Fun With Referrer Logs

Yes, I know you are all hepped up to read about the mind-numbingly banal details of my weekend, but in order to properly prepare you, sometimes it helps to prime the pump with the mind-numbingly banal details of why people come to Possumblog in the first place.

Such as this nice person who visited all the way from Jollye Olde looking for information on Extreme Zombies Woolworth.

You know, hardly a day goes by that I wonder why Woolworth wasn’t able to make a go of it, but in the end, I think it was never able to get over the image of all the nickel-and-dime variety zombies they had, and their inability to move the 'extreme' ones. You know, kids today demand their extreme (or X-TREEEEEM!) zombies, and Woolworth’s just couldn’t deliver. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, kept an eye on the profitable youth market and on bargain shoppers, and has been able to leverage beneficial deals for high quality extreme zombies using their large size and buying power. This has squeezed all the mom-and-pop stores who carry zombies, but there are a few who continue to plug along by playing over in the specialty, boutique zombie side.

Next up, an Israeli visitor who wants to know "how to make your car faster" free.

Most of you know I had a long misspent youth messing around with various hot rods and such, so this one is right up my alley. Basically, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do to make your car faster for free, except to sell it and let someone else dump all THEIR money into it. Better yet, simply decide that a particular car is yours, and pretend that you have given the real owner permission to drive it. See, Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari is really mine, and I just let him drive it. My car is really fast, and with him driving it wins a lot, and that’s pretty neat for me. And when he goes and does something bad, like bending it, I can calmly sit here, knowing I do not have to write a check for a million dollars.

Next, someone with a scientific bent wants to know: what is the airborne velocity of an unladen swallow?

::chuckle:: Obviously, our interlocutor meant “airSPEED” velocity, but sadly the equation has a few variables which need to be filled in before we can solve—we need to know if it’s an African swallow or English, and if it really intended to be unladen, or if it decides it would rather carry a coconut by gripping said coconut by the husks with its tiny little feet. Assuming the English swallow, and assuming a weight of 200 grams, and the coconut weighing 1kg, and assuming the swallow beats its wings 2.6b/second, and the wind is calm, and the temperature is 15 degrees C, and barometric pressure is 900mb, we can calculate that in level flight the swallow can attain a LADEN airspeed velocity of approximately 322kph, or about 200mph. Unladen, the sparrow could theoretically break the sound barrier, but they have been known to become unstable at around Mach .9.

Glad to be of assistance, and remember to plug in the actual values for weight and so on.

Of course, Possumblog is more than just hard science, there is also the fine entertainment value it offers—much like a combination of People and Ladies Home Journal magazines, with just a touch of Highlights and the wonderful GRIT. Probably why someone came here looking for julie chen gossip.

Well, keep this to yourselves, but I have it on good authority that the hot Ms. Chen has quite an affection for dimwitted non-placental mammals, AS WELL AS dimwitted placental writers of online journals! (But you didn’t hear it from me!) I hear she also likes pickup trucks.

So anyway, that’s all the pump-priming you’ll get for now—I’m fixing to go eat lunch with Miss Reba, and then I’ll fill you in later on stuff.
posted by Terry at 11:56:00 AM