The Bemused Flange

Sometimes the human race just scares me.

Picture the scene. I finish and publish my last post, do my usual quick check and then look at my stats.

Now usually I play around with the stats a bit, the service I use gives a lot of information. For example, I’ve discovered that in the past 2 weeks I’ve obtained quite a following in Malaysia… and I have no idea why.

Well yesterday was a momentous occasion for my site. I actually got a visitor that found this site through a search engine.

Finally, Google had found me.

So what’s the connection? How can this site finally being listed on Google cause me to fear the human race?

Well, I’ll tell you.

My stat service allows you to see what words your visitor put into the Google search bar that led him to your site.

Do you want to know what keywords got that guy here?

Brace yourself.

“Cindy Crawford is washing her face in milk.”

Oooooookaaay. Is anyone else strangely weirded out and scared by this?

You see, I have a post on here that mentions Cindy Crawford and washing dishes. Google apparently saw the words ‘Cindy’, ‘Crawford’ and ‘Washing’ and directed the weirdo this way.

Can you imagine the mental picture that popped into my head when I saw that? It should have been a moment of triumph for me. Getting listed on the major search engines can do wonders for your traffic. It turns out my first step on the road to a worldwide audience was actually late night porn surfer with a strange milk fetish. I’ll never be able to look at a ‘Got Milk?’ billboard again without shuddering.

I feel dirty and used. Instead of arriving here and being impressed by my sparkling wit and edgy writing style, I was nothing but a minor annoyance and red herring in the path of this guy’s blurring wrist.

I’ll be showering for a week.

You see, one of the great things about the Internet is that it lets you see and come into contact with a huge cross-section of human life. Conversely the biggest problem with the Internet is that it shows you that you never want to actually meet most of that cross section.

Let’s face it, one of the things the internet has proven is that no matter how big a weirdo, no matter how much of a social deviant you are…there’s thousands of people out there that are just like you. The Internet is the only communications medium in the known universe where you can say “Show me pictures of Japanese dwarf amputees wearing tartan jackets having sex with rabbits” and it replies “10,000,000 results found, please specify type of rabbit.”

Now I’ve never really believed in ‘normal’. In my own experience, anyone who is completely normal comes across as just plain weird. Lets face it, when we’re alone, we all do weird things. You know…trying on a teacosy, pretending to ‘shoot’ bad guys with a drill…there are also very few men who haven’t pushed their wedding tackle between their legs and looked in the mirror to see what they’d look like if they where a woman.

However, if you ever feel that you’re truly weird, surf the Internet for a while. There are people and websites on there that would make even the most dedicated weirdo raise his eyebrows. For example, I recently discovered, through a name generator, that my punk band name is ‘The Bemused Flange’. This site had literally hundreds of thousands of hits. This is how we spend our time, folks…and what’s worse is that this is a very, very mild example of Internet weirdness.

There are websites dedicated to the strangest things. For example, ‘Cat buckaroo’ (see how many objects you can balance on a sleeping cat), Worlds best beards, ‘Manties’ (panties for men), the VCR clock (a page that just flashes 12:00 over and over). I could go on all night.

Again, these are mild examples, but there are plenty of websites that are downright, pant-wettingly weird. Take for example, http://www.cryingwhileeating.com/, which features…you guessed it, people crying while eating.

People have actually taken the time to film themselves eating and crying…then gone to the trouble of transferring it to their computer and uploading it. What a complete and utter waste of time, energy and technology! Who would actually bother to spend time and disk space in order to download a video like that?

“What are you doing today? I’m going to the ball game. Wanna come?”
“Nah, I’m going to spend a few hours watching a fat guy from Sweden cry while eating a chocolate éclair.”

The list goes on, there are so many websites in the completely weird, completely useless and complete waste of time category, that I could literally spend the rest of my life finding and listing them…and not even scratch the surface.
Some truly weird sites are such classics as ‘The Condiment Museum’, ‘The Toilet Paper Museum’ and ‘How to Cook with Lava’. This is what world culture has come to.

Now I remember when the Internet didn’t exist. Hell, I remember when modems didn’t even exist. When the internet first came onto the scene, it was hailed as ‘The Information Super Highway’, it was going to revolutionize our lives.

It started in a very serious way. As any geek knows, the conception of the internet was the result of the need for a communications system that could survive a nuclear war. No matter how many nodes where taken out, you could still route a message through the remaining ones.

Of course, the sheer commercial appeal of the Internet was hard to miss, and it was quickly adapted for civilian use. It had the Universities drooling…imagine being able to share information from across the world instantaneously! The ability to send sound and video across the world for the price of a local phone call! What a revolution!

It made international borders meaningless, and for the first time in history, created a forum where the citizens of the world could share opinions and ideas freely. Truly, we entered a golden age of international communications and the free exchange of ideas! What a truly enlightened and noble undertaking!

However, what do we use this amazing revolutionary technology for?

Sharing pictures of gigantic turds. (Hey everyone, look at this basketball sized chocolate mud baby I made last night!). Arguing whether Captain Kirk is better than Jean-Luc Picard (Lots of Cheetos and Mountain Dew spilled over that one). Downloading pictures of Janet Jackson’s nipple at the Superbowl. Buying a home-made Yoda sock puppet on ebay…and the collectable Hitler Toby Jug might be worth a bid to!

…and of course, looking for pictures of Cindy Crawford washing her face in milk.

I despair of the human race…I really do.

Anyway, I have to go now and spend a few hours at the amazing babies with beards website.