Being Dave Gorman-ish

Dave Gorman is a British comedian who made a name for himself by finding all (well, enough for a tv show) the other Dave Gormans in the world and then going to meet them.

I thought of him the other day when I googled myself (not out of vanity, it was a work thing..... no really it was...), and I was not only not the only person with my name in the googliverse, but the other one (who is a healthcare worker in Saskatchewan apparently) topped me in the results.
Queenie lost the top spot in her own SEO project... doesn't bode well for her future in deh world of deh online ...

But actually, after the shock, I was really thrilled. I have a very unusual name, so finding an exact namesake was pretty cool after about eight years of intermittent searching.

So then this evening I thought... Twitter has a search function...

And I'm able to blog because Himself and Little 'Un have gone fishing without me. Not that I wasn't invited. But it was that kind of invitation you get after they've spent four hours in the shed getting two rods ready and preparing the worms for trout and the thingummies for mackarel just in case, and discussed possible spots for both possibilities and packed the car and put on their fishing boots and are heading out the door sort of pretending I am welcome to come along.

So I said no.

Because if I were to go there would be delays because there would have to be blankets and chairs and thermos', and strawberry shortcake and all kinds of shenanigans. Which is why I don't get invited in the first place.

So it's all good.

I went mackarel fishing once and caught about fifty and it truly was the coolest thing I've ever done apart from taking the hooks out of their poor mouths and killing them.

Anyways, back to Twitter... where nobody dies... unless they're tweeting from Iran.

First of all I put my surname in the search engine and came up with someone who loved my brother's online tennis commentary from Wimbledon so much they posted it to Twitter.

Tennis?

Tennis!!!!!!!!!!!

D'ya have strahwbrees widdat, Baz?

So then I got myself orientated and typed my surname into the Find People engine which is what I meant to do (although it is always nice to see my brother online).

Aaron from Dallas, known as GoPearl, is an artist and writer who works hard saving companies money on their telecommunications. And only tweets about that. He sounds like a typical corporate dick, which is a pity because he's probably miserable (well I would be if I was an artist that had to spend all my time being a corporate dick).

Aaron, what you need to do dude, is to engage in the family tradition of sarcasm loaded with irony in your tweeting, in order to survive. Probably wouldn't save the companies that much money though.
300 followers.

Such a waste of a perfectly good following...

Benjamin from Arizona, otherwise known as Skulljammer is a comic book writer and has been up for 54 hours meeting deadlines.
120 followers. (plus me now so 121).

Dave won't say where he's from but he's moaning about the absence of UK adapters and he sounds like a Brit. He's here for a good time, not a long time.
34 followers.

Probably should vote for mr cameron next time then dave, if you're so fucking jingoistic you can't buy a universal adapter, yet so embarrased you can't put BRIT on your profile.

Matt from Phillie State doesn't like to use his full 140 chtrs. 'chillin'. 'summer'. 'witness'. etc. Having said that, he mourns the passing of Harry Kalas, the celebrated Phillie sports commentator who passed away during a commentary recently.
34 followers too.

A man of few words.

Must be from the Queen Dad branch of our surname tree.

Scott, also known as Mr. Blur, who is from a phone number rather than a place, is an avid cyclist who is tired of people thinking the world is their ashtray.
31 followers.

Well, guess what, Scott, me and my big fuck-off SUV, we're tired of people thinking the world is their velodrome.

Shannon, otherwise known as Supergrrrl, from Toronto is funny. And the first girl on the list.
30 followers. One of which is The Onion.

Attagirl!!!

John is my personal favourite. He appears to be in Iran, and he has the mullet to blend in well. But he's no Persian so far as I can see.
Give me liberty or give me death.
28 followers.

Here's a thought. You could actually pretend you were somewhere you weren't and tweet about it and get away with it, couldn't you... or am I missing some major Twitter honesty protocol.

This is my problem with Twitter.

That and the fact that the person from The Coast who is tweeting from the virgin mudfest is either really stressed or getting really drunk and incomprehensible, so even if I wanted to memorise the tweets and pretend I was at the concert I might make a big faux pas.... but then I could just pretend I was drunk....

which really is the key issue I have with twitter.

there is no truth protocol when you are dealing with 140 characters or less.

Having said that, look at all the nice people with whom I share DNA whom I have tracked down in just one hour.

There are pages and pages and pages of people with my surname on Twitter.

Follow one. Just for the hell of it.

Me, I'd go for the BeachBandito, otherwise known as Bruce.

That's me when I'm old.

Without the beard obviously.

Wolfram Alpha know nahtink!

I tried Wolfram Alpha, the new search engine, that's apparently not a search engine. There's a great article in The Guardian about it today, which says (and I'll try not to do a Maureen Dowd on this) that asking Alpha something is like asking someone sitting in a room full of idiots savant. In other words, if you ask a question and one of the IS knows the subject you'll get the dish on it, but if the expert IS is not in the room, the answer is 'huh?'.

So I typed in my hometown and got Egyptian currency, the birr.

I typed in Halifax and found out that the city is 52m above sea level.

I typed in my date of birth and learned that I was born on the same day as Beck.

I don't care to learn any of those facts. If I did, I would've bothered remembering them the last time I heard them.

Still, it's very excellent for doing hard sums - you just type in the equation - so I added it to the Favourites list anyway. Check it out.

Competition is good.

Even for people who don't do evil.

Edward's asking forgiveness again. Much better than permission.

Somebody called Edward, who has a private profile on Blogger.com (bad Edward) linked my blog to Infomonkey.net - Halifax. Then added a comment to my blog saying that he (is it even a he, we don't know, because his profile is private) had done so and if I minded that I should tell him so he can remove it.

I didn't minded, so I never said nothin'. See, I write a blog. Which is on the Internet. Which is like putting your diary in your front window with the page open to the previous day's entry.

Except the sun won't fade the writing on the blog, the way it would fade the writing in the diary.

So anyways, last night I wrote a (for me) totally boring piece on my camping trip to New Brunswick.

Lo and behold, up pops Edward in the comments box again.

Still private is Edward.

Reminding me that he linked me to infomonkey.net - Halifax and that some of what I write is personal, so if I mind to let him know straight away.

Well, yes, everything published here is personal to Queenie, but obviously none of it is private because it is on the Internet, so no I don't mind that you paid the blog the compliment of linking it to infomonkey.net - Halifax.

In fact, I found some other interesting blogs there.

If you write a blog and people link to it, that's good.

However, when I post, my traffic doesn't go up extra due to the link, that's not good.

I'm a great believer in asking forgiveness rather than permission. But, if you are concerned about people getting mad, asking permission in advance would reduce the number of times you have to mail people for forgiveness??!!

Galway Bay rocks Russia

"How a Champions League final commentary has turned into extended musings upon Peig Sayers' life is a mystery to me," writes Rob Cotter. "Never mind Man Utd or Chelsea, nostalgic Toasted Heretic fans are the real winners here tonight."

'Xactly.

Thanks Baz. You write good commentary.

Your sister, Queenie.

And thanks Queen Mum for clearing up the strawberry flower pinching issue.

Families and technology.

They're the greatest.

Nova Scotia

is the beginning of the rest of the world.

It could be an Arcadia.

It was once.

It was Acadie.

I met a woman tonight.

Who is a Valley Baptist.

And she and I sat in a bar.

Uncomfortably.

That I, of course, had picked.

But we had a good chat.

We are all the same, us women in the office.

That's what I love about this job.

It's just a pile of women on a big floor of an office building.

And if I am anything.

Which I have never yet even believed that i could be.

But if i were

despite myself

i would be a leader of women

because that is the hardest job in the world.

and anyone who can do it

whether they are female or male or not sure

has my total respect.

Fuck the timelords...

... the librarians are going to win.

I don't follow technology, because they immigrate numbers into the language and that is foreign to me and I am rule-bound (which may or may not be my fault)

but it's all a spectrum.

So you talk to the people next to you.

Like in a cinema queue.

But hopefully a Leonard Cohen gig.

Paul Watts in Ireland,

has a ticket to Leonard Cohen,

who is canadian,

and is playing in halifax,

where queenie lives,

and she can't get a ticket,

episode 28,

in queenie's,

... lives her life again...

... in (the usually),

ever decreasing circles,

etc.

Facebook takes a new and scary turn

When I logged onto Facebook this evening, it gave me a list of people I may know. Mostly it was people who had four friends in common with me.

It gave me quite a jolt.

There were people on the list that I have been avoiding on Facebook for ages. So I'm wondering, are they getting the same message? And if so, are they avoiding me? Or are they just busy? Or have they not noticed the thread yet?

Interesting times ahead.

There was also someone I thought was a friend. So I must have been blocked.

Oops.

Mental note not to do that again.

There were people on the list that I'm pretty sure are avoiding me.

That's the beauty of Facebook.

Or it was.

You could avoid people without seeming to.

AND NOW YOU CAN'T.

So it's The Buttery in 1989 all over again.

Episode 27 of Queenie lives her life over and over again in ever decreasing circles.

Never mind.