Tweaking your home page is like asking a bunch of bikers to come over and drink beer in your house. At first, it seems like it's going to be a lot of fun, with music and postmodernism and countercultural good times. After a few hours, surveying the wreckage, you ask yourself "Why? Why did I bring all this chaos into my life?" By then of course, it's too late. You didn't back up what you should have, and panic sets in.

"Hey! We're outta beer over here!"

Yeah, and then the bikers start getting ugly (well, uglier anyway). So you're running around trying to make nachos and stuff and these guys are taking your metaphor into your bedroom for "a party" as they put it.

So finally, after the police clear them all out, things seem to be back to normal with a few improvements. In this case, we've got the "Archives" working, and the Raven's favorites are snugly sleeping in the dark. That evil The Raven text that used to appear under the title graphic is gone (with thanks to html cop Bryan Bell who put a "hurt lock" on it). And hours of fun went into tuning the art and getting the title to float—like the afterimages that follow you down the hall after a scotch binge.

I don't know about you, but when I visit a blog that has 395 navigation links running down the side I get a funny feeling. Is this clown trying to tell me, "Look at all my friends!" Or am I supposed to check the list and see if I know anyone. Either way, the eyes tend to glaze over and you say to yourself, "Yeah yeah yeah, a bunch of links. Bully for you, pal." In my case, I'm trying to keep the list short—real short. In my grouchy world, this is called "utility value," and in today's hypernet bitstream it's called, "Guess he doesn't have any friends." Here's what they are:

View: Things you want to look at locally.

Writers: A selection of good reads in various categories.

Civic: A site that tracks books either banned from US libraries and schools or under consideration for censorship. Flowers for Algernon being on the hit list disturbs me greatly.

Feeds: One-stop shopping for news and resources. H-Lines is breaking stories and Newslink wires you into all the papers by type, region, etc.

Archives: Vintage Raven cage-liners.

6:05:38 PM       

The Raven has a mixed bag today - how unusual! - of things that may or may not be related. As always, we look for the connections. For instance, it's hard to watch more than an hour of television these days unless forced to do so at gunpoint, but in the span of an hour one is likely to witness a parade of commercials for fast food, junk food, diet plans, exercise equipment, and personal injury attorneys. We see how it works.

Heroic Act of Valor Award

The Lakeland PD showed uncommon valor yesterday when they shot Willie Foster, an 81-year-old nursing home resident "three times with bean bags and hit him with pepper spray when he became suicidal and brandished a small glass vase."

"It was the safest option for the patients and the man," said police spokesman Jack Gillen. "If this were my parent, I would be satisfied with the officers' actions."

We Didn't Need This

Did you hear about the Albanian guy who tried to strangle stewardess Irena Radonjic on a flight out of Duesseldorf yesterday? He was a Kosovo "deportee" (that's officialese for "undesirable") on his way back home from Germany who got the bright idea to unlace his running shoes in the toilet and emerge with his mission of - vampirism? A spokesman for the police in Kosovo commented:

"We don't really know what was in his head. When she was serving refreshments and asked him what he would like to drink he replied: "A little blood from you."

It Pays to Check

Remember "Mayberry USA"? This was supposed to be a safe ISP that filtered "smut, hate and offensive materials" right at the source to provide children with a squeaky-clean Internet experience and prevent them from doing what young people normally prefer to do online, i.e., look for smut, hate, and offensive materials. Turns out the CEO of Mayberry was Candy Wilson, a former hooker who without any experience or qualifications set up a brokerage firm called Arizona Capital, and raised millions to establish Mayberry USA Online. Both ventures have tanked and she's scrambling to stay ahead of "a trail of angry investors."

The Big Squeeze

Since we're on the subject of vice, here's an amusing story about Vancouver street people who want compensation from film makers who are increasingly moving operations up North. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (now there's a group I wouldn't invite to my home) said in a letter sent to 30 production companies:

"Sex trade workers must be compensated for displacement they experience at your hands in the same manner you would compensate a business if you were to use their locale during operating hours...The same must hold true for homeless people you push from beneath a bridge or doorway and drug users you move from a park."

9:40:59 AM