Large corporations, desperate to have their brands easily located on the Internet, spend great gobs of money making sure that their names appear first on the Web's most popular search engines.

Not being a large corporation, we at The Simon were curious what sort of competition we faced on Yahoo, Google, and the like. So, we typed in our name, hit Search, and these were some of the odd assortment of people and groups we found. Welcome to The Simon family, you guys.

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1) Simon's Rock College

Much to our disappointment, this is not, in fact, a school to learn about rock music, V-shaped guitars, and the finer points of nailing groupies. Simon's Rock is actually a Massachusetts school for gifted 15- and 16-year-olds ready to make the leap to college already. Highly lauded, written up in U.S. News and World Report's annual "Best Colleges" issue, Simon's Rock is about as far away from rockin' as you could imagine.

2) Simon LeVay's Home Page

Mr. LeVay, looking very contemplative and scholarly in the photo on his home page, is a neurobiologist. He's written about everything from volcanoes to sexuality to extraterrestrial life. He's taught at Harvard and Stanford. His novel, Albrick's Gold, got good reviews in The Advocate and Publishers Weekly. As far as we can tell, the only thing wrong with him is the embarrassing typo in the second sentence of his site's introduction.

3) Simon Tatham's Home Page

In the year 2003, do you actually know a single person who would claim to like goth music? Well, if you don't, now you do. Mr. Tatham spends time on his personal page explaining in long detail why he isn't goth — even though he listens to goth music, goes to goth clubs, and wears black. And, ladies, as far as we can tell, he's single. If you're interested in Mr. Tatham, here are two things you should know. First, he likes "cheese, and chicken, and curry, and garlic, and pizza." And, perhaps more importantly, "I think whoever invented Chicken Kiev should have been given more medals."

4) The Simon Laven Page

What is a Chatterbot? We didn't know either, but this helpful site gave us a lot of information on the subject. Too much, actually. Not even 23, Mr. Laven has a frightening grasp of the most up-to-date information on artificial intelligence. And, hey, if you wanted to buy a copy of Short Circuit, this is the place to go. Huh, they have a special-edition DVD of that, too?

5) The Simon Spiff Silly Sensation



Magical clowns. Juggling jesters. Scary puppets meant to entertain children. And, is it just us, or does "Simon Jr." look a little like The Simon? We'll be calling our lawyers, bub.

 

The Simon's Back Pages is updated monthly.

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