He always adds great personality to his characters and his combination of the vocal content and the physical movements of the characters is just awesome.  I love it when the characters he's not using on stage yell at the one that's one stage from inside the suitcase.  Cracks me up.

I won't say more.  Hope you enjoy.

Carlos Oscar

Os recomiendo ver todos los videos en el orden en que los pongo, pero si quereis ver solamente uno, os recomiendo el de Achmed.

Walter:

Achmed, el terrorista muerto:

Melvin, el superheroe:

Peanut:

Peanut & Jose Jalapeño:

Especial de Navidad de Achmed:

The above video is a bit of hilarity from the very talented ventriliquist Jeff Dunham. The next bit is a collection of responses to the video posted by MobLogic.

"Most of the people who watch these videos are racist." What?! My message to anyone who finds racism in this video, or any joking of this nature: you are the ones giving legitimacy to any ideas of real difference, and thereby promoting racism - not the rest of us who are just having fun.

One of the great concepts of slander is that in order for something to be truly slanderous, it must be considered believable by a normal person. If someone posts a video joking that Libertarian Ramblings can't even write a complete sentence, it can be easily left as simply a joke because it's so obviously untrue. If I fight back on behalf of my blog and cry foul, it can only be from the perspective that it's possibly true, and thus hurtful. Thus, it's not the joke that brings bad light on LR, but the cry of foul play that suddenly brings people's attention to the thought that maybe LR really does suck.

Additionally, embracing difference is generally considered to be a part of anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc. Embracing difference means we don't avoid ever making mention of differences or potential differences - we don't ignore them. Embracing difference means acknowledging that it's ok to have differences, and so differences becomes a thing of smiling and laughter, not a thing of hate, as some pretend they must be. These people push what I call "tolerance by ignorance" - make everyone appear to be exactly the same and ignore all differences. If we can't actually handle differences, then what the hell is the point?

The fact is, if we're a free people, we can be free to embrace our idiosyncratic differences - even those that are associated with identifiable groups of people. More than that, we can be free to have fun with those differences; to make jokes and to laugh. What is freedom worth without laughter anyway?

In keeping with the end of this post, I thought a little humor might be in order. Just so you know, I am sometimes not a bitch.

So, today was supposed to be the genesis of a new venture in the big wide world of medical-speak. But, it didn't happen. I had someone remote into my computer to install the necessary software for the programs I will need...and I sat back and watched as "she" fumbled through the DOS commands (and came up with a few of her own), ignored WIN error messages (not that I DON'T sometimes but not during an install), and try as she might, the computer screamed that something was seriously fucked up. She even went so far as to look for spyware in the processes. I am happy to report there was none. She tried for 4 HOURS to make it work...and it just didn't. I give her points for tenacity, but I have to take away a few for sheer ineptitude. This goes back to many previous episodes that made me grit my teeth when they occurred. Not really a Comcast fan, as those who have read my blog in the past are aware. Their customer support lacks any form of support and some of their tech people have proudly announced to me that they "went through 2 weeks of school" to get their jobs. There's something undeniably amiss there. I had a longer-than-I-wanted-to conversation with one of their alleged tech support gurus. I'm guessing Habib might have been a good name for him. He was Indian. His English was, to say the least, way bad. That was the first hurdle. The second was that, despite not having those golden "two weeks of learning at the Comcast God's feet," I knew about a bazillion times more than he did, and he even commented after an overly long conversation with him where we got nowhere with the problem and I eventually ended up fixing the issue myself, "You are veddy smart, Ms. XXXXXX. I learn from you. Thank you very much." In another lifetime, that might have been a compliment, but in THIS lifetime when I dial an alleged AMERICAN company and end up saying "excuse me" every other sentence because the person on the other end of the phone has zero English skills...well, there are not enough compliments in the world to make me feel good about that. And...they are paying him...and passing the cost on to me, the almighty consumer.

Ms. D said they will be remoting into my computer tomorrow a.m. (like rats deserting a sinking ship) because the install "didn't work out." Ummmm...okay. I won't sit idly by hoping for a miracle tomorrow. If wishes were fishes, I would have something to fry.

anyway it was really a perfectly beautiful evening. and it seriously made me want to go camping for some reason.

so we went to see jeff dunham, who is a ventriloquist.  i can never pronounce that word because of my damned korean tongue. it comes out ventilokrist. but yeah, jeff dunham is funny.  he is wacked.  probably the first clue is that he makes puppets talk.  but it's amusing.  it's gotta be pretty cathartic to say whatever you want to say but with a puppet. 

anyway, the evening was a great and much needed end to my weekend. i cant wait for this weekend already.  i love holidays!!

No sé si recordaréis (espero que sí) un vídeo que pululó por internet meses atrás de un ventrílocuo junto a su compañero terrorista Achmed. Una actuación para morirse de risa una y otra vez, que dejó la muletilla Silence! I kill you! para la posteridad.

Pues bien, el mismo humorista, Jeff Dunham, nos presenta a otro compañero, esta vez a Peanut, junto con una sorpresa final. No son los únicos compañeros que tiene, ni mucho menos, pero si no llega a ser por Albert Salas, lo más probable es que no lo hubiese sabido.

Esta nueva actuación es memorable, y toda una garantía de carcajadas a destajo, os lo aseguro xD

A continuación os dejo con la segunda parte:

Vídeo | Youtube - Youtube
Sitio oficial | Jeff Dunham

Classic Peanut! (Slight language alert....)

John Pinette: Chinese buffet.

Wanda Sykes: Gay marriage.

Jeff Dunham & Walter: Suicide bombers.

Prank secret revealed.

In 1958, a group of twelve students at Cambridge University parked an Austin Seven on the roof of the university's 70-foot-high Senate House. To read about their fifty-year reunion and find out how they did it, click on the pic.

You know you want to try this.

Digg it!   Stumble it!

Marketing is a business activity that you have to embrace as a survival skill. I've spoken before about the necessity for marketing, but slid over the types of marketing activities you should adopt.

Let's focus on those for a few minutes.

There is an ever-expanding supply of free marketing advice on the Internet. Plug "Marketing" into Google, and you get 63.3 million unique hits. Narrow it down to "book marketing" and you get 53.1 million hits. Advice is cheap. Free, actually.

A huge amount of the marketing advice you find on-line is related to website marketing, e-book marketing, building traffic to sites, blogs, etc. Some of it is useful, and can be adapted to marketing fiction books. Some of the schemes and scams suggested border on unethical, if not totally illegal, and marketing gurus tend to think of these methods as "black hat" marketing, as opposed to the "white hat" marketing that abides by the Can-Spam Act, and other Internet protoccols and social etiquette.

But even within the White Hat category, there's a type of marketing that I call "crotch-grope" marketing, and I know you've experienced it yourself. Hang out on-line for very long, and you'll get groped.

Marketers who make their living from affiliate programs and click-through advertising displayed on their sites have one major aim; they want to build traffic to their site. They know success is a numbers game. The more traffic they can funnel to their site, the higher the click-throughs they'll get on links and ads. They will do anything to get that traffic, and they don't care what happens to the 95% of the traffic that doesn't clink on a link. They'll pepper their site with "content" which they've usually bought at a cut rate and re-worked to make it unique - which is a high priority for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as Google downgrades a site with duplicate content.

There's also the marketer with a "product" to sell. You'll recognize these, too. The product is usually an e-book, sometimes courses, lessons, interviews, or a package of information products that can be downloaded for a price. The "landing page" you click through to is usually dozens of screens long, heavy on text, with bright yellow highlighting and screaming red font headlines extolling the benefits of the product ("Always stress the benefits!!"). There'll be dozens of gushing testimonials, and you always have to scroll right down to the bottom of the page to find out how much the product costs, and there is very nearly always a "bonus" that comes with it.

Sound familiar?

I've been sucked into these more than once, and shelled out good cash for a product that promised the moon, and failed to deliver. A couple of times I've asked for my money back, and I'm glad to say I did get it back. Guarantees are part of the white-hat marketing credo.

But reading these landing pages always makes me feel like I'm being suckered. That they're lining me up to grope for the sale, and once they have that sale, they couldn't care if I lived or died.

Same with affiliate marketing sites, which are full of light-weight recycled information. It's the equivalent of a carnival barker, whose sole job is to get people into the tent to see the three-legged man or the bearded lady for ten cents a peek.

This is what I call crotch-grope marketing. It's impersonal, high-traffic-oriented and condescending. The marketers creating these sites and products are only looking for income. Sales. If they get their hand between your thighs, they consider that a hit and don't care what you think about it, or how you feel.

A great deal of the marketing advice you'll find on-line is designed for these types of sites and businesses. Even if you have the best intentions in the world, if you use these techniques, your readers will be subjected to the same experience you get when you trip over yet another affiliate business site. They'll feel manipulated and used.

As an anchored author, your primary aim is to grow your readership with each book you publish - no matter how you publish it. Never think of it as ‘sales figures'. Your focus must be on your readers. Don't forget, for every sale you make, there's often a second or even a third reader reading that copy, and they're your readers as much as the guy plunking down the money for your book. So look beyond the sales to the readers themselves, and aim your marketing efforts at encouraging them to a) read this book and b) read the next one.

In other words, you're building relationships.

Crotch-grope marketing doesn't build relationships. It doesn't let the readers get to know you, your books, feel comfortable about spending money on your stories, and happy to tell others what a great writer you are. There's no relationship there, and no intention of building one.

Evaluate every new marketing technique you come across for its ability to help you communicate with readers and find new ones. If the technique feels even slightly shabby, don't use it. There are plenty of other ways of getting word out there about your books and your site(s) that don't leave a bad taste in your reader's mouth.

Seth Godin, for example, understands this intuitively. Subscribe to his blog, if you haven't already, and read his books. Much of what he says can be adapted to marketing fiction.

Ideas are everywhere, though. One of the best marketing ploys I've ever seen came from Jeff Dunham, the ventriloquist, and his manic puppet Peanut. For a whole ten minutes, Peanut drove Dunham crazy reciting his website in a sing-song voice. I can hear it even now: "Jeff-f-fah...Done-ham...dot com!" It was hysterically funny, especially when Peanut looked at Jeff and said "You're getting angry, aren't you?", then looked at the audience and said "the scary thing is, he really is getting pissed!"

It's a brilliant way of making sure people remember Dunham's website, and how to spell his name properly, so they don't get a .404 error message. My own name can be spelled a dozen different, creative (or downright bizarre) ways, so this is definitely a useful technique for me. I still can't figure out how to use it, yet, but it's there for when I need it.

You can find copies of the Peanut clip on YouTube. Have a laugh.

Also watch what other authors do. You were a reader before you became an author, and you're still reading (I hope!). Passively scan the ways you find out about other authors' books. If you feel like you happily tripped over the information, analyse how it reached you and see if you can adapt the method for your own marketing portfolio. If you feel like you've been groped, though....

Happy marketing. 

He is absolutely amazing and is so damn funny!

I strongly recommend that you all go and pay his site a visit at:

http://www.jeffdunham.com/

And you may even want to buy his DVD's :P

Jeff Dunham ist Amerikaner und pflegt die Kunst des Bauchredens. Dies macht er mit verschiedenen Puppen, die unterschiedlicher Natur nicht sein könnten. Sei es Walter, der knorrige alte Nörgler, der an Schlagfertigkeit nicht zu überbieten ist, oder Peanut, das hyperaktive Fabelwesen mit der grossen Schnauze und dem goldigen Herzen (der Liebling des Publikums). Das sind bei Weitem nicht alle Figuren, die Dunham auf die breite Öffentlichkeit "loslässt". Es gibt auch noch Achmed, den toten Terroristen. Ich will mich da nicht zu weit aus dem Fenster hinauslehnen. Die Figur ist ebenfalls der absolute Hammer, dürfte aber ziemlich die Gefühle von Menschen muslimischen Glaubens verletzen... ausser sie verstehen Spass...

Hier eine Kostprobe...

Silence, I kill you!

happiness is... when u are by my side. indeed, i strongly feel so this few days. everyday, when u think of ' this is the last time we meet', then u will cherish everyday more n more n more.. so no more complaints or wat from me.

phengfong said happiness is when u are satisfied with wat u have.. well, is different view point. thats all i can say..

well, in a narrow way. i mean consider relationship with my love la.. i m happiness yet sometimes i still demand for a lot of things. maybe is not material, but another things. (ha! that day i just forced him to ask me wanna be his gf or not, coz he nvr ask me b4 oso. haha..)

to some1, u can dun sms me, u can angry with me, u can keep on tickle me, but plsssss take care of urself.. dun get sick again, or I KILL U! hahahaha...

alright alright.. i love to be with this person.. althou he always tickle me while he is immune to 'tickleness' d=.=''' althou he give me a scary stare last nite. althou he let me worry a lot.. althou he just simply lauf at me when i did something stupid or memalukan.. althou he took a lot of my sleeping photos(WEI!!!! =.=) ok! i love to be with this guy.. this is a part of my happiness...

p.s: he still care a lot that i put his 'stupid' photo in my blog.. haha.. nenenepupu...

well.. is that all for happiness? no, surely no! human beings are greedy.. not so easy to be satisfied.

did u read fairy tales? (shrek!!! did u read/watch? beh intro to him more plsssss...) remember what is the last sentence of the story? always is.. live happily together forever after.. then the next page, THE END... well.. THE END of the story? THE END of their life? THE END means significant nothing? ha.. deep thought again..

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HOT STUFF!!!

• another jeff dunham for today.. ha.. i m too boring it seems.. but it really cheers me^^

• new game introduce to u!!!! meetoto (click)

T-gang who likes to sing song will like this i think. u can sing song/have a concert etc in this game. well, it is an online game. when u r singing, ppl can vote for u.. and, u can earn $ ($ in game la) by the voting..

seiowphey got around 100 votes for her 1st trial. BRAVO!!! some1 even asked does she has a bf or not? some1 pm her and said that pm the person when she is singing.. haha.. (last nite is the lasttime she sing ba.. she need to do something for her teeth, so cant sing anymore in sometime..) jiayan asked me to sing last nite. but sorry.. no mood + no guts.. aiya.. actualy u no need guts to sing at there la. no1 will know is you also.. so u can just sing wateva u wan la...

• the song intro by alvin is really nice. mayun ask from me when she listen to the song. n.. mr oink, u never listen la, even i put in ur laptop d... duno y.. but u need to listen many times den u will start to love the song.. haha... oh ya.. the song is Lucky by Jason Mraz

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i will be going home this week or next.. so.. i will miss Usa edu fair or beh's bday party.. and! i m going to cut my hair short!!!! shinghui said i cut becoz my bf ask me to do so? ya, kinda-.-'' her bf dislike she cut short hair, yet she cut! my bf wants me to cut short hair.. zzz.... 

gotta find FOOD to eat again. hehe.. i start to believe in Maslow.. Food really is the 1st step towards happiness.. haha...

p.s: pui scold me damn just now, 吓到我很多下.. dun ask me y i got 101 in toefl... i also duno.. really duno, as u can see my spelling/grammar/pronounce/vocab etc is VERY POOR! i really duno how@@

Wiliam De Lucca
Que recomenda assistir os outros vídeos de Jeff