Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots » Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots

From The Blog To The Stage

Jenée — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:54:43 +0000

Last week for the first time, I tried converting bits from my blog into my standup act and some are actually keepers. So thanks to all you readers for keeping me writing regularly. I taped some sets and put a few bits online. Here’s one you may recall from a recent post about 7-11. I guess you could call it “live-action blogging”:

If you care to see any others, you can view them on MySpace.com. I’ll probably be adding more soon.

Tags: video, videos, standup, standup comedy video, 7-11, humor, funny

My First Blog “Duh”

Jenée — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:47:50 +0000

Those of you who have read my blog for awhile may remember the “duh” threat I issued (“Calling Out Idiots”) in regard to comments. Up to this point, I’ve never had to use it, which may be because the readers who stuck around get what I’m writing or it may be because most people simply stopped leaving comments out of fear. Well, the time has finally come to leave my first “duh” and it goes out to Marie‘s response to “A Family That Smokes Together, Stays Together (Until The Kids Rat Ã¢â‚¬ËœEm Out)”. Since this is the first “duh,” I’ll explain:

In the post, I wrote that I was curious about the fact that the 23-year-old man was referred to as the father rather than the stepfather of the 11 and 12-year-olds. And Marie wrote, “Well if the oldest kid is 12, it means Carlson, who is 11 years older, could Ã‚Â¤technicalyÃ‚Â¤ be the fatherÃ¢â‚¬Â¦”

I can understand that some people might think such a complex mathematical equation might be a challenge for someone who attended the Unversity of Hawaii (“You can’t spell ‘duh’ without ‘UH’”). I’m aware that it’s not the most difficult school to get into. Other colleges require extensive forms and essays. At UH, you can call in your application and they ask one question: “Is Hawaii one of the 50 states?” As long as you answer either “Yes” or “I’m not sure, I was absent that day,” you’re in (I threw them a curveball and said it was the 51st state after Washington D.C. They didn’t know how to verify it and put me in the accelerated program). So I admit I went to a crappy school but there’s a calculator on my cell phone, which helped me determine the father’s age at the time of the oldest child’s birth.

I also attended public schools growing up, which means I may not have been properly educated in biology. But, like most red-blooded American idiots, I read the gossip rags and am aware that Mary Kay LeTourneau became impregnated by a 12-year-old boy. My trusty calculator showed me that 12 is one year older than 11, which is a pretty short time frame and therefore I gathered that an 11-year-old boy could possibly reproduce.

That all said, it was never a question of whether the man could be the biological father, I just found it unlikely and wondered if the omission of the “step” was because he actually was their biological father, if he was their adoptive father or if it was just because the reporter was a graduate of UH’s journalism program.

But thanks, Marie, and congrats on receiving the first “duh.”

Tags: university of hawaii, mary kay letourneau, uh, 50 states, duh

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Weird Tag

Jenée — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:31:27 +0000

I got my first “tag” from Kristi at A Beautiful Mess. The way I recall the game of tag as a kid was a boy would touch me and say, “You’re it” then I’d turn around, kick him in the balls and say, “You’re it.” (I always blamed my bad early luck with boys on my height and freckles but maybe the long-term testicular damage I caused had something to do with it). No balls to kick in this tag, I’m just supposed to list six weird things about myself. I think the weirdest thing is that I had a hard time coming up with this list. Gotta love denial.

1. I like ranch dressing on just about everything but salads.

2. I’m an excellent speller but can’t spell announcement (anouncement?) or traveling (travelling?) without looking them up.

3. I’m always cold but I get sweaty pits.

4. I’m the third of four kids, with my twin brother being just a few minutes younger than me. But I always considered myself a middle kid. It was only a few years ago I realized I’m technically a “youngest child.”

5. I twirl my pasta counterclockwise. My twin brother’s the only other rightie I know of who does that.

6. I didn’t tie my shoelaces properly until I was 23. Relearning such a task at that age is a lot more difficult than you’d imagine.

Apparently I’m supposed to tag six other people but since there were no promises of riches if I do or threats of eternal suffering if I don’t, I think I’ll just keep it here and anybody who wants to play along can post their list.

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Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay

Jenée — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:17:44 +0000

I want to put in a plug for one of the funniest blogs I’ve come across, which happens to belong to my friend, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor. It’s called “Baby on Bored” and primarily deals with her experiences as a new mom. Normally, that topic would be far from my area of interest, but Stefanie writes from the perspective of someone who’s not the “mommy” type. She’s only a “cunt” or two away from uptight readers calling Child Protective Services on her.

In addition to her great blog, she has a new book out called “Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay…And Other Things I Had To Learn As A New Mom” (available at Amazon). She’ll be hawking the book on tomorrow morning’s Today Show. Since there’s not much chance I’ll catch her appearance at that insane hour, if anybody watches it, please tell me something she said so I can quote it back to her and tell her she was fabulous.

Anyway, check out her blog and buy her book. She’s a degenerate poker player and a comic so she needs all the sales she can get.

***Update*** Stefanie got bumped from tomorrow’s Today Show for some late breaking news guest so they’re pre-taping her segment for airing next week. The good news is her blog has not been bumped and is available for reading right now.

Tags: sippy cups are not for chardonnay, stefanie wilder taylor, today show, baby on bored, poker player, comic

[Conversational Reading->http://esposito.typepad.com/con_read/2005/10/sippy_cups_are_.html]

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Cybergeek Stuff

Jenée — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:38:33 +0000

Open Trackback Alliance

I’m now an official member of the Open Trackback Alliance (keep reading- it’s even geekier than it sounds). What that means is every Friday I will publish a post that anybody can trackback to with their own post and have a link and excerpt for it displayed on the front page of my blog almost instantly. The purpose is two-fold: 1) To showcase people’s best recent posts and 2) To exchange links, which increases both sites’ search engine visibility and traffic. What I’ve found is that the sort of people who participate in this exchange tend to have very well-written blogs (even if some of their political views make my skin crawl. But that’s beside the point). It’s actually a great way to discover interesting new blogs.

I won’t go into all the details about how the OTA works as you can find all that in the FAQ (while you’re there, check out the rest of OTA founder Samantha Burns’ blog- she’s a smart, funny chick). All you really need to know is that to participate, you just have to include a link to this site (preferably to my homepage) and send me a trackback from your post to the weekly post designated for open trackbacks. If you’re not familiar with trackbacks or how to send them with your blogging software, again, I direct you to the FAQ. I will post the specifics, such as the address for sending trackbacks in Friday’s post. I particularly hope some of the regulars here will choose to participate.

Technorati’s Top 100 Favorite Blogs

One reason this is a good time for people to participate in the OTA is that “People are Idiots” is number two on Technorati’s favorite’s list so it’s sending a bit of extra traffic my way. It’s not the kind of traffic I pulled in for my Blogjacking efforts but it’s decent and I’m happy to share the traffic if I can. To explain: Technorati is the number one search engine for blogs and they recently implemented the capability for members to add various sites to their Technorati favorites (thus the link that’s been prominently displayed over on the sidebar). I’ve been hovering at number two on the list for awhile. I’m also at #10. I think when I transferred my blog over a few weeks ago, it doubled up my domain’s favorites. I either look really cool or really stupid for having two listings on there. I think it’s the latter. If you haven’t already added my site, it would be kind of nifty if you did. And “nifty” is one of those special words I don’t just throw around haphazardly. I’d kind of like to be at number one because it’s looking like it could be my last chance to make any sort of mark in life. When I die, someone can say about me, “She spent one week at #1 on Technorati’s favorite list.” Then everybody will whisper, “What the hell is Technorati?”

What do you get for adding me to your favorites? Nothing! What do I get in return? Absosmurfly nothing! There’s won’t be any coverage of the ascension in People Magazine, there won’t be a fancy awards ceremony and ball. It’s just one of those things where if I’m gonna be #2, I might as well be #1. Yaknowwadaimean? And I only need 12 additions at this point. If you do add me, please use this here link because the url is slightly different than my homepage url (which, unfortunately, is the one at #10). If I make it to #1, I promise to stay away from religion (for a little while, anyway) and write some funny stuff. Sound good?

Tags: cybergeek, technorati, trackback, open trackback alliance, technorati favorites, samantha burns, links, blogs

[Customer Servant->http://customerservant.com/2006/03/23/open-trackback-time/], [Liberal Common Sense->http://liberalcommonsense.blogspot.com/2006/03/its-thursday-time-to-share-some-link.html], [TMH's Bacon Bits->http://www.tmhbaconbits.net/2006/03/23/bbop-68/]

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It’s Alive!

Jenée — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:52:58 +0000

Some people may have noticed that my site’s been down for almost two days. Or maybe nobody noticed. But please don’t tell me that so I can continue with my grand delusion that people went into panic mode when they couldn’t access my blog.

I was in the middle of writing a post when suddenly the download manager popped up asking me if I wanted to download pages instead of viewing them. I sent my piece-of-crap web hosting company (not to be confused with the piece-of-crap web hosting company I ditched just two months ago) about seven help tickets marked “urgent” over the course of 24 hours and couldn’t get even a reply! It took until the fifth ticket before I included my first angry “fuck,” which I think showed a lot of restraint considering my site and email weren’t working.

Their website claims, “You can speak to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.” What they don’t mention is that you can speak to them 24 hours a day, but they probably won’t be listening and they certainly won’t be responding. Being ignored aggravates me to no end. They could have said they were working on the problem or they could have said they didn’t know what the problem was. They could have even blamed it all on me. But they should have said SOMETHING. I finally had to switch to a new web host and wait for the DNS servers to switch over. Let me tell you, once you switch from html to php and SQL, you want to find a good host and stay there forever. Figuring out how to configure that stuff is a bitch.

So now 36 hours has passed since I first wrote them and still nothing. My chances of getting a refund of the balance paid don’t look good. Where’s that Virtual Bullet when you need it?

Tags: website, website hosting, php, sql

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Moving (Again)

Jenée — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:56:12 +0000

“People are Idiots” is moving again. Sorta. I decided to make the blog my homepage since I really wasn’t adding mini blogs the way I’d hoped. But rather than force everybody to update their links and bookmarks, I’ve decided to keep the old one put as somewhat of a mirror.

If you decide to continue reading the blog in the old location, the only differences will be that the Blogger comments will be closed and the comment link will take you to the homepage’s posts where the comments will be displayed. Also, I may not add all the mini blogs to the old location. You can find those in the keyword category link, “Mini Blogs.”

The new location has some options I think are pretty cool. For one thing, there’s a “recent comments” module where you can see some of the latest comments, even if they’re for older posts. You can also subscribe to the feed for all comments or subscribe just to individual post comments so you can track replies to your words of wisdom from your news reader (fear not, I’ve imported all the old posts and comments so they’re still available).

Read it in the old location, read it in the new location. It really doesn’t matter. But thanks for reading it wherever you do.

New permanent home for “People are Idiots”: www.jenee.net

Tags: blogger, blog, comments

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Game Over

Jenée — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 08:43:00 +0000

All good things must come to an end and so it is with my reign as queen of the blogjackers. Apparently the folks at Blogger finally got their acts together and fixed the recently updated list. Damn competence burns me again! And I think I was finally getting close to that coveted death threat after my last post. So once again, this blog will just be me talking to myself. Actually, I have to say that while my three links on Blogger’s Dashboard did bring in a lot of traffic, it was nowhere near the kind of numbers you’d expect from such high profile listings.

I never really cared much about the amount of traffic I had prior to the windfall, but now that I’ve wasted time shamelessly cluttering the site with stupid ads, I feel I need to justify the wasted time by figuring out how to get new click happy folks to my blog (I might as well admit the Mesothelioma post was both a challenge and a joke. Check out this to understand why people’s explanation of it were counterproductive to my purpose. I ain’t stupid). I think I might even turn to whoring myself on (ugh) MySpace. So you can probably expect a lot more changes to the site in the near future.

For the most part, I write this blog for me. But at the same time, I like that it sort of keeps me in touch with the few family members who read it. And, of course, it’s rewarding when people who stumble upon it find it entertaining and/or interesting. As I mentioned in a previous post, this blog has renewed my long-lost interest in writing and I really appreciate those who have showed continued support for this endeavor. I probably won’t discover another nefarious way to bring mass visitors to my site but I do hope to provide the occasional worthwhile post to keep the current regulars coming back.

Tags: blogger, myspace, mesothelioma

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Calling Out Idiots

Jenée — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 05:27:00 +0000

There seems to be some confusion as to the nature of this blog. It’s called “People are Idiots” because I primarily discuss the idiotic behaviors I encounter on a regular basis. But judging by a few of the comments to my posts, some people seem to think this blog is “People for Idiots,” like it’s some sort of group that supports idiots. While I would be happy to accept any donations on behalf of Jessica Simpson, Anna Nicole Smith and George Bush, they won’t receive the money and sending such a donation will only add you to their ranks.

I appreciate people taking the time to leave their comments, I really do, so I think I should clear up some things. The first being that I am not an idiot. Sure, I have my moments but they’re far enough apart for me to not qualify as being an idiot. If I say something in my blog that seems totally absurd or if a solution is painfully obvious, trust me, I know about it. Sometimes I take a little poetic or comedic license when I write. Including a bunch of disclaimers or explanations would take away what little humor I have to offer. That’s not to say that I never get things wrong, just that if the average moron on the street knows what’s correct, then I do too. Ask if you’re not sure.

If I claim ignorance on a topic like, oh, say, Mesothelioma, it’s not because I don’t know how to learn more about it. I’m sure that the 20 or so people who offered explanations of Mesothelioma through comments were trying to be helpful. But since the mere mention of the word caused a dozen or so “Learn More About Mesothelioma” ads to pop up on that page, I wasn’t lacking for convenient, expert resources- even if I wasn’t already well versed in the workings of a Google search. Then again, maybe the comments weren’t attempts at being helpful but rather a “screw you” to me after I said I didn’t want to know more about it.

That all said, I’ve deleted most of the recent offenders to save some embarrassment but from now on, I’m calling people out. If someone wants to point out the obvious, I’m going to respond with the simplest, yet most effective retort ever: “Duh.” Now, I don’t want to scare people away from leaving comments, so I’ve added a little “Duh” semi-immunity: I’ll limit my abuse toward those who use the simplest, yet most effective excuse ever: “I was drunk.” Just preface your comment with ***DRUNK COMMENT*** and I’ll cut you some slack. Notice I said “some” slack because there are certain levels of idiocy that go beyond mere drunkenness.

Tags: idiots, blog+comments, mesothelioma, anna+nicole+smith, jessica+simpson, george+bush

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You’re Not Gonna Believe This

Jenée — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 06:55:00 +0000

I was finishing up today’s post when an email brought to my attention the fact that my blog is missing the “flag?” button. Now, it’s possible that the Blogger powers-that-be stumbled upon my blog (which isn’t hard to do these days), realized the enormous social importance of this blog (through such topics as the American Idol premiere, Paris Hilton’s smashup and Robbie Kneivel’s sex life) and decided to rid me of the oppressive judgment measure other Blogger users are subjected to.

But since I don’t live in Never Never Land, I know that didn’t happen.

Instead, it appears that I’m the recipient of some flagging (derived from the words “fag” and “flogging”) which is done by closed-minded sheep boinkers (although, it could have been done by a friend, in which case, that’s pretty funny).

I was curious if the flagging was due to my blog’s content or my “increased visibility within Blogger.” So I checked out the other blogs occupying the recently updated list. The first three sites all had their flags in place. Then I got to “Poker Abby Teaches Poker.” I wanted that page almost as much as I wanted “Lesbian Therapy.” It, too, didn’t have a flag. In fact, it didn’t have any page at all! You guessed it… I am seizing the world one recently updated blog at a time! And it never ceases to crack me up.

I figured I was already pushing it with the two other blogs pointing here. But I’m not quite ready to get rid of “My Blog” so I decided to keep the new site in it’s usual location and continue in the tradition of the old Poker Abby’s advice blog. However, it’s no longer advice on playing poker, it’s just advice coming from a poker player. As you can guess, this ain’t Dear Abby’s kind of advice. For the two of you who don’t already know the way to the page go to: Poker Abby. (Stop by and submit a question)

As for any further conquering, I do believe this is it. I’m sure by this time next week, I’ll no longer have a Blogger account, though I don’t think I’ve actually broken any rules. Regardless, flag me all you want- this blog’s not going anywhere.

Tags: blogger+flag, blogger, american+idol, paris+hilton, robbie+knievel, dear+abby

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