I'm still on hiatus, part III.

I paid my $15 to Haloscan to upgrade my account, so now all the old comments show up in my archives. I also added a nifty search box below my archives list. It's from Atomz and I couldn't be happier with it.

So, I've done all the little home improvements I've wanted to do for awhile, with the exception of cleaning up my archives of all those annoying blank spaces that would occasionally appear at the end of entries done with a text editor back in the days when I wasn't hep to the fact that blank space could count as content. And, of course, correct all the misspelled words. Unfortunately, these two things will have to fixed manually. Unless someone can tell me otherwise.

I still have no set date for my return to regular programming.

I'm still on hiatus, part II.

I got my feed up and working finally. I kept trying to use the feed URL Blogger told me to use which is my regular URL with /atom.xml stuck on the end. That never worked. I set up the feed on my secret R&D blog and it worked using this addition to the URL. I saw another blog that had their feed up and running and they too had the /atom.xml URL. So what was the problem with Volume22? I found out, by accident when I republished the entire blog, that my feed URL for some strange reason is my regular URL plus /rss/volume22.xml. Huh? So, be warned if you plan to set one of these feeds up that the URL Blogger tells you the feed is on may not be the URL it's actually on. If that makes any sense. I only barely understand it.

I'm still on hiatus, part I.

I'm still on hiatus, this is just the first in a series of posts that may appear from time to time before I come out of hiatus (whenever that'll be).

You may have noticed a few changes to my sidebar. I've been doing some improvements. I now I use Blogrolling for my links, I've changed my archives to monthly instead of the completely excessive weekly scheme I've had for over a year, and I'm getting the new Atom site feed set up. I'm also going to put a search box in the sidebar. Another thing I'm pondering is whether or not I should part with $10 of my hard earned money to get a paid Haloscan account so all my old comments will appear again.

Thank you for your patience.

Cheesy Guitars.

If you ever been curious about what kind of electric guitars were made in the Soviet Union (come on, there has to be at least one of you that's wondered that), then have a look at Cheesy Guitars. Large and crude with bodies shaped like amoebas, some of these guitars are amazing. Freaky. [Link via VintAxe.]

Finally!

Finally, a blog written in the Klingon language has surfaced. [Link via Qov (whose link to his homepage didn't work).]

Suspended Animation.

Well, it's official, I'm going on hiatus. Or rather, my blog's going on hiatus. I hate doing this hiatus thing, mainly because I hate it when other people do it, but it wasn't until quite recently that fully understood why people do it. If you're too busy to write, or can't think of anything to write, then there's no use in forcing it. And I really knew it was time to take a break when it seemed incredibly laborious to even slap together several links for my semi-daily posts. I have no idea how long this hiatus will last. Maybe only for a week or two. Maybe for a couple of months. I really don't know. I do plan on coming back. I may even post things here on occasion, but don't come here every day expecting new stuff because you're going to be very disappointed.

If any of you who link to me want to take my link down, go ahead; I don't want to clog up anyone's sidebar or Blogroll.

My Apologies.

The old blog is on life support. I'm seriously debating whether or not I should go on hiatus or just stop. I don't want to do either, but recently I just can't come up with anything worth posting.

A new reason to get up in the morning (besides a full bladder).

Mina Naguib Website Mixmaster mixes the layout of one site with the text of another. Here's an example of this blog's text mixed with Yahoo's layout. [Link via Metafilter.]

Living Color.

A gallery of pre World War I color images each built from three black and white images taken through red, blue, and yellow filters. [Link via Metafilter.]

Boot Boys.

Skinhead Family Tree. [Link via *.*.]

New Day Rising.

Bob Mould, formally of Hüsker Dü, has a blog. [Link via *.*.]

Found Art.

Taking photographs Without. [Link via Cipango.]

A Very Bad Thing.

Things have gotten a little spare here recently I know, but unfortunately they may get even sparer. My class load this semester is a bit heavy, but even worse than the general class load is the fact that I have to take Accounting II. Anyone who was reading this blog last Jan-May may remember my semi-frequent rants about how much I hate/fear accounting. Simply put, the subject drives me absolutely insane. I have the mathematical skills of a sideshow mule, but even though accounting mostly deals with addition and subtraction, entering in all of the figures in the right places and making sure the account is balanced gets me so frustrated I become almost completely unhinged. After twenty minutes or so of struggling with this stuff I get so infuriated I practically foam at the mouth. Then I get up and begin pacing, flailing my arms wildly, muttering the vilest obscenities I can think of, and making all kinds of crazy accusations. Accounting is bad, people. Very, very bad. And if I don't pass the class, I don't graduate in May, and the class won't be offered again until next spring.

Folklore.

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts.

Food.

I love watching cooking shows on TV. I never cook anything complicated, but I love watching someone else cook (as long as it's on TV; in real life it's not fun at all). A couple of weeks ago I was watching one of these programs and a chef was preparing two live lobsters. I'm not completely naive, I know lobsters are cooked alive. So I just assumed the chef would toss the lobsters into a big pot of boiling water and be done with it. Nope. He picked one of the lobsters up and, while it was still moving, chopped it in half length-wise with a big meat cleaver. It sort of reminded me of the episode of The Simpsons I'd seen where they go to a restaurant called the Slaughterhouse. The restaurant had live cattle on one side and you could chose the one you wanted and they'd kill it in front of you.

Mouse Pad.

I bought my spiffy new computer a little over a week ago, but yet I'm still using the same mouse pad I've been using for over two years. It's looking a little diseased. I'm not one of those people who eats a lot when I sit at my computer (otherwise I'd weigh 300 pounds), but still the mouse pad looks filthy. I think most of the filth, if you can call it that, is skin. I have very dry hands. The pad isn't ragged, just dirty. So my question of the day is, Can you wash a mouse pad? Have any of you ever washed one? If so, how? In the sink by hand? Washing-machine? Dishwasher?

And, yes, I know mouse pads are cheap and I can just go buy a new one instead of trying to wash the old one, but I just bought a new computer and I don't have any money left. So there.

New Toy.

I've been playing around with the Narrator in Windows XP. This feature, intended for the sight-impaired, reads on-screen material in a robotic voice. Naturally, since I'm not blind, I find this feature amusing rather than helpful. A few days ago I had it reading emails I'd pasted into a text editor. Very funny (for a little while). The voice isn't appropriate for anything. It emphasizes the wrong words, sometimes dragging them out ridiculously, thus changing the tone of the text its reading. I would like to get it to read blogs for me (I've simply gotten too lazy), but even though it's supposed to work with Internet Explorer, I can't get it to read most web pages. I've yet to coax it to read a blog. Anyone have any ideas? And not just about the Narrator, either. I'll take any ideas, I'm fresh out.

Interviews.

I've just discovered a huge selection of interviews with contemporary authors.

I Wish This Was Serious.

A Note On Aardvark Symbolism In Late Castilian Literature.

A Reprieve.

Yesterday was the first day of school for this semester. I only had one class, so it wasn't that bad. Today the real horror was supposed to start, including my much dreaded final foray into the vile world of accounting. But getting up at 6:30 this morning was a waste of time because there was about an inch and a half of snow on the ground and school was cancelled. So I get another free day to spend slack-jawed in front of my computer.

Making Things with Light.

If you found my Etch-a-Sketch link from below amusing, you might like the online Lite Brite. Or you might not. I personally find it tedious, not at all like a real Lite Brite. [Link via Metfilter.]

Russell Edson.

Russell Edson is the perfect poet for people who hate poetry. His poems are actually very short, very strange stories.

Another Wonderful Time Waster.

ArnIIe has an online Etch-a-Sketch that I think may be more enjoyable than the real thing. And I bought a real Etch-a-Sketch at my local thrift store a couple of days before Christmas, so I'm speaking from recent experience and not just from my addled memories of childhood.[Link via Metafilter.]

More Lost Art.

More Strange Album Cover Art. (Some might not quite be safe for work if you work for a bunch of damn useless prudes.) [Link via J-Walk.]

So Cold... So, So Cold...

Suddenly the weather's turned cold again, almost like it was January or something. I think I've mentioned before how cold my office gets in winter. Seriously, you could probably store meat in here when it's cold outside. I thought I had the situation under control when I dragged one of those dangerous space heaters in here. You know the ones with the long glowing heating elements like they have in ovens. Actually, you could probably make toast with this thing, but I've never tried. (I'll save that for another day when I'm really bored.) I've placed it in the safest possible place, but unfortunately that safe area's a little too close to my left leg. I don't think I'm actually being cooked alive, but that one leg is a little warmer than I'd like. Naturally the rest of me, including my long suffering mouse-controlling right hand is near frozen.

A few minutes ago I was happily typing away. OK, that's a lie. I was miserably typing away, when I heard something that sounded like pphhhhhttttt (purse your lips and force out a little air to get a better idea of the sound). It was the AC thingy I had the stupid heater plugged into. It has blown out. And it doesn't have one of those reset buttons. Lovely. And it wasn't even mine. Luckily I had my big surplus AC strip nearby, so now I can finish cooking my left leg.

????

Occasionally I find blogs that are in languages I can't identify. This is one of them. It's partially in something resembling bad teenage English, but then it drifts into something else. Tagalog?

Update: I was looking at this with Mozilla Firebird and it wasn't displaying all the characters. I just looked at it with IE and could see that there was a lot of Chinese on it. But that still doesn't explain the weird stuff written with the Latin alphabet (you know, the alphabet we use) that's mixed in with the English.

Educational?

Faces of Orgasm, or at least I've been told that's what it says. It's in German. Click on the faces. It's safe for work. Kinda. [Link via The Presurfer.]

It's Educational. Really.

Boobs: An Owner's Manual. I don't think I need to say anymore.

Heresy.

Paul Graham's essay, "What You Can't Say" is easily the most intelligent thing I've read online in a while. (But considering much of what's online, that isn't saying much.) It's quite long, but it's really worth the time. [Link via *.*.]

I'm Royalty.

On occasion over the past year or so, people would leave comments here that contained little cartoon smiley faces. I don't mean the ascii smilies like :) but actual images. I'm embarrassed to admit it publicly, but I had absolutely no idea how they did it. I didn't see anything to select the various smilies in my comments box and I was too embarrassed to ask. Mostly I didn't think about it because I hate smilies, but I also ignored it because I was annoyed I couldn't figure out where the damn things came from. Did these commentors have some kind of third-party smiley software? Were they using HTML image tags and hosting the images on their own servers? Neither of these explanations were satisfactory.

Yesterday while I was leaving a comment at a blog that uses the dreaded Haloscan like I do, I noticed a question mark that was a hyperlink. I was curious as to what it linked to. When I clicked it a new window popped up with all the damn smilies on it. You'd think this remarkable discovery would fill me with joy, but it only made me feel like the all time king of the morons.

I've done things like what you described with the popsicle.

Some Recent Bewildering Search Requests.

I usually wait until I have a large pile of weird search requests I've found in my referrer logs before I do a post like this, but I haven't been collecting over the past month due to my unfortunate computer problems. So I've made this entry only from things I've found over the past three days. They seem to me far stranger than normal.

animated gif duck late
The least an animated duck .gif can do is be on time. How hard can it be?

stereoscopic movie porn glasses
My friend, I think deep down we're all looking for stereoscopic movie porn glasses.

bouquet of penis's
Fred finally realized what would be the perfect thing to get that girl he has a secret crush on who works at the yarn store in the mall

Excuse me volume 22
I like it when people are polite to my blog.

"no web pages load"
Have you tried turning the computer on? Sometimes that works for me.

clown phobia server info
I hope this exists.

cartoon out on a limb saw
I have no idea.

unbridled nudity
Searcher, if you find this site, please let me know. It's for research. Honest!

smash stuff
I'd be pleased to. Anything in particular?

"my sister" "an enema"
Your sister's an enema? That's odd; my sister's an art student.

Art From A More Interesting Era.

The Vintage Paperbacks has galleries of those gloriously strange and sleazy 50's and 60's paperback cover art I've loved for years. There's drugs, lesbians, creepy sex, etc. [Link via The Cartoonist.]

Anatomy of an Obsession.

Someone searched Google UK for all of the mentions of Icelandic porn on my blog. While I appreciate the attention, the results just make me look insane.

On the Dole.

Yesterday I saw something on the news about Iranian officials rejecting a planned humanitarian delegation to the earthquake flattened city of Bam by U.S. senator Elizabeth Dole. When I saw this, my mind immediately snapped back to something I'd heard years ago when Elizabeth Dole's husband Bob Dole was battling Clinton for the White House. At the time Iranian news programs and newspapers wouldn't mention Dole's name because the word dole is Farsi for penis. I did a little research and, in an archived Usenet post (or something like that), turned up what's supposed to be a Reuters piece that explains it. So if this is true, then I think the real reason for canceling the humanitarian trip was Elizabeth Dole's rude surname.

A Return to Quasi-Normality.

I finally got a new computer today. I'd go into more detail, but since it's just a computer I think most of you know what the hell I'm talking about. If not, how are you reading this?

The hard part now is trying to get myself back on a regular blogging schedule similar to the way I did things before the horrible month of December lurched into town and stomped me into a pulp.

Holiday Drivel.

I'm going to celebrate New Year's Day the same way I've done it for the past fifteen or more years, by ignoring it.