I discovered something remarkable today. For all of these ... months ... I've been under the misguided impression that I was living in and blogging from Chicago, when, in fact, I've been in Southern India the whole time. Why, you could have knocked me over with a feather, but Alexa couldn't possibly be wrong, could it? Let's take a look at the Alexa listing for this site and see what we find:
Joseph-dunphy.blogspot.com
9/4 IIIRD STREET SUNDARAM COLONY , TAMBARAM WEST
CHENNAI, TAMILNADU 600045,
INDIA
Phone: +1 415 538 8404
Fax: +1 212 629 9305
dns-admin [at] google.com
Oh, and good news - Google is ready to help me with my newfound national identity! Quoting what just came upon my screen as I backed up my work:
Blog in your native Indic script
Convert English characters to Indic script as you type! Learn more about transliteration on Blogger.
Why, thank you, boys! If only you could teach me to understand my native indic script and maybe even a few words in my brand new native tounge, I suspect that that new found ability to blog in a less European mode would be even more helpful.
Now some people, some very boring people, might suggest that I'm still an American and still in Chicago, and that what we're seeing is an excellent example of the problems that arise when a site accepts contact information from any Tom, Dick or Harry who wishes to offer it, or in this case, I suppose, any Dinesh, Tushar or Haresh, to be properly non-anglocentric about these things. They might even go so far as to say that the submission didn't even come from me, but instead, from somebody who seems to intend to hijack the url for this blog, and not understanding the difference between domains and subdomains, doesn't know that a registrar can't submit joseph-dunphy.blogspot.com as a domain name. Can you imagine that? I will tactfully decline to comment at length on the making such terrible accusations in this more sensitive and enlightened era in which we all know of our duty to assume good faith, especially since I am one of those shameful people who has been denying that this contact information is accurate, and if one can't be tactful with oneself, truly, who can one be tactful with?
While I work through the obvious self-esteem issues posed by my insistence on my own Midwesterness, I would make a request of anybody coming to this site from Alexa. Regardless of what you might have read in the site description in the search results, please accept that this is not, in fact, the number one site for "Alien Resurrection" downloads. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for such things, so please don't ask, and please don't be too disappointed when you discover that there aren't any other bootlegged downloads at this location, or at any other location I have anything to do with. No movies, no mp3s, not even any faked nudes of the Bush twins ... nothing. I know, it's a terrible oversight on my part, leaving out the contraband like that, one which I must confess I have no intention of ever rectifying, but one for which I might someday be forgiven, if only by the truly gracious few.
Addendum, June 14: A few weeks after this post, I sent Alexa a correction of the contact information, and they removed the address and telephone numbers. Eventually. The url for this blog, however, remains listed as if it were a domain name to this day.
