This one is from Nick in Washington

This is Scott

Denise in Texas used one of my old mantras on her mirror this week.

There’s also been some good ones on Twitter.

Seriously, I’d sign a petition right now to return Candid Camera back to TV

LOVE!

So the fact that I’ve sat on the details of this practical joke for so long is kind of surprising.  I started putting this practical joke together over a year ago!

I have a friend named Tyler that is a radio personality here in Arizona and he also does events as a professional DJ.  He calls himself “The King of The Streets.”  About a year ago I started noticing that he was taking himself really serious on Twitter and Facebook.  He would tweet things like, “Wats up? I’ll be on da mic at the Indoor Swapmeet in Peoria on Sunday.”  I’m not joking.

He has a pretty good sense of humor, so I came up with an idea.

First, I should tell you that Tyler has a caricature that he uses for all of his King of the Streets stuff.  It’s supposed to look like him (see below) but frankly it looks more like the creepy Burger King guy with a unibrow.  Tyler is not as chunky as his King of the Streets caricature.

Well anyway, I have this friend that is a pretty damn good artist.  So I printed out the little caricature that The King uses and I asked her to come up with something for me.

“I want it to look like the same artist drew both pictures,” I told her.  “And I want him to kind of look like a version of Ronald McDonald.  And his belt should say ‘PA’ because his name will be The Prince of the Alleys.”

Get it?  King of the Streets…Prince of the Alleys.

She quickly got to work, and after about ten minutes (seriously…she’s good) this is what she came up with:

Pretty sweet, right?

I quickly hoped on Twitter and created a Prince of the Alleys Twitter account. And I started to tweet in the same style that The King tweets.  Some of the tweets were parodying The King’s Tweets…like when the King tweeted “Gotta get home to watch ENTOURAGE!”  the Prince would tweet “Gotta get home to watch GILMORE GIRLS!”  And some of The Prince’s tweets were nothing but exact copies of The King’s tweets.

Some of my favorite Prince tweets include: “I’ll be spitting on the mic over at the Chilis on Camelback until midnight. Come out and say “hey!”"  and “Sat at a bar and watched world cup soccer. I annoyed everyone by acting like I had a digetry doo”

So I was having a bunch of comedy fun for a while.  But then I got word that Tyler was getting angry.  He suspected that the person behind the Prince wasn’t someone like me (a guy just having fun at his expense) but rather he thought it was a specific “enemy” that was attacking him.

So I laid low for a while.

Well, actually before I laid low, I took a photo of the back of Tyler’s truck (which has the KING sticker on it) and used Photoshop to make this picture:

And the Prince included this message with the photo: “I just got this legit sticker on my truck.”

The King responded with something like, “This Prince guy is close to me, but won’t be when I figure out who he is.”

That’s pretty much when I stopped Tweeting as the Prince.  I didn’t want to ruin the friendship…and I never intended to make him feel attacked or angry.  So the Prince died.

Until last week when I uploaded this photo to Facebook:

He called me.  Cussed at me.  And basically said that he was ready to fight this one particular person that he was certain was making fun of him via The Prince…but now that he knows it was me, he wasn’t angry.

Now that my true identity has been revealed, I have to start thinking of who I can pull my next practical joke on.

BTW…Tyler is pretty cool.  You can follow him on Twitter @tymartinez1011.

Today’s Prompt: Today let’s focus on the good things diabetes has brought us.  What awesome thing have you (or your child) done BECAUSE of diabetes?  After all, like my blog header says, life with diabetes isn’t all bad!

Today is my last day working at The Boys & Girls Club.  I’ve worked at different Clubs in different capacities for the past ten years.  I’ve got a heck of a lot to do today (like three different people asked to take me to lunch…and I need to take down all my kid-art in my office).  So I’m recycling a post that I wrote back in 2008 on this exact topic.  Here you go:

Too much space on this blog has been dedicated to me bitching about diabetes (testing blood!  needles!  low blood sugar!  high blood sugar!  no sheet cake from Costco!), but I wanted give a little space to the ten reasons I enjoy having diabetes.  Here they are in no particular order:

1.  I’m selective at potlucks – How many times have you been at a potluck where someone demands that you try their gross recipes?  “You’ve got to try my mom’s meatloaf recipe.  The secret ingredient is cows tongue.”  Well, with diabetes you can just say that you wish you could try it, but there ketchup is just full of sugar.

2.  Free stuff – I’ve received a few free blood glucose monitors, a pedometer, and a diabetic cookbook just for filling out those little cards that fall out of magazines.

3.  I’ve got mail – My mailbox is never empty when I check it – and you know how much I love getting mail.  The information I filled out to get those free gadgets mentioned in number 2 was put into a diabetes database and I always get mail.  Granted, they assume I’m a 70-year-old living with diabetes and send me AARP junk and ads for other services that cater to the elderly, but it’s still nice to never open an empty mailbox.

4.  Funny looks - When I say things like “I’m feeling high,” or “I’m going to go shoot up,” It’s funny to see the eavesdroppers reactions.

5.  Eat when I want – If I’m in one of those dreaded situations where friends are arguing about where we are going to eat, I just need to raise my voice a little and say, “We have to stop arguing and get some food.”  If I close my eyes after this (for dramatic effect), we usually are in a restaurant ordering before 10 minutes passes.  What’s funny is that I’m pretty good at timing my insulin injections and I am rarely in a situation that demands that I eat immediately…just a small white lie.

6.  I remember what I eat – Before my diagnosis it was too easy to munch away for hours.  This amnesia during high-calorie binges was more than responsible for my weight problems.  Today I’m still guilty of an occasional binge, but I’m much more aware of what is going in my mouth since it has a direct effect on what my BGL readings are.

7.  It hurts so good – This one is a little sadistic, but I’m just being honest.  I’ve come to terms with the “pain” of diabetes.  It’s not easy, but I try to  approach all things with gratitude…and when I think about the daily injections and finger pricks, I’m grateful that I can still feel these small pains.  And I’m grateful that I have 10 fingers to sample blood from.  And I’m grateful that I can (barely) afford the expensive drugs that I have to inject.

8.  Online communities – Without this chronic illness, I would have never been connected to the great people I’ve found at TuDiabetes.com and Twitter and Facebook.

9.  Self-awareness – When something changes in me, I know about it right away.  My blood glucose monitor tells me if I’m going too high or low.  And since I’m consciously thinking (worrying) about hypoglycemia, when I feel an ache or a little lightheadededness,  I can immediately do something about it.

10. I’m still young.  I don’t have a number 10 yet.

I need a new Twitter avatar.

My current photo is cute…well at least I think so.  It’s a scrunched up face (see above) that I’ve used for months now. I think this photo says, I’m not exactly cute…with the glasses and smile lines and wrinkles…but I’m fun and I own it. It’s self-deprecating.  It’s not serious.

And I think every Twitter avatar says something about the twit.  So here are a few things I could choose to say about myself in my new twitter avatar:

* Too cool to hide my cell – you’ve seen these douchey pictures all over Twitter/Facebook/Myspace/Friendster/ICQProfiles.  People take photos in their bathroom mirrors but don’t hide the cameras or cell phones.

* I’ve got a bigger heart than you – kids love me, so I’m better than you are.

* Here’s what I looked like almost 30 years ago - Why do people do this one?  You don’t want us to know what you look like?  Was this the last time you considered yourself cute?  LOW SELF-ESTEEM.  Other ways to tell people you have low self-esteem: change your avatar photo to a picture of your dog’s face or a random celebrity.

* I support everything – I hate the dumb Twitter ribbons for causes.  Do you believe passionately about something?  Then tell me.  Share links and anecdotal stories.  If you want to win my support I’ll need a little more than a silly downloaded image on your avatar.

* I’m old enough to drink – I hope ya’ll know I’m over 21.  If not, my avatar will prove it.

* I’m a coffee snob – Not only do I drink expensive coffee, I do it so often that I was drinking some when I snapped my Twitter avatar.

* I Love Myself - This is the opposite of using a pet/childhood photo.  Maybe you love yourself too much.  Put a friggin shirt on.

* I met a celebrity once – We don’t care that you had your picture taken with someone famous five years ago. If you really had celebrity friends this wouldn’t be your avatar.

Clearly I’ve got some thinking to do before making a change.

On Twitter I post my pictures to Twitpic, and yesterday I was in downtown Phoenix and I snapped a picture of the backside of The Westward Ho Hotel and posted it to Twitter with this tweet:

On average about 30-40 people click and view my twitpics when I post them…but this “backside of the ho” photo has already received over 100 views.  Which leads me to believe that all of my Twitter followers are PERVERTS!!  You know you want to click it too.

Aside from a really bad diabetes day yesterday (post to come), I’ve had a tremendously lucky week.  It started on Monday when the local Dunkin Dounuts franchises were celebrating something (an anniversary?!) and I walked in to buy coffee and won a card that is good for FREE COFFEE FOR A YEAR!  Just for walking in and doing what I always do.

Then I got on Twitter and saw that Dunkin was having a daily trivia contest.  I got the correct answer on Monday, but I wasn’t the chosen tweet.  Tuesday, however, I not only got the right answer, but they chose me to get a Dunkin Donuts gift card.

Wednesday I walked into the Dunkin right by my office and purchased coffee and won a shirt that says Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Starbucks.

But wait, there’s more!

After winning the shirt, I got to the office and was farting around on blogs and Twitter and I saw this Tweet from Fez:

And I called them up and won four tickets to Thursday’s Mercury game.  We had fun at the game (even though I had an exhausting Diabetes Day).  It was my first WNBA game and we were an hour late.  But all in all it was enjoyable:

Don’t be jealous of my lucky streak.  I have a feeling that my luck has run out.  Maybe I should play the lotto quickly.

By the way, I’ve been singing this song ALL week:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCUDrv4p-yQ

I wanted to write a blog post about photos.  I’ve been snapping a lot of them in the recent past, and I haven’t been blogging them here because there are too many other places around the web to post.

I’ve posted a few photographs to my Facebook from last weekend, and I’ve also created an album there called “I ATE THIS” and it’s just photos of crap I’ve eaten.

The second Photo related thing that I wanted to post about was my DailyBooth.com account.

Do you Daily Booth?  If so, follow me and I’ll follow you back. To see today’s Daily Booth photo, look on the left hand side of this page.

Some of my Daily Booths are just stupid head shots in the car.  Others are me with other people.  And some are me sitting on the toilet (just kidding…well, ONE is me sitting on the pot).

The gist of Daily Booth is this: each day you photograph yourself and people can comment or respond.  It’s a lot like Twitter but you use photographs instead of words.

And lastly, I wanted to say that I’m always photographing stupid shit and posting it on Twitter…like this Greeting Card Fail. You have no reason NOT to be following me on Twitter.

Drew says that every few months he clicks through his Facebook friends and deletes people.  His general rule is this: If I saw them on the street and would just walk past them, then I delete them from Facebook page.

My question was simple: why?

I have 335 friends on Facebook…I would guess that over half of those people I would totally stop and talk to if I saw them on the street.  The other chunk of people are randoms I met once or twice, or people who read this blog.

I can’t see any real disadvantage to keeping those acquaintances on my friends list.  Maybe my feed could get bogged down with where some random contact is eating and another contact doing shout-outs…but on Facebook you can just remove those people from your feed.

Facebook, unlike Twitter, is a forced two-way street.  I handle my Twitter followers in much the same way as my Facebook friends.  The only difference is that Twitter publishes your numbers and gives you the choice to follow back.
I have 467 Twitter followers (and just like Facebook, about half are real friends) and I only follow 188 of those people back.

If I broke everything down by percentages (and trust me I’ve thought about doing it), I’d guess that my Twitter follow-back rate and the percentage of people I keep in my Facebook feed is pretty equal.

So my question is this: do you see any benefit from deleting Facebook friends from time to time? I’ve definitely been deleted by others…so I know that Drew isn’t the only one.  Someone shed some light.

Annoying.

So I responded to him on Twitter and said that “using words like ‘fag’ and ‘faggot’ make you sound ignorant.”

That was pretty much the end of that.

I don’t work closely with the guy anymore, but we do still follow one another on Twitter and Facebook.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an Oscar Wilde book and tweeted the following: Sharing my bed with this queer tonight: http://twitpic.com/26xowh

And my old supervisor put me on blast.  In jest, he said that using words like “queer” made me sound ignorant.  But then he tweeted to all of his followers: “if people of certain race/sexuality get offended when others use a derogatory slang 4 them then they shouldnt use it either #bearolemodel“

So there are a couple of things I have to say about this.  Firstly, calling someone (presumably someone who is heterosexual) a fag or faggot in an attempt to make them feel bad about themselves is much different from calling a dead, eccentric, open, homosexual author “queer.”  His argument that my name-calling is on the same page as his, doesn’t hold water.

But he does pose an interesting question.  If gay people get offended when others use the words “fag” and “faggot,” should gay people refrain from using those words too?

What do you think?

My opinion is this: it’s all about context.  When a gay friend talks about how he was in drama club in high school, it’s appropriate to say, “and your parents were shocked when they found out you’re a fag?”

When a straight friend says that they hope that the Steelers win the Super Bowl, it’s not appropriate to say, “You cock-sucking faggot.  You’re an idiot.”  A double standard?  Perhaps, but that’s where I’m at.

Microblogging has kind of taken over, and sometimes I write pithier more direct things on these sites.  Sometimes I’m funnier there.  Sometimes I’m not.

Whatever.  Here’s a list of 20 of my favorite Facebook/Twitter updates that you may have or may have not seen this summer:

1.Twitter: I just realized that my website has a bug in Internet Explorer…and I kind of don’t care. Upgrade people. 11:12 AM Jun 8th

2. Twitter: At a house party, and I will be surprised if there is NOT a gang fight or drive by before I leave. 8:36 PM Jun 26th

3. Facebook:  A spoonful of sugar is sort of counterproductive when taking medicine for my type 1 diabetes. Thanks anyway, Ms. Poppins.

4. Twitter: hadababyitsaboy 11:37 PM Jun 25th

5. Facebook:  I’m filling out an online application and documenting my work experience. Under “Employer” I wrote “Disneyland.” Under “Brief description of the company” I’m tempted to write “Seriously, it’s fucking Disneyland.”

6. Twitter: I’m at Some random lady’s house (9035 E Blanche Dr, Scottsdale). http://4sq.com/9D5eoq 11:29 PM Jun 19th via foursquare

7. Facebook: Quote of the night…”so she started making out with this guy, well she thought he was a guy.”

8. Twitter: Once you go black, you’ll never go back…and I’m talking about carbon-copy paper that is left in a hot car. 10:09 AM Jul 24th

9. Facebook: When my coworker said “there are a lot of hot guys at my gym, and that makes it easy to come.” I giggled for an hour.

10. Twitter: During a game of “TELEPHONE” today an 8-year-old turned the phrase “I like dinosaurs” into “I like ball sacs” just to be funny. #FML 11:29 AM Jun 18th

11. Facebook: For the record, guys DO make passes at boys that wear glasses.

12. Facebook: If you’ve ever thought it would be okay to swim with contacts in and you’d just keep your eyes shut, don’t do it. I’m blind all day today.

13. Twitter:  I just saw two crazy homeless guys arguing at the library about waiters and enchiladas. Wtf? 1:11 PM Jul 25th

14. Facebook: Doubt what they say, and believe what they do.

15. Twitter: Do your best & forget the rest. 10:27 PM May 27th

16. Twitter: This place is gayer than Amsterdam on a Saturday. Just saying. (@ Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market) http://4sq.com/77eukP

17. Twitter: I may or may not be wearing a shirt that is too tight. 6:36 PM Jul 26th

18. Twitter: long story, but I just had to add the word “faggot” to my cell’s dictionary, kept trying to change it to fargo. 5:28 PM May 22nd

19. do you ever feel like some people talk loud and say nothing? 7:29 AM May 21st

20. Twitter: Going some place to do some thing…that’s all I know. 9:27 AM Jul 17th