There’s something that’s been bothering me. And I think you know what it is.
That’s right. It’s the other Alice Bradley.
For years, Google searches for me have suffered at the hands of the other Alice Bradleys of the world.
There’s Depression-era cookbook author Alice Bradley. (I have a few of these books, so if you have a craving for Mock Veal in White Sauce or Anchovy and Catsup on Toast Points, I can help.)
Then there’s former slave Alice Bradley. (Do yourself a favor and look at that link. I’m not sure whether to be amused or horrified. Or both!)
Not to mention pseudonymous science fiction author Alice Bradley. And Alice Bradley, author of "The Governor's Lady," and some Alice Bradley who wrote books under the name Cousin Alice, and then a whole heap of dead Alice Bradleys.
Still, my ex-boyfriends could usually find me in the first few Google pages. Find me, and see all that they were missing.
But not anymore. And it’s all her fault.
I’m sure she’s a very nice person. She has pleasant hobbies, such as candle-making, and knitting. And lounging on floors of hotel conference rooms. She’s not afraid of a little dust, or off-gassing! She also enjoys striking suggestive poses near plants. And I’m glad for her!
Not to mention, she shows that models “can be hot and live a regular, quiet lifestyle.” And for years I had feared that my quiet lifestyle would destroy my looks. Thank you, Alice Bradley, for showing me how I wrong I was.
But lately she’s been cramping my style. Recently I’ve had to interview some wary subjects, many of whom Googled me and discovered that young men on the Internets are calling for “more hot pics of Alice!!” One subject actually emailed me and asked, “Is this you?”
Yes. For when I am not interviewing physicians, I am inevitably lying nude on a wood floor, rose petals tastefully shielding my nips. (Link NSFW, more or less.) Then I settle in for a quiet evening of candle-making. Nude candle-making.
There must be a term for this. Google-impaired? Google-hobbled? Someone! Come up with something!
Nice to see you embracing your Doppelganger.
Posted by: victoria | November 16, 2005 at 04:15 PM
This is why I love you, a complete stranger I've never met:
You are too effin' funny!
By the end of you post I was ROARING with laughter.
I'm not sure which image I enjoyed more: "you" in front of the plant or "you" on the wood floor.
Actually, I think it was the entire entry that had me rolling.
" 'Is this you?' "
Hilarious!
Posted by: Terry | November 16, 2005 at 04:24 PM
I believe this is called the phenomenon of misgooglesentation.
Hey, at least they're confusing you with a hot chick. The entries that come up for my name are not flattering.
Posted by: Mir | November 16, 2005 at 04:38 PM
When googling my actual first and last names, a really cool car comes up a lot. Now I'm remembering one spring a few years ago... I slipped on the ice and slid under the back end of a parked car, banging my head on the fender as I went down. When I pulled myself back out and hoisted myself up over the bumper, there was my name in silver! I thought it was the coolest thing, because growing up, nothing ever had my name on it.
Posted by: schmutzie | November 16, 2005 at 04:44 PM
Just post some sexy, partially clothed pics of yourself on your blog. Then when they come looking for pictures of her, they'll see you and be converted to the REAL Alice Bradley! No one can resist you!
Posted by: Eulallia | November 16, 2005 at 04:49 PM
As I said to Mighty Girl when she posted a pic of a Maggie Mason tombstone, try being named William Braine and doing a Google image search. I'm more screwgled than you!
Posted by: braine | November 16, 2005 at 04:56 PM
Ha! Screwgled - i like that. Googleganger? Dopplegoogle? Ogleganger? Hmm...
Posted by: LetterB | November 16, 2005 at 05:31 PM
her abs make me hate her because if you have had children and have abs that look like that i am required by the law of self respect to hate you. plus, she has stolen your name and so, there is no hope of my ever tolerating her existence. i am done with the other miss alice bradley. for good.
Posted by: honestyrain | November 16, 2005 at 05:55 PM
Seems to me she should have knitted herself a nice cardi or two, she'll catch her death one of these days and then who'll be sorry? I shall be visiting your blog much more often than her website, did you read any of her replies to the questions?.....she's been staring pensively into the distance so much she's forgotten how to talk properly.
Posted by: Helen | November 16, 2005 at 06:28 PM
Remember that scene in American Splendor when Paul Giamatti (as Harvey Pekar) talks about looking in the phone book and finding a few other Harvey Pekars? That knocked me out.
The suspsense you built here was perfect--I really laughed when I saw the other AB. You couldn't have made up anything funnier.
Posted by: Marigoldie | November 16, 2005 at 06:35 PM
Okay - when my name is googled, people find a 60-year old man who got a mail-order bride from the Phillipines. They have apparently done some porn together, as well as copious interviews.
I am 28 and female. No porn - especially not with any mail-order bride from the Phillipines.
I voted for scroogled also, though google-deficient seems to work as well, plus it has the added hilarity of being pseudo-politically correct :)
Posted by: dd | November 16, 2005 at 06:35 PM
Hmm, you haven't been googled, you've been "isthisyou-gled?"
Last Christmas, I had to tell everyone who asked if I had an Amazon wish list, that I was NOT the one requesting the Home Depot bendable screwdrive, the Neil Diamond CD, the breast pump, or the fire engine playset. There were ten of us with the same name, and it would have been an interesting Christmas if I hadn't, I tell you.
Posted by: Nothing But Bonfires | November 16, 2005 at 06:40 PM
I hope you washed your jeans after rolling around on the hotel carpet. Ew.
Posted by: Lisa V | November 16, 2005 at 06:40 PM
Silly you! You forgot to include how you, Meg Nelson and Amy Ford led the Wellesley Widows to a triumphant finale in April of 1991. I am *sure* that is what all the Alice Bradley seekers are really after...
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V111/N20/widows.20a.html
Posted by: Widow Emerita | November 16, 2005 at 06:57 PM
Screwgled! Yes!
Posted by: Laziza | November 16, 2005 at 07:10 PM
Oh, god, I was going to use the Widows link, but I have post-a cappella shame.
Posted by: alice | November 16, 2005 at 07:18 PM
She's a stay at home Mom? With the knitting and the candle making and the floor rolling?
And the excessive wearing of crocheted bikinis - that I believe she made herself?
Shit. My husband better not discover this. He's settled for ultra sarcastic in Spooky Flannel halloween pajamas. He knows not of this alternate univers.
Posted by: Dawn | November 16, 2005 at 07:50 PM
Give her some credit, y'all. She is BALANCING a rose petal on her left nipple, for goshsakes.
Those men looking for her but finding you were confused by Google. . .Confugled.
Posted by: surcie | November 16, 2005 at 08:02 PM
BTW, a search that's out of whack could described as kerfloogled.
Posted by: surcie | November 16, 2005 at 08:08 PM
In this case I would go with Ew-gled. Except the aritistic photo section. That thar's some class. Freshly glazed class. Just like a Krispy Kreme.
Posted by: mignon | November 16, 2005 at 08:14 PM
My name, Sue Davis, is being cybersquatted by somebody who will sell me the suedavis.com name for only $395. Screw em.
There are one zillion Sue Davises out there. Why couldn't Mom and Dad have been more creative and named me Hyacinth or LilyBelle?
Posted by: Sue Davis | November 16, 2005 at 08:16 PM
Hi! Fellow Blogher member de-lurking!
Well, I feel your pain, as a fellow woman who has been Screwgled. If you put *my* name into Google, you get eleventy billion websites advertising my "hot nude pics." Evidently some C-list movie actress and I have the same name, spelled exactly the same, and she had a bit part in a Jason horror movie where she was violently massacred, but not before she took off her top and pranced about for a while.
I can only imagine what people I went to high school with think of when they Google me. *groan*
There's also a heaving bosoms-style romance novel writer who has my name as well. What *is* it with me and smut?
Posted by: Kaguya Hime | November 16, 2005 at 08:29 PM
The other AB does not look like an Alice. No, she looks more like a Bambi or an Aurora.
When I google my real name, I only get nerdy scientist types and other do-gooders. BORING!!
Posted by: clickmom | November 16, 2005 at 08:35 PM
Wow! I google me and I find a writer-filmography who made a bunch of films (none of which I'd ever heard of) in the 40s, 50s and 60s. How kewl is that? And the best you got was a nude model? At least she is exotic looking.
Posted by: M&Co. | November 16, 2005 at 08:59 PM
Google a-go-goed?
Posted by: MFA Mama | November 16, 2005 at 09:21 PM
i'll say you're haunted by hotness, pretty lady!
[cue opening strains of "brickhouse" by the commodores]
awww right!!
Posted by: sweetney | November 16, 2005 at 09:43 PM
ps: hubba-hubba.
Posted by: sweetney | November 16, 2005 at 09:58 PM
Let's all turn the tables on this other Alice - e-mail her and ask "Are you finslippy?"
I had a co-worker in LA who has the same name as a hard core fetish photographer (that's putting it kindly) who also lived in LA. Shortly after my co-worker told me about his doppelganger, my husband (a financial advisor) was handed a new client - none other than the fetish photographer.
Posted by: Julie | November 16, 2005 at 11:00 PM
You have been Doppelgoogled.
I love the rose petal on the far nipple.
Just ... poised ....
Posted by: Suse | November 16, 2005 at 11:10 PM
Wait a minute, WAIT just a dog-gone MINUTE!
You mean...
That's NOT you?!
Excuse me... being totally realistic here, she doesn't look like an Alice Bradley... she looks like a Mulan Faa.
Also, I read that interview she did for IGN and she may be "hot" but she's got no brain. Let's equate her beauty to her vacant skull. (And if by some chance she really is smart, she has done a spectacularly poor job of displaying that via the internet.)
You got it ALL over her!
Posted by: TitanKT | November 16, 2005 at 11:29 PM
Finslapped?
...since you discovered it and all ;)
Posted by: Amy | November 17, 2005 at 12:23 AM
Jeez, that girl is skin-ny!!
Looks like the other Alice Bradley could use a big helping of Mock Veal.
Posted by: dave | November 17, 2005 at 08:30 AM
I get nothing on Google searches. Not a single thing. And now after seeing bizzaro Alice, I think I'm okay with that.
Posted by: TB | November 17, 2005 at 08:43 AM
You know what they say "she who doth protest too much"!
Posted by: cagey | November 17, 2005 at 09:08 AM
That is Soooooo funny!!!
My namesakes include a former sister-in-law, fortunately, never on the web and whose name has changed since remarriage.
And a research ob/gyn in Chicago specializing in vag!na surgery or something else crazy. People searching for me will find something altogehter. People searching of vag!nas will be disappointed in any case.
((I wonder what folks searching for you from that NY Times article ever found))
:-)
Posted by: Anita | November 17, 2005 at 09:34 AM
Google taught me that I am a 20 ton sea monster in an old Godzilla movie.
Could be worse.
Posted by: Manda | November 17, 2005 at 10:04 AM
Anita, as far as they're concerned, I'm Alice Brady.
I want to be a sea monster! ME!
Posted by: alice | November 17, 2005 at 10:19 AM
Oh PLEASE! You are so much hotter! I bet if you had to balance rose petals you would do a MUCH better job. At least you don't get MTV's Daria pages when you google. Funny thing everyone asks if my parents named me for the cartoon ... I am 23 people the cartoon is much younger.
Posted by: Daria | November 17, 2005 at 10:37 AM
Nude candle making can be painful. So can pouring liquor on your labia but that's another story......
Posted by: Lala | November 17, 2005 at 11:45 AM
Hey, I'm the number 1 link for myself. That's kind of cool. I suppose that's what you get when your name is Dana Vittum and the only other person out there named that is related to me somehow.
I want to be a sea monster as well.
Posted by: DM | November 17, 2005 at 11:52 AM
see and i *like* that i can't be found.
the sweetest sound was a documentary i saw on this "shared name" phenomenon that i really liked. i especially liked the part where he was suggesting killing all the other people with his name, so that he would be the REAL ONE AND ONLY him. i couldn't kill all the people with my name, though. we are legion.
Posted by: anne | November 17, 2005 at 12:13 PM
oops. alice, dear, clever alice bradley, can you close that tag for me or am i doomed to look as inept as i am?
Posted by: anne | November 17, 2005 at 12:14 PM
She's a google-ganger rather than a doppleganger. Or she is your "googlenym."
Posted by: Gemini6Ice | November 17, 2005 at 01:27 PM
She's a google-ganger rather than a doppelganger. Or she is your "googlenym."
Posted by: Gemini6Ice | November 17, 2005 at 01:27 PM
The worst part about my name is the fact that there is another writer with it and a bunch of conservative Christians. I get emails all the time now asking me about my faith and my dog newsletter. What?
Posted by: Meg | November 17, 2005 at 01:39 PM
When I first starting reading finslippy, I googled you to see if you had written any books. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were a hot Asian model in your spare time! And I totally looked like a perv sitting at my desk at work looking at that website when all I wanted was a new book to read.
Posted by: edithmae | November 17, 2005 at 02:34 PM
Edith: Perv.
Anne: link fixed! I AM clever, aren't I.
I like "screwgled," then I thought, maybe scroogled? But Scroogle is some kind of anti-Google site.
I also like Googlenym.
Posted by: alice | November 17, 2005 at 02:38 PM
awesome - googlenym is just right :)
Posted by: dd | November 17, 2005 at 07:29 PM
Well, at least if you did lie on the floor with nothing but rose petals covering your nips, you wouldn't be backing those nips with fake boobies.
Posted by: Monkey loves Kitten | November 17, 2005 at 08:14 PM
I vote for Screwgled! Scroogled? I kind of like the Scroogle for the visual ties with Google. I'll have to see if I end up thinking it sounds anti-Google. Could you also use Screwgled if there are sites out there that DO pertain to you and cast you in a bad light and are then found by prospective employers? It's never happened to me (though the only thing that comes up for me are horrid pics of me from my High School drama days), but I think it's a good terminology!
Posted by: Betsy | November 17, 2005 at 09:05 PM