In search of… May 6, 2008
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, wit and wisdom.Tags: Gertrude Jekyll, humor, Jekyll and Hyde, search engine terms, Wallace & Gromit
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Our friend Ben is not what you’d call a morning person. As James Herriot put it, “I am not at my best in the morning.” In fact, I’m more of a dusk person. Colleagues have told me I actually look different in the afternoon. No doubt they’re noticing that our friend Ben’s hulking Mr. Hyde-like morning persona has finally completed its transformation into something more closely resembling the civilized Dr. Jekyll.
(Fellow gardeners, you may wonder with our friend Ben why Robert Louis Stevenson chose the surname of one of gardening’s icons, Gertrude Jekyll, for the protagonist of his ghoulish tale. It does lead one to wonder whether Mr. Stevenson happened to know any foul-tempered members of the Jekyll clan, or was merely struck by the name, or if in fact it was just coincidence. One website, The Victorian Web, claims that it was used as a clue to the character’s suicidal tendencies, “Je” from the French, “I,” and “kyll” for “kill.” This seems like a stretch to our friend Ben, especially given the name’s pronunciation, which I understand is properly jeekle, not jeckle or jeckill. But I digress.)
Thus, anything that can bring a smile to the zombified, Shaun-of-the-Dead-like early morning face of our friend Ben is a good thing. (Silence Dogood claims it’s more like a miracle.) And one thing that often does is the list of search engine terms that people use to find our blog, Poor Richard’s Almanac. WordPress hosts our blog, and it allows you to see what words and phrases people use each day that direct them to you. (Thanks, WordPress!) Of course, most of them are very straightforward: the two most popular for this blog are “ben ten” and “poor richard’s almanac.” But because the blog’s scope is fairly broad, people come to it by all kinds of roads.
Many of the search engine terms lead our friend Ben to conclude that students are searching the web for stuff to put in their term papers. Our friend Ben wonders what they make of it when they search for Robert Frost’s “Nature’s first green is gold,” for example, and end up staring at one of our friend Ben’s rants. Then there are the people who are looking for very specific information, answers to practical questions or dilemmas. Our friend Ben is relieved when I see that, in fact, the post they’ve been directed to answers those questions, and I feel bad if I can see that it doesn’t. I hope they had better luck elsewhere! There are sometimes questions that our friend Ben would also like to know the answers to, such as “who invented Amish friendship bread,” and the occasional topic I wish we’d actually written, like “ben ten party food ideas.”
But, almost daily, there are also searches that strike our friend Ben as screamingly funny. These range from “little richard’s almanac” to this morning’s classic, “infant swallowed copper-plated steel coin.” We’ve had sweeping generalizations like “cats are brown,” bizarre juxtapositions like “african greys and radishes” and “radish seeds and caffeine,” eccentric arrivals such as “lola loves rick,” “blue cat statue in yard,” and “do yellow snails need blubber.” We’ve gotten “nutritional value of vegetable peels” and “crazy ben franklin quotes” (poor old Ben, he gets no respect).
One search that recently received a One-Ben Lifetime Award was “revenge of the bread, the Amish strike.” Haaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!! Not only is it great in its entirety, but “Revenge of the Bread” is just begging to be turned into a Wallace & Gromit classic. (Tragically, our friend Ben just discovered on a trip over to Nick Park’s official Wallace & Gromit website, www.wallaceandgromit.com, that Nick is even now at work on a film called ”A Matter of Loaf and Death,” so clearly it isn’t in the cards. Rats!!!)
A great big “thank you” to every search-engine user who brightens our friend Ben’s day. Keep ‘em coming, please! But I fear we already have a grand prize winner, the person who submitted “poor richard will do anything for money.” Our good friend and fellow blog contributor Richard Saunders is never going to live that one down—at least, not if our friend Ben and Silence have anything to say about it!
Every now and then, I like to make up a list of what brings people to my site and write a post about it. I think my very favorite was sometime last month and went like this: “how can you worry about eggs when I’m standing here confessing my love to you?”
I don’t know. I just report ‘em…
Oh, lord, Becca! I hope that was just a random search and not something personal!!! (And besides, my chickens resent that ordering of priorities!) But you’re right, that one would have definitely qualified for a One-Ben Award!
Evidently, my blog doesn’t get too many hits, as the most unusual keyword hit was “edamame new orleans secret life of bees”. I am left with a feeling of “huh?” What on earth could they have been looking for to put all those words into a search engine? Oh well.
BTW, I loooveee Wallace and Gromit. They remind me so much of another fabulous British pair, Jeeves and Wooster by P.G. Wodehouse. Now famous, Hugh Laurie, was most wonderful as Bertie Wooster.
Please enjoy an excerpt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWnB0hQWGdI
Thanks, CeeCee! I adore Hugh Laurie–first encountered him as the clueless Prince Regent playing to Rowan Atkinson’s cunning and devious butler, Edmund Blackadder, on the hysterical show “Blackadder III.” You must, *must*, rent that on Netflix or something if you haven’t seen it. Rowan Atkinson went on to Mr. Bean and Hugh Laurie to House, and I for one am sorry on both counts. You probably know that both Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry of “Jeeves and Wooster” went on to write novels, too; I keep trying to remember to find and read them, but so far have not been able to duct-tape enough brain cells together to get both myself and my request to the library. If you’ve read them, please let me know what you think! As for Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep is my hero. I was thrilled to see that the W&G website has an entire area devoted just to Shaun!
I’ve had some strange search phrases, too — cottage chair red legs being one of the finest.
Fun!
That’s a great one, Nancy! Isn’t it wonderful that our blogs provide some comic relief as well as an opportunity to express ourselves!
Hey, I’m glad you finally put some of these together for a post. But I must say, I’m a little concerned about the kid who swallowed the coin (and about the person searching Google for help!).
-Nan
Well, I did wonder, too, Nan: Were they just idly searching for arcane facts, or had *their* kid swallowed a coin? And if the latter, why the hell didn’t they call the doctor?!! Yikes. I’m glad they weren’t my parents! (Mercifully, though, the kid would actually be fine, though he or she might set off the metal detectors at the airport!)
What a fun post. Loved it, thank you.
Thanks, Barbee’, and thanks to the blog searchers who made it possible!
Language takes a lot of strange turns whether on the byways of Internet searches or at the crossroads of cultures. In China, their version of “American Idol” is (and I kid you not) “The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest.”
Hmmm, and here I’d been assuming I simply didn’t “get” internet shorthand! Perhaps Silence would like to try out to be “Sour Yogurt Supergirl”… Ow! Ow!!!!
I like looking at the google entry words too. Mostly I get “container composting.” Which is great because I actually explain how to do that. I think my favorite was “Fracus Plant.” Don’t have one, but it would fit in. Funny post.
Deb
Thanks, Deb! “Fracus Plant” is a great one!
It’s funny what the computer can come up with when you enter a phrase. After your post about googling yourself, I googled both Cindy and Cinj. Cindy brought up a lot of referernces about Cindy Crawford, luckily for them my name didn’t pop up until after the third page, so I’m sure they tired of their search long before they got to my blog. Cinj, on the other hand though, that’s number 8 on page one. Apparently many people could come by my blog looking for the Cancer Institutes New Jersey.
Yikes! You just never know what you’ll find. But one thing is certain: It won’t be what you expect!