Congrats to Acorn King!

Newcomer Acorn King took top honors this week. Acorn King, you may display the coveted In Your Face award.



Email me your address at diesel --at-- mattresspolice.com and I'll send you a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary, as well.

robin came in second with:

Dude, for the last time I'm sorry, I didn't know she was your sister. Can you please stop pretending to ignore me and open my beer? Seriously, I have a goalie's glove for my hand and we all know Abe's useless with a pop-top can.

And Deb on the Rocks took third with:

Diesel, come on, what we have is special and forever. I didn't mean to hurt you. Bringing Abe in will just spice things up for a little while, that's all. But it's up to you, baby, it's up to you.

There were some really great captions this time around, guys. I'm always amazed at what y'all come up with. Even perennial favorite Brad couldn't squeeze into the finalists this week.

Have a great weekend, everybody. You know where I'll be.



WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Join me at BlogCatalog!

Thursday Shout-Out: New Blogroll

I took my blogroll down a while back because it was getting totally out of hand. I hated maintaining it, and it was getting too long to do anyone any good (that's what she said).

But now my guilt has gotten the better of me, so I've decided to put an abbreviated blogroll back up in an effort to balance out the karmic linky something something. So over to the right you'll see a heading that reads "Worth a Look," under which there is a list of 25 blogs. I've picked these blogs based on a number of factors, but mostly based on my guess as to what kinds of blogs visitors to this sight might also enjoy.

Limiting it to 25 makes it a manageable list, but it also guarantees that a lot of great blogs get left off. For example, avid supporters such as Beth, Claire, Jeffrey Ellis, Jinksy, Teri, and probably a dozen other people that I can't think of right now (because I'm retarded) get shafted. Sorry. I will be adding a links page back to this site in the near future that will have a lot more blogs on it, but I'm going to try to keep my sidebar list down to 25.

You may have noticed some other changes on this site as well. For one, there's a little button at the bottom of this post that looks like this:



Except that it probably says "smiley me!" which is another way of saying "Hello? Is this thing on? Anyone? Beuller?" It tracks the number of smileys a post has gotten on Humor-Blogs.com.

There is also a rank widget over to the right that looks like this:



That one shows the blog's overall ranking at HB.

The smiley count widget is a little tricky, and I've only tested it on Blogger. The ranking widget is super-easy, though, and will work on any blogging platform that supports Javascript (read: not Wordpress). There are instructions for plugging in both widgets on the HB Widgets page.

That's about it for today. If you're looking for something funny, try checking out one of those blogs. And don't forget to join my neighborhood at BlogCatalog and leave a nice comment for me over there.

Here's another place to find a funny blog.

Celebrities I Have Dreamed About

If you think I come up with some crazy stuff while I'm awake, you should hear my dreams.

One of my favorites is a dream that I had when I was a little kid. I was walking through our house and I saw that there were wolves hiding behind the furniture. I told my dad, who announced authoritatively, "Well, we'll have to blow up the attic." I found this oddly reassuring.

Not too long ago I had a dream I where my older brother and I were sitting by the side of a road when a helicopter flew overhead carrying a milk carton the size of a house. I turned to my brother and said, "That is a big f---ing milk carton." End scene.

I'm pretty sure I dream about celebrities more than is normal. And not usually the celebrities you'd think -- there are a lot of real C-listers in there. You could throw the stars of my dreams together in a house and have a decent episode of The Surreal Life. Recently I was thinking about all the celebrity appearances in my dreams over the past few years, and I came up with the following list. The number of appearances of each celebrity appears in parentheses after the name.

Huey Lewis (3)
In the first two dreams, Huey was a sort of Godot-like figure. I waited patiently, and eventually he showed up, but was too busy to talk to me. In the third one we talked, but I can't remember what about.

Ed Kowalczyk, the lead singer of the band Live (2)
In one of the dreams, we discussed the Crummy Church Signs website.

Paris Hilton (2)
Neither of these dreams was sexual in nature. In one of them, we sat together in a coffee shop while I gave her career advice. "You're like a modern day Audrey Hepburn," I told her. "People expect more from you."

Charlie Sheen (1)
Also not sexual in nature.

Halle Berry (1)
No comment.

Howard Hesseman, star of WKRP in Cincinnati and Head of the Class (1)
My dream was actually a commercial for a nonexistent TV show called The Howard Hesseman Show. It consisted of various clips of the show, one of which was Howard saying, "I want to die in these pants. It really wouldn't be heaven without these pants."

Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon (1 each)
I have the distinction of having dreamed about every ex-president who was alive during my lifetime. I can't recall the details of any of the dreams. They seemed to be basically photo ops for the ex-presidents.

Jimmy Walker, star of TV's Good Times
This one is my all-time favorite (excluding Halle Berry). I was in church and Jimmy Walker was the minister. He was stoking the congregation into a frenzy, but instead of exclaiming "Amen!", everybody was shouting "Dyn-o-mite!" Honest to God, I'm not making that up.

I'm sure there were more, but when you've slept with as many celebrities as I have, you start to forget. I should probably start some kind of dream journal, although that sort of thing might be hard to explain if I ever run for public office: "Last night: Scott Baio - told me Fonzie was really an alien. I told him I really liked Joanie Loves Chachi, but was just being polite."

I'll keep you updated the next time some faded sitcom star or aging pop singer shows up in one of my dreams. I mean, unless it's Belinda Carlisle. A man's got to have some secrets.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Waiting for Huey | Where Was I? Join me at BlogCatalog!

Vote!

Man, it's getting really hard to pick these caption contest finalists. It's like picking a favorite from among my children, except that I don't have to worry about a bunch of captions on other websites that I don't even know about.

I finally narrowed it down to these ten:




Jay said...

Diesel: "I swear I have the crappiest HMO in the world."




Alex L said...

The first annual meeting of the I hate Thomas Kinkade association.


Fold My Laundry Please said...

Diesel's friends take Dungeons & Dragons VERY seriously!




Bunk Strutts said...

"Diesel, forget the midterms. The Chinese Chicks should be here any minute and you still don't have your Amy Winehouse costume on."



robin said...

Dude, for the last time I'm sorry, I didn't know she was your sister. Can you please stop pretending to ignore me and open my beer? Seriously, I have a goalie's glove for my hand and we all know Abe's useless with a pop-top can.


Carla said...

"Hang on a sec, I'm looking for that picture of you back in high school when you still had your horns."



carolinebender said...

HellBoy, "No, the 7th circle is pretty cool, actually. You have to call ahead to get that set-up, but you should totally come with us next year."



Deb on the Rocks said...

Diesel, come on, what we have is special and forever. I didn't mean to hurt you. Bringing Abe in will just spice things up for a little while, that's all. But it's up to you, baby, it's up to you.


Acorn King said...

Dude, you totally bite it on page 19.




Sherri said...

"Here's to whoever wrote the words to Kumbaya."

Opinion Polls & Market Research

I'll announce the winner on Friday. As usual, the winner will get the In Your Face award and a copy of my book, Antisocial Commentary.

And while you're in a voting mood, make sure you head over to BlogCatalog, join my community and rate MattressPolice.com. I've been doing some recon behind enemy lines lately, checking out other blog directories. Most of them suck compared to Humor-Blogs.com, natch, but BlogCatalog is actually pretty cool. It's a nicely designed site, and it has a friendly, sensible ranking/categorization system for blogs. So if you enjoy my writing, head over to BlogCatalog and rate me and leave a nice comment, before Johnny finds out about it and kicks my ass over there as well.

Looking for a funny blog?

Close to Ten Tips on Writing a Funny Blog Post

As you know, my Meme-Wraith, Grundir the Implacable, generally dispatches all troublesome rodents and memes that attempt to violate the sanctity of Chez* Diesel. Today, however, Grundir humbly approached me cradling a delicate young meme bearing an insignia resembling a giant malformed spermatozoan.

“Cast it into the Crack of Mount Doom, you fool!” I howled at my Nazgul minion. Then I burst into a fit of giggles, because I can’t say “Crack of Mount Doom” without laughing. Grundir tolerates this with admirable aplomb. Being dead for 900 years gives you a certain amount of patience.

“It’s bears the ominous mark of Brent Diggs, m’lord,” rasped Grundir.

“Ah yes,” I said. “The universally recognized Giant Malformed Spermatazoan of Brent Diggs!”

“I believe it is a comma, sir. An Ominous Comma.”

“I know what a comma looks like!” I snapped. “Why, my gentle wraith, surely you’re aware of my affinity for the comma, the most sublime of punctuation marks, the enabler of superfluous modifiers, the – ”

“Indeed, m'lord. Shall I bury this meme in the orchard with the ditch digger?”

“It’s called a shovel, worm-brain.”

“No, m’lord, I mean…”

“Silence, fool! I must maintain plausible deniability. No, my rotted friend, I shall answer this meme. Read it to me, please. My eyes fail me in this light.”

“As I’ve tried to tell you, m’lord, your perpetually tinted glasses –”

“I’ll perpetually tint you if you don’t start reading, Stiffy.”

“It reads, ‘In my brief foray onto the internet I have –’”

“Good lord, how long is this thing? Cut to the part with Liv Tyler already!”

“He wants you to write something funny and yet educational. To impart some of your wisdom about blogging to the masses, if you will.”

“Brilliant! I shall give the masses Ten Tips on Writing a Funny Blog Post.”

“Excellent, m’lord.”

“Tip number one: Self-reference is always funny.”

“I’m sorry, m'lord. Would you care to elaborate?”

“Yes, take this down: ‘As you know, my Meme-Wraith, Grundir the Implacable, generally dispatches all troublesome rodents and…’ Wait, how many commas is that?”

“Three, m’lord.”

“Ok, good enough. Point number two: Don’t belabor a joke. Stop right before the reader understands what you’re doing. Good readers like to think a little. And bad readers, well, f—k ‘em. Except don’t write ‘f—k.’ Put dashes in the middle or something.”

“Very good, m’lord. What else?”

“Point four: Writing a post in dialog form automatically makes it 43.7% funnier. Oh, and point five: Needless, unjustifiable precision is also funny.
“Point six. Wait, I’m not sure about point three. Strike that one for now. Remind me to come back to it later.”

“As you wish, m’lord.”

"Where was I?"

"Point six."

"Right, point six. Sprinkle your post with obscure pop culture references. They'll go over the heads of a lot of your readers, but the real Ainur will eat it up. Point seven. Make fun of yourself, but don’t be too obvious about it. Make yourself out to be a huge ass, even if you’re really a nice guy. Of course, it works better if you really are a huge ass, like me. Am I talking too fast for you, Casper?”

“No, m’lord.”

“Point eight: Give yourself a straight man. Somebody the readers can identify with. But somebody who doesn’t seem very relatable at first glance. Toy with the readers’ expectations a bit.”

“Very good, m’lord. I never could have devised such a brilliant notion.”

“Of course not. You’re a 900 year old medieval jerkwad who sold his soul for something shiny. And finally, point nine: Always leave the reader wanting more. Now slap the Mattress Police seal on that baby and send it back to Diggs. We’ll show him what a real blogging insignia looks like. No sperm for us!”

“Of course not, m’lord.”

“On second thought, throw a little sperm on that baby. Can’t hurt.

“Yes, m’lord.”


For this non-meme, I anoint the following individuals:
1. Dave Barry
2. Sinister Dan
3. Scott Adams
4. Ecstatic Wavelength Lady
5. David Sedaris
6. Sue Piltdown
7. Bill Watterson
8. Leigh (on the condition that she does not offer any boob-related advice or pictures)
9. Voltaire
10. Jocelyn Hergenfliffer

*Pronounced "CHEEZ"

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Tremble Before the Meme Wraith! | Can You Dig It? | Tremble Before My Shovel! Looking for a funny blog?