Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Search For the Holy Google

So I was doing some upkeep on the site recently when something took me by surprise. Normally, traffic on the site is really slow in between my posts, but for some reason I had over 40 visitors yesterday. My first thought was that I had accidentally posted embarrassing pictures of myself. But luckily I checked the data and it showed that all of the people were just looking at my most recent note on a gazing healer named Braco. (And just in case you have seen the photos: no, I don’t know if it is safe to do that with a squeegee and yes, that badger is trained.)

Anyway, the reason that particular post became so popular is that a lot of people have been Googling Braco (that sounds dirty, or a great band name), and my blog kept coming up apparently. Now, I’m not naïve to think that everybody that visits my site intended to. Most of them made a mistake, and all of them regret it. But I’m not complaining. In fact, many websites and blogs try to use keywords or phrases that will make them pop up in Google searches. That is why you will often see me subtly mixing in oft-searched terms like “Twilight,” “how the hell do you use a bidet,” “naked pictures of Lindsay Lohan,” “how long does pot stay in your pee,” “making meth in your basement for dummies,” “where do lizards keep their reproductive organs,” etc.

Google is very interesting like that. It truly is a remarkable technology that enables anybody from anywhere in the world to simply type in a few keywords and, with a simple click of the mouse, get pictures of naked people. I mean, you could Google “mother teresa nuns sesame street” and you would get pictures of naked people. The sites and pictures that show up on Google almost never have anything to do with what you were searching for.

So this got me interested in what searches were leading people to my site. Now don’t worry, I can tell what searches led to my site, but not who performed the search. So your privacy is safe, unless Google sells all that stuff to the Chinese or something. And it is probably a very good thing all this stuff is secret, because you people out there Google some very disturbing things. All I am going to say is that the word “semen” appeared in over a dozen searches. Now, for those of you pointing out the fact that searching “semen” leads to my site makes me the sick one, you are missing the point. The point is that you almost never get what you want from Googling things.

For instance, the most read post of all time on my site is the one I did on philosophy. The main reason for this is that apparently there are a lot of nervous philosophy majors out there who have no idea what to do with themselves. So a lot of them end up on the site by Googling things like “what do I do with a philosophy major?” This sucks for them, because I never answer that question in the post (mainly because nobody knows the answer). Through the searches, you can actually trace what happens to a philosophy major in college (and I swear I am not making any of these up):

  • “I’m good at philosophy for some reason”
  • “how do you know you should be a philosophy major”
  • “what courses should I take with my phil major”
  • “what do you learn in upper division philosophy”
  • “Confused in my philosophy class”
  • “I don’t like my philosophy class”
  • “I hate my philosophy class”
  • “Don’t do philosophy”
  • “Philosophy degree is ridiculous”
  • “People’s reaction to my philosophy degree”
  • “Next destination depression”

I’ve listed a few of the other interesting search terms that led people to this website, and I promise I am not making any of them up, and I left the spelling as it was. Frankly, I have no idea how I would even be able to make them up. Some of them are so weird you wonder how the heck the searcher came up with them, much less felt the need to Google them. I’m still not sure which is worse, these searches or the fact that my site popped up for all of them. Anyway, here goes:

  • “Bacon saddlebags”
  • “My philosophy is don’t think” – Okay I can see how this one led to me.
  • “Glasses make me look sexy” – This one too.
  • “The back of my toe hurts”
  • “What does mitch bade mean?” – I get a lot of these. Mitch Bade is actually a term used by rapper Techn9ne as a replacement for b**ch made.
  • “looks good” “stupid glasses” “car commercial”
  • “love Canada”
  • “Can’t believe it butter (fire retardation)” – From my experience, butter is actually very flammable.
  • “Buckle up and bunker down”
  • “Why doesn’t david caruso make eye contact?”
  • “Casa bonita if rape Disneyland”
  • “Chimp can you hear me now”
  • “Counter argument for love is in the air”
  • “CSI semen funny” – Well thank god someone else thinks it is.
  • “Dude where’s my car and philosophy”
  • “Face contorting”
  • “Gas hydrates”
  • “Facial hair t-shirts philosophy” – If you don’t get why these go together, you have clearly never had a philosophy class.
  • “Geriatric sibling rivalry”
  • “Glee cast member plays connect four”
  • “Horny photo”
  • “I am looking for a job egg farm in abbotsford” – Not to be a downer, but I think you need to be a little less picky when you are looking for jobs.
  • “Is she dirty blogspot”
  • “Mad scientist birthday ideas”
  • “Joe jonas + glasses”
  • “Mitch the Barbie” – As it turns out, they don’t make one. But they should. It could be the next hot Christmas gift every child wants.
  • “Mande Mitchell tranny movies” – Hey, I was working my way through college.
  • “Semen on figure blogspot”
  • “Reword the prompt”
  • “Roofies”
  • “Sememn everywhere in CSI”
  • “Sexist jokes” – I can’t express how proud I am that this search leads to my site.
  • “Spell booh-yah”
  • “Where to buy butter bear”
  • “Trebek quotations for soccer”
  • “What can I do with my philosophy ma” – Learn to finish words would be my first suggestion.
  • “Wog”
  • “A little pitchy dawg t-shirt”
  • “Alex trebek is not smug”
  • “Alex trebek smug” – Clearly this person had no luck with the previous search.
  • “Black greek sandals”
  • “Barbie face sobing”
  • “Barbie.com kicing”
  • “I can’t beleve it’s beer” – Judging by your spelling, I can.
  • “I’m on a high horse tonight”

And, drum-roll please, my all-time favorite:

  • “once justin beiber hits puberty he’ll be able to grease his hair with his own…”

That’s how it ends. I’m not sure if this person was hoping somebody would finish that sentence for them. Feel free to finish that sentence in the comments section, so this person can find what they are looking for. After all, isn’t that the point of Google?

Monday, January 3, 2011

Healing Gaze

So I woke up the other morning and walked out into the living room to find my mother on the couch watching a DVD. The DVD was about this guy from Croatia who apparently has the power to heal people – simply by staring at them. I swear I am not making this up. He simply goes by the name Braco, and he has supposedly rid people of cancer and helped people walk again and is reportedly the mastermind behind Britney Spears comeback (okay, so I made that last one up). Apparently he has the ability to manipulate energy or something and heal people, and does this by just staring at rooms full of people.

I wasn’t really surprised that my Mom was watching this; my Mom is one of those people who is always trying the latest weird healing methods. Technically, nothing is ever wrong with her except for the fact that all she ever does when she isn’t at work is sit on the couch eating snacks and watching DVDs about mystical healing methods. At various points, our house has been filled with things that sounded like ingredients to a magical smoothie. At one point, we had tons of cases of something called gogi berries. At the moment she is preaching some things she learned in a book about eating right for your blood type. She told me that since I have blood type O, I am supposed to avoid pork, milk, cookies, meat, fish, lettuce, tomatoes, air, frozen foods, refrigerated foods, red foods and any foods with more than three vowels. According to this diet, I can basically eat only celery and dirt (unless you are one of those weirdos that count “y” as a vowel).

Anyway, so these new “gazing sessions” are her latest fad. Apparently Braco is in Hawaii, so my Mom asked me if I wanted to come with her to a session. Since my New Year’s resolution was to be open to trying new things, I enthusiastically jumped up off the couch and said “No.” Then I sat back down, because sudden movements hurt my back. I am the opposite of my mother; I’m not a big believer in any sort of medicine or healing. When it comes to healing, I believe in the holy trinity: sleeping, eating and beer. So I was not about to go pay some money to have some guy stare at me. I mean, I had my doubts that somebody staring at me would make me feel better (unless that somebody was Megan Fox).

But I was a bit curious about how this whole thing worked, so I eventually went. Plus I was really, really bored. Besides, it was only $6. Apparently the guy is loaded and doesn’t need the money and practically does this stuff for free. I mean, except for the fact that you have to pay for his plane ticket and his hotel room and buy his instructional DVDs and jewelry and autobiography.

So after we got our ticket, we took a seat in our room. We were told to sit wherever our “energy” directed us. And as with most of my college classes, my energy was directing me to the back row where I could sleep, because I used up all of my energy trying to figure out where to sit. But my mother’s energy apparently was telling her that we should sit in the smack-dab middle of the room, next to the weird couple that was clearly way too into this.

The first thing I noticed was that the crowd was clearly made up of a certain demographic. That is to say, everybody was old and white. I was easily the youngest one there. Part of it is that there is actually a warning outside that prohibits people under 18 and pregnant women due to – again I’m not making this up – “the potency of the energy.” At that moment, all I could picture was Yoda using Jedi mind tricks to fly me across the room, and I was beginning to wonder if that was the real reason my Mom wanted to come to this thing.

Anyway, the session lasts about 30 minutes, but Braco is only involved in about eight of those minutes. The first fifteen minutes or so was people sharing their experiences, and of course the first person to speak was the lady next to me. She started talking about seeing “balls of liquid crystal” and “bright rays of light,” which raises several questions. What type of drugs is she on? Where can I get some? What the hell does liquid crystal look like? Not coincidentally, she and her husband also had tropical drinks from the hotel bar, so maybe showing up drunk helps with the “energy.” Give me enough Mai Tai’s and I’ll be finding balls of liquid crystal everywhere.

Finally, we all stand up and Braco comes in and gets on a stand in the front of the room. And then for ten minutes he just stares at you, and it is indescribably creepy. He doesn’t say anything (in fact nobody has heard him speak publicly for years) or do anything, he just stares out into the crowd. Some people also hold up photographs of loved ones, because supposedly his gaze is supposed to be able to go through photos (apparently it can also work through Skype). But mostly, you are just supposed to stare back. It's like a really bad first date.

After it is all done (and the guy next to me stopped having weird spasms), you just leave the room. And I’ll tell you what, despite my cynicism and disbelief, I left the room feeling something very strong deep within myself: hunger. Frankly, I was starving, and standing up for ten minutes and staring at this guy was exhausting.

In conclusion, I have no idea why I am paying money to go to school when I could be making money by staring at people. So I’ve actually been practicing on people here, and I think it’s going well so far. I’ve only been pepper-sprayed five times.