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When it comes to things that are cyclical in nature, the ones most easily-predicted are, without a doubt, ones that are directly related to the whims of people. There are all sorts of  trends that come and go each year, like senioritis, making resolutions, patterns of shopping… the list goes on (although not very far for me since I only had a 1×2 inch scrap of paper to scrawl my notes upon). One invaluable tool for tracking the Ouroboros-like beast of human interests is Google Trends, which was reintroduced to me by my brother. For those of you who haven’t checked this out yet, this toy allows you to check the frequency your particular term has been searched for with Google. The imagination runs wild…

After exploring the trends associated with juvenile queries like “buttsex”, “boobies”, and “orgies” and seeing no obvious trends, my brother and I moved onto more serious terms. Predictably enough, “turkey” showed a spike in  frequency twice a year: Thanksgiving and Christmas. “Eggs” had their 15 minutes around Easter time, “pranks” were in high demand just before and on April first, and great interest in  “shopping” took place during the holiday season.

After getting bored with the easy ones, we put a little brain work into our terms and discovered that “dieting”, “weight loss”, “quit smoking”, and “champagne” all peaked at the end of each year. I put my guess to the test with “thesis”, and sure enough, it spiked around the beginning and end of each semester (perhaps for those grad students who show initial interest in what will be due, and then again near the end to frantically figure out how to accomplish what will be due?). “Wedding” had small spikes in the spring, summer, and fall, but had a huge lull  during the winter months. “Jewelry” and “diamonds” were eagerly sought around Valentine’s Day.

I think we all get the gist of these annual happenings, right? Well how about singular and interesting spikes?

For example, never before had people been so interested in Saddam Hussein until the day he was executed (thanks a heap, YouTube). And spinach was extraordinarily intriguing when the whole E. coli deal went down. I didn’t check, but I’d bet just about anything that pigs are experiencing a lot of popularity at the moment. And then there are people who win stuff on reality TV shows, who get feverishly searched for until the next person wins it by combining the contestant’s name and the show he/she was on (“David Cook, American Idol” or “Bob Crowley, Survivor” will get big hits for a while).

And while “superbowl” itself has its predicted spikes at the beginning of February every year, and “nipple” typically has a steady– albeit slow– stream of Googlings, if you add those two terms and throw in “Janet Jackson”, you’ve just hit on a veritable trifecta. Common Spike Phenomena.

(Note: “Nipple ring” could replace “nipple” and garner similar results)

Even after another hour or so playing around with Google Trends, I was unable to beat that discovery. Oddly sexual queries like “Vaseline, cucumbers” yielded no appreciable signs of CSP, nor did “sex, candy” (Sorry, Marcy Playground!). I decided to stop before I exhausted myself, lucky to have scored just one Google grand slam, but not before haphazardly throwing a few more combinations out there (“bubble gum, rocket launcher”, “shoe bomb, horse shoe”, and “aardvark, watermelon”). Sadly, my pessimism was justified as none of these last-ditch efforts to find a preposterous example of CSP were successful.

But maybe it’s just as well. I’m not exactly sure how I would react if I found overwhelming CSP with “bondage, teapot”.