So there it is: the raincoaster tag cloud, which idea I got from Seismic Twitch who got the Cthulhu chandelier from me so that is what you call fair trade. Thanks to WordPress.com and their security restrictions it’s not dynamic, but at least it does exist and feature Cthulhu rather prominently, even though it appears to imply that God hates Helen Mirren, which even if it were true I would have no way of knowing, so call off the lawyers and the priests already!

When you cast your bread upon the waters, it often returns to you in strange and unusual forms, even if an thousandfold. I mean, who needs that much bread pudding? But after casting nearly two thousand blog posts upon the blog pond, the internet gave a great heave and tossed the following back at me:

the raincoaster game!

I have my own game! Mother would be so proud!

In moderately unrelated news, Google has recently re-jiggered their jigs and re-mastered their masters and greased up the series of tubes known as the internet and as a result my Page Rank, which had been a solid and more than respectobiggle 6 back in the day, but which had plummeted to a juicy 0 after the domain change, has clambered back up to a moderately impressive 5, although there is still lost ground to be regained. Operation Global Media Domination has suffered setbacks before, but it can no more be killed than it can be exorcise: like antimatter, OGMD is inherent in the very nature of the universe and should it be eliminated by some unthinkable and unspeakable metaphysical conflict, the existence of existence itself would cease to be, the snake would swallow its own tail, and the world as we know it would vanish in a puff of hyacinth-scented fairy dust.

And nobody wants that to happen, do they?

Got credited “submitted by” on BoingBoing for submitting Helm’s Deep in Candy, which they and TORn picked up: did fuckall for my hits, actually, and Technorati is still steadfastly refusing to see the damn link. They hate me. Mutual, babes, mutual. But I still get up to twenty hits a day from my comments on the Helm’s Deep post: very strange, but I’ll take ’em!

BTW, I outTechnorati BoingBoing on a search for Helm’s Deep in Candy. *thrilled*

Also, the Guardian picked up my Fart Tax story, which I got from the Guardian, and named it “Best of the web” but of course I didn’t get a screenshot. D’oh! Going on the resume anyway. It is a strange kind of incestuousness indeed that makes the participants BOTH look good, but god knows I’m not proud. Arrogant, yes: proud, no.

In extremely-related news, I found this delightful little metric on Blogpond. How could raincoaster here resist something called EgoSurfing? I ax ya. My results, which vary between 10,000 and 12,000, give me a ranking of “Common” which is surely the first and last time someone will be able to get away with calling me that; you can insult me, but only if you manage also to give the impression that I am original in my sordid vileness: is that too much to ask?

Recently I was whining about the effect of blog quietude on hits and a friend of mine expressed complete bafflement at my interest in the subject; more than this, he managed to imply that working for fame was invalid, whereas working for money was right and good. More on this some other time, but being, as I knew he was, of a quantifiable turn of mind, I simply looked at him and quietly said “During the time I’ve been visiting you I’ve gone up seven thousand, five hundred places on Technorati.”

Where is your 2% annual raise now?

And finally tonight, also in OGMD news, we present some of the top searches that have led people to the ol’ raincoaster blog. Let us give thanks to Donnie Davies, may he rest in peace, Helen Mirren‘s tits, and the immortal triad of Beautiful Agony, Beaver Shots, and Blackzilla.

Strangely, nobody wants to look at Doug‘s beaver shots. They much prefer Lori’s. Maybe I should host a sort of photographic carnival of beaver shots, an internet-wide challenge for the best beaver shots out there. But that would artificially game the hits, and that would be so, so very far beneath me.

Wouldn’t it?

del.icio.us: tag cloud nine
blinklist: tag cloud nine
furl: tag cloud nine
Digg it: tag cloud nine
ma.gnolia: tag cloud nine
Stumble it: tag cloud nine
simpy: tag cloud nine
newsvine: tag cloud nine
reddit: tag cloud nine
fark: tag cloud nine
Technorati Favorite me!