I’m giving myself a break from writing Afrikaans this evening to take stock of my campaign to dominate the internet.

Good news:  I am now nine of the first ten results, and all of the first eight.  This bodes well for the future, and those who have helped me get there will rightfully be rewarded with a big party or an e-mail or something.  Another blog entry, at the very least.

The results become a bit creepier on page two, where The Huffington Post has published some of my political campaign contributions.  It’s pretty out-of-date, however — several elections, two jobs, and one home address out-of-date, in fact.  But it is (or was) me, no doubt about that.  Hmm.

I didn't plan it this way, of course.  My mother didn't even plan it when she came up with my name.  The alternative could have been like that experienced by Jamie, who shares his first and last name with a nude model and Playboy playmate.  Jamie's web stats went through the roof when her issue came out, and he couldn't figure out why so many visitors to his site were entering searches for "Jamie Ford sweet booty."

Having a relatively uncommon name has more advantages than disadvantages.  One of the greatest advantages, and the biggest surprise, is that it enables people who haven't seen me since I was three years old to find me today.  One tracked me down through an online add I created to sell my 1990 Volvo 780 Turbo.  Sean, an old friend of my mother’s and now actor, recognized my name in the ad and figured that there's only one person named "Kennedy Brandt" in the world.  I don't know if that's absolutely true, but it is true that he's the same Sean who befriended a struggling actress-singer-secretary in New York almost forty years ago, and she had me as a son.

Another long-lost contact rediscovered was another friend from New York:  Claudia, the first babysitter I remember.  I used to sit in her living room for hours, overlooking West 86th Street, watching people and taxis roll by and imagining who they were and where they were going.  Somehow Claudia found this blog and guessed that I was me.  She was right.

I wonder who's next.

Another Google result that comes up is a link to my Amazon reviewer profile.  This is a bit odd, or at least it could be in the future, if and when I have something of my own to sell on Amazon.  Will others find these reviews, be offended that I gave their favorite terrible Dave Matthews album a bad review, and rate down my own offerings as a result?  It's possible.  Considering the problems that already exist with fraudulent online reviews, there’s not much I can do about this one way or the other.

My short-term goal is to occupy the entire first page of Google results for “kennedy brandt.”  All it will take is for enough people to perform this search and then select any of my results after Kevin Kennedy-Brandt’s profile on Plaxo.  As of this writing, that’s my Twitter and Classmates pages.  Care to help me out?

I promise to give you a slice of the internet as soon as I’m done with it.