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boycott the Infoseek playpen.Jessika, Sara, Joanna and Johnny Boom Boom left today for Philadelphia, taking Monster Boy with them. They also took Karen the German Girl as far as Dulles International Airport so she can fly back to Deutchland Deutchland über Alles. My departing friends came to visit me just as I was getting off work. Jessika saw I was listening to Guided by Voices and started mocking me by pointing at me and saying "Guided by Voices" in a falsetto. So I reciprocated by pointing at her and squealing "Nick Cave." I wished I'd said "Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds" because that rolls off the tongue so well. We had the obligatory hug orgy at Joanna's van, though they all know I think hugs are meaningless. Monster Boy has left his car parked behind my house. He speaks of perhaps not returning for a month.
I accomplished much today at UVA's Cocke Hall, where I worked from 4pm until dark (8pm). As you can see, I devote much of my free time to my Internet projects. But the weekend was so impossibly complicated that my efforts to chronicle it will require far more time than the 8 hours per shift available at work.
The Fox network was broadcasting Addam's Family Values, a movie I've seen before. I sat and watched it with Elizabeth. It's a ridiculous movie, with as much preposterousness as a typical Simpsons episode. And also, like the Simpsons, it's chock full of interesting social commentary and real dark humour, not the fake kind one finds in Disney movies. A prime example of this is the gag where the dancing girl gets cooked in the wedding cake and thus, being dead, cannot emerge during the subsequent wedding. Hanging around the goths as much as I do, I have a heightened appreciation for the "dark side" glorification I saw in the movie. Examples of this include all the coldly casual violence attempted against an infant sibling by the Addams kids, Wednesday and Pugsly. Such darkness is wonderfully juxtaposed with what I so hate about the "non-dark-side," as exemplified by the superficial touchy-feely counselors and the snooty spoiled blond girls at a camp attended by the Addams kids. It's so refreshing to have my almost inexpressable ideas given life by a movie. A note to all fellow writers out there: this paragraph has been difficult to cobble together because the inter-relationships of the ideas expressed are rather complex. Do you know what I mean?
A prime example of this is the gag where the dancing girl gets cooked in the wedding cake. I took a pre-work nap starting at 10pm. When I awoke I felt horrible. Yet again, for fifteen more minutes of sleep I would have gladly sold my immortal soul.
Stephan had interesting tales to tell about life in the army. Particularly funny are his tales from Egypt, where he once bought camel shit thinking it was hashish. Also, the art of finding attractive women is complex but not impossible in a land where all anyone can see are ankles.
why I have decided that I hate Infoseek
Recently I have noticed that Infoseek has been refusing to automatically index some of my musings entries. In the past this was due to understandable issues such as over-zealous deployment of META tags. (Such tags are used to increase the relevance of certain words in a search engine's index.) But in the last few days another factor has been at play. I was clued into this factor by the new wording that pops up when a page submission is refused. The wording now says (in addition to the META tag statements):
In response to a number of complaints from our customers, adult-oriented sites are subject to a manual review process to ensure that they do not show up in non-adult-oriented queries. The process make take 7-10 days or longer.I discovered that all the pages that were not being indexed contained indecent language such as "fuck" and "shit." I haven't yet determined what words Infoseek trips on, but at the minimum, they include the familiar bad words that mommy said you must never say. "Hell" is okay though. Infoseek's auto-index robot automatically determines that any page containing a bad word is an adult page. And adult sites must be MANUALLY REVIEWED to ensure that they will not crop up in non-adult-oriented queries. Now...what exactly is a "non-adult-oriented-query"? Is a search for information on the Heaven's Gate cult a non-adult-oriented query? If so, then does it follow that no pages returned from such a query can contain naughty language? Does this make any sense to anyone? What is Infoseek's goal? Are they trying to be the search engine choice of pre-schoolers? Should I continue to use a search engine that in all likelihood will never get around to cataloging controversial content in the future?
What is Infoseek's goal? Are they trying to be the search engine choice of pre-schoolers?
I think this sets up a terrible precedent. If search engines can blindly block indexing based on the occurrence of simple keywords, it will have a chilling effect on web authors who post pages to those search engines. Since search engines constitute the major free marketing tool on the Web, such a chilling effect will be much like censorship. And while it's true that a corporation can decide what it wants to do with its resources, it is also true that the consumer of a corporation's product should be aware of what he is getting. It is my intent to expose this example of search engine monkey-business. Until they get their shit together, I would advise everyone to BOYCOTT INFOSEEK. I sent email to Infoseek telling them that I know what they are up to and that I intend to tell everyone I know. I urge you, my readers, to email them too.
If search engines can blindly block content based on the occurrence of simple keywords, it will have a chilling effect on web authors who post pages to those search engines.