Jason sent me a link to Webtype.org, a typography weblog. Very cool.

When I was in German class in 7th grade, our German teacher had a a very thorough English-German dictionary that even included translations of, shall we say, “naughty words.” We used to borrow the dictionary frequently to look them up. Apparently, some English students are doing something similar with the Collins Paperback English Thesaurus, and the head teacher is upset. I rather doubt that these phrases are at all new to the students.

The mayor backs away from an attack on hip-hop music, but it’s obvious how he really feels. Note that our brand-new police chief joined him the other day in blaming violence on music. I’m not particularly a hip hop fan myself, but this is ridiculous. In combination with the vetoing of the new teen dance ordinance that would fix the problems of the old flawed one, this begins to make Seattle look like the town in Footloose. Now the mayor’s advisors have let him know how bad he looks, so he’s recanting. Don’t believe it. Not for a second.

Behind The Curtain is up! Last week, more than 100 webloggers took photos of their lives in a 24 hour period. Now you can eavesdrop, too.

I almost forgot — here’s the link to my Behind The Curtain gallery. I was desperately trying to get something, anything on line by the deadline, so it’s not very visually impressive or anything… but I hope you find it interesting.

Last night (Saturday), while driving around, we drove by an A-frame style church building. Jason turned to me and said, “When you see an A-frame church, don’t you want to just go over and rearrange the sign in front to read ‘International House of Jesus’?”

Well, just as I said I wouldn’t be posting much, I remembered this. Sandra Loosemore’s posted a review of the 2000 World Artistic Roller Skating Championships that just finished up this weekend, from an ice skating fan’s perspective. If you’re a skating fan at all, read this.

Well, it’s finals week. Which means that I’m going to be spending just about the entire week grading, so posts here might be even sparser. Websurf? When? The grading hell has already begun. I’ll post when I can.

SPL and Wells Fargo are close to an agreement. If you recall, our home was nearly torn down to build a new library branch, but earlier this year, we convinced the Library Board to choose the Wells Fargo site instead. Still, I won’t feel safe until ground is broken at the Wells Fargo site. This news puts us that much closer.

I’m not sure what some people are looking for when they come to this website. As you may know, when you visit a web site, the “referrer” information is stored in a log file. This information tells what kind of computer you were using, what browser, and where you came from. If you came from a search engine, you can tell what keywords you searched for in the search engine to find this site.

Often, though, the keywords don’t seem to have much to do with Slumberland. Here are some of the more unusual keywords and phrases that got visitors to this site recently:

“my taste buds are numb”


“i think grandma drinks too much”


“hellenizations prussianize tegucigalpa frosting kindness” (??)


“henry ii king of england”


“why do i feel like i m dying”


“whats up with the perculator”


“didn t have to burn them”


“prepare for death and follow me”


“parents who hate their bad ass kids”


“what is the meaning of raunchy”


“like the sea i could drown”


“then she took them off”


“my gal s all liquored up”


“i have nothing to believe in”


“dorkypants”

Weird, hmm? I bet the creative among you could come up with some amusing poems or haiku using these phrases. Send ‘em to me, and I’ll post the best.

I heard on KIRO-710 news this evening that the last batch of signatures for the Monorail Initiative, submitted Monday, were enough to put the initiative on the November ballot after all. Perhaps this means the lawsuit mentioned a couple of posts below is now irrelevant.

Averill Field in Snohomish, WA might be replaced with a skate park and youth center. Averill Field is named for Earl Averill, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame from Snohomish.

Reading this reminded me of my own Earl Averill story. Back in 1977-79, when I was in junior high, my mom and I attended tons of Seattle Mariners games at the Kingdome. Tickets were cheap back then ($1.50 for outfield bleacher seats on the first level!), and we also made a friend in the front office who would give us tickets (that’s a story worth telling, too, but another time). We were always there early for batting practice and we always stayed right through to the final out.

One day, a man came up to us during batting practice and said “We’ve seen you at a lot of baseball games, and my father would like to meet you. ” He gestured up the stairs to where an elderly man sat in a wheelchair. We didn’t know why an old man would want to meet us, but we had time to kill and the situation seemed harmless, so we walked up to meet him.

He introduced himself as Earl Averill. He said he used to be a ballplayer, and he enjoyed going to as many games as he could. “I’ve seen you at a lot of games, and I know you’re real baseball fans,” he said, “so I’d like to give you something.” He signed a baseball and gave it to me, then took out a postcard, signed it, and gave it to my mom. “Enjoy the baseball game,” he said, and we thanked him for the gifts and went back to our seats, thinking what a nice old man he was.

A few minutes later we looked more closely at the post card and saw that it was his Hall of Fame postcard, with a picture of his Hall of Fame plaque.

After that we’d occasionally see him at the Kingdome, and we’d wave and say hi. He died in 1983.

All of this is, perhaps, a roundabout way of saying that Snohomish might want to reconsider removal of Averill Field. I think a skate park and youth center are great ideas — but isn’t there a way to keep the ball park, too?

Monorail supporters are suing over the invalidation of signatures for the I-53 initiative. I must admit, though I’m a monorail supporter, this has the stench of desperation about it. I do think they shouldn’t invalidate both signatures when someone’s signed twice, though. That’s just punitive. Still, and I’m going to yell here for a sec, so cover your eyes, WHO ARE THE IDIOTS who sign an initiative twice? Ya MORONS!

It’s the Bendy Bunch! I especially like the Evil Bendy and the Hindi Bendy.

Only three players in major league baseball history have ever played all nine positions in one game. The third one did it on Wednesday night.

The Society for the Elimination of the Color Pumpkin from the Web would be funnier if the site didn’t have all that ugly red type on a black background!