And a quick note on Blekko

Are you using Blekko? The new search engine? Well let me tell you, it's an eye-opener.

Backtracking: Have you ever googled "Geoffrey Raymond"? Well, let me tell you, I have (although I try not to do it more than three times a day). And I always wondered, in a somewhat self-serving manner, why this professor from UCSB with the same name as me gets about the same number of entries when you type us/me/him in. I mean, without bragging, they are talking about me on the NBC Evening News and he's publishing something obscure in The Illinois Journal of Applied Social Behavior. Or some-such.

Not that this makes me cross, but after googling myself on Blekko (I bet the guys at Blekko hate that choice of verbs), I'm starting to think that the fix is in. Because when you Blekko me/him/us, manoman I am crushing the guy. Not like its a competition, but still...

The deal with Blekko--not suggesting I've made a personal inquiry; this is just what I've read--is that they are immune (my word, not theirs) to search engine optimization (which is obviously what the guy from UCSB must be doing) and just report the facts. Like Joe Friday on Dragnet. If that's not lost on you.

So the next time I need to know something, I'm going to blekko.com.

Try it now. Click here. Type in my name. You'll be amazed at the shit you'll read.

And as a bonus, at the 117th entry (I was fascinated by all the stuff people have written about me and couldn't turn away), I see this glimmer of a previous life:

So, does Concord grape juice contain the beneficial compounds as red wine? Some compounds overlap. It helps that Concord grape juice is made by pressing and pulverizing the whole grape, including the seeds and the skin, before it is strained and made into juice, according to Welch's spokesperson Geoffrey Raymond.

Thank you, Blekko, for that bit of good fun.

And while you are there, be sure and read the artistic statement I submitted to the Brooklyn Artists Gym for my artist-in-residence page. As of this writing, it is Entry #13. I assumed that everybody would get the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" references (they go on, word for word, for sentences at a time). But nobody did and they all looked at me in a very much different way after that.

For you completists, everybody mentioned in my artistic statement is an Peter McManus regular.