I arrived safely in Indiana last night, where the mosquitos are friendly and the light is rarified. My brother dumped two gallons of bleach in his water tank to kill any unwanted heebie-geebies. The unfortunate side effect of which is that we will all lose our fingerprints by Friday. At which point we will be free to commit crimes with impunity. I'm gonna start my crime spree with some cow-tipping and then move on to some crop circles.


A few reassuring facts about leeches: there are three types, two of which make an incision in their host and one which swallows its victims whole (don't worry it only goes for invertabrates). I figured this was important information to have on hand now since leeches have become FDA approved medicines.

Site visitation chart. Today has been a good day for visitors. Thanks guys!

I'm going to Indiana for a week (the former mean center of the US), but I will surely continue my blogging habits while I am there. I keep a brother, a nephew, a cat, and a dog there, so they might keep me busy. Feel free to make more song requests. I'm sure we can come up with a fabo rendition of whatever you want to hear.

Pandora, today's random kitty. (See more pictures here.)


Spencer Tunick came to Cleveland and some two thousand people took off their clothes.


Favorite Lyric of the day:
"I'll do as I'll decide and let it ride until I've died
And only then shall I abide this tide
Of catchy little tunes
Of hip three minute ditties
I wanna bust all your balloons
I wanna burn all of your cities to the ground"

Wondering which kind of techno music is right for you? Take the quiz. Trance suits me best, according to the quiz.

Playing Deuce on the Death Trail means...


"Here at foodpix.net we take pictures of food and put them on the net!" ...this gives me a greater appreciation for professional food photographers.



Is it just me or does this baby look pissed off? Click pic for larger view.


And a wave of nostalgia rocks the boat. I miss England.

I am just now learning about site statistics and counters. The little counter at the bottom of the page will take you to statcounters.com which supplies me with all my fascinating info. First off, I am told how many page hits the site gets in the span of a day. Then it tells me how many of these are new visitors and how many are returning visitors. This is then all beautifully extrapolated in a chart with pretty colors which I can monitor in real time throughout the day. I also get stats on where a particular visitor is from (Shout out to my peeps! You know who you are.) and what link brought them here. For instance, the bulk of the sites' visitors come from my halfbakery page, whereas only one was directed here by a Wikopedia page (?) on the mean population (that means middle, not cranky) center of the United States, which coincidentally is no longer in Indiana, which I think is a shame. I can't find my link anywhere on that page, but statcounter must know what it's talking about. Right?
What I find most fascinating is that this blog has more repeat visitors than first time viewers whereas my film blog has almost no repeat viewers and gets most of it's referrals from random google searches.
*sigh* It's just all so interesting.


Random photo. If it's your birthday, then this one's for you.

Man of La Mancha
my own arrangement, obviously. I didn't know this song when it was requested, so I guess it can be counted as something new I learned today. Thanks, World. Gineer.

I don't know what they are doing at this party, but it looks like fun.

Here's an ESL word search that helped me kill 3 minutes. See how long it takes you.

Today's Yiddish word is kvell. It means to be extraordinarily proud of something.

Best Halfbakery illustration of the day. And the other one isn't bad either.

Where can I get lessons?

How to decorate your baby according to today's random photo.

Look over there! I found an annoying little waving kitty. -------->
(I promise I'll take him down tomorrow.)

Q: Let's start a grass-roots movement to replace the word "intensity" with "tenseness," shall we?
A: Because we can.

I get the feeling that these people really love their dog. I wonder if they named him after Welles.

Phae·dra: ('fE-dr&) a daughter of Minos who marries Theseus and falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus.

A nostalgic random photo.

The funniest gmail swap of the day:

"kendahlin offers: to find your virginity.

I am an expert researcher. All I need is the approximate date and time you lost your virginity and the location. I will do my very best to recover your lost virginity. I also guarantee that if I am unable to find your lost virginity within 24 hours; I will send you, by the new gmail account you provide, simple instructions for virginity restoration.

P.S.

Don't take my word for it, this is what my clients have to say about my work:

"I thought I lost my virginity, but as it turns out I just misplaced it. If it weren't for Ken, I would have still been looking"

Tony L.

"I never realized how important virginity was, so I wasn't very careful with it when I was younger. I'm 75 years old now. Ken's virginity restoration intructions was a relatively painless procedure that only involved losing a gmail account invite."

Barbara B."

A fascinating study on the laws of Netflix rental availability.

Other materials you can use to recreate The Last Supper: people, figurines, tattoos, jewelry, chocolate, candles, glass plates, sand, roofs, caskets, or legos.

Of course none of them are as good as The Last Balloon Supper. Hehehe.

Makes me hungry just looking at it...

Random photo of the day.

(Also, audioblogger is screaming to be tested. Respond to this post and ask for your favorite song... I might sing it.)

I visited Philly this weekend. I walked the streets of Philly in uncomfortable shoes. I got dehydrated, nauseous and underslept. Then I got blisters and threw my hip out of alignment. It was great. I don't remember much because I was trying to stifle the pain so my friend wouldn't feel bad for dragging me through the streets at top speeds.
I might sneak back at some point and try to see it alone so I can go a little slower... : )

Random photo of the day. Bet you wish your music classes were that fun.

Meet Gopal. A very funny website.

Today's random singer of the day. Are those nuns?

A beautiful thing happened when I swapped a gmail account, someone took up my offer to make a balloon sculpture. Of course, he wanted to make the typical balloon sculpture of a bear holding a flower or two lovebirds kissing inside a heart swing, but what I really wanted was a balloon sculpture of the last supper. And folks, this brave balloonist accepted!

I could not be prouder to present to you perhaps for the first time ANYWHERE:

The Last Supper Balloon Sculpture!

Please no pushing or shoving! Also, visit our gift store before you leave...



hy·a·loid: glassy or transparent. I've got that hyaloid look in my eyes today.

On this day in 1579 Sir Francis Drake claims California for England. Of course he called it something else.

Random goofy person of the day.

Where I've been spending all my time in the last two days. This is more exciting than day trading! I just hope it's not illegal...

Today's random shot of public transportation. Name that country and win a dollar!

Scumble

Did you ever make a drawing like this when you were a kid? Aren't crayons great?

The italics problem (6.11.04) was my fault. The nice people at Blogger figured it out and fixed it for me. Aren't they nice?

Today's random photo of people all wearing the same clothes.

Donald Trump's Birthday. Happy Birthday, The Donald.

G.K. Chesterton died on this day in 1936.

Today's random redneck photo.

Looking for random quotes? I wonder what his source material is...

Today is Hugh Laurie's Birthday. He was born in 1959. It must be nice when even Wikipedia knows your birthday....

Random photo.

Did you notice that my blog just turned wavy? It looks like italics swept the whole thing. I think blogging about blogger may be the most solipsistic thing I've ever done.

Look at this nifty website Brian FOUND! I can't wait to find someone else's personal correspondence so I can send it in!

Blogger blackout. Damn them. Wasted six blogging hours. (3 hours, two blogs. You do the math)

Some pictures of ears.

A smorgasboard of random photos (they were all so good and all in the same batch): A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Okta: One eighth (one tenth in the US) of the sky as seen by an observer. Used in reference to cloud cover. Less than one okta means clear skies.

I am very pleased with this particular website and its photography.


Blogger changed their rules for profile photos. The beautiful bubble I stole from some guy had to be replaced because it disappeared off the web. I tried to replace it with equally beautiful photos which were not accepted because Blogger has "size constraints." (Size constraints! Somebody's just getting greedy...) At any rate, a new smaller image of a frozen branch should appear sometime tomorrow.


If you have not seen these short films for BMW starring Clive Owens, take a look.


Random paperweights of the day.

This is a Japanese website of bunny breeds, apparently. I am blogging it for my brother. I'm not even sure he still enjoys rabbits. The only two rabbits he ever had killed each other. In any case, the link is here because he told me he was reading my blog.

This is a Japanese actor working on a role for a movie. Man, I love that actor. I love that director, too. Seven guesses who these people are and what film they're working on.

Random photo of the day.

Today's beautiful but unreadable website.

The random name brand of the day.

Self-referential blog, just in case I ever get lost...

On this day in 1070, roquefort cheese is invented in a cave near Roquefort, France. It's a cave cheese. Go figure...

On this day in 2004, Henry "Huggins" Mathow Hopper was born. The world will never be the same! Welcome, Henry. : )

Guess the random white object of the day and win a puppy!

[Later that day] And the winner is! Worldgineer!! Congratulations, Mr. Gineer. We are happy to present you with this brand new puppy!

The one and only Astérix! This must be the coolest French website on the world wide web. [editor's note: This does not imply that the French don't create nice websites. I'm sure they do. I've just never seen any.]

I have been asked, "Why does Ohio have such a weird flag?" Truth is, I don't know, but it's called a burgee. Get used to it.

The very best site of the day. Make sure to take a peek at Creations Specialities in the sidebar.

Today's random car photo.

Flamingo Road and Pines Boulevard in Pembroke Pines, FL is the most dangerous intersection in the country. Danger rating: 2568

Babies: so innocent, so trusting, so space-efficient.

Today's random hit.

On this day in 1946, Italy decided to become a republic, exiling King Umberto II de Savoia after 33 days as monarch.

Finding Your Inner Genius with magnets. Temporarily suspending the link between the two hemispheres of the brain can give you savant type properties allowing you to "see" the world instead of interpreting it. *sigh* I always wanted something like this. Maybe if I hint around, I'll get one for Christmas.

Need a holiday from the everyday grind? Here's one way...

Today's random photo.

Kerfuffle: a disturbance or fuss. (Please try to use this word at least four times with the same person today.)