Shameless Self-Promotion

Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at “Tongue-in-Cheek” column number 98.

That’s right. Almost two solid years of churning out this God-forsaken drivel week after week.

What have I learned from it all?

You can tell a lot about a man by looking at his blog tags.

You see, I post each of these columns to a blog (www.tongue-cheek.blogspot.com), which keeps them neatly archived so I can go back and check which immature jokes I’ve already used.

Each entry has “tags,” or key words that make the blog to appear when someone searches for one of those words.

I thought I’d show you my tags. Sure, it sounds dirty, but it would give you an idea of what this column is all about, in case you’re new to it. (As you’ll see, I’m not afraid to take on the “tough issues,” such as paranoid elk.)

These keywords have NOT been rearranged for meaningful effect. Honest. They are simply in alphabetical order.

For example, the phrase “Earth-Raping Pirate Pillagers” appears next to “electric company.” That’s not a reflection on my views of the electric company.

Well, okay, maybe it is, but only by coincidence.

Say… that gives me an idea for a cheesy contest.

Scan my tags and see if you can find any other places where two seem to fit together. Write to me at chuckrates@gmail.com and let me know which ones and why. Whoever comes up with the best one will get to have lunch with me. (It would be like meeting a celebrity, albeit one who is not the least bit handsome, interesting, or famous.)

I’ll announce the winner in my 100th column, two weeks from now.

Here they are. Good luck:

Abstinence, Alfond Arena, anarchists, Anthem, armpit gland surgery, arsenic-laced Wheaties, atheism, Babe Ruth, Baldacci, beer tax, biodiesel, Black Death, black market drugs, bowl of popcorn, brass knuckles, breast feeding, Brian Setzer Orchestra, bronchitis, brothel,
carpet mold, cat vomit, cataclysmic explosions, cherished personal orifice, Cheshire Cat, Christian Civic League, cigarettes, Civil Disobedience, Clint Eastwood, clown college, coccyx, collective flabbiness, complete apocalyptic chaos, consolidation, Conway Twitty, Criminal Scum, Curt Schilling, cute matte finish,
darn corporate greed, democracy, diapers, Don Imus, driving, Earth-Raping Pirate Pillagers, electric company, Engelbert Humperdinck, engorged testicles, Etch-a-Sketch, even more sex,
fantasy baseball, fatherhood, feminism, festering wound, fjords, foam packing peanut finger puppets, Food Network, Fox News, fraud, freaking Panama Canal, fungal evil, furry woodland creatures,
Garbanzo Beans, gardening, gasses escaping, gay rights, Genghis Kahn, go-karts, Gray Poupon, Green Party, grenade launcher,
Halo, Hannaford, haphazardly-trained orangutan, heating oil, heebie-jeebies, Hillary Clinton, hip waders, hockey, Home Depot, hopeless drooling losers, Hormel, horticultural terrorist, household spiders, Human Growth Hormone, hunting, Hurricane Ike, Husqvarna Mafia, hypnosis,
Idaho, insect toilet paper, insurance, Interstate Highway to the Sun, intimacy, investing, Iraq, James Bond, Kleenex, larger ice cubes, Larry Bird, lead paint, leprosy, Lewiston, loofah, lucky briefs, Lunar Rest Area, lust,
Manny Ramirez, manure, Massachusetts, menacing muscular manliness, meth-addicted howler monkey, Molly Ivins, Moons Over My Hammy, mosquito coitus, Mother's Day, Motor Booty Affair, Mrs. Beasley, mucous, municipal landfill, Muppets,
nerds, Nintendo Wii, Panic of 1893, paranoid elk, patented detergent additive, Patriot Act, pepperoni stick, pffft, Philip-Morris, pointy trout antics, poison ivy, poisonous gases, pus, Queen Elizabeth II,
Red Sox, religion, remorseless evil, Republicans, rinky-dink town, Roscoe P. Coltrane, rotten cantaloupes, Route 1, Rubik's Cube, sado-masochistic plaything, scythe, Senator Collins, sewage treatment plant, sex, Sherlock, shrunken head, snake advisory, sophisticated nod, soul-bending fiery passion, SPAM, spastic hand gestures, sphincters, spider self-esteem, steamed crap, Steve McKay, swarthy lying scumbag, Sweet-n-Low,
taxes, The American Way, The Man, thrilling capitalistic orgy, toddler, toilets, Tom Brady, traffic laws, transmission fluid,
underwear-staining alarm, utter foolishness, Uzi, vacuum, vampire, vasectomy, video games, virgin poultry, wedgie of doom, weeds, wet Chihuahua, Wiggles, Wikipedia, wrinkly texture, writhing, yoga, youth sports, zzzzzzz.