How computers think

One of the features my blog host offers when you click and build your blog page is Google ads. And I thought, Google ads! Hey, I wouldn't mind fistfuls of cash! Where do I sign up! Oh, right here on the "layout" page. O.K. Click, click, click, all set up.

The first ads were for nonprofits, which is fine. I wish I still had those ads, but I'm not sure I have any influence on that.

One of my early blog posts had to do with my ruining the upholstery of my chair by spilling coffee all over it. The next day my blog was decorated with postage-stamp-sized ads for chair care, re-caning, where to buy chairs cheap--as if this was a blog for hardcore chair enthusiasts. Actually, only about three people read this blog and, if anything, those ads were aimed at me.

Then, because blogging is new for me, my blog talked about my blog--prompting ads with headlines such as "Make Money Blogging!" (oh, really? you mean with all those Google ads?). And, no, the ad about making $2,000 a day blogging did not tempt me in the least.

To tell the truth, I have not made one penny so far, but now I wouldn't remove the Google ads for anything: They are my my most attentive--in a cockeyed way--commenter.

After I put up posts about my struggle through the latest revision on my novel--my seventh draft in two years--the ads were for online writing programs, books about writing, 26 tips for better writing, and two antidepressants I had never heard of.

Just as an update, I got through a lot of revising over this past week and I am PLEASED (really? me?) with how my process is working again for me. It's almost as if by telling the whole world--well, three people--about all this, I was putting myself on the spot about fixing it. I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving weekend and reading my MS from cover to cover. The seventh draft looks like it's just about done.

This creative jumpstart has involved a mix of insomnia (against my will) and intentionally staying up late because I had good stuff to write. Either way, that tended to prompt my cat to tap me on the face the next morning reminding me that her day had begun and she wanted her breakfast--now. This, as you might have expected, prompted Google ads about insomnia remedies and substances to remove cat urine. Although in my case, the insomnia was the cure for not writing; so, I would never take an insomnia cure and I guess don't need to buy that book with the 26 tips. Besides, insomnia is probably a cure for something--sleepiness, at least. And as for the cat urine, I guess the mainframe at the heart of the Google empire saw the word "cat" and assumed. In describing this, I have now typed the phrase "cat urine" more times in this paragraph than I have typed in the previous ten years combined, I pretty much expect to boot up my computer tomorrow and find that I have created the cat urine edition of my ongoing rant. Now watch this be the thing that brings me fistfuls of cash ("Having made his fortune advertising a cat-urine remover, Tony Powell quit his day job to write novels. He also sits on the board of directors of the leading cat-urine-remover manufacturer in the United States").