So here I am being all “WOaoaaah” and you’re all like “Ahhhha whaaaaa?” No I’m kidding I really sober right now. In fact I just woke up from a long nap, as it is only 7PM! Hahaha yes!

I do have a cup of rum nd coke in front of me, and I would shout something dramatic like “SOBERVILLE AHOY” but it turns out I’m not going TO soberville, but leaving from it!

hahaha awesoooooome

also happy new year in a few hours that’s a good

One of my more engrossing gifts this Christmas was a copy of Bret Hart’s autobiography, “Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Professional Wrestling.” Despite that title being dangerously close to one of Mick Foley’s books “Foley is Good and the real world is faker than wrestling,” Hart’s book is a large tome detailing his entire life story, from his early days being raised in the Hart house, to the Montreal incident to his career ending concussion, to his stroke, to his recovery and induction in the WWE Hall of Fame.

As a wrestling fan, the book is a fascinating read. For non-wrestling fans, it would no doubt also be interesting to see some of the things that go on backstage and behind the curtain at a ‘rasslin show.  Hart gives us details of conversations with Vince McMahon, Shawn Michaels and others, portraying his impressions of many key points in his career.

Like any good story, there are many villains. At varying times, Hart’s father Stu, his sisters Diana and Ellie, brothers Smith, Bruce and Dean, Vince McMahon, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan and an asshole Lloyd’s of London Insurance adjuster all fill the role of villain. Hart seems conflicted about his father, however, as he describes being terrified of him as a child, but having nothing but love and respect for him as an adult.

In fact, the entire Hart family, save for brother Owen and mother Helen are made to look like the most dysfunctional clan to ever earn chromosomes. According to Bret, after Owen died, all the Hart siblings made their various power plays to take advantage of the situation, with Bruce trying to get a job with the WWE out of it, and Diana and Ellie trying to get their husbands, the British Bulldog and Jim Neidhart, jobs out of it. As a result of this Owen’s widow Martha gets far less out of her lawsuit than they might have otherwise.  At one point, Ellie tells Bret “I’ve hated your guts your entire life.”

As an side note, Diana wrote her own book about the Harts, but according to Bret it was ghostwritten, and was just filled with ugly, hate-filled criticisms and made up stories, including a wrestling aligator in the basement, which apparently never existed. Her story opens with a story of her husband drugging and sodomizing her and gets uglier after that. Bret thinks she didn’t even read the final version before it was published, and a lot of it was embellished by the ghostwriter. Worst yet, she got Stu to write the forward without even knowing that the book mostly bashed his family.

This is all very interesting, but there are points that more learned wrestling fans may have questions. Hart’s version of the buildup to his Survivor Series match with Shawn Michaels (where the infamous Montreal incident would take place) is suspect. Hart sums up the series of interviews leading up to the match. He claims that he was simply going off the script, while Michaels would be “shooting” (making unscripted, real digs at him). Humorously, in Michaels’ book, he claims the opposite, that he was on script and Hart was “shooting.”

In fact, the comparison between Michaels’ book and Hart’s is really interesting. The two disagree on the facts of many situations. Hart claims that being World Champion went to Yokozuna’s head and made him arrogant. Michaels described Yoko as being humble, and “one of the boys.” Each of them claim that the Harris Brothers (a tough, identical twin tag team) were strongly on their side of the Montreal issue. Bret claims that Owen desperately wanted out of his WWF contract after Montreal, Shawn says Owen was happy where he was, as he was winding down into retirement anyway. And of course, each of them was in the right of the Montreal screwjob.

One thing not really in question is Hart’s depiction of his personal life. Hart admits to regularly having been unfaithful to his wife, Julie, with an almost constant cycle of “ring rats” (the wrestling equivalent of a groupie). Hart describes in painful detail how Julie threatened to leave him on an almost weekly basis for their entire two decade marriage. He admits to steroid and drug use, although he says that women were his main addiction.

Regardless of whether or not that makes you hate Bret Hart, the book is still a fascinating read. The behind the scenes stories are really entertaining, and gives a little insight into why anyone would put on a tiny bathing suit and pretend to fight other giant ment in tiny bathing suits.

I give this book 356,200 ring rats banged by Bret Hart out of a possible 447,243.

Other recommended wrestling biographies:

Have a Nice Day by Mick Foley
Foley is Good by Mick Foley
Walking a Golden Mile by William Regal
Controversy Creates Cash by Eric Bischoff
A Lion’s Tale by Chris Jericho

Instead of writing, I’ve made this lovely comic. Happy New Year, all!

Recently I did a ranting article on What Tags Are and why we should use them. Here’s the plugin I featured towards the end of that article!

What Is It?

This is a plugin that displays a link to your latest article that does not contain tags, and provides you with an editing link for it as well. This will help you update all your older articles that don’t have tags on them.

If all of your articles have tags, it instead selects the article with the fewest number of tags.

This is a great plugin to slowly (but surely!) let you and all of your site editors apply tags to those old articles, thus making them more easily accessible to your readers and search engines.

Here’s a screenshot of it in use:

The phrase “TagIt” Is a link to the selected article, and (e) is a link directly to the article’s edit page. The (?) tag is a mouseover describing the work to be done (add tags!).

Download

Click here to download the latest version from the Wordpress Plugin Repository.

Ya know how Spazzy Wives get when they play board games?

You know, when they keep playing until they win?

And it’s a game of chance so you can’t even let them win?

So I’m sitting here at work, it is Christmas day, and I am:

No!! I am not a multi-ethnic group of “employers” who are labelled “all who want to earn cash” by google image search. But the underlying theme IS me! I AM EXCITED! I HAVE A WII!

I’ve spent the last year just dreaming about a Wii but unfortunately my piloting career has rendered me

And I have been feeling like I am living in

I can’t wait until I get home from work (only 8 more hours to go!) so I can play with my new toy… EDIT: Went home on my lunch break and had a round of Wii tennis…

hehe WII

(bonus hardly worksafe nerdcore pic)

Weasel’s HTML Bios is a plugin for Wordpress that simply stops wordpress from stripping HTML from the User Bio field. This is handy for anybody that actually uses those User Bios. :)

No configuration, it simply stops the stripping of HTML.

DOWNLOAD

Please download the latest version of Weasel’s HTML Bios from the Wordpress Plugin Repository.