Things that are tagged self-referential stuff

On Search Results

Posted on December 20, 2000 by Porter Mason

I was looking through our counter statistics, which I do every morning like they were the Wall Street Journal or my copy of Hustler, Special Holiday Edition (Santa checks his list to see who’s been naughty and who’s been naughtier!!! And then has sex!!!! A lot!!!!!), I was looking through those stats and I noticed a few hits that came through a search engine (which will remain nameless except to say it rhymes with “poogle“). So I thought today (which is the very basis for something to appear in a Thought of the Day thing), I thought today: “Hey, I wonder how T.J. Monkey’s comes up in searches? That is, I wonder what people search for to find our site.” I always clarify myself when I’m thinking, in case anyone nearby has telepathy and is trying to follow my thought process.

What would people search for and find T.J. Monkey’s? What, indeed. Well, I immediately began an intense research project to discover this very thing. The first step was to go get some pizza and watch “Return of the Pink Panther” on DVD. I can’t explain why, but that was just the logical first step.

That out of the way, I began typing in lots of words or “queries” into the little box or “text field” on the search engine page or “party of the first part”. And in doing so, I discovered some of the top queries that result in a hit for T.J. Monkey’s.

Here, brave viewers, who have braved through my expository few paragraphs like knights to a Crusade, who dared read on, as tangents were ruthlessly followed left and right, who stared boredom in the face and triumphantly emerged victor, here, brave, brave viewers, are the top few queries:

“t.j. monkeys” – Well, this seemed like the obvious first thing to try. You’d figure not a lot of other sites are named T.J. Monkey’s. Or even ever utter the phrase for any reason. Unless of course they were linking to our site or reviewing us in some big-time magazine!!! So basically never. However, you do get a few random hits of sites that have the words “t.j.” and “monkey’s” somewhere on the same page. Like, for example, apparently there’s some character referred to as “TJ” in the script of “12 Monkeys”… see? And apparently, there’s some “sea monkey” page run by a guy named “T.J.”, or maybe the sea monkey is named “T.J.”, or maybe it was the guy’s friend, or dog, or something: it doesn’t really matter. Bottom line: who cares? Are that many people searching for “T.J. Monkey’s”? Not unless word of mouth has been really great, and you people are telling lots of people about the site, but even though you tell people the address, they don’t remember it, but they remember the name because they’re all like, “Hey, T.J. Monkey’s, that’s kind of kooky and fun and funny and kooky,” but they don’t know the address, so they go to a search engine and type in “T.K. Monkey’s” because they mistyped, but then realizing their mistype, they put in “T.J. Monkey’s”. Now…. sure, this happens some. But not tons, not enough to account for the huge amount of hits we receive from search engines (which at this point is just that one yesterday).
“monkey humor” – OK, well, this is possible. People could search for that. And we do come up on this search. Problem is, there are a few other “humor” “sites” that have the word monkey in the title, to list just a lot of them, why there’s…. “MonkeyMag”, “Monkey Town”, “Sticky Monkey”, “Little Monkey”, “The Monkey Clan”, , “Monkey Magazine” (not to be confused with “MonkeyMag”), “Primate Humor”, “The Drunken Monkey”, “PC Monkey”, “Monkey Search”, “Monkey People”, and, finally for this list (though there are many more), there is the exact match of a site called “Monkey Humor”. So… we are on this list, but we’re the 104,237th match. And most people stop looking through search results at about, oh…. I guess, around the 57,000th match.
“t j monkeys” – same as above
“monkeys tj” – same as above
“britney spears XXX nude jenny mccarthy nude claudia schiffer nude nude nude nudey nudey nudest nudelino nudorama nudalamaloomadingdong tyra banks nude” – oddly, also same as above

At this point, I initiated the vital next step in my research, which was to get more pizza and watch the special features on the “Rushmore” DVD again. Similar to the very vital first step and just as vital. After doing this, I looked at my counter stats again and noticed they told me the query the guy entered in anyway. It was “job outlook in investment banking”. It hit on a page at T.J. Monkey’s entitled “On Investment Banking and the Telling of Stories” (written by one of our most brilliant and modest writers). Pretty random, but we show up 4th when you search for “job outlook in investment banking” on Google. In Spanish. Seriously. Try it, click here.

And so, my study ended. I learned a little, I laughed a little, and I wrote a lot more than was needed on this topic. Such is my nature, and such is life. Keep on searchin’, my friends, I’m off to get more pizza and study those “britney spears” results a little more in-depthly.

Porter

On a Thought You Shouldn’t Read Ever

Posted on July 22, 2001 by Porter Mason

Stop reading this now.

Those of you who are still reading, please only read and obey the following warning message and then stop reading: Cease and desist all reading of this immediately. You are still reading. If you keep reading this, and I can’t stress this enough, your eyes will fall out and turn to goo. You can still save yourself by turning your eyes away right now, but if you read further, no promises can made as per your eyes turning to goo.

If you are reading this, you have begun to read the third paragraph. Please. For the love of all things that are holy in this world, do not read this paragraph or any of the ones that follow it. You’ve read the first two, I can’t do anything about that now, and I assume, since you are still reading, your eyes have miraculously not yet turned to goo. You are EXTREMELY LUCKY. DO NOT TEMPT FATE. You got by with reading those first two paragraphs, but honestly, if you read this one, I HAVE NO WAY OF ASSURING YOU THAT YOU WILL NOT BE MAULED BY TIGERS. I’m serious. It’s happened before, more times than I’d like to admit. Repeat: IF YOU DO NOT ENJOY BEING MAULED BE TIGERS, TURN AWAY, AND STOP READING. And you know, if you do derive some sick pleasure from being mauled be tigers, still, STOP READING. I won’t sit idly by and allow someone’s deranged fetish to get them killed.

All right, you clearly do not follow directions and rules well. I urge now to do the following things:

Sweet Jesus, stop reading this at once.
Secure you eyes into your sockets using some sort of smallish plasticine case. This is such that in the (now inevitable) occurence that your eyes fall out and turn to goo, you will have caught all the goo and can then take it to a doctor. No doctor will really be able to reverse the process, but perhaps this doctor could cryogenically freeze your eye goo, allowing you to wait, eyeless, and hope for a future in which eyes can be recontructed from their original goo. Swimming goggles work well for this.
If you have tiger repellant, USE IT. This can be in spray or roll-on form. If you don’t have repellant, you might consider getting some. But DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. This may severely increase your chances of being mauled by said tigers (and these chances, I should remind you, are quite high to begin with and grow continually higher with each word you read). Perhaps you might consider ordering tiger repellant from one of the many fine respectable establishments that sell the repellant online. This way, the repellant will be delievered to you. Although, you run the risk that the mailman himself may be mauled by tigers before he ever reaches you. Perhaps include a note on your order stating: “Mailman, please use a bit of the enclosed tiger repellant before attempting to deliver.”

Well, it is clear at this point that you have little regard for your own life. You read that entire list. That was ballsy. Stupid and ballsy. Now that you’ve read this far, there is no way for me, at this point, to assure you that you will not soon explode in a horrible catastrophic nuclear explosion. I don’t need to tell you that this will not only affect you, but those around you (as most people react VERY poorly to horrible catastrophic nuclear explosions). Also, you might consider the lives of the several tigers who are stalking you at this very instant. Tigers are a proud species, and, though they have been informed of your nuclear instability, they have decided to nonetheless follow through on their assigned task. Which is to maul you. So please, to save your own life, the lives of those around you, and the lives of countless, brave, noble tigers (who are at this very moment ready to maul you), please…stop reading.

All right. I…well, I just didn’t think so many CLEARLY PSYCHOPATHIC PEOPLE (this means you) would read this article. If, after “the shit” goes down, there are any little tiny scraps of your goo-eyed, tiger-mauled, atom-smashed body left, they will WITH NO DELAY be put straight into a mental hospital. And it’s a good thing too because we don’t need people like you roaming the streets of our neighborhoods. Not to mention all the tigers you’d attract, and, nothing against tigers, but they really don’t send property values sky-rocketing. You can, of course, stop all this if you simply stop reading this, but I think we all know that’s not gonna happen, right? Right, Mr. Tough Guy? Jesus! The gall. It’s assholes like you that make me wanna just grab an Uzi and live in a cabin in the woods. You sicken me, sir/madam. You are what is wrong with this planet. You are what drives people to drink. You are the embodiment of all that is foul and evil. You are nothing more that a giant, puss-filled scab on the ass of humanity, and I hope the many (many!) tigers that surround you (at this very instant!) enjoy feasting on you (and the goo that was once your eyes!), hopefully disabling your nuclear ignition device, so that they live to tell the tale at tiger parties years and years later, harping on the fact that you didn’t even taste that good.

Anyone there? Anyone? Great, OK, if you’re still here, I’m, well, I’m proud of you first of all. You saw through the whole thing, and you realized it was all a ploy. I apologize for some of the things that were said (very few of you actually resemble scabs, I’m sure), but it was all necessary to weed out some of the, ah…well, let’s just say the “wheat” needed to separated from the “chaff” (you are the wheat in this metaphor). But you made it, and that’s great, and I’m happy to have you here. And to allay any fears, let me assure you that your eyes will not gooify or any of that nonsense, so please put your mind at ease. Just sit back, relax, let your guard down, and be thankful that you were smart enough to see through this whole ruse. So pat yourself on the back, unlock your front door, and join me, as I raise my glass high in the air, place my hand on my heart, and say, with the greatest sincerity:

TIGERS: ATTAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!

You should’ve stopped reading.

(Not) Porter

On Grammar

Posted on September 3, 2001 by Porter Mason

T.J. Monkey’s has a very specific demographic. We reach young males. 20-23 years old. Who are my friends. Who I e-mail and remind to look at the site. Who are named Bret. Yes, basically, this is all for the benefit of Bret, this whole venture. To keep him entertained, to keep him happy, to keep his interest piqued.

And so I thought, “What better way to really make Bret happy than to write a big, long, rambling article about grammar?” Bret obviously loves grammar, and the way I can tell this is that when he sends Thought submissions to me to edit, they have extremely terrible grammar. You see, Bret loves grammar so much, that everything he sends me is like a big grammatical puzzle for me to solve. I imagine what he probably does is, he writes his Thoughts with perfect grammar and all, and then he goes back and painstakingly changes the Thought, adding in horrible grammatical errors for me to fix.

“Oh, look!” thinks Bret. “In this paragraph, I am consistent with the tense of my verbs! Well, let’s just skiddle dee doo that around a bit…put in a few more there’s instead of they’re’s…aaaaand…there! Let’s see if Porter can solve this little mind bender! He has nothing better to do with his time!”

And that’s where he’s right. I don’t. And I love grammar, just like Bret. So I thought, “Hey, let’s have an article on the site about how important grammar is, and go through some of the basics of good grammar.” And so, here we are. Let’s begin!

Why Grammar Is So Important or STOP! Grammar-time!

Most people in this world don’t give grammar enough damn credit. It’s very important. Why, without it, the books and articles we read would be nothing more than a bunch of unintelligible series of words. It would be like if a roomful of monkeys just typed stuff out on a typewriter, or if someone just cut up the dictionary into little pieces and pasted stuff together at random, or if Ethan Hawke wrote a novel.

Yes, grammar is not unlike the underappreciated friend we all have. You know, the guy who always helps you move, and never asks for anything in return, but consistently reminds you about it, and it’s like this big guilt trip that he just won’t drop. Yes, grammar is that annoying guy, who you don’t really like, and you can’t remember how you even met him, probably through another friend who you no longer keep in touch with, and he always puts stuff on your tab, and his stupid brother crashed at your place for three weeks and puked on your couch, and you can’t get the smell out, no matter hard you try, and he owes you $300, and you’ll never see that money, which is too bad, because you need a new stereo.

That’s who grammar is.

Anyway, let’s look at some basics of grammar. Some of these are things I learned in school, and some are just unspoken rules, rules that I’ve picked up off the streets. The tough streets of Internet comedy essay writing.

First off, we look at the sentence. The sentence is made up of words which, in turn, are made up of letters. The sentence is the basic building block of good writing. Writing that doesn’t use sentences is bad. Unless it’s by James Joyce. And then it’s good. Or, well, I guess poetry doesn’t always have sentences. So, OK, if your writing doesn’t have sentences, you better be writing poetry, or you better be able to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are in fact, James Joyce.

Now, sometimes, people write what they think are sentences, but what are actually “sentence fragments”. Fragments are bad. Very bad. Very very bad. Not good. At all. (That’s a little grammatical humor, Bret, that I’m sure you just found totally wicked!)

You see, a lot of people think that a sentence is just any old combination of words that has a period at the end. This is not true. Sentences have two key parts: the subject and the predicament. The subject is like the main character of the sentence. The protagonist, if you will. The predicament (which is from the Greek “predikamus”, which means “a sentence’s ass”) is like what happens to the main character, i.e. what sort of crazy “predicament” he gets into. You see, a good sentence is like a good sitcom. You have some sort of nutty main character, and then he gets into some kooky predicament, and then there’s some wacky neighbors, and copious amounts of sexual innuendo, and everything gets resolved, and then they roll the credits. Or, in the case of a sentence, the “period”. That’s why the credits are “rolled”, because they are like a period, which is round. Starting to get all this? I know; it’s tough. Look, let’s break down a few example sentences. In the sentence:

Bret eats the sandwich.

“Bret” is the subject. “Eats the sandwich” is the predicament. Ooo! Hey, cool, now, in the sentence:

“Eats the sandwich” is the predicament.

“‘Eats the sandwich’” is now the subject! So, it kind of switched around on us. What just occurred is an example of a “literary device”. Literary Devices are not parts of grammar, but they’re important to writing. This particular literary device, where one part of a sentence turned around and switched to another part of another sentence, is called “The Ol’ Switcheroo”. You’ll often see English professors, while poring over texts, occasionally jump up and exclaim, “Hey! It’s ‘The Ol’ Switcheroo’!” And then they high five each other. English professors are a raucous bunch of blokes.

Other Literary Devices include hyperbole and irony. Hyperbole is when you add in the word “damn” to a sentence. So, let’s say your sentence is:

That’s a big sandwich.

Using hyperbole, you’d get:

That’s a damn big sandwich.

Hyperbole “ups the stakes” of sentences and makes things more exciting, or should I say, makes things more damn exciting! (More cool grammatical humor. Pretty wicked, huh, Bret?)

Irony is when you say something clever. Anything remotely clever is probably ironic. So, whenever describes some situation that’s sort of funny, you should always chime in and say, “How ironic!” You’ll always be right, and people will think you’re smart. (They’ll be right!)

OK, but back to grammar. So you have your sentences, and they make up paragraphs. If sentences are like sitcoms, paragraphs are like “Must See TV”. They’re a group of sentences, placed together because they’re all sort of similar and compliment each other.

Like “Must See TV”, sentences must be ordered very specifically. Your first sentence is like “Friends”. It’s gotta be strong, with appealing characters, and tight clothing, something that people will tune in to see, but it also should be light and humorous, nothing too heavy to scare people off. Your last sentence has to be strong too, like “ER”, so the last sentence should be longer, more dramatic, more emotional, a real show-stopper.

Then there are the sentences in the middle. They are like the shows in between “Friends” and “ER”. They’re like “The Stephen Weber Show” or “Jesse”. No one cares about them, and it doesn’t matter what’s in ‘em. Any time spent on these sentences is just wasted time. No one cares. Just type “blah blah blah”, slap on a period, and be done with them. Or better yet, just repeat the first sentence. People like that, because they’ve already read this sentence, and they’re comfortable with it. And if a first sentence is really good, you can just put it into syndication and use it as a middle sentence in all your paragraphs.

Finally, we’ll go over “voice”. There are two main types of voices: active voice and passive voice. Here is a sentence in active voice:

Bret kicked the shit out of some kid in grade school.

Here is a sentence in passive voice:

Bret got the shit kicked out of him in grade school.

In passive voice, the subject of the sentence (see above) takes a more passive role in the predicament of the sentence (see above again). You should never ever use the passive voice ever. I don’t know why. It’s just, my 10th grade English teacher, she told us that using passive voice was really terrible. Even when it was the more correct way to say something (as in the example above). She really hated it. It was as though the passive voice had murdered a member of her family. Or, well, I should say, it was as though a member of her family was murdered by the passive voice. So just don’t use it. It’s as bad as sentence fragments. Maybe worse. (Hee hee!)

OK, so there’s a basic review of some key parts of grammar. Go forth and use them in your writing! Except of course, if you are Bret. If you are Bret, you should continue to play your clever grammatical games with me. Send me your fragments! Send me all your mismatches tenses and voices! Send me your paragraph-less ramblings! I will continue to solve every puzzle you throw my way, you crazy kid. Until I find something better to do. Like, you know, if “Friends” is on. “Friends” will then be watched by me.

(At this point, Porter was murdered by his 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Bandy. How ironic!)

FIN