I make the top of the search list more than once!

I have to ask, what the heck is a crowl cage? This is what someone went searching for on Yahoo a couple of days ago. I shouldn’t worry, as it brought my blog up at the top of the list, but since Yahoo thought that John Cage and Mike Crowl had something in common with a crowl cage, it seemed a bit of a pointless result for the query.
Various other equally inconsequential results turned up, none of them having anything to do with a crowl cage. The results are much the same on Google, and I still come up at the top of the list. Well, good on John Cage for providing me with some assistance in terms of search queries.
I'd still like to know what the person was looking for, and what they thought 'crowl' meant.
I didn’t do nearly so well when it came to people getting search results for Baldwin St and wheelie bins. I’ve written about the incident in which a student died elsewhere, but it’s interesting to see that a number of other people have also written about this, and several of them have got their facts wrong. Word-of-blog can be just as muddled as word-of-mouth, rather like the equivalent of Chinese whispers on the web.
Which reminds me that I had a good idea about blogs at lunch time while talking to a friend – which I’ve now forgotten. Maybe it’ll come back before I finish this post.
I did manage to get to the top of the Google list with ‘skin game coughing’ – a fairly meaningless phrase, you’d think, until you realise, as Google apparently did, that it might have something to do with Hitchcock’s movie, The Skin Game, and the scene in which the auctioneer has a persistent cough.
Eeyore’s characteristics turn up again, and I get to third place. Pretty good for a little blog that only three people ever read….
The film, Deliverance, must be being studied at the moment, since a common search is for ‘notes deliverance’. And I get to third place for that too, even though my only comment on this film is to quote from another source – the Christian Science Monitor, in fact – which actually has something good to say about the movie. I remember it as a shocking and nasty piece of work, with the only brief moment of quiet and gentleness being when one of the four main characters stops to play a duet with a young mountain boy. It’s a well-known sequence, but it has very little to do with the violent nature of the rest of the movie. Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.
Back in 2007, I mentioned that Peter Jackson was likely to be directing a film (or perhaps three films made back-to-back) about Tin Tin. Seems like that’s going ahead, with Jackson and Spielberg co-directing. One source says they’ll each direct one movie, and then co-direct the third. I get the impression this is all still in the pipeline as yet.
Extraordinarily I make it to the top of the list again, with a query about John Adams Composer. I was very taken with a piece of music by this composer that I heard in England, and intended to get to know his music better when I got back home. For a brief period, Adams was flavour of the month on the local Concert radio program, but they didn’t play the piece I’d heard, and what I did hear didn’t great excite me. Adams appears to be in the mode of composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, guys who have their moments, but who have chosen to compose minimalist music that can drive you quite insane. Unless that’s their intention, of course.
I’ve been trying to think how I can introduce strollers into this post, and so far haven’t succeeded. Strollers, for those who don’t have, or never have had, children, are those awkwardly-shaped devices that fold up into equally awkwardly-shaped shapes, and in which you carry your toddler (when it’s not folded up – the stroller, I mean, not the child). We used to call them baby buggies, and I think they have a number of different names, depending on where in the world you happen to live. Baby buggies were okay – they were lighter than some strollers I’ve since come across, and we didn’t go through too many of them in carting our five kids around over a period of several years. Nor did any of them ever fold up while the child was in them, which I’ve seen happen with later versions. When we first bought one (in fact, I think we brought it back from England with us), they were the new thing. After that, everyone had to have one. Of course.

Brunel St

I wrote a piece on the online magazine, Quazen, the other day, called Dunedin’s Other Steep Streets. You can see a link to it in the Triond Articles’ box over to the left – the widget box, as it’s officially known.
In it I mentioned the fact that Dunedin has quite a lot of steep streets, including part of the one we live on. My daughter has phoned me to say, but what about ‘Libby’s Street?’ (Libby being another daughter of mine.) This street, which is really called Brunel St, runs parallel at one point to our street, and falls down the same piece of hill at a nasty steep rate.
I seem to remember it got called ‘Libby’s Street’ because she used to delight in us going down there at great speed, when she was younger. She might not be so keen these days, particularly if she had her kids in the car, as she got uptight at me heading at 30kph corners at a rather faster rate when we were in Christchurch once.
Being reminded about ‘her’ street brought to mind another incident with her. Back in the old days, when there such computers as the Amiga 500 (marvellous machines they were, too), Libby and I went to the Amiga Club one night, and wound up playing some game which involved people dropping suddenly off something (the details are little hidden in the mists of time, as you see). Each time a person dropped, my daughter would, without fail, burst into an hilarious laughter. The other patrons of the Club were not impressed. She hasn’t a nasty streak in her, but something about the sudden drop appealed to her – which is maybe why Brunel St was one she liked too.

I can't show you a photo of Brunel St, but there are some photos of Baldwin St, Dunedin's famed 'World's Steepest Street' on DelsJourney.com. Just scroll down the page a bit, and you'll see it. Brunel St almost gives it a run for its money.

Baldwin St

Baldwin St may be popular with tourists, but it’s not so popular with the people who live in it. Does that make sense?
You know, of course, what Baldwin St is famous for, because you read your Guinness Book of Records, or the Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand. It’s the steepest street in the world, isn’t it!
I remember having an email conversation with someone about this one time, because he claimed that there was a street in San Francisco that was steeper, and set out some mathematical stuff that I didn’t in the least understand, to prove it. Well, whether it is, or whether it isn’t, it’s regarded as being, and that’s enough for me. (Actually I’ve just noticed in the paper this morning that there was a battle over this issue in 2003, and we won!)
However, steepness draws loonies, and with there being up to 20,000 students in the city during the Varsity year, it’s not surprising there gain some additional loonies. (We actually have enough of our own without importing any, by the way.)
In 2001 one loony student ‘drove’ his girlfriend down the street in a wheelie bin (a rubbish bin on wheels) and killed her when they crashed. And just the other day several loonies in a car (littered with booze bottles and such) careened down the street at an estimated 150 kph and crashed into the Hospice at the bottom.
These are the sorts of things that make the street unpopular with those who live there: they hate the drongos who see the street as a challenge to their (inept) driving skills.
Quite honestly, it’s not a street I’d care to live in. I once worked as a survey interviewer, and got Baldwin St on my list. It ain’t fun to climb, I can tell you.