Tax season is over. Expect normal blogging to resume shortly.

Another couple weeks and the blog postings will pick up again.

But here's a tip to share with my friends with children out there.

I-Bonds.

You can buy them from the bank or from TreasuryDirect. You pay face value for the bond and as of this posting they are earning 6.73%. They can be cashed in 5 years if necessary without penalty. With penalties they can be cashed as soon as 1 year.

But the clincher is this. The interest earned on these would be tax-free if used for your child's education, but ONLY if the owner of the bond is 24 or older at the time of purchase. in other words, DO NOT BUY THEM IN YOUR CHILD'S NAME.

Since it is tax season and I've got plenty of work going on here, I will leave it at that. Food for thought for parents out there. But before purchasing, please research for yourself and decide whether investing in I-Bonds makes sense to you.

It does for me, so I bought some yesterday.

No time for love, Dr. Jones.

Just a link.

GarbageScout.com

www.theneverything.com
www.lovelybysurprise.com

This looks interesting. The self-realizing character makes me think of Spike Jonze for some reason.

No, I don't. It's just a cheap use of a recent song title. And there's no links in this post, because it's Saturday night and that makes it alright, so honey what do I got to lose. If you catch my drift.

Anyway French riots were all over the damn tv today. I am uninformed on this matter, because I am in 1040 Hell. I am the Taxman, in case you didn't know. Apparently the French government has passed some law to make it easy to fire younger employees.

And if that's what's going on, to speak in my native Jersey tongue...that fuckin' sucks! Riot away I say. But what amazes me is the amount of news media airtime given to the French riots, and what few minutes of airtime any of the Iraqi war protests in the United States have received from the mainstream media.

Yes the French kids are losing jobs, but guess what they're still alive. They're not losing sons and daughters.

And I'm wondering if Bill O'Reilly has tried to connect this whole thing to his frickin' French buoycott. (Is it buoy or is that just for the floating stuff?) Bill, I'd check the Paris Business Review, except for the fact that it doesn't fucking exist. Keep drinking the punch, buddy.

I'd heard from a few people that the Roomba was not such a great vacuum cleaner. So it's good to see another use for it.

I'd heard the term thrown around before, kind of had an idea what it was, based on the context.

But now I got the whole story. Thanks, Nate Harrison.

And, thank you, A Slice of Class, for the find. Now I can have intelligent conversation regarding the Amen Break.

And like anything else, you can commemorate the Amen break wth a t-shirt.

...in the same posting.

I can't read or speak Italian. And I know I probably could translate the page somehow, but the 2 videos speak for themselves. Inkiostro has featured both a Live Action Simpsons Intro and Natalie Portman...no,no,no, not that Natalie Portman...the other one...the gangsta rapper.

Distract yourself with the Death Jr. C4 Hamster Game. I've seen mixed reviews of the actual PSP game. But this minigame created by StarvingEyes, will amuse for a bit.

Occasionally people that don't know me read this blog. Occasionally people who do know me read this blog. Occasionally people do wear white after Labor Day.

One of those people is Shannon Palmer. (And I'm sure she wears what she wants, Labor Day be Damned!) Normally I don't have a reason to out a reader. It's not all about blog nepotism. I read her blog. And it's good. She blogs about music, art and other things that are neither and some that are both.

After falling down the rabbit hole I found her blog. It wasn't exactly chasing a white rabbit, but close. Somehow I even landed on her blogroll. If I sound giddy as a schoolgirl, it's because someone reads this. And perhaps the Catholic school uniform and pigtails I'm sporting right now.

Yes, humor and creepiness can co-exist. And if for nothing else except one more reader, this writer will live to blog another day. (I think I actually paraphrased a line from "The Trooper" just there. But then I read the lyrics and think, "No, not really.") Eddie Lives. Guy crossing the street dies.

As a contrarian sidebar, I'm listening to the microradio from micromusic.net. Homefront for a good portion of homegrown 8-bit Gameboy jams.

Dear Coudal,

Will we ever see Photoshop Tennis again?

...Sigh...

The archives aren't even there anymore. I haven't looked for awhile but it's got to be a good 3-4 years since Photoshop Tennis has been around.

Immediately increase the good feng shui in your home by placing an infant in a bare corner. Babies are much cuter than plants and typically don't collect as much dust as other tchotchkes and knick-knacks. They are not as cost-effective so this solution would best be used for one problem corner. Or, like me, you can select a few corners, and just move the infant from one to the next every hour or so.

This may no longer be a viable solution once the infant begins crawling as the benefit of the enhanced chi will move along with the child, and leave the trouble spots bare once again. Use of duct tape for positioning not recommended.

I hate how you need to sign up for a blog post a comment on a blogger blog. Shit...I'm talking like a fucking smurf.

Anyway I commented at Gorilla vs. Bear today, because I was annoyed with the anonymous comments there. But that's besides the point.

The purpose of this post is so I remember the location of the free blogger blog that I had no choice but to sign up for. I actually figured out my password and now I know the address in case I want to do something with that blog.

alliwantedwastoleaveacomment

If you expect nothing, you won't be disappointed. This is for me and my personal grey matter.

The scary thing is that the post there has 2 comments. I'm not sure I've had that many here that weren't by me.

Granted, the first is clearly spam. And the second one found my blog inquisitive. No one to my knowledge found thisblogismyblog inquisitive. Yet alliwantedwastoleaveacomment gets the kudos.

Perhaps abandoned blogs will be the wave of the future. Perhaps if there's some kind of huge drought some teens will ride their skateboards inside the abandoned blogs and create some sort of cultural phenomenon.

What? Don't look at me like that. It could happen.

Today I was attempting to catch up with some work, but then my short-attention span kicked in, like 30 or 40 times, and now I don't know why I'm here, but I don't get paid for blogging, yet I'm still here, for some reason or another.

Anyway, getting back to work I was going to stream some tunes from The Hype Machine. If there were only 10 web sites left on the Internet, this would need to be one of them. Small problem, with that theory though. The Hype Machine is like an mp3 blog aggregator. (Ed: Dropping the like from the previous sentence would still result in a true statement with a slightly less conversational tone.) (Ed: That means Editor right, well there's no editor, just me. Don't get the impression that this blog is actually proofread.) Although if you've read it before it's probably become quite clear to you that it's not.

What was I saying about my attention span, again?

Oh yeah, 10 sites left on the Internet. The Hype Machine being one.

Well, it would be completely useless if the other 9 weren't mp3 blogs. And that's highly unlikely. Because the other 9 sites left would probably just be porn anyway.

I hope the Internet is never reduced to 10 web sites. Kind of like I hope the Vice President never comes to my house and shoots me. But if he came to my house he probably wouldn't. He'd probably just raise my thermostat to about 94 degrees. Because somehow him and his friends will make more money that way.

Ok...I was trying to find The Hype Machine site today, and I accidentally stumbled upon their blog. And through that blog I found A Softer World. I was greatly amused. Joey Comeau makes the funny captions and I suppose takes the pictures they accompany. (Ed: WRONG! Emily takes the pictures.) But I cannot confirm or deny that part.

When I read Overqualified, also by Joey Comeau, I was also amused. I also used also twice in that sentence. And look I just did so again. I was again amused, but not as greatly. Remember how I was mentioning that short attention span. When the words are many and the pictures are few, that tends to kick in.

Words + pictures = amusement.

Words - pictures = amusement - 1.

So I guess I need to stick a picture somewhere in this posting, huh?

"You cannot add yourself as a friend."

I was on MySpace and no one was watching, so it was worth a try.

As seen on The Daily Show.

A special report from Demetri Martin.

Live performance with De La Soul and Madonna @ The Grammys. I saw Gorillaz in concert with the first album, they've definitely worked on their live show since then. I still can't figure out how Madonna walked behind Murdoc in the clip. Perhaps she's just an animated character, too.

Found the link to this comic over at the Jigsaw Gallery.