The Choose Your Own Adventure features actually work now, thanks to code stolen from Eric “Glish” Costello. He would certainly have a place in the coming Evil Empire, if he so desired. (Don’t feel bad. You probably would too. But when was the last time you wrote clean, easily modified, open as in Free javascript that did something useful and could even be said to be entertaining reading, in a geekish way?)

If this causes any major weirdness to happen in your browser, try shift+refresh first. If that doesn’t work, you probably have a cookie from the previous version. Play around with the font settings some, and then close the window; this will cause a new cookie to be set. And if that doesn’t work, delete the cookie manually.

I am currently having some issues with my provider. My email and webhosting is down, and I’m not entirely certain I’ll be able to connect again after I disconnect, so you may not be hearing from me for a few days. My contact information below has been changed to reflect the current situation. I have conjugated the word ‘fuck’ at least a dozen times in the last hour. Bear with me.

An amendment: BlogTracker is apparently not fux0red in the least. The data in the favorites include (which is actually still running for now) is different from what shows up on the front page of weblogs.com or in their syndication feed, which is composed only of blogs which have told weblogs.com that they’ve updated. (I had assumed they were the one and the same, and for this I am stupid.) The actual issue is that a vast majority of bloggers simply aren’t bothering to do so. Hopefully, this will all be solved soon enough, when more blogging apps support the new weblogs.com.

Of course we discover that our heater is busted on the first night of sub-freezing temperatures. That’s just the way these things go, isn’t it? :sigh:

“Top FBI and CIA officials” reveal suspicions that anthrax scare being perpetrated by domestic, as opposed to foreign, whack jobs. They certainly took their sweet damn time, didn’t they? Some of the most frustrating conversations I’ve had in years have been related to this. Nobody seems to remember that anthrax-mailing hoaxes have been going on for years, and that the prime suspects have always been our own home-grown right-wing militantly igorant hate-mongers. I suppose the public’s fear and hate over this being externalized was seen as potentially useful until now?

A first on the Hoblog: a semi-regular* feature. Five Latest Songs will, hopefully, give you some idea of what I’m currently grooving on. I’ve tried a couple different versions of a music feature over the years, and have now settled on the approach used by so many others: use it as blog filler! So without further ado…
The Tams - Be Young Be Foolish Be Happy ·:· Its sheer, relentless happiness rivals that of many a mindless pop song of today, but without the self-imposed guilt.

J Ralph - One Million Miles Away ·:· From a Volkswagen commercial. The wedding one. I offer no apologies.

Pink - Get The Party Started ·:· I’m beginning to think she can do no wrong.

Gigi D’agostino - I’ll Fly With You ·:· Europop with thump.

Toya - I Do ·:· Beutisheakin (Boo·te’·shay·kin) is an anti-depressant recently approved by the FDA. Also, I live for the day I see this performed by a drag queen.
* As in, updated either when I have five new songs, or when I remember. Whichever comes first.

Drunken vehicular harrasment of innocent women in Coshocton County, Ohio will net you a sentance of an hour in drag on Main Street. Somehow, I suspect some Friday night plans are being changed right now. (via Obscure)

I humbly submit: the Daypop Top 40 is more useful than Blogdex. Why? Well…

Turning boredom into bookmarklets: the unimaginatively named new windows works sort of like the ubiquitous randomwalks check-box. Sort of, in that it ignores local, email and javascript links, and—most importantly—in that you can take it with you.

They finally turned off the little javascript favorites include, and the SHF BlogTracker is still, to use the technical term, fux0red. (I know that more than three of my faves have shown up in changes.xml in the last two days.) So all of this pinging and crawling and XML-RPCing adds up to what, exactly? Nothing useful, that’s for sure.

I predict it’s going to take about a week for me to get really, really tired of manually telling weblogs.com that I’ve updated. Let’s watch!

Update: Never mind, then. Love ya, Ev. Mwah.

This flash movie (keep in mind that the last such I bothered linking to was “napster bad”) is the sort of thing that makes you wonder why it is exactly that cartoon series haven’t migrated to the web en masse. There’s been the technology, and there is now definitely the talent. Besides, it’s imperative we somehow address the severe psychological damage no doubt done to Gen Y by the almost complete lack of cartoons on Saturday mornings these days.

“You are Ned. You don’t always see yourself as a rebel, but […] you have no embarassment about championing your cause. You laugh in the face of taste and style. Only truth matters to you. Ned Flanders would be proud.” Well, gee-diddly-gum. (via Firda)

It’s really interesting how I seem to have completely changed my entire relationship to art, and especially music, so quickly. An honest outpouring of emotion in song, which formerly would have brought goosebumps at best, now produces a twinning effect in me. I feel that emotion fully myself. Lack of emotional honesty, of truth, in a song now produces almost the same level of disgust in me as lack of skill used to. I have cried more often in the last month than I had in the five years prior, just listening to old songs I’ve heard a hundred times before.

Having your life completely uprooted, or realizing that it has been for some time, can have the strangest effects on people.

Oh yeah, I’m in Charleston again, so don’t expect regular timely commentary on the world at large or anything. Well, you can expect it, but you won’t be finding it here.