Today's task is from the August 25th entry. I have to GO SHOPPING AND IMPROVE MY BLOG.

I feared it might be asking me to buy blog-related products online, but no, he really wants me to go to the mall. Yes, the physical mall, in physical space. Is cyberspace curved, by the way?

Once there, I'm supposed to wander round for thirty minutes, noting down things like what people are buying and why, how retailers are attracting them, what colours are in fashion, and so on. Then I need to go get a coffee (he's constantly forcing coffee down my throat), read through my notes and work out ways to apply it all to my blogging.

Well, I've been to the mall before, so I think I might explore the behaviour of shoppers through the power of memory. Hmm, let's see. Oh yes, it's all coming back to me now.

People are buying stupid and pointless things. Their motivation is that they are too stupid to use the Internet, and retailers prey on them like Venus fly traps, luring them in with the promise of sticky treats before dissolving their flesh and turning the resulting stringy goo into cellulose and chlorophyll. The most popular colours are aquamarine and pus.

I can apply this to my blog by stealing your souls and selling them back to you at 20% pa. From now on, each post will contain up to 5000 words, of which one in ten will be emoticons, and every word will be delivered to your home at no extra cost.

Right, that's enough better blogging. We wouldn't want to attain perfection six days too soon, would we? Time to feast on grilled bread, garnished with my own bile.

Today's task is from the August 24th entry. I have to DO A SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION AUDIT ON MY BLOG. In other words, I have to edit my blog so Google loves me.

And ProBlogger says some interesting and useful things. Apparently, instead of just using the word here for a link, like I normally do, you should select text which reflects the meaning of it. For instance, rather than And before you take me to task for my awful ways, theres an grandiloquent defence of them here, I should be saying And before ... here is my take on blogiquette. The same thing applies to head tags - tags which attach to text which is formatted in heading style - and image tags.

And you should always be sneaking in links to your own stuff. Just like I did there. Did you notice?

If you have control over your title tags (the text that appears on the title bar at the top), do bear in mind that it's the title tags that people see in hit lists. For instance, a Wikipedia title tag says [Topic] - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, so every link is like a little vision statement in itself.

Not that I've got that kind of control over this blog. Still, it's a blessing just to be back in again.

Today's task is from the August 23rd entry. I have to GO ON A DEAD LINK HUNT.

Done. Boring.

Today's task is from the August 22nd entry. I have to CATCH NEW READERS UP ON THE BASICS OF MY BLOG.

When I first started seven months ago, it was nearly all about religion. I'm against it, you see, and I wanted to tell the world. Of the first twenty posts, most of them are polemical. In the early days, if my blog was a body part, it would have been a spleen.

After that first great blasphemous splurge, I remembered there were other subjects in the world. Having started at the Richard Dawkins website, that naturally led me into other science sites, in particular the Science Blogs, so I started writing about the wonderful things in there. Being on the Internet a lot, I naturally found myself thinking about it, and you'll find several sparkling posts on that subject. I'm also keen on sports, especially soccer, and I was soon baffling my American readers with phrases like promotion chase and without playing the national anthem.

A big hug for all my readers in the US, by the way. You may be aware that whenever you meet a Canadian in Europe, the first thing they do is mention they're Canadian, before you have time to register their accent and assume they're American. Irish people, of course, are equally quick to establish that they're not British, so from one citizen of a pariah nation to another, welcome. Whilst of course understanding the Canadian and Irish position, we don't hold with such tawdry bigotries at the Backlash. In here, you are judged solely on the pungency of your scabrous wit.

I say we, for many great minds are wont to pay us a visit. If commenters give you a URL, it's very often worth a click.

You'll be getting the hang of it by now. Never use five words when twenty are available, and every word labelled archaic in the dictionary is worth three normal ones. If you know Latin you'll find I sometimes plant little treats for you, which might unfortunately get lost when they're borne across. Horribly elitist of me, but then I don't write this to be nice.

I don't write it to be nasty either, you understand, but you need to know that I'm not here for the social responsibility. I get enough of that in my actual life. This isn't me, this is me-on-the-Internet.

Welcome, and enjoy. If you scroll down to the Tags, you will observe that the main categories appear at the top, and begin with a #.

I'm back in!

I've been locked out, for technical reasons too boring to explain. Yes, there are things so boring even I won't explain them.

And from looking at my stats, you've all kept coming by anyway. Like Lassie, you just couldn't accept I was gone. I'm touched, really. Really.

And I've been scribbing away, here at my end of the bargain. I've got four more entries on the better blog challenge for you. Yes I know you've been desperate to know what's coming up. They'll be turning up in order over the next few hours.

God, it's a relief to be back. I was almost reduced to talking to the neighbours.