Unexcused absences

Hey everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates, but a perfect storm of events happened to prevent any posts.

1) My wireless broke.
2) I went on a business trip.
3) I'm lazy.

Luckily, two of these problems are solved. However, the third one isn't so unless a miracle happens, there will be no golden umbrella award this week. Again. I know, I suck.

Golden Umbrella go Braugh

I'm coming to you live from Not Tucson to bring you this week's award. Yes loyal reader, even though I am miles away from home, I am using my break time to lug my laptop around looking for a wireless connection and post this. That is the type of dedication that you have come to deserve, and I intend to deliver. Unfortunately, I don't think you deserve the dedication that involved me getting up earlier than the 3 fucking o'clock I had to get up and post this. That's just crazy.

Speaking of dedication, I don't think you realize what the average nomination process involves. It goes something like this...

1) Check emails and comments for good candidates.
2) See emptiness.
3) Cry.
4) Grab bourbon.
5) Start looking through hundreds of blogs.

This is where I want to stop. Have you ever looked through this many blogs? It sucks. Most of them are horrible. It just sucks the soul out of me. It would probably break a lesser man. That is why step 4 is so important. But you know the old saying, "You've got to kiss a lot of frogs to find one who will suck your dick." I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.

Which brings us to this week. In honor of my traveling on the day of the award ceremony, we are going to have a first. That's right, the Golden Umbrella is going international. This week's winner comes from the country that gave us red headed boxers, potato famines, and whiskey. Mmmm, sweet whiskey. Buckle up people, we're going to Ireland.

Govstooge is the author of the autobiographical blog The Uncivil Servant's Rant. It's a blog about her trials and tribulations at work. Seeing as my own blog got its humble beginnings as a blog bitching about work, I can relate, even though I have no idea what a civil servant is. It's very educational. For example, I am learning how to swear and insult in Ireland from this site. I'm just dying to call someone a luddite today. Plus, she brings the funny in her posts. A very worthy winner.

So back to the rules. As usual, in order to be added to my esteemed 'Winners of "Umbrella's Blogs That Don't Suck" award (AKA the Golden Umbrella)' list, you must make an acceptance speech in the comments section. You can look at the past winners to see the type of quality you are up against. But you wouldn't have won if I didn't think you were up to the task. So congrats Govstooge, and stop by to accept your award.

This will look good surrounded by green

Loose ends

This isn't going to be a very coherent post. I'm just updating some things that are still hanging.

It appears that my brilliant idea for my profile picture isn't going to work. I began some investigative research, and I have yet to find a urinal high enough that I could squeeze under. All of the other concerns are still in play. I may have to break down and get photoshop to do some 21st century magic to make this work.

For only the second time in the history of this blog, I wrote a post that got an unexpected amount of feedback via email. The first one was my rant about blogspot, which apparently touched a nerve, both positive and negative, with a lot of people. The second one was my recent tales about my daughter's Academic Decathlon. I checked my email yesterday, and found quite a few comments about this post. "Oh great" I thought. "I've got a bunch of irate parents and/or kids pissed at me for making fun of the dorks." However, I was quite wrong. They were from parents of a team in California, and they really LIKED it. And this isn't just any team, it's only the defending national freaking champions.

So I was very pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. But then I got to wondering. How in the world did they find my site? I know, you're thinking "Umbrella, you have readership in the thousands, the odds are high that one of them would have a kid involved." Ah loyal reader, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but my readership is not as high as the quality of this site would indicate. I don't advertise my site around, so I'm quite clueless as to how they stumbled upon this particular rant. Let's face it, parents of genius children are not exactly the demographic that my writing is slanted towards. So if any of you have stuck around and are still checking this out, let me know how you found this site either via comment or email. The curiosity is killing me.

New Friday Feature. Family Fun!

Back when I started this blog a couple of years ago, I was using that "NEXT BLOG" button to check out other people to see what was going on. It's a cool idea, but lacking in execution, as I wrote about.

Fast forward to 2009. I decided to go through this exercise once again. Much has changed since then, but not necessarily for the better. It turns out I have a new list of problems with this method.

1) Blogs not in English. This is a big problem for me. I realize that in many other places, English is not the first language of choice. However, I am an ugly American, and have not bothered to learn any other languages. Can't I get an option to exclude other language blogs?

2) Blogs that are just pictures. This is stupid. There is already a site designed especially for this.

3) Sites that steal my awesome URL. Yes, I realize I've already mentioned this. And no, I didn't find this using the NEXT BLOG button. I'm just still upset.

4) Sites that don't have the "NEXT BLOG" button. These are always a subset of #1. After clicking that button like a tweaker for fifteen minutes in hopes of finding something that doesn't absolutely suck, I get into a nice rhythm. Don't screw me up by actually having to move my mouse to back up to the previous crappy blog.

This method has yielded absolutely NO sites worth mentioning by name. It's pretty discouraging. That being said, I have ultimate willpower, and will prevail. I WILL find good blogs out there, written by average schmucks like me.

That being said, I am starting a new feature. It is the esteemed UMBRELLA'S BLOG THAT DOESN'T SUCK award. Seriously, this is probably bigger than the Golden Globes. As of now, there are two members of this prestigious club.

SINISTER COFFEE - This blog wins the lifetime achievement award. Phraink was one of my first loyal readers from back in the day, and he's still going strong. Good enough to make my list.

The first winner however, goes to Things That Annoy This One White Kid In Particular. Paul E. Wog is a dude from my town here who let's everyone know his thoughts on various crap. No nepotism here, I've never met the guy. But he is funny, and some of his rants hit pretty close to home. He's not PC, so if you are easily offended, you might want to stay away. However, if you are easily offended, you probably aren't reading my blog in the first place, so no worries.

Congratulations Paul, and keep up the good work. You can now accept your award.

The prestigious Golden Umbrella award

If anyone has any nominees, let me know via comments or emails. Heck, you can even nominate yourself. Hopefully I will have a new one every Friday, but so far, the pickings have been slim.

Can I have a URL intervention?

My URL is stupid. I added a "24" to the end of "umbrella" because umbrella by itself was taken. OK, I can live with that. They were there first, sucks for me. However, check out the site that is keeping my good URL.

Are you serious? One freaking post about how retarded you are and can't even post correctly? Can't I just take this URL over, kinda like eminent domain?

Also, I want to get a new picture for my blog homepage. I thought it would be kinda cool to have a picture of me, sitting under a urinal, holding an umbrella. Maybe even an appearance with the rally plunger. However, there are some problems associated with this. Here are my concerns, in order from least to biggest...

1) I haven't taken any measurements, so I'm not sure if it is even physically possible to fit myself with an open umbrella under a urinal.
2) I need to find a good location to accomplish this photo shoot. I don't have a urinal at home, and my office bathroom is unisex, so work is out of the question as well. I don't know anyone who owns a restaraunt, so I'll have to be a ninja to get this done.
3) The thought of sitting under a urinal is pretty gross. I guess this is what they mean by suffering for your art.
4) I still want to remain anonymous. If I get someone I know to take a picture of this, I'm sure there will be plenty of questions. And as good of a bullshit artist as I am, for the life of me, I cannot think of one single way to spin this without looking like a total freak.

So this is where it stands. Until I figure it out, you'll have to be content with this picture of Augie Ojeda at BOB on 80's night.

Back from the abyss, again (DISCLAIMER ADDED)

So, after an extremely long hiatus, I'm back, with a disclaimer. Back in the day, I made a post about psycho bitches. I referenced a character which consisted of some of the worst traits from several of my ex-girlfriends in one character. However, one of my ex-girlfriends found my blog (as she said, "How many people are called Umbrella?") and hilarity ensued, as noted in this post.

She recognized a lot of herself in the character, and was understandably hurt by the post, so I removed it. Then my grandmother got ill after that, and my posting days ended. When I started this blog, I wanted to remain anonymous (which is why I didn't tell anyone about my blog), because I wanted to be able to vent about things that piss me off. What are the main sources of my annoyance?

1) Significant others
2) Daughters
3) Mom
4) My co-workers

As you can see, the closer people are to me, the more likely they are to piss me off. That doesn't mean I don't care for them. However, I felt like I couldn't vent honestly anymore without hurting people, or worrying who might stumble across it, so I lost my motivation for blogging.

Lately, people have been suggesting I should write some of my stories and experiences, because they like the way I talk about little things that happen in my life. Little did they know I used to do that. And I realized I missed telling my little stories, even though my readership was pretty small. So now I'm back, with a disclaimer....

IF YOU KNOW ME PERSONALLY, AND YOU DON'T WANT TO GET OFFENDED/ANNOYED/DISGUSTED, YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T READ MY BLOG!!

You can tell I'm serious because I used TWO exclamation points. Hopefully I can update my six loyal readers on everything that has happened during the hiatus.

Blogs I Hate

From time to time, I like to use the "NEXT BLOG" button on the upper right and just go surfing away. I am hoping to find blogs I will add to my esteemed "Other Blogs I Like" list, but I usually find just a bunch of crap. So for the truckloads of people out there who are dying to make this list, let me give you some hints on what irritates the shit out of me with certain blogs.

1. Changing the cursor. This shouldn't bother me so much, but it does. What is wrong with the little arrow?

2. Those stupid message boxes. This is just retarded. I remember a website someone sent me to once that you had to click the message box about a hundred times. Now, even once, and I am looking for a flamethrower. If the message is so important, make it the title of your blog.

3. Blogs that play music. This might not be so bad, except the type of people that do this are the type of people that use the theme song to the Smurfs, or a crappy MIDI of The Cure as their music.

4. Blogs that are just advertisements. Which is about 80% of the blogs on Blogger. Do these things work? I find that hard to believe.

5. blogz that think they rool This drives me nuts. No caps, purposefully misspelled words. Shut the fuck up you l33t motherfuckers. I know this makes me sound like an uncool old guy, but I AM an uncool old guy, so fuck you.

6. Dark text on a black background. I know, I know, you are just showing your uniqueness. Your individuality. Whatever. I could shit in the middle of my living room. That's unique, but it doesn't mean you should do it.

7. Blogs that are just link lists. Once again, this probably wouldn't be so bad, if the links were interesting. But no, the links are generally to Yahoo news stories. Try telling me something I don't know. Maybe a link to, I don't know, I site I never heard of. Hint: I know about Google as well.

8. Whiny, depressing, "the whole world hates me" blogs. You know the type. These are the ones usually written by 13 year old girls, moping about some guy who doesn't even know they exist. These usually go hand-in-hand with numbers 1, 2, 3, and 6.

I am sure there are many, many more, but these are the ones that popped into my head. And I am sure there are things about my blog that annoy the piss out of people. Heck, there are things about my blog that annoy the piss out of ME! If I knew how to change it, I would, but I am HTML illiterate.

My blog name needs work

Somehow, it slipped out at work that I was going on the cruise with my mom. Hoooo boy. Talk about throwing meat to the lions. At this point, I think I have heard every Oedipus and/or incest joke in the book.

So I am hiding in my cubicle, surfing. Screw it, it's Friday, and I have worked almost 60 hours this week. I decided to google "Under the Umbrella", just to see what I would find. The results were not very good.

First off, there is an actual site with a URL of Under the Umbrella. They sell vases that you put under those outdoor lawn table umbrellas. There were also a few blogs with that in their title. Most of these were the types of blogs that feature bad poetry written by depressed teenage girls. Between seeing this, and being harassed by my coworkers for the last half hour, I feel like my manhood is slipping away.

So here is my challenge. I need to come up with a new blog name. My nickname is Umbrella, and that isn't going to change. Maybe I'll tell that story on a later date. But I would like to keep the umbrella concept in there, with a more manly and/or humorous approach. Under the Umbrella was something I just came up with off the top of my head, and the more I think about it, the worse it sounds. So all of my loyal readers, who have been here the whole day of this blog's existence, submit any ideas!