The vacant lot two doors down from our place has been on fire repeatedly over the past week or two. One of the many calls to the fire department was made over our mobile phone by a neighbor. It was quite educational for me to hear how our location is described to emergency services. I didn’t know until then that the vacant house on the corner is well known to everyone and is nicknamed after a previous owner. I feel more secure both in knowing about this landmark and in being able to pronounce it.

Despite being somewhat burnt myself, I still managed to drag myself outside to participate in Self Portrait Sundays.

Here is how Wikipedia sums up one of the major ideas that Seth Godin holds and promotes:

“…the only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable…”

I do not agree with this statement. It is an eloquent and intelligent assertion, but it doesn’t quite fit reality. In some ways I wish it did because the trend in most media is to sell harder when audiences become desensitized to marketing. They do this because there is a measurable benefit to doing so. I don’t actually know what I am talking about, but I have been emboldened by a recent instance where I was right about something.

I was thinking about how to break out of the mediocrity of the blogosphere this afternoon and I suddenly had the unimaginative idea to Google the word BLOG. The highest ranking blogger that isn’t Google or Dilbert is Seth Godin.

I failed miserably at my week long attempt to grab a piece of Perez Hilton’s traffic and I have to admit that my heart wasn’t really in it. I am going to spend some time examining the tactics and strategies used by Seth Godin.

I’m curious about whether Seth knew that he ranked below Dilbert for the search query blog and how that makes him feel.

I was aghast to hear the report that Katie and Tom sleep separately because of Tom’s snoring. Isn’t scientology supposed to make us into people who are not encumbered with maladies as trifling and pointless as snoring and homosexuality?

I am beginning to have some doubts about the scientology way of life.

I think that the separate bedrooms thing is a bad idea and that one thing these two should try is having sex almost every evening…together. The endorphins we are rewarded with after sex help us fall asleep together. I have a partner who sometimes snores, and it a rare thing indeed for the snoring to disturb my sleep.

I haven’t been able to blog for a couple of days becasue of my traveling. On the bright side, my adventures while stuck in airports will provide for many excellent posts composed of the kind of sh** that you can’t make up.

I saved a baby. As you can see in the diagram below a mother was momentarily distracted by an internet access point that charges one pound sterling for ten minutes of internet. Her baby became amazed by the revolving door and was beelining for it. I saw this from fifty feet away and rushed towards the point where the baby and the door were about to intersect.

I was had made it there just in time and I was in a hockey goalie stance between the baby and the door which were about eight inches apart. The mother noticed after I was there for a couple of seconds and gave a breathless thank you. I will have more airport stories that range from slightly less heroic to downright embarrassing in the coming days.

I have a bunch of Air Travel to muddle through starting today. I am a bit worried that there are protests near Heathrow. There are protests in Canada as well, but they are out in the countryside where George Bush is schmoozing with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

I am travelling with my two daughters. Both of them hate flying. One of them also hates Gravol.

So, this question has been put to me: What would I do if I had an air compressor in my home?

I am a veteran of compressed air use. My dad had a small one on the farm. We mostly used it for the typical purposes of inflating tires and operating air wrenches. It was also useful for cleaning dust and dirt out of radiators.

I spent 10 years working at a lumbermill. We had clean dry compressed air from huge units. Much of the automated machinery used air pistons and we used air to blow dust off the machinery for fire safety.

If I had an air compressor in my home now, I would not use it for any of these purposes, except maybe inflating tires. The main purpose of my air compressor would be to power a profession airbrushing unit to paint a wicked retro mural on my Skoda.

Here are ten blogs that I found using the next blog button on the Blogger toolbar. Blogs that stay within acceptable social norms and do not conceal their blogger toolbar get a link..

• A Spanish language blog featuring the blogger’s favorite music.
• A general interest blog by a young androgenous person in Singapore.
• A blog with news items related to West Haven, CT
• Some girl’s attempt to make a blog that is just like a MySpace page, complete with auto-play somewhat explicit lyrics (she does conceal the next blog button, naughty girl)
• Photo diary of a young woman living in Sweden.
• Photoblog with lots of people and travel shots, it is beautiful.
• Commercial blog selling some kind of Gym equipment that vibrates???
• A blog with very little content that is an affiliate for an eBook about how to make money blogging ( here’s a hint from me, the first step is to actually blog ) Actually, this guy has made 27 posts so far. And it is summer, I really should be in a pool cooling off right now instead of blogging. I think I am obsessed with blogging.
• Pornograhy…I’m surprised I managed to go through so many without seeing it
• Another school girl. I think that blogging platforms are picking up members as more and more schools block things like MSN and MySpace. There are so many embeddable widgets available these days, including chat boxes, that you can replicate the same functionality of these popular social tools on a blog.

I do this sampling of blogs at random times to see what is out there. I have yet to land on a blog that I already know about while doing this.

Vanessa Anne Hudgens is an actress. She is 18 years old, but she plays a somewhat younger character in the High School Musical films produced by Disney. The Cartoon Doll Emporium has fun online dress up dolls for the major characters in High School Musical 2 including Vanessa.

There are also fanclubs associated with each leading actor hosted by Cartoon Doll Emporium.

The high school musical and dress up dolls both appeal to tween girls, so this particular corner or Cartoon Doll Emporium is really taking off. When I was checking out the IMDb entry for the original TV movie, which won two Emmy’s, I saw people in the forums asking about sequels. Number 2 is out and number three is in the works, so the fans must be happy.

This multi-lingual number is infectious and it makes me smile. I discovered it when I was doing my monthly Next Blog survey on blogspot. I think that what we really have to do to achieve peace on Earth is to find another habitable planet and send everyone who doesn’t have a good sense of humor there. After we bid all the party poopers a tearful farewell, this band can be the opening act at the going away party.

Amigo Para Siempre!!!