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My 2007 Year in Review

Unlike everyone else, I slacked off and waited until 2008 was officially here to do my review. 2007 was my first year of full on blogging. I’d messed around here and there with different blogs before, but 2007 was the year I drank the Kool Aid and went at it for real. I’ll keep this list confined to what occurred on this blog. You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m somewhat guarded about the personal life. Enough about me…here are my thoughts on my 10 most notable posts of 2007:

Ron Paul’s Presidential Run
At times it seemed to me that Ron Paul news was taking over this blog. On one hand I feel like I need to apologize for that, but on the other hand, it’s my blog and that’s what I was interested in. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who was excited by Dr. Paul’s message, and I hopefully played a small part in helping him get elected. More on that later this year, as I have some thoughts on what is realistic, and what is for the best.

Knox County Scandals
There were more in 2007 than I can even count. That makes you wonder how much stuff is going on that we haven’t even heard about yet. Last week I saw a t-shirt that read, “Miami: A sunny place for shady people.” Knox County seems to have the market cornered on shadiness this year.

Steroids in Sports (and Non-Sports)
My bottom line–WHO CARES? Next topic.

People Getting Nekkid and Almost Nekkid
I got a ton of traffic this year writing articles about Vanessa Hudgens, along with a couple of articles about the Inskip teacher who had arguably inappropriate photos on MySpace. I don’t really care who gets naked and takes photos of it, I just wonder how people can do that and not retain ALL digital copies of the material. Idiots.

Barbie Cummings and the Highway Patrol
This was just a funny local story that ended up causing me to exceed my bandwidth when it went national and I ended up ranking #3 on Google for “Barbie Cummings Blog”. Since then, Ms. Cummings life has apparently changed dramatically, much for the better. How do I know that? I’m resourceful, and it didn’t take much digging anyway. Nevertheless, it seems like she wants to leave that part of her life behind her, so I think it’s time this story finally died and went away, never to be mentioned here again.

Tennessee Smoking Ban
Thank you to our state’s elected leaders for writing and enforcing personal choice laws on private property. If you really want to look out for me and mine, stop wasting our tax dollars on this crap. Next thing you know we’re going to have to provide health care for people who would’ve otherwise died if you’d not spent millions trying to keep them from smoking.

Buddies Blogging
Some people I know IRL also started blogs this year. It’s funny that you can go months or years without talking or emailing with someone, and this medium puts you in the position to “converse” with them every day. Even when it isn’t dialog, you read what they write and they read what you write. Very cool. Not to mention the countless other blogs I’ve begun to read that I never would have learned about if I’d not started blogging for real this year.

The War On Education
Also known as the public school system. I feel like I don’t spend enough time or energy talking about this because I think it’s the number one problem facing our country. Solutions are anything but clear and simple, but one thing I’m very excited about for this coming year is that I’ve got an idea that may help a little, at least for individuals. I’m finishing up some other projects, and then I’m going at it full force.

Blogging About Blogging
As I said, 2007 was my first year blogging full throttle, and boy did I learn a lot. I posted a ton of stuff about monetizing, driving traffic, building networks, linking to other people, and I’m sure lots of other stuff that annoys people. I can’t help it…my interest is peaked. Another project I want to tackle for this year is keeping that stuff off of this site and directing it to a different blog that is dedicated to that subject.

The One I Wish Was More Popular
Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about The Wire. I really wished more people watched this show, especially the season that starts next week which will address the media. I’ve had several great conversations with people who watch The Wire, and I’d love to bring more of them to this venue. In fact, I think I’m going to, despite the fact that most people don’t know about the show. At least I’ll have the bragging rights that a couple of people heard about it from me when they are finally turned on to it.

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Barbie Cummings Trooper Indicted

The KNS tells us that former Tennessee State Trooper who received a favor from Knoxville based porn star Barbie Cummings will be prosecuted, even though the work she performed was pro bono…

James Randy Moss turned himself in to Wilson County authorities in Middle Tennessee this morning to face a sealed indictment on charges of official misconduct, tampering with evidence and official oppression.

I’m a little surprised that Barbie Cummings doesn’t still have her blog going, or if she does I can’t find it. She really could have made a big splash with this story if she’d played it right. I thought from the beginning it was just a clever stunt on her part to get her name out–no such thing as bad press, right?

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Barbie Cummings Misses Court

All she had to do was show up and her ticket would have been dismissed. Now she’ll have to pay it. 🙁

Since her old site has been taken down, she has a temporary blog. According to that, she’s been pretty busy lately, traveling to the West Coast for some business engagements and even getting married in Las Vegas.

It states there that she’s moving from Knoxville to L.A. soon, so I guess the court date completely slipped her mind.

***UPDATED 7.25.07
You COULD read about it in her own words, but Blogger deleted her site…probably because there was extremely explicit material on there. You can always depend on me to stay well informed on this story. 😛

What a truly strange story to be cumming (sorry, had to) out of sleepy old Knoxville!

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KPD Prostitution Sting Wildly Successful

The KNS reports that a sting ending at 6 am in the Magnolia area caught eleven “criminals”. Apparently ten women and one man were engaged in swapping services one party was willing to provide for money the other party was willing to pay.

Stay tuned to the KNS. I’m sure they’ll have a follow up story once the victims of these crimes are found and identified.

In (somewhat) related news, the former Highway Patrolman involved in the Barbie Cummings traffic stop is under further investigation for other traffic stops he made involving women. Not sure if they are looking for evidence of him disposing of drugs or receiving sexual favors from the women he has stopped. Based on the photo I saw of him, I’d say the former is more likely than the latter.

Again, they should let this die. Cummings herself says there was no exchange of services involved and he still gave her the ticket. The guy has already been fired, and I think that’s enough–not because of what he did, but because he was stupid enough to tell everybody about it. We should expect our Highway Patrolmen to be at least a tad bit brighter than former presidents.

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Eaton Beavers

I was telling some guys I work with about how my blog traffic was recently affected by the Barbie Cummings story, and we started talking about funny porn names.  I was telling them about some guys I knew in college who either made up funny names or just had funny nicknames and the funny stories associated with these guys.  They thought the stuff was pretty good and worthy of posting, so here is the first installment…the story of Eaton Beavers.

I was hanging out with my buddy Burgers one night in ’98 or ’99 and was watching some TV while he was changing clothes to go out.  This was back before cell phones, and Burgers was one of those fancy boys who had to have caller I.D.  Believe it or not, this story isn’t even about Burgers (I’ve got plenty more on him), I just happened to be at his house when the phone rang.

Burgers yelled out from the other room for me to see who it was on the caller I.D.  The screen said, “Beavers, Eaton”….Eaton Beavers was calling Burgers.  Of course I started laughing and told him that Eaton Beavers was calling him.  He told me that was actually another friend of ours, Halfacre (real last name).

Halfacre had used a fake French accent when he got his phone connected and told the lady his name was Eaton Beavers.  It was even listed in the phone book that way.

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The Barbie Cummings Saga Continues

It’s odd that this latest KNS article releases her real name (it’s Justis Ellen Richert by the way). It’s odd that in their first article they stated that she asked not to be named out of safety concerns–not sure who she was afraid of, or whether she’s okay with it at this point, but the cat’s out of the bag now.

The officer, James Randy Moss, has been fired and may face criminal charges for destroying the drugs she had on her. Continue reading “The Barbie Cummings Saga Continues”

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Barbie Cummings and the Highway Patrol

Could it be the title of her next movie?

Barbie Cummings is a clever, clever girl.

The porn star based out of Knoxville was pulled over by a Tennessee Highway Patrolman outside of Nashville and engaged in an exchange of favors with the officer. Actually, she still got the ticket, so there actually wasn’t an exchange.

This genius took photos and videos and bragged to his fellow patrolmen about it and has subsequently been suspended. All Barbie did was write about it on her blog.

Very clever. Hope all of you SEO masters are paying attention. This is TRUE viral marketing. The story has caused such a stir in Tennessee and presumably created so much traffic to her blog that it, ahem, went down last night.

No worries, they got it up again. 🙂 I was able to go there and do some fact checking. Don’t visit it from the office, but if you want to see free speech in action, it’s worth a look.

Maybe you’ll read it, maybe you won’t, but this girl is lucky that my friend BGE no longer lives in Knoxville. Their lives are about as parallel as the two rails of a train track. If they ever cross, look out!

Story about the incident in the KNS

***UPDATE***

Obviously, demand for information is high. Subscribe to this feed and I’ll update with news…

I just checked out her site to see if there were any updates since this story went national. Apparently she either got a nice offer for her domain name or she’s put her own Barbie store on her site. I’d guess the former. Unfortunate for all of you who were looking to get a firsthand look/read. I’m sure her site will surface again at a new address. Stay tuned.