I Google, therefore I am

How do people find your blog, and are they perhaps disappointed, misled, grossed out, intrigued, or horrified when they do?

Because of the great alien-ear crisis and my somewhat hypochondriac and moderately paranoid disposition, I have spent quite a lot of time lately googling key words such as 'infected upper ear cartilage piercing', 'sea salt soak', 'cartilage damage', 'cauliflower ear', and the winning concoction 'piercing pus swelling shattered cartilage'. However, you can rest assured, I have one (hopefully) final appointment with an ear, nose and throat surgeon on Monday, so I'm not flying completely off the handle solo here, I'm just looking for additional information to scare the shit out of myself, and make it impossible for myself to have a peaceful night's sleep away from ear-related worries.

Nothing out of the ordinary then, eh?

However, as much as I know you are all just aching to hear still more about my poor ear, that is not exactly what I have in mind today. Well, I have it in mind constantly, being prone to paranoia and all, but not for you. Not again.

I promise. Girl scout's honor (Moi?).

What I have in mind for you today, my dear readers, is utter amazement over what the medical Google searches I conducted yielded as results.

How did they ever survive, before Google came along? 

Apart from some hits with decent medical information, there were quite a few hits that were surprising. To put it mildly. And then there were some, where the connection between upper ear cartilage and what was on the site was a whole neck and torso's length. And apart from that measure, there really wasn't anything connecting the query to the site that I could fathom. Those hits were just plain ole disturbing, which could, however, be an understatement. Or, the fact that I grew up in Finland a barrel, might have had a hand in the matter. Thank Zeus, we'll never have to find out. It will already take several bottles of wine just to erase certain images now mistakenly stored in some obscure part of my brain that seems to be under the influence that they need to be there. Maybe the part is confused, because we are technically still talking about piercings, albeit the more correct term is probably something quite different.

Shudder. And please don't anyone tell me what that term is. Even if you know.

Of course, I am not drinking until the antibiotics are done. No way. Never. Mother. Although, I must say the Google search concerning Ciprofloxaxin and alcohol came up with some interesting information concerning the ban on drinking while on antibiotics, dating back to WW II, some STD-ridden soldiers, and some drunken bastard forgetting to take his dosage. I'm just intrigued by this history of course, nothing else.

(Really? She just googles all day long?)   

I also have to say that I was rather thrown by the number of people out there walking around with pierced genitalia, let alone infected pierced genitalia. There aren't enough painkillers in the world.

And then, as I was pondering about genitalia and mentally placing the pain I had been in with my ear further down between my legs (a big, big mistake), I started to wonder about how people find my blog (naturally), and whether they are looking for something completely different. And I mean completely different.

Thanks to Site Meter I have been able to see exactly how many times I have unwittingly had the chance to attempt to provide the 'answer' for the question "What should I do with my life?" The count is surprisingly high, and I hope, if not to have inspired who ever was posing this question to Google (not the way I would go about finding the answer, I would of course start a pointless blog and then proceed to disregard the question...), to have made someone possibly in a total funk over their life and therefore asking a computer the most important question ever, laugh. Even just a little. Or at least to have kept them from slipping further into that funk. Or kept them from looking at that site with those ...piercings.

Still, while the above question being matched with my blog is perhaps a tad duh-worthy, why would Google feel that I could ever, ever answer questions like: "How much toothpaste will kill you?", "Why do I sweat randomly?" and "What food will shoot farthest out of a potato launcher?"

I mean, I know my blog can at times be somewhat random and even weird (although I prefer quirky and eccentric, and most times there is some sort of point. Really.), but I don't remember ever writing about a potato launcher. And I racked my brain over this one, since I thought it does sound awfully like me. And I do hope the person asking about toothpaste wasn't intending to actually kill anyone with toothpaste though. Is that even possible?

Must keep an eye out for toothpaste-related murder cases in the newspapers. Or perhaps I should just Google it?

Nah, too scary an endeavor so soon following the piercing and genitalia revelation. I don't want to know what all toothpaste is good for. I just don't.

What is this hold Google has on our lives (apart from controlling the weather and the known universe, of course), and does it even know what it is doing? Or is it just my life?

Oh Google, what will I ever do with my life?