I am a virus

As most of my regular readers have probably noticed, I put a little pitch for Hyde County and for visiting scenic Highmore at the top and the bottom of my web pages. This is all done with the script that generates templates for my web pages; it’s all automatic and doesn’t require any thought on my part.

Not suprisingly, the phrase “scenic Highmore” exists nowhere on the web except on my web site or on sites that have copied content from my web site by data mining software that isn’t too bright. A search on “scenic Highmore” turns up some odd stuff. There is a costuming blog that has a link to a joke about a costume party and an advice on pregnancy site that has a link to a joke pregnancy questions page. There even is a porn page entitled Sexy Mother that reprinted a joke about a sexy mother.

It’s obvious that these pages have lifted stuff from my site – the “visit scenic Highmore” pitch is right there in plain sight. However several pages have my little message concealed deep in the bowels of the HTML. I don’t know what it’s doing there, and I have every confidence that the creators of those pages don’t know either.

All of this is the tip of the iceberg. Copies of a lot of my stuff appears all over the web. Some of it has leaked off the web. According to County Lines, an in house publication for the employees of Elkhart County Government there is an article about Finch College that mentions such notable alumnae as Calamity Jane Austin and Tricia Nixon. It seems that I am infecting reality with my nonsense. That’s as it should be:

After all, I am a virus.