So like everyone who has a blog, I check my stats constantly regularly. The title of my blog is a paraphrased line from a song: “The Necklace of Marie Antoinette” by Hannah Fury. (A free download of this song, and many others, is available here on her website. Hannah Fury is one of my favourite artists and has been for years–I’ve written a lot of words to her music playing on loop.)
This is part of the song with the line that my blog title comes from:
I’ll make it look like it was meant to be
I’ll make it seem like I was innocent
I’ll make the strychnine taste like raspberry tea
Now, I sometimes forget that having strange blog titles can result in some… interesting search terms. I’ve had this blog since 2007 (I started it on livejournal, then blogspot, and finally I moved it over here where it will hopefully stay). It’s only been since I started following my wordpress stats that I’ve had proof of this.
A few weeks ago someone clicked to here through searching covering strychnine taste. At first I laughed, until I realised a potential reason for that and my laugh turned into a wheeze. Of course there are many other (and non-fatal) reasons for googling such words–how many times have you started typing random things into Google when bored?–and I’m sure many writers have typed the most bizarre “how to kill” questions into over the years. (My latest, and most strange to date, googling was: “Can a window be nailed shut?” It was a plot-related point, I assure you.)
I mentioned this to my housemates, who had a similar reaction of laughing and then wheezing. It led to an interesting conversation about Google in general.
About a week ago, I noticed another odd search term: how to make strychnine. After another moment of, “Oh, not again,” I then thought, “Hmm… how do you make strychnine? I wonder if could I use it in a story…” Ah, the mind of a writer. You can get an idea from the strangest things that collide together. It definitely beat the time I was watching one of my housemates playing Guitar Hero and realised one of my antagonists was actually double-crossing the people who were double-crossing her.
In conclusion: search terms can be very strange and amusing. And hopefully not lead to fatal results.
Helen Corcoran 
Can you find how to make strychnine online? Maybe you should include a helpful link for those people… 🙂
I’m not certain, but I imagine it’s tucked away somewhere in the world wide web. 🙂 Though if I did and someone succeeded with it, then my life could turn into an episode of Castle or Law and Order…
…I can’t believe I just rationalised this to myself.
Not anywhere near as interesting/disturbing as how to make strychnine, but a while back I used a lyric from a CCR song as the title for my blog post, and now I’m constantly getting hits from people Googling that lyric. Apparently I should steal other people’s lines more often if it drives up my traffic like that. 🙂
Haha, indeed! Hannah Fury runs her own independent label, so I’m not sure I could get traffic that way. She is gaining in popularity, though, which is really good to see. More people should definitely be listening to her.
hi there
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