my first foray into the southern hemisphere

Dear America,

I've been hired for a freelance gig by a company in Australia. The itinerary isn't finalized yet, but I think I'll be leaving for Sydney this Thursday. I'll be back around mid-October -- in my absence please come to the realization that John McCain is a lying (or senile) economic ignoramus married to a thieving drug addict. Sorry, reformed thieving drug addict. Can you imagine if the tables were turned and Mrs. Obama had been the one stealing from her own charity to feed her drug habit?

Have a good time, and don't forget to water my plants.

Sincerely,

SeeLance

Look Who's Popular Now

or, An Examination of the Comparable Popularity of my Most-Viewed Photos on Flickr.

Flickr has a useful and interesting "stats" page, wherein I can easily peruse my photos in order of popularity (judged by a number of criteria, but the one I find most interesting for the purposes of this discussion is Views, or my "200 most popular bits, ordered by the most views". What follows are my top five pics, in descending order:



This photo of Michelangelo's Moses is far and away my most popular, with a whopping 568 total views. What's so great about it? Nothing -- it's an average photo of a breathtaking but not overly famous sculpture in Rome. I've got a better photo of Vatican City's Laocoön group that didn't even break the top 15. But the link to "Horned Moses" pops up early on in Yahoo!'s image search engine; in fact, 147 people have image-searched Yahoo! for "moses" and stumbled across this photo. What does that say about internet users in general? I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of religious or religi-curious people conducting searches on the Web.



Next up, with 343 views is this pic of a Japanese student wearing socks bearing the Playboy Bunny emblem. Some key search phrases entered on both Yahoo! and Google that have yielded this photo are: " teen socks", "teen uniform", "playboy rabbit", and "playboy socks". Not only are the netizens of this world religious, they're also prurient. Fascinating dichotomy, no?




These next two photos (with 302 and 276 views, respectively) are similar and occur right next to each other in my photostream, so it's a fair assumuption that a visitor to one might spot and click the other's thumbnail also. These will rise to the surface if people conduct a search for "harajuku" or "harajuku girls". Thank you, Gwen Stefani.



This one is number five with a bullet. Only a few days ago did it edge past my sixth-most popular photo (another Harajuku girl), with 265 views. Google, Yahoo!, and Baidu (a Chinese search engine) searchers for "Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni" have clicked on this photo I took in HK last December. What can I say, other than that the Olympics are a phenomenon.