Thomas Mahoney

According to Google Analytics, these are the posts I made this year that got the most reads. Don’t worry — this end of the year nonsense is almost over and we’ll soon return to our regular programming.

1.) Top 8 Christmas movies For Dudes Who Like Explosions, Laughs AND Sensitive Moments
2.) Bestiality? (NSFW)
3.) I just pwned the Internet, forever
4.) An Economic Timeline
5.) Nuking model Ryan Curry
6.) 2666 - English edition
7.) Akasa “Yomi” video
8.) My Bloody Valentine made me realise
9.) alternative top 10 searches for 2008
10.) cloud computing criticism

What does this indicate? I should stick to writing about music, technology (read: the Internet), and bestiality/model Ryan Curry (possibly Ryan Curry’s Brother).

I should note that after several years of using various analytics software at work and for clients, I only installed it on my domain in late July, after I switched my former blog, Infinity Destroyer (archived on this site), from a Blogger-hosted and powered model to a WordPress version on thomasmahoney.net, which I’ve owned for years but previously let go to waste.

Also, I’d like to note that I had been using Blogger for about a year and a half before converting to WordPress, and while the content hasn’t really changed nor my methods of advertising (relying strictly on my social network profiles and links via friends), my traffic has skyrocketed. Either I got a secret PR firm working for me while I sleep, or WordPress is optimized to go off. Or anchor text methods really do work, along with NSFW words and phrases.

Whatever. Blargh.

I clearly remember the day I got my first Apple Computer. I was in elementary school, about a year before I was old enough to go into the computer lab. My dad came home with an Apple IIe. He had been given it free as part of a promotion by a bank where he had just opened up some kind of account. I’m 100% sure this is not the reason he opened the account; I can imagine him walking out of the bank, carrying the box, probably hating it but just wanting to leave, so not making too much of a fuss.

I messed around with it enough to figure out Logo (a derivative of the Lisp programming language) and how to install text-based RPGs and sports games. More important, it opened up my young mind — previously focused solely on baseball and archaeology (yeah, weird) — up to the possibilities of computing and other hardcore nerd stuff that I probably wouldn’t be talking about if not for the fact that I can kick pretty much all of your asses.

Fast-forward some twenty years into the future, and I’ve got an iPhone waiting in a box and the absurd dream of owning (read: PWNING) the $88,190 version of the Xserve (2 quad-core processors, 32gb RAM, 5tb storage, et cetera, blargh). In honor of one of the few corporations I’ve ever bowed down to and for my own personal stroll through tech memory lane, I present the model numbers and photos of the forbidden fruit computers that fell off the Tree of Knowledge and into my eager hands.

Apple IIe

Mac Classic II

Mac Powerbook 1400

Mac G3 tower

Mac G4 Titanium Powerbook

iMac G5

iPhone

Xserve (someone make this happen!)

I’ve received the great honor of being nominated for a Shorty Award — here is the actual page.

I’m not one to campaign for such recognition, but I will openly state if you nominate me for #pwned, #goesoff, or simply #, I’ll send you a digital high five.

According to TIME Magazine and Yahoo!, the top 10 searches of the year were:

1.) Britney Spears (editor’s note: slut!)
2.) WWE (editor’s note: Ben Boudreau is pumped!)
3.) Barack Obama (editor’s note: teeth of Horus rule the divine)
4.) Miley Cyrus (editor’s note: slut!)
5.) RuneScape (editor’s note: AS IF! WoW pwns you forever!)
6.) Jessica Alba (editor’s note: slut!)
7.) Naruto (editor’s note: huh? NERD ALERT!)
8.) Lindsay Lohan (editor’s note: slut!)
9.) Angelina Jolie (editor’s note: slut!)
10.) American Idol (editor’s note: see also “teenage homoeroticism”)

I’d like to respectfully disagree with this list. Through my own research, analytics, and other covert means, I’ve discovered the top 10 alternative/hipster/fuck-up/weirdo (i.e. “real people”) searches were:

1.) Bestiality (editor’s note: term synonymous with “child pornography,” “two girls one cup,” “hot 3way sexcapades,” and other searches that blow up your parents’ computer and get the FBI watching)
2.) Come and get some (editor’s note: see also “play a riff” if at a Wolf Eyes show in the greater Los Angeles basin)
3.) Thomas Mahoney ruler of the internet and all multiverses
4.) Celtics 131 Lakers 92
5.) Psycho Matt Model Ryan Gay Homosexual Meltdown Party
6.) Crystal Meth
7.) Warcraft funeral
8.) Sasha Grey (editor’s note: unlike whores listed above, NOT a slut due to interest in existential and post-modern theory, not to mention fan of dark poetry broadcast by the likes of Joy Division, et al)
9.) Laser cats (editor’s note: see also “Dirty Dave’s cat nuking everyone and admitting via mimicry that he is indeed the drummer on Dr. Z’s epic prog album “Three Parts To My Soul”) / “Say hi to your mother for me”
10a.) Spiders on drugs (editor’s note: see also “Gary Vaynerchuk“)
10b.) Twitter ain’t shit but Obama and iPhones

If you have any doubts about the validity or impartial nature of this list, please consider there was no mention of “going off” or of getting “RickRoll’d.” Care to disagree with the list? You know how to contact me. Come and get some, turkey.

I rest my case.

For quite some time, when you typed “Thomas Mahoney” into Google or partner search engines (Yahoo!, etc.), the first several returns would be for the main link to this blog and its most popular posts. About a month or so ago, this changed, and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought it was because the guy who now gets the hits was in the Fortune 400. 

Until tonight.

Steinmetz sent out an email extolling the virtues of Blogspot/Blogger — whatever the fuck Google calls one of its major acquisitions of the past few years. And in its fine print — the part no one ever reads — there was an interesting little piece of knowledge. Figuring it may be a leftover anomaly from the acquired company’s philosophy, I dug through other Google properties and found that it was a common disclaimer:

Pedophilia, Incest and Bestiality: Users may not publish written, image, audio or video content that promotes pedophilia, incest and bestiality.

Short of turning all conspiracy theorist on you, I now believe that my constant use of the term “bestiality” — used as a reference in a post about the importance of tagging and metadata, then subsequently used to reinforce that point AND because it’s seriously knee-slapping funny — is causing Google to demote me. I actually don’t really mind, because for the most part my posts usually spark the kind of fires best left unlit, so I really don’t need anyone besides the 863 unique visitors I usually attract coming here.

But for those visitors, I feel it is necessary to be forthright and honest: all future instances of the word “bestiality” will be replaced with “humans fucking animals.” Over time, this will evolve into HFA.

I’d like to apologize to the Google spiders and robots that crawl the web. I hope one day you turn into real boys and become practitioners of HFA. Lord knows the sheep need it.

Goodnight and good luck.

Today’s best online rumor was Twitter turning down a $500 million acquisition by Facebook. In an economy as terrible as ours, this is especially interesting news. 

If you don’t know what Twitter is and you are reading this, you are my mother or my oldest sister (and the latter has an iPhone, so she might). If you don’t know what Facebook is, then you are a terrorist at a library in some foreign country who happened to find my blog either because I use variations on the word “terror” frequently or because of the bestiality post. 

Some interesting points about this right off the bat:

1.) Twitter makes no money. Yes, this is common knowledge, but really, think about this. You have a company that makes no money and someone offers you $10, let alone $500,000,000.

2.) Apparently Mark Zuckerberg is losing his mind because Twitter is in 2008 what Facebook was in 2007 and what MySpace was before, and so on. 

3.) The major dispute is the money involved, since it involves stock: Twitter doesn’t think Facebook is as valuable as Facebook thinks Facebook is. So Facebook stock means shit to a company that regardless is still currently MAKING ZERO DOLLARS.

Just these facts lead me to a variety of possible conclusions:

A.) Twitter is fucking crazy.

B.) Facebook is fucking crazy.

C.) Twitter is run by psychic cyber ninjas and galactic pirates born from the same cosmic mother that produced Steve Jobs, Tupac, Pablo Escobar, and Michael Bay’s fascination with hot babes and blowing things up.

D.) No one gives a fuck about what my opinion is.

After thinking about it for several seconds, I’m going with C, though D is probably the most accurate.

Twitter is, to borrow the vernacular of the kids, thuggish. This, for the moment, is punk rock. Yes, Twitter will learn how to make money, and they’ll probably sell out to the highest bidder. But for the time being, Twitter is what you thought the Sex Pistols were in ‘77. They are the French kids in the streets in ‘68.

Music used to be the way to rebel. That officially died after Nevermind went platinum, though it was truthfully dead years before that. The way to rebel now is technology. Got an idea? Don’t talk about it, just do it. If it’s that great, you won’t need to market it. Great ideas spread like disease, and disease does not need to convince people. Disease does not sell itself to others; it transfers itself regardless of permission, dollar value, or overt advertising. The Twitter meme, around since early 2006 at least, started multiplying like crazy during the summer of 2008. It multiplied so fast that it infected the minds running the second largest social network in the world, a network itself that has been around for under 5 years.

The power of no is not that you disagree with the question, but you disagree with the question in principle. For instance: do you want to clean the bathroom? No. Why, because it’s not dirty? No, because that is not what I do.

I don’t know what they call it in the business world, but in my world, what Twitter said to Facebook was this:

Get fucked.

Hoo ha.

- If you follow my Twitter, you might remember the other night I went off about rewriting an .htaccess file to modify some PHP script on my server. And I did it on a Mac, which is a fucking wickedly brutal feat to pull off for someone like me (from what I’ve read) with little server experience. Anyway, the people at Perishable Press, who are way smarter than I’ll ever be, have a great overview on .htaccess tricks you should check out if you are into such things.

- Led Zeppelin is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band ever. This is not an opinion. It is fact — watch the Royal Albert Hall performance if you need some evidence. I’m pretty sure before Stephen Hawking and his android wheelchair kick it, he’ll release some kind of equation proving it. Of course, Led Zeppelin is trying to sabotage this with talks of doing a tour without Robert Plant. Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Is a $100 million a piece a good price to destroy a legacy for? For instance, say if I find a cure for cancer, make a gazillion dollars, and at a late age decide I want even more gold, would I, let’s pretend, go on national television and tell everyone I’m a serial child rapist/murderer? Too brutal/illogical of an analogy? Not in my mind. Don’t do it. Just play, “In The Light” over and over again and read some Crowley texts, Jimmy. The shark isn’t ever going into the vagina again.

- I was recently privy to the most terrible conversation to have occured in the western hemisphere in the past several months. No, it wasn’t racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or violent, or in any way offensive to your average emotionally-challenged civil lawsuit plaintiff. It involved one past and one current heroin addict. Actually, it was really just a monologue with the occassional interjection by the other party, who later laughed with me about the shittiness of it all. One person just kept on saying how much it irritated them how a certain strand of heroin on the west coast is called a certain thing, when in reality that kind of heroin is only on the east coast and a much better product. As the voice of reason — and if you have made me the voice of reason you’ve already lost — I declared the conversation to be beyond all that is useless and annoying. You do drugs? Fine. But when you’re high, it’s in your best interest to follow a simple rule I have tattooed above my right wrist (for non-substance abuse reasons): DON’T TALK. Talking about drugs while on drugs is the only morally reprehensible part of the act of using, henceforth illegal in my eyes.

- Enough about me. What about you? What did you do today? I’m not being facetious or sarcastic when I ask this. I really want to know. Email me. What are you doing and why? God bless.

TM