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Please Don’t Taunt the Gorilla in the Cage

First of all, I want to send mad nasty uber-jiggy props to Mark over at neOnbubble, who was kind and clever enough to play my little game from my last post. He even made a great choice — check it out for yourself.

(* Ooh, ooh — update since I started writing this entry:

Kick ass, people! And they even got it without the hints below!)

Thanks also to Shelley over at Cynical: A Life, who answered — but in the comments, not in exactly the way intended.

(But she’s forgiven because I used to listen to Bill Cosby on vinyl back in the day, too. I didn’t even have to go to the library — my dad had Wonderfulness and Why Is There Air?, so I could giggle over them whenever I liked.)

Anyway, if you’re interested in playing, too, but haven’t quite figured out the game, I’ll just say this — initially, I didn’t want to reveal the secret to the code. Yes, initially — that is to say, at first — I hoped to stick to the letter of my game. And not give up the code. I didn’t want to paragraph — sorry, sorry, I mean telegraph; did I really say paragraph? — I didn’t want to telegraph the secret. But now… well, now I still don’t want to give it away. But I just did, right there, already. Drat.

All right — on to new business. Unless anyone’s got another agenda item to take care of first. No? Good. Let’s move on, then.

(Yes, I’ve been spending way too much time in meetings lately. I’ve started setting agendas for trips to the bathroom. It’s not cool.)

So, how’s this for a mindjob:

I checked out the logs — as I occasionally obsessively do — a few days ago, and saw that someone was spending quite a lot of time browsing around. This happens from time to time — I usually assume that it’s someone scanning for porn, or dialing in from a mental hospital, or maybe a dog skittering over an unattended keyboard somewhere. No sane person would actually read this stuff in high volumes. Not if they wanted to stay sane, anyway.

The intriguing thing, though, was where this person came from. The domain listed for that session was a publishing company. A large, multinational, well-known publishing company.

(Well, apparently ‘well-known’, because I’ve heard of them. And I can barely read comic books. So they’re freaking huge.)

Now, that’s one thing. Interesting, but nothing to get all chubbed up and perky about. But here’s the other thing — peep what I found in the search logs, and correlated back to the same person:

Search: query for ‘contact’

Search: query for ’email address’

Search: query for ‘novel’

Search: query for ‘publisher’

Search: query for ‘literary agent’

Search: query for ‘agent’

Search: query for ‘book’

Damn. Now that’s pretty intriguing. I don’t know what they wanted, exactly, or what brought them to my little hovel on the internet, but that’s pretty damned cool.

Except… except that the first two queries appeared to be an attempt to find a contact address. And I haven’t gotten any emails from big well-respected publishing houses in the past few days… or, well, ever, really. Hell, I’ve never gotten an email from smarmy little tiny publishing companies, either. No love, I’m saying. No love at all.

So, apparently fate is teasing me. Again. If only the person had noticed the email links at the end of each post. Or if they’d just come back and read this, or have someone else check out the site, then… well, hell, I don’t know what, really. Then I could answer their questionnaire, or subscribe to their newsletter, or find out that they’re looking for a specific Charlie, and I’m not him, or some other far, far less interesting thing than I’d been hoping for. And fate will rattle my cage again. Goddamned fate. This is why I never play the lottery. Bah.