asides

While poking around in my blog stats, I noticed something peculiar: quite a few people are now finding my site by googling “nazi swastika.” I thought this was weird because the only thing about it I’ve ever written was the entry I posted on June 9th - a mere 2 days ago - about Nazi swastikas in video games. Lo and behold, though - thanks to the way Google’s PageRank system works (System13.org has a 5PR out of 10) - my post about swastikas in video games is now the 8th result on Google for “nazi swastika.” I’m not sure whether to be glad that Google’s system thinks my site is worth something, or to be concerned about my position in the search results for those keywords.

System 13 ranks pretty high for some other… “interesting” searches. A few examples:

• I’m #4 on Google for “rotten shark.”
• #6 for “ninja penguin.”
• #7 for “hardwood floors and dogs.”
• #10 for “I can has cheezburger.” (Heh…)
•  #3 for “stargate languages.”
• #2 for “stargate everyone speaks english.”

Don’t take this post the wrong way. I’m not being narcissistic (at least, no more than any other blogger…) - I just find a lot of those funny. If you could dig into my stats, you’d probably be surprised at just how much traffic I get from searches like that. In particular, I seem to get at least a few hits every day by someone who’s looking for information about Icelanders eating rotten shark meat which has been soaked in shark urine. I’m not kidding.

You internet folk… you’re some weird people!

I read in the daily newspaper today that over 100 headstones and monuments in one of the local cemeteries were knocked over last night, many of them completely destroyed. Many of them were knocked over and then purposefully smashed, most likely with a sledge. Some of them dated back to the 1800s. Why would someone do this? What is there to gain from destroying headstones and monuments which families have bought to honor and remember deceased family members? I suppose if someone were angry at a particular person, they might destroy a headstone belonging to a relative of the person. While that would still be extremely mean and low, it’d make sense. But just to rampage through a cemetery destroying stuff? Why? I really don’t get people sometimes.

Just a note to anyone visiting my site directly: I haven’t gone insane and reverted the look to plain text on white. A bunch of WordPress.com blogs are having the same issue. We bought the CSS upgrade; the custom CSS is still in the Presentation area; but our blogs aren’t actually showing it.

So, worry not. It’ll be fixed soon, I’m sure.

Update: And things are back to normal.

I just came across this entry, which reminded me that I hadn’t enabled ClearType yet on the computer I usually blog from. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to that entry and learn. You’ll thank me for it. ClearType makes the text in Windows so much prettier. Less stressful on the eyes, too.

Sitting here browsing various blogs, something just popped into my head: what’s the end of the universe like? Does it even exist? Let’s say in theory, we had a spacecraft that could move fast enough and far enough to reach the ‘edge of the universe’. What would be there? A wall? A sign that says “dead end, turn back here”?

Hrm…