Today’s post has two shameless, self-serving objectives. The first is to raise awareness of Melbourne Cupcake Day, an alternative first-Tuesday-in-November event for those who prefer sweet treats over losing money and throwing up. It deserves to be a phenomenon – the bake-off that stops a nation (better slogans are welcome).
Secondly, I want to put my own cupcake day entry on the internet:
I admit they’re not the most beautiful things in the world, but those are red velvet cupcakes topped with space invaders made of pop rocks.
It’s my belief that that is exactly the sort of thing the internet loves, so I’m going to put it there and see how long it takes for the first search engine hit to land. Take it away, Alta Vista!
And while we’re on a slightly retro topic, there’s something I’ve always wanted to say about Space Invaders, the game. It was hugely popular in its time, so much so that for me and my peers it became the generic name for all video games (“let’s go play the spacies!”).
And yet, I was always a bit disappointed that the aliens in the game didn’t look like the creepy monsters on the side of the machine:
Someone please make a version with them in it. That would be so cool.
Astrocave 
Hm. OK I used alta vista to search “red velvet space invaders cupcakes” and I’m sorry to report that you’re not on the first page.
Google, however, you’re #4.
I think Giant Evil Corporation wins over… well, Other Giant Evil Corporation actually.
And the cupcakes were very nice, thanks!
It occurs to me that adding “pop rocks” to the search term would probably bump you up the listings. Let’s see (because I am working today, but not very efficiently, obviously):
Alta Vista you’re still not on the front page.
Google you’re now #1.
Maybe you need to add lots of “Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi” type tags so Alta Vista picks up you exist or something.
Actually, my top search term is “the meaning of life”. If you do an image search my Space Girl comic comes in at number 21.
And I’m not really that worried about Alta Vista, just amused to see they still exist. Them and Lycos, still going strong.
Ask is unfortunately still going as well. They come up with the weirdest results, and for some reason my home computer managed to accidentally get set with them as the default search engine. Sometimes they even assume you’re trying to search for something when you enter a bloody URL. Meh.
Hmm… Infoseek is now called Go.com. Unless you’re Australian, of course, in which case it’s powered by Google.