The weirdest thing in your search history

Information about the coremata of the tropical Australasian tiger moth Creatonotos gangis. The house is full of these moths at the moment. They don't steer very well and when you look at pics of the moth with coremata deployed, you can see why.

I had to search "suicide bow and arrow" for a story I was critting. I was deeply disappointed that the first result linked to the "Story Research" forum here.

Not writing related per se, but my last search was "can gorillas be sociopaths." I won that argument.

Wow, I just looked through my google search history, which spans several years. What a bizarre trip down memory lane!

The following items particularly jumped out at me:

- House painter pooping in yard
- Can fluroscein rabies tests have a false negative?
- What color is arsenic?
- Disapproving lips
- The definitions of "Pronk" and "Stot"
- Foamy stalker
- Fish with big butts

I started a thread about this same thing a while back. There's a lot of hilarious stuff in there. I'll be interested to see what else people have researched now.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=262421

Tazlima said:

- Fish with big butts

Click to expand...

You can't just leave that one hanging there!


My Old Man would probably be worried if he ever looked through my search history. How to kill people silently, poisonous plants of northern Europe and how to administer them to kill someone quite slowly, can someone survive having half their face sliced off...you know, all the usual stuff

I don't see anything interesting in my recent search history, but off the top of my head, I once looked into ways that guns can explode.

Last night - Czech for 'wainscoting'.

stuff like "how to tan hides using middle palaeolithic technology" and "how to haft a blade to a stone tipped spear" or "stone age resin glue"

I'm not sure how to view my actual google search history, there are probably weirder ones in there.

The search terms people use that send them to my blog are quite interesting, although I'm surprised at the number of people who found it while searching for sex pictures involving Fred and Wilma Flintstone and the Croods.

Mr Flibble said:

You can't just leave that one hanging there!

Click to expand...

Lol, it's not as pervy as it sounds, I was researching funny-looking fish for a PB.

High-altitude EMP.

I'm really not looking to get on a plane any time soon.

ViridianChick said:

What's the weirdest thing you've had to look up recently?

Today I've googled how to comfortably gag someone, how to pick handcuffs, and how much a person can bleed before they die. I'm probably on some kind of list.

Click to expand...

If you are, so am I. I've looked up these same things (though I've spent more time researching how to pick old-fashioned warded locks, because one of my characters had to fashion a lock pick out a nail, and I needed to see if it was plausible to do this), and also sucking chest wounds, various poisons and toxins, and flogging, hanging (they have live videos of hangings on the web, I discovered, but I stopped short of watching those), and various inquisition-era torture implements.

Oh, and many, many diseases, especially old-fashioned words and descriptions for them.

Novelists probably visit more strange sites than actual terrorists and people with fetishes do. But I suspect (and hope) the pattern of hits is rather different, as is the frequency of visits to particular sites and length of time spent on them.

Not recently, but I kept giggling while doing research for my first novel because I had to search "How to kill a cow" multiple times. The scene was a sad/beautiful thing where a family says goodbye to their pet cow and puts her down, but based on my google searches, it looked like I had some sort of creepy cow-murder fetish.

I also googled "How to get rid of a cow body." http://www.absolutewrite.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

YouTube videos of gelding a horse (castration). I don't recommend watching them unless it's necessary for your writing.

Also—because I was curious for no reason—Do big cats get hairballs? Yes, they do. It's just as gross.

Oh boy my search history is weird...

I have:

"cremation during monsoon"
"noise that monkeys make"
"easy torture methods" followed by "diy medieval torture"
"cut throat time to die"
"cholera victims usually die within"
"things that weigh as much as a baby"
"what does lakewater smell like"
"evil seal" (yes, I did mean the animal)
"psychopathic chicken"

and my personal favourite: "Google, please motivate me to write"...

StarryEyes said:

Oh boy my search history is weird...

I have:

"cremation during monsoon"
"noise that monkeys make"
"easy torture methods" followed by "diy medieval torture"
"cut throat time to die"
"cholera victims usually die within"
"things that weigh as much as a baby"
"what does lakewater smell like"
"evil seal" (yes, I did mean the animal)
"psychopathic chicken"

and my personal favourite: "Google, please motivate me to write"...

Click to expand...

Things that weigh as much as a baby was the best for me.

The psychology of consensual incest
The frequency of incest among wild wolves
What does a flayed human corpse look like?
What does a human corpse look like after it's been in the sea for a while?
Old Testament quotes about gloating

I looked up "long pig" recently for a horror story. If you're not familiar with the term, it refers to human cannibalism. The term still doesn't make sense to me though, lol.

A purely curiosity search for my real live actual name.

First thing that turns up is the name (which I share) of the world's leading expert on the horrible black funnel web spiders that infest Queensland, Australia.

I ain't him.

caw

blacbird said:

A purely curiosity search for my real live actual name.

First thing that turns up is the name (which I share) of the world's leading expert on the horrible black funnel web spiders that infest Queensland, Australia.

I ain't him.

caw

Click to expand...

I've worked with him.

I haven't worked with you, but I do have Alaska on my 'to visit' list, so be warned.

[I've just re-read this and it sounds vaguely sinister! Oh dear. And I can't find a suitable smiley to jolly it up. So...]

andiwrite said:

I also googled "How to get rid of a cow body."

Click to expand...

BBQ party?

Roxxsmom said:

Novelists probably visit more strange sites than actual terrorists and people with fetishes do. But I suspect (and hope) the pattern of hits is rather different, as is the frequency of visits to particular sites and length of time spent on them.

Click to expand...

What about novelists with weird fetishes?

Tinman said:

I looked up "long pig" recently for a horror story. If you're not familiar with the term, it refers to human cannibalism. The term still doesn't make sense to me though, lol.

Click to expand...

*adds another thing to his search history*

Tinman said:

I looked up "long pig" recently for a horror story. If you're not familiar with the term, it refers to human cannibalism. The term still doesn't make sense to me though, lol.

Click to expand...

I've been researching Papua New Guinea, which has a recent history of cannibalism (One of the tribes is believed to have eaten the son of Nelson Rockefeller, Michael, who disappeared in 1961.) I also learned that some of the tribes have deviant (from our cultural views) sexual habits that are gross and disgusting. So, of course, I'm going to use that in my WIP.