Splintered Sunrise

I normally dig my heels in and resist memes, but a little while back Phil tagged me with a good one. Feel free to join in if you like.

Very simply, grab the nearest book, go to page 123, and write down sentences six to eight. Then see what randomness you come up with. It’s all the rage on the sociology blogs, I believe.

So what we have here is:

Nokorbal agents took the time to make a watertight case and prepare the purge of a party cadre carefully. In June 1977 Tiv Ol, another cultural revolutionist, was arrested. In May and June five more North zone cadres were sent to Tuol Sleng and between June and September another 35 Northwest zone cadres.

Quite. That cheery little passage was from The Eyes of the Pineapple: Revolutionary Intellectuals and Terror in Democratic Kampuchea by RA Burgler (Saarbrücken, 1990). So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

(Actually, I cheated a little. This was the second book I picked up. The first was a Sherrilyn Kenyon novel, and the directions put me in the middle of an energetic shagging scene. I know some readers are a bit sensitive about that sort of thing.)

A couple of minor landmarks for this bewilderingly popular little blog. The stats counter has now passed 150,000, which I find absolutely unbelievable. The daily hits are not quite what they were at the height of the Respect crisis, but they’re very healthy nonetheless.

Meanwhile, we’ve been nominated in the News/Current Affairs category for the Irish Blog Awards. To which I can only say, aw shucks. You might want to have a look at all the nominations in the different categories and support the many excellent bloggers there.

But for the time being, the tea is hot, the BÖC are playing “Shadow of California” and my toes are tapping…

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Thanks to everyone for their kind messages - I’ll also endeavour to go through the irregularly checked SS mailbox.

 A special thanks also to Madam Miaow for the card.

It’ll be some time yet before I’m firing on all cylinders, but there will be some writing here. There’ll probably be some changes on the blog in priorities and subject matter, but there you go. It’ll be a nice surprise.

But for now, it’s time to get back to Celebrity Squares. Will it be Mary-Kate? Or will it be Ashley? One never knows, and so the tension builds…

And so it’s the return of our ever-popular Search of the Week feature, occasioned by a sudden upsurge in arresting search terms over the last week. You won’t be surprised to learn that our little discussion of pubic tonsorial fashions has a lot to do with this – there are a couple for 1970s porn star Kay Parker, there’s Pam Grier nude scenes and there’s hairy women 1970s. Most striking of all is one for women with big red pubic bushes, which I suppose proves the point that there are all sorts out there.

And of course, bearing in mind what half the surfers out there are looking for, there are plenty of other sex-related terms, notably what size are Suranne Jones’ tits – I must confess, if you’re looking for an exact cup size I don’t know – and Willesden Green sexy massage. Indeed.

Here are a few other gems:

Kneeling schoolgirl
Michelle Ryan pyjama
Hitman with turban
Jeremy Kyle plied us with booze
Mathematics bureaucracy
Bulldog Basil
Misogyny Andy McNab
Facial massage manicure Mid Ulster
Julius Caesar masturbation
Correct Methodist acolyte diagram
Young women puritan lifestyles

All honest to God searches from the WordPress stats page. And my favourite this week is: dude basalt columns. I have an image in my head of The Big Lebowski being re-enacted at the Giant’s Causeway…

As we wish a happy Hanukkah to our readers, I’m pleased to notice that the stats counter has now passed 100,000 hits since moving to WordPress back in April. What’s more, November saw a high of 28,097 hits, up from 25,445 in October. It’s a long way from the dizzy heights of Socialist Unity, but not bad going for an esoteric little blog like this.

Huzzah!

Rud eile: I haven’t done Search of the Week for a while, just because the more bizarre searches seem to have dried up for some reason. I am however tickled to see a search for Oliver Kamm is an odious little man - more like this please.

Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t done Search of the Week for a while. This isn’t due to laziness but to lack of supply – the really bizarre searches I used to get on a regular basis seem to have dried up lately.

But, on the other hand, there is always the Google image search. This can generate a lot of traffic if you score highly, but it’s a mystery to me how the rankings work – you often seem to make a showing at some random point, maybe some months after the relevant post goes up.

It’s also slightly amusing to think of the reactions of the searchers when they get here. That’s especially so when the image is an oblique comment on the post, or is just an image that caught my eye but has no real relevance to the text. I mean, two of the perennial favourites bringing people here have been Pingu (that leads, I think, to a discussion of the Irish Labour Party) and Dale Winton (leading to a post on Bertie Ahern). All the same, it keeps the stats counter ticking over and, you never know, somebody might get a kick out of the text and decide to come back.

I mention this because over the last week or so there had been an inordinate number of people coming here looking for multi-talented glamour model and pop singer Michelle Marsh. A quick referral to Google Images confirmed that this blog was one of the top three results for the lovely Michelle. So, that accounts for the boob men. But in the last couple of days they have been outflanked by the leg men, drawn here in great numbers by searches for foxy newsreader Fiona Bruce.

I should really be mortified. Here I am trying to promote political discussion, and promising to keep the cheesecake to the bare minimum, and this is what I get from the search engines. I don’t particularly want this place to get a reputation as “the socialist blog with big boobs” – God knows, my feminist credentials are shot to hell as it is – but then that seems to be what half the punters on the net are looking for.

I shrug my shoulders.

Well, the stats counter has nearly burst into flames this past week. I’d like to think that this blog’s coverage of the Respect crisis has given traffic a boost, and indeed it seems to have done, but the big spike in the graph was very largely due to my throwaway skit on the Tower of Bono. Thanks to Crooked Timber for picking it up.

Despite all this extra traffic, however, it hasn’t been a vintage week for searches, so I’ll just flag up a few that caught my eye. Gay tracksuit photos in Japan is an obvious one, and so is Myles na gCopaleen at war. I’m also pleased to see Skibbereen Eagle turn up, as well as Wittgenstein and Chomskyan linguistics. Although I’m puzzled by why men buy boats Michelle Marsh…

A punter asks, Where can I buy Gerry McGeough’s book? I didn’t know he had one, but I’ll look out for it. Another Googler simply types liúdramán – well, that’s to the point. Someone else is looking for duncher work hats – you know, I used to wear a duncher, much more regularly than I do now, but I never thought of it as a work hat.

Our bronze this week goes to apartments built over Church of Satan. Somebody alert Sarah Beeny!

Our runner-up is bone Inuit fetish. Would this be a mystical Greenlandic carving?

And this week’s winner couldn’t really be anything but Bono’s erection. I will be watching plans for the Tower of Bono with great interest.

Just wanted to say, I really enjoyed Johns Bird and Fortune giving a rare interview to Belvid for last night’s South Bank Show. Nice to see the overview of their whole career going right back to Cambridge. Also, I never knew that as a young man Bird had joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It makes some sense that, were he to join a left group, it would be the uniquely intelligent and charming SPGB.

Time now for Search of the Week, to see what waifs and strays Google has brought our way. Newton Emerson feminism turns up, as does Donegal Mafia – and I repeat, any serious student of Irish politics should really take a look at Sacks’ classic book on the Blaney machine. And those readers who remember the CPI(ML) will be delighted that I have a hit for David Vipond Trinity.

There are several sex-related local searches, beyond the usual punters interested in Methody girls’ skirts. I am slightly alarmed at sexy loyalist girls Belfast, in case this indicates that the priapic Johnny Adair is thinking of making a comeback. We also have Newtownards gay, Portadown brothels and Buncrana porn, all of which are beyond my ken. And Sikh women sex makes some sense, but gay tracksuit fetish really has me scratching my head, as does dungarees porn.

There is one for saucy Eoghan, which I really hope isn’t our favourite senator, and political searches include Kate Hoey BICO, Kevin Myers homophobic Belfast Telegraph and National Rosary Crusade Ireland Hibernian.

We have Jackie Gleason and Irish mafia, which would put a whole new slant on Smokey and the Bandit; criticism of Marcus Brigstocke; and I’m pleased to get one for Power Man and Iron Fist, obviously from an aficionado of early 1980s comics.

In third place is Than Shwe’s philosophy of life. Hmm, maybe practice of death would be more accurate.

Our runner-up is money for old rope columnists, of which there are many doing the rounds. I think that leads to a discussion of Carole Malone, who certainly believes in recycling.

We have a runaway winner this week, and that winner is Chomsky wearing saucy schoolgirl uniform, an image I’ll find hard to erase. Beat that, Volty.

Time again to see what weird and wonderful searches are bringing Googlers here. I am immediately struck by someone typing feck off, and someone else looking for Methody skirt blog – well, we try our best. Could this be the same punter who typed Methody girls Belfast stockings?

There is a search for Mary Lou McDonald that catches my eye, but it’s probably libellous so I won’t reproduce it. I like class versus crass feminism, also do football casuals still wear Prada – did they ever? – and case studies Waterford Glass. We have one for IRSP Burma, and another for anthropology female gossip. And I’m puzzled by Tony Gregory of Ernest Bevin school – is this the same TG we all know and love? And an honourable mention goes to old time cars Switzerland, and also do people wear leather coats in Ireland?

In third place this week is Swiss Toni reading map. Which of course would have led to a discussion of Kieran Allen, possibly not what our punter expected. Although it would be nice if it was.

In second is vintage gay paperboy porn – I get this one on a semi-regular basis, and I’m not sure I want to know more.

Our winner is the Googler who is looking for Torments of the Tomb in Islam. Sounds like fun…

On top of wangling a space in Iain Dale’s directory of political blogs (thanks, Mick) and scoring far too highly on the Socialist Unity top 101 (thanks, Andy), I notice from our site stats that the Sunrise is now quoted as a source on not one but two Wikipedia entries. Not on Irish politics, unfortunately, but in the entries on Jim Noble and Francis Wheen – both subjects I’ll probably return to.

I also notice that the stats counter is ticking over quite healthily, with hits up from 11,522 in August to 13,513 in September. Not in the same league as Socialist Unity, but I continue to be surprised that this blog attracts any readers at all. No doubt Earl would find a karmic reason for this.

Rud eile: I’m typing on the fly at the moment for reasons of travel, so if your comment languishes a while in the moderation queue don’t worry about it. Normal service will be resumed on Saturday, with further commentary on Respect. Apropos of which, I notice that the Weedy Wanker is shamelessly plagiarising Socialist Unity, and without attribution forbye. When they plagiarise me, I’ll really have hit the big time.