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.

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.

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!"

I wonder what it says about my site, readers, and/or the Internet that for the third month in a row, the most visited page on Primrose Road is a news item I posted back in August about a twelve-year old boy in court because his father wants him to undergo circumcision against his will.

According to this site's traffic details for February thus far, someone got to Primrose Road by searching for the phrase "my homework." So Google recognizes personal pronouns now? Perhaps I should search for "my dissertation" and copy and paste the first page that comes up.

Other good ones: "william shakespeare ducky," "cansts," "false doctorates baptist." Looks like somebody's preacher is in trouble.

Earlier this week, I passed the final qualifying exam and achieved candidacy (woohoo, now I get to write a dissertation?), but I can't hibernate yet: I have to wake up in approximately four-and-a-half hours and leave my apartment by 5:30AM in order to get on a train to Washington DC, where I'll be attending a weekend seminar for the rest of the term. So right now, students eat my weekdays and Shakespeare eats my weekends. Hibernation will have to take place in late May and early June. Then in the fall, apparently, I'm supposed to try to go on the job market or something. Hmm.

While I'm experiencing the joys of Amtrak, please rejoice in the following search terms that brought people to Primrose Road this month:

1. "providence devinity Hamlet"

~ Dear undergrads: try JSTOR instead of Google.

2. "Ophelia and Hamlet romance fanfiction"

~ cf. Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film.

3. "Shakespeare in Love fanfiction"

~ "Shakespeare in Love" is fanfiction. Hilarious fanfiction. Poor Marlowe. ::sniffle::

4. "mscae spiritual"

~ Obviously either a New Age agricultural engineer or a Lindsey Buckingham fan.

5. "what is a primrose"

~ And you thought clicking on a link to this blog would answer your question why?

To whomever arrived at Primrose Road via a search for "shakespeare types of poison": I want to read your paper when it's finished. ;)

Shakespeare's contemporaries have a lot more fun with poison -- see esp. Webster's The White Devil and the 'anonymous' Arden of Faversham. Artists, take note: there's lots of money to be made in the poisoned painting industry.

The following searches have led people to Primrose Road so far this month:

1. derrida hamlet
2. eighth house astrology (again! I must be disappointing so many people.)
3. globe theater blueprints
4. primroseroad adorno (I know of only one person in the entire universe who would have searched for this.)
5. shekspir theatercom
6. sigmund freud england
7. thomas jefferson (WHAT?)
8. you can do whatever you put your mind to
9. you can do whatever you put your mind to philosophy

Yes, I am definitely disappointing people who visit my blog seeking astrology readings and self-help advice.

Searches for variants on "Saturn in the eighth house" make up 17% of all traffic to this blog for the month of November so far. Maybe I should use a time machine to return to my formerly woo-tastic self circa 2000 and change this into an astrology blog and make lots and lots of money off of it. $60 for a natal chart, $400 for me to replace Saturn in your eighth house with Jupiter in your eighth house.

(Those TV commercials about the guy named Bob purport to do something similar.)

OK, no more filthy astrology jokes.

I'm also seeing a significant number of searches for "copysquash," a word I made up in reference to the Dozier Internet Law cease-and-desist ridiculousness. This can only mean that copysquash, along with awesometacular, pathetisad, and spectricipant will soon become part of the common vernacular.