Entrecard top droppers for February

Once again, it's time to recognize the top Entrecard droppers to this here little blog.

These folks -- the amazingly consistent visitors -- are all dandy fine people who are smarter, funnier and sexier than 90 percent of the U.S. population. I thank them all for visiting.

So, here are the top visitors from Entrecard (if you have a blog and you haven't signed up for an Entrecard account yet, head over there and take care of that right now -- you'll be amazed at the increased traffic):

1. Is a mans world

2. ik.my

3. The Junk Drawer

4. Computer Aid

5. Mr. Soleh's Outburst

6. The Way I See It

7. Our Journey to Forever

8. On the Bricks

9. ImamKhalid

10. Epicurean Health

Do yourself a favor and visit all of those fine blogs.

A commercial I hate...

One of the more entertaining blogs out there is The Commercials I Hate.

As you might imagine, you'll find YouTube videos of truly awful commercials and obscenity-laced rants about them. If you haven't visited that blog, you really should -- it's a hoot, indeed.

As it turns out, I hate a lot of commercials, too. So I'm going to swipe the idea from the aforementioned blog (because all of my best ideas have been stolen) and post a commercial that drives me up the wall. Here's the YouTube clip:

Yes, that's the latest ad in a series of bad ads that the obnoxious folks at YellaWood have decided to inflict on the public. In this particular series, an old, hefty guy who calls himself Yella Fella runs around combating outlaws and rotten wood.

The acting is bad, the concept of a "cliffhanger" series of commercials is bad and I'm absolutely sick that the always amusing Riders in the Sky have sold their souls out to those sleazy YellaWood folks. There's not enough liquor on the planet to keep me from flinching when the stiff, ridiculous Yella Fella acts tough, speaks or -- hell -- even appears on my television set.

Want to know why DVRs were invented? So that we could avoid stuff like this. I can't imagine why anyone who saw one of these dreadful ads would think, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to buy something from YellaWood for sure!"

These commercials are so bad I always regret it when I'm watching live television instead of something recorded and face the possibility of seeing one of those awful commercials. If there's any justice in the world, the series will conclude with the Yella Fella being shot dead and buried in a coffin made out of wood so rotten that pieces are falling off the thing as it's being lowered into the ground.

Firefox -- what the heck happened?

Once upon a time, an organization called Mozilla came up with a browser designed to challenge Microsoft's putrid Internet Explorer.

And, so, Firefox was born. Life was good. The Firefox browser was small, fast and considerably more secure than Explorer. Early compatibility problems were ironed out and enthusiastic users developed skins to change the look of the browser and add-ons that made Firefox the most customizable browser on the planet.

I've been a Firefox fan for years, in fact. After messing around with Firefox 3 for the past few months, however, I can't help but wonder what the heck happened?

My light, fast browser has been replaced by a resource-hogging monster that is slow and has definite problems with security. I feel like I'm back in the old Internet Explorer days again and that's no good at all. I believed that Firefox 3 just needed to be updated a few times and things would be great again. That doesn't happen -- if anything, updates have made this browser more problematic than the original Firefox 3 that wasn't compatible with a lot of skins and add-ons from previous versions and took forever to load and run.

What on earth got into the folks at Mozilla? How has success encouraged them to develop something that is almost Microsoft-like in its bloat and the annoyance it causes? Will future editions of Firefox actually be worse? Will another company show up and develop a browser that will be everything Firefox used to be -- light, fast and a magnet for community support?

It would appear we're entering a period in which Firefox's failures have strengthened competitors and have caused at least one new browser to be developed. Apple's Safari has gained some fans as of late and let's not forget that a lot of longtime Opera fans are claiming their browser is just the thing for people who feel let down by Firefox (Opera's good stuff -- I've been messing around with it on my PC and it works very well on my Nintendo Wii, too).

Opera and Safari aren't exactly new, of course. One browser that is very new and works amazingly well is Google Chrome. It seems that Google, as part of the company's overall strategy to rule the world, went and put together a very capable browser that's built on the Safari core. Could it be that Google saw a bunch of irate Firefox fans and decided to cater to it?

If someone would have told me two years ago that I'd grow to hate Firefox almost as much as Internet Explorer, I would have said they were nuts. Sadly, that's exactly what's happened. Mozilla has messed around and has revealed a weakness that competitors appear to be exploiting as we speak.

George Stephanopoulos is a fat head and a hack

As anyone who has been paying attention ought to know by now, President Barack Obama went and addressed Congress on Tuesday. He was talking about the economy and how to fix it by throwing money at it.

I'm not going to talk about that as his address has been dissected all over the place. Besides, I've griped about his economic fixes enough and don't feel like doing it again.

No, I'm going to talk about George "Mouthpiece" Stephanopoulos. I was watching a recap of Obama's speech on ABC's Nightline and noticed, as usual, that Mouthpiece was called on to give an analysis of it all.

Has Mouthpiece ever said "I think Obama got it wrong" or "maybe this guy is totally off base" or "what the hell is he talking about?" Has Stephanopoulos ever been seriously critical of Obama at all?

I don't mind him being an obviously biased jerk as he's always been an obviously biased jerk. However, the man hold himself out to be an "independent journalist" and has found a lot of people in the media willing to back him up on that.

Why is it, then, that partisans on Fox News are accused of political whoring and cheerleading, whereas Mouthpiece is assigned a certain level of credibility for doing essentially the same thing?

Musical Monday -- Blondie!

Here's one of the best from Blondie, "Dreaming," and it's played live. Dig that amazingly busy drummer!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

M&M'S Premiums aren't half bad

I've always hated M&M'S.

Now, to be fair, I'm not a big fan of milk chocolate. Most of it tastes like cheap chocolate with something to hide. M&M'S tastes like the manufacturers found the cheapest milk chocolate on the planet, spruced it up with a candy shell that comes in various colors and inflicted it on an unsuspecting public. I've always considered M&M'S to be the Chicken McNuggets of the candy world in that I'd probably get physically ill if I knew what was really used to make the stuff.

When I learned that M&M'S were developed during World War II to give to American troops, I assumed that meant the Nazis developed them to stuff down prisoners of war. I'm still not convinced that isn't the case.

Hey, you can wrap substandard milk chocolate in a candy shell all you want and it still tastes like garbage. Go ahead and add a peanut in the center and you've still got low grade milk chocolate surrounded by a candy shell that just tastes like "sweet" and nothing else. The only thing more disgusting than a bunch of M&M'S is a sack full of the slightly more noxious Reese's Pieces (made popular by the lead character in E.T. the Extraterrestrial, another hated product of junk culture).

M&M'S have always been vile, but I found some the other day that aren't half bad -- M&M'S Premiums. I've actually found myself enjoying the Mocha and Raspberry Almond varieties of the stuff. I found some on sale at Kroger's yesterday and picked up a box. I still hate the standard M&M'S, but these Premiums things are pretty good.

The only drawback I can see to these things is that the old slogan -- "They melt in your mouth, not in your hand" -- doesn't really apply. That's OK, though, because they taste just fine.

Besides, that famous slogan is rather a lie, anyway. I've seen more than one kid with various colors melted to his hand after going through a bag of M&M'S. Everything about the standard M&M is a big, fat lie. The Premiums, however, are very impressive. Give them a shot.