Tom Schreiber. Or: Welcome, searchers!

Friends, I don't pretend to understand the internets. It may be a connected series of tubes. It may be run by gnomes, or the French. All I know is that the internets are wonderful. All eleven of them. I sometimes mention in this space that my favorite thing about this blog is getting to see what random people, all over the world, were searching for when they stumble upon my blog. I discovered a while back, to my surprise and bemusement, that Google, in its infinite wisdom, puts my blog on its search results pages for all sorts of queries to which my blog provides absolutely no answers. Most mornings, when I get into work, I check an internet tool that allows me to see, among other things, all the search queries that led to "hits" the previous day. Here, for example, are some of the best ones from the last few weeks:

• "Reginald wood stove"
• "It is time to look sooooooo good."
• "shirt off" "my host"
• "can you take a photo of us"
• "cramps in hands at night"
• "find a map of where the war on terror is at"

And, I swear to God:

• "a greek Mythological sculptor reputedly able to make sculptures that could walk and talk"

I checked Google about this last one; it turns out that this blog is on the FIFTH PAGE of results for this search query. If the person who searched for this has returned to this blog and is reading this, please let us all know why you (a) searched for this in the first place, (b) scrolled through five pages of results before finding something to click on, and most importantly (c) what in God's name compelled you to click on THIS result. If you answer, I will award you fifty credits. But try not to hurt yourself when collecting them.

Google not only presents odd search results; it also ranks them via a mysterious formula. The only person who knows this ancient and powerful formula is not even a person. It is a dragon who lives in a cave on a mountain. His name is Albee the Racist Dragon. We volunteers have recently come to discover that this search result formula is also a formula for fun; a volunteer named Tom Schreiber (that's Tom Schreiber, if you didn't hear the first time) realized that, when searching for his own name (his name being Tom Schreiber), Google returned another volunteer's blog post ABOUT him (him = Tom Schreiber, in case I'd lost you already) above his own blog (that is, Tom Schreiber's blog). We became curious about what would happen if other volunteers started posting about Tom Schreiber; sure enough, a couple other volunteers' posts have ALSO jumped Tom Schreiber's own blog on the Google results page if you search for his name (type in "Tom Schreiber").

Now, you may be wondering if I am going to be joining these volunteers in this experiment. I am not. I refuse to write a post about Tom Schreiber. I am certain that this blog, behemoth of the online community that it is, would not only supercede Tom's blog on Google, but would literally make Tom's blog cower in fear and run to an uninhabited, poorly-lit corner of the Internet, to the unfindable realm currently occupied by the "Nudie Photos of George W. Bush" blog, the "Black People Support Hillary!" fanpage, and the Armenia National Tourism Board's official website. I do not wish to embarrass Tom's blog in this manner, because Tom is a very nice man, a friend of mine, and a seventh degree black belt in a martial art that he invented himself because he thinks that karate is "for sissies." So do not think that this post (the one titled, "Tom Schreiber") is an attempt to engage in this activity. It is merely my discussion of the activity, and my musings thereon. I do not wish to "beat" Tom Schreiber. That is all.

Tom Schreiber Tom Schreiber Tom Schreiber Tom Schreiber Tom Schreiber.