CALL ME SNAKE

The analysis presented moments ago ("Downsize This," April 30, 2005) was flawed. When I Googled myself in March, I used my name and various aliases, but I forgot about the aliases in my most recent search. Correcting for that oversight, I got 2,620 results, a slight increase over the March tally. I still suffered a slight drop in "relevance," however, going from 630 in March to 611 today. But I'm not going to let that bother me since relevance, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. So long as I remain relevant to my mother and my children, I'm doing OK. On that score, I seem to be holding my own with my two-year-old, but my five-year-old has moved on and I fear my mother has done the same.

My tenant just got a job offer from Google today, which came in the form of a FedEx package. I accepted the package for her (though not the job) and that got me thinking of Google and how I hadn't Googled myself for more than two months (see "Googlesize Me," March 18, 2005). When I did so today, I received quite a shock: I'VE BEEN DOWNSIZED! In March, when I last went through this exercise, there were 2,600 results in all, 630 of which were deemed "most relevant." Today, I got only 2,260 results--a paltry 515 of which earned "most relevant" status.

I should say, by way of protest, that I consider this classification scheme highly subjective. That said, I can't explain my 13 percent drop in overall importance (as judged by raw statistics) and, more significantly, my 18 percent drop in "relevance." I thought I was doing pretty well, keeping a reasonably high profile, but the numbers don't lie: Apparently, I've passed my peak and entered the long decline that will continue until there's no further to sink at which point I will have reached my final destination, that being rock bottom.

ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE... For vanity cases who can't bear to miss a single reference to themselves, Google has a new feature, "Google Alerts," through which you can receive live updates via email every time you make it onto a new Google entry. Of course, the same technology could be used to inform you of every new listing on rutabagas, if that brand of turnip happens to be your main interest in life.

I've taken a big step into the unknown: I have joined a few, or maybe several, "web rings," which supposedly brings "Call Me Snake," the blog you know and cherish, into a larger community of (for want of a better term) blogdom. (I'll explain exactly what a web ring is later when I figure it out. For now, let's just say I don't have a clue.) This could be good for reasons commonly cited: cross-fertilization, synergism, and cross-fertilization. It could be bad for reasons commonly cited: "guilt by association," the "rotten apple" syndrome, and "guilt by association." Time will tell. But for now, please bear with me during what may prove to be an interesting experiment--one, I might add, that may transport us to the stratospheric heights of creativity or, conversely, drag us all, kicking and screaming, down to the lowest rung of the blogosphere.

I'm an overachiever, even when it comes to wasting time. I was watching the Celtics game earlier tonight (they were getting their asses kicked by Indy), when who should call but my nemesis Jungle Jerk. I said I didn't mind--and I didn't--because I was already wasting time with the basketball game. Why not save time by wasting it with him as well? Then I got to thinking, why stop there? I started blogging with the game on and Jungle J. on speakerphone, thus achieving the elusive "threefer"--i.e., wasting time on three things at once, which is a personal best for me but, I now sense, just the beginning.

I don't know about you but sometimes I need a little motivation to drop all my pressing responsibilities and start blogging. A sign I stick to my computer screen helps get me going: "There's no time to waste. Start wasting time."

File this under: "Isn't our country great?" Lawmakers in Arizona are trying to pass a bill that will allow people to bring guns into bars. It's a brilliant idea that will hopefully spread like wildfire (an apt simile?) to saloons throughout the land, conjuring up raucous, fun-filled scenes from movies like "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence." I can't heap enough praise on the wise legislators of the Grand Canyon State. At the risk of repeating myself, I can only say: "This is one heckuva country."

"Write about something!" a friend of mine has admonished. I would be inclined to ignore him, were it not for the fact that he is one of the few people on Earth I know of who is still reading this blog. (I can't get my wife to read it and my parents will only do so under extreme duress.) His advice certainly seems reasonable, were it not for the success of Seinfeld--perhaps the greatest sitcom that ever aired on primetime. They produced a show about nothing and made a fortune. So why should I write about something when I could just as easily--and more easily, in fact--write about nothing?

First our society went overboard on the "sorries," with people thinking they could apologize for abominations like the Holocaust and slavery. Now we're drowning in "thank you's." At the end of a TV show last night (a police drama, if you must know, though I don't watch TV; it just happened to be on) an unseen announcer said: "Thanks for watching." We are also thanked at the conclusion of every single TV news shows, though again I should stress that I don't watch TV news, which in my town consists solely of "deadly fire" coverage and impending storms that threaten to end civilization as we know it. Why are they thanking us? Probably because the product they're putting out stinks. Maybe if they put out some shows worth watching, we could thank them for a change.

There's a new word circulating around these days, and I'd like to put a stop to it. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, call me a curmudgeon, call me a jabbernow, but I hate the word "snarky." I don't know what it means and don't want to know, though I sense it's popular in "cyber" circles. Even bloggers, whom I consider to be the last bastion of sanity, are using it. But that will soon end. I promise never to use the word again. Now it's up to you to do your part. For starters, please don't refer to this site as "Call Me Snark."

By all rights, I should have missed last night's Celtics game. My two-year-old had a late-afternoon nap, which kept her up until 11 p.m., so I should have been reading "Whingdingdilly" to her. Instead I made her watch the last quarter of the game with me, and it was painful to see the Celtics fritter away their lead and let the Pacers back into the series. Don't get me wrong. I can handle defeat; everyone tells me it's an inevitable part of life. I just can't stand losing.

I was late in filing my Celtics playoff report, as I frankly admitted in an earlier post ("2005 NBA Playoff Report," April 25, 2005). But before you castigate me too severely, I'd like to relate a little story: Just the other night, a friend told me about an accountant, a relative of his, who took more than three years to file the income tax forms for a client, who happened to be another relative of my friend. Viewed in that light, the cited "day and a half lag" in my reporting was not late at all. On the contrary, it was three years early.