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I work at an online ad agency. We have clients. Those clients pay us to manage their online advertising campaigns. Google has just scolded me and removed one of my client’s ads because I used a word in an advertisement they felt was “in violation of their policies and guidelines”. When Google takes down one of our ad campaigns, it hurts our client’s sales and therefore threatens my very livelihood. So you’ll forgive me if I endulge myself and share some of the the details with you now.

One of our clients is an electrical supply manufacturer. They make things like cable ties, butt splice connectors, wire markers, block spades, heat shrink tubing and fork terminals. Did you spot the offensive word there, folks? Not so fast, butty.

A block spade is some sort of a cable connector/insulator and is in wide use by electicians and contractors everywhere. This is also the term that Google felt offensive enough to warrant abruptly stopping my client’s sales of last night by removing their ads from their almighty publishing network.

I can see you’re confused. But then again, so was I. Let me try and explain.

“Spade” – on it’s own and only in certain circumstances – is an antique racial slur. When you’re referring to a poker game or planting a tree, it’s a perfectly acceptable facet of the King’s English. Dictionary definitions include: “sturdy digging tool”, “black, leaf-shaped figure on certain playing cards” and “castrated man or beast”. It can even be used as a verb when describing the act of digging.

Calling an African American a “spade” is something your Grandfather might have done right before cranking up his Model-T Ford or cranking one out to Betty Page. My point is, it’s not even a racial epithet that’s in use any more. If Google is penalizing electrical supply manufacturers for using the word, in an obviously non-pejorative format, I sincerely pity the garden tool and playing card industries. Oh, and Western civilization.

1980 was a great year. Post-It notes and the Sony Walkman were introduced, Reagan was elected President and Christina Aguilera, Nelly and Chelsea Clinton were born. Yes, t’was a truly glorious and defining year in human history.

At 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. I was 7 years old at the time and remember watching it on TV well. Helen is back in the news again, and I wonder if I’m the only person who’s a little concerned that residents of Washington State seem to have have completely forgotten what happened 24 years ago.

• 57 people were killed as a result of the eruption. Of these, 21 bodies were never recovered from the blast zone.
• 7,000 big game animals, 12 million Chinook and Coho salmon, and millions of birds and small mammals died in the eruption.
• The massive ash cloud grew to 80,000 feet (18 kilometers) in 15 minutes and reached the east coast in 3 days. Although most of the ash fell within 300 miles of the mountain finer ash circled the earth in 15 days and may continue to stay in the atmosphere for many years.

Scientists have been watching the mountain closely since last week when increased lava flow and other seismic data led officials to evacuate the surrounding 5 mile area. Friday’s activity has been described as a “hiccup”, and five miles may seem excessive to some people. But I’d like to again draw your attention to the fact that the ash cloud, which would be responsible for the bulk of any fatalities, spread 18km in 15 minutes back in 1980. It takes me less time to clean my apartment. And a lot less time time to make love to my imaginary girlfriend who sometimes visits me from Niagara Falls.

This “hiccup” is also the most activity that’s been reported at the site since May, 1980.

Keep an eye on the Mount St. Helens Volcano-Cam and cross your fingers on behalf of these clueless cougars. And maybe see if we can get Nelly and Christina to headline the on-site Mount St. Helen’s benefit that’s due to kick off 14.5 seconds before the lava starts spraying.

The dog sweater knitting pattern site that Janet and I have been working on finally broke it’s little doggie cherry and got a Google Page Rank. And it’s ended up with a rating of 5/10 which is no small feat for a new site. I am writing about this for two reasons:

1.) I am a tremendous dork and am actually really excited.

2.) Janet has informed me that I am no longer allowed to bother her about when we’re going to get together to finish the site.

So folks, please – if you know my sister, phone, fax, email or IM her today and ask her why DogGoneKnit.com still isn’t finished. She’ll then tell you to f*ck off. But better you than me.

It’ll be funny. I swear. Grr. Not Brr.

I just heard this awful piece of news from a friend of mine who works for CNN. He is currently in a “news gathering trailor in cleveland for the VP debates” and it just came through the wire.

I need a moment to compose myself and will write more later.

OK. Later: Apparently my happy thoughts bought him an extra week, but that’s a small consolation. If you need a laugh, listen to this. And I posted these in a comment last week, but I think a lot of you may have missed them. Here are my all time favorite Rodney Dangerfield jokes for you to commiserate and commemorate:

>> I tell you, with my doctor, I don’t get no respect. Well, I told him I’ve swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. He told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.

>> I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back!

>> Some dog I got too. We call him Egypt because he leaves a pyramid in every room.

>> My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

>> I’ll tell ya, my wife and I, we don’t think alike. She donates money to the homeless, and I donate money to the topless!

>> When I played in the sandbox the cat kept covering me up.

>> I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.

And my all time favorite: >> A girl phoned me and said, “Come on over. There’s nobody home.” I went over. Nobody was home!

So long Rodney and thanks for all the laughs. You’ll always have my utmost repect.

“I really didn’t want his signature, I wanted his life. And I ended up taking both.”

Mark Chapman shot and killed John Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in NYC on December 9th, 1980. Chapman had been lurking most of the evening and had gotten Lennon to sign a copy of Double Fantasy while he was leaving. Several hours later, John and Yoko returned and Chapman, who had been waiting patient/insanely shot him five times with a .38 revolver. Chapman calmly waited to be arrested, Lennon died on the way to the hospital to be admitted instead to the morgue, and New York City rallied in stunned silence around the crime scene.

Chapman has now been in jail for 25 years – as long as he was old when the murder took place – and has a parole hearing on October 4th. Glad to see he put the time to good use in the weight room. Officials are worried that if parole is granted, Chapman will face the wrath of Lennon fans still angry and unwilling to give peace a chance after a quarter of a century.

Why do they fear for Chapman’s safety? Let’s start with the fact that there are a myriad of international websites calling for his immediate execution. People all over the world are waiting with itchy trigger fingers, and cyanide-soaked copies of Catcher in the Rye, for Mark David Cartman.. er… Chapman – to be released into their clutches.

You know what they call that? Instant Karma.

This my 80th post. Wow. To all the non-believers out there, I guess I’m officially blogtastic. Or bloginine. Or a blogiot. Or whatever. Anyways, in keeping with this article’s questionable beginning so far, I found an enormous archive of cheesy, corny and funny pick-up lines. I have painstakingly read through them all (There’s about 500) and selected the best of the worst. And hey – it’s Saturday. So get out your notebooks boys and try spitting some of these tonight.

>> Are you a parking ticket? (What?) You got fine written all over you.

>> Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?

>> My name is ____. Remember it, bcause you’ll be screaming it later.

>> Did you hear the latest health report? You need to up your daily intake of vitamin ‘me’.

>> Don’t walk into that building — the sprinklers might go off!

>> Giant polar bear (What?) It broke the ice.

>> You’ve been a bad girl/boy. Go to my room.

Alright, so maybe they’re not all that and a bag of chips. I used to teach pick-up lines (particularly #3) to an 8-year-old I knew when I was a bartender at The Hind’s Head of Bray in England. Then I’d set him loose on the female populous of the pub. It was really funny. Until one afternoon he started trying them out on his mother, who was also my boss.

I got the Sunday morning shift that week.

Between the ages of 10-13, whenever my mother would leave the house I’d dash upstairs and squirt a bunch of ketchup onto a coffee saucer. Then I’d bring it back down to the finished basement which was basically the “Dave Zone”. I was strictly forbidden to have “blood matches” with my rubber WWF wrestling figures, so this practice always had to be performed on the down-low.

I’d pit two dolls against eachother within my plastic WWF ring, and invariably one of the wrestlers would introduce a foreign object (usually Andre The Giant) and the ketchup would start flying. Pomegranate seeds also worked well for this purpose, but were only in season once a year and similarly banned from the basement.

Upon hearing my mother’s car return to the driveway I’d rush back upstairs, rinse the evidence off the toys and my forearms, and go back to my Commodore 64 which was usually downloading a primitive wrestling game on my 500 baud Pocket Modem. Dave, what’s changed you ask?

Well, I don’t follow wrestling anymore (as far as you know) but I did discover a disturbing list that I want to share with you. It seems that Ray Traylor, a.k.a. The Big Boss Man, died earlier this week. And of course I knew Andre and Owen Heart had met with untimely deaths. But what I did not know, is that people in this pugilistic profession have been dropping like flies. And not just from steroids and their repercussions – from all kinds of nasty accidents.

For example, did anyone else know that Rick Rude, Davey Boy Smith and The Junkyard Dog are all currently pushing up turnbuckles? I didn’t. Memories of my childhood just dropped a flying elbow on me. Have a look for yourself here.

“One of the reasons Brando was a great star was that he never followed the form book, but lived his life spontaneously, personally and sincerely.” – Roger Ebert

When Marlon Brando died July 1st 2004 at 80 years of age, I had not yet crossed over into bloggerdom. His ashes were scattered today – half in Death Valley California and the other half on the Tahitian island he bought in 1962 (insert blizzard joke here). So I wanted to take this opportunity to mark the occasion.

Here’s what must be amazing about being an enormous (no pun intended – Marlon was still fairly fit in the 60s) celebrity. You can do the most outrageous, impulsive things. Marlon filmed Mutiny on the Bounty on the island, called Tetiaroa, in 1962. After principal photography wrapped, he married one of his co-stars (Tarita Teriipaia) – and then bought the island.

“Me filmy. Me likey. Me stayey. I’ll take the tanned broad, too.”

I’ll miss Marlon. He is first on a very short list of actors who defined the artform. Up until his death, he was giving in-house (and I mean his house – which he never left, ever) acting lessons to established A-listers like Sean Penn and Nick Nolte. The list of restaurants that would permit Marlon to partake of their all-you-can-eat-buffet is probably… also… very… short. Sigh.

That’s what you refer to as a “low-hanging fruit” joke. But Brando was into humor at its most very basic – flatulence – so he’d probably let me get away with it. Have a safe trip on that last Streetcar, Stanley. You’re the best that ever was.