BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

The “interwebz” can do some strange things. It’s almost as if the damn thing has taken on a life of its own, which I suppose kinda makes old Al Gore a “Doctor Frahnkensteen” of sorts. (Okay, okay, I know… Gore’s quote was taken way out of context, but the joke worked… gimme a break. I’m actually writing this way early in the A.M. and my caffeine system isn’t up to snuff just yet…)

Anywho, the thing here is this – there are just some places on the internet that seem to have become a multi-headed monster doing whatever it damn well pleases. Social networking sites for instance. In this particular instance, Facebook.

There I was, ditzing about on FB, taking care of my necessary social networking marketing schtuff. E K was at her desk behind me, fiddling about with her own FB page, updating the world on her adventures in grocery shopping and slapping a coat of polyurethane on the O-spring’s chest of drawers.

Yeah, truly exciting stuff there… (Hey, sometimes it’s good to be boring…)

So, anyway, I did a quick refresh of my page to see what was going on and the screen went all willy nilly, flashed a bit, sent some gibberish scrolling around, then settled back into my “Facebook Wall.” Everything looked relatively normal except for one minor – well, actually major, IMHO – detail.

Now, just by looking at the picture on the left you might not see the problem. In reality, it looks pretty normal. In fact, it looks extremely normal. And, if it weren’t for the fact that I happen to use a link that generally resides in that box, I might not have noticed the problem myself. However, on the night in question, after perusing my wall I was going to go have a look at someone else’s wall. Namely, the halo wearing half of The Evil Redhead.

Yeah… I was going to go look at Kat’s page, and the easiest way for me to get there is to click on the link under relationship status, because normally it looks like the picture on the right.

But, it didn’t… It looked like the one above.

According to Facebook, I was still married, but to whom was the question. I checked my info tab and it claimed I was married, but my spouse was a mystery.

Figuring this was just some bizarre glitch, I hit the search box, looked up Kat’s profile – which ostensibly was still there – and clicked on the link. My screen flashed, went blank, then my FB newsfeed appeared. I cocked an eyebrow, grumbled, then tried it again. Same thing.

“Hey legs,” I called over my shoulder. “Did you unfriend me on Facebook or something?”

“No,” she replied.

“Did you block me?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I grumbled a bit more as FB repeated the redirection each time I clicked, then I answered her. “I can’t get to your page.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I didn’t change anything.”

“Let me try something,” I mused aloud.

I went down the line, clicking on several of our mutual friends. Each time I did so, either I was redirected to my newsfeed or told that this person’s page was no longer available.

Grumbling even more I mentioned this to E K. Of course, she promptly began to click on those links herself.

“I can get to Johnathan’s page just fine,” she announced. “And Tracy’s…” A few more clicks sounded. “And Anastasia’s…”

“But I can’t,” I said, perplexed. “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally add me to your block list or something?”

“I’m sure,” she replied.

Just to be thorough I clicked on some of my other friend’s pages who were not mutual between The Evil Redhead and me. No problem at all. Surfed right to them without so much as a brief pause. I cleared my cache just to make sure it wasn’t a phantom page. They still worked.

I logged out of FB, shut down Firefox, restarted it, cleared cache again, logged back into FB, and checked my page. Nothing at all had changed. No matter what I clicked I was no longer married to my wife, nor could I get to mutual friend pages.

“Well,” I sighed a lament. “It would seem that Facebook has divorced us and you got to keep all of our friends.”

E K giggled, of course.

By now it was pushing midnight and well past my bedtime, yet I was still clicking about on my page because I had no intention of signing the divorce papers, virtual or not.

E K clicked off her monitors (she has two, being the multi-tasker she is) and pushed back from her desk. As she rose to head for the bedroom she said, “I think you should just give up for the night.”

“But, it says I’m not married to you anymore.”

“Get some sleep,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll be married to me tomorrow.”

I guess I’ll have to start checking the calendar on the fridge in the kitchen to see which days I’m married and which days I’m single.

Better yet, maybe I’ll just check Facebook…

More to come…

Murv

I suppose I’m a bit of a voyeur in some respects. I think all authors are. We watch the world around us with a kind of personal fascination. Everything we see becomes fodder for a book somewhere along the line. Maybe not right that minute, but perhaps in the future. We tend to log these things away in the darkened corners of our brains just in case we might need them.

I am guess it is because of the whole “voyeurism” thing that I keep tabs on the search phrases and words that land folks at my website and blog. Yeah, sure, it initially started out as one of those optimization things. You know, using tags and keywords that brought me traffic. But, I figured out early on that web-traffic isn’t always good. If it isn’t qualified traffic, it is just eating up your bandwidth for nothing. Kinda like trying to sell a high-end TV to a homeless person. They don’t have money, or even a place to put it, so you’re working a dead lead…

Damn… I’m having a flashback to my days in sales at VideoConcepts… Now I need a drink…

But, let’s see if we can move on… Like I said, I figured out early on that some of this keyword stuff really does you little good. Unfortunately, in some cases, even though it is a valid keyword that actually has plenty to do with the blog post, there are searches going on out there that seize upon it for different reasons, yet again driving unqualified traffic your way. Such was the case with the word “handcuffs”. You see, when I wrote that little piece of Twitter Flash Fiction and posted it here to my blog, it contained the word handcuffs. It also had a picture associated with it. Very suddenly, and without warning, my blog started receiving all kinds of traffic. I mean, insane amounts of traffic. From all over the world, even.

The problem was, all of it was people looking for pictures of handcuffs via Google Image Search. They were never coming to the blog. They were merely hotlinking the image.

Not exactly qualified traffic, know what I mean?

So, anyway, I got that all cleared up by changing some keywords, jpg names, and petitioning google to remove a couple of now-nonexistent links. It took a week or so, but finally it was done.

But, of course, the handcuffs aren’t why I called you here today. You see, since I skulk around peeking through virtual curtains and the search phrases which bring folks to my blog, I thought maybe I’d share a few of the more esoteric entries with you. So, here goes…

• Clark Kent

Why Superman’s alter ego brought someone to my blog I have no idea.

• John Glenn Moon 1962

John Glenn I understand. I did, after all, write a blog on my birthday which mentions him rather prominently given that I was born on the day he orbited the Earth in Friendship 7. However, simply reading that phrase makes me wish I had a slice of the action, because my guess is that someone was trying to verify facts for a bet. BTW, NO Virginia, John Glenn never went to the Moon. Now pay up.

• Bound Pentagram Sacrifice Nude Virgin

I’m sure all of these words connected up with various key elements of the sample chapters from the RGI series I have here on the site. But, something tells me that’s not what they were looking for, and that just scares me.

• Wife In Stockings
• Sagging Stockings
• Women In Seamed Stockings
• feeling your stockings

Of course, all of these landed on the page “Fool For Your Stockings...” from the Mahwage blog series. Again, I don’t think that’s what these Googlers were looking for…

• how to deal with a pain in the ass wife

This one brought the searcher to “E K Is A Real Pain In My Ass…” for obvious reasons. I have to wonder if his so called “pain in the ass wife” checks his search history when he isn’t around. If she does and ends up back here she needs to contact E K. Something tells me The Evil One could give her some pointers on how to deal with her “pain in the ass husband”.

• “regular housewife”

My guess is, this is what the numb-nuts above is looking for. But where’s the fun in that?

• I damaged my ass
• what is pain on my butt
• pains in my right ass cheek
• my butt aches after I take a crap

I like to call these the “pain in the ass” searches. Again, they ended up at the most recently mentioned entry, which I am sure was of no help to them whatsoever. But (pun intended with extreme prejudice) I have to say, I’m a bit concerned for the person whose butt aches after defecation. That doesn’t sound good at all… I have to admit I’m also just a bit curious about the “I damaged my ass” person.

• nathan fillion practical jokes

This one had me momentarily stumped until I remembered I had written a blog about Fillion’s new show, Castle…

• bad ass bitch in heels
• devil angel redhead
• devil woman
• heels, ass, biker

Where the whole “biker” thing came in, I have no idea. But, these quite obviously landed the Googlers on just about anything where E K is mentioned, but most especially the “Somehow Satan Got Behind Me…” blog, due to the included “devil woman” graphic. I’m sure they were looking for much more explicit pictures and didn’t really find anything that fit what they REALLY wanted, but if they took time to read the blog entries themselves… Well… They might be afraid now. I know I would be.

• sindromul edison
• pagkain

What good would a search keyword log be without some gibberish as translated from another language. Other than Edison (This is Edison Carter… blog entry…) I have no clue what they were after…

• novel peanut butter dan jelly

My kid used to watch a cartoon called P B and J Otter. But, I can’t imagine there being a novel. Also, I am going to assume that is supposed to be “and jelly”… Because if it’s actually supposed to be “Dan Jelly”… Well… Given the possible connotations, I just don’t wanna know… At least they didn’t type in jam…

• before after combover makeover

I’ll go bald before I do a combover. Enough said.

• ass animation
• Butt Cheek Images
• men getting spanked

Here we have the second round of “ass searches” which brought folks to the “E K Is A Real yadda yadda…” blog, again quite obviously because of that lovely three letter word. I grouped them together for that very reason, although I think #3 had a something different in mind as compared to #’s 1 and 2. In this case, due to the joke and cartoon at the beginning, #3 might have actually found what he or she was after…

Something I found to be of particular note is the fact that the vast majority of the searches for #3, or some permutation thereof, such as “women who spank” or “wifes (sic) spanking husbands” come out of the UK, France, and Italy, in that order.  At least, that’s what the IP addresses say. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

• Paranormally Warped

Unknown to this poor internet searcher, all he or she needed to do was type in M. R. Sellars to get this… Of course, it doesn’t matter. All paranormal warpedness leads straight to me anyway…

• Satan Poke Poor Soul

I have theories, but they make my brain hurt…

So, there you have it… Yet another round of Google weirdness that brings people right here to Murv Weirdness.  I guess those search engines actually do work…

More to come…

Murv