| Thurs., July 22, 1999
"Please
be considerate and turn off your bullshit detector before taking your seat
so as not to ruin the experience for others. Thank you."
- Sign
spotted in a Broadway theater lobby.
I'm alone again. My wife is visiting
relatives in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. In sequence, of course
- not all at once. Either way, I'm still alone.
Well, except for my cat, Jester.
And the 230 fonts I have installed.
And the lawyer and judge she left me with in a noble attempt to help me
keep my mouth shut.
Turns out it was that lawyer and judge who got the most exercise when I
was talking with my neighbor this morning.
"Isn't it awful about JFK, Jr.?" that neighbor had asked me right off the
bat.
"Objection!" the lawyer barked. "Neighbor is leading the conversant."
"Sustained," the judge ruled.
"What do you think about the JFK Jr. thing?" my neighbor rather sheepishly
tried again.
"Objection!" the lawyer barked once more. "What Dan thinks is irrelevant,
immaterial, and unverifiable."
"Sustained," the judge agreed.
A quiet pause followed.
"Hot day, eh?" my neighbor suddenly hit me with a surprise change of subject.
"OBJECTION!" the lawyer bellowed. "The neighbor is badgering the
conversant!"
"Overruled," the judge opined - apparently on the grounds that I looked
as if I could use a good badgering. "Neighbor will repeat the question."
My neighbor moved in towards me slowly while casually examining her nails.
"Hot day, eh?" she whispered in a transparent attempt to catch me with
my guard down.
"OBJECTION! OBJECTION! OBJECTION!" the lawyer positively erupted.
"The conversant is NOT a trained meteorologist! He is NOT a thermometer!
He - "
"Sustained," the judge ruled while fanning himself with his gavel.
As my neighbor charged the judge with a hoe, I slipped home to get in some
wild living of my own before my wife returned.
The first thing I did was head to the Internet and attempt to answer that
age-old question, "What one-word search term will produce the greatest
number of hits?"
I used the Excite search engine for no good reason at all.
I'm like that when I get wild.
After several hours of unholy, ecstatic, even orgasmic surfing, here's
what I found out:
1.
1999 - 7,517,180 hits
2. 1998 -
7,017,123 hits
3. 1997 -
4,973,701 hits
4. News -
4,045,683 hits
5. Internet
- 3,776,557 hits
6. 1996 -
3,776,557 hits
Blink. Blink. Funny how "Internet" and "1996" each produced
exactly the same number of hits, eh? That made me recheck my figures.
That's when I found this curious fact;
Microsoft
- 830,589 hits
Death - 830,589
hits
With trembling hand and quivering lip, I continued my research.
Computer
- 2,498,738 hits
1995 - 2,498,738
hits
Book - 1,897,305
hits
House - 1,653,276
hits
Money - 1,653,276
hits
1994 - 1,653,276
hits
Music - 1,653,276
hits
Love - 1,543,297
hits
Space - 1,440,633
hits
Travel - 1,440,633
hits
America - 1,344,800
hits
Games - 1,255,341
hits
Sex - 1,171,833 hits
1993 - 1,171,833
hits
2000 - 1,171,833
hits
Canada - 1,171,833
hits
California - 1,171,833
hits
Chat - 1,021,113
hits
Car - 953,187
Weather - 889,779
hits
God - 675,614 hits
Dog - 363,610 hits
Cat - 316,842 hits
Jesus - 276,091 hits
Gates - 159,178 hits
I got a bit giddy after this. I started wondering how "Ohio" stacked
up. I found out that Excite returned 512,997 hits for it - compared
to 447,016 for China. Ohio has 11 million people spread over about
41,000 square miles. China has about 100 times as many people spread
over 90 times the area.
This gave me a bad case of the giggles.
My cat Jester wandered in to see what the hell was going on. I good-naturedly
did a search for "Jester."
Ouch! Just 10,862 hits.
"Sorry, Big Guy," I tried to console him. "That's still better than
some get." And just to prove the point, I typed in "mud."
OUCH! Excite gave me 85,668 hits for mud!
I quickly typed in "dirt."
How was I to know that Excite would vomit up 105,319 hits??
"Now, there must be a less popular word than 'Jester'!" I assured
my pet while wisely resisting the impulse to see if "vomit" was one of
them.
I tried "spit" instead.
Would you believe 15,008 hits for "spit"? Well, the actual answer
is 35,008!
Including this one which I actually found utterly charming. It's
where I learned that in my life I've probably produced something like 2,491,830,004,125,000
spit cells.
I hid my excitement from Jess and pressed on.
"Liverwurst" - 261 hits.
YES!
Jess wandered off, happy.
Leaving me with the question, "Is there any word I can type that will
produce 0 hits??"
Tired as I was, shaky as my hands were, I continued my quest for knowledge.
I was determined now to find THE word.
Nothing
- 1,021,113 hits
Oops. I ignored that major embarrassment and continued after carefully
grabbing a dictionary and randomly flipping through its pages.
Laparotomy
(abdominal surgery) - 1383 hits
Etymon (an earlier
form of a word) - 136 hits
Stannic (of or relating
to tin) - 284 hits
Wormy (full of worms)
- 817 hits
Zyzzyva (tropical
weevil) - 195 hits
Zoochore (a plant
dispersed by animals) - 3 hits
I took a deep breath. So close! Of those three hits for "zoochore"
two had been for French language sites.
I worked the tension out of my shoulders. I wiped the sweat out of
my eyes. I pressed on and I pressed on hard.
Zoold (an
organic cell or organized body that has independent movement within a living
organism, esp. a motile gamete such as a spermatozoon) - 0 hits
As in
0000.000000000
HITS!
YAY! WOOHOOOO!! YEAH, BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And my wife thinks I never accomplish anything while she's away!
HA!
Just wait until I tell her!!
If the lawyer and judge will let me, of course....
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