I'm one of those Luddites who still don't understand the appeal of Twitter. For those of you who are lucky enough to have never heard of it, here's what it is according to the Twitter FAQ:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I usually have a simple answer to that simple question: None of your business. And even my closest friends rarely hear that question from me except in the rhetorical sense, e.g. screaming "What the fuck are you doing?" when they try to jaywalk across a busy road or do something similarly stupid. I love my friends, but I just can't bring myself to care enough about the boring little details of their lives.

A lot of Twitter users (or, as I call them, twittards) sound like Tamagochis to me. I'm hungry! I'm bored! I'm sad! I need to poop! I'm sleepy! Snore. This episode of Lore Sjoberg's Alt Text pretty much sums up how I feel about Twitter.

So why do we suddenly have a new Twitter widget over there on the right sidebar? Well, I signed up for an account a few weeks ago after constant peer pressure from Jeff and Tiff. Those two monsters left me alone after that, and I hadn't actually posted any tweets (or followed anyone else's, heh). But now, I've decided to give it a try. The second part of the answer to "What is Twitter?" in the FAQ gave me some hope that this Twitter thing wouldn't be completely useless:

Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

The "Possibilities are endless!" part is foolishly optimistic (and mathematically impossible) for a system that limits messages to 140 characters, but the concept of microblogging does seem mildly interesting. I guess I can share with you the little things--YouTube videos, CNN news articles, Lolcats--that make me laugh during all the hours I spend mindlessly surfing the Web.

So follow me on Twitter and allow me to help you waste a few minutes of your precious time everyday. Yay!

If you were at yesterday's iBlog4 or 88DB.com's afterparty, you probably saw this chicken.

What was intended as a small publicity stunt turned out better than I imagined. The costume is quite flimsy and uncomfortable, but I don't think Philos can complain after winning a shiny new PSP for having the best costume at the 88DB party. He also probably never had so many women touching and hugging him in one night. The only problem was that, without any peripheral vision, he couldn't be sure at any given moment if he was being groped by a woman or a man, heh.

Anyway, it's time to dish out some link love for the people who had pictures taken with the chicken. Here's what to do: find your picture below and leave a comment with your name, URL, and number (not your phone number, silly... your picture number). Again, don't forget to mention the number of the picture you're in. Make it easier for lazy me, okay? If you do that, I'll put your link under your picture.

Click on the thumbnails to see bigger versions, which you can then right click and save and set as your desktop wallpaper. What? You don't want a chicken on your desktop? Boo.

Sarah	Chris	3
Ambo and Gab	Dexter	Jane
Karlo, Topz, Toni, Tinette	Arbet	Fjordz and Gerald
Dhon	Benj	The [Deranged] Writer, Jed, Vinch, Reyn
Ian/ravenfox13 and KC	14	Makoy
Denis	Aaronjames	18
Prudence	Robby, Mistervader, Prudence	21
Robby	23	George
Jerome	Ria	27
Lauren	Mistervader	Murder!
Jester	Poyt	33
34	Elaine, Aileen, Vida, Rommel	Arbet
Jeff	Jeff again	Stop molesting the chicken, Jeff!
40	Poyt	Eugene
Maki	Mica	45
Mary and friend (no links?)	Camille	Dak
FunnySexy	OneTamad	Ade
52	53	What are you looking at?

Our apologies to the nice people at the 88DB party registration desk... their group picture with the chicken got lost somehow. Sorry.

All the pictures were taken by ArsenaL, but you can grab them and do whatever you want. ArsenaL swears that he won't sue you for copyright infringement.

UPDATE: Mica made a nice Chicken Mafia tribute video from some of the pictures.

Go see if you're in there and which of the five groups you belong to :-P

In a few days, Runawaycat a.k.a. Neko-chan is coming over to Manila for a short visit. Since she has been a good friend of the Chicken Mafia for quite a while now, I think we should take this opportunity to have a Mafia meeting. So mark Friday, November 23, 2007 on your calendars now. Everyone is invited.

People, this is your chance to meet some of your favorite chickenmafia.com bloggers, like Philos, Catinamosh, and ArsenaL. Huh? Who, who, and who? Yeah, I know. Sometimes I too forget that they're on my blog team. Lazy bastards, all of them....

Anyway, here's the plan.

6 PM: Go-kart fun at Kart Trak (Get it? "Trak" is "kart" spelled backwards. So amazingly creative, no?). That's right beside Boom na Boom in Pasay City. Compared to other (nicer) tracks, their rates are quite reasonable... 260 pesos for 11 minutes if I remember correctly.

Karting is fun, but I want to make it clear that the Chicken Mafia shall not be held liable for any injuries or death that occur during this activity. No, I'm not kidding. The last time we went karting, this buddy of mine decided that he didn't need the brake pedal. Unsurprisingly, he crashed on pretty much every corner. He ended up with a badly sprained ankle and couldn't walk without whining afterwards. The sad thing is that he was our high school batch valedictorian... shameful. Yeah, our high school sucks.

7 PM: Seafood dinner at Dampa, Macapagal Boulevard, Pasay City. Expect to spend around 300 pesos. And before you smart asses ask... no, no free food for anyone. I don't love you kids that much.

Again, the Chicken Mafia shall not be held liable for any injuries or death that occur during this activity. For example, if you're severely allergic to shellfish and still foolishly decide to eat it, we'll laugh at you and watch you die. Philos will probably try to perform first aid, but we'll laugh at him too.

Well, that's about it. Maybe we can do something fun after dinner, like beating up random homeless people or setting parked cars on fire... or maybe not. Let's just wing it and see what happens.

If you want to join us, just send me your email address and mobile phone number. Don't worry, I will never sell your personal info to spammers unless they offer me a ridiculous amount of money (stole that line from Goodnight Burbank).

Please also indicate which activities you plan to participate in (karting, dinner, or both).

As some of you might have noticed, chickenmafia.com was down for almost 24 hours. I can't talk about what happened. All I can say is that I just had the worst day I've had in a very long time.

But don't mind me. The important thing is that we're back, and we're better than ever. Yay!

OK, we're not really better than ever. We're just pretty much the same as before... I wish.

Actually, we're not even quite the same as before. For instance, all your avatars are gone. Sorry about that, kids. Well, consider this an opportunity for all of you to create and upload your own chicken avatars. Let's repopulate this place with chickens. Yay!

I took chickenmafia.com off-line for around an hour or so late last night to upgrade some stuff. On a whim, I decided to replace the old boring "this site is under maintenance" message with a pointless little lolcat.

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone besides Carnifex got to see it. Since I don't want the rest of you to feel left out, here's what you would had seen if you dropped by at 4:30 AM Philippine time.

OH HAI!

COME BACK LATER. KTHXBYE!

LOL. OK, so it's not really funny, but... nothing.

I blame Fire Eye'd Boy for contaminating my mind with the unspeakable evil of lolcat and Carnifex for luring me to ICanHasCheezburger.com, a bottomless pit of lolcatness.

BTW, my lolcat was created in the Cheezburger Factory.

KTHXBYE.

Janette Toral started a writing project to identify the top 10 emerging influential blogs of 2007. Since I'm lazy, I usually instinctively run away from projects. But I'm participating in this one because I'll get an approximately 1 in 25 shot to win $100. *cue Dr. Evil voice* ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I like cash, and I like the odds.

So here's my list of 10 emerging blogs and why I think they're influential. Did I say 10? I meant 5. 10 sounds like too much work.

1. Paolo Mendoza a.k.a. The Philosophical Bastard - He's like the little brother I never had. The ultimate blogosphere politician, he gains supporters by going from blog to blog, kissing hands and shaking babies. He claims that he'll become the president of the Philippines in 2028, so sucking up to him now could be a good idea.

2. The Runaway Cat's SpaceParade - She's known to Chicken Mafia fans as neko-chan. Just like me, she loves food and hates CSI:Miami. She's like the little sister I never had. Oh wait, I do have a little sister... sorry, sis.

3. Greenpinoy - This guy specializes in lowbrow Pinoy humor. He posts short entries several times a day, and that's perfect for my short attention span. He earns bonus points for being a pervert.

4. Fruityoaty - This one is influential because it was most likely created under the influence of some kind of drugs. She earns bonus points for having a morbidly obese cat that looks like Garfield.

5. The Blue Addictions - Flattery and talking about poop are two of the best ways to win my approval. (Bribery is another... hey, look, there are still 5 slots open on this list! *wink* *wink*)

Yay! I'm done!

I do follow quite a few other blogs, but most of them are either too old (blogs created before August 2006 are ineligible) or updated too infrequently (you know who you are :-P).

Oh yeah? Well, I just did. What are you gonna do about it?

Saw this strange little shop at the newly opened TriNoma mall last Saturday....

Spooky!

And guess what they're selling? The first person to guess correctly gets a free hamburger. Why a free hamburger? No particular reason. That's just the first thing that popped into my now hungry mind. If your geographical location makes it difficult for you to claim your burger, you'd have to settle for something less yummy, like perhaps one month of free advertising on this site.

Each of you gets only three chances. No cheating! Anonymous chickens must use a valid email address to participate.

All answers must be posted by 11:59 PM on Sunday. The winner, if any, will be announced on Monday morning.

UPDATE (MON 18-JUN-2007):

The answer? They sell clothes. We didn't know that either until we asked.

So I guess there's no winner :-P Dodge's answer (shoes) came pretty close though. Hmm, who knows, maybe they do sell shoes. If I can confirm that they do, Dodge will get the burger.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Better luck next time :-P

If you have too much time on your hands and want your own chicken avatar, here's the basic chicken file. It can be opened and edited with Adobe Flash. You'll get to choose from several different types of eyes and beaks that I've included in there. Enjoy.

Legalese:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. The Chicken Mafia shall not be held liable for any damages or injury caused by the chicken.

Plain English:

You can modify the basic chicken and make your own chicken avatars, emoticons, mood indicators, or whatever. It's free. All we ask for is a link back to chickenmafia.com. If you want to sell the chicken (yeah, as if anyone would buy it) or use it for commercial purposes, ask for permission first or we'll sue your ass. And if the chicken somehow messes you or your computer up, you're a total moron you can't sue us.