Sharky, The Most Popular Dead Dolphin On The Internet

Get ready for a bombshell: JG2Land normally doesn’t get a whole lot of visitors.

According to the WordPress Statistics Machine, on any given day somewhere between six and eighteen people surf on in to see what I’m up to. That’s no big deal. To paraphrase the guy in that old wine commercial, I’m only doing this blog to please one person: me. I am my own biggest fan. If I don’t stop hanging around my own house waiting to catch a glimpse of me, I’m going to have to call the cops on myself.

You can imagine my surprise when I logged in yesterday after the Sharky the Dolphin obituary went up and saw that upwards of ninety people had stopped by JG2Land. The aforementioned WordPress Statistics Machine (hereby referred to as the WSM) confirmed that the majority of these visitors were searching for any news they could get regarding Sharky’s untimely death. Talk about one popular dolphin. Sharky makes Flipper look like a completely obscure asshole!

So far today, the WSM shows 117 people have strode through the virtual gates of my literary amusement park, most of them still on the hunt for Sharky facts, figures, and funeral plans. That’s really something.

I have to question the WSM, though, as I tried Googling “Sharky the Dolphin” myself and the original JG2Land Sharky entry did not come up on the first six pages of search results. Are all these visitors using Dogpile or some other outmoded search engine? I demand a more specific breakdown of who these people are, where they come from, and what the deal is with airplane peanuts.

One Sharky enthusiast named Sally was nice enough to leave a comment informing me that Sharky was a girl. Thanks, Sally, but Shamu’s the one you should be telling. He / She / It’s under the impression Sharky was all man. Oh, and I deleted your comment because you left it in the “About Me” section. That space is reserved solely for comments about how awesome I am.

I guess it’s safe to assume all famous animals are actually female. Lassie, Spuds MacKenzie, Garfield, the Ultimate Warrior, Star Jones – they’re all womenfolk. Show me a famous critter with a wang and I’ll have you arrested for peddling varmint porn.

I’d like to thank the Sharky Nation for stopping by. Unfortunately, I can offer nothing more than my condolences and a few corny jokes. Hopefully your pal Sharky is enjoying his new home in the clouds with Albert Einstein and Jonathan Brandis. Peace be with you, dolphin.