Whack-a-mole guacamole and hit-and-miss linking

In part because it's Labor Day and in part because, well, at $1.45 each, what a waste if the avocados went bad, I've just finished mixing up some guacamole. As the first part of this post implies, though, Guess-n-Gosh is a key preparation component in my "recipe." Everything is fresh and from scratch, which means that even though I use the same ingredients each time (avocados, onions, Roma tomatoes, serrano peppers, onions, salt, and lime juice), I can't say definitely how much of what to put in it. There's no way to know how the avocados will taste or how hot the serranos will be until you mix it all up. So, everything is "to taste." Thus "whack-a-mole." But also lots and lots of tasting--and unless things aren't going well, the tasting is far more pleasurable than frustrating. You have to get it right, don't you?

It's rather fitting, then, that what follows here will be a bit random, with more hits than misses.

I just don't get how Google works, how "it" "decides" in what order to list links in its results. Example: This morning according to my site meter a visitor from Iran (welcome) recently found my site by Googling the phrase "your average book." Curious to see how many pages of search results this person sifted through to find my humble blog, I Googled it, too. Just click, will you? Tell me, someone, how this outranks listings on Amazon, Newsday, the Daily Telegraph. Just weird.

Of course, given the above, some of you might look at the cartoon below and think, Yup--that's like what John thinks while staring at his computer screen:

(from PoetryFoundation.org (via poet and cat-blogger extraordinaire SB of Watermark)

Okay--enough frivolity. Some new-to-me people have linked to me recently, and I'd like to thank them by pointing y'all in their direction.

epea pteroenta ("winged words") is a blog whose interests are primarily in language and languages. This sounds like arcane territory, but its overall pitch is a bit lighter than that of the other language blogs I'm familiar with. And for those of you whose eyes sort of glaze over when you hear the term "folk tale," you might find this a healthy corrective.

"melponeme_k" writes My Scribbling Mess. Her blog doesn't seem to have a particular agenda, but she is in the midst of a series of posts recounting, in elegantly-written detail, her recent experience of being chosen and then sitting on a jury in a murder trial. Though a bit peripheral to that series, "Culture Clashes" arises out of a small moment during voir dire tell a story that is unknown to most Americans and yet will sound profoundly American to all of us.

And finally, a belated but very hearty thanks to Acephalous to linking to good old Blog Meridian.

Happy Labor Day, one and all.