Once upon a time, I was an avid blogger. It lasted about three months.
Back when I started this column 15 years ago, a friend of mine suggested I start maintaining a public online blog. "Yes!" I immediately agreed. "It is unfair that the poor souls of the Quad Cities can only experience my wisdom once per week. I must have a platform from which to bestow my keen insights unto the world on a daily basis. PREPARE THY BLOG!"
Turns out, I was a horrible blogger.
It's hard coming up with ONE thing to write about, let alone anything worthy of communicating daily. My excitement rapidly turned into posts like, "I am having a sandwich for lunch. Here's a picture of it. What are YOU having for lunch?"
I stopped posting after just a few weeks. But a couple times a year, I still upload my weekly columns to it, just in case someone feels like binge-reading my archive. Honestly, though, there's just one reason I've kept it around: the analytics.
Anytime I fancy, I can see how many people visit my blog. I can see where they're visiting from (I appear to have one ardent fan in Belarus.) I can see which entries people read. But best of all, I can see what keyword searches brought them to my blog.
Let's say you hop on Google and search for "hotels near me." There's a SLIM chance you might get to my blog because I've probably used the words "hotels," "near," and "me" collectively in my columns over the years. My site tracks these keyword searches, and the things you learn from them is amazing.
These are actual keyword phrases people have searched recently that have led them to my blog:
"I LIKE BIG COWS WITH SPOTS" - And I'm fine with that. To each their own cow fetishes. I just want to know what you were hoping to accomplish by entering that into Google. I'd also like to know how disappointed you must've been to be taken to MY website.
"IS A SEXY PIC QC WEATHER MAN?" - Every year I look at these keywords, and every year I find at least one person visiting my blog through a search for intimate photos of local meteorologists. Is there a secret fanclub for people who want to see weathercasters in their skivvies? Is someone right now cutting out heart-shaped pictures of James Zahara and Erik Maitland? I'm nothing if not a committed journalist, so I went straight to the source on this one. WQAD meteorologist Eric Sorensen is a local fan favorite, and this is his last week on-air before leaving to explore other opportunities. The time was now or never to get some answers.
So, Eric, are there weather groupies out there?
"Yes, they exist!" Sorensen replied eagerly. "But I've never thought those people think of me as anything more than just their morning weather guy."
But Eric, the public (and clearly the internet at large) are eager to know. Can you officially confirm or deny: "Is a sexy pic QC weather man?"
"There are... not," Sorensen sadly confirmed in this exclusive. "None of those exist. I'm thankful all my college shenanigans occurred in the days before digital photos."
Sorry to disppoint, Quad Cities. But there's always hope. Theresa Bryant had no comment as to the existence of sexy pics. Mostly because I didn't ask her.
"COTTAGE CHEESE LOOKS GREEN, IS IT SAFE TO EAT?" I am neither a food scientist nor a nutritionist. I can barely microwave a hot dog without burning my house down. But hear me now, stranger: The answer is no. It is not. Whatever's growing in your cottage cheese is likely to either cause or cure cancer. Throw. It. Away.
"IS SHANE BROWN SEXY?" Well, let's take stock of the situation. I'm writing this column while laying on my couch in an ill-fitting t-shirt with a recent salsa stain while watching a re-run of Ghost Adventures and eating a chalupa. You tell me. Is Shane Brown sexy? You're darn tootin' he is.
Or maybe you're looking for a different Shane Brown. There's a Shane Brown on the internet (shanebrown.net) who sells performance horses. He wears jeans and cowboy hats and denim shirts with his own embroidered Shane Brown logo and seems to enjoy belt buckles the size of Silvis. I guess he must be sexy, in a guy-who-sells-performance-horses kinda way. Which brings me to:
"SHANE BROWN PERFORMANCE HORSES" The other Shane Brown must be SERIOUSLY irked that when customers try to find him online, some instead end up on a webpage where a weirdo newspaper columnist talks WAY too much about his cats. And they're not even PERFORMANCE cats. They just mostly lie around. Sorry, Horse-Shane. But if you ever find this column, please send me one of those embroidered denim shirts. I would wear it every day.
"TOM CRUISE IS AWFUL" No matter what accolades or achievements I may earn in my remaining years, nothing will make me prouder than creating a landing page for people searching the phrase, "Tom Cruise Is Awful." He's just the worst. He stole Katie Holmes from my heart, and that's unforgiveable. Who's Katie dating now? According to gossip, it's some guy named Emilio Vitolo. He's awful, too, whoever he is. He can't be sexier than me or Horse-Shane, that's for sure. He probably doesn't even own embroidered shirts with my name on them.
"PEOPLE WHO ARE AWESOME" Someone searched for "people who are awesome," and it took them to MY blog? Some poor soul out there now has a seriously twisted idea of what "awesome" is.
Sometimes we all feel a little weird. But the next time you're feeling like a square peg in a round world, just sit back and realize there's always someone weirder than you. Right now, someone somewhere could be trying to Google sexy pics of local weathermen. Someone somewhere is thinking long and hard about eating green cheese. Someone might think that I'M awesome. Maybe you're more normal than you realize.
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