Circus efemera.png

I’ve just learned that even the U.S. president is getting in on the act now, and by ‘act’ I mean ‘using The Google’. Early adopters will already know that The Google is a ‘search engine’ that can help you find ‘pages’ on the ‘internets’. Some ‘web surfers’ even use it to find their way here, in focused search of specific reading material, no doubt for vitally important research projects. Here, without further preamble, is the Autumn 2006 version of the

Inexplicably Obligatory Intermittent The G o o g l e Search String Follies:

    “A few questions…”:

  • Does isoglossia perchance feature girly vomit videos?
  • Where should I direct my browser for spambot nightmarishness?
  • How can I solve the puzzle of the Samorost sleeping taxi?
  • Can I read about two tone bandicoots on isoglossia.com? wondered a searcher in Mexico
    Economic interests, semantics, and uncertainty about liquid volume bring other searchers to isoglossia, with search strings like:

  • twix market share
  • meaning of the word segundus
  • circus efemera [sic] Did you mean: circus ephemera
  • objects that hold about 500 milliliters
    The indexing ‘bots of The Google never overlook the strong parenting orientation of isoglossia, returning high results for queries such as:

  • drop a coin ask if your [sic] pregnant
  • pictures of kids eating and getting dirty (how can I express my deep sense of honor that isoglossia is the #5 hit on The Google, in the same exalted company as The BoingBoing and The History Place: Child Labor in America?)
    And of course, with the parenting comes the scatological and, inevitably, the monkey-sexual:

  • A reader in Valparaiso, Indiana was interested in finding Gross pictures of steaming pile of shit (with isoglossia ranking #3 of an alarming 105,000 results)
  • Starting around 15 October, numerous people searching The Google for images (IMAGES!) of “colostomy bag” (WHY? WHY?) began to be referred to this picture here. This makes me unaccountably happy. Also to see that at least some people out there, even if it’s just colostomy fetishists, know that The Google loves “The Quotes”.
  • copulating monkeys pics = isoglossia in The Google UK’s number 5 spot

And speaking of copulating monkeys,

“‘Sweet monkey Jesus!’ I thought to myself. ‘You’re on stage making out with Jane Goodall! Roll with it!’ But the translator failed to roll with it at all. He stared down at his sheaf of papers as if he were trying to ignite them with his mind. The audience, of course, was going nuts.”

“(YouTube is essentially the Great Alexandrian Library of Weird Al videos.) ”

“I may have intended to build a wall, but it was shaping up more like a tower of trash. Like a great number of weblog authors, I had started a mental recycling project.”

“New Years Eve 1998, Chuck Norris and I were at a party, when the clock struck twelve, instead of kissing someone, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked everyone at the party. He then proceeded to roundhouse kick everyone on the street, and the whole city. He has been doing this ever since.”

“Kevin Kelly noted that the web currently has 1 trillion links, 1 quintillion transistors, and 20 exabytes of memory. A single human brain has 1 trillion synapses (links), 1 quintillion neurons (transistors of sorts), and 20 exabytes of memory.”

Previous meta entries: June 2006; February 2006; December 2005