A rare culinary success!
Last night I tried my hand at one of the classics of American cuisine: the venerable meat loaf. And guess what? It turned out great! Well, it wasn’t the best looking thing ever, but it tasted good. I need to stick to the basics, I guess.

My Blogger CD Swap mix is done! Granted, the “summer” theme is a bit tenuous (I just put songs by all the bands that were big in December/January). I relented on my “No Kylie” rule, so she’s in there. I think it’s pretty good, actually. I’m a little nervous about sending Americans a mix of all foreign stuff, but I guess if they volunteered for the project then they’re open to it. I hope they all like it!

The Ladies Home Journal ranked the “200 Best Cities in the U.S.”. And guess what, Marci? Fort Wayne, Indiana didn’t do too badly! South Bend and Gary, though, didn’t fare so well. The Bend actually scored lower on the “low crime” chart than Gary did! How did everyone else’s cities rank?

I knew a guy in my hometown named Dave Park. He named his firstborn son “Fenway”. True story.

I hate spammers. I especially hate the ones that send you messages that say, “Hey, I visited your site and noticed you’re not listed on some search engines…” They piss me off.

• Okay, first off, the spammer is assuming that I want my site listed on 50,000 random crappy search engines. Which I don’t. Based on my server logs, 90% of people come though via Google or Yahoo anyway, and I’m already listed there.
• Why add the bit about visiting my site? In the case of Purple Weasels.org, I think it’s pretty clear that the site is not for the general public. It’s an online community for a very specific group of people. It’s obvious that it shouldn’t be submitted to lots of search engines. Therefore, the spammer is either stupid or dishonest.
• Why must they send huge bloated HTML-formatted e-mails? Am I the only one that uses PINE to read my mail these days?

I’m just annoyed because this particular spammer has hit all three of my personal sites and has repeatedly ignored my requests to be removed from their mailing list. Anybody feel like engaging in a little Google bombing with me? Just throw up a link like this – “evil spamming assholes” – on your site. I thank you.

Snookums has his first job interview today, which gives me a helpful kick in the bum to ramp up my own job search. So there probably won’t be much in the way of links today…

Weirdness. Earlier today I read this story that exposes the scam behind all those “Work at Home” signs you see all over the place. Apparently it’s all done by the same company, Herbalife. It sounds incredibly dodgy. Two hours later, Snookums brought in the mail… which included a flier for Herbalife. Can you believe it?

Since I can’t bear the thought of y’all waking up, heading to web-goddess, and seeing that next post right off the bat, I’m gonna end with something a little cheerier. I’m almost finished with my Blogger CD Swap playlist! I went with the Australian angle, because everything else I own is stuff everyone’s heard a million times. So it’s 100% Australian, with nary a Minogue in sight. (Oh, quit your bitching. Like I said, I wanted stuff not everyone’s heard already.) Now I just have to get the all important song transitions right…

Oh God. This is turning into one of those “I hate humanity” kind of nights. Check out this Metafilter discussion and the accompanying links. (Warning: definitely not safe for viewing at work.) How can men be so awful? Why do I even bother trying to be optimistic about my fellow human beings?

Hee! Best April Fools Day fake news story: “You’ve got Blogs! AOL buys into homegrown media”. It’s about AOL-Time Warner supposedly buying the rights to two hundred of the most popular blogs. My favorite part is where the AOL executive says, “No cat will ever go ill in America again in obscurity.” Ha!