the quirks of people’s web searches that lead to my blog

WordPress has this clever tool that shows you what keyword searches people on Google/other search engines are doing that lead them to your blog.

The two most prevalent keyword searches I’ve noticed so far are:

1) (no great surprises here) “weed/pot in Manhattan”

– which leads the searcher straight to my post about how Manhattanites get their weed delivered door-to-door.

2) The other seemingly most popular keyword search is definitely more of a surprise: “shpitzel”

– which is randomly enough, the pillbox hat/sheitel (wig) combination that some Hasidic women choose to cover their hair with (a sheitel on its own is not good enough because G-d forbid some people might unknowingly think it is your own hair).

This leads searchers to my post about discovering how there’s a Yiddish word for everything.

Who would have thought as many people (based on the findings of this very unscientific study) were scouring the Web for information about shpitzels as are seeking how to get hold of weed in Manhattan?

Afterword: Try as I might, I can’t seem to find an image to upload to this post of a woman wearing a shpitzel hair covering. Is this a worrying reflection of the increasingly repressive trend on the part of editors of the Orthodox Jewish press to censor any image of a woman/girl/female?

Doing drugs Manhattan-style

A friend of a friend living on the Upper West Side told me a funny little anecdote:

She was at a Friday night dinner being chatted up by a dashing French fellow sitting beside her. All was going swimmingly until he suddenly threw an entirely random, and somewhat inappropriate, request at her. Here’s a rough version of how the conversation proceeded thereafter (bearing in mind the Gallic gentleman’s thick French accent):

-You ‘ave ‘potte’ in yourrr appartement?

-Pot? What kind of pot? (somewhat startled)

-You know, ‘potte’, jwoints, what you can smokk.

-What, pot as in marijuana?!

-Yes, exactlee! You ‘ave eet? We go smokke in yourr appartement?

-Hmmm, um, funnily enough, no, I don’t have any marijuana in my apartment.

-What you mean you don’t even ‘ave an emerrrgencee supply of potte? (sounding aghast)

-Emergency supply???

-Yes, you know, like you ‘ave zat emerrgencee fifty-dollar bill in case of emergencees- zat kind of sing.

-Umm, how can I put this? Look, I don’t even smoke the stuff for one thing, so certainly don’t have an emergency stash of it! And anyway, I keep Shabbat and you’re not allowed to smoke on Shabbat.

-Oh but it would create exactleee ze right ambiance forr Shabbat!

-Well, even if I wanted to, where would I even get hold of weed in Manhattan? I mean, where do you buy your pot here? Do you have a dealer?

– But we arrre in Man’attan – I get it delivered of courrse.

I love that punchline, delivered in that entirely matter-of-fact way.

Only in Manhattan!

PS. I suspect that it was not just a language barrier that prevented the two protagonists from deciding to take their relationship up to the next level.