The World of Stuff .com

Turkey time

Well, Thanksgiving is around the corner, and you know what that means: It’s time to feed the homeless! I got roped into doing some volunteer work today. I really didn’t want to wake up at 6:15 on a Saturday to do it. You have no idea. It’s 5:30 on school days and 6:30 for work. And even when I can stay up late, I always wake up early. Saturdays are mine… unless I have to help distribute frozen turkeys in the tri-county area. I really didn’t want to do it. That makes me a bad person.

Anyway, KFC donated 200 frozen turkeys to the cause, so the first thing we had to do was go and get them. They were conveniently located in a small warehouse in West Palm Beach, so we had to go up there and get them. From then we moved to points south, distributing turkeys here and there, and also picking up some boxes of food and stuff that had been made specifically for certain needy families. Then those boxes had to be delivered to Miami, so by that time, I actually felt like going along. After all, I had never been to West Palm Beach and Miami in the same day before.

After that, I hung out with Mark for a bit. He gave me back some of the CDs that I lent him from our band practice of April 18, 2004. I’d been getting on him about it for months now. Nine hundred and forty-four (944) days later, he gives two out of three back, which I’d say is not bad for him. Incidentally, my CDs were held captive for 500 days longer than the Iran hostage crisis. However, while all of the American hostages returned alive, two out of three of my CDs emerged unscathed.

Well, besides Thanksgiving, the other noteworthy things that happen in mid-to-late November are my friend Michelle’s birthday and the Leonid meteor shower. I’ve never seen the Leonids (or any meteor shower, for that matter), although I have tried. Five years ago, I went camping with my friend Sean around Leonid time, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the meteors, but I couldn’t. I think it was too cloudy, and I was too tired, and the smoke from the campfire was making me sneeze too much. It was probably too cold also.

It’s also cold tonight, but the sky is as clear as a bell (except for all the light pollution, but whatever). The meteor shower is supposed to peak later tonight, so maybe I’ll actually see some. I’m glad that the Leonids aren’t peaking on a school night this year. You won’t escape me this year, Leonids! Actually, you probably will, considering how much light pollution there is in my general area, but… we’ll see, won’t we? I’ll probably come back inside frustrating and freezing, but Leonids, I will see you. Well, I’ll try, anyway. Okay, that’s enough.

A little Ask Jordon never hurt anybody.

Peter: Do you realize that, according to Alexa, your traffic is falling somewhat rapidly? Why do you think this happened, and what could you do to stop it?

Yes, I did realize that, actually, but it doesn’t worry me that much. The only reason I can think of that makes sense is that I haven’t been posting as much as I could be (though I am posting as much as I can, if that makes sense). Or maybe it’s just that people who download the Alexa toolbar are increasingly tending not to be the sort of people who visit my site. Who knows?

If I wanted to gain more traffic, which I suppose I do (even though I don’t care about it as much as I used to), I would probably try increasing my links to other sites and maybe write a post that would make the front pages of Slashdot, Digg, Fark, Metafilter, and all the sites of that sort. I tend to link to a lot of top lists of things that are ranked by certain people who seem to know what they’re talking about. In fact, checking my list of sites that I plan to link to in forthcoming posts, 3 of the 14 pages are countdowns of some kind. Maybe I could write the Top Ten Reasons People Should Visit The World of Stuff. That’ll get ‘em.

Check out The Illustrated Beowulf, a condensed version of the timeless Old English epic, featuring Bill Clinton as Beowulf, Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and Pope John Paul II as Hrothgar, and Cookie Monster as Grendel, among others. But, as always, be sure to watch Beowulf: The Movie, starring my friends and me.

Speaking of astronomy: What is the Hubble Deep Field, and why is it the most important image ever taken? Find out (YouTube).

One year ago: “By the way, I don’t want to die alone.”
Two years ago: “What might be even more crazy than Mr. McDonald having been a Major League Baseball player is that no one ever bothered to tell me.”