We’ve all heard the stories of states rejecting vanity license plates because they found them too offensive– but sometimes the DMV‘s own random plates are suggestive enough. You might, for instance, already have heard the story of the man in Florida with an unintended "orgy" on his license plate— but even worse, there’s the story of the woman in Ohio who received a new license plate with "BL04SX" emblazoned on it…

Time for some more Weird Search Requests, a nice feature we’ve had access to after, um, celebrating our independence from free web hosts… (I had to tie it in somehow, all right?)

• new volkswagen commercial layers clothing – In the January 2002 blog archives, I mentioned a music video that resembled a Volkswagen commercial, and the fact that I had been dressed in several layers of clothing. But even now I don’t recall having seen any Volkswagen commercials that involved layers of clothing– and I wonder why someone interested in a new commercial would view a January 2002 blog archive, for that matter.
• Discussion Forums on Accents – Quite amusing, really: I have a rather inactive message forum on the site in which I sparked– you guessed it– a thread discussing accents.
• “paxan”+sound – Uhh? This is a search from Brazil, so maybe there’s something in Portuguese that I’m missing, but I still doubt it.
• MOUTAINSIDE BY MARRIOTT – Led, of course, to a page on the Proofreader’s Hall of Shame.

Am I the only one who finds this ad placement on boycott-riaa.com ironic?

Will the search requests for “dowloads” ever end? Just browsing through the latest zone38.net server logs, I’ve come across hits for “blog dowload”, “spelling dowload”, “dowload spelling bee”, and “proofreader dowload”. Those last three are incredibly ironic, I must admit…

Yet another inexplicable search request culled from my server logs: “funny proofreader marks”. Now, I’ll openly admit that I’m quite easily amused, but even I’m not that bad…

When it comes to the ins and outs of instant messaging, some people just don’t have the slightest clue. Take, for instance, the rather confused AOL user in this transcript who apparently thinks my screen name, registered for about five years, belongs to someone else…

The only thing I can think of is that the person in question had an e-mail address of codeman38@[some e-mail provider]– either that, or it was an elaborate prank by a friend with an AOL account…

Little did I know, when I added the Proofreader’s Hall of Shame entry about “experienced litary agents“, that someone would actually stumble across my web site by searching for “litary agents” on Google.

Yet that’s exactly what happened, according to my server’s access logs. And not only that, I’m the first result for that search string.

I guess that’s up there with all of those “dowloads” people are searching for…

But that’s not all. On a whim, I did a Google search for “litary” by itself, and the first link was, ironically enough, a page on Mercer University’s site! Maybe I should point it out to them, y’think?

I simply must share one of the quotes which resulted when I ran my blog through a Markov chain text generator:

Woohoo. I’ve apparently helped to make friends with quite a few exceptions (and what great exceptions those are!)…

What great exceptions, indeed. I wish I could find more such exceptions. 😉

News flash: Audiogalaxy forced by RIAA to share songs only on an opt-in basis. This is a sad day for those of us who discovered obscure bands and little-known tracks through the power of peer-to-peer sharing– sadder, even, than the day Napster was forced to implement filtering, as that was a far more lenient opt-out system.

Now where, pray tell, will I get my underground European techno fix? 🙂

News flash: Some high school graduates have never seen record players or heard of Atari.

Wow, I’m starting to feel old. I mean, sure, I just graduated from high school last year. Nonetheless, I actually had a record player when I was young (heck, I often listened to my dad’s and my sister’s old LPs!). No 8-tracks, though–that’s just a bit before my time. But I did, however, play Pong, along with other such classics as Pac-Man and Frogger, on the family’s Atari 2600…

Of course, there are people within my generation that aren’t entirely out of touch with the ’80s. After all, I know of quite a few people who, though they’re still in high school, have seen and/or heard of most of these things first-hand.

But then again, I’ve also discovered that there are kids who’ve never heard of the Speak & Spell, or if nothing else, recognize it as “that red thing from E.T.“. How sad. 🙂