At Rum & Monkey, we love our audience. You’ve been here with us since the beginning; on January 30, 2002, when we pulled the giant “on” switch and the city lights all flickered out – we like to think with joy – you were ready and waiting for the products of our fecund finger-tappings.

The Internet, however, has moved on. It used to be enough to tack up a page and leave it sitting there, winningly smelling up its corner of the web while people stopped by to copy embed codes into their MovableType weblogs. These days, you’ve got to throw up – literally throw up, projectile-style – brand pages on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, RedTube and Grindr, and ideally track the hell out of your visitors and sell inferred knowledge about the HIV status of their children to the dazed, pockmarked remnants of the KGB, operating (as everyone knows they are) from a warehouse loft in Sunnyvale.

With this in mind, some time ago, we added a Facebook “like” button to all of our pages. Most people don’t know this, but in exchange for doing so, Facebook provides detailed demographic information to site owners, using the profile details of people who didn’t log out of their site and happen to stop by our site. (Seems legit to us.) Our visits and pageviews are pretty awesome, but we’ve been stabbing in the dark – now, for the first time ever, we could analyze the demographics of our site and better serve you, the user.

This is absolutely true: the key demographic for Rum & Monkey is 14-year-old Indonesian teenage girls.

“No way,” we said.

As it turned out: way.

Shit.

We’ve been running this site for nine years, people. We’ve run articles about Sarah Palin, Robert Mugabe and George W Bush. We’ve called Ariel Sharon an evil criminal, we’ve discussed the finer points of New Labour politics in Britain, we’ve made web toys about the looting in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina (all in the best possible taste, of course). Our hope – nay, our plan – was to attract a disaffected audience with the same disjointed sense of humor.

Now, it could be that Indonesian teenage girls have a particularly adept understanding of global sociopolitical current events, and have been attracted by our intelligent but irreverent coverage of same. More likely, though, they don’t give a shit, and have been skipping right past all that stuff to the Name Generator Generator, rendering our tears, sweat and that time we locked a team-member in his room for three days entirely pointless.

Which is not to undervalue Indonesian teenage girls. I’m sure you’re all great, and you’re in an up-and-coming part of the world that’s rising beyond its troubled past and is sure to blossom in your lifetime. That’s awesome. We just don’t know how the shit to write for you.

So, girls, answer us this: what can we do better? How? Why?

Everyone else out there who’s tried to run a website: how do we pivot from this?

And finally, to the three people who have actually been reading for the LolPalins and the Señor Peegs and all the rest of it: thanks. It means a lot.

Hi, America! Al Qaeda here. We’d like to thank you for changing your way of life in response to our activities over the last ten years. It’s fun to visit an airport or public place and see that familiar Al Qaeda stamp! Thanks to our friends at the TSA for making this possible.

We’d like to let you know about some other things we’ve been doing:

We’ve poisoned the french fries. Every french fry you buy in the continental United States is infected with terrorism. The same goes for fried dough, fried butter, and anything from Jack in the Box.

We’ve been broadcasting subliminal messages on the Fox News Channel. It’s basically our channel now. Every time you watch Fox News, you’re inundated with terrorist messages and become a sleeper Al Qaeda operative yourself. We also broadcast hypnotic messages in music played from cellphone speakers on public transport.

American cheese is un-American. ‘Nuff said, we think.

It’s pretty obvious that you should be avoiding Two and a Half Men. But did you know that Al Qaeda is responsible for the programming of America’s Next Top Model? You will smize in hell!

We have sent a large contingent of terrorist operatives who will bicycle on the wrong side of public roads, and on the sidewalks. Further terrorist contingents cram too many people into the segments in revolving doors and randomly come to a stop in crowded pedestrian areas.

The giant TVs at all Costco entrances are set to explode randomly.

Chihuahua dogs, when combined with handbags, will form a complete dirty bomb.

The cast of Jersey Shore join together like Voltron to create one big mega-terrorist.

We certainly don’t think that you should alter your lives in response to this new information.

Best regards,

Al Qaeda

Editor’s note: Rum and Monkey has existed as a website since January 31, 2002, well before many of its visitors had mastered the art of fully autonomous toilet control. However, it is not yet the Internet giant it deserves to be. These are the notes from a recent meeting where plans to rectify this by utilizing a win-win, zero-game, synergistic managed innovation strategy were touch-base synchroblurted molepoo dancer blah blah blah.

1. Pay Per Click advertising. We advertise bullshit relevant products and services and negotiate a fee every time an identity slave a user clicks through.

2. Eyeball-based advertising. We laser etch advertisements for relevant products and services on the eyeballs of punters. This gives us an advantage over our competitors Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto holds them back from doing the cool stuff. Luckily, our “be aggressively weird” motto is more permissive.

3. Bikini car wash! We wash bikinis with cars, in a crafty twist on the old classic. For crafty backwards money.

4. Build an iPhone app that convinces iPhone users that they must gently sing to their glassy-faced call-droppers daily or they will shrivel and die. Sell it for $1.99.

5. Organize a webinar. Charge people a fee in exchange for ceasing to use the word webinar. Move the event to Twitter, coin the term twonference, and profit handsomely.

6. Orchestrate a gargantuan reverse 419 scam and buy Nigeria.

7. Redevelop the site into one that has both purpose and definition, in a way that focuses on a specific audience and creates high quality, intelligent content on a highly regular basis. Attract valuable sponsors and sell branded products and services that are attractive to said audience. Probably drop that one article illustrated by a photo of Robert Mugabe.

8. Three words: virtual poo slinging.

9. Enrage the Tea Party by using logical reasoning, measured debate and intelligent political discourse based on a common respect across partisan lines. Also, call Glenn Beck a clownish buffoon whose carefully administered disinformation is viscerally evil. Include a new cartoon character, the ObamaCare Bear, who shoots rainbows powered by socialized medicine and a universal right to healthcare. Charge them to reply. Double if they want to reference Ayn Rand.

10. Become a social meme marketing agency. Describe ourselves as “gurus”. Provide face-to-face seminars, webinars, twonferences and fucktoblasts about how to create social widgets that the unwashed masses will paste upside their sites and spread virally across the twogosphere like some kind of pan-digital syphilis. Get government funding for the fucktoblasts.

11. Bring back Owen. What the hell happened to Owen? Is he still looking at those goddamn clouds?

12. Get as many Twitter followers as possible.

13. The world has a population of over 6 billion, with a total wealth of over $100 trillion. Create a website for everybody. If we can capture just 1% of the market, we’ll be fabulously profitable.

14. Sell own blood.

14a. Sell own blood to Google.

14b. Create a service that rewards users for checking in their own blood at local restaurants, cafés, schools and libraries. Award badges.

15. Actually begin selling rum and monkeys. Licensing for both may be an issue, so perhaps begin by selling just monkeys. But get them drunk first. If necessary, reassure them with a monkey lullaby, or rouse them into rum-sodden joyfulness with a sea shanty.

16. Two words: Internet mugging. Like GroupOn with knives.

17. Accept defeat and sell to AOL.

Bears. n.

1. Big hairy chunks of snarl. Big teeth, powerful body, all-consuming love of salmon.
2. Husky, large, manly gay men, with a lot of body hair.
3. Beverages consumed by the illiterate.

This article is about evading #1.

Why might I want to evade a bear?

Bears are large animals, with correspondingly large teeth and a propensity for snarling at bees. While many have a zen-like demeanor (cf Yogi Bear), every year a handful of people in the United States alone are killed by these beautiful animals. Typical reasons for attracting the ire of most species of bear include the following:

1. You have wandered into their territory.
2. You are a salmon.
3. You are the Pope, and they are disgusted by what you are doing in their woods.
4. You have disrupted their Catholic ceremonies.

The consequences of failure to evade bears

Should the above apply to you, and should you subsequently come into contact with an irate bear, you have two options:

1. Evade bear.
2. Do not evade bear.

While ultimately this choice is yours alone, it is important to understand the consequences of #2. Depending on the variety of bear, these may include:

• brown, black, polar bears: mauling, screaming, involuntary defecation, hairy overhugging, force-feeding of salmon.
• others: caring, warning of the dangers of forest fires, bouncing here and there and everywhere, miming terrifyingly to cassette tapes lodged deep within their unsettling cyborg bellies.

It is hard to overstate the dangers of these outcomes.

Evading bears

To properly evade a bear, you must understand the following principles:

1. Bears are cowardly.
2. Bears enjoy the taste of salmon.
3. Bears are easily confused.

All bear evasion techniques use these fundamental axioms as their basis.

The “bait and switch” technique

1. Keep a decoy salmon on your person at all times.
2. When approached by irate bear, wave decoy salmon at bear until you are sure it is aware of the fish’s presence.
3. Throw salmon as far as you can, in the opposite direction to the one you wish to run to.
4. Run away.

Important: do not use boomerang salmon.

The “existential” technique

1. Point at bear.
2. Shout “BEAR!”
3. While bear is distracted looking down at itself, run away.

The “I am a tree” technique

1. Wear brown trousers and a green sweater.
2. Stand still. Optionally, ooze maple syrup.
3. Gently sway in the breeze.

Important: this technique is not to be attempted if you have a beehive hairdo. The bear will try and climb you and scoop out your brain-honey. This is the opposite of evading a bear.

Practicing bear evasion

They say that practice makes perfect. Largely, this is a lie perpetuated by the practicing industry. Nonetheless, now you are aware of the main techniques involved in evading bears, it is important to ensure you can follow the instructions to an adequate standard. You wouldn’t want to be caught off-guard in the middle of a forest! Not with your Papal duties to attend to.

Obviously, it would be unwise to practice with an actual bear. Sticky situations might arise. Therefore we recommend the following:

1. Find a figure of authority, like a doctor, teacher, police officer, military officer or politician.
2. Pretend they are a bear.

Conclusion: bears

We hope this short guide has been a useful introduction to bear evasion. You may be interested to read our other titles in this series:

• Bringing down City Hall
• Encouraging your cat to take a proactive interest
• Palm oil: nature’s palm oil