RKNet Blog... Thing

Only the del.icio.us RSS feed can produce such gems as:

http://ascii.techhappens.com/ - An ASCII art generator.
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/10/10-surefire-ways-to-kill-your-crabby.html - Seen near a lifehack.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/j-shot-3.html - Located in the vicinity of jello shot instructions.
http://link.ezer.com/tools/google_serps_rank_checker.asp - Nearby a SERP rank checker.

It’s such an endless treasure trove of stuff. I would recommend subscribing, and not necessarily trying to review all the links that come through each day, but to use a feed reader with a search option to locate links of interest to you.

I use the feed reader built into Opera, and the “Quick Find” search function native to the reader searches both titles and content for whatever you’re looking for. However, it does seem to only return whole strings. For example, say I know there’s a link somewhere in my feed reader for Puppy Chow name brand dog food. I can search for “name brand dog food” but not “name brand food”.

I’m always looking for more snazzy, user-generated feeds of neat info and ways to keep track of it all.
What is your favorite feed reader and its favorite feature?
What are your favorite feeds?

It may always be sunny in Philadelphia, but that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily want to take a close look at the inhabitants.
In this article from Reuters, it notes a few interesting, negative tidbits about the City of Brotherly Love.

The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the “America’s Favorite Cities” survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News.

That could explain soooo much…

I can’t place why this feels note-worthy much less blog-worthy, but neither can I get it out of my head. Maybe it’s the guilt. Maybe it speaks too curtly to my character that I laughed so loudly when I learned of the initiative. A program, they explained. More crudely put, a “cleansing.” You have to understand; my roommates explained to me, they don’t belong here. Violating our home, resting on our resources, draining our patience with every exponential influx. Nothing has stopped them and nothing will. We killed them, they explained. We killed them all.

Improbably, I am glad I wasn’t home for the genocide. In plastering myself at the bar on a Wednesday night, I successfully escaped the gleeful cackle (and it’s resulting guilt) that I surely would have issued had I witnessed the initiative first hand. However, I can tell you, with a certain amount of shame, blended with a certain amount of sick-triumph, that I danced on their graves when I returned.

More than 200 lady-bugs (pumpkin bugs actually, orange with fewer spots and a musky aroma) lost their lives on Wednesday, October 17. Eye-witness reports state that these bugs, while quietly going about their (flying-around and crawling-all-over-my-goddamn-stuff) lives were indiscriminately sucked into a household vacuum cleaner, clinging to each other in shock and fear, their (gross, hard, shiny) bodies gripping one-another. They were then dumped unceremoniously into a brown paper bag, which had previously held an Old-English 40-ouncer and was thus crumpled and stained with malt-liquor. The bag was then dragged into the yard, doused with a liberal amount of Bacardi 151, and set on fire. The bugs were burned alive, popping like knuckles, amid a raucous blast of drunken jeering; and then pissed out (a final fuck you) by a stream of booze-ridden urine. You can still see their carcasses, littering our backyard; Burned-black ladybug flesh, shells, legs, crackling like leaves in their Machiavellian death.

A good reason for being an absentee from your own blog is to get out into the world and discover new and exciting things to bring to your terrific readers. I’ve been watching a lot more television lately and friends, I think I’ve dug up a gem that has the potential to explode into full-fledged meme status (outside of my own circle of friends, anyway).

The meme fodder I present you with is from the show It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. It’s on FX, Thursday nights at 10pm (EST). I strongly recommend checking it out. Seasons 1 and 2 are also out on DVD if your Thursday nights area already spoken for.
Without further ado, the clip:

If that by itself isn’t enough to get you to fall in love with this cast of total misfits, I recommend reading 10 reasons you should be watching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

It would probably read a lot like this feature over at Progressive Boink. It’s got poems, vignettes in the author’s style of the more well-known Peanuts characters, and original comics done up with dialogue in Bukowski’s style.

For more information about Henry Charles Bukowski, there is a list of 100 trivia items about the author available at alternativereel.com.

There are gems like #85: “Bukowski had a habit of puking in the parking lot before each and every poetry reading.”

For even more Bukowski references, here’s Modest Mouse performing their song “Bukowski” at The Backyard in Austin, TX on 5/9/07:

If I may be so bold as to quote Animaniacs…

“It’s time for another good idea, bad idea”

Good idea:
A device that allows folks with female sex organs to pee standing up.
Bad idea:
Fashioning said device to look something akin to a giant golden dildo.

It’s certainly a device that’s an invention of necessity. Yet I fail to see the need for it to be - as the site describes it - 12 inches long, and golden. And as it’s stated on the site “The Ebony model is due out soon. It will be significantly larger than the gold model, come with wheels and is…priceless.”

I’m absolutely positive that concept of this device could be executed with a LOT more discretion. I can’t picture wasting that much space in a hiking or camping pack, much less a purse with something that huge. A plastic funnel would probably serve the same purpose, at that.

Plus, I’d bet a nickel they’ve done SOME kind of keyword research, too. On the “Blog On” page, I couldn’t help but notice the sub-header stating: “The Shenis fits all designer vaginas”. The designer vagina issue seems to be coming up a lot more lately, probably due to changes in surgical proceedures and promotion. (I distinctly recall complaining about the very idea, in fact.) They could probably do more to optimize for that particular keyword, but I find it’s placement and presence in general to be highly suspect.

Conclusion: This is a pure novelty item and I’m not terribly impressed, to be honest. Campers, hikers, and road-trip travelling ladies, just make sure you have a plastic funnel (or good directions). You’ll be fine. Don’t throw money at this silly attempt to provoke in the name of convenience.

Hey kids! In conjunction with my desire to generate more user feedback here at the RKNet, I wish to take a moment to voice my support for The Great Mofo Delurk 2007.

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some RSS. It allows me to read far more interesting articles per day than visiting individual blogs ever could. Yet without feedback and conversation, there’s nothing to separate someone’s blog from some kind of diary or masturbatory pontification. (Not that there aren’t some elements of both in a lot of blogs anyway, this one included.)

So let us all take a moment to break out from the comfort of our cozy feed readers, visit some of our favorite blogs, and let those jerks people know just how we feel! If there’s nothing recent that really inspires you, go back to old entries that got you really fired up and sound off. Stumble your way through tags and categories and find things that really pique your interests and speak away! Share your favorite entries with friends and get them to comment, too.

We the authors know you’re out there, and we love hearing from you. It lets us know we’re doing our job: entertaining, informing, and/or inspiring*. (*Trolling is a form of inspiration too!) Gentle readers, we love you! Share the love and leave a comment.

Initially I thought “WOW. WP2.3 is a cakewalk!”
I have been proven wrong. I don’t know if it’s plugin incompatibility, my inability to follow directions (don’t rule that one out) or bugs, but I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled wordpress a few times tonight.

I integrated my Ultimate Tag Warrior tags and now I don’t have the awesome control that I used to have with the actual plugin itself. In fact, now all I have is a line below my post box area that informs me that I can type in comma separated tags. WHOOPDEDOO. How do I make sure that I don’t make incorrect and/or near duplicate tags by way of typos or pluralizations?

Incidentally, for conspiracy buffs, eris fans, and discordians at large: You will note that this ~is~ wordpress version 2.3. i.e. 23 with a mere dot as camoflage! That brazen hussy of a number. Simon Moon would have strong words for this situation, surely, were he not an element of fiction. Alas, due to the extreme loss of authors this year, I am unable to sustain the hope of meeting RAW to confirm or deny Simon’s fictitious nature.

But I digress.
I am going to do my damnedest to ensure that all tags, posts, and URLs are functional in this transition.