we’re listing the ten most recent comments in the sidebar with linkbacks.

In the header, I’ve updated the Daily Links page to include blogs. I also added a header link to a new page called Fanarts and Photoshops. Submit art via e-mail or in the comments and I might add it to that page with a linkback.

It’s a simple act of self-promotion on my part. I got ‘em cheap, and I’ll send ‘em to you for free. Here’s what they look like:

 

Send me your address if you want some. thechurning AT gmail DOT com

January rocks.

Here at The Churning, we recently celebrated out 50,000th visitor. That’s really not a lot, especially considering it took 8 months to reach that point. But things are picking up around here. In January, we had more than 16,000 unique visitors. That’s an average of 538 a day!

It’s not that I’m bragging. Seriously.

First, I just wanted to thank Ev, Jimmy, J.Mo, and Jillian for bringing the funny and giving people a reason to keep coming back. And second, I wanted to let you know that you’re not as fucked up as you thought you might be for laughing at this retarded shit. Apparently thousands of other people agree.

Okay, game over. Go here if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

April, MooAlex, and Mojotek guessed correctly. MooAlex took the early lead, guessing three correctly with no hints. Well done! And April was the first to guess all of them (on her fourth attempt). That’s serious dedication! Mojotek’s just riding on their coat tails.

Here are the answers…

Ev:

• I wrote a screen play called “Uwasa.” - True!
• I once was accosted by an overweight businessman in Philidelphia for not knowing the difference between communism and socialism. - True!
• I once got so drunk [at JJ’s house] that I pissed in the backyard, while people watched. - True!
• One time, I went out with this girl, and after eating her out, I immediately French-kissed her. She was not happy. - True!
• I was friends with this guy and he split up with his girl. So, I fucked her like 2 days after they had broken up. He came over while we were doing it and saw us through the window. - True!

JJ:

• I like midget porn. - True/False - I can’t decide.
• I enjoy sniffing the catbox when there’s fresh shit in there. - False
• I have eight toes on each foot. Thus, I’m forced to wear clown shoes, because regular ones just don’t fit. - False
• I once met Brontasaurus Rex. He was walking through the jungle and he stopped to say hello. I was high on peyote at the time. - False
• I am Redd Foxx’s long lost grandson. - False

J.Mo:

• I pinched the nipples of the Zoolander midget last Friday night. - True!
• I kissed Flea during Lollalalooza. - True!
• I been to 30 countries in my life. - True!
• I can drink like a fish, but one hit of the ganj turns me into a freaky hermit. - True!
• I shared a glass wine with Tommy Lee Jones while watching dailys for his latest film. - True!

Jillian:

• I am the only person to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis. - Chuck Norris!
• I still listen to Vanilla Ice. - True!
• I am almost eight feet tall - False (Or is this another Chuck Norris fact?)
• There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures I allow to live. - Chuck Norris!
• Rather than being birthed like a normal child, I instead decided to punch my way out of my mother’s womb. - Chuck Norris!

Jimmy:

• I have a wooden leg with a real foot. - False
• My nickname is Boogie. - False
• I see dead people. But… they’re dead. - True! (Well, this is true for pretty much anyone who’s ever been to a funeral)
• I don’t like using knives while fighting people. - True!
• I make love to my hand. - True!

Thanks for playing.

Update 2:00PM: Still, no one has guessed correctly. But now we have a couple of people who are really close.

Try again!

Mel tagged me with the Five Random Facts meme that’s been going around like VD. But I figured I’d spice it up a little with some help from the team. Now it’s not just another retarded meme. It’s a GAME!

I convinced each of the writers here at The Churning to list five random facts about themselves. Some lied, and some were entirely truthful. Now here’s where you come in. In the comments section, I want you to guess who wrote each list. Your choices are JJ, J.Mo, Ev, Jimmy, and Jillian. If you feel like it, you can also guess which lists are true. I’ll post the answers tomorrow.

List One:

• I wrote a screen play called “Uwasa.”
• I once was accosted by an overweight businessman in Philidelphia for not knowing the difference between communism and socialism.
• I once got so drunk that I pissed in the backyard, while people watched.
• One time, I went out with this girl, and after eating her out, I immediately French-kissed her. She was not happy.
• I was friends with this guy and he split up with his girl. So, I fucked her like 2 days after they had broken up. He came over while we were doing it and saw us through the window.

List Two:

• I like midget porn.
• I enjoy sniffing the catbox when there’s fresh shit in there.
• I have eight toes on each foot. Thus, I’m forced to wear clown shoes, because regular ones just don’t fit.
• I once met Brontasaurus Rex. He was walking through the jungle and he stopped to say hello. I was high on peyote at the time.
• I am Redd Foxx’s long lost grandson.

List Three:

• I pinched the nipples of the Zoolander midget last Friday night.
• I kissed Flea during Lollalalooza.
• I been to 30 countries in my life.
• I can drink like a fish, but one hit of the ganj turns me into a freaky hermit.
• I shared a glass wine with Tommy Lee Jones while watching dailys for his latest film.

List Four:

• I am the only person to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.
• I still listen to Vanilla Ice.
• I am almost eight feet tall
• There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures I allow to live.
• Rather than being birthed like a normal child, I instead decided to punch my way out of my mother’s womb.

List Five:

• I have a wooden leg with a real foot.
• My nickname is Boogie.
• I see dead people. But… they’re dead.
• I don’t like using knives while fighting people.
• I make love to my hand.

Extra credit if you can guess which line is stolen from the Chuck Norris fact list.

It’s like show and tell. We all take a turn. CousinEddie says it’s my turn now. Thus I present to you the 4 Things Meme:

Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life

1. Muck Washer - I wore a full-body rubber suit and shot high pressure water at grease and dirt caked on heavy machinery.
2. Photo Lab Guy - I spent eight hours a day in a darkroom, listening to talk radio while wearing night vision goggles.
3. Security Guard - I sat alone for 8 hours watching NBA playoff action, playing pool, completing crossword puzzles, etc. There was very little “guarding” going on.
4. News Producer - I’d write what the news anchors would say. Sometimes they say it wrong.

Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over

1. Memento - Backwards, forwards, this movie kicks ass in both directions.
2. Billy Madison - Adam Sandler has been involved in two masterpieces: Billy Madison and Punch Drunk Love. His other movies don’t quite measure up.
3. Return of the Living Dead - Gory, funny, sexy, punk rock. Pure fucking genius.
4. Goonies - Do the truffle shuffle, bitch.

Four Places You’ve Lived

1. A shithole Gainesville duplex that my roommate Joe decorated to look like the inside of a woman’s vagina/uterus.
2. A classroom inside a Richmond elementary school.
3. Frankie’s living room in a downtown Orlando apartment.
4. A highrise in Center City Philly.

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch

1. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Is this show ever coming back?
2. My Name is Earl - I used to have a skateboard video with Jason Lee. Dude was badass.
3. The Office - Art imitates life.
4. Conan O’Brien - I miss this show now that I have to wake up at a reasonable hour.

Four Places You’ve Been On Vacation

1. Angkor Wat, Cambodia
2. Nagano, Japan
3. Amsterdam, The Netherlands
4. Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Four Blogs You Visit Daily

1. Gangstas and Hugs
2. QWMaine
3. Diane’s Stuff
4. Captain & Coke with a Lime

Four Of Your Favourite Foods
This one’s easy. I really only eat four types of food anyway.

1. Cheese pizza
2. Veggie burgers
3. Burritos
4. Cheese hoagies

Four Places You’d Rather Be

1. Dap Dap, Bam Ban, Tarlac, Philippines - That’s the name of the village where Momo’s family is from.
2. Tampa, Florida - I love going back home and hanging out with my parents.
3. Edinburgh, Scotland - What a beautiful city full of drunks. My kinda place!
4. Austin, Texas - Good beer, great Mexican food, and fantastic friends.

Four Albums You Can’t Live Without

1. Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
2. Slint - Spiderland
3. The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs
4. Misfits - Legacy of Brutality

Four Vehicles You’ve Owned

1. 1981 Buick Regal with blue velour seats
2. 1986 Yellow Pontiac Firebird with t-tops
3. 1981 Chevy S-10 with no air conditioning, no tape deck, and a cable clutch
4. 2003 Subaru WRX. Yeah, I could kick your ass in the quarter mile.

Four People To Be Tagged

1. Mel
2. Sarah
3. JuicyA
4. Turboslut