Confederacy of a Dunce - Site visitors

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

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As a blogger who hasn't been at it for so long (110 entries and not quite 9 months), eventually I must come to the time when I express amusement and befuddlement about the search terms that bring visitors to my site (perhaps in part as a not-so-subtle announcement that the blog is being read by more than just my parents, siblings, spouse and relatives-in-law [insert obligatory in-law joke here]). Now is that time; sorry about that. I've already mentioned the frequent visits by referral spammers (here) but now I'd prefer to discuss real visits by real people. Most of my regular visitors seem to come from bookmarks or (one of a few) blogrolls, and occasional visitors follow links from other blogs (thanks for linking me!). And then there are those who reach me by web searches. Especially Google's fairly recently-launched blog search. As it turns out, here are the top 5 search terms in the past month or so:

1. Inzest: (German translation of "incest". Who would have thought my post about the Inzest-Baby would be so popular. Yes, I do come from Indiana. Yes, my parents do live in Kentucky. That doesn't mean anything in this day and age! Anyway, I suspect (hope?) most of these visitors are leaving entirely unsatisfied.

2. Zigni House: (Eritrean restaurant in north London). My review was a good one and there are not so many other reviews of this place online (undeservedly few!). I'm going there again soon, I promise.

3. Confederacy of Dunce: I'm pretty sure these are all misplaced references to the excellent novel A Confederacy of Dunces which is of course the inspiration for the name of my blog. I share perhaps a few too many characteristics with a particular character in that novel.

4. Boswelox: I was irritated at the pseudo-scientific tone of advertising (boswelox is frankincense + manganese), and I'm not the only one curious about this mysterious, amazing substance which (allegedly) helps reduce the appearance of lines caused by facial micro-contractions. Bah!

5. Sawney Beane: Lots of people are curious about this legendary cannibal about whom I wrote back in the very early days of my blog (only my seventh entry!). He's also known as "Sawney Bean", and apparently Sawney is a nickname for Alexander. No official word yet on whether he really existed, though. Here is the original post (in which I take a fairly a-sawney-ic position).

I can't leave this topic without mentioning my favorite searches of the month (none of which are actually relevant to anything I've written). Special credit is due for the MSN search: do girls fart. Although I have not written on this subject before I will officially reply with a solid "Yes". Second favorite is transporting a motorbike in an inflatable boat. Although I haven't written anything about this before either, I think I'll step forward with an equally solid "No". Finally there was gorge warshington. I'm not quite sure how this found me, but nonetheless it did (But not any more. If you google gorge warshington dunce, you get only one page [not mine]). I like this alternate spelling and may adopt it myself.

meta

Wednesday, October 05, 2005 12:46:36 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Disclaimer | Comments [4] | Related posts:
Mystery plant (not a pot plant or a pot plant)
Spammer names
A beard of burnt up black
Spammy, spammy, even more spammy
An unexpected extended silence over in these parts
Blogging for the obsessive-compulsive sort

Thursday, October 06, 2005 7:49:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

I would like to brag about having yahoo referrals from "wreckless driving teen". Particularly pleased that, when I allowed myself to make such a search, there were several websites promoting products to prevent "RECKLESS" driving among teens.

The Sister

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 11:47:01 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Oddly it seems that "reckless" and "wreck" have quite different etymological origins. Reckless comes from the Old English stem recce/rece, Old High German ruacha/rocha meaning "care", while "wreck" is related to Old Norse wrec/wrek meaning "to drive" (see also wreak and wrack which are also related).

The Dunce

Friday, October 14, 2005 12:53:28 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Who is this 'Dunce' character and why doesn't he get a life?

Noblesvillian

Friday, October 14, 2005 5:26:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

He has a life and that life is words.

The Dunce