Xanax for pennies, sexual enhancement beyond comprehension and a free Rolex watch. What if, after all of these years, I finally took advantage of one of these too-good-to-be-true inbox offers? Odds are I’d lose money – maybe even my identity. But the sheer volume of spam messages I delete everyday makes me start to wonder: Can the repetition of these messages have a subliminal effect on our minds?

Often embedded in a primary object, subliminal messages are designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. They can often affect the subconscious or deeper mind, altering your course of action or attitude in later events.

Perhaps spam is the polar opposite of a positive affirmation, drilling our mind with feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness.

Have a good spam filter? Then you’re pretty safe. But even having to dip into a spam folder to delete messages, might be long enough for a subject line to catch your eye.

In 1974, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determined that subliminal advertising “intended to be deceptive.”

Since one of the main goals of subliminal messaging is to create familiarity with a brand or idea, it makes perfect sense to Jack of All Blogs that all of this spam is clouding our minds.

Many studies put the effectiveness of subliminal messaging at over 80%. Couple that with the fact that there are approximately 90 billion messages sent a day, and there’s a good chance you’ve already been effected.

Next time you question your self-esteem, manhood or need for prescription drugs, ask yourself who’s asking, you or your subconscious.

That is not a rhetorical question.

Ever since I strapped 16 inches of plastic around my chest, I haven’t been the same. At first I just humming some horrendous 70’s rock anthem that I had no idea where I picked up.

At night, when I closed my eyes, I seemed to be riding a colorful rollercoaster.

The worst part, however, came when I looked away from the TV after playing. The entire room was drifting up – or down – I’m really not sure. All I know is that it moves.

I can trace all of these symptoms to one grand event: My purchase of Guitar Hero 3 for Wii.

What can I say? The game is great. Despite mountains of hype, it’s managed to exceed my (always tempered) expectations.

But why did no one warn me about the side effects?

From a cough drop to a tissue, I can’t seem to buy anything these days that isn’t labeled with a list of warnings. And frighteningly, many of these are nowhere as addictive as GH3.

WARNING: If you play Guitar Hero you may randomly break into Foghat’s “Slow Ride.”

But it’s not the Tetris-like addictiveness that concerns me, it’s my darn eyes. I did a quick Yahoo! Answers search and am pleased to see that I am not alone, After playing two or three times, quite a few people seem to experience a total eye freak out when they look away from the screen. After a very long 10 seconds, your eyes appear to refocus and the room once again is the way it should be – still.

A harmless optical illusion or serious permanent damage?

Will an optometrist, neurologist or orderly please speak up? Cause I will not perform my encore until I get some facts.

See, it’s all fun and games until the Jack of All Blogs loses an eye. And while Guitar Hero is almost worth it, Foghat certainly ain’t.

Given our lofty status in the blogosphere, it was quite a surprise when Jack of All Blogs was called for jury duty. It seems no one is exempt, not even this opinionated blogger.

Thankfully, I was excused after only a single day. Rather than bellyache about how so many people shirk this single civic duty, I’d like to pose several questions and propose some improvements.

1) First Round, Web.

Upon receiving a summons you must check daily to see if your number comes up. Once it does you must appear at the general jury room. This is a large room with a several hundred-person capacity.

Sure, it’s decent enough. The seats are wide, there are computer terminals and plenty of magazines. But why on earth should I have to waste an entire day to wait to be called for a panel. You see, even if you have a doctor’s note or are unfit to serve on a jury, you must sit in this room all day long. It’s like a third-grade punishment.

“If one person goes home early, we’ll have to send home everyone early.”

Why can’t this initial screening process take place on the Web? In this computer age of Web cams and virtual meetings, there’s no reason this first tier can’t take place remotely. And if someone can’t afford the technology they may visit a library.

Are there any municipalities currently employing or exploring this?

2) On-Site Doctor.

Jury duty seems to bring out illnesses of all kinds. From the common cold to heavy-duty psychological claims, people pull out all the stops to wiggle out of jury duty. If I was running the show I would have a small medical staff on-site to check out people’s claims. These days, a note means nothing.

3) Permanent Jurors.

Qualifications: Open mind, ability to weigh facts, no knowledge of the case. Rather than look for these qualities over and over again in different people, maybe you can save time by just hiring a regular panel. God knows there are plenty of people looking for work.

Overall, I have to say the experience wasn’t as bad as it has been in the past. One thing was crystal clear: there are plenty of people who WANT to serve. Moving portions of the selection process to the Web would certainly save everyone time and money.

Oh, and speaking of money, parking cost me $27 for the day. Man, I never though I’d say this but it’s nice to be back at work.

Now I can sit back and enjoy a six-year reprieve. Hopefully by then I can just share my excuses online.

I remember when a Thanksgiving meal was a Thanksgiving meal.

Turkey. Check.
Stuffing. Check.
Cranberry sauce. Check.

But these days, everything and anything seems to be fair game (poultry pun intended).

Chickens. C’mon!
Duck. C’mon!
Tofurkey. No comment.

Listen people, I’m just as guilty as you are for watching our nation crown an Iron Chef, Top Chef and the Next Food Network Star. However, all of this fusion cooking has left us confused.

Maybe Martha Stewart learned all about Cauliflower Gratin With Endive in prison.

Or perhaps Guy Fieri wants to spread heart attacks across America with Fried Pepperoni Stuffing.

The agenda is unclear, but one thing is crystal: There is a War Against Thanksgiving.

Some claim that Christmas is under attack by religious-phobes. But I think the real target is Thanksgiving.

The fourth Thursday of November means more than a four-day weekend and monster savings. It represents tradition and family and food. Normal food. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, pumpkin pie. Heck, even mince meat pie.

Perhaps things started to slide downhill in the mid 80’s with the introduction of the Turducken. For some reason, people became intrigued about a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken.

What was wrong with just the freakin’ turkey? It worked just fine for hundreds of years, no?

Silly me. This is America, after all. And we need to constantly make things bigger and ‘better’ than ever before. God forbid we just let things be if there’s a buck to be made.

Oh, and if the Thanksgiving madness isn’t wacky enough, what about the Jones’ holiday collection of soda? Just in time for Christmas: Christmas Ham Soda, Christmas Tree Soda, Egg Nog Soda and Sugar Plum Soda. And Hanukkah Harry isn’t left out either! Latke Soda, Apple Sauce Soda, Chocolate Coins Soda and Jelly Doughnut Soda.

My stomach hurts. I’m not sure if it’s the annoyance of the bastardization of holidays or the sweet corn salsa relish I just put on my fried ant micro green salad.

Whatever you decide to eat this holiday season, here’s to happy digestion!

Here a hack, there a hack, everywhere a hack hack.

LifeHacks: Wanna be popular? Don’t try to be popular.

MoneyHacks: Wanna save money? Get one less haircut a year.

WorkHacks: Wanna find your dream career? Always be looking.

Here’s a novel concept for our hack-happy society: stop reading all of these hacks, step away from the keyboard and actually do something! You see, if you’re glued to your computer monitor, the only hack you need is “how to read your computer monitor.” Aside from reading left-to-right, there’s not much more to say. But these so-called productivity experts would find a way.

“Sitting up straight and tilting your head to the right will activate your tear ducts, thus lubricating your eyes and allowing you to read three letters more per minute – resulting in 11,733 more words read a year.”

Whatever, man. You can keep you 11,733 words. Let’s just say I’m all hacked out.

I’m a man of action. If I want to shave – I’ll shave. I don’t need to know how to make the blade last a day longer.

If I want to kill a fly – I’ll kill a fly. Flyswatters have been around since the beginning of time and I think they do the trick just fine.

If the lifehack genre was killed off, where would these “expert” writers go? Probably back to their day jobs flipping burgers.

And while I take issue with the writers, it’s really you, the reader, that I have a serious beef with. What is it about “5 Ways to Think Faster” that has you all click happy?

Don’t deny it.

Your humble author is a tremendous hypocrite – often relying on “lifehack” headlines to draw you in. I laugh as I count my number of unique visitors then cry from the shame of it all.

Let’s stop the madness.

You’re perfect just the way you are and the Jack of All Blogs will love you no matter what; even if you’re not the most productive kid on the block.

So let’s make a pact here and now that we’ll talk and read a lot less and DO a lot more.

Now please excuse me, the editors at JOAB have asked me to get started on my next entry – 7 Ways to Get the Most Out Of JOAB. Peace out!

If you’re still trying to work out that bloggers union deal, especially the ‘work from home work out’ $tarbuck$ part of the contract, and finances are rather limited and you don’t manage it to squat days long that posh franchise with the thousands varieties of coffee-imitations… fear not.
Especially not if you’re UK based.

McDonalds comes to your rescue. Starting today.

With the launch of free Wi-Fi access in McDonald’s restaurants from Monday, we can provide the ultimate work break for UK employees to conveniently access the worldwide web. From the comfort of our restaurants, Brits will be able to come out of hiding and surf freely, for free.
[emphasis: waldorf]

I can perfectly imagine how it will feel to blog from home, sat on a hard wooden bench with a clinical table, fries and a tray in front of me. Not to mention the oh so del.icio.us iceberg salad and in ketchup drenched cucumbers falling on my keyboard. No, I don’t want my menu to be maximized, but do you have a power outlet where I can plug in? And maybe a cushion too, because those benches are so comfortable.

Soon coming near to you, 4 Dell equipped bloggers, hosted on blogspot, downloading their free music thanks to McDonalds FreeFi and Ronald ‘Beta’ McDonald 2.0.

Little by little I noticed that the once so-popular and hyped Facebook platform has turned in to a perfect spam box, spam with friendly greetings of… your friends.

Day after day my mailbox is flooded with spam messages, clickthrough messages, every time requiring me to visit the FB website. Sometimes just to read a message or discover that someone has added a picture. Basically the same thing I would have discovered anyway, when trying to follow my friend. That is whenever I log in. Daily actually.

And when I log in… then I am greeted by another spam box, the requests.
A little more than 24 hours of facebox absence generated this nice list, as seen in the screenshot at the right. This list obliging me to go on and on with my rant, because the screenshot is more than 700 pixel high. 700+ Pixels of useless spam, cyberwaste waiting to be added to the list of 32 applications I already have installed. And don’t use except for 4 or 5.

A never-ending list of applications, because most of time someone has been flirting cybervirtually flirting, more than just poke, and I HAVE TO add the application to see what they gossiped about me or check if they gave me a slippery banana or a wet nipple growing in my garden to produce endless bread for the rest of my life as a pirate bitten by zombies who lost the battle against the ninjas.

Not to forget the many notifications landing in my so conventional mailbox, because XXX wants me to add a slideshow to my facebox profile… just because she is too damn lazy to click the link to my flickr account in my facebook profile. sigh

Luckily facebox can be rather satisfying, ego-galaxy-stroking even, too… because right now I am… see the second screenshot.
If only they would have spammed me to let me know that!

I haven’t been here for quite some time, mainly because I’m still negotiating my network blogger deal, but today something horrible happened, and we should all forget the blogosphere for a second, a minute.

Angelo, who contributed often here at JOAB was struck by a family tragedy.
I still can’t find any words for what happened, but why don’t you just go over to his blog and join us in our prayers for Angelo and his family at this time.

Many thanks.

franky.

I used to think DMOZ is the holy grail of web directories. Turns out I’m wrong. Being controlled by human beings, DMOZ is also prone to—and is in all likelihood riddled with—corruption, just like the rest of the intarwebs. Jeremy Shoemaker writes about his experience with a DMOZ editor attempting to extort five grand out of him or else shoemoney.com would be removed from the listings.

A while back I got a email from a guy claiming to be a DMOZ editor saying that I had to pay him $5,000.00 or he would have my site: shoemoney.com removed from the dmoz.

I thought nothing of it…. then today I got a email from him saying it was removed and I might want to rethink not paying him. I thought I would check just for grins.

It was removed… WOW
...
Google seriously its time for you to aquire a business directory that has paid inclusion. There is so much porn and spam in the dmoz its a huge black eye for you. Business.com just got scooped up but there is another one that might be able to get got for a nice price cough best of the web cough

DUMP DMOZ

What was that again about Google saying paid links were bad?

Steve Rubel, power marketer raises a good point in yesterday’s entry, Building an Online Identity Through Lifestreams.

Where I will publish in a year’s time is anyone’s guess. However, what you can bank on is that I will have even more community accounts than I do now.

Right now, just as most other bloggers, the number of online profiles I have reminds me of the early days of domaining. You never have enough of them and any semi interesting, or worse even hyped, platform soon has you as member too.

But what’s the point of all those profiles? Agreed, there’there’s Facebook, where one can add almost everything. Or just stick to a Facebook profile and MySpace-ify the formerly geek cyber space of students.
But does exclusive Facebook networking alone satisfy the blogger or does one have to jump the bandwagon and spend valuable time on every possible network? And how much time does all this cost?

But most of all, where will you blog next year? Will any of those profiles, or services such as tumblr, replace your blog?