Sunday, October 24, 2010

Is Googleable a Verb?

Quote of the Blog:

K: Is it bad that I just Googled How to meet friends after college?

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I woke up this morning at 4:30 am to a high-pitched whining by my ear. I panicked. I pulled the covers over my head and sat under them for a few moments. When I turned on my lamp I saw the culprit, a zancudos, a mosquito(!) loitering on the wall by my bed. I grabbed a little tissue and, well, let’s just say he’s not going to be bothering anyone ever again. BUT, he’s the third mosquito in a week we’ve killed in the apartment! And we live on the fifth floor! WHYYYYYYYYYYYY are they in my apartment nibbling on my ear at 4:30 am? There might be exceptions I’d make for a nibbling on my ear, but this is not one of them. I mean, it’s almost November? Shouldn’t they be DEAD without me to kill them? With these thoughts in my head I pulled my Macbook off the desk onto my lap. At 4:30 am I started researching mosquitoes.

I love looking up things on the Internet. I really do. I love that I can find answers to just about anything. If a topic, person, location, etc. comes up in conversation and I’m near a computer there's a good chance we're looking it up.

Earlier today my friend told me that he was going to maybe dress up as Michael Myers for Halloween. I was like, “Oh? Mike Meyers, that's funny.” His exasperated, yet amused answer was, “No. Dork. Michael Myers from Halloween.” Within a few moments I’d opened Google images. Oh man. Michael Myers is Scary! And looks NOTHING like Mike Meyers (except maybe for the hair).

There was a time, for almost six months, where every morning I read one item on www.howstuffworks.com (possibly one of my favorite websites). I read about loads of different topics: cell phones, car engines, lightning, lock picking, quicksand, MRIs, zippers, LEDs, snowflakes etc. I loved it. I still read them – but not every day. Now I spend more time listening to the "Radio Lab" podcast - which gives me my “how things work” fix.

Sometimes my phone gets phone envy because all it does is phone stuff like calls and texts. I can sympathize. It doesn’t get the internet – or the World Wide Web as my friend’s mother calls it. “Sweetie, the world wide web isn’t working. Can you help me get it back up?”

You can search just about anything on the WWW but you can’t always find the answer you’re looking for.

Friend: Lately my belly has been sweating.
Brook: I'm sorry, what?
Friend: It's true! I even tried to Google belly sweat. It's like the one thing you can't Google.

So, even though I can get 2,310,000 results in 0.32 seconds by typing in “mosquito in house” we’ve still got a ways to go…

3 comments:

  1. Hahahaa, my husband's the same way...he lighting fast at grabbing a computer when someone has a question!

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  2. Forget going to the doctor, just ask Dr. Google.

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  3. Ok -one of the posts about catching mosquitoes in your home said to get a paper plate and wipe a thin layer of baby oil on it with a tissue - then swing it around to catch the mosquito. Let's just say I was dubious. But just now, as I was getting ready for bed, a mosquito flew by. As soon as I saw it fly by I got the plate and baby oil. The second time it flew by I swung the plate and it TOTALLY WORKED!! The mosquito stuck right to it! Kind of amazing. Thanks Google!

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