My Top 10 Recent Google Searches

In addition to this blog, I'm working on a number of spanking-related projects. For example, I'm working on a collection of erotic poetry (see recent posts Circadian and Afterwards, Across Your Lap for a taste), a novella, some fetish based arts & crafts endeavors, and I'm considering resurrecting the old Naughty Abby videos.

I have a lot I want to blog about as well, but I've been a little off today, restless and unfocused, so when I sat down at my laptop, I found myself Googling something that you wouldn't necessarily think had anything to do with spanking or any of my projects. I realized my searches might make an amusing list, so, in lieu of an essay, story, poem, or observation, here are the top ten odd things I've Googled recently all in the name of spanking, in order of most obviously related to least. This is exactly how I phrased them, according to my Google history.

10. thuddiness - I wasn't sure if I was making up this word as a noun and should find a way to use "thuddy" as an adjective instead, so I searched for popularity of usage.

9. is the red room capitalized - I haven't read the Fifty Shades trilogy, but I'm writing a story where the rooms also have names, so I was curious what E L Fudge did with hers. "Red Room" is capitalized. "The" is not.

8. bdsm novel leash dog - I wanted to write about puppy cages in the context of BDSM and I recalled reading a disturbing novel over a decade ago called Leash, but I couldn't remember the author's name. This seemed like the fastest way to find it - it was, and it was Jane DeLynn. Not recommended for the psychologically squeamish.

7. cum or come in erotica - I'm going to write about this literary quandry here on the blog soon. My Twitter feed is depressingly constantly covered in "cum" but I prefer the less porn-y "come." On that note, follow me on Twitter! I'm @naughtyabbyw.

6. magazine with air force amy on the cover - I'm writing a novella and one of the characters may have purchased magazines featuring adult film actresses and famous Nevada prostitutes in the late 90's or early 2000's. I remembered Air Force Amy from HBO's Cathouse and an episode of Jerry Springer, but I wasn't sure if she was ever on the cover of any magazines or what year that would have been.

5. what adult magazines were in regular circulation in the 1980's/nude woman in tiger cage - These were two separate searches, but technically they were for the same thing. I was hoping to blog about the first cover of an adult magazine I ever saw, so I tried to find the image. I have no idea what magazine it was, or what year. This would have also tied in with the puppy cage mentioned in #8. Neither search was fruitful, but if you search "nude woman in tiger cage" you get an amusing mix of women in cages, nude women, and Nicolas Cage.

4. is alligator or crocodile leather more expensive - Most sources say alligator. You have to know whether your character has expensive shoes, or really expensive shoes.

3. taxidermy sphinx cat - I don't want to give away any spoilers, but this also has something to do with my novella. Fortunately, it has nothing to do with cats.

2. what's that antique glass that's pink - Sometimes when I've been alone too long, I ask Google questions like it's a person. It knew I meant depression glass for my posts about going antiquing with Mr. W, so sometimes this method works.

1. okinawan martial arts emblem - On Sunday night, Mr. W and I were browsing Amazon for massage tables when we realized we hadn't searched Amazon for spanking/BDSM furniture. Amazon quickly gave up on showing us furniture and decided it just wanted us to see the plethora of painful looking romantic fiction e-books it had to offer. We didn't want that kind of pain, Amazon! Mixed sporadically throughout were items that had either "spanking" or "bdsm" in the description. One such item was the "BDSM Symbol 50 Shades Yard Flag."

Neither one of us are especially attached to the insignia, but as a student of media and communications, I found the description frustrating. I understand why or how it could happen, but Fifty Shades isn't exactly a brand that needs free bonus advertising, and as the rest of us know, there are plenty of players who want nothing to do with the franchise but have owned that emblem as part of their identity for years.

When I sat down at my computer today and realized I didn't have the energy for one of my usual posts, I thought I'd write a short post about the garden flag. Then I realized I didn't know much about the history of the BDSM emblem, or "BDSMblem" as I've now seen it referred to, so I thought I should do a little research first. This led to an article that describes What Is and Is Not the BDSMmblem. This article indicates that the above symbol, which is the same as it appears on the garden flag, is actually "the coat of arms of an ancient Okinawan family and has since become the emblem of a form of Okinawan martial arts." This is apparently because the dots are dots and not holes. The BDSMblem is, accordingly, supposed to have holes, not dots.

I proceeded to do additional Google image searches, including "okinawan martial arts emblem," but I never found this exact emblem to be linked to Okinawa or martial arts, although there are similar triple-spoked designs. That is not to say my search was at all thorough. This was curiosity, after all, not academic research. However, as I looked at "okinawan martial arts emblem" on the search page, I laughed as I realized how many absurd phrases I must have Googled recently, and so this post was born.

In addition, Amazon showing us all those e-books made me realize that a vast amount of romantic or erotic fiction is being easily published with clearly not a lot of effort. Much of it is shorter than I realized, and from the descriptions, I could probably put something together pretty quickly without worrying about plot or character development, though I'm two pages in to this novella I keep mentioning and I am definitely worrying about those things. Still, I'm hoping this spring will see me up on Amazon, if only for the practice of putting together an e-book and sharing a longer story with the world. I promise no sphinx cats, or cats of any kind, will be harmed or taxidermied in the process.