Monday, April 20, 2009

How the hell does this happen?

You've got to give it to Iran -- when they go out and put a nut in charge, they don't mess around.

That President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (hereinafter referred to as "Jed" because I don't want to type "Ahmadinejad" again) is a piece of work, isn't he? I won't get too deep into the merits of the U.S. entering negotiations with a man who's crazier than a sack of rabid weasels too much because that topic has been beaten to death.

I can't help but point out, however, that he seems to be consulting a Magic 8-Ball when it comes to foreign policy, however. How else can you explain the actions of a fellow who's talking about conciliation with the U.S. when he's not tossing racist remarks out at a U.N. anti-racism conference or his government is tossing journalists in jail?

How conciliatory can this cat be? Is compromise even possible when you're dealing with a guy who's ape-shit crazy? Should the U.S. even trust this fellow when he says the sky is blue?

Again, Jed's sanity and trustworthiness has been questioned for years and I won't bother hashing through all of that again. Here's my question, however. Let's say you're the guy who gets to plan the U.N. anti-racism conference. You've got world leaders in Geneva for a week to talk about racism and (ideally) how to get rid of it.

At what point do you think, "Hey, let's let ol' Jed speak before any other government officials. That's a great idea!"

Wasn't it obvious that Jed would open his fat yap and ruin the whole event for everyone? Did someone think he'd back off the Jews this one time and play nice? Did Jed even understand that the conference wasn't designed to promote racism? So that one week conference ended pretty early as a bunch of ambassadors walked out of the thing in disgust before the event even got off the ground.

Honestly, how the hell does stuff like this happen? No wonder the world's a mess.

Entrecard

Raise your hand if you're completely confused by the stuff that Entrecard is up to these days. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Your old friend, The Hawg, is rather at a loss. My traffic has dropped quite a bit, my ad rates are low and a lot of Entrecard members just seem irate. Frankly, I'm starting to wonder if that whole site is worth the trouble anymore.

I'll recap the events of the past few weeks for those asking "huh?" and "what?" out there. Entrecard, once upon a time, was based on the simple idea that people would get credit for visiting members' sites and could purchase "ads" with those credits. People were happy and there was much rejoicing.

Ah, but sites can't function forever without money, seemingly, so the Enterecard folks got the idea to start selling paid ads. The only problem, of course, is that the paid ads knock out the ads purchased with Entrecard credits half the time. This has caused much grumbling and strife -- that healthy Entrecard traffic has slowed down and even blogs like this one that don't accept paid ads are watching their ad rates dwindle.

There's enough grumbling out there, in fact, to cause people to look for other sources of traffic. I've been doing a bit of that and have found some luck with BlogExplosion and I'm hoping to get a bit of traffic from Facebook.

I've run across some great blogs on Entrecard and will likely spend some days dropping cards, some days not giving a damn and some days just dropping cards on blogs I like. I'm having trouble staying too serious about the site, however, and the old days of dropping 300 cards have ended.

Frankly, that's probably for the best -- I'd rather linger around and read blogs than do a bunch of reciprocal dropping, anyway.

12 comments:

Paul Eilers said...

How in the world did a guy like Ahmadinejad manage to rise to power? Seems that nut cases like him are always the ones just a button push away from starting WWIII.

As for EntreCard, thanks to my wife I still have a widget on my blog, but that's about the extent of it.

Paul

Eat Well. Live Well.
PurpleGreenPops.com

Unknown said...

I'm with you on both -- Jed and Entrecard.

HawgWyld said...

Paul -- I suppose we should just be lucky he didn't wind up in power in a nation with more wealth and influence. I'm really not sure what to do about Entrecard...

Sherry -- And you're a member of Facebook, too!

Karen said...

Please, please put an option to get your feed through email. I forget to read my Google Reader.

Patricia Rockwell said...

Maybe we should put Jed in charge of Entrecard. He couldn't mess it up any more than it is.

Lyndon said...

No comment on Jed!! I don't feel right about making fun of retarded people.

After checking my stats and finding, that I'm lucky if I get 2 visitors a day from Entrecard and the fact that I don't like the whole paid ads thing. I made the difficult decision to drop the widget. I miss the old days of the site, when you good find great new blogs to read.

I'll send you a friend request on Facebook, but I already read your site :) I find it better for making connections, rather than finding new readers.

Apollo said...

The simple fact that the 'Jed-Incident' was even allowed to happen just shows you what kind of mentally challenged people made the plans for the U.N. Anti-Racism Conference.

On the other hand it also shows that a nut-case only gets the stage at events nobody cares about. I mean seriously, who was all excited about that conference?

It is not exactly a secret that the U.N. is a (mostly) non-functioning organization and not even the members take it really seriously.

As far as EntreCard, there has been quite some revoke against it and we all remember the old days.

It appears that too much wanted to be changed too fast and it had a counter-productive effect (Obama anyone?).

I do give it some time and apply patience to see what happens. My traffic has not been affected that bad but I did see my ad prices tumble like everyone else as a direct result form paid ads.

There are plenty of problems in EC but I do think that they will be fixed (which may take some time).

Harrison said...

The UN is full of BS. Why we support this useless, corrupt organization is beyond me.

HawgWyld said...

Karen -- I'll do just that. And, thank you!

Patricia -- I think you may be right.

Lyndon -- Well, you're headed right for my links list on my sidebar. I'm trying to grow that -- you know, generate some traffic the old fashioned way and such.

Apollo -- I hope you're right about Entrecard and I know you're right about the UN. Still, you've got to wonder what the organizers were thinking. Did they want the conference to break up a week early?

Harrison -- I've wondered that for years. That bunch drives me nuts.

L. Venkata Subramaniam said...

During UN lectures I have seen most delegates are asleep. Now so many of them walked out during this guys talk. Do you think most of them even heard what he was saying? I think the usual herd mentality prevailed.

Anonymous said...

I just dont know what I am going to do about ENTRECARD.... I do over 100 to 200 drops a day, and I am not seeing the results anymore

Like yesterday, I did 60 drops and look at all I got back:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b10/cmarlow/Websites%20I%20am%20on/Blog%20Comments/NaturalStateHawg/Idid60dropsandthisisallIget.jpg


Its like, I am putting effort into NOTHING.


--- Christopher

http://life-accordingtochristopher.blogspot.com/

A Valdese Blogger said...

I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do about entrecard yet. I just know I don't like the situation as it is right now.