Speaking of finding URLs embarrassing to admit I once used, there's this really freaky story with erotic elements that generally weirded me out, that I lost. Let it suffice to show the story earned its "really freaky" moniker that my search terms were dragon, penis, beach, and urine. It was on a site I found through an ad on Flak Magazine, and I couldn't even remember the site.
Well, reading Homestar Runner Breaks From the Pack at Flak, I was once again presented with the ad. The site is Cherry Bleeds, which has some bits on Chuck Palahniuk a friend might like, and other interesting writing, though some I saw was overwrought for my taste.
Unfortunately the particular story I was after is nowhere to be found. The site has no archive, and neither the Internet Archive Wayback Machine nor Google (using aforementioned terms in combination with site:cherrybleeds.com) found it at all. Internet Archive had too low a sample rate for the apparently weekly site, and of course Google is no permanent archive, just a recent cache. I also looked at some page from Google that was inaccessible from the main site, and it 404ed, so even if I found the URL, unless it was also cached wherever, it wouldn't help.
Alas and alack, and woe to the Internet and our cultural history, that I track my dragon/urine/beach/penis story to its lair, for it to recede unattainably into the fog of bits past.
Anyway, it's a good trick to put the ad at the bottom of the page. It loads last, and you see it when you're done with the article, so you're more likely to immediately act on it. You can either take it if it looks interesting, or return to the top (or back a page) to read something else at the site. I wouldn't be surprised if they got better clickthrough from having the ads at the bottom like that.
