Reviewuate. Medireview. Retrireview. New words in the English lexicon? No, they’re just the result of an incredibly stupid Javascript-defanging mechanism on the part of Yahoo Mail. Seems that Yahoo has since realized their mistake: though the filter is still present, it now simply adds an underscore to the seven suspect words instead of replacing them with synonyms.

I’ve ranted many times about the weird and/or stupid search requests which have led to my site in several blog entries, but I think I may have just found the first relatively disturbing search request I’ve seen in my logs: chippendale’s glee club.

So how did the depraved searcher who was looking for such an unusual all-male revue end up at my site? Well, I mentioned a hypnotist who convinced a number of people that they were Chippendale’s dancers, along with the various clubs showcased at college orientation, in my 21 August 2001 blog entry…

As I was sitting in front of the television, flipping through the channels as if I had a case of itchy remote finger, I noticed a headline staring at me through the screen as I rushed past Headline News. The results of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, it said with its silent, typographical gaze, its “i”s staring right at my face, had been announced not long ago, reason enough for such an easily amused person as myself to be as elated as a geek hearing the Windows start-up sound blaring from the other room on Christmas morning…

Yet another subject line from the spam files: “Hello djoss ! YOU CAN BOOST THE RELIABILITY OF WINDOWS” Wow, they just keep getting more and more wrong each time…

Though I’m still trying to get a quiz bowl team started at Mercer (and wondering whether I’ll make it onto Jeopardy, for that matter), I still have fond memories of my high school academic team. And it turns out, there are some major quiz bowl geeks (and I use that term in the most positive sense possible!) out there on the Internet. Earlier today, for instance, I stumbled across K. Michael Wilcox’ quiz bowl page, which contains such odds and ends as unofficial quiz bowl terminology (I could’ve used quite a few of these terms myself!) and a packet of Warner Brothers animation-related quiz bowl questions (no, none of the answers involve “Bang! Zoom! Right in the kisser!”).

Fort Myers, FL: A former manager and employee of a convenience store returned to the place they met for their wedding – the 7-Eleven at 7:11 a.m. on July 11. (from the Macon Telegraph‘s Weird News page)

Well, in case you’re wondering where I’ve been for the past couple days (and why I haven’t been online half as much as usual), I’ve been in Houston, Texas, for the Jeopardy college tournament tryouts.

I know, you’re all wondering how it went. Well, for the third year, I managed to pass the test (introvert that I am, I’ve always thought that was the easiest part); and in addition, I feel like I did better on the mock game and interview than I had in the past. Let’s just say that I let the extroverted side of my personality show through a bit more than I have at past tryouts…

So, will I make it onto the show? Doubtful, yes, but there’s always a chance. I noticed that most of those present at the tryouts were from the area immediately around Texas (or, of course, from within Texas itself), and a majority were from larger universities such as UT, A&M, etc. Few were from small colleges such as Mercer, and fewer still flew all the way from the east coast to get here, so I actually feel like I have more of a chance than before. (Of course, this is just one of the four or so cities in which tryouts were held, and one of the two tryout sessions held here in Houston, so I can’t be too sure…)

But one thing’s for sure: if I do, by some chance, get the package letting me know that I’ve been selected to appear on the show, I’ll most definitely post a blog entry about it.

Spam header of the day: “Hello codedisk98 ! You’re a WINNER”. ‘Twould be great if that were actually my username. (At least it’s better than being called $FIRSTNAME, as has happened in several other spams, though…)

Random train of thought of the night, from an IM session with the inimitable Kat:

…all the girls I seem to encounter are the kind who think they’re cool but are, by my standards, far from it.
I’d think I’d encounter more, say, at lunch, in class, in the library, in the computer labs…but even then, I seem to have little luck.
I’ll occasionally find someone who actually likes me for me, but it’s a rare find.
I wish there were some sort of “geekdar” to identify geeks from afar. Heheh. :-p

Weird spam subject line of the day: “aegre : egre : (adv.) hardly, scarcely, with difficulty, laboriously.” Too bad the actual spam was just another run-of-the-mill ad for a pornographic anime site; honestly, I would’ve preferred the vocabulary lesson. 🙂

(I know this is going to get me some weird search requests, incidentally. Heh.)