When I first contemplated taking the National Blog Posting Month challenge I figured that it would be much easier than taking the Slim Fast challenge or the Pepsi challenge. And it was. Because blogging is fun AND easy.

So, here we are, 30 days later. Let’s recap the month one last time (by category):

Music Essays

It takes me longer to write music essays than humor essays and as a result of the daily NaBloPoMo schedule I only managed to write 3 music essays this month. But all three were rock solid (get it? “rock” solid!)

The Curious Case of a Band Called Ambrosia, the World’s Only Three-Hit Wonder discusses the weird fact that Ambrosia produced 3x one-hit wonder songs. I still believe that they’re the only band to accomplish such a rare feat.

Album Review: Mark Karan’s “Walk Through the Fire” (2009) attempts to highlight what is perhaps the greatest solo album to come out of the Dead family.

I Hate, John Mayer! discusses the ambivalence (or Mayer-bivalence as I like to call it) that we all feel about Mr. John Mayer.

Original Humor Essays

The train is my muse – or at least it gives me some free time to write silly essays. NaBloPoMo inspired me to tackle some of my favorite subjects and I wrote 12 all-new humor essays this month.

Hey James Beard, what’s with all of the Awards? talks about the endless awards that TV chefs seem to crow about.

Magnum, P.I.’s Short Shorts and the Golden Age of Television talks about my love of cheesy ‘80s TV mysteries and Magnum’s penchant for wearing Daisy Dukes.

Can We Just Give Hawaii and Alaska Back Already? is my argument against non-contiguous states.

The Red Sox Fan’s Guide to Delivering Snappy Responses to Yankees Fans if (when) the Yankees win the World Series was my only way to fight back against the dreaded Stankees winning the World Series.

Will the World Finally Come to an End Already? talks about the many predictions of ‘the end of the world’ that we’ve survived and debunks the 2012 hysteria.

Are We Really Still Bothering With NASA? allows me to rail against the waste of money that is space travel.

I know Your Secret, Crappy New York Diners allows me to rail against the waste of money that is (Greek) diners in NY.

Posts That Could Have or Shouldn’t Have Been allowed me to get out some half-baked ideas, including the popular new game, ‘Gay or British?”

A Handy Little Guide to Choosing the Perfect Place to Stay When Traveling Away from Home explains my love for boutique hotels.

Jets, Rails & Cars: A Handy Little Guide to Choosing the Perfect Mode of Transportation When Traveling Away from Home (not legally affiliated with Planes, Trains & Automobiles) explains my hatred of traveling outside of Greater Boston.

Having a Fine Time Doing Time provides an idealized view of life in prison.

How to Stay Famous talks about celebrity, not-celebrity and how to stay on top.

Classic Humor Essays

I have scores of classic humor essays in the archives and I dipped in whenever I was too busy to write something new (8 times, if you’re keeping score at home.) For those of you who think this is cheating, it’s called National Blog Posting Month, not National Blog Writing Month.

In Search of a Fancy Title? talks about my desire for an impressive salutation.

Freaky Friday Presents: My Psychic Gift is about my very real – and very useless – psychic power.

In Defense of (Fake) Food is a celebration of the foods that we all secretly love.

The 5 Stages of the Company Holiday Party are very real and very relevant for the next few weeks.

Cross-Cultural Intellectual Relativity Theory (C.C.I.R.T.) discusses the unfair advantage that British people get in America due to their brilliant accents.

Strangers I Love: Old Man Jogger is a love letter to a stranger – and the first in a series (look for more, soon!)

A Beard’s Life addresses beards, goatees and soul patches.

Getting Old Ain’t Hard to Do talks about some of the (positive) signs of aging.

Marketing Essays

Upon occasion I write about marketing or media topics and I wrote 2 new marketing essays this month.

“Personal Brand” THIS! was a screed against the “personal branding” movement that’s all over the social media wank-o-sphere these days.

Go Shopping Already, People! was an encouragement for people to hit the stores this holiday shopping season.

Clip Shows

Including this very post, I found yet another way to cut corners this month with 5 recap posts. Yes, they still count as posts.

NaBloPoMo Week 1 Recap

NaBloPoMo Week 2 Recap

NaBloPoMo Week 3 Recap

NaBloPoMo Week 4 Recap

Summary

3 music essays (10%)
12 original humor essays (40%)
8 classic humor essays (26%)
2 marketing essays (7%)
5 clip shows (17%)

Final Thoughts

I’m glad that I participated in NaBloPoMo, but I’m also glad that it’s over. I think that many people use these types of challenges to create new habits but that’s not really an issue for me. My problem is just having enough time to write. I definitely created more time this month, but I also missed reading my book on the train ride home.

I’m not sure if quality is necessarily related to effort. Some of the most positive responses were for essays (e.g. ‘Having a Fine Time Doing Time’) that I churned out relatively quickly. Then again, it took forever for me to get that Mark Karan review just right and I got a bunch of really special e-mails from that one as well. In other words, I’ve learned nothing about the process of writing, except for the fact that the more you write, the better you get.

I really appreciate all of the comments and e-mails from readers both old and new. Thanks for putting up with me every single day for a whole month. I’ll be resuming a normal posting schedule, which means probably 2-3 posts per week. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to the feed here so you’ll know when new essays are posted.

See you next November! (Maybe)

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your friends, enemies, co-workers and relatives to stop by.

###

One of the problems with today’s hyper-speed news cycle is that people barely get their full 15 minutes of fame anymore. One minute you’re surrounded by the paparazzo everywhere you go and before you know it – poof! – nobody cares about you anymore and you’re forced to rush out a bad memoir named after an X-Men character.

It sure seems like it’s gotten easier to get famous nowadays (thanks to more celebrity-based media and reality TV) but it’s much harder to stay famous. Worst of all, the truly talented people are getting lumped in with the general riff-raff (e.g. Jon & Kate) that are inexplicably clogging up our trashy magazines, website and TV shows.

In the future, if we want to keep evolving as a celebrity-obsessed culture, I think we’re going to need to create a new level of categorization somewhere between “celebrity” and “nobody.”

Now, you might be thinking, “isn’t that what the D-List is for?” And the answer is no. The D-List is for people that earned their way to celebrity-hood but didn’t have enough talent to stay famous or relevant. But that doesn’t take away from their initial accomplishments. For example, Corey (Feldman) & Corey (Haim) at their worst are still more culturally important than Octomom at her best. The D-List is still a part of the list and you need talent to get on the list in the first place.

Personally, I’d like to use the term “infamous” but that implies being known for negative reasons and most modern reality stars are more tedious than negative. Plus, killing sprees involve a lot of messy work, so “infamous” probably needs to be reserved for serial killers. Just like middle name usage.

So, unless you have a better suggestion, I’m going with “lamous.” Basically, we replace the term “fame” with “lame” in all of its uses to make it clear that this person is known, but they’re not famous. They’re lamous.

So that solves our first problem of separating the famous from the lamous and the celebrities from the celamebrities. But how can genuinely talented people stay famous in this unpredictable media era?

My theory is that many creative people get famous for being themselves. Their first book, album or TV show is original and authentic and society embraces them for being slightly more talented versions of regular people. But then they can’t sustain their fame because being famous changes them and takes away what we liked about them in the first place.

This happens on Food TV all the time. Someone like Rachael Ray is initially appealing precisely because she’s goofy and unpolished. Then she hits it big, becomes a “personality” and loses all of the goofiness that we found appealing in the first place. Look at Guy Fieri. I’m sure he’s a nice guy but they turned him into a caricature of himself with the stupid backward sunglasses and the sweat band and the ridiculous shirts and hair. When he was just a regular schlub and he dressed like that he looked fine. Now he looks like a douche. Plus, that dude will literally eat garbage. No one likes a celebrity that eats garbage.

Many, but not all, musicians suffer from the sophomore slump. People think that the sophomore slump is a result of the artist having run out of good material. But I don’t think it’s the absence of quality material. I think it’s that their environment has changed. They went from being poor, unknown chumps to being stars. You can’t write about everyday life and relate to regular people when you’re taking private planes everywhere and partying with Verne Troyer.

The simple answer seems to be to “keep it real.” But that’s unrealistic advice. Nobody is going to live in a shitty apartment or eat Ramen noodles just to keep it real. That’s not authentic, either.

Nope, the key to staying famous is to never relate to regular people in the first place. By definition, you can’t lose touch with people that you were never in touch with in the first place. That’s what makes celebrities like Madonna (or her modern-day knock-off Lady Gaga) so compelling, even though their music is awful. They don’t seem like real people. They don’t look like they were ever kids or not-famous. They appear as if they were birthed fully-formed as celebrities, like Athena from Zeus’s head.

(My apologies for that burst of pomposity.)

In conclusion:

If you have talent and want to sustain a long career of fame, don’t be a regular person that hits it big – people will get bored with that. Be a famous person that occasionally treats the commoners to a glimpse of greatness.

If you don’t have talent, but you want to be well-known, please feel free to go on a reality TV show or a multi-state killing spree. But be forewarned, you’ll never be a real celebrity and we might use your middle name.

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your friends (just the D-Listers) to stop by.

###

Well, the month of November – and the silly game of NaBloPoMo – is almost over and I, for one, am looking forward to returning to a lax posting schedule.

The 4th week of National Blog Posting Month featured a mix of new and classic essays that were sure to please and/or offend everyone, including Brits, prisoners, Australians (wait, I already said prisoners), old people and former Presidents.

In other words, it was a normal week at Big Mouth Blues.

My love of oldsters came through twice in Getting Old Ain’t Hard to Do and Strangers I Love: Old Man Jogger.

My love of Brits was discussed in Cross-Cultural Intellectual Relativity Theory (C.C.I.R.T.)

My imagined love of prison life was discussed in Having a Fine Time Doing Time

My love of beards was addressed in A Beard’s Life

And finally, an impassioned pre-black Friday plea to help fix our economy through consumerism was made in Go Shopping Already, People!

###

Like many of you, I’m thankful for many things this year, including: winning the suicide NFL pool, having the batteries in the scale die before Thanksgiving, getting paid to yell at people to buy pizza, and of course, family, friends, the new puppy and all of you anonymous and not-so-anonymous readers.  Happy Thanksgiving.

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your professional acquaintances (especially publishers and editors) to stop by.

###

While many people will scratch and fight and basically do anything they can to avoid getting old, there is a small minority of individuals (okay, just me) that actually enjoys aging. I’m guessing it’s because as a child I was blessed with three glorious old men in my life – my two dearly departed grandfathers and my writing idol, Andy Rooney.

I love old men, with their lax hygiene and their stubbornness. I love their rambling, pointless stories about multiple unnamed characters. I love their complaining about anything and everything. And I especially love their old man cars.

Oh my, do I ever love their old man cars. Give me a Lincoln or a Mercury any day. If I had the money I would single-handedly save the American car industry. I dream of one day owning a Cadillac and putting a box of tissues and a navy cap on the rear shelf. I love that fabric roof top that looks like a convertible but isn’t. I love driving a little too slowly and drifting over the center line a little too much. And I love getting mad at anyone that tries to tell me to pay attention to the road.

But my big problem is that time moves so damn slowly. I’m just not getting old fast enough. It’s taken me practically a whole lifetime to get to be my current age and I’m not sure that I have the patience to wait until I’m officially pronounced old (I’m calling 70 old these days).

To ease my fractured nerves, I’ve been thinking about some of the signs of aging so that I can anticipate and celebrate them as they happen. You know, I’m just looking for a few positive markers to keep me motivated during my long journey.

So today, I’m excited for the day when I can no longer feel the roof of my mouth.

Let me explain. If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant (I was a cook for 7+ years) then you know that soup can never be hot enough for an old person. No matter how bubbling, boiling or scalding the soup is upon delivery, it absolutely won’t be hot enough for an old person. I’ve served thousands of bowls of soup in my day and I have never once heard an old person say “that’s too hot!” (Although I did once hear an old lady say “that’s hot!” like Paris Hilton and it haunted me for months.)

Since the same exact thing happens with old people and their coffee, my educated guess is that old people must lose all sensation on the roof of their mouths at a certain point in their lives. My palette, on the other hand, is still as sensitive as a baby’s bottom. In fact, just yesterday the roof of my mouth got all “skin-y” from an overly vigorous toothbrushing session.

Speaking of coffee, why do old people drink it with everything? Next time you’re in a diner sneak a peek at the old people and you’ll see that they all drink coffee (black, maybe decaf) no matter what time of day it is or what they’re eating. Coffee and an english muffin? Sure. Coffee and a tuna fish sandwich? Of course. Coffee and spaghetti? Why not?

So, as I was saying…wait, what was the point of this essay again?

Hey! I really am getting old! Hooray for me!

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your friends (just the oldsters) to stop by.

###

When former President Chucklehead instructed us to go shopping in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks he was rightfully derided for suggesting such an insignificant response to the most horrific event of most of our lifetimes.

More than 8 years later, I find myself in the awkward position of echoing the advice of the dunderhead-in-chief. Now, more than ever, it really is time to go shopping.

America, you’ve done a phenomenal job of tightening your fiscal belt over the last year. For the first time in over 30 years the personal savings rate is above 0%. You’ve scrimped, you’ve saved and you’ve denied yourselves the basic pleasures of rampant consumerism.

But, you’ve been a little too good lately. And if you ever want this economy to recover you’re going to have to start spending a little bit more.

Our economy – for better or worse – is largely driven by consumer spending. It’s estimated that 70% of our GDP is comprised of consumer spending. So, if there isn’t enough consumer spending, there won’t be any economic growth, employers won’t hire people back to work and things will never get better.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you spend beyond your means. I’m not recommending that you buy recklessly. But if we all loosen up the purse strings a little, we’re going to help out a lot of people.

Some suggestions:

1) Spend locally. Try to buy things as close to home as possible. (Except for kiddie Lemonade stands – that does nothing for the economy.) Your town needs the tax revenues. Your local shops are probably struggling. Sure, you might save a dollar or two buying online, but that extra dollar is going to help your town and your neighbors. Plus, you won’t have to wait for the mail to come – instant gratification!

2) Eat Out. Restaurants are getting killed during the recession. Try to eat out (or take out) at least once a week if you can. Dining out on a weeknight is even better for business. Tip generously – at least 20% if not 25% – your servers will appreciate it and will put that money right back into circulation (probably at the restaurant’s bar.)

3) Buy some newspapers/magazines. Newspapers and magazines are really hurting. Just for fun, buy one a week. Sure, they make your hands dirty and they can’t accept your anonymous snarky comments, but they’re cheap and they’re full of interesting stories, sudoko puzzles and coupons.

4) Subscribe to this blog here. It’s free! (Sure, it won’t help the economy, but it’ll enrichen your life and further my plans for global domination.)

The holiday shopping season is officially upon us, folks. Do your patriotic duty and buy stuff!

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your friends (just the shoppoholics) to stop by.

###

One of the best things about being a man is having facial hair. Not only is growing a beard totally fun but it also allows a guy to completely change his look. Unlike women who can color and cut their hair to mix things up, most adult men just don’t have enough head hair to do anything exciting.

(On a side note, I once had a meeting with a 40-something guy with perfect hair: flowing locks, full and shiny. I was mesmerized by it. What Faustian bargain did he strike to score that hair? And how come actors and politicians always have more hair per capita than regular guys? Is it the hair that makes them successful? Would it be awkward if I ran my hands through your hair?)

I first fell in love with the beard when I got a copy of Springsteen’s “The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle” as a young boy. Bruce had a great, scraggly beard on that LP cover and I dreamed about having a beard like that one day. A few years later Tom Selleck and his fantastic moustache appeared on Magnum, PI and I was smitten. Now that was a moustache that you could set your watch to!

I always wanted to be that kid in high school with the facial hair. Remember that one guy that hit puberty way early and was already shaving on a regular basis? Yeah, I wanted to be that guy. In retrospect, that guy seems weird and creepy but at the time he seemed very mature and debonair. Then again, it wasn’t really an option for me as I couldn’t grow a beard in high school. Actually, the beard came in first, but the moustache was still pretty sketchy my first year in college.

Nowadays I’m a regular facial hair growing machine. I can bust out a credible beard in just under a week. I’m pretty proud of myself for that, by the way.

I almost always wear some kind of facial hair as my skin tends to be a little ruddy and my nose seems even bigger without the facial hair (yes, I’m painting a very attractive picture for you today.) I usually vacillate between 3 main looks:

Look #1: The Full Beard

Actually, the full beard would imply no shaving and I usually clean up the neck a little. Also, I trim it before it gets too bushy, or else you look like a crazy mountain man. Trimming requirements aside, the full beard is by far my favorite look. I think that it makes me look more rugged and macho and let’s face it – I need all the macho that I can get.

The only problem with the full beard is that it doesn’t work in the summer. Not only is it hot and itchy, but it’s just looks weird – like wearing cords in August. Or wearing manpris, any time.

Look #2: The Goatee

I actually hate the goatee because I think that it’s for fat guys and baseball players. Since I’m trying not to be a fat guy and I’m not so great at baseball I just don’t feel right with the goatee. But, the goatee is the go-to option when it’s too hot for the beard. I don’t think the goatee looks as good on me as the beard but it looks better than clean shaven, so I stick with it.

I’ve tried many of the fancy goatees but I just don’t like them – the beard only, the disconnected top and bottom, the wide goatee, the narrow goatee – nothing really strikes my fancy, though.

One time – just for fun – I shaved my goatee into a Fu Manchu and picked up my son at the YMCA summer camp. I knew that it must have looked creepy when parents were literally shielding their children from me. The Fu Manchu: It’s not just for bikers anymore!

Look #3: The Soul Patch

For some odd reason my wife likes the soul patch on me, but I feel like a tool when I have it. Mine is just too rectangular and a good soul patch has to be triangular. It seems like such a half-assed attempt at being a hipster, too. I mean, when you pull up next to me in traffic and I’m belting out some later-era Elton John power-ballad with the car seats in the back, don’t you just despise me and my stupid soul patch? Don’t you want to smack me for ruining the soul patch and everything that it stands for? I do.

One summer when I had the soul patch there was another daycare dad that had one (first). So we called him “Soul Patch Man #1” and I became “Soul Patch Man #2”. For the next few weeks whenever we spotted a soul patch man we would add to our list. It was fun, like we were a little club – the soul patch brotherhood. The moral of the story is that soul patches are more popular than you might think, but I still look like a loser with one. Sorry guys, I’m out of the brotherhood.

The Experiment

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out if people treat me differently based on the style of facial hair that I’m sporting. Like yesterday, I’ve got a very rugged 4 day stubble going – just enough to show that I mean business. And the barista at Starbucks gave me a venti for the price of a grande. And when I asked why she just kind of giggled, as if to say: “because you look so damn sexy today, Mr. Stubble, because you look so damn sexy!”

Or, maybe she just hit the wrong key on the register. But I think we know that it was the stubble. Anyway, I’ll keep tracking the results and will update you with any interesting findings.

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your friends (just the bearded ones) to stop by.

###

I’ve always thought that I could really succeed at prison life. And I don’t mean the local lock-up or even the county jail. I’m talking medium-to-maximum security prison-prison. Now, I’m not saying that I want to go to prison, nor am I implying that I accidentally killed a man in Boise and deserve to go to prison. I’m just saying that I think I could survive – and possibly even enjoy – a little time in prison.

Things that I think I’d like about Prison Life:

1) The clothing: prison garb consists of loose, flowy pants and shirts that ride the line between sweats and real clothes. Sounds comfy to me!  Plus, the vertical stripes are very slimming.

2) The alone time: while I’m no Unabomber, I’m also a person that can go long stretches without needing to leave the house and/or interact with other humans. Solitary confinement sounds kind of awesome if you think about it.

3) The mobile library: here I am, like a schmuck, going to the library and bookstore while in prison they bring the books to you.

4) The food: they don’t serve that fancy chef-inspired crap that I detest so much in prison. We’re talking Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and other real food three times a day, every day. Yum!

5) The gangs: I feel like I’d do pretty well working my way up a prison gang hierarchy. I’m not great with a shank, but I’d definitely work on my skills if I knew that I was going to be in the joint for a while.

6) The free Johnny Cash concerts: ’nuff said.

Things that I think I wouldn’t like about Prison Life:

1) The yard: never a great athlete, I feel like my lack of sports skills might prevent me from getting on the prison soccer/football team and planning a dramatic escape.

2) The guards: they seem mean and are always demanding favors and bribes. I don’t like their attitude at all.

3) The gangs: I’m not sure which gang to align myself with. I’m leaning Latino, but I’d have to brush up on my Spanish a bit first. The skinheads would definitely not like me. I’d like to read some brochures before I commit, though. It’s such a major life-decision – kind of like picking a fraternity to pledge, I’d imagine.

4) The pay: $1.65 an hour to do the laundry seems a little low. Sure, I could always supplement it by dabbling in the cigarette-strawberry wine trade, but still, I’d like to make at least $6 an hour.

5) The sheets: I hear that the thread-count is below 300. That’s really not going to cut it. I have sensitive skin, you know.

6) The free Billy Ray Cyrus concerts: ’nuff said, again.

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your cell-mates (just the innocent ones) to stop by.

###

Dear Old Man Jogger,

Please know that today and forevermore I love you.

I love how you jog up and down my street every day. Well, I suspect that you run every day but I don’t actually see you every day. Perhaps you take a day or two off a week. You probably should. You don’t want to get shin splints or anything.

I love you because you’re old and you jog. You jog a lot more than I do and I’m at least 40 years younger than you. You jog by my house. You jog on the promenade by the beach and you probably jog in other areas that I don’t frequent.

I love you even though your ribbed wife beater is threadbare and full of holes. I love you even though you look kind of grouchy. I love you even though you barely grunted at me that one time I said “hi” to you. And I still love you even though you smelt really, really bad that one time I tried to say “hi” to you.

I consider you an inspiration to all old people between 70 and 85. I thank you on behalf of the oldsters in town.

On the other hand, you should probably know that you make people my age feel guilty. I know that I feel guilty when you jog by my house and I’m stuffing yet another Suzy-Q down my piehole.

Either way, I just wanted to say that I love you. And good luck with the jogging.

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your neighbors (just the strangers) to stop by.

###

I’ve been hard at work in the lab lately doing some landmark research on cross-cultural intellectual relativity theory (C.C.I.R.T.) and wanted to share some of my initial findings just in case any readers had valuable insights to share before I submitted my final report to the appropriate scientific journals.

I believe that I have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that individuals in possession of a British accent receive an intellectual credibility enhancement (I.C.E.) benefit of approximately 63% upon arrival in the United States. This benefit differs based upon the sub-variant of the accent. For example, a Cockney accent only yields a modest 10% benefit while an East Yorkshire-on-Little-Paddington accent receives an incredible 134% gain (on average).

This (frankly undeserved) intellectual perceptual boost helps to explain* the massive emigration of British citizens to the U.S. over the last three decades. Many Brits are now well aware of the fact that Brits of average intelligence have a much greater chance of financial success in America simply because the average American thinks that Brits (even dumb ones) are wicked smart because of their fancy way of talking.

(*Please note that our research also showed that many Brits prefer life in America for many other reasons. Some of the listed examples include: the American habits of wrapping food in hygienic containers, chilled beverages, cable television and sporting events that do not drag on for months on end without resolution.)

Sadly, there appears to be no reciprocal factor. Residents of Great Britain (England in particular) are wholly unimpressed by American accents and actually have a higher opinion of dim-witted Welshmen than of Americans, especially Southern-accented Americans. This is most likely due to the perceived intellectual limitations of former American president George W. Bush.

Other notable findings of the study include the fact that most Americans view Australian accents favorably; but as opposed to the intellectual credibility enhancement associated with the British accent, the majority of Americans just thought that Australians sounded like “they’d be fun to party with.”

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your mates (just the British ones) to stop by.

###

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already finished 3 weeks of the exciting National Blog Posting Month contest! We put forth another Herculean effort this week, delivering a lethal combination of laughs, intrigue and snark.

The week commenced with a brief celebration of real food, by which I mean, fake foods, in the essay called In Defense of (Fake) Food.

Since I was traveling a lot this week, I also wrote two essays dealing with travel. The first was A Handy Little Guide to Choosing the Perfect Place to Stay When Traveling Away from Home and the second was Jets, Rails & Cars: A Handy Little Guide to Choosing the Perfect Mode of Transportation When Traveling Away from Home (not legally affiliated with Planes, Trains & Automobiles).  Like you, I have trouble deciding which one is better.

I also expressed my Mayer-bivalance towards John Mayer in the essay I Hate, John Mayer! (The awkward punctuation is an homage to shifty Simpsons attorney Lionel Hutz, by the way.)

Feeling businessman-like, I made the case against the ridiculous notion of “personal branding” in “Personal Brand” THIS! and finished up the week by reviewing The 5 Stages of the Company Holiday Party.

All in all, I’m sure you’ll agree that it was another fun (and educational) week of blogging.  And thanks as always for your eyeballs, comments and e-mails.

###

When making burgers, please realize that there is no such thing as a “turkey burger” or a “veggie burger” or a “portabella burger” or especially a “salmon burger”. Take it from someone who was a vegetarian for 5 years: all of those alleged burger substitutes are terrible, pale imitations of the real thing. So, please, don’t besmirch the good name of Burgermeister Meisterburger with those yucky fake burgers.

###

Thanks as always for reading. You can find all of my NaBloPoMo essays here. Other humor essays are here. Music essays are here. You can subscribe to this blog’s feed here and you can follow me on twitter here. And please tell your personal chef (just the non-vegans) to stop by.

###