Just a warning because I always fall into this trap:

When you hold a large hammer, everything looks like a nail.

is there a contest going on to see who can have the biggest rss icon on their site?

Clearly this one wins: http://www.havelaptopwilltravel.com/biggestRSS.html

probability user will accidentally sign up to rss feed = size of icon / total screen size

That would be accurate if your visitors were bots whose job it was to hit a truly random point on the page.

they just didn't have anything else to put on top of that column

I'm sure most of the readers would prefer that the blog be on WordPress.

Funky, but bizarre and not sure it is very reader-friendly. (or even author-friendly, for that matter since most authors spend a lot more time reading and searching the stuff they write.)

Nifty! Good thinking, I like it :)