Search String Story

Profgrrrrl has a wonderful new writing exercise/meme.  You collect search strings that brought people to your site, then construct a story out of them.  She suggests that you can adjust punctuation as needed.  I didn't, which accounts for some of the awkward phrasing here.  I also decided to challenge myself by using the strings in the exact order in which they occurred.  All of them are from today.

Watch out for the ravens; I hear them at night over the sound of the neighbor's barking dog kill kill kill they cry!  In no way do their caws seem like gentle folksy sayings.  These are perverse birds; shaving sex/japan, the ravens seem to murmur in the trees at night.  Or maybe I'm hallucinating; sometimes I dream that I see -- arranged in a Jamie Lee Curtis face shape no less -- frogs. Problems to be sure!

On such nights, when I stay up beyond all reason, I find myself asking questions like, what are the calories in hard liquor? And I find myself answering, the frogs know.  They always know.

Managing journal citations using Filemaker -- how does one do that?  Who would know?  Frogs.

I try to calm my nerves by doing kumihimo.  I try to diagnose my mental state by taking an aura quiz.  I wonder what it means, that I am a person who dreams about trolls screaming in all caps, HEART MURMUR AND DENTAL PROCEDURE PROP!

I flip on the television, and watch coverage of the ravens 2005 comp, but to my horror, the announcers sound like frogs -- like croaking frogs ravens croaking...  I must be going mad.  The sports coverage has shifted to a spinning basketball fingers "how to" program, but all I hear is the croaking of the frogs.  The frogs!

I cradle my troubled head, aching from its throbbing sinuses, and I think, "santa ana winds".  That's the reason I'm up too late, looking up facts about "victoria's secret pink" on the internet.  I should be doing something soothing, like sleeping or spinning silk, not stressing out about the pie chart [of the] u.s. budget, or wondering about what a xuan wu pen might look like.  Yet still I keep clicking through this unending online tales liberry, feeling freaked out anew by the gingerbread man lowermybills has trapped in a condom-like beaker of goo. 

Outside, in the pond frogs frogs -- Oh, my head hurts, stop croaking, you frogs!  If you keep this up, my picture's going to be the first one that you see when you go to take the bitch quiz!  Or I'll end up in the looney bin, staring at the strange drawings I've made on the walls:  frogs bug pictures a cartoon of ravens taking the bitch quiz, everywhere pictures of ravens!  Of frogs!  Lots of madly croaking frogs! 

I am so tired.  It's time to put on my martini pajamas, stop all this late-night internet debauchery, and let the cawing of the ravens put an end to this latest iteration of second-guessing syndrome.

Finis.

Comments

[Jimbo]

Hee, Hee. I'm going to have to try this one.

jwb

[profgrrrrl]

I really want martini pajamas.

[Rana]

They sound cool, don't they? I can't decide whether they would be pajamas with little modernist drawings of martini glasses on them, or some fabulous silk lounging pants and top to wear while drinking martinis. Either way, they'd be neat to have.

[Jill Smith]

Brava!! ::applauds::

I want sushi pajamas.

[Rana]

Oh, those would be cool, too! *grin*

Heh. Now I just need to get some faboo internet writing gig so I can lounge around all day in my pajamas and surf the web. *wink*

[Jill Smith]

I have one of those - it's called being a self-employed corporate writer/editor. It's sad what I get away with. Business casual has NOTHING on me!

The downside is the fluctuations in the work itself - hey, is it feast today, or famine?

[Jill Smith]

A quick google search of the famous Buffy line about "yummy sushi pajamas" netted me this.

I want wasabi sushi pajamas - is that too much to ask???

[Rana]

Nope! Those are cool!

[Amanda]

I picture martini pajamas as something worn by ultra-trendy women at cocktail parties in the 1930s. Oh, and I've actually got a pair of sushi pajamas! They're my favorite pajamas, even without wasabi.

Cool writing exercise idea. Unfortunately my latest referrer hits include someone who came in on a search for "what the hell is wrong with women?", so now I'm tempted to post an entry yelling at this person instead of trying it out. But there's always room for both.

[Rana]

Yes, please! Rants and stories are both good.

[Harrison]

These exercises will probably become self-perpetuating. Quoting the weird search strings in weirder ways will only result in yet weirder search stings leading to your site... Are we really prepared for where this going?

[Rana]

Hee. Yes, that thought had occurred to me as well. However, I think I will be driven truly mad if I keep writing posts like this, if only because the drumbeat of frogs, frogs, frogs punctuated by the occasional wah-wah of ravens is dreadfully persistent and repetitive.

It would be an interesting experiment for someone out there with a lot of time on their hands, to write some initial post and then make all subsequent posts consist of search strings, to see what happens.

[Harrison]

I guess I should be proud of this -- I'm now the number 10 search result on google for "fuck Bush." Of course, this means that that is far and away the most common search string that I get.

[Rana]

Hee. I bet you could get a good rant out if you did the writing exercise. :)