Popularity is a mystery

Oh, and despite my recent neglect of this blog, it’s somehow never been more popular, according to my daily stats.

This fact is as inexplicable to me as the above photograph, which provokes untold emotions in me.*

*They’re probably not emotions, really, so much as ill-defined attempts at feelings, abstracted through the vague unreality of the great Reality Filter. It’s hard to feel much of anything when encountered through such a foggy lens as the Internet. Except, that is, a general and ever-pervasive sense of disgust.

In absentia

Yes, I have been absent, neglectful, and perhaps even selfish in this.

But I felt the big hairy spider of the interweb breathing down my neck, and decided I’d better scamper for a while before my blood was drained into its veins, and my dried husk of a carcass disposed of casually to the left of the abyss.

But I took the opportunity to read some amazing fiction:

'Something Happened', Joseph Heller

Heller has never produced anything better than the stunning Catch-22, but then as Heller said himself, ‘Who has?’.

Something Happened has almost no narrative. It is largely a 550 page a-chronological rant from a successful corporate executive about his fears at work and the ways in which he hates his family. It is one of the most indicting chronicles of 1950s America I have ever read. The endlessly selfish logic, chauvinism, and the pathological fear of failure (as opposed to risking failure in pursuit of real personal greatness via honesty) is remarkably captured. It extends into a social and cultural phenomenon. And its filtered forms are frighteningly recognisable beyond the novel’s historical period and geography.

'Jesus' Son', Denis Johnson

I read this in an afternoon. I feel I ought to read it another two or three times. I’ve read the story Emergency previously – and loved it, for more than just the baby bunnies scene. The whole collection though is stunningly written and disturbing in equal measures. The short fiction form serves perfectly the junked out recollections of the narrator – who remembers and misremembers with little differentiation. What I mean is, the collection works as a whole and as its contained parts for the same reasons.  And the writing is so punchy and fresh, it’s a bit like having your nose broken, but enjoying the strong scent of blood.

I really want to see the film version. Unlike the film of the amazing short story collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace (apparently horrifyingly poor, though not necessarily why DFW topped himself), Jesus’ Son is supposed to be a-ma-zing.

Water: fucking amazing

Excuse my ignorance, but the other day I wondered – just why is water essential to all forms of life? Its use in cell structures was of obvious significance; but then why not some other liquid for the same job? And why else might it be so important?

After asking Google (aka God), I was answered with this fascinating layman’s summary.

I recall having learnt some of these points during high school bio and chemistry – such as water’s top spot as the only chemical compound to exist naturally on Earth’s surface in all three physical states (solid, liquid, gas)…

Now I wonder, what other terrific facts have been filtered from my brain through the sieve of time?

I’m twenty-six. There are a lot of factoids – thousands, millions! – that I must have learned and unlearned; discovered and lost; collected and catalogued amongst an immense filing system to gather dust.

I want them all found and returned. I want my facts back.

Killer Japanese seizure robots

Then there is this absolute all-time classic. (Now plastered with online wife-finding adverts.)

WARNING: most definitely will induce seizures in those prone to them.

BadgerBadgerBadger

It is the silly season after all, so I thought I’d post a couple of my all-time favourite silly videos.

This recent discovery totally blows my crazed mind. Very ‘o’ for ‘awesome’.

Really quite brilliant

That’s pretty much the only way to describe Matt Suddain (see his blog). Or one very appropriate way. As well as ‘hilarious.’

I encountered him via a friend who pointed out his semi-regular work in the Sunday Star Times.

Also, connecting a connection, I clicked a link on his blog and got a pretty realistic handful of tips on writing in the age of distraction.

Absence

Unexplained.

Dirty trails to here

Some of the most popular / “curious” searches that have lead to this blog, in no particular order:

• “midget women”
• “stick my prick in”
• “clayton weatherston”
• “fat hairy armpit women”
• “hottie hairy armpit girl”
• “prick mans website”

I make no judgements on the above searches, aware that my own interests are varied, albeit very differently to the above, and… this is the internet after all.

YES, THIS IS THE INTERNET AFTER ALL…

Public shaming

This entry into Google images brought forth a variety of more interesting results. The following are just a small example:

Pygmy twins

I thought it might be interesting to type a random phrase into Google and post the first resulting image. For instance, “pygmy twins.”

I guess my subconscious took over and the word pygmy slipped from recently remembered soft-news headlines concerning these critters of current celebrity.

And you know what, I was presented with not one, but exactly too-fucking-many images of these pygmy marmosets, residing at the Wellington zoo.

Apparently there is also a competition to name them.

I have nothing inventive to offer, sorry.

But let me try this Google thing again, thinking more expansively.