MIT is doing a research project that tracks the videos removed from Youtube for alleged copyright violation.  It’s entitled Youtomb.  Definitely good for a few laughs.

I found this online today.  It totally made me laugh uncontrollably!  So I share it with you, my faithful readers.  Enjoy!

“We… took the baseboards off and made the mantel disappear and took the ceiling down. And ooh! You. Will. Not. BELIEVE whatwefoundintheceiling!!!!! Porn! Somebody’s secret hidden stash from 1997! Three little dirty magazines. Not sure why it was hidden above the drywall. It’s not as if you could actually get to it from there. I guess the previous owner really didn’t want anyone to discover his little pornographic secret. What makes this even better, though, is that the previous owner actually lives next door to us now (his wife used to be just the pretty girl next door until he, you know, married her and moved next door). I’ll have to refrain from asking him whether 1997 was an unusually “hot” year, or whether he really “felt the excitement” that year.”

Yesterday I wrote this post, detailing how I was struggling with the code for this website.

Just thought you would all like to know that today I figured it out and am happily cruising along again.

(By the way, you won’t see my changes affect this website for awhile. I installed a “dummy” version of wordpress on my hard drive and have been using it to experiment and test changes in my code.)

Most of you know that I have been working very hard lately to conquer PHP.  Lately I’ve been doing a tutorial that walks me through how to design a Wordpress theme.

Tonight, I encountered my first major problem.

I followed the instructions, checked and double checked my work, but suddenly my code is not correct.

I have NO IDEA what I have done wrong.  But it makes me wonder if I need to go out and take a class or something, so that I can get a textbook or something like that, and figure out EXACTLY what I am doing wrong.

Some of you know that what you are reading here is basically my job.  I work in blog marketing.  It’s a pretty sweet gig.  I blog, and then I get paid for it, and all that work leaves me plenty of time to work on what I really love - which is, writing books and searching for a publisher for those books.  I’m actually in the process of creating two more websites (in addition to this one) where I can also write and get paid for it.  I could gripe sometimes about google pagerank or other ranking systems, but they’re not really the problem.  The problem is that the advertisers haven’t discovered a more reliable way to find publishers.  But they will, sooner or later - it’s the nature of a free market economy.  Anyway, I’ve discovered that I really love writing advertisements and I really love working with companies and corporations.  I also love being my own boss.  It’s totally cliche, but it’s true.  I’ve worked under both good and bad managers before.  This job beats working under a bad manager, and even working under a good manager, somewhat.  It’s wonderful to set my own schedule and to have so much control over my income.  If you have any questions about this job, feel free to email me or comment, and I would be happy to tell you more.

Yesterday I started using Johnson & Johnson’s Clean and Clear acne cleanser.  So far I’m not super impressed.  My neck, in particular, has begun to itch incessantly (not a surprise, since I use the cleanser in the shower and it rinses down my neck).  I’m not yet seeing a dramatic improvement in my acne, and if this itch continues, the cleanser will have to go.

I’ve talked about this before, but I’m toying the idea of picking up a journal again.  I’ve journaled a lot over the years, but put down my journal when I returned from Africa and haven’t picked it up since.  Tonight, though, I have a crazy urge to write about a dream I had.  Now, here’s the complicated part: I haven’t decided yet if I am comfortable with writing about this dream on my blog.  I want to remember it - though in fact, I suspect it won’t be difficult to remember.  It was an unbelievably vivid and personal dream.  I can’t decide if I want to share it online - or, for that matter, if you’ll be comfortable hearing about it.  What do you think?

I feel so fried today.

First of all, I am exhausted.  I hardly got any sleep last night - between all the commotion with the power outage and the sleep cycle change, I lay in bed awake for most of the night.  When I did get to sleep, it definitely wasn’t that deep, restorative sleep - just fitful tossing and turning.  There was periodic thunder throughout the night, which certainly didn’t help my quest for sleep.  When the lights came back on at 6:30 this morning, our house lit up and I got out of bed.

Now I am attempting to work on my code.  For several days now, I’ve been working through a PHP tutorial of how to design a wordpress theme.  All was going well until today.  I copied, pasted, and typed everything, exactly as the tutorial directed, and something’s wrong.  There’s a syntax error on line 74, which may also be an ansi/unicode error.  I have no idea how to fix it, and it’s incredibly frustrating.

So, between the exhaustion and the frustration, I just feel totally blah.  Maybe I need to take a nap.

I have this domain.

I picked it up early on, along with melindamusil.com, because I thought it was cute and clever.  But then - perhaps kind of stupidly - I started my blog on melindamusil.com.  I never did find any long term uses for this other domain.

I don’t want to let it go.  It’s a good domain and I am certain that I can use it to earn money.  In fact, I hope I can start another blog on it and earn money through that.  However, I have NO IDEA what to write about.

It’s challenging enough to maintain this blog.  What I need to do is find a “channel” or “topic” that I am fairly knowledgeable about.  I don’t know what to write about, though!  I have so many thoughts and ideas, and I know so much about so much.  I can’t decide what one topic to write about!

Does anyone have ANY thoughts?  I need some help!

In high school, I had a fantastic journalism teacher.  Two years under his tutelage shaped my writing in a way that few other events have.

One thing he taught, that I’ll never forget, was the power of language.  I can walk or run.  I can trot, scamper, scurry, race, sprint, bolt, chase, dash, gallop, hustle, jog, lope, scramble, or whisk.  These are all synonyms of “walk” or “run”, but each word implies a different type of motion.

We also discussed the strangeness of idioms.  Imagine, if you will, overhearing these phrases and not knowing the story behind them, or perhaps hearing them but not knowing their significance in the English language…
-”It cost her an arm and a leg.”
-”She was burnt to a crisp.”
-”He was as high as a kite.”
-”He was beating a dead horse.”
-”She bent over backwards for her family.”
-”He really went out on a limb last week.”

I could go on but I think you get the idea.  His point, always, was that words have power.  Words must always be chosen carefully, because the wrong word can give an entirely unintentional impression.

I’ll be the first to mention that I don’t always succeed at this.  Of course, I always try to keep these words in the back of my head, but like I said, I don’t always succeed.

An example of this is my previous post about a boy’s death at an amusement park.  I wrote, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an amusement park… reading stories like these makes me glad… police are reporting that another teenager died at an amusement park”.

I did not clarify the second phrase.  Reading stories like these makes me glad - not that anyone died, but that I have not been to an amusement park in a long time, and probably won’t return to an amusement park for a long time.  I think it’s tragic that anyone died, and I’m saddened for this boy’s family.  I am NOT glad, as a commentator implied, that the boy died.

Hope this clears it up…

How bad is it when you want to write a post on your blog, but you can’t find anything to write about?

That’s me.  I looked at some news sites to see if anything sparks my interest.  Nothing.

I looked at some WEIRD news sites to see if anything sparks my interest.  Nothing.

Now I’m looking at Craigslist, though I have no idea why.  I don’t need or want anything.

Oh well.  At the very least, Craigslist can be entertaining!