Primrose Road

At some point during the last three days, someone arrived at Primrose Road via a search for the phrase

"prostate squib"

, which I believe resulted from someone looking up prostate cancer treatments produced by the Bristol-Meyers-Squib pharmaceutical company, but still.

Yesterday, as a result of boredom and a yearly-doctor-checkup day off of work (him, not me; I'm a dirty hippie grad student who is teaching evenings and weekends this summer), el SigOther and I went to see Don't Mess With the Zohan, a movie which included both an allegorical look at British colonization of the Middle East and Adam Sandler catching a fish with his ass.

When we left the movie theater, there was a bright green flyer on my windshield for a service called "New York Trackers," which purports to help suspicious spouses and girlfriends/boyfriends catch their other halves in the act of cheating. Here is the first paragraph of the flyer, reprinted here as written (for your enjoyment):

Being unfaithful or having an affair, whatever you call it; it is likely to be one of the most painful And devastating things that can happen to you. Not knowing if your spouse is cheating on you or Not is equally as painful. Let us find the truth with out spending hundreds or thousands on private Investigators. Let us help you at New York Trackers; here we are able to get you the truth with out Costing you a fortune:

One service is offered is GPS vehicle tracking, where a car can be "equipped" with a tracking device. Also,

we have software that can run totally in stealth; that is, it is virtually undetectable to the user it will NOT show up in the task manager ... These programs monitor Keystroke's, Emails Sent and Received, Internet Chat Conversations, Website Activity, Screenshot Capturing and much more.

All legality issues aside, style and usage DO function in advertising, kiddies.

+1 for using an unlisted phone number, though.

I am, as always, fascinated by the number of people who apparently find Primrose Road via searches for the phrase "Saturn in the eighth house." And I'm pretty impressed that someone got here simply by searching on the word "Jews." But one search term this month by far takes the cake:

"romantic hilarity"

We've discovered a new genre.

Oh, Barnes and Noble ...



Sylvia Browne (obnoxious "psychic"/scam artist who takes advantage of grieving families -- and is worshipped by Larry King) in the Science section at my local B&N.

On that note, I'm moving Macbeth to the "Self-Help" shelves. :)

Rabbinical authorities in Israel have ruled that giraffes are kosher.

Finally, families everywhere can enjoy giraffe-noodle soup on Shabbos.

My results on the "Which Shakespeare Play Are You?" test:

Link: The Which Shakespeare Play Are You? Test written by macbee on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(macbee)

Bear with me while I set up an allusion: Way back in the day (like, seven years ago), Chris Isaak starred in a Showtime comedy as (sort of) himself. In one episode, a stalker keeps leaving gifts, including a loaf of banana bread, on his doorstep. Chris later sees one of his bandmates eating the bread, and says something like, "Are you eating the stalker bread? You can't eat the stalker bread!"

Late last week, in what I'm going to assume was a cultural misunderstanding, a student gave me a gift-wrapped bottle of wine along with his final portfolio. I told him I couldn't accept it, but he insisted, so I went to give the wine to the department administrative assistants, who said that since I obviously understood the ethical wackiness of the situation and wouldn't let the wine affect the student's grade, I should take it home with me.

So now I wonder: is drinking student-bribe-wine the equivalent of eating stalker bread?

It's only three days into the month of May, and there are two utterly awesometacular search phrases that pointed people to this blog thus far:

1) shakespeare's life experiences
2) florida is another country

In the fifth grade, our teacher asked our class if any of us had ever been to another country. One girl excitedly raised her hand and shouted "Florida!"

On the ridiculous-beyond-comment new game show Bingo America:

Host: "In Shakespeare's sonnet, he writes 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's ....'?"

Loud Excited Balding Contestant: "ROSE!"

Newsweek's pretty excited about a children's book written by a plastic surgeon in Florida that explains to the kinderlekh why Mommy's having plastic surgery to look prettier. While this is definitely hilarious, and certainly gives me more insight into why it's always one of the ever-expanding cadre of cars with Florida license plates cutting me off or driving 90mph on the Long Island Expressway, what's far more hilarious is that the book is, as Teresa Nielsen Hayden happily notes, "published" by a vanity press.

Though I have to give the press credit (even though it charges $1995 - $2440 for a printing package) for at least presenting itself as a vanity press rather than scamming authors into believing it's a "traditional publisher" that wants to fulfill writers' hopes and dreams. (::cough cough::PublishAmerica::cough cough::).

Tip of the hat to squib, who has some good ideas for sequels.