It’s time to bring an old favorite department back from the dead! In times past, I would occasionally peek at my website logfiles to find the silliest, most ridiculous search keyphrases that had brought people here. In my recent relaunch of the Oddball Update I deleted hundreds of old posts, those included; but at the request of a friend I thought it might be amusing to get this little featurette relaunched.
I’ve got over a year’s worth of logfiles to peruse, so let’s get to it, shall we?
Since the last time I did this, certain corners of my blog have gotten a lot more popular. For instance, there’s a particular post about fixing slow WebDAV performance that draws a ton of visitors each month and has been linked to around the Internet, including in documentation and software wikis, even though I was merely reprinting a solution that I’d found elsewhere. (Guess I better make sure I never delete it or change its permalink.) As a result, my search logs are stuffed with dozens or even hundreds of these types of queries each and every month.
I’ve mostly discarded those keyphrases for the purposes of this post, but there’s still plenty of zany fodder in the search logs beneath all of that unfunny relevance. Whether it’s a particularly amusing query for an otherwise sensible topic, or a search that is apropos of God only knows what, I’ve collected what I hope will be an entertaining selection below.
- apple slice soda
- faygo honeydew mist
- recipe for bill knapps chicken fricassee
- keebler classic collection chocolate fudge sandwich cookies
- keebler french vanilla creme cookies
- discontinued keebler fudge cookies
Yes, people are still searching for these antique and long-unobtainable foodstuffs, despite the fact that I first (and last) wrote about the subject back in 2006. One guy even knows that his fabled cookies are discontinued! My search logs are filled with these kinds of queries every month. Excepting the seekers of Bill Knapp’s top-secret recipes, I’m not sure what people are expecting to find — someone with a thirty-year-old stockpile of Apple Slice and Keebler chocolate fudge cookies in his Soviet-era bomb shelter? Good luck. But as long as we’re waxing nostalgic on the subject of cookies, anybody remember Keebler’s other stroke of cookie genius from the ’80s? They were called Magic Middles, and they were delightful.
Moving on…
- oddball automotive new mexico
I’m not sure whether this is a mechanic’s shop, a car dealer, or what. I’ve run a search for this query and turned up nothing conclusive. Nothing except my own site, that is.
- do i need a tivo sunscription if i have comcast?
Maybe it’d help if I knew what the hell a “sunscription” was. Beyond that, how does paying Comcast for cable in any way obviate your need to pay TiVo for their guide data? You gotta pay both, so far as I am aware.
- tenchu z hairstyles
This showed up because of a review my friend (and ocassional Oddball contributor) wrote of this game in 2007. But why hairstyles? What the crap? I realize that your character’s aesthetic attributes, including hairstyle, were customizable, but is the hairstyle choice a hallmark feature of this game or what?
- vegas style games xbox
Hee. It’s a legit query, though not really for this site. What’s funny is, I bet I know why this came up.
- star trek online how to take a seat
Seriously. You need to ask how to sit down? In truth, the ability to “take a seat” — or perform numerous other actions, such as the fabled Picard Facepalm Maneuver — are fairly hidden away in Star Trek Online. What’s amusing to me is that it was so important for somebody to know how to sit down that they searched for it. And trust me, it wasn’t just one person, either.
- apple we’ll be back soon font
I think it’s called “Marker Felt.”
- mrs oddball
Hey! Leave my wife outta this!
- star trek online i bought the bundle but it still costs money?
For some reason, I saw this query as being almost lyrical. Kinda like Jerry Reed’s song: “She got the goldmine and I got the shaft!” But I’m not surprised to see this query; I had nothing but problems the one and only time I attempted to buy something from the Star Trek Online store, to the point where I eventually gave up empty-handed.
- oddballs nurse porno
A Google logic failure illustrated. This is a lurid combination of my blog name, the title of the review I wrote of the Thai horror film Sick Nurses, and…porn, which…this site doesn’t feature. Seriously, what the fuck.
- how to listen my radio i install in my gto
This had me rolling, and not just because of the incompetent grasp of the English language. How can you possibly operate a motor vehicle, let alone install a car stereo yourself, and not know how to turn the radio on? Surely that means the windshield wipers and high beams are also well beyond your understanding. This query is scarier than Sick Nurses.
- excellent affinity for destruction intact shepard
Haha, nice. It didn’t take long for this to make it into my search logs from this month, proving that someone else enjoyed Mordin Solus’ quip from the Mass Effect 3 demo as much as I did. (Incidentally, speaking of Mordin, did you know that he has a different voice actor in the latest game? I couldn’t tell, judging only by the limited lines he had in the demo.)
- skip blitzball games
I sympathize, truly I do. But you can’t.
- blitzball simulator
Conversely, here’s a brave soul who enjoys Blitzball so much, he wants a simulation of it. Like a team management game for Blitzball or something. (Maybe he should play Final Fantasy X-2, since I understand that’s more what Blitzball is like in that game.)
- mass effect questions annoying
Renegade Shepard: “I am sick of this reporter’s annoying questions! Garrus, grab a gat and shut her ass up!” Apparently, judging by the number of times some variant of this query appeared in my logs, numerous people find Mass Effect’s conversations really annoying. I guess that’s why the latest installment has the new “Action” experience mode that turns the interactive convos into cutscenes.
- what accent is the man from cradle of life
I think it’s a dialect of Incomprehensible, commonly spoken by natives of Mumbleyville. Seriously, if you mean Gerard Butler, it’s Scottish. And I couldn’t understand him either, if that’s what you were getting at, though given the movie in question, I don’t think we’re missing anything.
- on being an oddball
I mean, I guess I would know, right?
- webdav fucking slow
Out of all the hundreds of queries I get each month for WebDAV issues, using every combination of terms imaginable to describe the problem, I like this one the best. The guy really boils it down.
- why does the display button on my jvc head unit work
If I understood you correctly, you’re asking why the display button…is working properly? Who asks questions like this? “Holy shit, why does everything work RIGHT? This stuff is doing what it’s supposed to and I can’t TAKE IT!”
- skyrim too few voice actors
Jesus, yes. JESUS, YES.
- how can i get an illegal cable card for my tivo
Oh, that’s very good. This is like that one I had a few years ago where some guy was Googling for the best place to buy illegal drugs. You might as well just search for “where can I steal a TiVo from” while you’re at it.
- tahmoh penikett kotor
It looks as though somebody else made the same connection that I did. (I admit that this is an assumption, but I cannot imagine why else they would have searched for this.)
- horror movie nurse with a trunk 70s
A horror movie about a nurse…with a trunk? From the ’70s? Huh? I have no earthly idea what this query is on about, but I’m envisioning an old slasher shot on Betamovie featuring a tarted-up evil nurse who lugs around a huge trunk and…I dunno, beats people with it while funky guitar licks play. My imagination is odd. (Annnnnnd that’s why this site is named what it is…)
- odd ball the game
Oddball: The Game. That’s awesome. If it actually existed, I imagine it would be an awesome adventure about my incredibly pedestrian life. Sadly, it does not exist, so I have no clue what this idiot was looking for.
Oh…wait. It does exist. And it looks like it sucks, too. Oh well. Probably because it’s not an awesome adventure about my incredibly pedestrian life. If it were, it would have sucked much, much harder.
- i am playing a year and a nice christmas
This sounds like something that a state hospital inmate might run up and say excitedly to you if you accidentally went down the wrong hallway.
- oddball truck driving jobs
Because it’s not hard enough being a truck driver, you want the oddball truck driving jobs. What would those be, anyhow — transporting alien corpses from New Mexico to Mulder’s office or something?
- i knew it would work
I’m so glad to hear that. Why you searched for this phrase, however, continues to elude me.
- i might busy from weekend until next week
*pulls hair* Seriously, what is with people who search for these conversational non-sequiturs? WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO FIND? Are they song lyrics? Movie lines?
- always bet on duke broussard
While I know that “always bet on Duke” is a famous quote from Duke Nukem creator George Broussard, the way this query was structured makes me envision a character named “Duke Broussard”: a big, ponytailed programming guy with a mega-arsenal who kicks ass by coding and snarking aliens to death.
- tomb raider underworld coastal thailand boobs
It seemed like a perfectly legitimate query, until suddenly there was “boobs”. I guess boobs from coastal Thailand are what the searcher would really like to see. As opposed to, say, Valhalla boobs or Arctic Sea boobs. (All of these are locations from the game, and I guess you could technically say that there are boobs at all of them, since Lara Croft travels there. Ba-doom-boom.)
- commander-in-chief bugged out on everyone
Which commander-in-chief is this? What is this in reference to? I may be the Chief Oddball, but I’m not bugging out on anybody, let me assure you.
- roxio burn crap
Another amusing search for what I guess is a crappy product, wherein the searcher doesn’t really want answers, they just want validation that Roxio burns crap. Sounds like a pretty cool slogan, actually. “Roxio: We Burn Crap.” That can’t smell too good, incidentally.
- freedom force boring
Somebody apparently agreed with Pooch’s ye olde review of this game, written back in B.C.E. 950. (I mean, 2004.) He thought the game was so boring, the word even makes its way into the title of the post.
- darfh
Hey Pooch, I think Scott may be looking for his old PS2 memory unit.
- knight rider it’s a bomb code red
This is awesome. Somebody else must think this scene is iconic enough to search for, because there it is — the famous airport security guard’s line from season four’s “Sky Knight.” The guy sees a bomb trundling through the baggage X-ray, exclaims to himself, “It’s a bomb!” and then leans into a microphone and drones generically, “Code red.” Wow! I’m sure that’s proper FAA/TSA procedure for reporting the presence of explosives!
- apple slice soda fermententation
Ignoring the fact that the guy G.W. Bush’ed the query with one too many syllables (“fermen-ten-tation”?), I can only imagine someone would search for this if they had (or were looking to buy) a case of classic Apple Slice left over from the 1980s and were worried about how the stuff might taste after all this time. Maybe it’s the person I alluded to above, who’s got a line on a source of this discontinued food stuffed in somebody’s Soviet-era bomb shelter. Hey, look at it this way: if the Slice actually is fermented — which I doubt, because there is likely no trace of actual apples in that stuff’s apple flavoring — it might be a good way to get drunk.
- thank god i’m not in high school anymore.
You and me both. I don’t know why you searched for this, but I raise my glass (of fermented Apple Slice) to you.
- ted spindler jewish
Ted Spindler may be many things, including the man who spilled instant Quaker oatmeal on the Ventana Nuclear Power Plant’s control console in some crazy fiction of my own invention, but as far as I know he’s not Jewish. …Oh. You mean some other Ted Spindler.
- young nurses are dunking in hospital with doctor
Another one of those bizarre queries that sets my imagination afire with mind’s-eye visuals of a doctor and group of nurses merrily dunking their heads in a pan of water in the basement of some hospital somewhere. Seriously, I’d love to know what this person is really looking for with this.
- chevrolet watchamazon
Is that the name of a new model they’re going to release next year? The “Watchamazon”? Perhaps they can sell it alongside the GMC Sumpinorudder and the Buick Thigamajigiba.
- aztek pontiac raider tomb
I think whoever searched for this is dyslexic. If you read the query backwards it almost makes a bizarre kind of sense. Except it doesn’t, because to my knowledge there was never a “Tomb Raider” special edition of the Pontiac Aztek (although if there was, given the time that vehicle was in production, its pointy nose would have borne a striking resemblance to the pixelated visage of ancient low-poly Lara Croft).
- phony 1080i transmission by some satelitte networks look like poop
Hee hee. He’s absolutely right, but I just love the fact that he searched for this. This. Not a question (“Does it look like poop?”), not a solution (“How do I make this look less poop-like?”), but a statement of fact. More Internet validation-seekers, it appears.
- highly compressed vampire game
So are you looking for a game about vampires that has been compressed (i.e., with 7-Zip or RAR) with maximum possible efficiency? Or is this a game about highly compressed vampire midgets who just crawled out of a trash compactor?
- pictures on the internet i dont want
If you don’t want them, why on earth are you searching for them? Or are you looking for pictures from that “Do Not Want” meme? Because if so, you’re doing it wrong. (Oooh. Meme-mixing.)
- is it wrong to ask someone to do as they are told
Not if you’re their superior officer or paying them to do a job.
- jack dunworth haunted
“The Jack Dunworth M…” …is haunted. I guess.
- pastor john c mills
This is the guy who recorded a whole litany of those Faith Bible Hour “tape cassettes” that my late grandfather left me. I have no idea where Mr. Mills is now.
- i am 51 and dont want to use the internet
Yet, here you are. Using it.
- is jin from fear dead or not
I see somebody else is confused about the F.E.A.R. canon contradictions where Jin Sun-Kwon dies cheesily in the Extraction Point expansion pack and then shows up in F.E.A.R. 3 alive and (mostly) well. Answer: Extraction Point is not canon and should be disregarded (even though it is a higher-quality F.E.A.R. experience than F.E.A.R. 3…).
- i feared that i would run into a last night.
Well, I fear that I will one day have to engage somebody with your mental capacity in conversation.
- i signed a contract with nozzel nolan do i have to honor it?
Isn’t that the definition of signing a contract? But really, what I’m here to snark about with this search log entry is the unmitigated hilarity (and unfortunateness) of a company name like “Nozzel Nolan”. I looked them up and they seem to be a pest control company. Yet all I can think of when I hear that name is “the nozzle” gag from The Venture Bros. “Please do not be alarmed. We are about to engage…the nozzle.”
- toyota commercial oh yea this is serious stuff
“Oh, yeah! Toyota…that’s serious!” Seriously boring. (I assume this was a tagline from a commercial of theirs or something.)
- hello i want a big mac mcdlt quarter pounder
Bahahahaha! I assume this is a reference to the old McDonald’s Menu Song from the ’80s, but what really gets me laughing is the errant “hello”, which was not part of the song. It makes the query read like somebody just walked up to you, said “Hello!” and then started reciting the McDonald’s Menu Song. (I guess we’re back in the wrong hallway of that state hospital again…)
- my mom havebeen loving
Wait…what? All this makes me think of is that guy from Shawshank: “I had your momma! She wasn’t that good!”
- wolfenstein 3d project totengraeber xbox download
As the creator of Project Totengraeber, I think it’s cute that somebody hopes it’s been ported to the Xbox…somehow. (How would I do that, exactly?)
- cablecard fuckery
Ha! Another one that really sums it up. Dealing with CableCARDs is probably one of the worst experiences you can have with a cable company, and given that they’re, y’know, a cable company, that’s really saying something. “Fuckery” indeed.
- thaigirls inn koh samuie
Only one word of that query escaped being misspelled, sadly enough. Since Koh Samui is in Thailand, I’d say it stands to reason that there would be Thai girls there. But if we look closer, it seems that perhaps the searcher is looking for the “Thaigirls Inn”, which I can only assume is a brothel. Either way, have fun getting around with such poor communications skills.
- acura all ugly
At this rate, that might as well be the name of Acura’s next model. The “All Ugly”. Because undoubtedly it will be. (Seriously, though, I should give these guys some credit. They’ve been trying to fix their rampant uglification lately.)
And finally, here’s the last query, which I can only assume was spurred on by my multi-week (sometimes multi-month) absences from posting on this site:
- what happened to the oddball guy
At this moment? I’m right here. But in case I should disappear again, I’d like to present you with a revolving assortment of excuses for it, which you can choose from at random:
- Preoccupied with the baby
- Got sucked into a sidework project that has brought the level of cursing at Oddball Headquarters to new heights
- Too busy bitchslapping Reapers/monsters/Belltower agents in Mass Effect 3/Silent Hill/Deus Ex
- Went to Zimbabwe for fun and profit
- Fell off the back of a truck
- Invented an automatic necktie straightener and quit my job due to sudden financial windfall
- Fell asleep at keyboard
Till next time.
