It’s been a wee bit busier than expected up here this week. The DVD update will appear tonight.

Podcast fans: Sorry to say, that got delayed to tonight, as well.

Management thanks you for your patience and continued support.

24 hours later, I’ve yet to receive an offer to buy me out.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time, though.  It was a bit unfair of me to spring this on corporate America on a Friday.  I’m sure there’s a corporate office staying up late this weekend trying to raise the funds.  They’re probably working on a bond issue or something.  Two million bucks isn’t always “ready cash,” unless your Apple.

If you’re Apple, I’ll lower the price to $1.9 million, if you throw in a couple of iMacs.

Let’s wait this out till Monday.  Something’s going to come.  How can it not?  This is almost literally too good a deal to pass up!

I can be bought.

And it can be profitable to the both of us.

I’ll set the price at $1,000,000.

That’s not much these days.  That price won’t buy you many 30 second spots in prime time television.  Heck, depending on the show you’re buying ad time on, you might not get more than a minute.

I’m offering you something better:

My blog.  It’s for sale.  I’ll change the name to “[Your Company’s Name Here] Presents Various and Sundry.”  Heck, I’ll buy that as a domain name.  I’ll make you the exclusive advertiser on a blog that updates at least five days a week.

You’ll get better than a million dollars’ worth of press coverage on the deal.  What better story for the tech press to fawn over for a week or two than your company buying up a no name meaningless blog.  It’s an amazing publicity stunt that makes no sense.  It’s PERFECT internet fodder.

This blog doesn’t have a big readership.  It’s definitely under a thousand readers.  It’s probably closer to 500.  It makes so little sense for you to sponsor it that it’ll command great attention.  We can do a joint press release that’ll light up the blogosphere.  I can get on one of those crazy Revision3 video podcasts.  I’d happily be a guest on Net@Nite. TechCrunch would be all over this.  I’m available to do press with all the cable news stations.  I can blog the experience, to boot.  It’s material for me; it’s tons of publicity for you.  I’ll wear a baseball cap and a t-shirt with your company’s name on it when doing all of these shows.

I can even talk to the point that this deal will mark the end of the second web boom.

I am a friggin’ sell out.  Just go ahead and buy me now.  My e-mail address is linked to my name at the top of the right column.

Sadly, someone already beat me to Buymyblog.com.

But I won’t let that stop me.  Others sell pixels for a dollar a shot.  Others promise to do outlandish things.  Some sell space for tattoos on their body, but I’m not going that far. I’m skipping all the work part.  I’m just going to do my thing and take your money, sponsor!
You need something more personal?  I’m going to be a Dad this fall.  I can be a stay-at-home Dad with your million dollars.

Wait, I forgot about the taxes.  Better make it two million bucks, just to be safe.

GoldenPalace, are you reading this? Call me.  I like to play poker, too. . .

Barring all that, I’ll take a Drobo for lesser terms.

Today is the day to get off the internet, as people who don’t understand what an April Fool’s Gag is supposed to be attempt to fool you into believing stupid things to make you look like an idiot. Even worse, several people decided to do “Early April Fools” gags last week. Idiots!

We here at Various and Sundry don’t believe in that kind of crap, so we’re just not updating today. Take everything you read today with a grain of salt. In a few days, the internet will return to normal and sort through what the real announcements were and we can discuss it then.

In the meantime, be nice to each other today, OK? And don’t go making crap up.

The promised Friday Q&A will be delayed to the weekend.  Stay tuned. . .

I’ve been remiss.  I’ve let the weekly “Ask Various and Sundry” feature lapse.  I’m sorry about that.

So, the mic is open.  What do you want to talk about?  Discuss it all in the comments.  Fire your questions away and I’ll answer them in the next week.

The previous entry is the 5,000th blog post to Various and Sundry. I thought for sure that I wouldn’t realize it until long after I posted it, but there we have it now.

This is post #5001.

It doesn’t really mean much, but it does make my fingers feel a little more tired than they did five minutes ago.

Maybe in another 5000 posts, I’ll finally find a focus for this site.

Paul C is the first questioner this week:

Which of the summer comic book related movie are you looking forward to the most?

It’s between Batman and Iron Man. Probably Batman, by a nose. As big a Marvel guy as I am, there’s something about that last Batman movie that makes me anticipate the next one.

Are plans for summer holidays this year or any places you would like to visit?

No plans made yet. Doesn’t look like I’ll be going to San Diego again. Places I’d like to visit? Too numerous, but I’d start with Belgium and Paris — the latter just so I can blow all my money at a comic shop and bring home a suitcase filled with BD albums I’d have to learn French to read.

I also want to bring my camera to the Grand Canyon.

Do you ever wake up one morning and decide you can’t be bothered to do a V&S post, or is it drummed into your head by now after going at it for so long?

Mostly the latter. Plus, I have a certain schedule going now: DVDs on Tuesday, Twitters on Monday, Questions and Answers on Friday, American Idol Wednesday and Thursday. . . I blow those dates sometimes, but I usually have something in mind for most days of the week. Given how many blogs I flip through each week, it’s easy enough to come up with a link dump or another topic of interest worth writing a sole post about.

Not that there aren’t times I’d rather step away from the computer and play Guitar Hero or read a comic or watch a DVD or something. I just tend to feel more productive this way. I’m building something here, you know?

Would also you rank the season 5 finale of The Shield as one of the best, most unexpected/shocking/brilliant scenes ever on TV?

Yes. I know I should expand on that answer, but I’m not sure how I could. Although for pure shock, nothing beats that ALIAS season finale where the car gets hit out of nowhere. I jumped in my chair at that one.

And for the obligatory nonsense question: You are stuck on a desert island, what kind of cereal do you take with you?

I’m not much of a cereal person. Being diabetic, I’m limited on the ones I can eat, anyway. About all I’ll do is eat puffed rice (think sugar free Rice Crispies) with some raisins. But if I were on that island, I’m going with Chex Mix. Does that count?

And Soon asks:

Do you think your podcast voice has changed over the life of the Pipeline Podcast thus far?

I go back and listen to bits of the older Pipeline Podcasts every now and again to hear if I’ve changed at all. So I kinda know the answer to this one already. My voice has changed, but not as much as I would have thought. Part of that has to do with the fact that, before podcasting, I had done college radio and local radio for a number of years. My voice was already pretty well honed at that point. Podcasting allows me to be freer and sloppier, is all. There have been two changes I hear from the beginning:

1. I talk faster. I worried too much about enunciating in the early days, and it slowed me down. I got some e-mail complaints about that, so I sped things up and that got to be very comfortable very quickly.

2. I’ve added better equipment, like a condensor mic and a compressor. Both of those help even out my voice, eliminate some of the hollow sounds that a “regular” mic produces. I’m still not happy with the final sound. I play with it every single week, but the change is never great enough. I’m constantly annoyed by something happening on the bassline. I can’t quite figure it out and I’m probably the only person who hears it, but I can’t get rid of it. I’ll keep trying.

Nowadays, I’m working on speaking at a lower volume into the mic.  I found myself shouting into the mic a little too much, so I’m trying to be more conversational and less over-the-top, as it were.

Thanks for the questions, Soon and Paul!

Please, post your questions in the comments thread below and I’ll try to get to them on Friday this week, which is the normally scheduled time for this “feature.”

And GO GIANTS!

Just to round out the year:

Above this, you’ll see a link for the Amazon Marketplace. It’s right under the tasteful “Various and Sundry” banner atop every page on this blog.

I just added a bunch of things to the Marketplace and by clicking on that link you’ll be taken straight to them. I never realized there was such a high demand for REBOOT DVDs, for example. There’s also some animated DVDs up there, including some Miyazaki works, a Nintendo GameCube game or two, and some TV-on-DVD.

All funds raised in this effort go towards the purchase of a digital SLR, which will provide lots of raw material for this blog in the months ahead.

Thanks! Back to normal blogging now. . .

Yes, I am reusing last year’s graphic. It came out rather well, don’tcha think? We’ll return normal hours tomorrow with a look at this week’s DVD releases.

Merry Christmas!

I totaled up all the writings on this blog for the month of November. I did not include the quoted passages from stories I linked to, though I did include the repurposed Twitter content.

10,000 words.

Only 40,000 short a novel.

One of these days, I’ll figure out what my average month’s writing is to see if this experiment was at all a success.

This is the last day of November.  My attempt to be a more prolific writer at this blog was not as successful as I would have liked it to have been, but I think it’s been a good month for the blog, over all.  I’m in the middle of a fun lottery-related post that should go up next week, though I was hoping to make it part of NaBloWriMo.  Sadly, I’ve run out of time to check over it again and make sure the math is half right, so it’ll have to wait.

Next week, I’ll also try to work up a final Month of November Word Count for this blog.  In the meantime, I’m taking the rest of the day off.  See ya in December!

Happy Thanksgiving, first of all, to my American readers.

This holiday season, please support your local blogger.  It doesn’t have to be me.  Odds are, there are other blogs you surf past in your daily rounds on the web. I would just ask you to reward one or two of those blogger whose work you enjoy all year round.  If you’re doing some holiday shopping through Amazon, odds are very good that one of the blogs you read has an Amazon banner on it somewhere. Go ahead and click through on one of those before you start putting together your order.  It won’t cost you a penny, but it’ll mean a nice little reward for your blogger of choice.  Thanks!

This is alarming:

That’s the number of visitors this site has seen between January and October 2007. See a trend there? Where did everyone go? We had the usual American Idol spike in the spring, but it’s been straight downhill since.

I’m starting to hear crickets in here.

Was it something I said?

And now I’ve fallen into the trap of the “unloved” blogger screaming desperately for attention. Nevermind me.

Forget NaBloWriMo.

There’s already NaBloPoMo, but it only challenges you to write a post every day.  Fah!  That’s simple.
I’m just not sure which one sounds less ludicrous.

I think I’ll stick with NaBloWriMo.  Nobody cares anyway, so I don’t have to feel too badly about it.