Of course now that I made the giant proclamation that I will not be blogging here for a while, I have something I desperately need to get off my chest…

In my constant quest to fine-tune my SEO skills, I have been taking a course in the subject on Lynda.com. At one point in the video course the instructor talks about the value of the auto-fill option in many search engines (namely Google) for generating additional keyword ideas, which are of course based on popularity of search terms.

So I thought it would be interesting to use the Auto-Fill as a sort of seer/oracle–to look into the feeling of the times through whatever automatic text appears after a given word or pair of words. I got some interesting data as a result.

“No jobs in” yields: “No jobs in Michigan,” “No jobs in California,” “No jobs in Portland,” “No jobs in San Diego” and “No jobs in Arizona,” and “No jobs in Florida.”

“Hard to meet people” yields: “Hard to meet people in Los Angeles”

“Best city for singles” yields: “Best city for singles Austin”

“Obama is” yields: “Obama is the Antichrist,” “Obama is a socialist,” “Obama is Irish” and “Obama is not black” among other things.

“America is” yields: “America is the heart,” “America is doomed,” “America is dying,” “America is a melting pot,” “America is not the world,” and “America is fat.”

“The solution is” yields: “The solution is offline” and “The solution is simple”

“Invest in” yields: “Invest in gold,” “Invest in America,” “Invest in bonds,” “Invest in silver,” among others (like the stupid, “Invest in oil”)

“Your destiny” yields: “Your destiny is to merge with infinity,” and “Your destiny is coming.”

I will leave you with that last chilling one.

I’m happy to report that I am fully diving into online writing/editing and SEO. About.com has hired me to head up their Los Angeles site–an online hub for natives and those wishing to move to LA. I will be covering my usual art, film, restaurants, bars, clubs, political issues (local), spas, health and some extras for a wider audience (including content for families, people moving to LA, etc.). I am excited to be part of a high caliber network like About, which is owned by the New York Times Company. Ranking in the Top 50 web sites globally and boasting over 60 million monthly users, they’re giving me a great head start.

I will be blogging on there too. So, at the moment, between that, my occasional blogging for The Huffington Post, my continued daily posts for Hindi Hollywood (the blogosphere nexus of the Hollywood and Mumbai film worlds), and launching a new 360 European travel sector company, Route Three-Sixty with my former LA Times.com colleague Bettie Rinehart, my plate is full. I’ve decided to indefinitely hold off on blogging here. Once I get a handle on things, in a few months I may still post every so often. But for now, enjoy your summer!

I almost forgot to include this little excursion in my roundup of the weekend. I attended a rooftop party at Formosa Cafe for Kevin Roderick and his LA Observed media blog. Lots of LA journos, bloggers, mag people including the friend I went with, Jod Kaftan, an editor at the LA Times magazine. Here is a video that Kevin posted on his site. Our conversation seems to be prominent in it. That’s me: little black dress and black hairband talking animatedly to Jod, Laurie Pike (Style Director of Los Angeles magazine) and her assistant.