Russell Crowe is Hot

My friend Judy will be so disappointed, if she ever finds this entry, that she hasn't been following my journal daily. We have had discussions about Russell Crowe in the past, which have not always been pleasant. She likes him, I don't so much. So for me to write a journal entry called "Russell Crowe is hot" is quite a stretch!

I'm on a roll with Morning Stories and have transcribed several of them this past week. It's a fascinating project, not only because the stories are interesting -- some funny, some touching, some informative -- but because the stories themselves make me want to take a break, rush to Google and do some searching to follow up on a point that the story teller has made.

[ASIDE: You can hear some morning stories yourself, by going to the web page, and especially by searching through the Archives. The show has been running since 2003, so there are a lot of stories there, in wide variety. Something for everyone. The longest episode I've come across is 12 minutes, so it's not like it takes a great deal of time out of your day. New stories come out every Friday.]

But back to Russell Crowe.

The morning story I was transcribing last night was by a blogger named Betsy Divine (whose husband Frank Wilczek, is a Nobel prize winner in Physics), who writes a blog called "Betsy Devine: now with even more funny ha-ha and peculiar." (Now how can you not be intrigued with a title like that?) The title of the morning story was "Blogging in Boston," and I chose it to transcribe for obvious reasons: I'm a blogger and Jeri lives in Boston. Seemed logical to me.

As I typed, she was reminiscing about starting her own blog and how after a week, she noted that it was "quiet out there," and how disappointed she was that nobody had stumbled across her blog yet. She was excited when she got her first comment after three weeks of entries.

But then one day she checked her stats and discovered that she had somehow attracted "hundreds of visitors." What had attracted them, it seemed, was that she had written an entry about a company (SoundDogs) which sells sound effects. She had apparently been in the market for the "sound of happy, laughing children" when writing a computer game several years before.

She mentioned in passing that she discovered that this company sold about twenty-five different sound effects for dropping pieces of armor.

[In case you are interested, they are: Put Down Belt, Put Down Boot, Put Down Boot, Put Down Broken Armor, Put Down Broken Shield, Put Down Buckler Shield, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Cloak, Put Down Glove, Put Down Glove, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Large Shield, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Medium Shield, Put Down Plate Armor, Put Down Small Shield, Put Down Belt, Put Down Boot, Put Down Boot, Put Down Broken Armor, Put Down Broken Shield, Put Down Buckler Shield, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Cloak, Put Down Glove, Put Down Glove, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Large Shield, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Medium Shield, Put Down Plate Armor, Put Down Small Shield.

Apparently gladiators put down boots a lot, and, I guess, in a lot of different ways!]

She questioned why anybody would need twenty-five different sounds for armor and speculated, humorously, that the only reason she could figure out would be if Russell Crowe were to do a gladiator strip tease. Apparently all the crazed Russell Crowe fans flocked to her site and her reputation was made.

So I figured what the heck. If it can work for Betsy, maybe it can work for me. What kind of fans will I attract if they are able to find me by googling "Russell Crowe is hot" ?

Previously my most consistent search engine query is "urethral play" (from the days, I guess, when I was writing about working in a gynecology office and reviewing shows!). "Russell Crowe is Hot" has the potential of attracting quite a different class of internet voyeurs, don't you think?