Looks like the natives are growing restless! The White House was evacuated an hour or so ago, and reporters and politicians were told to run to the basement! Apparently an aircraft penetrated the no-fly zone around the White House.

One of the challenges for beginning bloggers is getting your site noticed. Your blog is just a small collection of bits in the incalculable bitstream of this planet’s electronic traffic. Not to make you feel insignificant or anything. Just trying to be honest here.

So if you want folks to find you, you must be proactive. Here’s a nice collection of tips on moving from obscurity to ‘Net stardom.

No, it’s not a new band. Although it is kind of a cool name…if you didn’t get sued by the Femmes for infringing on their trademark. No, it’s really a description of the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Man, we love nothing better here than seeing someone blown away (remember how we laughed when Marvin got his head blown off in the back seat in Pulp Fiction?) But God forbid if we show someone naked! Faux News is a prime example of this mentality. Love the war shots. Love the criminal cases (remember Scott & Laci Peterson?). And really love to jump on the (in their words) “moral” bandwagon when we see Janet Jackson’s nipple.

How stupid is that? I’d much rather my children see some naked people on TV than watch Freddie Krueger, or Blade 2, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre 7, or the 10:00 news, or…

I mean, take a look at other folks around the world where nudity is much more commonly accepted. I don’t see a moral decline or disintegration of society in South America, Scandinavian countries, the Caribbean, or basically all of Europe where nudity is an ordinary part of society. Why are we so hung up on the human body, but okay with guns/violence/death?

I really think it has to do with maturation. Just as people mature at different rates, and some not at all, I think that countries have different levels of maturation as well. We’re still relatively new kids on the block. Europe went through its Holy Wars and feudal periods and Spanish Inquisitions and got all that out of its system a few hundred years ago. Oh, sure, they still have a big war every now and then, and there are some terrorists running about, but at least not every friggin’ psychotic in the continent is running around fully weaponized and whining about having their Second Amendment rights infringed.

The U.S. is still like a teenager who’s just received his driver’s license. Thinks he knows everything, thinks he’s untouchable, thinks he’s got the world by the tail…but he’s an accident waiting to happen. Statistically provable. Especially when he’s driving a big ol’ fuel-guzzlin’, road-hoggin’ SUV and not bothering to watch out for other cars…or nations.

Boy, this sucks! Here am I, a 17+ year IT veteran, and I can’t even get a simple blog going! It would help if I read the directions…Mom always told me to do that when all else failed. For some reason the &*$*!+ comments aren’t being allowed! Good thing that no one is looking!

Later…

After mucho searching, gnashing of teeth, and wailing, I had an “a-ha!” experience and solved my little problem: You don’t want to have an index.html file in the same home directory as index.php — just trust me on this one. The .html version takes over and sabotages the .php. Go ahead, say, Duh! if you want. I can handle it.