The wonders of the search engine stats

One of the perks of using WordPress is that you get to see the words and phrases that people put into a search engine that then led them to your blog. As a little extra entry, here are some interesting ones that led to the CDB Desk:

“what does look like a prat mean” ~ I found this one rather charming. The entry concerning Jeremy Clarkson and Britney Spears came up on the first page of Google results.

“profound msn names”, “horrible msn screen names”, “msn screen names that say I like you alot!” ~ having tried all of these phrases it became apparent that there’s apparently a whole load of sites devoted to supplying people’s MSN names for them. For crying out loud – can nobody put something sensible that they thought up themselves? This really stunned me. It detracts from my already-limited faith in the human race. It clearly has something to do with the terrible naming trends I covered in my first entry.

But wait, there’s more! “impressive msn name” was a personal favourite of mine. It’s just somebody asking to be unimpressive.

“what your msn name says about you” ~ I’m guessing that in this particular searcher’s case it’s “I am a prat”.

And that was followed by a whole load of stuff about Hugh Laurie. But that’s far less funny.

MSN Screen Names: A Rant

Aloha, this is the first post on the CDB Desk blog. No need for an overlong intro, suffice to say that I’ll be running this in conjunction with my sport blog, the CDB Pod, which will launch this summer. I’ll be using this blog to comment on all the non-sport issues that I feel like talking about. Strap yourself in.

So, to get started, I thought I’d talk about a subject close to my heart (in the ‘keep your enemies closer’ sense) – MSN screen names. Those of you who don’t use MSN – sorry, but I’m sure you can relate to this somehow, considering you’re internet-literate enough to be reading this in the first place.

Basically, I keep seeing people using these ridiculous “deep” sayings that don’t look deep – they just make you look like a prat. Here are some great examples:

• <Name> What if today was your last day? I hope one day you will get the chance – to live like you were dying~
• ~Life is like a game of poker! U never know if u will win or loose!~
• I’ll make sure we survive

Here’s how I see it.

1st example: This is pointless, pratty melodrama. I mean, wtf? I know for a fact that this person is not going to die tomorrow. So how the HELL does he know what it’s like to ‘live like you were dying’? Why does he wish it on someone else? IT MIGHT BE HORRIBLE! It probably would be, thinking about it a bit…but that isn’t the point. To the person who wrote this, whose name shall be omitted – YOU. ARE. A. PRAT. Stop trying to sound impressive, it isn’t working.

2nd example: First of all, no. It’s not like that. There are times during a game of poker when you KNOW that you will win or you KNOW that you will lose, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And second – if we remove the poker part, life itself ISN’T always ‘you never know whether you will win or lose’! There are times in your life when you KNOW you will succeed at something or you KNOW you are going to fail. And there are also times where you don’t win or lose – how do you explain that? Furthermore, if it WAS like that, thanks for pointing out the bleeding obvious! WE WOULD KNOW! We don’t need you to tell us!

3rd Example: What are you, a freaking psychic? You know who you are.

So, in short, basically I’d like people to stop pratting about with all this nauseating melodrama and supposed ‘wise words’. They don’t make you look impressive or cool, and most of the time the ‘wise words’ aren’t even wise. THEY’RE NOT EVEN REAL WORDS! Case in point, use of ‘u’ instead of ‘you’. That’s not a word! THEREFORE it can’t be wise words. If you absolutely must identify yourself with something other than your name or a nickname, at least make it something funny. Seeing as most people on MSN are under the age of 30, I highly doubt that any of them have enough life experience to say something truly profound anyway.

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Note: If you’re one of the people I pressured into reading this blog, you may recognise the above. It is indeed taken (and modified, I hasten to add) from a post I made on my old Son of SPAM Palace forum (now defunct), as a way to get me started. From here on in, though, it’s all up-to-date material.