2000: The Ants Are, My Friends WEBSITE OF THE DAY A Googlewack discussion, for those who are looking to see just how obsessive people can be.
Sheila
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GOOGLEWACKING 29 December 2004 OK....I gave googlewacking a shot. For those who didn't follow the link to the website of the day yesterday, allow me to explain. You go to Google. You put in two words and see if you can get only one hit. Not the first 10 of 35,672 entries, but just 1 of 1. I actually managed to googlewack on my very first try, but forgot which two words I chose. So I started trying various combinations. Toadstool/obituary yielded 2,130 hits. Kangaroo/butterball gave me 2,760 hits, the first of which was about Captain Kangaroo. Of course. What was I thinking? Aussie/Googlewack got me only 37 hits, 36 shy of the mark, but I was at least getting closer. The possibility of finding 37 pages containing "aussie" and "googlewack" seemed unlikely until I realized that Dave Gorman, the man who created a whole stand up routine out of Googlewacking came from Australia. There were 620 hits on typhoon/sauerkraut, including a menu item for a hot dog dish with sauerkraut served at Typhoon Lagoon in Disneyland. There were 917 hits on tribble/corpse, including one for a game about the "death tribble," and 2,250 for transcription/skydiving, including one to a page for Ana, a transcriptionist who goes skydiving for a hobby. The more I got into this thing, the more fun it became--not only the challenge of trying to find the elusive "only one" match, but checking some of the quite bizarre pages that resulted from my quite bizarre matching attempts. Trying peanutbutter/AIDS, for example, led me to a page about kicking the peanutbutter habit, hawking a 336 page hard back book "filled with great stories, humor and a down-to-earth Bible study: 'Breaking the Peanut Butter Habit... Following God's Recipe for a Better Life.'" Who knew that God didn't want me to eat peanutbutter? Parrot/Dentist yielded 75,400 hits, including a page about Tiki, a one year old Senegal Parrot with a very adventurous nature. "Part comedian, part explorer and part lover of all... Tiki finds his way into everyone's heart. He was adopted in Venice, Florida and now lives near Disney World. His favorite activities are: taking showers, eating limes, giving lots of kisses and climbing, climbing, climbing. He can say "Hello, Love you, What Mama?, Uh-oh, Tiki Bird, and Night Night". Tiki likes to lay on his back and have his belly rubbed, but he isn't selfish, and will preen mom's hair anytime. When he grows up, Tiki will probably be a Dentist, since he is fascinated with teeth." Just amazing the things that you find on the 'net! Chook/cricket brought me to a page devoted to Larry Gomes, West Indian Cricketeer, one of 3,400 hits. Gomes is said to "bat like a girl - only chook-chook here and chook-chook there." Who knew that the combination of Sambucca and Bailey's was called a "Slippery Nipple"? (that's one of the 31,600 hits on jello/nipple.) or that there were silent movies named "Cactus Nell" and "Mr. Walrus caught in the Park," one of the 7,790 hits on cactus/walrus. One of the 760 hits on marron/zebra brought me to a page of Zebra song lyrics, which includes a song entitled "Marron." I started picking out words I was hearing on the television, which was going on in the background. Reindeer/decorating was a biggie, with 151,000 hits including one for this tie, which I'm really sorry I didn't find before Christmas. I'm sure Walt would have loved it. Handkerchief/headlines gave 16,700 hits including a lovely treatise on the power of the handkerchief, which even had a bit that I could relate to: In the recent AFL Grand Final between Brisbane and Collingwood the Handkerchief Phenomenon was experienced by nearly half the country. It goes on to talk about one of the losing players crying into his handkerchief. I watched that game in Australia, so I felt kind of a vested interest in the article. Lugubrious/bondage had a lot of links to pages about Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" among its other 4,410 hits. By now I was obsessed. I was determined to get my first googlewack. Peekaboo/Jackhammer, among its 352 hits led to a Christian book website about role playing games. It was more fun to let my imagination run amok in thinking about all of the possibilities, so I didn't even check it out. I should have known better than to try urethra/lavatory. Several of the 641 hits led back to Funny the World because of all the search engine queries about either urethral play or "7 old ladies locked in a lavatory." There were 39,700 hits on haggis/chocolate, including some to food pages, which seems sacreligious to me. I don't believe anybody should ever try to mix something as good as chocolate to something as disgusting as haggis, even on the pages of a book. One of the 70 hits on formidable/cottonball led to the Borax Museum in Death Valley, where I learned that "The first form of borax to be found in the Valley was white crystalline ulexite called “cottonball”, which encrusted the ancient lake bed, Lake Manly. Cottonball of this kind had been found earlier at Columbus Marsh and at Teel’s Marsh, in western Nevada." 14,100 hits on emu/tuxedo led me to a place where I could buy natural ingredients for weddings, birthdays, and baby showers, including items made with emu oil. I was getting close with perambulate/jackhammer, which only gave 7 hits, one of which seems designed with thwarting googlewhacking in mind! (If you can find a more logical explanation for that page, more power to you!) When I wrote the above paragraph, I wondered what would happen if you used thwart/googlewacking and Bingo there was only 1 hit, with 9 sub-hits, which I will choose to ignore, since Google didn't even show them. It's been a totally wasted hour, but in the end, I stand (or sit) triumphant! (And I wonder why I never get any transcription done!) Mood |
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Created 12/26/04
