Today we are moving. I mean, we’ve been moving stuff to our new house for days now, but today is the day of the rented truck, and tonight will be our first night to sleep there. So, whatever troubles you’re having today, whatever little annoyances you must endure, please just think of me and feel better about your life. Are you hauling an oak desk up a narrow spiral staircase in 92-degree heat? Throughout the day, will you be dropping major appliances on your toes?

I reckon there will be times today when I will feel an urge to cuss; but I won’t, so Basil’s big sister won’t say I’m inadequate and inferior.

When the Justice Department asks Google for information like, “How often do people search for ‘noodling,’ anyway?” Google refuses to comply, saying it would be an immense drain on their resources, and an invasion of privacy, and a totally uncool trip, and all that. But apparently, I can ask for the same data without a subpoena, and get it in seconds, for free.

Enter any topic into Google Trends — or up to five topics at once — and you’ll get a graph of how often that topic has been searched over the past few years, and how often it has appeared in news articles, and which cities around the world generated the most hits for that topic.

There is no way to search Google Trends by city. To find out which words are looked up by Oklahoma City Google users more than by residents of any other city on earth, I had to guess a bunch of words, and see if OKC topped the list of cities for those words. I found a few. Most of them were unsurprising (like “Istook“), but a couple were a bit unexpected.

Did you know that Oklahoma Citians search on Google for the word “softball” more than folks anywhere else do? Why would that be? I don’t know.

Oklahoma City tops searches for the acronym “DHS” too. (I hope it was nothing I did.)

Also “ammo,” “hornets,” “bombing,” “boomer,” “tinker,” “Comanche,” and my favorite, “noodling.” These are the words which our citizens Google.

We take second place for some notable words: “taco,” “fleas,” “bankruptcy,” and “sooner.”

Generally, teachers assign grades to their students. RateMyProfessors.com is a handy site where students can go grade their teachers. Being a self-selected straw poll, the results aren’t scientific, but the rating and comments can be used by the teacher to find where he might need to make improvements, and by other students to help them choose classes.

My own rating is 4.6 (on a scale of 5), good enough for a yellow happy face!

Do you know any teachers you want to look up? It’s fun to see what their students think. Heh.

Sad news:

On May 15th, Nickie Goomba passed away in Italy in the village of Pieve San Lorenzo in Northern Tuscany. It was the end of a lengthy and painful struggle.

I never met Nickie, though I expect to later. He was a good blogger.

A novel by Saddam Hussein, titled Get Out of Here, Curse You, has hit bookstores in Japan. It tells the story of a dashing Arab named “Salem,” thought to be patterned after the author, who bravely leads his people to victory against foreign invaders. The Japanese translator of the book, Itsuko Hirata, says the novel shows Saddam to be “delicate and tender.” I couldn’t find any excerpts online, so I made this one up.

CHAPTER 71

DISPENSING THE JUSTICE OF THE VICTORIOUS JUST VICTORS

Salem thoughtfully stroked his luxuriant black moustache, streaked with one gray strand for each of his 65 years of age, though otherwise he exhibited the physique and stamina of a strapping thirty-something-ish goatherd, and flashed his famous debonair smile at his old friend Mahmoud.

“Victory is yours, Salem! The twin towers of the infidel Jews have gone down in flames, just as you predicted. Truly, you are glorious!”

Wordlessly, Salem merely raised one of his luxuriant black eyebrows, and in one graceful motion he ripped off Mahmoud’s head. Of course the death of so many Jews was a cause for elation, but the great leader had no taste for personal laurels.

“I see you have decapitated my husband.” Fatima had entered Salem’s private chambers, unbidden. And where was her veil? Her lips, red as berries, parted seductively.

Salem chastised her. “Oh, but you are a wanton.”

“I’m a-wantin’, all right. Let me help you with those gold buttons.”

So much death, thought Salem within his cranium, beneath his luxuriant black coiff. So much destruction and ruin. And now Fatima. Cool.

“Fatima, your execution will be slow and painful. So there’s no rush.”

“That’s all any woman could ask for, Salem. Now let’s inspect that weapon.”

Still working hard on my new game. I’ll try to show y’all some screenshots tomorrow.

Today I took a whole carload of boxes to the new house, and put them in the basement. It has been two years since I lived in a domicile equipped with stairs, and I had quite forgotten the, ah, salutary effect of lugging heavy things up and down stairs on the old cardiovascular system — not to mention the eccrine glands! Whee. I just know this move is going to be so fun, I won’t want to do it again for years and years.