This is hilarious. I couldn't resist posting it here. My apologies and gratitude to noisyduck because I borrowed liberally (and I mean liberally) from his content, and for making me literally ROTFL (there's really no accounting for taste now, is there?):

How to Build a Bad Website

(And Why You Should...)

In the business world today, having a website is a must. But why should you strive to have the best website ever when it is much, much easier to build a bad website than a good one?

There are several benefits to having a bad website. For example, you can leave behind the stress of the "Web Race". Your customers will tell you that your website stinks, but will not necessarily be able to tell you exactly WHY it stinks, and because of this your web team may not be able to tell you how to fix it.

The result of this serendipitous confusion is that you can simply put your feet up and do nothing. No wasting your time snooping on competitors websites, no sending your web team to expensive continuing education seminars, and no worries.

Here are some tips to help you on your way:

1. Pick a nice dark background for your web pages, and use a color wheel to pick a nice coordinating color for the text. For example, navy blue and brick red go nicely together, so do royal purple and mustard yellow. This will showcase your excellent color sense, and keep your information secret from all but those with the best vision.

2. Make sure that your nice colorful text is small enough that your entire frontpage is visible without scrolling (Size 6 or 8 is nice). You don't need headlines to get attention, your subject matter is interesting enough all by itself.

3. Place high-resolution photos on every page. Photos should be at least 300dpi and have a file size of at least 1.2MB. This will ensure that only urban customers with broadband will use your site.

4. Add a nice long flash movie to your landing page. A commercial for your company is most appropriate, and will get your customers excited about you. Make sure that there is no "skip ad" button, so you can be sure everyone sees the whole movie.

5. Use music liberally throughout the website. Everyone loves music! It should play automatically at a good volume, so customers can get the full multimedia effect.

6. Ditch your navigation plan. The longer it takes for customers to find what they want, the longer they will stay on your website. Many studies have linked the amount of time customers stay on a website to the amount of money they spend on the site. Also, it looks really good in website statistics reports.

7. Stay away from homogeneous page layouts. Be creative. Customers don't want to see the same thing on every page. For example, it's just boring to have the links in the same place on every page, or the same number of columns on every page. This will also help keep your customers on the site longer.

8. Add lots of ad links and popups. These make the website more visually interesting. Make sure the links are broken, however, so customers can't actually leave your website.

9. Avoid frequent updates. You should think of your website as similar to a print ad or book. You put a lot a thought into your web content, and unnecessary changes could confuse your customers. A couple updates a year will be enough to keep things fresh.

10. Keep your site off the search engines. You know they send Spiders to your website? You don't want spiders. Your customers don't like spiders. Spiders bad. Ok?

Remember, anyone can have a good website, but a bad website is better.

Am I The Only One Who DISLIKES Manny Pacquiao?

Not hate. Hate is too strong a word. I don't hate him. I barely know the guy. Still, for someone I hardly bother an iota about, he sure has managed to rain down on my parade once too often.


The international pugilist franchise that is Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao has single-handedly managed to lure my husband away for whole days at a time during each televised fight, my considerable charms notwithstanding.

The potent PR locomotive that carries his label is such that previously respectable and dignified citizens (e.g., my Atch, his parents, my parents, the neighbors....darn it, the whole *meeping* world!) are moved to yodel and yowl and leap up in the air throwing right hooks and left uppercuts, as if they could propel the very brunt of their enthusiasm in aiding the Pacman to a TKO victory.


And yesterday, of all the days Atch couldn't pick me up from work because he had a meeting with the bosses, was the very same day Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao's publicist penned in his appointment book the much-awaited, much-ballyhoo-ed visit to a city that had claimed him as its adopted son. My city.

*Meep*

Earlier in the day, the office was a-buzz with excitement. It was Pacquiao-this and Pacquiao-that and Pacquiao-will-they-please-just-shut-the-*meep*-up.

I dashed out the door right after closing time. I had heard the Paquiao caravan was planning to wind its leisurely way all across downtown and I wanted to miss all the action. I boarded the first jeepney at the dispatch area and impatiently waited for it to fill up. Across the way, sidewalk vendors were twitching with excitement, clutching at their makeshift cardboard posters declaring that they were totally proud of the Pacman, that they totally loved the Pacman, and would the Pacman please totally sleep with them, just for one night.

Too late for me, the sirens and drumbeats started. Traffic cops on motorbikes quarantined the road. People started screaming and waving their placcards. Camera phones were held up in readiness. Our driver and the rest of the other passengers craned their necks and bodies as far out the window as they could without actually spilling down into the street. One would have thought the Beatles had reunited for one last concert.

I counted the lead car with the sirens, a truck with masked costumed dancers and two trucks with the drum-beaters. A host of other vehicular hangers-on. Then the frenzied crowd screamed even louder, lauding the Pacman's coming. He was atop the tallest truck, a nondescript man in a nondescript tan shirt, waving to the crowd.


“It's only fitting”, my officemate M.B. had declared earlier, tongue-in-cheek, “that his name is 'Money Pakyaw'”. She was referring to the term “pakyaw”, which in the local dialect means 'to acquire in large quantities”.

“And his middle initial 'D' stands for “dollars”, she continued, “so it is a good thing he is giving all this money away, since he has pakyaw'd a lot of it.”

One of the reasons the reigning WBC lightweight champion of the world was gracing the city with his presence was to hand over a donation of one million pesos intended for victims of typhoon Fengshen. Notice, I use the word 'intended'. What percentage of that amount will actually trickle into the outstretched palms of the beleaguered? But that is another story...which I'm sure will be dismantled to death in local coffeeshops and corner sari-sari stores all across this benighted land for months to come.

Squeezed nauseatingly close under Pacquiao's armpits, the mayor and some minor politicians held aloft his various championship belts, grinning even wider than the owner of the belts himself. 2010 was a long way off, and already they were working at cementing the deal on their re-election bids. But as politics and I haven't been on speaking terms in ages, I shall leave this topic alone.

The following day, Pacquiao would be photographed distributing relief goods to people in depressed areas of the community, again with his contingent of local political...erm...friends in tow. If I wasn't so irritated by his presence, I would have felt a tinge of pity that he was being thoroughly utilized to serve other people's quests for publicity. In exchange, he got to inaugurate a new traffic light and had a day named in his honor. Quid pro quo.

And so the Pacquiao caravan slowly made its way down the street, followed by his crazed legion of cheering fans. I let out a great sigh of relief, peering anxiously at a sky that was graying with approaching rainclouds.

But when I looked expectantly at the driver, he said, “wait Miss, the parade's going to make another turn.” His jeepney was full to bursting and he was next in line to go, but the *meeping* man wanted a second look. And so gritting my teeth against the humidity and overpowering stench of humanity, I waited for round two.

By the time I got home, the sky was fully dark. It was exactly two and a half hours after I had stepped out of the office doors. Two and a half hours of waiting for the parade and the traffic to pass in what would have been a thirty-minute ride home without a certain someone's *meeping* state visit. I was tired and dusty. My stomach was growling. My children were bathed and droopy-eyed for bed.

And to dip my raw-skinned psyche in a figurative vat of vinegar, my husband, the husband who was supposed to be in a conference with the bank's Ay-Vee-Pees, called to tell me he had walked to the nearby mall where the Pacquiao caravan had landed amidst another horde of waiting worshipful fans. “Aifee, he grew some whiskers,” Atch confided in an awed voice, “and his skin seems lighter than usual. You think he's had it professionally bleached?”

All this the husband had spied at a distance of more than a hundred yards, scrunched elbow-to-rib with the rest of the Pacquiao cult followers, when he hadn't even noticed that his wife, less than a foot away, had worn her hair differently that morning. Tresses shiny with a scented hair-sculpting serum, no less.

I fell to my dinner like the starving person that I was. Crunching bones between my teeth and imagining this was Pacquiao's tibia, or that other his sternum. I ate a lot that night.

If my waistline expands beyond my usual 30 inches, I am totally going to place the blame on his head.

Not Your Typical Fairy Tale

Once upon an early evening, a man and his wife went out on the town. They hailed fresh from a barbershop where they firmly held down the Wild Man of Borneo as he screeched and flailed and screamed. When the Wild Man's appearance had half-way began to resemble their younger son, they asked the barber to stop, and they hauled their snivel-faced snot-nosed changeling home.

Exhausted and much put-out, they decided a break was in short order. She wanted a slice of blueberry cheesecake. He wanted a beer. It was a Monday night.

They drove aimlessly, of two minds on where to stop. They bickered briefly about the hair-littered car while she upended her bra to let out more hair. Then they bickered about the bickering.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, an edifice loomed in front of the windshield. It was larger than life and more solid than breath. It resembled a camelot, the likes of where Cinderella might have danced with her prince, or where Beast courted Beauty in all his barbaric splendour. It turned out to be a stately new hotel. It was huge. It was imposing.

It would do.

The grand gilded doors opened to them and they suddenly remembered they were dressed like peasants put to the plough. They were rough and they were sweaty, and they were furry with hair that was not their own. But there was a beer somewhere inside waiting for them, and a rich cheesy wedge glistening with thick blueberry sauce, and fairy tales were a thing of the past, so they glided in and ignored the pointed stares.

They eschewed the elegantly appointed dining room, telling themselves it was too cold and housed too much frippery, but really because he wanted to sprawl lazily spread-legged and because she wanted to enjoy her desert with one foot propped up on her chair, and wasn't the garden a much much better choice? Yes it was. It was a perfect place for grubby gnomes and dressed-down dwarfs and craggy creatures of the forest. Best of all, it was empty.

A haughty footman waiter handed over the menu, and informed them there were beers, but no cheesecake. So they ordered the cheapest item of beef and settled down, ignoring two tall white tophats who peered at them disapprovingly from the kitchen door.

But the beer flowed and the beef was tender, and their loosened tongues praised the solitude of the twilight terrain. They became as Scheherazade and her Sultan, and told each other stories that grew more riveting as the dark deepened and mosquitoes blithely feasted amongst the blades of hair that the Wild Man had left on their legs.

I will build you a castle, said he of his plans for the future, I shall slay every Maleficent that threatens our coffers. And she swooned at his gallant chivalry, mightily helped along by the contents of another bottle. How proud she was of this errant knight in rusty armor, even as he promised to adorn her finger with an engagement ring seven years in the waiting.

Too soon the comforts of their cave and their tiny trolls called to them, and beckoning their steely-eyed server once more, they paid their bill while he looked down his narrow nose at their platters scraped clean of all traces of potato and gravy. At the very least, the man and his wife surmised, the dish washer would be grateful for their efforts.

So they made their way out the opulent lobby, avoiding the floor to ceiling mirror lest it come to life and shriek that no, they were not the fairest in the land. Not by a long shot. No way.

Then they got into their car and rode off into the moonrise and lived happily ever after. Or for as long as that night lasted, anyway. And as you very well know, this is not

The End...

Pain Without End

How does one fill a yawning chasm that has so suddenly appeared in one's heart and womb? That caved-in feeling, so dark and soul-less: a bottomless pit of nothing that is all that's left after the tears have been spent.

You still long for that tiny heartbeat, so much a part of you in the long months you carried this burgeoning hope and fondest dream, only to have it snuffed away in a tempest, crushing you so you are breathless still.

So longed for and thought of, his very existence was your sustenance. It seemed that you could hold him almost, and smell him almost, and feel his gentle eyelashes tickling your cheek. But men make plans and God laughs, so it seems to you in the very depths of your despair, because he has been torn from you just when you thought he would finally be yours to shelter and adore.

You wonder if there is life after this endless pain, or if he is flitting in the air with gossamer wings even as you commit him to the ground he will never get to toddle upon. And you despair that you will never find room in your heart again. For even now, you can still feel the touch of his tiny hand....



____________________________

Atch's officemate C. lost the baby boy in her womb. It was eight months old. I do not know of any words that can ease her anguish, only words that describe her pain. For it would be my pain too, had it happened to me. Still, words are not enough. Not to sympathize, not to reassure, not words of any nature at all, except in prayer.


Would that her heart be calmed and her soul be stilled, and the emptiness of her womb be filled with one more chance, God willing.