PSA

To all those people coming here looking for the translation of the Baudelaire line I used as an entry title, here is the translation of “Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frère!”:

Hypocritical reader – my likeness/my double – my brother!

It’s the last line of Au Lecteur (To the Reader), the introductory poem to Les Fleur du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). You can go finish that paper now – it’s due tomorrow morning, isn’t it? And here I thought knowledge of Baudelaire was taken in at the breast with mother’s absinthe.

To the person from Pittsburgh who keeps coming here searching for pierogie lights: Gift shop, the Andy Warhol Museum. Enjoy!

To all the narwhal folk (or to the one person with a really oddball obsession): Sorry your trip here has been futile, but check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal, though I fear even that won’t help those who searched for “origami narwhal” and “narwhal drinking game” (if you find out what that is, by the way, I'm curious to hear). And it definitely won’t be a help to the person searching for “narwhal porn.” In fact, unless this is a desperate move on the part of an otherwise scientifically respectable narwhal breeding program, I’m thinking there’s pretty much no one who can help someone searching for narwhal porn. I mean, you know . . . um . . . ouch? (And to Ms S of DC: you realize this is all your fault, right?)

The search that really fascinated me recently, from I think Columbia Medical Center in New York, was “Barry Zito Nathan Gunn” – no other terms, even the inevitable but tasteful “shirtless” or the engagingly candid “naked pics”. It turns out I’m apparently the only inhabitant of the entire webosphere that has written about both of them. Does someone else just share my combo pack favorite current baseball player and favorite baritone? See, no matter how obscure the niche, there’s someone else out there looking for it. So maybe narwhal porn guy should take heart and voyage on, the Captain Ahab of man/tusked sea mammal relations.