To Search, To Seek, To Find

I am sitting in the lobby of University Tire & Auto Center in Charlottesville, waiting for a diagnosis as to why my car's electrical system has collapsed. (I am hoping it is just a dead battery.) To pass the time, I have reviewed the search terms that brought the last 4,000 visitors to this blog and discovered, once again, odd and inexplicable examples of Googling.

After several other explorations of these phenomena, I have decided to retire -- at least for the moment -- substantial reflection on the numerous searches for nude, shirtless, or circumcised celebrities, or inquiries regarding the size of their genitalia. I am still struck, however, by the persistence of the rumor that actor Daniel Radcliffe ("Harry Potter") is or will be attending the University of Virginia (though you will note there is a new variation on this one, since people are now trying to find out if he has matriculated at Virginia Commonwealth University -- perhaps a judgment that Daniel was reaching too high with regard to UVa?).

Here, in alphabetical order, are the most recent illustrations of perplexing words and phrases that drove people here from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, AOL, Dogpile, and other search engines:

aaron carter's sex drive is high

catholic male masturbators

Corigliano + Flintstones

dick cheney dances at national press luncheon

dismally resuscitate

don ameche and log cabin republicans

flintstone lesbians

fried fish gay sex

harry potter going to virginia commonwealth university

lsd AND "history of the american flag" "stars and stripes"

naughty medieval limericks

"other uses" viagra

perpendicular milwaukee

Petition to have candidate removed from ballet Maryland template

ronald reagan's library and fundraising and assortment of foods

"Ron Paul" circumcision

"r. steven landes" idiot

star wars nursing scrubs

thought of son as a fellator

tony danza gay male prostitute

vomit sex

was pope benedict ix gay?

where to buy bongs charlottesville

why are gays always shirtless?

will they ever let the cowsills sing at fenway again

Of all these, the one that strikes me as the oddest and most inscrutable is "fried fish gay sex." Is this some kind of fetish that has heretofore had no proponents? Is it an expression of multiple hungers? Is there a restaurant somewhere in the world with a unique menu? Someone, please, tell me.

Twin Carnivals

Jason Kenney hosts this week's Virginia Blog Carnival, presenting it in a carnival-barker style that compels you to look behind the side-show curtain to take a peak at the freaks.

A couple of excerpts:

That guy who isn't that chef Emeril (but still makes a kick ass chicken and veggie dish from what I hear) has some thoughts on the Gay Marriage Amendment. If those don't tickle your fancy, consider this: If you take the tile of his post "My Thoughts On The Gay Marriage Amendment" and translate it to French using AltaVista's BabelFish and then translate it back into English, it becomes "My Thoughts On The Merry Amendment Of Marriage". So just by using the title and translations, we can all assume that he and everyone else who speaks of this "Gay Marriage Amendment" think it's a merry thing to do. Or so the French would have us believe. On a side note (because I've been staying on topic up to now), I'm Not Emeril's favorite Beatle is the recently late Billy Preston....

Kilo ventures into the great unknown and pulls back the curtain on the bearded lady we all know and love as Zogby Interactive.

Ghana knocked the US out of the World Cup tourney on Thursday and nobody in Virginia really cared....

Gasp in shock and horror as Rick Sincere recounts his lunchtime escapade with the one and only Dick Cheney!

Eerily and chillingly, Jason reveals the secret identity of well-known pseudonymous blogger The Jaded JD but mentions that next week's Virginia Blog Carnival host is so secret that not even a pseudonym is known. (Details about how the VBC works are posted at Commonwealth Conservative.)

Jason also notes that there is a special-edition carnival rounding up all of the postings about this month's Virginia bloggers' summit in Charlottesville. This is hosted by Semi-Truths, and it turns out that there were more reports on the conference posted than I thought. (I count 23 or 24 separate entries -- maybe more.) That Sorensen Institute: it motivates people!

While we're on the subject of writing on the Internet, let me close with a bit of doggerel I found in Ernest Lefever's new book, Liberating the Limerick. This is attributed to Maynard Kaplan:

A third grader who lives in Bucyrus
Has unleashed a computerized virus
That endangers us all
In large countries and small,
Excepting those still using papyrus.

'Liberating the Limerick'

Not long ago, I received an invitation for a book party to take place later this week, celebrating the launch of Ernest W. Lefever's latest publication, Liberating the Limerick: 230 Irresistible Classics.

I have not yet read the book, but I knew months ago that it was coming and am looking forward not only to reading it, but reading an autographed copy. (As you can see from the photo at left, Dr. Lefever and I go back a ways -- I think that picture was taken almost 20 years ago, on the night that Robert Bork received the Shelby Cullom Davis Award for Integrity and Courage in Public Life.)

To my surprise, Sunday's Washington Times featured Liberating the Limerick in a review by books editor Carol Herman, who writes of it:

Let's face it. For many people the limerick signifies a naughty little construct. Often salted with dirty words and an attitude to match ("There once was a man from Nantucket . . ."), the limerick lives in most imaginations as the drunken uncle of polite word play.

With the publication of Ernest W. Lefever's insightful and entertaining collection "Liberating the Limerick," all that, as they say, is about to change. As Mr. Lefever writes in the book's introduction, "This collection of 230 verses by fifty authors, past and present, demonstrates that limericks can be wise, hilarious, and often sexy without being obscene."

Herman wonders how Lefever, author of such serious-sounding (and, indeed, serious) books about public policy as Ethics and World Politics; Scholars, Dollars, and Public Policy: New Frontiers in Corporate Giving; Uncertain Mandate: The Politics of the UN Congo Operation; and Nuclear Arms in the Third World: U.S. Policy Dilemma, could come to edit a collection of light verse.

Throughout the book, Mr. Lefever shows that tackling even the most prickly issues need not be a dry or joyless endeavor. The inclusion of New Yorker cartoons throughout the book is lagniappe.

The question that will likely occur to readers first approaching this book is: How did Mr. Lefever, the founding president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the author of a dozen books on ethics and politics, and the holder of a Ph.D. in Christian ethics from Yale University, come to compile a book of limericks? Mr. Lefever writes: "Frankly, I don't regard this collection as a descent. Many, perhaps most, of these verses reflect facets of truth and virtue wrapped in irony and caricature."

Dr. Lefever told me that he has been savoring and collecting limericks since he was a teenager. He culled the 230 in Liberating the Limerick from about 9,000 that he has found and saved over the past seven decades.

The book has already gained praise from other authors who know something about humor. Actor/writer/game-show host Ben Stein calls it "startlingly wholesome" and "full of fun." Christopher Buckley, whose novel Thank You for Smoking has been turned into a successful movie (still in theatres) wrote his own limerick in tribute:

A tireless man named Lefever
With limericks did beaver and beaver
Producing a tome
You'll want in your home
It's delicious and deucedly cleever.

Liberating the Limerick is being released at just the right moment: Immediately available for summer beach reading and in plenty of time to become a Christmas stocking-stuffer.