Hot, Sexy Photos

There is an inherent danger in entering your own name into a search engine. You never know what part of your past is going to pop up, or other scary things.

As a writer, though, you got to to it. You've got to at least attempt to see who might be stealing your stuff and selling it as their own. There are numerous sites that claim to be giving away my book for free, but so far none of them are really doing it. Mostly, those sites are looking to sucker people into buying something or trying to pass on a virus or malware.

Fortunately, a Google search of my name brings up the things it should on the first page – links to my work pages, links to buy my books and my social media accounts. The second page is nice, too. That's where you start to learn what I've been up to over the past 20 years, the awards I've won, the stories I've written for the newspaper over the years. I used to be a business reporter for a zoned section of the Albuquerque Journal. As such, I wrote a “focus on business” feature twice a week for about five years.

I used to tell people I was the most read writer in Albuquerque because of these stories – business owners would clip the story, frame it and put it on a wall in their establishments. So a customer would come in and read it.

It's been some years since I've written those stories, but I still like the kind of articles I like to call refrigerator stories – the kind of stuff that folks would cut out of the newspaper and post on their fridge, or keep in a scrapbook, or mail to a grandchild. (My grandmother used to do that.) Now, folks will post them on their websites, blog posts or social media. These stories aren't exactly hard news, but they're still fun to read and to write.

Then, there are links to issue stories and columns I've written. A couple years ago, for instance, I wrote a column about how I love libraries. That one spread to just about every library advocacy website in the world and still pops up on searches. And if you all are under the notion that I didn't do “real” news, there are links to stories I did on abusive priests, the lack of water in New Mexico and huge land development deals. Some of my stories have even been used in academic studies by people much smarter than me.

An article I did is even used in a biography of Barry McGuire. I had got a great quote from him about “Eve of Destruction.”

Other hits on my name turn up information on where I went to high school, when I was in the Air Force and a bit on my acting career. In the internet age, much of our lives is available for scrutiny online. Although I value my privacy, I know that my vocation is such that much of my life is played out in public. And having the unique name I have, it is easy to find me online.

But sometimes the internet gets a little confused. Some years ago, a film maker friend asked me to help him out on a short movie he was making. I took a day off from work to play an office worker. I'm not sure if I had a line, but it was fun and I got paid 30 bucks or something like that. Then I forgot about the movie until I recently ran across my page on imdb. The only problem is that imdb lists me as an actress, as in a female actor. I thought about updating that information – I'm not a woman despite what my PE coach in high school thought – but didn't care enough about it to go through the registration process at the website and let it slide.

Then a couple days ago, I was doing a Google check on my name when I came across a link that said this: “Hot Sexy Photos of Rory M. McClannahan: Cleavage, Boobs ...”

There are so many things wrong with that sentence. I'm 48 years old and I have no delusions about how I look. I look 48 years old. It's been some years since anyone could have used the adjectives “hot” or “sexy” to describe me. And while gravity has had its way with me, I don't think it's very nice to make fun of me because of it. So I need to do push ups, there's no need to laugh at me or tease me about cleavage and boobs.

Did I click on the link offering hot sexy photos of me? Of course I did. It takes you to an aggregator for celebrity wallpaper. No photos.

But what if there was? Is there really an internet fetish site for middle-age man cleavage? And furthermore, am I going to have to start keeping my eye out for the paparazzi?

Well, I guess if it helps my writing career ...