Having a Google Alert for your name is nothing to be ashamed of.

Nor is it something you need to lie about any more. (Heck, if Survivor’s Jeff Probst can come clean, anyone can.)

Similar to the way I recommend in the TWEET model that you use Twitter to search for yourself, having a Google Alert for your own name is a smart way to see what slander or joy is being spread about you. Then, you can take matters into your own hands and either “mean tweet” the offender a la The Real Housewives of New York’s Kelly Bensimon or send them, with joy, free steak.

Today, I veered on the side of mean tweeting.

Then, however, I realized that the culprit of the slander was my own ugliness. Alas, mean tweeting myself seemed of little value. This is what my Google Alert pointed out — out an old video of me from BlogWorld 2010 with a hideous, frozen-in-time screenshot I want to vomit all over.

Honestly, objectively, and (I say this completely without personal bias) it looks like I’m chewing cud.

Yes, cud. Like a cow.

If I’m lucky (and, I usually am) the SEO ranking on this video is likely through the roof because of some black-hat (black-cloak? dark-cloak?) scheme I will never understand, and as a result every image search for my name from now until infinity will produce this result.

Moo.