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rinuePeriodically, I go to a randomly-selected search engine and enter all or part of my name because I am
(1) vain,
(2) bored, or
(3) paranoid.
Done once, this gives you the amusement of "hey, look, there's a wild dog with my name!" or "wow, is that person really trying to type in a jamaican accent?" "Cool! I have a napkin fold!" Done semi-regularly over the course of a year, you start to get a feel for the forces of the universe. Let's face it: even if you have a weird name like "Romie," the chances are slim that the websites you find are about you. Essentially, you are firing a cannon over the sea to make bodies surface, borne by the tides.
About a year ago, when I was followed by crows and black helicopters and all my assets were mysteriously frozen because I supposedly did not exist, most of the websites that came up were along the lines of "Romie is crazy." "I'm going to kill Romie." "Romie was found mostly rabid and feral." "ROMIE IS THE ANTI-CHRIST!!!!!"
Today, it's all incredibly bad poetry. One Romie is out there writing awful goth-punk drivel about the anarchistic darkness of his soul. Another Romie's teddy-bear rose-adorned kitchy website addresses the universal problem that "We met online a few months ago/Its neat how these friendships can sometimes grow/Its also strange how some quickly fall apart/And someone always ends up with a broken heart". In both cases, my computer froze up and refused to download any more of the sites, either to protect me from the horror or to save its own pitiful carapice.
I'm looking at almost a dozen bad Romie poets, and I'm left to wonder: what does it all mean? As a Romie, is my poetry automatically bad? Alternately, is my poetry so good that no good is left for the poetry of other Romies? Will I be mistaken for one of the bad ones? Why is this vast bad-poetry-by-people-named-Romie conspiracy just now emerging?
Of course, rationally, I must accept that most people who write poetry feel the need to share it, creating the probability of a number of vanity websites. In addition, most people who purport to write poetry write very bad poetry, and somehow entirely fail to recognize their own monstrosity; therefore, the critical majority of these websites will contain horrific maulings of the English language. Moreover, those who are good poets will most likely have their work published, negating the need for a vanity website. It's only natural given the percentage of Romies in the world population that many of them will write poetry, all of which has a high probability of being bad and all of which has a moderate probability of being online, especially if it is bad.
Still.
I think I'm going to go wash my eyes with dish detergent.
(1) vain,
(2) bored, or
(3) paranoid.
Done once, this gives you the amusement of "hey, look, there's a wild dog with my name!" or "wow, is that person really trying to type in a jamaican accent?" "Cool! I have a napkin fold!" Done semi-regularly over the course of a year, you start to get a feel for the forces of the universe. Let's face it: even if you have a weird name like "Romie," the chances are slim that the websites you find are about you. Essentially, you are firing a cannon over the sea to make bodies surface, borne by the tides.
About a year ago, when I was followed by crows and black helicopters and all my assets were mysteriously frozen because I supposedly did not exist, most of the websites that came up were along the lines of "Romie is crazy." "I'm going to kill Romie." "Romie was found mostly rabid and feral." "ROMIE IS THE ANTI-CHRIST!!!!!"
Today, it's all incredibly bad poetry. One Romie is out there writing awful goth-punk drivel about the anarchistic darkness of his soul. Another Romie's teddy-bear rose-adorned kitchy website addresses the universal problem that "We met online a few months ago/Its neat how these friendships can sometimes grow/Its also strange how some quickly fall apart/And someone always ends up with a broken heart". In both cases, my computer froze up and refused to download any more of the sites, either to protect me from the horror or to save its own pitiful carapice.
I'm looking at almost a dozen bad Romie poets, and I'm left to wonder: what does it all mean? As a Romie, is my poetry automatically bad? Alternately, is my poetry so good that no good is left for the poetry of other Romies? Will I be mistaken for one of the bad ones? Why is this vast bad-poetry-by-people-named-Romie conspiracy just now emerging?
Of course, rationally, I must accept that most people who write poetry feel the need to share it, creating the probability of a number of vanity websites. In addition, most people who purport to write poetry write very bad poetry, and somehow entirely fail to recognize their own monstrosity; therefore, the critical majority of these websites will contain horrific maulings of the English language. Moreover, those who are good poets will most likely have their work published, negating the need for a vanity website. It's only natural given the percentage of Romies in the world population that many of them will write poetry, all of which has a high probability of being bad and all of which has a moderate probability of being online, especially if it is bad.
Still.
I think I'm going to go wash my eyes with dish detergent.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-12 12:51 am (UTC)-C
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-12 02:37 am (UTC)A Multitude of Horrors
Date: 2003-05-12 07:25 pm (UTC)I went under the looksmart search engine and typed in "Jesse Kerr". I found a tribute to a Sgt. Stanley Jesse Kerr who died in Vietnam and then...
HORROR.
Someone from Tulsa University found the web site I had made when I was 18 and transfered it over to their server.
The description under the search was my first paragraph on the page with a note the guy had added "Hope you enjoy this trip into the darker side of gray matter".
And the site?
http://euler.mcs.utulsa.edu/~wilson/esmc/jessek.html
Error 404 not found when you try to get there... but it shows up on the search engine.
So yeah. More than a little creeped out.
Thanks Romie.