Since your IP now gets logged pretty much anytime you open the stove,
visit the bathroom, or run the dishwasher, Sitemeter can slap together
a nifty little graphic of the home countries of this site’s last 100 visitors.  It usually looks something like this:

It changes constantly, of course, as different countries wake up, go to
sleep, and occasionally collapse in genocidal ruin.  But it’s fun to
think about people from Vietnam and Croatia and Finland
dropping in.  And what I’m happiest about most of all are readers from
the Unknown
Country, who seem to be among the site’s most loyal.

I’m not sure where this Unknown Country is.  I’ve checked my atlases and poked around Google Maps.  Nothing. 

The phrase is, however, notably similar to the term Hamlet used to describe death.

Logically, then, I can only assume that Sitemeter is telling me that dead people are big fans of the site.

Yay!  Dead people are always welcome here.  A lot of people fear the
dead, but if you think about it, dead people are responsible for most
of the great art and culture we have, not to mention the only decent
pop music in the last fifty years.

But since there’s rarely more than one dead person online at a given time, I also
conclude that internet access is poor in the Great Beyond, and they’re
probably sharing a computer.  Possibly my last Mac, which died abruptly
three years ago.

Still, what an opportunity.  So many things to ask the dead.  Like, are
you still using Explorer, or has Firefox made it to the other side? 
Are pudus cute there, too?  Who wins in a slap-fight, Jesus or Buddha? 
How many of you guys thought you were following the right leader, but
now realize you were just part of getting a whole lot of people killed
for no good reason?  Does that suck forever, or can you, like, laugh
about it once a few centuries go by?  Those 72 virgins that every
suicide bomber gets —
is there, like, a machine that makes those?  Because that’s a lot of
virgins.  And do they ever blow themselves up?  Because if I was a
virgin and the only hope for love I had for all eternity was an average
of 20 minutes a day with a perpetually-exhausted maniac, I’d probably
strap on an explosive belt myself and take my chances in the Great Even
More Beyonder.

Whew.  I have more questions, but that’s a good start for now.

Anyhow, send me an email.  Or just make Jon Edward belch the answers, one letter at a time.  Thanks!

Wasn’t sure what category this belonged in.  Finally decided fortune cookies are media.

After all, they’re certainly at least as accurate as anything on Fox.

Bopping around the less traveled bits of the BBC site, I accidentally discovered something wonderful: the BBC Great Lakes Service.

For a moment, I wondered if they were translating the news into
midwestern American dialect, with frequent references to bowling,
high school football, and lake effect snow. 

It is not, however, anything we’d recognize back home on the shores of Lake Erie.

Sorting out what the hell these webpages actually say is the most fun I’ve had all day.  What follows is my attempt to share the experience in a glance.

This fellow, for example, is definitely the Pope.  He’s saying something about how the gatolika kiliziya has renewed its straight-men-only policy regarding
imibonano mpuzabitsina.  And this from a guy who wears Prada shoes.

And then there’s this story,
about how the Bush administration ntiremeza amasezerano ya the Kyoto emissions targets,
dragging its feet again in
Montreal about carbon dioxide wonona ibirere the same way leta
zunz’ubumwe za Amerika has since the damn thing was signed.

Wow, is that ever a cool language.

Of course, simbizi if what I just wrote made any sense.  But usually simbizi squat in general. 

What language is that, you
ask?  Good question.  I’m honestly not sure.  I don’t
see the answer on
the BBC site.  As near as I can Google, it’s Kinyarwanda or maybe Kirundi,
but that’s my ass talking, and it speaks with a thick accent in
English, much less Bantu languages.  Anyway, since the Great Lakes
of Africa would
be
the bit around Rwanda and Burundi and Uganda and such, that’s a
logical guess, and I’ve proceeded accordingly.  But simbizi just about bupkus here, honestly.

I’m sure somebody out there knows.  Uvuga ikirundi?  Uvuga
ikinyarwanda?  Ejo bite?  Warasaze uri umusazi?  Or just mildly nuts?  Urakoze in advance for
any reply.  And yego, I screw up the noun classes.

Anyhow, here’s my point: seeing this makes me suddenly wonder what sort of computer services exist around those
parts.  There must be some, of course, or the BBC wouldn’t bother.  This is something
I’ve simply never thought about.  And then
I realize
how much else I don’t know about the area.  Which is to say: everything.

Like you, I’ve
read about genocide, poverty, dictatorship, and general mayhem.  But
I’ve also read that things are getting better of late.  If one believes
the news, things have improved at least from abject horror to perhaps a
more tolerable level of general misery.  But the truth is, I know
nothing.  And I’m suddenly curious.

So I wonder.  Maybe a kid from the other
Great Lakes will have to find out more and perhaps even visit. 
There’s so much to learn.

Amahoro.

A few kind readers have actually emailed to ask what I’d like to receive as a present.  A general thanks before I send specific ones, and here’s the only response I can think of:

Just tell your friends about the site.  Send links around from articles you like.  That’s all.

Thanks!

PS — I’m using the word "holidays" not out of a general respect for our multifaith society, but specifically because I am part of a left-wing conspiracy to destroy Christmas.  Obviously.

Funny, how alliances shift once self-interest and the bottom line enter consideration.