the words! they burn! Or, possibly, bite.

[freckles_and_doubt]

My evenings have become somewhat babylonian in the last little while, but I am nonetheless finding time to rewatch Torchwood, on the grounds that dodgy sexual undercurrents and quasi-realism in contemporary Brit sf TV can only distract me from the dogdy sexual undercurrents and quasi-realism in my thesis. I am halfway through the stupid fairy episode, which is, the horrors of "Countrycide" emotional overwroughtness notwithstanding, the current favourite contender for the worst in the season. Last night I stuck, for the second time, at the bit where Jack gives Gwen an incredibly overwritten, pretentious and basically incomprehensible rant about the generally numinous, evanescent, liminal and indeterminate nature of whatever interdimensional entities are being used to occupy the cultural niche labelled "fey": I had to pause the media player in order to froth, gnash and excoriate the name of the scriptwriter. People don't talk like that. I am starting to believe that I was unduly harsh on poor old Captain Jack: he emotes perfectly well if you give him something reasonable to say.

Life is very full of curriculum advice, honours dissertation draft annotation and postmodern feminist criticism, but I cannot pass up this opportunity to support a Google-bombing attempt. Neil Gaiman wrote two new movies in the time that it took me to type Penn Jillette. Not that the Google search engines are going to be affected in the slightest by the fleabite that is my blog, but it's the first time Neil Gaiman has asked me to do anything, and who am I to refuse?

Which reminds me. There are fleabites all over my legs. Unless they're spiderbites, or bedbug welts, or a sort of ankle-level rash brought out by irritation overload from Torchwood dialogue and too much mention of performativity. Either way, not amused.

Comments

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

(whispers) Christopher Eccleston is in episode 12 of Heroes... :)

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I had heard, yes, but was concealing my fangirlish glee behind a façade of dignified indifference. Is it working? ;>

Can't say I like the face-fungus, though. I will have my men clean-shaven.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Please explain to ignorant little me, what is Google bombing (everyone oin the world all Googling something at the same time?) and what does it have to do with Neil Gaiman's blog? I didn't go trawling through past entries ... thought it easier just to ask you ...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Google bombing is a technique for artificially influencing the appearance of a term or name in the Google search engine rankings. You do it by encouraging vast hordes of allies to link to your page on their blogs, which causes the search engine to believe that your page with that term is more important than any other page with that term.

This has huge political possiblities: recent googlebomb attempt include one which made the official George Bush biography the first search hit for the search term "miserable failure". The Smart Bitches had a similar field day with the Bill Napoli hella-rape speech - they managed to kick their link, with a searing attack on his rant and an attempt to redefine "Napoli" as a verb, to the top of the rankings for a search on Napoli's name. (Go on, Google Bill Napoli, I dare you!) There are lots more examples in the Wikipedia entry. Neil Gaiman is trying to googlebomb Penn Jillette, who's a friend of his who's just been amusingly rude about Gaiman on Jillette's radio program, more or less as a prank.

You'll notice that I edited the post to change the link text in that hyperlink. That's because I typed the above from memory and then thought I'd better check my facts on Wikipedia, and realised that the link text is actually the important bit when leading innocent search engines astray.

p.s.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's a term for everyone in the world Googling you at the same time, other than possibly "Orlando Bloom", but if everyone in the world hitting your site at the same time you've been slashdotted.

I find it enormously interesting, in a meta sort of fashion, to note that if you google "miserable failure" now, you'll pull up fifteen or so news articles talking about the resurrection of George Bush's reputation after Google pulled the plug on the bombing attempt. Guilt by association at one remove is still guilt by association :>.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

Well, my favorite search "incompetent idiot" still points to our Minister of Communications.