Suzanne à Grenoble

One of my favorite (albeit dorky) new things to do on the Internet is to hit the “Next Blog” button up on the top of blogger.com blogs and see what happens. It can be pretty entertaining, because essentially you’re saying to the Internet, “show me what you got. Send me to the ramblings of someone I’ve never met, will never meet, and whose personal thoughts I should not be privy to.” But lately I’ve been getting a whole lot of advertising sites that people use the blogger templates to create. At first I was annoyed by these uninvited ads, but I came upon one last night that made me laugh until I cried (http://wigs761resorces.blogspot.com/). Let me explain why, because, at first glance, a Web site about “saliva resources” would not seem too hilarious.

Someone, somewhere (someone named Webcorp, apparently), has created a template to be used with blogger sites which help people find out about a subject, product, or news story. But usually, because of the nature of templates, the phrasing of the ads makes little or no sense, as the person who created the site simply entered the name of a specific product or research topic or news story into the blank field of the template, and then let it be published without editing it. So what ensues, a lot of the time, is a blog like “saliva resources,” (actually entitled “WIGS786”) where you have entries like this:

Detailed information concerning thyroid saliva test wichita. saliva resources, full of thyroid saliva test wichita newsletters, articles, links and other thyroid saliva test wichita information - ALL FREE - in one easy to navigate site to save time and money.

and this one, which frankly still makes me tear up each time I think about it:

Detailed information concerning dog throwing up saliva. saliva resources, full of dog throwing up saliva newsletters, articles, links and other dog throwing up saliva information - ALL FREE - in one easy to navigate site to save time and money.

Dog throwing up saliva newsletters? Sign me up! Is the Internet really so diverse and detailed, and are peoples’ needs so evolved and specific that it’s possible to subscribe to a newsletter for my dog’s salivary gland disorder? I can’t believe that there is a community of people out there who have banded together in support of their pets’ dysfunctional vomit.

No. It’s got to be a front for something else. When you click on any of the links on the saliva resources page, they bring you to another chock-full-of-advertising site, with a mention of saliva in combination with another (possibly illegal?) subject, like downloading mp3’s. Perhaps this is a way of avoiding being punished for illegal downloads or something. I haven’t investigated enough to be sure. If you wish to enlighten me, please do. Or, if you are a subscriber to the Dog Throwing Up Saliva Newsletter, PLEASE contact me. I would really like to talk to you.