1. I promise to accept the fact that the check-out lane at Giant is not one big Super Market Sweepstakes game. I will no longer be surprised when the cashier suggests I have lost again and must actually pay for my groceries. I will start digging through my purse for my payment long before I hear this sad news.2. Unless I professionally scan groceries for a living at another store, I will not use the Self Service Check-Out lane at Harris Teeter when I have 20 or more items in my cart. I also promise to use a cashier if I have produce such as Jerusalem artichokes or white asparagus that can only be scanned after paging through pages of electronic pictures of similar looking vegetables.3. I will post more to my blog while drunk.4. Unless it is for TMI Thursday.5. On Sundays I shalt not double park.6. Growing up in a snow belt state taught me how to safely drive in 3 feet of driving snow. However, driving the family station wagon with chains on its tires down an empty country lane to the Tractor Supply Company store is not the same as navigating the snowy DC Beltway with thousands of other drivers, most who did not have the privilege of graduating from Snow U. I will no longer endlessly complain when the DC area closes down due to the treat of two inches of snow.7. As Chairmen of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, I will happily give Herb of DC two Inaugural Ball tickets for his embarrassing and desperate "Escort Herb to the Ball" blog contest.8. As Manager of Marshalls at DC USA, I will provide a better explanation for why the Peppermint Bark is not 75% off other than saying that it is not holiday merchandise because it "don't have a picture of Santa Claus or a Christmas tree" on it.9. I am proud and happy over the election of Barack Obama and look forward to attending his historic inauguration. No matter how well I know DC I will take public transportation and will not park in the close-in neighborhoods.10. I worked very hard creating my blog that now gets thousands of well deserved hits a week. It would not hurt my blog to occasionally link to other more modest blogs who might have something interesting to say that day or perhaps have creative uses of spelling or grammar. Especially if Herb that blogger regularly posts comments and links to yours mine.11. I now know that using foul language while waiting on customers at CVS only dooms me to forever work at CVS.12. Creating blog posts with as many DC hipster references as possible for the express purpose of being linked through DCBLOGS or DCist is pathetic and sad. I resolve to no longer feature any of the following in posts in 2009: Ben's Chili Bowl, Whole Foods, Sasha and Malia, Comet Pizza, Morning Joe, PBR, the Orange Line, Falafel, Aunt Zeituni, drunken Metro bus flashing, Mika, Petworth, Michelle Rhee fantasies, Sasha Fierce, World of Warcraft, sex in a Filene's Basement dressing room, tweets, bears, the Bloomingdale Farmers Market, tourists, independent coffee shops/book stores/clothing stores, madras, H Street, Ambien, Pat Buchanan look alike strippers, cankles, Nellies, Cabinet Nominees I Would Like to F***, Jefferson Memorial priapism and Audacity of {insert word here}.
My blog entry for the Katie Couric/Sarah Palin parody on SNL was featured on the Blog Log of the Washington Post Express Monday, September 29. I have been featured there before and quite frankly, you don't get a lot of new traffic to your blog from it. I guess it is hard to link to a blog from the paper you are holding in your hand. The money quote:"THE REALLY SAD PART is that the opening few minutes of the bit were not very different at all from the actual interview that they were parodying. I walked into the room after it had just started, and it took me a second to realize that it [was] 'SNL.'"Herbofdc.blogspot.com was dismayed by the similarities between parody and reality in a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch about Sarah Palin's CBS interview.Wow that makes me sound very smart. Analytical. Sober. Unfortunately it wasn't me that said it. It was commentator Gilahi of Gilahi Blog.Does anyone actually edit this page? Another blogger recently had a similar problem in regards to a very thoughtful post she wrote about 9/11.
So was it sloppy editing or did they read my entry on why I had to turn down the "Certified Honest Blogger" award and just assume that this was another comment I had made up to post to my own blog? Really when I said that I was kidding...KIDDING!!! Hehe.
October 1, 2008 UpdateBlogger Gilahi dashes into a phone booth, dons his cape and Belt of Righteous Indignation and comes to our defense as Super Gilahi! Take that Washington Post Express! BAM! POW!!!
October 1, 2008 Update #2The WPE replies via email:Hello Herb, in the edition that day it was simply a mistake. If you read that section frequently, you'll notice that we often use the verbiage 'a commenter at xblog' said such and such. That day's was just left out erroneously.Thanks for reading and please forward this to your friend Gilahi with my apologiesOctober 1, 2008 Update #3
WPE thanks for responding. We all make simple mistakes, like my mullet, now and then. But based upon all the comments over at Gilahi World today, this seems to happen frequently.
No need to respond. Thanks! Still love the Post and all things Stanley Kaplan!
Google searches bringing folks to my blog this week include:
female super bowl
how to please people
fired employees of lowes
how to run a corn shucking contest
DC emoticon
sally struthers porn
youtube pig mouth sharpie
and my favorite, one that is almost Haiku in its simple beauty...
Hillary Clinton Iowa, corn, wow, "State Fair"
How do I break up with you? You were one of the first blogs I read with any regularity. I even Bookmarked you and moved you to the top of my Favorites list right between my primary Bank and my Credit Card servicer. I began every morning with my virtual ablutions to confirm I had not been the victim of identity theft and reaffirm my love for your blog and a good FICO score. Before my discovery of RSS feeds I visited your site several times a day desperate for new content from you. You noticed my unique IP address, right? How could you not? All day I would press F5, F5, F5, F5, F5 in order to keep the pictures of you in my browser as fresh as my adoration of you. I finally mustered up the courage to post a comment on your blog and for about a year I commented often. My comments were on topic, supportive, sometimes funny and usually within 3 minutes of you publishing. One day you even posted a comment on my blog. I still have it. It was the best birthday present ever! But over time I started reading you less and less. I still think you are laugh-out-loud funny but I gradually started losing interest. I don’t know why. Maybe because it seemed like all your commentators also had blogs yet somehow knew each other in real time. You and your Blogroll members pass comments back and forth like electronic STDs. I felt left out of your Virtual High School and was hurt that my blog was relegated to sitting at the online cafeteria table with the Chess Club members and the Foreign Exchange students. To torture me further you began posting pictures of your skanky blogger friends with you. I suspect there have even been some dirty blogger hookups. Is that what it takes to make your Blogroll now? How come no one comments on that? You used your blog to get laid. I used my blog to write about the proper time and place to shuck corn. I think I am the one who got shucked. I would delete you from my Blogroll but I never added you to begin with. I didn’t think I was worthy but fantasized about the day you announced to your claque that you had added me to yours. Now I know that to appear on your Blogroll is just another way of you crowing about another notch on your Blogger dashboard, one more hit on your Sitemeter or another eHarmony match thoroughly harmonized. You and your blog are dead to me! You are no longer Bookmarked and now nothing comes between my checking account and my VISA. My RSS Reader? Poof, you are gone! Ok, maybe I will check your blog one last time tomorrow just to see if you respond to this...
I recently was updating my will and after laying out clear and firm instructions for my executor to immediately collect my “personal” photos and any “toys” usually not seen on Saturday morning TV (I call this role that of the “Grim Sweeper”) I remembered my blog.
So what happens if you have a blog and you unexpectedly have Your Comments Permanently Moderated? Does your blog just hang out there forever as your readership declines and folks wonder if you finally did meet Marie Osmond (or Cazwell) and got married? Will your blog host eventually delete your blog to make room for uh, fresher content?
Here are the options as I see it:
1. Leave a password for your executor with instructions to immediately delete your blog. “They say you can't take it with you, well guess what bitches, I did!”
2. Ask that your executor make one last update announcing that you became living challenged. “After several days of not moving during a 'High School Musical' and 'Camp Rock' Marathon it was determined that Herb of DC had lip synched his way into Camp Eternity. He is survived by his cat Possum and veal cutlet pooches Lucy and Lizzie who are hoping to finally have a human companion who will take them for a walk.
3. Will your blog to a relative to make it his/her own. If my sister took control of this blog it would feature regular updates on the latest macramé techniques or polls to determine who is cuter—Bobby Sherman or Davy Jones. Probably most of my readers wouldn't notice the change.
4. Leave your blog to a relative to pretend he/she is you. Think “Hints from Heloise.” Sure her daughter has taken over but I swear she just recycles the same columns over and over again. Yes we get it--VINEGAR is great for cleaning! And duct tape is not just for dating. Sheesh!
5. Give your blog to a friend. Bob would you take this over? I mean there needs to be a blog devoted to "Everything Ina Gartner", right?
6. Pass on your blog to another blogger. What a great way for a blogger to wreak havoc and start blog wars without harming his/her own blog or reputation. “Herb of DC is awfully vicious with his comments these days. However, his grammar has improved and thank god he hasn't posted about proper corn shucking techniques or the Osmonds lately.”
So who will you leave your blog to? And who wants this one?
By the way I'm not planning on going anywhere soon...
I noticed today that a Google search of "insane people" delivered someone from Weston Massachusetts to my blog. Okay, so maybe this person wasn't insane but he skipped this first seven Google results and selected my link.
He stayed 10 seconds. Crazy!
Please, please people Google "insane people" and select my blog. I want to be #1.
Despite my first name and picture being on this blog I am still startled when a stranger mentions my blog. Do that many people really read this thing? Or is my blog so limited in scope that my Blogebrity reaches no further than two or three blocks from my house which is where most of my interactions with the Herbarazzi occurs.
The latest encounter occurred at the 14th and U Farmers Market where one of the vendors asked if I had a food blog. Yikes, was I about to get a heirloom tomato facial? Had I suggested that his produce was less than organic? His carrots were limp? No snap in his snap beans? Crooked zucchini? No wait, I always have kind words for Farmers Markets--especially my home market! Feeling safe from Swiss chard in a definitely unneutral spot I confessed that I had a blog but it wasn't about food.(1)
He said wasn't sure how he found my blog but he found it through random Googling (2) and liked it. Whew! Also he recognized me by the Tractor Supply Company baseball cap I was wearing.
Note to self if you are seeking Blogebrity, always wear in public the same clothing you are wearing in the profile picture of your blog. You not only save a lot of money but you will be thought of as eccentric and perhaps colorful, instead of cheap and crazy.
It was a beautiful August day here today and I hope you got out and enjoyed it.
Pictured above is "Chorus Line of Farmers Market Booty" August 9, 2008.
(1) Actually I don't know what my blog is about. I just know its not about grammar.
(2) Most random Google searches to my blog involve "High School Musical" or "TMNT"
I think we all squirrel away for a rainy day someone's particularly funny blog posting in order to enjoy again when we feel down or in my case, steal from it when I realize that I am the only person who thinks that my "Osmonds Monday" was a good idea.
Some of my favorites are from The Woolgatherer's rants aimed at the Food Network's cirrhotic High Priestess of Canned Goods and Tablescapes, Sandra Lee.
These will make you laugh!
Maybe even out loud!
Well played Woolgatherer!
