Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Pointless numbers I

As I missed the 10,000th visitor here, instead I bestow the arbitrary honour on the ten thousand one hundred and first visitor here, simply because the number makes a pretty pattern, and looks like 21 in binary.

Drumroll please... and the winner is 219.78.184.177 from PCCW in Hong Kong, who came here at 09:05:34 on Sunday 24th July looking for Anyhoo.

It's a bit odd to think that someone might actually have been looking for here, rather than the usual misguided (in both senses) searches such as Linda Barker nipple. Yes, she only has one after an unfortunate incident during filming of the Curry's "Always cutting prices" advertising campaign.

I've just found out an anagram of "Curry's: Always Cutting Prices" is "Trusty girl spews inaccuracy". Admittedly it's a bit of a stretch to class Linda Barker as either trusty or a girl, but still it's probably fairly apt.


Pointless Numbers II

The reason for the title of the post is the looming abyss (don't point out that it's a bit hard for abysses to loom unless one's at the bottom so then it would be a canyon). Today is one of two days when my brother is 4 years older than me, and I don't want to catch him up.

So in an effort to avoid lengthy soliloquies along the lines of "My life's not where I wanted it to be, and although I'm trying to waggle the tiller, I'm beginning to wonder if I put the rudder down" (Yes part of this post had a different first draft, and yes I'm not good at analogies, and yes tiller waggling is cheating and I ought to be using the wind), I'm going explore this famous day.

On the twenty-fifth of July:
Constantine the first was proclaimed emperor (by his troops. I wonder where this year's military coup in honour of my birthday will be?); Caracas was born; Nelson loses an arm; America sinks one of its own ships; income tax starts in Canada; people talk over the Atlantic; a man hopped over the Channel; a test tube baby is born; a boy is reportedly attacked by Mozilla's email programme or a member of the Tracey family; Rosalind Franklin was born, as more importantly was Matt le Blanc and a great many people I've never heard of, including several Wikipedia think are important; Coleridge died, presumably while Kubla-Khaned; the bard of the USSR died on the day I was born (and I've never heard of him either); it is Hurricane Supplication Day in the both sets of Virgin Isles (although Googleing suggests it might be a bit of a moveable feast. A .vi website has it as the fourth Monday in July); it's the National Day in a province of Spain; it is also the feast day of Furina, Roman goddess of thieves (Wikipedia claims elsewhere that the feast day is June the 25th. Just shows the power of the Wiki).

Via Google: Roxy Music played the Birmingham Odeon on the day I was born. The European Commission made a decision. The Chicago Cubs fired their manager.

Bloggers who share my birthday (for no reason other than Globe of Blogs lists those registered):
- Adela, who is a year older than me, posts infrequently and slenderly, although she's just been flooded (or nearly flooded).
- Someone writing in Spanish on a Norwegian domain. Seems fairly good, but I don't know what he's saying.
- CandyMandy from Canada writing about all things Canadian and torturing small rodents along the way.
- Angela from Boston, with a grammatically poor meme (although I'm not sure use of word wicked is solely a Bostonianism. For me 1,4,8,12 [and it's has supper], 16 [because I don't know what one is, but I do take any line I like across roads], 17 [I suspect I do; Google puts it as skittles with thinner pins], 19 [I'm not sure what is in mph, but probably], 23 partly, 24 and 25 are true, which makes me 38% Bostonian).
- A guy from England. Bit of a hit and miss affair.
- Avital from Vancouver, who admits to liking country music.
- Ben from NSW bemoans the irritation caused by online petitions, while overwhelming Firefox's pop-up blocker. To be honest I haven't read much of this one, as I'm having problems with the black on dark green writing.
- Bill the post-Catholic exploring Judaism. He writes it G-d, but other wise seems fairly sane.
- Boi from Troy, who I've seen mentioned elsewhere. He has his own unique political stance (meaning he talks a lot about Republicanism, and most of the time I've no idea what he's referring to).
- Someone with defunct blog from Nashville.
- Chad from Chicago and his Chess Strategies. I'm sure it'll come in useful at some point.
- Cory the Newfy, who has given up.
- Cory from BC, who advocates writing good content pages simply to boost ratings at a linked-to site.
- Christina from Brazil, whose site loaded the scrolling title and no more. Uses accented vowels in place of normal and mu when she means u.
- David from Binghamton NY, and his defunct site.
- Sur-Reality. One post onscreen, 24 words, dated 29th May. This isn't going as well as I'd hoped.
- Francesco Nardi writes in Italian, with a slightly confusing dual-column layout. No idea what he's talking about, but at least he's persistent and prolific.
- Another kaput blog, from Japan this time.
- Amber Dawn Pullin in goosed-upon boots from Canada. LJ and very of its genre (but better than some).
- Gardenwife from Ohio, who many writes about back problems, dieting and comment spam.
- Hans Presto's bilingual Niblog which mostly seems to be about some toy man.
- Houssein Ben-Ameur on various aspects of Quebecois life, such as Stephen Harper et le mariage des gays (yes, it was the only bit I understood without having to get out a dictionary). Just to enhance comprehensibility, he also writes in Arabic. The last CD he bought was by Leonard Cohen. Moving on...
- Jamee of the lapsed Happy Phantom/Ruckus Maker/Somewhat Damaged blog.
- "Jane", an unhappy student in Seattle. Bit irregular posting.
- Jason Cheeseman-Meyer, who is going camping over his birthday, assuming he hasn't drowned his daughter first.
- Jim, an [American] English teacher in Thailand. As I've just been distracted by several of his posts, it might actually be worth reading.
- Jenthemom in Calgary. DEWISOTT.
- Jon from San Francisco and his extinct blog.
- The Musings of a Lank which seeks to answer which is better; True Romance or Pump up the Volume.
- i=i. Better than some, but still not quite there. But I think I need to go and refuel, and I might be more receptive once I've done that. This is taking a very long time.
- Meg in Mobile. LJ.
- Obconic. Possibly good, if I was in the right mood.
- Paulo's Republica. Brazilian, hence in Portuguese.
- Something to do with Marbella, which no longer exists.
- Someone with an infrequent blog about Project Management.
- Someone with an University of New South Wales Art Dept hosted blog on advertising in the digital age. The template loads, but no content.
- Ryan Morrison who might work for the BBC in Jersey. I didn't leave his site as quickly as I have left some.
- Sara White, a student in Victoria, British Columbia (and Hawaii). Again a lingerable site.
- Serge lives in Mexico and writes about it. Either the quality of the sites has improved or my blood sugar's gone up.
- Edward Sinann-Whittaker. Unused; still in original packaging.
- Stacy, a potential alcoholic, last post September 2004.
- Stuart Tinsley blogs about his coytoed cat and his brood.
- Teju gave up in December 2004.
- Someone blogs about Scouts in Belarus. Unsurprisingly it's in Cyrillic Russian.
- Me and my monkey. Sporadic.
- Austrian Veronika writes her Koala themed Egozentrum in German. Alles ist less than klar, although I understand sporadisch upgedatete.
- Pink, lilac and purple Weggywoo feels the need to state that she's a girl. I would have thought the discussions of Gog and Magog would have already suggested that. She's a year younger than I am.
- Xtort's Entropic Bloom contains links to various fun and informative things. Mostly just link-feed.
- Yaya runs News to me by reacting to the news. US-centric and apparently and abandoned experiment.

Conclusions from this
- It's not just me who has problems with writing consistently good posts.
- Blogs are just as disposable as everything else in modern life.
- Signal to noise is low.
- A shared date isn't unifying.
- Yet a lot of these fit into pre-existing types.
- There's only a couple or so I might bother revisiting, if I remember them.

I wonder which part of Leo x Year of the Monkey X Friday's child bestows upon me the ability to be pointlessly persistent? And if I really am that combination, shouldn't I be having more fun?


Pointless Numbers III

Twenty-five on the twenty-fifth ought to be special, significant somehow. And yet it's not. It's going to be a day like all the rest, just another creeping period which will be gone in a pathetically small amount of time.

I think the problem is I don't feel like I've had 25 years of life. I've existed that long, but have I lived? In one sense I must have done - what else would give rise to the "where did that come from?" creases in my skin [memo to self: must stop smiling], or the occasional white hairs which mark impacts and not just pigmentation on the blink (or so I claim). And yet... And yet there's an awareness that the "yet" is less, and that the haves, hads and hases are growing as they recede.

And why are the words denoting the past so cruelly reminiscent of laughter? Everything is ha-ha-ha, aping the waning sound.

Maybe I ought to seek out the bastion of the aged, and lie about my age. After all, people who don't know me assume I'm doing A levels, but the same people also assumed my older brother is doing GCSEs, so that's probably more them than me. But I don't want to have to lie. It seems ageing somehow.

And in this mood I really don't need banner ads for Sky screeching that "The clock is ticking" and that "Time is running out". I don't even want Sky. I have no need of it. Begone all ye harpies of commercialism and harbingers of doom. And take your brand-name drugs spam with you.

So much for skirting the soliloquy. But perhaps the true meaning may save me yet; the obscurity of this blog and lingering oblivion may mean that I am actually only talking to myself.

And for all those, and I use all somewhat loosely as it invariably comes down to a dip...de, a hor-hawker and the near lunar wellsfargo, about to tell me that so much is yet to come; I know it is, but I just wish it didn't feel like I was having to compensate. And Mr Halls of Residence can't do that, as he is pitifully young (and probably feels comparatively old. It's the comparatively that undoes people).

Youth is wasted on the young, but the young are the only people who have it to try. We may simply have to conclude that wastage is a symptom of youth; it would be wasted regardless.

Whereas all this could just be a symptom of that fact it's raining, and rain in the IBP [Inter-Birthday Period] is rare, and I don't remember it ever raining on my birthday, which just goes to show how the memory goes as one ages.

It's stopped now; as should I.

Anyhoo,

PS. Finding a suitable image just brought to my attention two different mutations of memes. Firstly I originally typed it as "Monkey say, monkey do" rather than "Monkey see, monkey do" which makes more sense (at 580 ghits versus 80,000 ghits respectively, I think the rest of the world sides with sense).

The second was the divergence in the order of the three evils [results are in ghits, and the second figure is for the replacement of speak with say]:
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. 47,600, 468
See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. 610, 63
Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. 692, 38
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. 9,810, 289
Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. 798, 50
Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil. 701, 24