With all the talk about the new Blogger interface, few seem to have noticed that there's actually two new interfaces. I forgot about it until yesterday. I first noticed there were two interfaces earlier in the month a few weeks after I signed up for a new blog to use as test site for Volume 22. If you're using a new browser like the latest version of Internet Explorer or (my favorite) Mozilla then you get the new blue interface everyone's been yapping about which bears more than a passing resemblance to the old interface. But if you're using an older browser like Internet Explorer 5 or an older version of Mozilla/Netscape then you get the mostly grey, no frills interface. This stripped down interface works just fine, but doesn't give you as many options, nor does it let you see previous entries until you click your blog's link. I have no idea if one interface is less buggy than the other.

Animals, particularly dogs, tend to mark their territory with urine. I wonder if this technique would work to prevent break-ins of homes and cars. Maybe the primitive part of the human brain would kick in at the smell of the urine and burglars would keep away. But now that I think about it, if the burglar was a big tough guy and the homeowner was a little shrimpy guy, then more than likely the big tough guy wouldn't be intimidated by the puny guy urine. So the puny homeowner would need to procure urine from a really big tough guy and pour that all around his home and on his car. The value of really big tough guy urine is sure to sky-rocket if it's found to be a deterent to burglars. But it would probably be a deterent to everyone. Who's going to come to your house or ride in your car if everything stinks like piss? (Back to the drawing board. Again.)

The perfect way not to spend the afternoon is to not watch a medical documentary featuring the graphic portrayal of breast reduction surgery. Ye gods! What made them think this kind of thing was the perfect thing to show at lunchtime? Thankfully my lunch was over, but still, I really didn't need to be watching this. And if graphic portrayals of surgery freak me out, then why do I keep watching them?

My favorite surname is Hunsucker. The first time I saw this name anywhere it was written inside the cover of an old novel I used to own that had been printed in the 20's. For several years I wondered if I was reading the name right. It was in cursive script and written with a fountain pen, but I was pretty sure it said Hunsucker. Later I did some online research and confirmed that the surname Hunsucker actually existed. Our surnames are often remnants of our ancestor's trades: Smith, Farmer, Carver, etc. What, I ask you, did the Hunsucker family do to earn such a moniker? And why did they limit themselves to huns?

A few days ago I asked for a link that would direct me to random web pages. Well, I've found it: RandomWebSite.com. Enjoy. Or not. It doesn't matter to me. [Link via Incoming Signals.]

I dreamed about Ian Curtis last night. He'd attempted suicide in New York(?) by going down onto the subway tracks and licking the third rail. Of course if he'd done this in real life he'd have been fried instantly. I don't know why I was dreaming about Ian Curtis, I haven't listened to any Joy Division in months.

Americans plagued by telemarketing bastards now have the choice of opting out of what at times can be a living hell by being included in the national "do not call" registry. This is a start, but my fear is that the telemarketers will just move to Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas and continue as usual. I've gotten telemarketing calls from outside the country before. Once it was a British guy in Toronto trying to get me to join some kind of military book club. I told him I wasn't interested, but what I really wanted to do was ask him if he was aware that Virginia was an American state and not a Canadian province. Telephones are a bad idea anyway. Leave me alone.

Once at my favorite thrift store I saw a funeral wreath. It was one of the kind that's on a stand, and the store employees inexplicably placed it in a corner beside the book section. (Clearly it should have gone in the sporting goods section.) It wasn't there long before someone bought it. I can't even begin to imagine the series of events that had to occur before the wreath ended up in this store.

At the same store I saw an artificial leg (with shoe) standing in the appliance section. It too was quickly bought. And on several occasions I've seen those old-timey weight reduction machines that have a wide belt that goes around your problem area and when you turn the motor on it rapidly jiggles the hell out of you. (They were a favorite prop in old movie comedies of the thirties and forties.) These contraptions are also snapped up as soon as they appear. And who knows what kind of bizarre scenarios are enacted once these things arrive at their new homes.

I was under the impression that the new Blogger system was supposed to do away with the problem of disappearing archives. Well, as usual, part of my archives are gone. I went to Blogger's help section to get the instructions on republishing my archives (just like I did a couple of weeks ago), but I found out the instructions only apply to the old Blogger system. The old Blogger system isn't up anymore. So what the heck are we supposed to do to get our damn archives straightened out?

I'm in an internet rut. I have my usual haunts all in convenient lists of links, so it doesn't take me long to plow through the 25 or more blogs I read regularly. And I have equally convenient lists of all the other sites I hit regularly. It's just all too convenient and boring. The sites themselves aren't boring, it's the rut that's boring. I don't seek out new weirdness to entertain myself anymore. It's just the same blogs, the same news, the same nudie photos, the same blah blah blah...

Blogger has a link (I don't remember the URL) that will take you a random Blogger site. Is there a link that will take me to any random site on Earth?

Oh, joy! We finally get the new Blogger. Now what? I'm bored with it already.

Once in a thrift store I bought one of those things used to edit home movies that was probably made in the 40's. It consisted of a wooden slab, two holders for film reels, and an aluminum piece used to hold the film for splicing. Inside a compartment where the splices were done were many scraps of black and white and color 16mm film. I dumped them out and began holding the pieces up to the light one at a time. The scraps were mostly only half a frame and consisted of things like people at the beach, babies, grandparents, houses, dogs, horses, an African safari, cars, etc. The typical home movie stuff of an upper-class American family in the 40's-60's. But about a quarter of the scraps were from old black and white porno movies. The pornographic material was more than likely stuff bought under the counter rather than homemade, but mixed in with the other material, the fragments told a narrative about this family as detailed and varied as a novel.

There's a type of bird called a booby and another type called a tit. Ornithologists must get very lonely.

Yesterday at my sister's, we moved a few piles of stuff up to her apartment in the elevator. At one floor the door opened and a UPS guy came in with a loaded handtruck. He had several packages and two brand new car tires. I said, "Who lives in an apartment and orders tires?" The UPS guy laughed and said, "I don't know, I just deliver it." One of the boxes had VOLVO printed on it. Maybe someone was assembling a car in their apartment a little at a time.

My eyes are still bloodshot.

When I went to bed last night I thought I'd quickly fall asleep since I was so tired, but instead I had to lie there for a half hour or more as images of trees, road signs, houses, and endless highway appeared in my vision. There's no way to turn it off. It makes me wonder if my brain was replaying this stuff the entire eight hours before I went to bed. Thankfully I have no memory of dreaming about an endless road trip.

Here's a useful, fascinating flash tool that makes suggestions on what books you should read. [Link via Metafilter.]

The trip was fairly uneventful, but here's a few highlights:

Since the tedium of riding for hours and hours is nearly unbearable to me, I brought a multi-band radio that picks up AM/FM, VHF TV, air traffic, fire/police, and weather. I was prepared for anything. About twenty minutes into the trip my El Cheapo brand headphones broke in half, so I had to hold one of the pieces up to my ear for twenty miles until we stopped to get a roll of tape to repair them. It didn't really matter anyway, since much of that long stretch of highway from Danville to Richmond goes through desolate farmland and the occasional jerk-water town. There was little to hear on the radio.

One thing I did hear on the radio was that Dick Cheney and a battalion of Secret Service agents were also going to be in Richmond today. Thankfully we avoided that circus.

On the way back, about 25 miles from home, I saw a house that had what I can only describe as a folk art flying saucer in their front yard. We drove by pretty fast, so I didn't get a lingering look at this oddity, but it was definitely a flying saucer. Who knows why the people that lived there put this bizarre contraption in their front yard. It's times like this I wish I was one of those people who carries a camera around with them everywhere they go.

After riding over 300 miles, my eyes are so bloodshot it looks like I'm really hung-over or I've been having a crying fit.

I'm back safe and sound. Well, at least safe. I'm tired, but not quite as addled as I expected. I'll try to post something a little longer tonight.

Oh, look, Haloscan's down. Again. How convenient for everyone.

I may not post anything tomorrow, because I'm doing something I rarely, rarely do: travel. I'm riding up to Richmond with my parents to see my sister. I never go anywhere if I can help it; I don't travel well. After several hours of being trapped in a car I'm practically hallucinating from sensory overload. I can close my eyes and it's like they're still open. And even after a few hours of unwinding, when I close my eyes to go to sleep, I can still the landscape rolling by just like I'm looking out the window of a car traveling down the highway.

I wish I could just be sedated and put into a container like they do with animals on airplanes. After we arrive I can get an injection to wake me up. Then after a few hours of witty conversation, I'd be resedated and put back into my container. But now that I think about it, the container's kind of unnecessary. They could just put the seat belt on me in the back seat and I'd be fine. As fine as an unconscious guy strapped into seat can be, I suppose.

Here's a site devoted to an exhibition of illegal art. Interesting stuff. Definately worth a look. [Link via some graphics heavy blog I looked at a couple of weeks ago that I don't remember the name of. I think I might've wrote it down someplace, but I don't feel like looking for it. Anyway, it took forever to load because of all of the pictures and other crap on it. It was kinda cool, but there was just too much junk. Every single entry had some big-ass picture or two or three. My dial-up connection died before the page finished loading. Then Internet Explorer had some kind of seizure and caused Windows 2000 to completely lock up. Even the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work. I had to hit the reset button. Rock-solid stability, my ass. Bastards! All of them! But one day retribution will be mine!]

I'm bored and my brain is empty, so I dug out one of my old notebooks (volume 18) and began reading bits and pieces. I used to write quotes I liked inside the front covers; the two in this notebook seem to sum up my entire aesthetic. The first quote is from photographer Ansel Adams: "I am addicted to the found object." The second is from 40's/50's newspaper columnist Matt Weinstock, "That's the trouble with real stuff, either it doesn't go anywhere or it's fragmentary or it's full of irrelevancies."

On page 234 of the notebook I mentioned the Weinstock quote again while droning on about Samuel Beckett's method of writing. (During this period (spring '97) I was obsessed with the idea of writing a novel, but I had no idea how to go about it. I produced very little.) Further down the page I found my own varient of the Weinstock quote, "The problem with real life is that there's very few beginnings and endings but a profusion of middle."

So I mainly experience the world as a series of found objects. It's fragmentary and doesn't go anywhere. It's full of irrelevancies. There's few beginnings and few endings, but lots of middle.

Today in the modern South there are parents who name their male children Bubba. As hard as it is for some of you to believe, this sort of thing actually does occur. There's a racecar driver on the local Late Model Stock circuit named Bubba Urban, Jr., which means, of course, that there's a Bubba Urban, Sr. Why would parents weigh a child down with a name like Bubba? Don't they realize that people are going to make lots of unfair assumptions when they find out their child's name? And don't they realize they're closing a lot of doors to that child? No one named Bubba is going to be a respected lawyer, brain surgeon, judge, computer programmer, CEO, novelist, etc. Would you consent to be operated on by someone named Bubba? I wouldn't, not even if Doctor Bubba was a genius. Thankfully the Bubba phenomenon isn't quite that common; I've never met a Bubba. (I met an Elvis once, but that's a different story.)

Chris Pirillo's blog now has a remarkably useless feature where you press the Speak button before each blog entry and hear a robotic voice read the entry. It's icky and it doesn't work quite right, but that's what makes it interesting. The annoying part was I had to turn off my Wilco CD to hear it. Stupid robotic voice.

Something's happened to my internet connection. It's bad enough I have to be a hillbilly living out in the boondocks stuck on a dial-up connection, but to suddenly, inexplicably, have said connection top out at 32.2 Kbps is both bewildering and annoying enough to make me want to go on a rampage. It's been like this since yesterday morning. It would make sense if we'd had a really bad thunderstorm, lots of high wind, or torential rain, but we haven't. I'm sure it's something local and not something with my ISP.

I'm sure most of you know that you can become a legally ordained minister online. The two main purveyors of this sort of thing are the ULC and the PULC. I became an ordained minister out of sheer boredom back in '95 from the ULC. And I did it the old fashioned way, via snail mail. I haven't performed any marriage ceremonies or started a bizarro church, but I can't say what I'll do in the future. The Screaming Church of Full Frontal Nudity? Hmmm...

The best thing about these weird outfits that do these ordinations is that they're basically diploma mills. The PULC in particular offers a downright peculiar array of Ph.D.s: Counseling, Metaphysics, Parapsychology, Theology, Healing, Hypnotherapy, Tarot, Holistic, Homeopathy, Religion, Astrology, Psychic, Herbology, Dreams, Graphology, Naturopathy, Clairvoyant, Psychometry, Meditation, Exorcisms, Acupressure, Ufology, Reflexology, Aromatherapy, Psychology, Dowsing, etc. Somewhere I have an envelope full of brochures that list every one they offer, and at the time not only were they having a half price sale, they were also having a buy-one-get-one-free sale. Now that's an educational bargain. On the PULC site there's the following quote, "Become a 'Doctor' & Certified Professional helping others to help themselves." I love those quotes around Doctor. And remember, "your title of 'Doctor' alone could make the difference between dismal failure and growing success." Just what kind of job can I get with a Ph.D. in Ufology that I bought in a half-price sale?

I once saw a classified ad in some tabloid for a place that was selling diplomas. The ad copy read something like, "Get a degree from 'California Central University'." And I thought, Yeah, I really want a degree from a school who's name is in quotation marks.

I saw Pastor Jack Stahl, founder and leader of the PULC last night on Unscrewed performing an exorcism on the host of the show. Pastor Stahl also runs the Church of Tom Jones, so you know he's completely sane and sincere.

This weirdo flash stuff isn't quite as neat as the SodaConstructor, but it is neat. Really, it is. Trust me for once. I insist. Click the link or I'll mete out spankings like a vengeful grandma! [Link via Metafilter.]

I've got nothing to look forward to today except Peachtree homework and class tonight. This software is so miserable it defies description. The teacher keeps telling us that knowing Peachtree will really look good on a resume. Maybe, but I'm not listing it because I flatly refuse to have anything to do with this software in the real world. (I hate the real world!)

The only thing I have to look forward to tomorrow is more Peachtree homework. And in case you're wondering if I'm going to piss and moan the whole summer about Peachtree, yes I am. I may even throw a king-hell tantrum. Watch this space.

Ah, feck, it's Bloomsday. I completely forgot it until I stopped by the Leptard. I used to pay attention to Bloomsday, but eventually I stopped. I should get back into the habit since James Joyce blew my little world apart back when I was 16. I had no idea you were allowed to write a novel that ran roughshod over every rule in language and literature. Amazing. I would walk through the halls of my school with my copy of Ulysses and teachers who knew what it was would stop me and ask what class I was reading it for. When I said I was just reading it for fun they seemed shocked. This book was power.

I found out about Blogmatcher last night. "BlogMatcher is a program that helps people find weblogs that match their interests and find like-minded blogs. When given an URL to a weblog (called 'Reference Blog') the system finds other blogs that appear to discuss similar topics." Interesting, at least to me. But then I'm a sad, sad little man with grudge against society and a mad lust for world domination. [Link via C:\pirillo.exe.]

Fascinated by hoodoo? Who isn't? Have a look at Hoodoo in Theory and Practice, a book in progress. There's tons of material at this site, most of it about hoodoo, oddly enough.

I show you something neat like the SodaConstructor and no one's the least bit impressed, so as punishment, I'm going to have to show you something monumentally stupid. (I don't make the rules, people, but I'm bound by honor to enforce them. And enforce them I will!)

I've found the coolest website ever, Sodaplay. No, it's not new. And yes, I know you probably saw it three years ago. I'd never seen it before, so that's all that matters. The SodaConstructor has to be seen to be believed. I've seen some things sort of like this before (like a marionette skeleton on a Dutch site I don't remember the URL of), but this is cooler, and creepier. See, and even build, things that possess the mindless persistance of an insect. It's vile. Also check out the SodaZoo to see the various things built by visitors to the site. Freakish. Intolerable. Unspeakable.

For the past year or so I've been seeing these commercials for metal detectors. All metal detector advertising is the same: an excited guy (and it's always a guy) goes on and on about all the coins, rings, charms, bracelets, watches, etc. he's found while simply wandering around with his spiffy new metal detector. I can't help but be somewhat swayed by this advertising, even though I have firsthand evidence that most of us don't strike it rich with these contraptions.

When I was about eleven or twelve I collected coins and became obsessed with the idea of there being loads of old coins everywhere on our property. If only I had a metal detector! Eventually I got a fairly nice one for Christmas. It wasn't a cheap toy, either. So, I spent an inordinate amount of time over the next month or so scouring the properties of my parents and various relatives for untold riches. I found nothing. No, that's not true, I did find some things. I found rusty nails, rusty cans, etc. The best thing I ever found was half a horseshoe and that wasn't that remarkable because I found it just outside of the horse stall of the old barn in our backyard. Periodically over the years I'd get the metal detector out and give it another chance, but I only found more nails and cans.

My family has probably lived in this area for over two-hundred years. If I can draw any conclusions from my metal detector experiment it's this: my family must have been tight with money for multiple generations. If any of us ever even suspects we have dropped a coin we immediately drop to our knees and search until we find it. Even if it's just a penny.

Want scientific evidence as to why today's music won't be as popular in the long run as yesterday's music? No? You're not even the least bit curious? Well, that's not surprising, but here's a link anyway. [Link via Rebecca's Pocket.]

Need some feelthy, feethy art? Hell, who doesn't? This site sells clever, pixilated porno art that looks abstract close-up and downright obscene from far away. (Safe for work? It's ART dammit! If you're looking at this stuff at work and some jackass comes up to you screaming about what a pervert you are for looking at porno on the company's time, just yell, "Get outta my cubicle, you philistine! Don't you know ART when you see it?" It'll work. Trust me.) [Link via J-Walk.]

What do I have on my plate for today? What kind of wacky hi-jinks will I blunder into? Oh, now I remember. I have some Peachtree homework I need to start. That's about as wacky as a involuntary rectal examination. Even less so, actually.

After endless mild weather, summer's finally arrived, although it's a mild summer. We're still in the midst of the endless rain and we're having almost daily thunderstorms. I used to sort of enjoy thunderstorms, but these days it just means I have to shut the computer off and unplug it. What am I supposed to do when my computer's turned off? And I can't help but worry that the house will be struck by a big bolt of lightning and get blown to flaming bits.

A couple of days ago at Metafilter there was a passing mention of Mike Keith's World of Words & Numbers in a thread about Crank.net. Since I'm always interested in cranks, I hit Keith's page and was surprised at the inventiveness on display. I wouldn't call Mike Keith a crank for recasting Poe's The Raven according the numbers in pi anymore than I would call the members of the Oulipo cranks for doing things like writing an entire novels containing no words with the letter e. Keith's site doesn't have bizarre theories about the hollow Earth or information on how to make tinfoil hats to prevent mind-control, it's just literature of an extremely rigorous sort. So read and enjoy. Or don't. Either way it has no bearing on my life because I'm going to be very busy developing special shoes made of beef jerky that I believe will give me powers of invisibility.

If you remember my rants from a month or so back about the unbearable reek of Bradford pear trees, you might like this short online journal about what I believe is the same kind of tree. Or you might hate it and will want to crush my toes in a vise for even suggesting it.

Yesterday while working with the dreaded Peachtree, I was supposed to type Money Market Account, but instead typed Monkey Market Account. I imagine somewhere out there is a real company that has a special account set aside for the Monkey Market. Ah, the hustle-bustle of the Monkey Market, how I miss it. The shrieking, the feces flinging, the monkey pox...

In the past I've mentioned how every once in a while the Extreme Tracker stats thing gives erroneous information. For instance, it'll list some site as having a link to my site, but when I check this site there's no link. This has happened five or six times over the past seven months or so I've used this counter. The odd thing is that it only seems to happen when people in Australia hit my site. Of course it doesn't happen every time someone from Australia hits my site, but the times it has happened the visitor was from Australia. It'd make more sense if they were all from the same ISP, but they're not. I'm stumped and open to suggestions, the more improbable the better. But since my comments are down yet again... Oh, nevermind.

After seven months of doing this I finally managed a repeat post. Not my fault. Blogger hiccupped while I was trying to post. I didn't even see it until hours later.

Ah, back home after a tedious night class and an even more tedious afternoon spent with Peachtree, that vile accounting software. I hope after I graduate (and get my much much much delayed diploma that will allow me to finally get a decent paying job in the highly overrated adult world) that no one ever has the nerve to ask me to do anything with Peachtree. Ever. If asked to use this software, I will go completely apeshit, destroy everything in sight, and spend the rest of my sad years in prison.

And speaking of mules, last week or the week before there was a news report of scientists who had cloned or were trying to clone a mule. When I first read this report I immediately thought of William Burroughs' novel The Western Lands where someone brings about the end of the world with a pregnant mule. (Mules are always sterile.) Or at least that's how I remembered it. I read that book once years ago.

Is it just me or is Monkey Pox the coolest name for a disease ever?

Sometimes I wonder what a half-human/half-chimp would be like. And you'd think such a mix would be possible considering how genetically close humans and chimps are. Horses and donkeys can be interbred, so why not humans and chimps? I want to see the primate version of a mule. We could possibly groom them for public office. Can't be worse than anything we have now.

My comments are back up. I'm shocked. I figured Haloscan would be down for days. Not that it matters or anything.

Oh, happy day! Haloscan's down again. They're claiming it's not their fault this time. So, there'll be no comments for awhile until they get their problems sorted, or I switch to another comments host. Whichever comes first.

Can someone remind me why Blogger doesn't have built in comments? Oh, hell, you can't remind me because the comments are down.

Where would we be without Cut, Copy, and Paste? I'll tell you. We'd be living in a cave eating raw mastodon, that's where.

Read, if you dare, the saga of Ass Chaps Man. (Not quite safe for work. Or maybe it is. I don't know what you do for a living, so stop pestering me.) [Link via Metafilter.]

I'm declaring today the International Blogger Republish Your Archives Day. Half the Blogger sites I look at have screwed up archives. Even mine are hosed. So we all need to go to the appropriate Blogger support page and carefully follow the instructions. It's not that difficult, and, from what I remember, it works like a charm. Oh, wait! [Slaps hand with forehead.] I tried that ten minutes ago and the page was unavailable. Thanks Blogger.

Last month over at Smoke Signals I read about the Leprechaun cam, but I forgot about it. I doubt a visit is worth your time, but I can't help but think that those damn freaky-ass leprechauns are dancing around like crazy when no one's watching. Don't let them get away with it!

I spoke too soon. I was able to log in and post something, but not actually publish it. I got error message 100 and a helpful link to find out the meaning of the various error messages. Typically, number 100 wasn't listed. Thank you Blogger.

When I'm out on one of my rare trips into civilization I just want people to leave me alone. One time this enormous guy came up to me and offered me his hand. I sensed he was crazy but shook his hand anyway. He held on to me and said, "Hi! How are you?" He talked in a loud, slow voice. I said, "I'm just fine." Then he said, "How's your wife?" He still had my hand. I paused for a few seconds and then said, "Uhhh...I don't have a wife." He let my hand go and turned slowly away from me like a zombie. Suddenly, I no longer existed. I just stood there and watched him plod down the sidewalk toward some other people. Prior to this encounter I was enjoying my day off, but afterwards things just went downhill.

It's about time. Google needs to crack the whip with the IT guys who handle the Blogger servers. I've been trying to get on since this morning.

A few years ago at my old job I got the idea to learn some Spanish, partly because we had a number of Mexican workers who spoke little English and partly because I was bored. Since I was and still am a cheapskate, I searched for discount learning materials. One thing I found was a set of six 90 minute cassettes and 300-plus page book geared at businessmen that had originally cost $50, but had been marked down to $13. An incredible deal, I thought. So I ordered it.

After a couple of weeks, the tape set came in the mail. I opened the book to the first lesson and put the first tape in the stereo. In an instant I found out why these tapes had been so greatly discounted. The man reading the lessons was obviously a professional voiceover person, but he was entirely the wrong guy for this particular job. How can I describe him? The only words that come to mind are intense and creepy.

Listening to these tapes made me think of nothing else but being held at gunpoint by a lunatic who'd made it his personal mission to teach me Spanish. I wish I could include a .wav file of the guy.

As I listened, I kept expecting him to suddenly drift off into something more sinister than businessman vocabulary: "First listen to the conversation, then repeat the sentences after me. At night I hide in the bushes outside your house. I watch you when you go the bathroom." I've never even listened to one of these tapes all of the way through.

Ah-ha! An article on Lou Reed in today's NY Newsday reveals who to blame for appearance of the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" in a damn Nissan commercial: "He also sold part of 'Heroin,' Reed's first-person, love-and-hate account of late-'60s drug abuse, to Nissan for a television commercial. 'It's not the song, it's two chords,' Reed says. 'You really think it's funny when something's banned for so long and they want two chords for whatever.'" I love Lou Reed, but clearly he's a complete jackass.

One time I was walking through the back yard and saw what looked like a turtle doing push-ups on a rock. When I got closer I saw that it was actually two turtles "doing it". Slowly. Since I didn't know any better at the time, I picked them up and actually pulled them apart. It was a bit difficult; the male turtle was really in there. When I put them down, the female turtle began to rapidly (for a turtle) walk away and the male turtle went after her. I was horrified by this, so I separated them. Needless to say, during this time of my life, I was pretty much an idiot. Today I wouldn't thnk of standing in the way of that good turtle lovin'.

Once I found myself reading the ingredients on a bottle of hand lotion (it was a slow day) and I noticed that one of the ingredients was something called urea. I looked it up because it sounded nasty. Here's the definition: "a soluble colorless crystalline compound contained especially in the urine of mammals." Blah! Why do we need mammilian urine derivatives in our lotion? What real purpose does it serve? Do I really need mammal urine on my hands to keep them soft? And what's going to be next, finding out my shampoo contains hippo dung?

I found an old article in English Pravda called "The Art of Wanking Brings Lots of Money". Things may be different in other parts of the world, but I've received no financial gains from such activity.

Need an online Swedish-English dictionary? No? Well, why didn't someone tell me before I went and dug one up?

First there was Rent My Chest and now there's Read My Boobs. (That last one's not safe for work, by the way, unless you work at a strip-club or something.) [Link via C:\pirillo.exe.]

I'm both outraged and horrified. I was watching TV and saw a Nissan commercial that was using the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" as its soundtrack. The Velvet Underground. In a commercial. Does Lou Reed need money that badly? Does he even have any control of the Velvet's catalog? What marketing jackass thought a song about a drug addict would entice yuppies to buy sport utility vehicles? Why do the brain-dead apes that make commercials have to take the things I love and cheapen them? First Nike used Iggy and the Stooges immortal, essential "Search and Destroy" in a commercial, and then the flood gates opened up. Mainly it's been Nissan that's been turning my cult favorites into jingles. They used the Buzzcocks. They used the Stooges. I think they're currently using the Ramones. (Or at least someone is.) And now the Velvet Underground. Next it'll probably be Big Star or XTC. Bastards! Marketing cretins, a pox on you all!

I was going to write something fabulously witty and entertaining today (for a change), but it's hard to summon up wit when you're vaguely dizzy, nauseated, and have one ear that keeps getting that blocked-up feeling. So in lieu of wit, I give you pathetic whining: I feel rotten. I'm achey. I can't get comfortable. There's nothing on TV. It's too hot. I need a tissue. I'm thirsty. Uhhh...

The main reason for my sudden switch from Linux to Windows is this class I'm taking on the Peachtree accounting software. We have to do most of the work at home and it's Windows software. The teacher said it was an easy class, and at first I thought it was easy, but it's not. Miserable, agonizing stuff. The worst part about it is the textbook, which doesn't explain things thoroughly and makes sudden leaps in logic. The bio on the inside cover claims the author had 30 years experience as a teacher. From the way the textbook is written I would've guessed the author had smoked crack throughout its composition. It's that bad.

It's going to be a long, miserable summer.

There was a text ad on my page for "Coconut Monkey Purses". The ad copy read, "Made from real coconut". I half expected it to read, "Made from real coconut and real monkey". But it didn't read that way. No one makes anything from monkey anymore.

I've suddenly lost interest in my blog. I've also suddenly lost interest in everyone else's blogs. Maybe I'll snap out of it in a day or two.

There's nothing happening here.

Prior to switching to Windows, I had a lot of interest in how much traffic my blog was getting and I'd check my stats several times a day. Since I made the switch I still check my stats, but I've basically lost interest in them. Strange. And reading blogs isn't quite as enjoyable either despite doing things to make Windows more hospitable, like downloading Mozilla (the best browser on earth) and spending a lot of time heavily modifying a copy of Jason Shellen's highly useful Cheatsheet. It's just not the same. I'm going to have to do a dual boot system and have both Windows and Linux.

I'm going to have to get another monitor. This thing I'm using is ten years old and came from a thrift store. It works just fine, but with Windows I can only get a decent picture if use 640x480. I end up doing a lot of horizontal scrolling to read pages these days and that seriously sucks. If I set it to 800x600 I end up with this tiny screen. Anything above 800x600 gives me flashing squiggles that are aesthetically pleasing, but quite useless.