On Google and Losing My Blog Focus
In the beginning, I tried to write a blog about my day to day experiences as a small business person. That lasted about a day, mainly because I have the attention span of a 7-year-old boy mainlining Hershey Bars. I still blog a lot about running a small business, but I also comment on political trends, mainly from a libertarian point of view, and anything else that happens to strike my fancy that day.
However, with Google out there, I have lost even more focus and control of my blog's positioning. A lot of my traffic is Google hits, and it turns out there are two particular searches that drive a non-trivial portion of my traffic. That means for many readers, my blog is defined by these two topics:
- Pocket Doors
- Spanking
Yes, call me the Pocket Door and Spanking Blog now. LOL. Anyway, if only to reinforce my strong Google rankings on these meaningful topics, here is how I became the Pocket Door and Spanking Blog:
Pocket Doors and My Manhood (December, 2005)
Our bathroom has a pocket door to save space - that's one of those doors that slide on a hidden rail in and out of the wall.
From time to time, usually because my kids go slamming into it, the
door comes off its rails and gets jammed, which is a problem as it can
bottleneck some very critical facilities.The first time this happened, I tried to get it back on its track,
but I just could not. The track is up in the wall and it is almost
impossible due to the lack of clearance to do anything with it. I
checked in the Yellow Pages and saw there was actually a company that
specialized in pocket door repairs, so I called them out. Well, Joe
(or whoever) shows up with his little tool kit, looks at the door for a
second, grabbed it in a certain way, and then gave it a quick jerk -
kabam - and it was back in its tracks. It took him like 5 seconds.Well, there I stood, completely unmanned, right in front of my
laughing wife and family, by Joe the visible butt-crack guy. Bummer.Since that time, I have had the door come untracked two or three
times. Thinking to save me further embarrassment, my wife tends to ask
any passing stranger to come in and fix it. I can sit there for hours
fighting the thing, and then my wife brings in the guy painting the
house - kabam - fixed. Next time she brought in the 60+ year old sales
guy who happened to be there - kabam - fixed. I swear, if Paris Hilton
was dropping by for a visit she could probably fix that damn door. It
is humiliating.Well, this time I would not allow my wife get someone else to fix
it. Every night, for about 10 minutes, I would take my innings with
the door, struggling to do what everyone else seemed to have learned at
birth. I actually suggested to my wife that we should call out a
contractor and tear the thing out and install a real door. She
suggested instead that she could have our 13-year-old baby sitter come
in from the other room to fix it. Finally, tonight, when I was about
to give up, I tried holding it in a slightly different way and - Kabam
- fixed. God I feel great. My manhood is restored and I am at the top
of the world.
Spanking Employees (November, 2005)
Well, just when you think you have seen every way to screw up in a small business, there comes this story.
The owner of a shaved ice business was arrested after two employees claimed he spanked them for making mistakes at work.
And more...
One
of the women told police that on her first day at the Tasty Flavors Sno
Biz, Levengood made her sign a statement that said: "I give Gene
permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit."Hat tip to Jim Rome, as I first heard this on his radio show, and to the Mises Institute,
of all places, where I found the link. This story has been out and
about for a while, but I wanted to give it a few days to make sure it
was not a hoax.To make this more bizarre, I did a Google search to see if
anyone had called this out as a hoax, and found that there have been
many similar stories in other places, including here and here.
Sigh. Oh well, I guess a weird identity is better than no identity at all.
J:
It's like they say... spank the adults, not the children. The adults enjoy it more.
March 30, 2005, 11:37 amCap'n Arbyte:
For a while, MSN Search ranked me #4 for "What will increase the size of my boobs?". It was very amusing. Link in my name - can't post HTML in comments?
April 6, 2005, 6:32 pmDennis Foster:
My most popular Google hit is off of "Iraq Kaibab" which I think means people are looking for some kind of ethnic food recipes. Well, maybe I'll start adding them to my blog!
October 26, 2005, 12:16 pmFact Vendors:
Getting side tracked from posting about small business is very easy with all of the other strange things happening in the world! Spank me if I'm wrong.
August 4, 2006, 4:59 pm