I'll take my traffic anyway I can get it

While this is probably in reference to the seventeenth century theologian Jeremy Taylor or the 1960s folk singer Jeremy Taylor, it still has me a bit nervous. The whole Switzerland being neutral thing often leads to the conclusion that inhabitants of the mountain nation are non-violent. Which couldn't be further from the truth. The typical Swiss is well armed, a terrible drunk, and bitter about one chocolate joke too many.

Plus anyone who is willing to make that extra effort and use the shift key . . . who knows what else they are capable of?

Early returns suggest 2008 will belong to Britney

There are things about Britney Spears that still interest me. But they are auxiliary things. Such as the continuing study of what constitutes the Britney-based economy -- which is by some accounts larger than the entire national output of Tonga. I've also been been fascinated by the Associated Press's open embrace of all things Britney, followed by the AP's very public preparation of the 26-year olds obituary, followed by an AP editor actively lobbying for her death so his news organization could finally get a little ROI on their soul selling.

Britney herself, not so much interest anymore. Although I haven't been able to avoid noticing that lately Britney has been doing a lot of semi-nude weeping (and not the good kind), has fallen under the influence of a pair of Afghan handlers with suspect motives, and, keeping with the international theme, has now developed British-accented alter-ego who is apparently quite nice. Also, there was something with Dr. Phil.

While it's always fun to see a crazy person attempt to represent themselves to the public as sane -- like Tom Cruise or what Britney used to do -- having a crazy person go out of her way to act as nutty as possible gets tiresome pretty fast. Unfortunately the public doesn't agree with me. In this chart of searched terms you can see not even the transcendent, Kennedy-approved and rigorously over-hyped power of Barack Obama can compete with Britney's full embrace of the crazy white chick routine:

Now that Lindsay is drinking again maybe she will be able to cut into Britney's market share, and spur Barack to victory. But history suggests otherwise.

Hillary has a fan in Australia

You can learn a lot from search engine inquires. Did you know just using information gleamed from keyword activity to this blog I became the first person in the whole world to break the story that former Security State Henry Kissinger probably takes human growth hormones? A substance rightfully banned from most of your better major professional sports leagues.

OK, fine, that story never caught on like I thought it would. But I have a new one. It comes from Perth, Australia:
You probably can't read that as is, but, if you click on it, it will enlarge and reveal the Aussie was searching the term: Hillary can't hide her sexual activities in the camp David swimming pool.

I think we know what Hillary he speaks of. And I'm sure you are wondering if these sexual activities involve the Muslim lesbian who follows the former First Lady around. If not, maybe the late Vince Foster. A dolphin?

So far, none of my own search engine research has unearthed anything about Hillary and a forbidden aquatic romp. But, feeling like I've been deputized by the inquisitive Western Australian, I will make sure to get to the bottom of this important development.

And prove, once and for all, that all the answers in the world lie in the questions we ask.

Internet dominance can be yours too

This morning, during my day of having fun with search engines, I checked out Google Trends. At the time, the daily searches list was dominated by a man named Seth Tobias. (He has since been bumped out of the top spot by the just-dead rapper Pimp C.) I had never heard of Tobias, but those of you who still have to watch financial news shows all day might remember him as an investment manager, and sometime-CNBC contributor, who reportedly drowned in his swimming pool after a heart attack back in September.

In today's New York Times, gossip rag that it is, new allegations involving Tobias's death were released. The article included this sentence fragment, which I believe is solely responsible for the dead man's completely out of nowhere search engine surge in the AM:


Now, if you go to my post below, I discuss how search engine superstars such as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears can control the Internet for years and years. Such domination is only for special people, and is more than the rest of us can ever hope for.

But what Seth Tobias proved this morning is that anyone is just a vengeful wife, a sack of cocaine, a watery asphyxiation, a couple basic cable TV appearances, and a male go-go dancer named Tiger away from completely dominating the Internet for a few hours on a slow day.

The results are in and Britney wins again

Each year, in the beginning of December, Yahoo! provides a report on the annum's top searches. This year the Internet service company has abstained from providing a list of top overall searches, instead offering up only top ten lists in narrow categories such as News Stories, Environmental Searches and Celebrity Downslides.

I can only speculate that this is a misguided attempt to class up the Internet by implying there could be as many people searching for information on recycling as there are looking for images of Paris Hilton's Hilton's vagina.

But it doesn't fool me, and I noticed the Celebrity Downslide list most resembles last year's top ten overall list. So, like I did in '06, I will analyze these results, and assess each searched term's prospect for search engine success in '08.

10. Owen Wilson
In 2007 it was revealed that Owen Wilson is a tragic clown, as a half-hearted suicide attempt stripped all the sheen from the Butterscotch Stallion's happy-go-lucky veneer. Expect Wilson to rebound in 2008 by appearing in quirky film roles opposite Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller. Also expect critics to finally recognize the existential pain Wilson brings to his seemingly flimsy characters. While it's doubtful he ends '08 on any top ten search lists, Wilson's chance for Oscar gold has increased exponentially.

9. Michael Vick
The bleeding heart and the crazy-marriage-proposal-lady will walk with the human murderer, but the canine killer walks alone. Vick learned this the hard way in 2007. Since he will likely be in prison, his '08 search engine prospects are bleak.

8. Tara Conner
For whatever reason, Yahoo! doesn't recognize the parameters of the Gregorian Calender. Which is why disgraced beauty queen Conner, whose cocaine-addled promiscuity made news in December of '06, makes the '07 top ten list. Although I've advocated hard for Tara's further ubiquity in the past, I will now concede she has been out of the spotlight for too long for an easy comeback. At this point, it would probably take a "leaked" sex tape. And by that I mean a shockingly explicit one, perhaps involving another more famous person or a snake.

7. Rosie O'Donnell
I don't pay a whole lot of attention to Rosie, so I wasn't even aware that in 2007 she "backslid." But I do think Internet user's fascination with Rosie is a historic victory for women everywhere of a certain weight and voice type.

6. Amy Winehouse
If you have Amy Winehouse in your office's "who will die next" pool, it's time to start thinking about who you are going to spend that 50 dollar gift certificate to TGI Friday's on. Where Winehouse ends up on '08's list depends solely on what else is going on during the week she meets the big crack dealer in the sky.

5. Nicole Richie
I'm a little surprised to see Richie so high, as I thought anorexia and terrible driving were becoming passe. The only way I see Richie repeating this position in 2008 is in the unlikely event she gets her hands on a 18-wheeler or an airplane.

4. Vanessa Anne Hudgens
I'd never heard of the Disney star until she forgot her clothes on her way to storming the Internet. Former Disney stars Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan were able to achieve web fame before they flashed their ladyparts. The fact Hudgens had to reverse that order is a commentary on our times.

3. Anna Nicole Smith
If she returns it's only at number one.

2. Paris Hilton
Having already done the prison thing and the sex tape thing, Paris needs to come up with a new shtick to keep the clicks coming in the coming year. There will be an election in 2008, and Paris isn't averse to getting attention by canoodling with prominent people. My God, I hope she picks Hillary.

1. Britney Spears
A five-time former winner of Yahoo's now retired "most overall searched" distinction, Britney brought it again in 2007. Spears proves crazy isn't static, and will adjust elegantly to life changes, such as new motherhood and divorce. Although I don't think Britney will stray too far from her '07 formula of drunken sex, chocolate cake and child neglect, I do expect Britney to repeat as champion in 2008.

The unintended consequences of marketing the NBA in foreign countries and other displays of rank perversion

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, practically none of my traffic comes from search engines any more. Which means, when I do get a search, I tend to try to figure out why, so maybe I can crack the matrix and capture more hits.

Increasingly, this activity has left me feeling unclean. If you are wondering why, check out my last two searches:
Darko Milicic, it happens, is very large and tends to respond violently and irrationally to perceived slights. Which is why I would like to take this oppurtunity to remind my readers that this blog is actually the last place you would want to go to find pictures of a naked Darko. And I have no intention of making it so -- increased traffic from Greece be damned.

As for the second one . . . That's really on the Daily Show. I know they like to keep things loose over there. And I know the rumor is black males would be the ones with the good sex simulating rhythm. But 15 year olds? For shame.

JSB gets a visitor from the awesome future

There was once a time when the search engine gods smiled upon The JSB, and hundreds of unwitting readers were sent this direction daily. That time has come and gone.

It's not like I don't get any search engine traffic at all. But I certainly never get anything normal, like "Lindsay Lohan naked" or "George Bush chimp." In fact, these days, you pretty much have to have an interest in erotically appealing furniture or a penectomy (or both) for the algorithms to deposit you at The JSB.

Or you can be from the future. The future in which evolution has done away with those annoying bodily functions, and has made the human body self-cleaning. A future called Columbia, Missouri.

Times readers don't know how to use the Internet

These are the top ten searched terms today on the New York Times' website. I like to check this list to see what the fancy people are thinking. Two through ten fluctuate, but one generally stays the same.

I'm not surprised The New York Times' highfalutin readership has sex on the mind. If there is one thing the Internet has taught us, it is that everyone has sex on the mind. Though I am taken aback, knowing what we do know about the Internet, so many of The Times' on-line readers would waste their time searching the paper of record for "sex."

Search engine queries are a window into humanity

While I appreciate the traffic search engines bring to this space, I do feel bad that my blog rarely addresses what searchers were actually seeking when they inquisitively clicked through. That in mind, and because it is a slow news day, I've extracted from my visitor log the most interesting and ridiculous search queries of the afternoon, which I will address below:






It is hard to believe how many variations of this question I get every time I check. So yes, Torrington, once and for all, old people are bad at driving. Very bad. On related note, fat people do not excel at ballet.






If you find yourself making such a desperate electronic query, it probably means the powder cocaine has been hopelessly lost. Either that or it was stolen by the sketchy friend of a friend who ended up in your apartment, talking your ear off, until 9 AM last Friday. I commend Riverhead for being the type who can, in theory, keep powder cocaine in reserve, but recommend next time it be stowed in a safe secure place -- like a sock drawer.





You will never learn drug etiquette by sitting in a chair in front of your computer. I'll tell you that much, young person from Houston, Texas. So get out of the house. Do drugs. Do drugs with different people from different backgrounds. Link up with Riverhead. It will seep in.





The length the Italian people will go to keep their birth rate down continues to astound.





This one baffled me. So fascinated was I, that I Googled "root of lohan" myself, and found that I am the only person in the history of the Internet to have published those three words in that order. By publishing them again, I believe I've secured this awesome legacy forever.



North Liberty isn't the first Google searcher routed to JSB to allege Henry Kissinger's legendary career was aided by taking the performance enhancing drug HGH. Click the shrunken log entry above, and it will enlarge to reveal the widely held suspicion that Kissinger's plenipotentiary aplomb and textbook realpolitik were results of more than just good Ashkenazi genes and a Harvard-sharpened brain.

Kissinger doping !?!?

One of the great things about being a famous blogger with an excellent Google page ranking is, through the recordable searches that bring traffic to your blog, you can get out in front of all the best rumors and gossip floating around the interweb. How about this doozy involving a former Secretary of State and the current performance enhancing substance of choice among Hollywood glitterati and major league ball players:






This really brings the whole Sino–American anti-Soviet alliance of 1972 into question. But they will never be able to take away his Noble Peace Prize. Or his access to power . . .

Jenna Jameson suffers the cruelest cut of all

Sad news from the world of adult entertainment: Jenna Jameson, best selling author and America's foremost porn actress, may be forced out of the business as a result of a vaginaplosty gone wrong. This weekend Jameson did nothing to quell the rumors of botched surgery by appearing at the Exxxotica Convention in Miami Beach weighing a skeletal 40 pounds less than her professional weight. The usually vivacious and fan-friendly star was also reportedly unprofessional and, at times, surly.

I've stumbled upon enough porn to know that the girls with butchered breast augmentations are still allowed to perform, so I can only imagine the horror of a mangled vaginaplosty -- a procedure I was not aware existed until today.

Some might think Jameson, 32, was entering into the twilight of her career anyway. I have to disagree. Just like baseball players are peaking at a later and later age every generation, better diets, exercise, performance enhancing drugs and surgery must be keeping our porn stars looking and feeling young well into their thirties.

Why couldn't have Jameson continued to dominate the porn game by combining her frozen-in-time looks with the technical precision and the -- yes I said it -- acting chops she has gleamed from 14 years in the business?

I wouldn't bet against her -- if she still had a good vagina, that is.

In our society the word tragedy is bandied about way too lightly. And this, this is no tragedy. But by publishing words such as porn and vagina onto my blog it increases the chances I will attract more awkward and hilarious Google searches along the lines of sexy vagina pornography.

These searches always seem to come from Iran or Saudi Arabia. I get a real kick out of that.

Google loses Viacom, me

Google had hopes that being the enormous, innovative new kid on the block would encourage the established media entities to submit to mutually beneficial friendships. If Viacom's one billion dollar lawsuit against Google subsidiary Youtube is any indication, Google might have to earn its friends the hard expensive way.

There was one, albeit small, media company Google had hook, line and sinker without speaking to a lawyer or spending a dime: Me.

My love affair with Google started about three weeks ago when I noticed The JSB's daily traffic had almost doubled. While I would like to think this was because of fascinating writing and word of mouth, when I looked into it I discovered I was getting an unusually large amount of traffic from search engines -- particularly Google.

For example, according to Google, I was suddenly the number one website in the whole entire universe for those looking for information on "Kenny Loggins plastic surgery." As I was for "Beyonce Knowles dies."

I was getting all sorts of new Google inquires in that off-beat vein. I just remember those two because they were so odd -- considering I never posted specifically on either subject -- and, in the case of Beyonce, thoroughly incorrect.

Google also cast me as the world-wide authority on any variation upon "how to smuggle marijuana onto an airplane." This was clearly triggered by a couple of posts I did on Quarterback Michael Vick's dimwitted attempt to do just that.

I know Google is always fiddling with its search algorithms, and I have noticed peeks and valleys in search engine traffic in the past. But this sudden page rank ascension shattered its way out of the normal ebb-and-flow. It was a delightful, ego-boosting mystery.

Then, last Thursday, it disappeared as quickly as it came. I'm no longer on the first page of "Kenny Loggins plastic surgery," and nowhere at all on "Beyonce Knowles dies."

As a result, my traffic dipped precipitously, and I have became depressed about what was not so long ago a comfortable reality.

So how about that Google? Figure out ways to usurp all the media content ever created and then sell ads on the side of the screen . . . what a business plan! Who came up with it? Tony Soprano?

Shakespeare: Like Sandler, only less funny

Ameican citizen and British resident Gwyneth Paltrow made waves from across the Atlantic last week when she reportedly said "the British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans."

Paltrow claimed she was misquoted and gave the half-probable Tower of Babel excuse that she was speaking seventh grade Spanish to a Portuguese newspaper, and now the quote is being translated back into English.

I would be willing to let her off the hook if she didn't have a history of making similar statements, in tenth-grade English, to English news sources. Also, Paltrow married perhaps the most boring man in the world and named her child "Apple," so she should probably keep herself five paces away from the nearest stone.

Nevertheless, you have to admit British people do sound awful smart and civilized when they talk old-fashion like they do. But are they smarter than us Americans?

I don't know. But what I can do is take a look at the UK's top ten Internet searches of 2006 in hopes of finding the answer. Because I don't fully comprehend the complexities of such an old, nuanced culture, I won't be able to analyze the results with the depth I attacked America's top ten search list. Instead I will provide a quick and dirty sketch and let the reader decide. In descending order, ten to one:

Kate Moss Coke-sniffing model.
Zinedine Zidane Ill-tempered French footballer.
Notting Hill Carnival Street festival (OK, that's sort of cultured.)
Borat Fictional anti-Semite.
Steve Irwin Excitable Aussie TV star and sting ray victim.
World Cup International sporting event.
The Ordinary Boys Rock band and Big Brother participants.
Big Brother Popular reality television show.
Pete Burns Cross-dresser and Big Brother participant.
Heather Mills McCartney One-legged former prostitute and Beatle tormentor.

The British list was, in fact, completely different than the American list, which was dominated by skin-showing, slutty types. So what does this say about Paltrow's controversial statement?

Not much, actually. But it is clear when Americans are thinking about sex the Brits are thinking about television.

And, between the Anglo cousins, there isn't a whole lot of Chaucer being read.

I won y'all

Yahoo, continuing its war against the month of December (alert O'Reilly!) crowned its top searches of 2006 today. The results were divided into categories such as top news story searches, top political figures searches, top sports team searches etc.

I've provided analysis of the celebrity-dominated top ten list of overall searches, as well as my thoughts on these high-riser's prospects for '07:

10 Lindsay Lohan 2006 just wasn't her year. She started strong, but ended on the verge of complete Andy Dick/Courtney Love-like meltdown that was as repellent as it was intriguing. The fact that she is aging in dog-years is not helping. Still, she is technically young and Lindsay's key for '07 is finding a happy place with her drug and alcohol abuse: One that will leave her slutty and without inhibitions, but still with the necessary semblance of coherence she lost in '06. If she can do that, and add say . . . a few nipple slips, she should threaten the top five next year.

9. Pamela Anderson The grand dame of Internet searches. Don't believe that bloated green fellow, it was Pamela Anderson who invented the Internet, and it's great to see her still getting credit for it. Pamela also reminds all of us old fogies it used to take a couple hours to download a 40 minute sex-tape. So much progress! All Pamela has to do to maintain her position in '07 is not die early in the year.

8. Chris Brown I'm assuming this isn't the deactivated Tennessee Titan's running back. Meaning I have no idea who this person is. I guess I could do a search on him, but I don't want to encourage his continued ascension. I'm hoping he (or she) will go away in 07.

7. Beyonce Knowles This one surprised me a bit. She is dating the rapper Jay-Z, but I don't think she ever does anything controversial or naked. Maybe this is a nod to good old-fashioned singing ability. The whole thing seems suspicious. Beyonce is the star of Dreamgirls, which is about to be released with Oscar buzz. That should give her a good jump on '07. To keep the momentum going, I recommend a plastic surgery scandal.

6. American Idol A television show. I assume it will be on next year.

5. Paris Hilton She is vile and despicable, yet Paris has proved a hard habit to break. While there are rumors Paris will explore her sapphic side in '07, I think maintaining her position requires nothing short of a drunken car wreck that results in multiple deaths.

4. Jessica Simpson In an obvious chasm between the world and me, I find Jessica to be downright scary looking -- and that's with the globs of make-up on. Nevertheless she has a worked hard to cultivate her image as America's foremost dumb blond, and she deserves everything she gets out of it. She probably needs to step it up in '07. The act is getting stale. I smell a sex tape.

3. Shakira Proof of the power of hip-shaking and America's growing Hispanic population. Shakira represents the future. But what will propel her to number one? Well, South Americans are notorious racists, and it is my belief Shakira is a racist tirade away from '07's top spot.

2. WWE It is no surprise a quasi-sport where pumped up men wearing tights preen and grapple is number two in the year we learned that everyone -- from cowboys, to congressmen, to clergymen -- is secretly gay. Until all gay men feel comfortable outside of the closet there will be a huge demand for WWE imagery.

1. Britney Spears Talk about finishing the year strong: In the past few weeks Britney has been involved in a high profile divorce, teased the release of a porn tape and most recently, flashed her vagina multiple times. Who knew the vagina flash is to a search engine competition as Mariano Rivera is to a baseball game? That's what '06 has taught us. No doubt, five-time winner Britney deserves her title. As usual, the road to victory in '07 goes through Britney Spears. And now, her vagina.

JSB comes to the aid of a lost high school senior

You can tell a lot about a person by what they "google." And it isn't always going to be pretty. That is why when AOL made hundreds of thousands of their customers search engine inquiries available on-line there was a public outcry and executives were forced to resign.

By the same token, you can learn a lot about a blog by the search engine queries that bring it traffic. This is unfortunate because most of the searches that bring people to jsb involve I-don't-want-know-why combinations of key words such as Justin Timberlake and gasoline, or Lindsey Lohan and testosterone. It is very embarrassing, and my only consolation is whoever devised the search would be even more embarrassed if they knew someone else could see that they did.

Well today I received a delightful respite from my typical search engine shame. Someone was directed to jsb because they wanted information on literary giant James Joyce's classic novel "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man."

In fact if you look at the specific search jsb is all over the top of the google results for it.

This all stems from a post I wrote on 6/6/06 about the devil and hell, which included a passage from the famously hard to comprehend book.

Even though I never actually read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, for the reason I just mentioned, the search still made me feel all high-school-AP-Englishy.

Which is a infinitely better than the parade of head-scratching, sleazy alternatives I am usually subjected to.