Tag: Google

Cancelled by AI

A 2020 post I wrote about a game old bird waddling around our modest smallholding took off last year, and it’s been pulling in the punters ever since. The post is called ‘I’m Not a Pheasant Plucker’. A cheeky nod to the deliciously smutty tongue-twister, it’s remained inexplicably popular. So I did a bit of digging. Google now uses the magic of AI to summarise search results, and when I searched for the post’s title, Google Gemini returned the following AI Overview…

“I’m Not a Pheasant Plucker” is a well-known tongue twister, often repeated as “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son, and I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes.” Some sources say it’s a favorite for those learning to speak quickly and clearly, though it can be tricky to say without tripping up. There are also variations and related phrases, such as “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s mate, and I’m only plucking pheasants ’cause the pheasant plucker’s late” according to Perking the Pansies. The phrase highlights the challenge of rapid and clear articulation, and some find it particularly difficult when spoken in a specific accent or with a certain cadence. 

Fame at last? Even I have to admit that citing me as an authority on tongue twisters is a tad far-fetched. And anyway, as AI is constantly ‘learning’, my fame has been fleeting. When I recently repeated the search, Gemini returned an entirely different AI Overview sans pansies – sad face. So I’ve been cancelled by AI. But then, won’t we all be in the end?

I’m expecting a sudden plunge in my visitor hits.

Carnal Knowledge

Carnal Knowledge

Following bountiful Christmas fare, and with emotions loosened by the Malbec, we plopped onto the sofa and cried our way through Mama Mia, Here We Go Again on DVD and Call the Midwife on the Beeb. Others, meanwhile, took to Google in search of something altogether less wholesome and more carnal. I do hope those dropping into pansyland looking for ‘pussy lovers’, ‘pussy galore’, ‘sticky knickers’ and ‘sex emporium’ weren’t too deflated to read about cats, Bond girls, a heat-wave and two old poofs on holiday.

Pith, Path and Poof

Anyone growing up in Seventies Britain will remember that the word ‘poof’ was the insult of choice for red-blooded males in their crotch-hugging loon pants, polyester tank tops, bouffant hairdos and BO. The abuse was often accompanied by a teapot impersonation. Oh, how I laughed. These days the word seems quaintly old-fashioned and has been (almost) consigned to history along with flock wallpaper, velour three-piece suites, fondue sets, beige teasmades with corn motifs and the curly perm.

Poof

I’ve often wondered about the origin of the word. A quick Google reveals a variety of explanations from a suitably camp French headdress to some fanciful tale about the sound of a fart; neither of which rings true to me. Now I think I’ve cracked it. Liam and I were watching ‘The Secrets of the Castle,’ a BBC show about the construction of a medieval fortress employing the building techniques of the day (I know, I know, we ought to get out more). One of the many absorbing details uncovered by the experimental archaeology was the old grading of sandstone into hard (pith), medium (path) and soft (poof). There you have it. Shirt lifters have always been considered a bit soft, never quite man enough to make the grade, butch-wise. Not that this was the case with Billy Moss, a prison officer I once dallied with in the Nineties. One warm summer’s evening we were enjoying a pint outside the Colherne Pub in West London, the grand-daddy of gay bars back in the day. As we supped, a delivery van passed by, stopping at a red light. The tattooed driver shouted over something rather unpleasant. Billy handed me his pint, swaggered over, squared up to the driver and said,

‘Come on then, mate. You want some? And after you can tell yer wife you got beaten up by a big poof.’

While I don’t condone the threat of violence, I must confess that the look of fear on the white van man’s face was a real treat as he hit the gas to make a quick getaway. I wonder where Billy is now?

Desperately Seeking Doreen

Desperately_Seeking_Doreen

A cursory glance at my stats shows that Perking the Pansies pops up on the internet in totally unexpected ways. My irreverent ramblings seem to attract the lost, the lustful, the inquisitive and the ignorant – and from the four corners of the world. These are a few of my favourite search terms:

  • Pussy lovers (for feline aficionados, obviously)
  • Gran Canarian Sex (for a bit of bump and grind in the sun)
  • Rent Boys (believe me, my street-walking days are over)
  • Hardon All Day (hit it with a stick)
  • Is Marti Pellow/Gary Lineker/Kate Adie gay (they seem happy enough to me)
  • Gumbet Love Rats (for the ladies who never learn)
  • The Turkish Living Forum (keeping my 2012 rant right up there in the rankings)

And then came:

  • Doreen Dowdall

Doreen Dowdall

Now that one completely threw me.  Dowdall was my old girl’s name before her soldier boy popped his ring on her finger. Who was the mysterious surfer?  I don’t know, but if s/he ever surfs back, do drop me a line and put me out of my curiosity. And yes, that is me in the picture (the one in shorts, not the fabulous Sixties frock). Bless.

P.S. It’s Doreen Dowdall’s 85th birthday tomorrow. Apart from being a bit mutton with a touch of arthritis and a dodgy hip, the old girl’s in fine fettle. I just hope I’ve inherited her genes.

2013 in Review

Perking the Pansies recovered from a difficult birth at the murderous hands of the Turkish censors, thrived through the terrible twos and survived the transitional threes, ending the year with 60,000 hits for the last twelve months. Thank you to everyone and anyone who’s passed by and glanced at my random witterings. Most blogs burn out after two years so I must be living on borrowed time.

As the sun sets on 2013, in the best Hogmanay tradition, I give you the year’s top ten – a pick ‘n’mix treat of bum cleavage, Turks at the barricades, a shot in the arm, a tender coming out story, a sexy rugger bugger, a book to send you to sleep, an old-time boozer, an olive tree planted in a foreign field and a scratched itch.

Image courtesy of Occupy Gezi on Facebook.
One for the Ladies
The Art of Blogging at St Margaret’s Church of Art
Gareth Thomas likes Good Read
Best of Perking the Pansies Vol Two
Queen’s Head, Chelsea
Tulip Fields of Turkey
Image Courtesy of the Financial Times
Tom’s Posing Pouch

Plumber’s Bum

It was the picture wot won it.

Turkey Troubles

A revolution in the making?

Tom Daley: Something I Want to Say

Saying it before someone said it for him.

Gareth Thomas, Dancing on Ice Drama

Who said ice-prancing rugger buggers can’t read?

Life in the Old Blog Yet

With thanks to the nice people at WordPress who featured me on one of their big hitting sites.

Turkey, Surviving the Expats – Out Now!

Keeping me out the workhouse.

God Save the Queen’s Head

A Chelsea classic and old watering hole of mine.

From Little Acorns...

A small corner of Turkey that is forever John.

Seven Year Itch

A soppy tale from Liam.

Turkey, Who Will Blink First?

And we all know who did in the end, don’t we?

For some inexplicable reason, this was the most popular image of 2013, featured in Let’s Hear it for the Brides.

Nine Elms
The Thames at Nine Elms

And I shouldn’t forget the perennial favourites from previous years that keep coming back again and again like a bad case of thrush.

Gran Canaria Sex Emporium

Proving that ‘sex’ really is the most searched for word on Google.

Now That’s What I Call Old

A humble little post about a spectacular discovery in eastern Turkey that just keeps on giving while the archaeologists keep on digging  – 8,000 hits and climbing. Who would have thought?

Expat Glossary

Oft quoted and oft plagiarised (and not always with a credit, tut tut)

Goodbye to the Turkish Living Forum

The few spoiling it for the many. A real shame.

Turkey Street RecliningAnd what of 2014? All I know is that Turkey Street, Jack and Liam move to Bodrum will be out early in the year. Will it be as successful as the first one? Who knows? Not me. Whatever happens, come rain or shine, a happy and prosperous year to all my pansy fans. Thank you for staying the course and for your remarkable support. I’m touched but then, I have been for years.

Old Posts Never Die

tamponsReaders of Perking the Pansies tell me that I’ve laid down some vintage posts in my time. They very kindly don’t mention the dross. Search engines and their secret algorithms have also been generous and thankfully, the blog is up there in the rankings. Still, it was a surprise when I received an out-of-the-blue comment from Rhona who stumbled across a guest post from August 2011 called Turks and Tampons. Rhona was having a periodic Turkish crisis and wrote:

Jack, I thought you might be amused by the fact that I found your blog via this post. I was on my first trip to Turkey (Gulluk) with my daughters when without going into detail we found ourselves in need of tampons…..problem! I googled ‘tampons in Turkey’ and there you were lol. But there also was this: tamponcrafts. Enjoy!

I certainly did enjoy a deep trawl through the wonder that is Tampon Crafts – a thousand and one things to do with Lil-Lets. Who knew that Tampax Pearls was so versatile? As Christmas is coming up, I’ve got Liam knocking up a nativity scene for the mantle piece. The Baby Jesus has never looked so absorbent.

Google Reader, RIP

Google Reader, RIP

google-readerGoogle, that arrogant, all-powerful, tax-evading internet colossus that has come to dominate our lives like the Catholic Church of old has decided to bin Google Reader, their handy application that allows surfers to aggregate and sort their favourite content across different sites. As of 1st of July, users will be left high and dry. Are you one of them? Fret no longer. Feedly is a worthy successor. Check it out here. Also, if you currently receive Pansy updates via a reader, why not subscribe via email instead? Simply click on the ‘subscribe by email’ on the right and away you go. Easy.

We’re back from Palma now so stay tuned for some delicious (and not so tasty) Catalan titbits coming next.

Jail Bait

In December 2010, Perking the Pansies was blocked by the Turkish internet police. I threw a hissy fit at the prospect of a firm hand on my door knob, a frisk by a frisky conscript and instant deportation. It all turned out to be a storm in a çay cup. Tens of thousands of Google blogs were instantly blacked out because they all shared the same IP address with a couple of Turkish websites that were infringing copyright law (laughable when you think that Turkey is flooded with counterfeit goods). As a result, my inconsequential ramblings were simply caught up in lazy censorship – the scatter gun approach punished the innocent and the guilty alike. My blog became, as the Americans say, ‘collateral damage‘. I had to shut up shop at Google and move lock, stock and barrel to new premises at Word Press.

Well, bugger me. It’s happened again. This time, the idiotic censors have targeted my personal website, jackscott.info, which I use to promote my book. I’d like to make some PR capital out of this by claiming anti-gay discrimination but, alas, I can’t. The circumstances are exactly as before. This time, it seems porn and gambling sites were targeted. I found one site sharing my IP address called Jail Bait; sounds like a particularly nasty little corner of the web. Ban illegal sites by all means but it can’t be beyond the wit of these petty bureaucrats to deal with offenders individually, instead of pulling the plug on thousands of innocent sites just because it’s easier.

I’m pleased to write that the problem has now been resolved by changing my IP address with my domain registrar. What a palavar.

Will the Real Jack Scott Please Stand Up?

Google sits astride the internet like a leviathan. Forget Yahoo or Bing or a host of smaller search engines, only Google counts. Their search algorithms can make or break an online presence. If you don’t show up in the first few pages of Google, you may as well not be on the internet at all. It’s all about search engine optimisation (SEO) and ways to make it better. There’s an entire industry dedicated to improving it (or trying to cheat the clever geeks at Google). How’s a humble little jobbing blogger in a faraway country most people couldn’t place on a map ever going to make his mark? Well, Perking the Pansies does well. Google favours fresh, frequently renewed content and my content is frequently renewed, if not fresh. Sorted.

1923 -2008

Little Jack Scott, though, struggles. The name is a curse. It’s eclipsed by other more illustrious Jacks plastered all over the web. Who are these pretenders to my rightful throne? Well, there’s Jack Scott, (AKA Giovanni Dominico Scafone Jr) the Canadian singer ‘undeniably the greatest Canadian rock and roll singer of all time,’ apparently. I’d never heard of him. Sorry. Then there’s the late Jack Scott, buck-teethed weather man who died in 2008. He was everyone’s favourite weather guru and brought magnetic weather symbols to live broadcasts on the BBC. Unfortunately, they often slipped down the board or dropped off altogether. My final Jack is the now infamous Mayor of the little town of Cordova in Alabama which was flattened by killer tornadoes earlier this year. Mayor Scott refused to allow trailers into the town to house the newly homeless because he didn’t want to encourage trailer trash. Sounds like a fine and upstanding pillar of the community.

So, what’s a diminutive, washed-up ex pretty boy with his best years behind him to do? Change his name to Dick Stillhard (no wait, that’s already taken).

Thanks to Spainstruck for the inspiration for this one.

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Top of the Blogs

I was flush with pink pride. Perking the Pansies briefly occupied the top spot on Blogroll Centre, one of the (many, many) blog directories I’ve joined. Sadly, the honour was short-lived, a temporary aberration caused by a transient interest in Now That’s What I Call Old, a post that resulted in 2,700 hits. The next day, Perking the Pansies dropped to 3rd place. A one day, one hit wonder. Doubtless the blog will continue to slide down the charts like an X Factor has-been that never was. To be honest I’m not entirely sure if any of these blog directories is worth the effort or the repetitive strain injury. I joined them on the off-chance they might broaden my audience. I think some are sophisticated enough to help with Google rankings but I wouldn’t know which. All I can say is that I would never consider paying for the dubious privilege of a listing, preferring to spend my dwindling assets on booze, fags and leather thongs.

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