You can see, perhaps, that when I really have work to do, I shut down both my browser and my e-mail. The web is a bottomless pit of timewasters, but Google Analytics is a sinkhole with my name on it. Behold, a map of my readership by state. I believe it reveals two things:
1) No matter how much I run, I will never leave Indiana behind, and;
2) I really need to boost my numbers in South Dakota.
And maybe one more:
3) California is my true home outside the Midwest.
LA mary said on August 22, 2007 at 11:04 am
Well, yeah. You’ve got me, Danny, Ricardo and MichaelG in the Golden State, just for starters.
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brian stouder said on August 22, 2007 at 11:25 am
LA-Ashley Alert!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20390994/
“It’s a justice issue,” Pitt told Curry. “What we saw with Katrina is that there is a portion of our society that’s being overlooked. And so, in the aftermath, we’re not going to be able to bring back the friends and family that are lost. “We’re not going to be able to bring back their heirlooms and their photographs. But maybe we can provide a better way of life. Maybe we can find some good out of this. “It’s about fairness. It’s about dignity.”
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Rich B said on August 22, 2007 at 11:30 am
Until someone else represents I feel singularly responsible for Massachusetts’ shade of corn ear green.
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John said on August 22, 2007 at 11:39 am
Connecticut is lighter than Massachusetts. I’m thinking you have company there Rich.
John (standing alone in the Nutmeg State)
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Jolene said on August 22, 2007 at 11:44 am
How do you know where we are? Not that I care; am just curious about what computer tricks are involved in finding out.
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nancy said on August 22, 2007 at 11:48 am
I’m more intrigued by Virginia (439 visits in the past week) and Maryland (388), m’self. They’re outdrawing New York (366), where I at least know five or six people.
Truth be told, I have no idea what any of this crap means. I wish they’d offer a tutorial on parsing your bounce rate, or at least some comparisons. And they need to keep it simple — I’m easily distracted by shiny objects.
Oh, and don’t get me started on keyword searches. Did you know we are the top Google hit for “my dog ate insulation”? Now you do.
Jolene: It’s the secret webcam placed in every laptop under the unread terms of the Patriot Act. We also know what you’re wearing.
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brian stouder said on August 22, 2007 at 12:54 pm
We also know what you’re wearing.
But the interesting thing is her “bounce rate”!
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MarkH said on August 22, 2007 at 1:06 pm
BRI-A-A-A-A-N-N!
Unless I’m mistaken, I am singularly holding up Wyoming.
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Dorothy said on August 22, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I believe I am the Lone She Wolf in South Carolina – but only for 9 more days or so!!
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Mindy said on August 22, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Go ahead and run. We Hoosiers will find you anyway and tell you all the news in high school basketball. Am now uploading a nice heapin’ plate of chicken and noodles over a pile of mashed potatoes….
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David said on August 22, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Hmm.. I see here in Illinois and in my native Ohio, and up with the Michiganders, you have a lot of love… but to the south… what did you do upset Kentuckians?
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Danny said on August 22, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Hmm. I was in Maryland two months ago.
As far as the California caucus goes, I am not sure I count as heavily towards that statistic. When I access from home I do. But at work, it is probably routed through a proxy where mothership corporate HQ is, in the midwest.
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Jolene said on August 22, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I’m in Virginia. As I’m not working right now, I pop in briefly from time to time to see if anyone has added any fascinating comments or responded to any of my fascinating comments. I don’t think, though, that I check in 400 times/week.
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John said on August 22, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Northern Virginia Jolene? I grew up in the sticks of the southwest corner myself.
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Jolene said on August 22, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Speaking of weird things you can do w/ Google, have you all heard of Googlenopes? “Googlenope” is a term recently invented by Gene Weingarten to describe phrases for which there are no returns when the phrase is used as a Google search term.
The link above goes to the original article, in which he describes the concept and provides many excellent examples. It’s hard to choose a favorite, but it’s hard to beat “Please accept these underpants as collateral”, unless you prefer “If you take off that bra, I’ll call the cops”.
Before Gene wrote this article “googlenope” was, itself, a googlenope. Now, of course, you’ll get many hits, including a site where you can enter your own googlenope.
I await news of the googlenopes created by the many clever readers of this blog.
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Jolene said on August 22, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Yes, Northern Virginia. Alexandria, to be exact.
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Kirk said on August 22, 2007 at 2:50 pm
The trick is to come up with a two-word googlenope.
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Danny said on August 22, 2007 at 3:13 pm
John, any chance you grew up in or near Buchanan county? My father and paternal granparents are from there.
I do not have a drawl, but when I hang with my kin for a while, I lapse back into it.
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Julie Robinson said on August 22, 2007 at 3:15 pm
“A nice heapin’ plate of chicken and noodles over a pile of mashed potatoes….” My husband loves that! To him, it could only be better if it had a slice of white bread underneath.
When we first married, this was how he ate. Brown rice and beans was how I ate. We have learned a lot about compromise over the last 28 years. But secretly, I think he still wants the chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes over white bread.
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Danny said on August 22, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Mary, have you heard anything about an upcoming ballot initiative to split California’s 55 electroal votes by precinct (or region?)?
Don’t know about you, but I think that would be way cool. California would be “in play” for the first time in forever. Makes absolutely no sense for us to be eternally ignored by both parties while having to listen to what is going on in Iowa and New Frickin’ Hampshire.
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LA mary said on August 22, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I hadn’t heard about that one. I had heard about moving up the primary, which it seems every state is talking about doing. We’re going to end up with three year campaign if the primaries start a year before the election. I’m hearing dates like Jan. 8, 2008 for the first primary. I don’t know if I can stand the bullshit that long.
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Dorothy said on August 22, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Aww man, a two-word googlenope? Now there’s a challenge!
UPDATE
I did it in two tries, Kirk – the successful one was “iambic quilt”. Unbelievably, “xylophone socks” brought up two matches!
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Danny said on August 22, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I know what you mean. I reached my limit about two months ago and find myself listening to music a lot more these past few weeks. And at night, forget about the news channels. Instead, History Channel, National Geographic, etc.
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Kirk said on August 22, 2007 at 4:18 pm
You’re good, Dorothy. I tried and tried one day some time back and couldn’t get anything under two.
EDITING WINDOW UPDATE
“Stradivarian spelunker” yielded one hit.
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Jolene said on August 22, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I got five hits for “heavenly cabbage”, but I appear to be the first person to have considered the possibility of “heavenly liverwurst”.
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Michael said on August 22, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Michigan sure looks mutated in the Googleverse, doesn’t it?
Also: I’m disappointed that Puerto Rico is not part of Google’s United States.
Also also: “Magyar frijoles” seems to be a fresh new concept in cuisine.
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LA mary said on August 22, 2007 at 7:35 pm
There were lots of hits on jellyfish tampax. Go figure.
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brian stouder said on August 22, 2007 at 8:47 pm
well you canNOT find a two word googlenope wherein one of the words is ‘sex’. I tried titanium sex, quark sex, artichoke sex (which produced, amongst many many other hits, “Synonyms for these and other phrases can be found in The Bald-Headed Hermit & the Artichoke, a unique guide to the lingo of sex”), spatula sex (“Spatula’s make great sex partners. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.“) subatomic sex, plaster sex, sex shoehorn…..and none of these produced less than hundreds of thousands of hits.
So, now I have a headache (a bit of irony there, somewhere), and I wanted to say that I think assigning electoral votes to the congressional districts is a TERRIBLE idea! Think about it. Kerry won California in a walk; any change that delivers less than all of California’s electoral votes to the winner of the state is simply a gift to the Republican nominee. And indeed, once they start fooling with the presidential electoral arrangement, then the only thing to do is pitch the whole thing over the side and go to direct popular elections.
between that and a single national primary day, issues important to states like Ohio and Illinois and and Missouri can just go to blazes, and the northeast and the west will choose all our presidents – with a little input from Texas and Florida.
I think there should be a lottery after every presidential race, to decide which states go when in the primary process
PS – by the way, check out Leo’s site, where the issue of the deranged Columbus hermit who shot the teenage girl was addressed, and which triggered dozens of responses….overwhelming on the side of the SHOOTER and against the young lady! I recall reading hereabouts that the Columbus paper’s comments section pitched over into the deep dark gun-nut abyss, and this thread pretty much did, too
http://openingarguments.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/spooky/
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alex said on August 22, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Googlenopes? Hell, I get those every day. I transcribe doctors’ writing (handwriting, mind you) for a living and every day I see new pharmaceuticals and new acute ailments that have never seen the light of day or the black of ink on the page. I depend on google to solve riddles by getting it partly right. To do this I subtract letters until I get hits. And a fair amount of the time it works.
Fun reading about women passing clots, surgical tools, etc. You think health care is fucked up? You don’t know the half of it. Please, whatever you do, don’t get sick in the US of A. Or try to sue an insurance company over it.
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velvet goldmine said on August 22, 2007 at 9:52 pm
John: You’re not alone in Connecticut.
Doesn’t have the ring of “You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania,” does it?
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Jeff said on August 22, 2007 at 10:01 pm
You can burn even more time, if astronomically inclined, at:
http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/ug_sky.html
New toys, same old 24 hours in a day.
Dorothy, i promise to stick my head in the office door my next trip past Gambier thru the bookstore!
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Jolene said on August 22, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Good lord, Brian. Those comments are scary as anything I’ve ever read. “Deep dark gun-nut abyss” doesn’t begin to describe the land where those commenters live. Sheeesh!
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leslie said on August 22, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Shout out from the California contingent!
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Dorothy said on August 23, 2007 at 7:46 am
Whoo hoo Jeff – I’m looking forward to it! My office is across the street from the bookstore. “Development” is over the door I believe.
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John said on August 23, 2007 at 8:08 am
Woo Hoo Vevlet G! Let’s hear it for USA’s 110 mile parking lot (commonly referred to as I-95)!
Danny, I grew up in Radford (stuck between Montgomery and Pulaski Counties). I do recall a camping trip to the Breaks Interstate Park in Buchanan County. It is (was, as the trip was 40+ years ago) a very remote and beautiful section of this country.
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Danny said on August 23, 2007 at 8:52 am
…And indeed, once they start fooling with the presidential electoral arrangement, then the only thing to do is pitch the whole thing over the side and go to direct popular elections. Between that and a single national primary day, issues important to states like Ohio and Illinois and and Missouri can just go to blazes, and the northeast and the west will choose all our presidents – with a little input from Texas and Florida.
Brian, I understand and partially agree, but the other side of the argument is that Caifornia consistently yields the Democratic candidate 55 electoral votes, in essence, spotting them one quarter of the votes they need to win an election. My vote has not counted in a presidential election ever (…pause while Mary genuflects and makes sign of the cross…lol!). And really, neither has any of the Democratically cast votes. We are all ignored out here, irrespective of the fact that we are the most populus state and have an economy large enough to qualify us as the seventh largest nation in the world.
Additionally, I question the supposition that issues specific to any locality are influenced by a presidential election. Traditional “midwestern” issues of big labor politics and farm subsidies also exist in California. I believe Cailfornia is just about the nation’s largest agricultural producer and surpassed Wisconsin in cheese a few years back. And though we don’t have the auto industry on the scale of some of the midwestern states, we do have big labor.
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brian stouder said on August 23, 2007 at 9:01 am
Jolene – agreed. The thing that struck me was that so many ‘abysmal’ gun people were so invested in this that they took the time to post.
One understands a little bit more about how a thing like sharia law (for example) can be imposed on a whole society, when so many people have such an eye-for-an-eye mentality to begin with.
Make that ‘an eye for any offense whatsoever’
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brian stouder said on August 23, 2007 at 9:06 am
Danny – good points; I would say candidates still beat a track to your state, so as to genuflect to the great Golden State golden goose.
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LA mary said on August 23, 2007 at 9:41 am
Danny, since we’ve elected W twice, I can’t say my vote has counted either. Since I’ve lived here (since 82) we’ve had Republican presidents all but 8 years.
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ashley said on August 23, 2007 at 2:23 pm
phylogenetic eucharism
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Carol Bradley said on August 23, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Hi Nancy,
I’m still reading you out here in Montana (esp. on days when writing block hits full force), so I take full credit for the shading you get there…
Cheers
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