» On 7/31/2006 07:00:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Mel Gibson's mug shot. [Sorry.] The L.A. County Sheriff's department has refused to release the real mug shot or the original report of the arresting officer. But several pages of the unsanitized arrest report have surfaced on TMZ.com. Ugly reading.

8/1 update: the authentic mug shot.

 
» On 7/30/2006 08:00:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Bloggy stuff. According to The Desert Quidnunc's Archives page, this list indicates the number of postings I've written:
July 2006 [62]
June 2006 [82]
May 2006 [63]
April 2006 [75]
March 2006 [83]
February 2006 [62]
January 2006 [61]
That's an average of 3+ articles per day, 5 days a week. Some of the pieces are less creative than others, but some required many hours (or even days) of research, preparation, interview sessions, photo shoots, transcription, editing, etc. The dead-tree edition of Palm Springs Life averages about a dozen articles per month, and they have squads of editors, designers, freelance writers and photographers. How long can I keep this up?

A few months back, TDQ briefly broke into the Big Time at Boing Boing: 3,200+ hits/hour. Ah, those were the days...

Carol Darr, Director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at The George Washington University recently told CBS News: "Most of the people who read blogs -- they are highly educated. They are middle aged. And they are high income. [...] Cause the people who are reading blogs tend to be opinion leaders and they tend to be trendsetters. So they are influential far out of proportion to what their numbers are."

World Map of Happiness: I think it's noteworthy that Israel was happier than Lebanon, even before the current hoo-ha. But I also think it's significant that 22 countries are happier than us Americans. I guess we just have to work harder at this happiness thang. Denmark is #1 on the list, and I have a Danish friend, Jørgen. He and I used to run a business, selling teeshirts on the French Riviera, during the late seventies. We nearly went bankrupt... but that's another story. Everyone called him "Jørgen the Jolly Dane" because he was always so f*cking happy. We never could figure out why. During the intervening years, Jørgen has become somewhat less jolly. But that sonovabitch is still happier than me. ;-)

One last blog issue: why do people read 'em? Here are some excerpts from a recent discussion over at Francis Ford Coppola's Virtual Studio:

· "I read about 100 blogs, all of them in my RSS reader. They're a great way to get different views of many different subjects."

· "I read the paper every day and visit blogs every few days to get Sullivan's or Greenwald's take on things. I'd guess that most of the highly successful blogs out there are political commentary - I'm sure the Daily Kos and InstaPundit are among the Top 10 most read."

· "All I know is that since my husband has discovered blogs on politics, the TV is on less and I don't have to listen to his rants! GO Blogs!"

· "Actually, I've met quite a few people--celebrities in the music world and writers--who read my blog [...] I've also sold my book via my blog as well as books of others via the Amazon program. I know there are people who think they are mental masturbation or whatever. I really don't care. You can't please everyone, can you? I enjoy blogging and for me it's a good warm-up in the morning for the subsequent hours when I work on my novel."

· "My little essays actually have something of a small readership, which surprises the hell out of me. I read a couple blogs each day myself, even though I've sworn not to."

· "Blogging is more than a simple hobby or curiosity. When a blogger has a focus, there is a readership that will follow his or her entries. [...] Commercial blogging has become a fascinating marketing tool, and a way for people to keep in touch with new ideas and even ideas-in-progress within their industries. Blogs can be considered advertising, but they're advertising ideas."

· "Pop culture at its finest. I'm hooked."

 
» On 7/23/2006 08:00:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Record high temps yesterday... which caused a gallon of liquid fish fertilizer to explode in our back seat, on the way home from the store. So I spent a large portion of the 121°F day outdoors, with my hands in smelly brown crap, mopping up like crazy. Eventually, I had to cut out and throw away a huge chunk of fish-guts-soaked automobile carpet, so we could avoid junking the entire car because of the rancid stink. Then I spent most of the evening in bed with heat stroke. In fact, I still feel kind woozy... that bed is looking mighty good right now.

PS: After 15 or 20 hand-scrubbings, and liberal applications of bleach and perfume, my fingers still smell like fish. Before this incident, I wanted to take Anikó out to the Red Lobster seafood restaurant for her upcoming nameday celebration. Now? Not so much.

PPS: I don't know how Mike Rowe does it.

 
» On 7/20/2006 04:09:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Anikó wrote:
Coachella Valley Bloggers: it just seemed like posting a list of these links somewhere on the web might be a useful thing... Paul Krassner, Tod Goldberg, Sunny James (The Short Bus), Maggie Downs (The Desert Diaries and Maggie jumps!), Lisa Snellings-Clark (SlaughterHouse Studios), Ron Gilbert (Ron's Log), MJ (Friday Fishwrap), Lynda Keeler + others (Palm Springs Swings), The Desert Quidnunc, The Desert Pun, Dr. Harold J. McLaughlin (Jack's-World), Jerold Heisler (Direct Mail Made Easy), Bob Mahlowitz (Thursday), Jonathan Tufts (JTs Blog), Phillip Smith (The Art Office), Jay Nailor (m modern gallery), Robert Starvation (Re:Generator Magazine), Trailing Xtabay, Evil Jungle Prince, Lesbian Curves Ahead, The Frippery, PS Metro and Vintage Palm Springs Postcards. Updates: Anikó J. Bartos & Alan C. Baird (BackslasherBlog.com and PalmSpringsDeath.com and Snoozeletter), Abe Cooper (the spare can), Gene Touchet (Logorrhea and Take That, Right Wing Nut Scum!), Cindy Lee Jones (Ibiza_Butterfly - or is it Flutterby?), Michael Dare (Disinfotainment Today - is it a blog?), California Standard, CV Hiking Club (website), Leslie Lange (Kept Lesbian and Chariot Lady), Kristin Johnson (The Blood Mask), Robert Hurlbert (Farquardht), Francine Kaplan (Prettier Sister), John A Harrell (Wordwright), David Roth for Congress, Desertcast and Lois Anderson (No Eminent Domain).

 
» On 7/01/2006 08:00:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
New month, new web host: The performance of our 9TimeZones.com site has been going WAY down lately - every time we'd try to visit one of our web pages, the d*mn browser would just sit there for 30 or 40 seconds... if the page ever appeared at all.

F*ck that.

I've been using GoDaddy.com for domain registrations during the past few years - they're cheap and easy, which is a good thing in this particular area. For example, these domain names are all registered with GoDaddy, and setting them up to forward to various pages within 9TimeZones was a snap: BackslasherBlog.com, LitCom.org, HairyPalmsMotel.com and SweatyPalmsMotel.com.

Then I experimented with putting the PS Writers Guild site onto GoDaddy's servers in early 2005, so I knew their hosting services were very reliable, as well as incredibly inexpensive. In fact, I don't understand why people are still using Network Solutions, when the NS pricing structure is 3 or 4 times higher than GoDaddy's.

Long story short: I finally got off my lazy butt and made the switch. Hope you enjoy the increased reliability and decreased wait times.

PS: The place where I can see the most improvement is in posting blog items - the uploading process has been cut from 10 or 15 seconds down to 2 or 3. YEEHAW!!