Free Electricity!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to share with you the first whacked-out muddled invention of 2007.

My little apartment is heated with radiators; there is a unit hanging on the wall in the bathroom that heats water using natural gas, which it then circulates using an electric pump. The pump is starting to make a lot of noise; it’s only a matter of time before it gives out. While pondering the pump it occurred to me that it was too bad there was no way to use the pressure in the water main to circulate the hot water through the radiators.

In fact, it would be easy to do that, but you would wind up pouring a lot of water down the drain. I had just reinvented the water wheel.

But wait a minute, I thought as I stood in the shower, I already send a lot of water down the drain. Why can’t I make it do a little work for me first?

The easiest thing would be to put a little turbine and generator in the water main, so that it would turn every time I ran water. The downside is that the water pressure for the whole place would be reduced. But we don’t always need the water to be at full pressure — that’s why faucets have variable valves. So what if your faucet had a variable-resistance generator instead of a valve? You would adjust the rate of flow from the faucet by changing the resistance of the generator. You’d get the same control over water flow you do now, but you would be getting a little bit of electrical bonus every time you use water. Woo hoo!

My electro-faucet isn’t quite ready to market yet — I’m still working on the catchy name.

Gettin’ the Google On

As I pay more attention to where visitors are coming from (Have the Campbell Award judges come by? Have the Campbell Award judges come by?) I am once again bemused by the wide variety of odd searches that people type into Google and Yahoo, only to end up here. Go figure.

In the past I have obfuscated key words in these entries, in order to avoid misdirecting the search engines to here, rather than to the original page. This time, though, I’m just too lazy.

  • stacking haircuts – I’d much rather be stacking rocks.
  • “large breasts” embarrassing incidents – linked to an episode where I discuss the darker side.
  • cult in scotts valley – linked of course to the shocking expose that only this blog dared expose.
  • minimum sample size – I doubt the searcher was looking for thoughts on Czech TV, but that’s what he got.
  • girl with extra-arms – the Stories category page was buried way deep at match 190, but that was enough for this searcher to arrive here
  • soup boy – linked to an episode in which I describe learning of my first pro sale.
  • Budvar Barthe place is near home, and it’s cheap, to boot.
  • write without fear – it’s an important ingredient for success. Sometimes I almost come close.
  • half baked sex – and understandable misunderstanding to be misdirected here.
  • stacked rocks – maybe I’m just paying attention more now, but interest in rock stacking seems to be on the rise. On Menorca , they’ve been doing it all along.
  • laura k hamilton blog – misspelling the famous writer’s name got me a high ranking in this misspelled search. Linked to an episode that talked about the words that ended up here.
  • boobs lake mead – nestled among the predictable crap was the sleep-deprived story of my day as I traveled from Las Vegas to Mesquite, or more accurately, Through the Valley of Fire to the Bosom of Bobbi.
  • Bearded actorsEverybody’s searching for them!
  • bud light banner – I assume if the searcher wanted a banner advertising the product, he didn’t share my opinion about that vile substance.
  • i like to clean my duck of air and heat myself – I think I feel sorry for the duck. Linked, strangely enough, to the Eels category page.
  • How to write a writing questionaire – attracted by a mutual misspelling to my writing category page, where no help at all was to be found.
  • how tall is kareem abdul jabaar? – mentioned tangentially in a Pirates! episode that took me from a garden party in Prague to a hotel bar in England.
  • Buffalo Butts – imagine the dismay when the searcher found an image of the back ends of bison.
  • “pork sparrow” – there’s only one reason to search for that phrase, and that’s to answer the question “what the hell did I just eat?
  • can a blind man dream in color – I ask the same question myself in a pile of random stuff, but no answers are even offered.
  • sestina origin – that my explanation is the top match in Google is likely a disservice to the poetry world, but what can you do? Plus, I like my version.
  • wizard of id ; shinola – linked to an episode in which I ramble about (among other things) how profanity is encoded in the mainstream media.
  • menorca pigeons – the episode mentions pigeons in passing, but it really about life, death, larceny, and all that stuff.
  • two beers in japanese – linked to an old, old episode in which I enumerate ways to say “two beers“. Your favorite not on the list? Leave a comment!
  • lonely in adelanto – whatever the searcher wanted, I doubt he found it in this episode with a sexy title.
  • summer seems shorter – linked to an episode with a story that with a little work would be all right. The comments are the best part of the episode.
  • hankering for bud light – notable only because my episode called Bud LIte is Horrible was the second match out of 36,000.
  • stacking things on drunk people – Good sport! Linked here.
  • my first enema – the constipation mentioned here is metaphorical.
  • Ax Chop Elf – linked to The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy , which has axes, chopping, and lovely young elves, but is almost certainly a far cry from anything the searcher wanted to find.
  • Mount Mazma – once it was very tall. Now it’s not, but it’s very pretty.
  • big ass diverson – Yahoo! corrected the spelling and brought the searcher along with me to San Angelo, Texas, for some big-ass beers.
  • dont get mad get glad – I don’t get every role I audition for. One time it didn’t work out.

Notable also is that in the last two weeks there has been a surge of searches for suicidal squirrels. The searchers are in Western Europe, mostly Germany but also France and Italy. The trend seems to be spreading to Eastern Europe as well. The crack team of Squirrel Watchers at Muddled University will continue to monitor this trend very carefully.