I promised I’d have plenty of unsolicited advice for the Democrats this week, and I do. However, after reading round the web about all the things that are wrong with “the Left” and how they’re not in touch with the “real America” (no links provided, they’re not exactly hard to find), I got a bit depressed. So I invented this game to cheer myself up.
I call it “Six Degrees Of This Googlewhack Is A Serious Problem For The Left”.
It kind of combines the fun of the Kevin Bacon game with the fun of Googlewhacking, and at the same time helps you generate yet more self-flagellating theories about the election results, which must be fun or people wouldn’t do it so much.
The idea is that, it seems, you can connect almost anything to the phrase “this is a serious problem for The Left” in much less than six steps of argument. So the name of the game is to start with a googlewhack from the site and end via a chain of fairly close reasoning with an argument that the Democrats need to consider your googlewhack in depth.
Thus, gesticulate tatties is a googlewhack (or at least it is until this page gets indexed), and it links to the Life and Opinions of Sir Andrew Wylie. On page 14 of this document, there is the line:
No man in his senses would ever expect to see an ignoramus bush, far less a doddered holly-bush, take up a pen to write a book
which is clearly an example of an aristocrat, who is British, referring to President Bush as an ignoramus. This is the sort of high-handed patronising attitude that the Real America hates, and is therefore A Real Problem For The Left
Meanwhile, liposome yarmulke not only has undertones of anti-semitism, but the actual googlewhack is to a spam page pushing cheap Viagra. As long as the Democrats don’t have a credible healthcare plan or a definite policy on parallel importation of pharmaceuticals, they will always be the party of Hillarycare and this is therefore A Real Problem For The Left
And so on. There is perhaps some small kudos for any CT reader who can find a Googlewhack so obscure and nonpolitical that it can’t be used as a stick to beat the democrats with. There is also slightly more kudos for anyone who spots an “in the wild” application; a breast-beating “death of the Left” essay that looks like its original kernel was a googlewhack. Have fun.
{ 43 comments }
kevin donoghue 11.10.04 at 10:31 pm
I may of course be missing the point completely, but “hyperbaric magdalenian” leads instantly to “Creation Model vs. Evolution Model” which is certainly a problem for the left.
Andrew McManama-Smith 11.10.04 at 10:33 pm
I having been able to stop laughing for a few minutes…
dsquared 11.10.04 at 10:35 pm
I can’t find it again, but “honeymooners squished” or something just turned up an essay on transformational grammar, which was invented by Chomsky and is therefore a problem for the left.
kevin donoghue 11.10.04 at 10:51 pm
It is hardly a surprise that “longitudinal scatterguns” gets us into trouble pretty quickly; while “swivet mongoose” brings up a discussion of Dungeons and Dragons, with obvious war-on-terror issues arising; “falcula tortoiseshell” leads to stuff about vanishing insects and the whole elitist-environmentalist trap.
It reminds me of a dreadful movie (title now mercifully forgotten) about a supercomputer which is about to trigger a nuclear war; mankind is saved because the machine runs a few billion simulations first and discovers there is no way to win.
foo 11.10.04 at 10:57 pm
Wargames.
Which are clearly a Real Problem for the Left.
Enzo Rossi 11.10.04 at 11:07 pm
So the game is really about finding something that’s not a problem for the left! In fact, that’s really what googlewhacking is about: finding a pair of English words which does not return any results in Google. As long as there are results, we (leftists) are in trouble. Bad times ahead, indeed.
wood turtle 11.10.04 at 11:20 pm
Really bad 60’s-70’s architecture, a really bad problem of the left, and the buildings last a long, long time. I’m sitting in one right now.
Sometimes people just tear them down because they can’t stand them anymore. Or they are so energy inefficient that they are just too expensive. The city I work in had a government building like that, and they just built a new one to replace it, with concrete molds to match the older, classic style buildings.
Zaoem 11.10.04 at 11:20 pm
“grubbily circumcision”
Which links to this issue of anthropoetics:
http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/archive/anth0301.pdf
Which contains many Real Problems of the Left.
Kieran Healy 11.10.04 at 11:30 pm
In fact, that’s really what googlewhacking is about: finding a pair of English words which does not return any results in Google.
No, Googlewhacking is finding a pair of words that returns precisely _one_ result in google. Or so I thought.
“Scottish Capybara”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=scottish+cabybara&btnG=Search are a natural outcome of the process of free trade but if protectionist reactionaries want to throw up tariff barriers to prohibit the traffic of giant highland rodents then this is certainly *A Real Problem for the Left*.
Luc 11.10.04 at 11:41 pm
That “A Real Problem For The Left” is just more proof of Librul hypochondria.
kevin donoghue 11.11.04 at 12:12 am
I think the greater kudos should be “for any CT reader who can find a Googlewhack so obscure and nonpolitical that it can’t be used as a stick to beat the democrats with.†It’s not easy.
On the other hand “a breast-beating ‘death of the Left’ essay that looks like its original kernel was a googlewhack†shouldn’t be hard to find (unless you are using the term kernel in some sense with which I am not familiar). All you have to do is work backwards from a reliable source.
For example: elliptic codswollop is a googlewhack that leads to Abiola Lapite’s blog.
kevin donoghue 11.11.04 at 12:24 am
Lest there be any misunderstanding, my last comment wasn’t intended to disparage Foreign Dispatches. The thing is, you won’t find many words like “diophantine” on Normblog, Harry’s Place etc. etc.
Jackmormon 11.11.04 at 12:35 am
“manifesting sparkleberry”
Reaches a page about the natural history of some little brown bird, which would seem to be a politically neutral subject until you consider the first line:
The kind of regionalism that prevents a Massachusetts liberal from understanding the perceptions that Southerners have of little brown birds is clearly a problem for the Left.
theogon 11.11.04 at 12:42 am
A frustrating number of attempts at Googlewhacking reveals previous attempts at Googlewhacking by Dennis Kucinich supporters. This is most definitely a Problem for the Left.
“Glycerol Sasquatches” leads to a number of random words, headed “throw a sack of shit at Bush.” Problem for the Left right there.
BenA 11.11.04 at 1:06 am
unconstitutional dandelion yields this page from the website of the Erk Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (which, for all I know, is itself a Problem for the Left).
But even if the EDP is itself unproblematic, we need only look to the last line of this page, which is a rambling letter in an interesting Central Asian brand of English addressed to the “Dear Deeply Disrespected Deputies of Uzbek Parliament!”:
“If, say, the dry-cargo ship can deliver 30 thousand tons of a cargo in ports of Italy, through Suez Canal, why, not to carry this volume by Russian Railway. Its at least 12 – 15 trains. Officials have already hinted, one of these days, in mass media, that it will be not favorable to countries of Southeast Asia to transport cargoes through Suez. And this implies, that in the Middle East, and in a zone of Persian Gulf, to someone, oh as, instability and chaos, the nearest years will be necessary. Time will show.”
Hard to follow, yes. But it sounds suspiciously like some kind of Global Test to me. And that, surely, is a Problem for the Left.
kevin donoghue 11.11.04 at 1:08 am
A better illustration of the point I was making above: bicoastal priggishness – a major cause of Red State disdain for the Left.
(Full disclosure: I didn’t “start with a googlewhack from the site” since it is much easier to find that sort of crap in a Slate article and then submit it to Googlewhack’s vetting procedure.)
Chris in Boston 11.11.04 at 1:46 am
Am I right in suspecting that this exercise appeals mainly to those who are good at or at least understand cryptic crossword puzzles?
C McHugh 11.11.04 at 4:02 am
“tunicate fossil”
Democrats need to make sure the petrified proto-chordate skeletons don’t escape from their hermetically sealed closets next election year, or the muslinging will destroy more ecoglogically valuable tunicate habitat.
b 11.11.04 at 4:51 am
“magnetosphere proctologist” leads to a page on buying generic prescription antidepressants. Clearly proving how the left is out to destroy patent law and make innovation completely unprofitable.
Katherine 11.11.04 at 4:54 am
The DemocRAT party is a bunch of .
Paul 11.11.04 at 5:03 am
‘you won’t find many words like “diophantine†on Normblog, Harry’s Place etc. etc.’
Perhaps not, but “diophantine googlewhack” is itself a googlewhack (though it will never make the list as ‘googlewhack’ isn’t in googlewhack’s dictionary),
with several real Problems for the left:
“The development of science in this century has increasingly depended upon fostering the education and training of scientists from among those who have all too frequently been ignored, marginalized, or victimized because of societal problems irrelevant to the pursuit of science. It will probably be critical to survival of our civilization that these barriers be completely eliminated in the next century.”
Continue with a coalition of minorities and become politically irrelevant, or give up the fight and watch the downfall of civilization?
‘This demonstration of the utility of existence proofs finally led Gordan to concede “I have convinced myself that theology also has its merits.” ‘
Religious voters see right through such opportunistic attempts at faith.
“Bush later lost favor as a shaper of science policy when he opposed development of ballistic missiles as weapons, military reconnaissance satellites, and the abandonment of analog for digital computers.”
A prophecy that all is not lost?
eszter 11.11.04 at 6:25 am
supercalifragilistic esperanto – leads to a page with lots of “adult language” corrupting minds and souls everywhere, which is clearly A Real Problem for the Left (or perhaps the fact that it isn’t a real problem for the left is the Real Problem for the Left)
eszter 11.11.04 at 6:30 am
heteroskedastic bumblebee – leads to a page discussing baseball reminding us that the Democrats couldn’t turn the Red Sox victory into a political win, which is clearly A Real Problem for the Left
Chris Clarke 11.11.04 at 6:42 am
Do I get a demikudo for finding Sedative Haruspices, or is the fact that Google provides only obsolete links some sort of, I dunno, Real Problem for the Left?
riffle 11.11.04 at 7:13 am
This is fun, and it does produce very revealing results.
Here are my two Dem-deficiency- Googlewhacks
1) deferens fundamentalism
Google for deferens fundamentalism
Justification: The most disturbing problem for Democrats is the deferens fundamentalism gap. The vas deferens (or sperm duct from the testicles) is used too liberally by Dems. They should be constrained about using it, as republicans are. Spermicides help, as well.
Addressing the deferens fundamentalism gap will be job one for Dems in 2006, 2008, and beyond.
2) ecdysiast gigaflop
Google for ecdysiast gigaflop
Justification: While the rock-hard base of the Democrats is strippers (ecdysiasts) and hard core computer nerds (those conversant in gigaflops), Dems have failed to reach beyond those subgroups to anyone in the US who is not a pole-dancer or a computer enthusiast.
The good news for Dems is that strippers and/or hardcore computer nerds make up 48 percent of the US population.
Riffle
Note: I realize that the hit for “deferens” in the first googlewhack is in an email address and not an actual use of “vas deferens.” Of course, this only serves to further solidify my point.
John Quiggin 11.11.04 at 7:39 am
I immodestly tried Quiggin+supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
and got straight to a post about a song about weapons of mass-destruction related activity. The link is broken, but I imagine a Mary Poppins tune would fit.
This leads me to the further suggestion that all entries should be set to music. I recommend “What do we do with a problem like Maria?” as a default choice.
Gozer 11.11.04 at 7:43 am
Imolument pipemaker returns a page concerning a history of clay tobacco pipe kiln studies.
This blatant glorification of the seedy drug culture destroying our youth is clearly A Real Problem For The Left.
bad Jim 11.11.04 at 7:51 am
When googlewhacking was my hobby, a couple of years ago, one of my goals was to find pairs that would make my point with little or any exegesis. I wrote down some of my whacks, many of which no longer return unique results:
bikinied euthanasia
trotskyist ballerinas
deregulatory snuggling
girly manometer
furbelow razors
frictionless sexpots
godless dimetrodon
motherland episiotomies
greediest whoreson
wastrel bushwhacking
jackbooted choirboys
pietist kleptocracy
bushless rapture
Peter Murphy 11.11.04 at 8:13 am
“Yenta pugilism” – the first place to start those “Left = Anti-Semitism” arguments. Which is clearly A Real Problem, etc.
bad Jim 11.11.04 at 8:24 am
Hmmm. Neoconservative fellatrices whacked, but was not permitted.
bad Jim 11.11.04 at 8:48 am
Untimbered vicissitudes, okay?
Why must it share conceptual space with dinkwad southerner or talmudical poops?
Kikuchiyo 11.11.04 at 9:34 am
Rectal leptokurtosis:
I think that this is clearly A Real Problem For The Left.
Rory 11.11.04 at 12:11 pm
“Infarcted Xanadu”: the death of Utopian idealism in America is A Real Problem For The Left.
Rory 11.11.04 at 12:14 pm
“Infarcted Xanadu”: the death of Utopian idealism in America is A Real Problem For The Left.
dk.dk 11.11.04 at 2:41 pm
I think that I could work both ’emancipative’ and ‘esoterically’ and ‘godot’ and ‘esoterically’ into this game is a real problem for the Left…
Tim Mason 11.11.04 at 3:30 pm
“figment sinistrally” is a whack (freshly stacked) that links to a site called “The key to the Bible”. GWB’s campaign relied heavily on Bible thumpers, which in Bible-thumping parts of the US is A Real Problem For The Left.
Zizka 11.11.04 at 3:40 pm
I’m new to Googlewhacking and D^D’s game is too difficult for me. However, “Finnish chlorocruorins” gets you the front page of my site, which does indeed discuss a big left problem — the Finnish push for world domination. A convenient mnemonic for those who happen to forget the name Zizka.
Tim Mason 11.11.04 at 4:03 pm
The whack bushing kendalia could be taken to refer to how even Bush’s relationship with Ken Lay didn’t cost him votes. But it’s actually about Texas Wildflower Day.
Not enough American native plants are named after Democrat politicians, which is A Real Problem For The Left.
mv 11.11.04 at 4:55 pm
“hegemonic elastoplast” – while clearly in itself a reference to the US Left’s wish to provide only temporary solutions to the world’s problems – links to an article that analyzes teen magazines to determine UK girls’ attitudes towards participating in sport. Sitting around with a pile of “Just Seventeen” instead of getting out there and watching a squad of buxom cheerleaders showing their joy in athletic accomplishment? Obviously a Real Problem for the Left.
Zizka 11.11.04 at 5:27 pm
“Myoglobin prissiness” gets three sites, all of which consist of random words, as far as I know, except that two of them are mostly in Turkish. I think someone’s fuckin’ with us.
r. clayton 11.11.04 at 7:35 pm
I was afraid this was
going to come up. In addition to playing on a smaller court with a deader ball, European Googlewackers start counting from one rather than zero as American Googlewackers do.
I hope one day we will eliminate these needless discrepancies between what should be a unified peoples, lest the discrepancies multiply and join into an impassable schism, which would be &c. &c.
Luc 11.11.04 at 7:57 pm
r. dayton! &c is no excuse for not noting that American Googlewackers are A Real Problem For The Left. You’ll end up reading about arthritis and Florida and it’s cheating because Googlewackers isn’t in Google’s dictionary.
Cheating and Florida, if that isn’t a real problem for the left, what is?
frumiousb 11.12.04 at 9:26 am
Storge Gamboling
leads to an essay about the Four Greek Loves of Ulysses
Ulysses (obscenity trials)
Greek Loves
Multiple partners
all bad, and all a problem for the left.
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