Swollen Pickles

I've been slack at maintaining the old pickle over the last few weeks. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do with it, but not enough hours in the day. Yeah I'm busy, but it could be worse. I could be the Nasosus Machedonus, aka. the Proboscis Monkey, aka. the monkey with a penis nose.

Yup, 31 August is officially Proboscis Monkey Day. What sets the Proboscis Monkey apart from it's other Monkey cousins is its massive hooter.

"A distinctive trait of this monkey is the male's large protruding nose, from which it takes its name. The big nose is thought to be used to attract females and is a characteristic of the males, reaching up to 7 inches in length."

What is a proboscis? It's an elongated appendage from the head. Ewwww! Head appendage. So here we have a fun loving monkey with a 7 inch schlong for a nose. According to science, the schlong nose is a real turn on for the lady monkeys.

Unfortunately the Proboscis Monkey is on the endangered species list, which is quite sad, as this is one monkey with the potential to bring great joy to the world.

Seven months down already. That's just crazy. Anyway, straight into it...

Goal Number One: Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that can generate $350US per month.

Effort + Output = Reward. That is probably why I am making very little progress on this goal. $141.03, yeah it's up slightly from $105.98 in June, but it's still less than half way toward the $350 target.

Goal Number Two: Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that receives 35,000 unique visits per month.

Snuck over the target with 35,518 unique visits in July, down from 42,793 unique visits in June.

What I found most interesting about the traffic statistics for July was that 9.52% of traffic to Swollen Pickles came from Bing.

Goal Number Three: Exercise a minimum of three times per week (30 plus minutes per session).

I managed to maintain this goal for the month of July. I'm on a roll.

Goal Number Four: Achieve a Body Mass Index (BMI) within the "Normal" range (from 18.5 to 25).

Getting closer!! I started the year with a hefty BMI of 29, at the end of June it was down to 26.5 by the end of July my BMI was 25.7. My short term goal for the next month is to get the BMI below 25.

Goal Number Five: Reduce my waist measurement to below 94cm.

When I set my goals at the start of the year, I never expected it to take me this long to get hold of a tape measure. In any case, I have no idea what I started at, and I don't really have an accurate measure of where I'm at now. I can say, that I now fit in to pants with a 97cm waist and I need a belt.

And in other news...

On the weekend I think that perhaps I became the only person in Australia to have watched Harper's Island through to its conclusion. I have to say, Harper's Island became a guilty pleasure for me, and once it drew me in, I was hooked. In Australia, the series started out in the 9.30pm slot on Sunday nights, but only lasted a couple of episodes before being given the shaft. I believe it ended it's run

For those that don't know, Harper's Island is a 13 episodes thriller/mystery/horror series that can probably only be described as a cross between Scream and Beverly Hills 90210.

It begins with a large group of family and friends arrive at Harper's Island for the wedding of Henry Dunn and Trish Wellington. It continues with a bloody rampage by a serial killer, and ends with only a handful of guests surviving the wedding from hell. Somehow, the killer is linked to the main character Abby Mills, who is the typical 'girl next door' type, who is also best friend of the groom.

I could try and explain it more, but in doing so I'd probably either a) spoil it, b) do the show an injustice or c) both. If you want to know more, watch the trailer from CBS below.

Harper's Island seemed to really struggle to find an audience, which I think is kind of sad, as it is one of those rare shows that comes along that isn't either set in a hospital, courtroom, medical clinic or police department.

To be fair though I guess the first three episodes did require a little patience on behalf of the viewer, and were by far the weakest of the series. From there on in though I found Harper's Island to be guiltily addictive viewing. In my opinion the show really kicked up a gear with episode five, with the death of one of the more prominent characters.

I get the feeling that Harper's Island will be one of those shows that garners a strong little cult following, and will probably find itself an audience among the DVD box set crowd. If you want to watch a series that doesn't outlive it's welcome and that will keep you guessing until the last episode, give Harper's Island a shot... if you can find it out there.

Island Ecstasy K Harper Good Book

US $1.00

2d 7h 18m