Rather than taking the time to post about our Jamaica trip, I spent most of last night catching up on my own backed up blogroll. For most of the sites I track, I marked the posts as read and called it a day. But there were a few sites that I scanned a bit more thoroughly. One of those was Tastespotting. I can never resist some good food pics, and I always seem to find great recipes through that site.

This time, however, I found something other than recipes. I found this post asking people to list the foods they'd never let into their kitchens. The post was titled "Calling All Food Snobs," and I think it's meant to give foodies a place to rant about processed foods and box meals. But I come from a different place than those gourmands, and thus, have a very different list. (In fact, we have almost ALL of the items on the original post's list in our kitchen right now.)

Here are the ten things you'd never find in my kitchen (if my wife didn't bring them in, that is):

1. Soy Milk or other Soy products
2. Walnuts
3. Okra
4. Limburger Cheese
5. Fake salt
6. Cow Tongue or other Southern bizarro meats
7. Grits
8. Anchovies
9. Cherry tomatoes
10. Clean countertops and an empty sink

Sometimes I bookmark things that I find funny, with the intent of posting about them at a later date. But then I forget about them completely, thus depriving the Internet of more hilarity. Or sometimes, I do post about them, then forget to delete the bookmark.

I'm not sure which is the case here, but I just found a link to the following in my bookmarks. I think it's very apropos of what I do for a living:

Five ways to leverage the mobile thinkosphere

1. blogmobisodes
2. webmobinars
3. telestreamanogisodes
4. lividmobipostiscussions
5. netconvermomomobomasations

- from 5ives

It reminds me of that commercial for DirecTV where the corporate cable wonk suggests that the solution to overcoming their competitor's claims is to "Blog it out!"

For some reason, StumbleUpon (which I've just joined) allows you to take a free personality test and associate the results with your profile. I guess this is so that you can make new friends that are ONLY of the same personality type as yourself. I mean, no respectable ESFP wants to waste time talking to an INJR. What would be the point? They have nothing in common!

Okay, I just made up INJR because I'm too lazy to look at what the other possible letters are. Just like I'm too lazy to screen my friends by personality type. I'm lucky to have friends at all--I can't afford to whittle down the list based on a stupid quiz.

76

I stumbled upon this little timewaster yesterday, and wanted to share it. Fun though it may be, the quiz is badly named. Instead of "How Many Countries Can You Name in Five Minutes?" it should be called "How Many Countries Can You TYPE in Five Minutes?" And if anyone's seen my four-fingered method of typing, you'll know that my answer to that question is always going to be "Not as many as I could say out loud!"

Although I was slowing down a little, I wasn't even close to the bottom of my barrel of countries when the clock ran out on me. Even worse, the quiz had spit out some of the countries I listed due to silly things like punctuation (it disallows US Virgin Islands, in favor of U.S. Virgin Islands) or spelling (under pressure I couldn't get the L's and P's in Philippines sorted out, and called Equatorial Guinea Ecuadorial Guinea).

I never would've gotten this entire list, no matter how much time I had. In fact, I'm sure at least some of the countries listed are fictional. "Nagorno-Karabakh" is a nation? Right. Sounds more like a syndrome. And I'm not even going to look up "Ross Dependency." That's not a country. It's what Rachel was suffering from when Friends went off the air.

I knew going in that I'd suffer greatly when it came to naming African nations. We had to memorize every country on the African continent when I was in middle school. But after countless civil wars, those countries have changed names more times than an international jewel thief. What a waste of my seventh grade year. I could've been doing something constructive with that time, like trying to score my first French kiss.

Anyway, don't rub it in when you beat me...and you will. The most frustrating thing about this stupid quiz is that although geography is one of my worst subjects, I really felt like I was rolling when the sands ran out. I thought this was a chance to redeem myself for taking so long to get the blue pie piece every time I played Trivial Pursuit. Geographical glory just isn't in the cards for me.

I guess I'm better off sticking to Arts & Literature. I wonder what the blue pie piece is in the kids' version of the game?

A group within my company is in the process of creating a web survey that would give them statistical data on our audience's comedic preferences. The goal isn't to better know our audience, but really just to use this data for marketing and press releases. As in, they could send out a release or make an on-air spot saying "4 out of 5 viewers prefer jokes about people getting hit in the crotch," or "dentists from the northeast prefer relationship comedies, while lawyers in the west like sarcasm."

I'm not quite on board yet with the concept. I just don't see the value, especially when I know what they're paying for the development. But they'll hopefully prove me wrong and this thing will become a smash success. I don't mind being wrong when it helps the company pay my salary. There are shows or sites that we put out every year that I have no faith in. I'd love to be wrong all of the time about such concepts, since every success for the network helps my own financial cause.

Anyway, one of the struggles this group is running into while creating their "humor survey" application is that they want it to be scientifically accurate. Even though the goal is PR (with a sub-goal being to create a quiz/survey that users enjoy and will maybe even post results from--i.e. a meme), they seem to want this to be as accurate as possible. They want to create something that real doctors can sign off on so that they can quote said doctors in the spots and releases.

The problem with that is that the questions you need to ask for the sake of science aren't exactly the questions that make a quiz/survey fun. And the answers those questions give you aren't really the results people want to post on their blogs. I mean, how many people do you see with Myers-Briggs personality results on their sites? Now how many do you see with results from "Which Grey's Anatomy Character Are You?" or "What's your color?" quizzes? This comedy survey, despite the fact that it's going to live on a comedy network's site, is much more like the Myers-Briggs than like those other personality tests. I've taken a beta version of the survey, and at this point in its development, it's way too long and boring. I get paid to play with things like that, and I still barely made it through without quitting.

The good news is that the group making the survey knows it's not yet compelling. The bad news is they want to somehow fix it without skewing the scientific results. Time will tell if they're able to serve both masters--entertainment and research.

Which all leads me to the following: Today, I got a newsletter from OkCupid.com, a social networking/dating/quizzing site that we've done some work with in the past. Although I'm currently more of a Facebook guy (with a little Myspace on the side), I usually log into OK Cupid when I get their mailings, if there's something interesting to do. Today, there was a "what's your dating persona" test. Although I'm no longer in the dating scene, the weak comedy survey had me eager to take a more enjoyable test, so I dived right in.

My results (below) were less than accurate. They're really more reflective of how I was when I was single, probably due to the fact that I answered the dating questions as if I was actually in the dating world, trying to think back to that long ago time. (Yes, I was sort of a man-whore before my wife showed me a better way. Don't judge.) The persona it assigned to me was sort of funny, and the quiz was interesting to take. I'd probably recommend it to friends/family. I think it's a good example of how to write a survey/quiz/meme. Users don't care about scientific accuracy, do they? Web surfers want to kill time with enjoyable pursuits, and they want results that are easy to understand and worth talking about with their friends, not boring data that's only interesting to the company asking the questions.

Would you agree? What kinds of quizzes do you tend to take online? Do you like the pop culture-based, just-for-fun stuff, or would you rather take longer, more intricate and more accurate quizzes? I mean, I know there's room for stuff like that--I actually like taking scientifically accurate stuff once in a while. But would you want/expect to take something like that on a comedy website?

I'll let you know when the comedy survey is available to take. Let's all hope we get it right and it's worth taking. I'm looking forward to being proven wrong.

The Vapor Trail
Random Brutal Love Master (RBLM)

Here today, gone today. You are The Vapor Trail. Are you in a relationship now?

What about now?

Vapor Trails can be highly charismatic people--unpredictable, confident, and magnetic. You're experienced. You know how to handle yourself in a relationship, and many people appreciate that. Many people, all in a row.

You've had your share of blissful beginnings, to be sure. But things almost never turn out how you'd like, do they? The problem is you're never happy with someone for an extended period of time. Relate to the following:

Positive Feelings		HER
		YOU
Time

Vapor Trails especially need a girl who will laugh at their jokes. They're also the most likely male type to be haunted by serious regret.

FACT: A few of your exes, the ones you were best to, will always love you. Nice going.

Always avoid: The Intern (DGSD), The Maid of Honor (DGLM)

Consider: The Sudden Departure (RBLM)

Link: The Online Dating Persona Test

Following in the footsteps of Grabbing Sand, I took the Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz on gotoquiz.com.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats rose to the top of my list, without a single one of them ranking below a single Republican candidate. I'm pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control, anti-Iraq war, so that makes perfect sense to me. In fact, my results lined up pretty much exactly as I would've guessed, with one exception:

I have no idea who Chris Dodd is.

Seriously. I know I'm woefully ill-informed about the candidates. Although I'm leaning towards Obama at the moment, I know I need to do my homework in the next ten months before I can make an educated decision. But in my ill-informed state, I have to confess to not knowing who the heck Chris Dodd is. Take him off the list, though, and it's fairly accurate the rest of the way down.

89% Chris Dodd
86% Barack Obama
85% John Edwards
85% Hillary Clinton
82% Joe Biden
77% Mike Gravel
75% Dennis Kucinich
72% Bill Richardson
52% Rudy Giuliani
39% John McCain
31% Tom Tancredo
30% Mitt Romney
28% Mike Huckabee
21% Ron Paul
18% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

It would be funny to see how different my list is from the results the rest of my family or Alecia's family would get. With a few exceptions (Alecia's brother Rob, for example), I'm predicting the rest of our family members' lists would look like this one...turned upside down. :)

According to our research, you'll be dead by: April 2047 at age 75
probable cause: heart attack

Your Score: Pure Nerd

52 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 17% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!


Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

The Results ARE IN! You are:

Your above score was normalized against the average, so don't even
TRY to disagree with us. Science is certain, and so are we: you
are absolutely 74% Slutty.


Scored by OkCupid.com, free online dating: www.okcupid.com

Your Score: Laureate

I can't believe you scored 65 %!

Very well done! My hat is off to you, as you are more knowledgable about books and literary topics than most of the dregs you slog about with on a daily basis. But that is not your fault, let's just blame it on the Mass-media culture that has de-volved over the last 30 years.

The Famous First Lines Test written by penultimate1 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test