First Time Millionaire Blogger

Charles Fillmore was a nobody. He lived in his parent's basement. Had a worthless liberal arts degree, and spent most of his time watching ESPN, reading online articles, doing yardwork, working out, and oh yes, blogging. Blogging is a phenomenon of sorts, and has been for several years now (or so they say). There are even terms now like the "blogosphere" and a term for those who live in it: "bloggers".

But what is a blog? Well Charles would tell you, snapping his brand-spanking-new suspenders that it is the short form of the old term "web log", which came about in the latter half of the nineties. And Charles is no shamwow salesman, but he is a millionaire, so I tried as hard as I could not to roll my eyes.

"Well, after several months of trying to get a job I realized my education was pretty much worthless. So I thought, 'Well, what is something I am pretty good at?' Then it came upon me like when I wet my pants during the 3rd grade talent show. I could write about flatulent rodents!"

A star was born. Charles' blog has been a smash success. Apparently people from all over the world are more than amused by his anecdotal expertise on furry, four-legged, farters. He gets somewhere around 40 million unique visitors a month to his site hampsterfart.com. And what does that mean? Ka-ching. Charles rakes in a six-figure salary monthly from online advertising. Granted, his advertisers range from triple X porn sites and chili pepper exfoliation cream to PetCo woodchips, but as Charles told me, "Money is money."

I asked him if he expected it to be this big. His reply was telling:

"I saved the wheel that the favorite hampster of my childhood, Zanzar, used to run around in. I vowed when he died to honor his memory. Now he lives on, and I have subsequently had that wheel dipped in 24K gold."

Maybe I should get into blogging.

Driving in Utah

Driving is fun. Especially in Utah. People courteously slow down before hills, curves, and slam on their brakes a full 1/2 mile ahead of time if they see anything even remotely resembling the redness of a brake light in front of them. They merrily barrell into on-coming traffic with a comfy, affable wave, and they generally like to wait for those turning left when they are crossing an intersection. It just makes me so giddy to see them all do it with smiles on their faces, cute little poof hair-dos that look like hampster nests, and enough makeup to put Queen Elizabeth I to shame. I mean, I've seen such behavior on both coasts, but middle America seems to do it naturally, with no ulterior motives. On the east, they're in a big hurry, on the west, they just like to see how fast they can go, but here, in precious Utah they just have this amazing, innate driving ability. Where I am from, we hone and cultivate our quirky driving. I guess I'm just jealous.