ceci n’est pas un blog

I’ve recently learned that the best way to increase traffic to your site is to feature pictures of zombies and/or pirates and then have boingboing.net link to it. I didn’t even think when I submitted my flickr photoset to them that they would post it since the title “Zombie Rights March Protested by Pirates” seemed too ludicrous to be featured on any site. I laughed wildly to myself as I typed up this absurd (but true) description of it:

Here’s a flickr set of pictures documenting the zombie rights march to Austin’s City Hall last Friday. The zombies’ signs in the march included badly spelled slogans such as “Mairage = 1 Zombie + 1 Zombie”, “More Binifits for Zombie Vets in Our Necronomoconomy”, “Brains…The Other White Meat”, “We’re here, we’re dead, get used to it!” and “Zombies Was People Too.” The zombies, shouting “What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Brains!” was unhindered by a group of pirates protesting the undead’s demands for their rights.

In the day or two that followed, I was very glad that I hadn’t posted the images on my own server since the photoset ended up getting over 20,000 visits. Ah, the excitement of being boingboinged. And the silliness that I can use that or “google” as a verb and have so many people know what I mean!

I really enjoyed this very unique show tonight. I took some more pictures which are available in this flickr set. I wish I could live on the same street as the Cathedral of Junk! At least I wouldn’t call the cops for loud music at 9:30 at night.

I just did a quick write-up about the 37th Street Christmas lights for the Austinist. I’ve enjoyed this street for several years and was glad that I could finally learn a little bit more about it for this. Lots of people have pics of the lights tagged with “37th street” on flickr.

I’m pretty impressed with the Google Analytics service. I was one of the first to subscribe right after they started offering the service for free, and have been very pleased with how well it performs compared with other web trend software I’ve used. I really like that it’s a flash-based interface, so I can see all the charts and stats with cool dynamic features. There’s even a little map that shows where in the world I’m getting visitors to my site from.

Unfortunately they’re not currently allowing new signups (due to the extremely large response they got), but for all those interested in site stats, I’d recommend signing up to be notified when they’re going to open it back up on the Google Analytics site.
I heart google.

Last night I went with a friend to see “Napoleon Explosive: The Chinese Napoleon Dynamite” at the Alamo Drafthouse (which is one of the many places that I consider makes Austin the wonderful place that it is.) It was Napoleon Dynamite in “Chinavision,” which basically means that they show a DVD of the film from China which was subtitled in Chinese and then translated back into English subtitles. It was very surreal.

I completely understood the translation of “Napoleon Dynamite” to be “Napoleon Explosive,” but how did Pedro’s name translate to “Virtuous Shell?” Is it a phonetic thing? Hopefully there is someone reading this out there who knows some basic Chinese and can resolve these profound questions of life.

One of my favorite translations from the movie was when Napoleon asks about the chicken’s “large talons”, and it was translated to something like “big marketable skills.”

For those wondering, no, alas, I was not one of the lucky ones to win a “Vote for Virtuous Shell” t-shirt. I like how those shirts made what was originally a somewhat obscure movie reference (and which became so mainstream that even Target was selling “Vote for Pedro” shirts) back into an obscure jest.

Last night, a friend came over and made the most delectable, rich chocolate dessert that I’ve ever had. I told him that I love the combination of chocolate and spicy chili powder, and so he took this epicurious recipe (using good chocolate with a high cacao percentage), and topped it off with a sprinkling of 40,000 Scoville heat unit chili powder. The extremely spicy side of it was toned down by the sweet richness, so we got that good endorphin kick without much burn. ‘Twas sinfully deeelish!

Having just made my first posting about "Alternative Holiday Shopping on the Travis Heights Art Walk" for the austinist today, I’m well on my way to being a regular contributor.