I signed up for Technorati last night. I've been hearing about it for a while now, but I had no idea what that was. If you know me at all, you'll know I don't like not knowing stuff. My initial suspicion was that "Technorati" was a compound formed from "techno," a kind of music that the kids are into these days, and "rati," the plural of the Latin "rattus," or "rat."

"Why might one combine techo and rats?" I asked myself. The most logical explanation is that Technorati is the actualization of what altavista.digital.com (these days just known as www.altavista.com) wanted to be - a franchise that provides fine dining and music. At worst, an evening at a Technorati establishment might mean me eating Baldrick's rat au van and listening to Prodigy. At best, it would mean me making several trips to the rat bar where I pick my rat(s), sauce(s), and additional meat garnishes and have the chef combine them in some amazing way, all while I listen to Silly Wizard or Die Krupps. Except for Prodigy, how could I lose? This, unfortunately, was not the case.

"Why else might one combine techno and rats?" I asked myself. The most logical answer, although certainly not the one that is most likely to spring to mind, is that "Technorati" is an example of analogical word formation: just as someone formed "gliteralati" from "glitter" and "literalati" or "commentariat" from "commentator" and "commissariat," a group of shoujo-loving tech-savvy rodents formed Technorati from TechnoGirls. For those of you who have been hiding under a rock, the TechnoGirls provide fan-translated shoujo anime that corporate entities are unlikely to release in the United States. Thinking of this was difficult because it required a major ontological shift - that of rats as content to be consumed to rats as content producers. As lovely an idea as this may be, it's total Bush.

More through research indicates that "Technorati" is formed from "techno," meaning "technology," and "rati," which is platypus slang that is nearly identical to the English word "otaku" (not to be confused with the Japanese word "お宅," which has a perjurative connotation). That's right, the Technorati are a group of young, hip, tech-savvy plats (also platypus slang, to which I'm totally flim) who spend their time indexing blogs and, at least in the case of males, occasionally envenomating people with the little spurs on their legs. I guess this means that my future posts had better not spen. I'm not too worried, since (a) I'm 110% awesome and (b) as I said, I'm flim to plat culture and lingo.

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There's been a lot of hysteresis about Six Apart wanting to turn LiveJournal into Wikipedia. As your main source of accurate, reliable information, I decided to do some investigation. I was suspicious at first, since if you look at the level of writing in the posts about this topic, they appear to have been done by people who have recently gone off their meds. The posts are really just a lot of ranting and free association. I can't remember any of them, so I'm going to write the rest of this post, eat some spider plant, sniff some catnip, and then write one of my own.

OMG I HaTE THE NEW LJ INTERFACE IT L00KZ LIKE A55!!!!111!!!十一! I h8 the customize area and teh new userinfo! I don't know how to change things anymore! lj_design are jerks and * h8 them so much! This may or may not be real. Six Apart operates several other blogging services, which means that (一) they will stop working on LJ (2) work on LJ to turn it into wikipedia (III) force everyone over the age of 13 to move to another one of the services they so sinistrally own and (100₂) I have DISCOVERD MANY TRUTHS: changing my journal title and subtitle are in some crazy area called "CUSTOMIzE!" WTF? Why I gotta go to Customize to customize my LJ? Man, my paws sure are dirty. You never notice how dirty your paws are until you stop and look. Even chewing on them doesn't get them clean. What gives?

So as you can see (I hope, since I haven't written it yet), these people sound like they are crazy. Maybe they need to switch to a service full of stoners, like MySpace. I mean, who really thinks that the statement that most LJ users are in the 13-29 age range, an ugly interface, and the ability to use Wiki markup are some kind of super-secret code for "We plan to turn the site into Wikipedia!" Then, of course, I noticed this above one of the posts:

This user is a hysterical moron and has been nominated for deletion or migration to Vox. Okay, we probably should have included a simple "No, we're not trying to drive adults away and turn the site into Wikipedia." in our FAQ, but COME ON! What is wrong with you people? Go to your pharmacist, get your prescription filled, follow the instructions on the bottle, and then come back and post.

So, yeah, it looks like we're on our way to being Wikipedia. I'm going to guess that we're going to go the way of E2 - anything that isn't hard fact or of personal interest to Six Apart will be deleted, and strict editorial standards will be applied to our own personal lives. I'm off to help LJpedia by expanding their stub on catnip. Then, once I'm down again, I'll go back and make the few changes in my journal that are needed to bring it into compliance with LJpedia's editorial policy.

After having tried and failed to get any useful information from Dracula, I tried one of the most popular modern vampire writers. Let me tell you, Ayn Rand does not live up to the hype, and I'm disturbed by the little cult that's sprung up around her books. Rand's main subjects are soulless monsters, although she tries to pass them off as the great heroes of our time. I'm really glad that most people don't buy into any of this, but I dread to think of how those few vampires who believe her have hurt our reputation. Don't be fooled by these people! The next time you see a vampire on a killing spree, blowing up a building, or showing an edited video of Leonard Peikoff in a debate, stop him/her and say, "I know you don't represent all, or even a substantial majority, of the vampires out there. Most of them are embarrassed by your behavior. You should be ashamed of yourself. Now behave!"

I've been to the vet two times. Each time, they have taken blood. I just heard that I'm scheduled for one more appointment that will involve taking blood. After this, I should be a vampire. I'm so excited. I've got a week or so before the change, so I'm doing some research. I spent most of yesterday sitting on a copy of Dracula, and I can say that it's not a very well-researched bit of scholarship. That would explain why the copy I'm sitting on is published by the Modern Library rather than by Harvard University Press's Belknap imprint. It's just so confusing. One minute Dracula is scared of sunlight and the next he's walking around town in the daylight. One minute he can't cross water and the next he's renting a paddle boat. One minute he hates soap operas, and the next he won't shut up about how Darien Steele and Victoria Malone can't end up together, since they are both actually brother and sister, although only that crazy old Lorenzo knows. I mean, come on! Anyhow, I think a lot of this was taken from Trilobite, which is so unscholarly that it's not even funny. I have nothing but the highest respect for the palaeontological community, but George du Maurier was known more for his work in Punch than for serious fieldwork.

This leaves me in a bit of a bind. Where should I turn? Do I need a coffin? If I need soil, where should it come from? I think my original home was in Walnut Creek, which means I'll have to take BART. Could I just get some out of the bag on the patio in Fremont instead? Should I practice counting grain? Are there any forms I need to fill out? Do I need to take a test or pay money for a license?

I'm an animal test subject, and I think it rocks! Pounce, the people who make some kinds of cat food, sent us a bunch of free cat treats that they are testing, and let me tell you, it's quite tasty. In the next few months, you should buy and eat anything you see from Pounce that says, "New!" Take my word for it. It's tasty. It's not unagi-tasty, but it's really good. Plus, it's Tartar-control, so I'll never have to go to war like Alexander Nevsky did to keep the Mongol hordes out of my town.

Serously, though, I'm not sure why people object to animal testing. I guess it's a species-based anti-outsourcing argument. I mean, I am taking the job from some human who would otherwise have been paid to taste-test this Pounce stuff. However, it's not like the jobs are leaving the country, so I can only assume people who are against animal testing are speciesist spigots.

I've been involved with animal testing for a long time now. When I was very young, my parents enrolled me in a cognitive disorders experiment. A bunch of protesters shut it down, but not before my parents had some cash. Plus, since I was part of the test, I guess I must be protected against cognitive disorders for the rest of my life. Mom said that the money probably saved my life. She said it was the only way they could afford to keep me instead of drowning me in a bucket. Of course, when she was drunk, she said it was so Dad could buy a couple of expensive Magic: The Gathering cards. Dad's story is and always has been that he wanted the money to buy a bigger bucket. Anyhow, whatever happened to the money, I'm protected from cognitive disorders. That means I'll never have cancer of the cognitive or anything like that.

I'm interested in taking part in more tests. I've heard that a lot of makeup companies test hot new makeup on animals. Since I'm a goth, I could use some makeup. I'm thinking a little black eyeliner would bring out the yellow in my eyes, but I'd be happy to have any hip new makeup.

polycat has informed me that flesh bugs are "alienoid life-form what look [sic] just like a hand." I'm not familiar with these creatures, and I've read every Geiger-counter manual I can find, so I think I know a fair amount about aliens. Has anyone else seen these things? I need as much information as I can if I'm going to hunt down the one that attacked me. To this end, I would like to announce the Miss Kitty Foundation for the Collection of Information Relating to Flesh Bugs, Specifically the Kind of Information That Can Lead to Their Destruction, Not the Kinds of Information Like "They Don't Think Seinfeld is Funny, Either," or "Some of Them Like to Play Whist."

I got to see an exotic slugfruit today. It was interesting. It was huge and spikey, and it had an interesting smell. Well, Clint cut into it and pulled out a giant, yellowish slug. It smelled like it was dead, and it didn't move. I'm guessing it was, in fact, a late slug. Then he ate it. I didn't get any. There were four more dead slugs in there, too. I want to try slug. Clint said it was interesting. Well, I can dig interesting. Interesting is what makes life interesting. Plus, slug is one of those meats I haven't tried.

Questions I need to research at some point:

1. Is this slugfruit a part of some slug burial ritual?
   
2. Did the five slugs die at the same time? That is, is it some kind of mass grave?
   
3. Were any of the slugs ritually murdered? I've heard that the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt were often ritually murdered, along with servants and pets, whenever a beloved royal cat died.
   
4. Are there any artifacts in these slugfruit? If so, perhaps Clint shouldn't just whack them open with a meat cleaver next time. These things need to be carefully documented, photographed, and packed off to a museum. I don't think there is a museum in the world that would want one of its ID cards to read "ceremonial bow of a royal slug, Sixth Dynasty (1997-1999 CE); scratch marks due to some guy's meat cleaver"

I'm not that fond of newspaper comics. I will admit that the art is usually quite good, but I'm not generally taken by the humor. It's usually crude, involving bodily functions, cheap shots and laughing at the stupid or ignorant. Peanuts, for example, is just full of cheap bathroom humor. I do like Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy, however. Get Fuzzy packs a lot of humor into each litlte picture, and it has Satch. He's *so* cute. Doonesbury is actually one of the hardest-hitting sources for news outside of The Daily Show. They don't pull punches for anybody, and they do some pretty fine science segments, too. I have fond memories of the time they took a safari in Ronald Reagan's brain, and that time they went inside Bush's head to take a close look at his morals. The last segment never actually made it to the newspapers, though. The people who did that Powers of 10 book and movie thought the intro sequence where they were shrunk down enough to actually see his morals was too similar to something in their book.

Also, I like The Far Side. The art is really funny, even if the words don't make any sense.

However, while reading Sunday's comics, I noticed that Clear Blue Water had a profound and, to my mind, unanswerable question:

"Why do punkins gots triangle eyes?"

I did some research, and I can only conclude that I have no idea, but a quick check on Google's image search confirms that it is true.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that my investing skills have failed in this case, but I have to say in my defense that my family wasn't really that big on Easter. I remember when we tried to celebrate it during the year I lived at home. Mom had the grill and the fireworks all set up when Dad pointed out that he was an Orangeman, so it was kind of stupid to celebrate. Then he collapsed face-first into a huge pile of Magic: The Gathering cards.