Google Spay
I’ve got an idea. Let’s put Google in charge. Of, like, totally Everything. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
My wife and I have perfected the art of screaming at the TV while Google runs a new series of ads promoting something called Google Play. The ads seem tailor made for millennials, those wacky creatures with birthdays in early 1980s to the early 2000s.
Google loves millennials. Also grandmothers using AOL on Windows 95 who only know how to open emailed photos of grandchildren and stalk the entire family on Facebook. But it’s mostly the millennials.
Millennials are the people in your neighborhood who get run over by cars while texting, fall down open manholes when walking down a sidewalk while texting, running over other people while driving and texting, listening to lectures in college and texting, working mundane jobs and texting, and, if the rumors are true, even use their internet-powered smartphones while sitting on the toilet.
Whatever Google poops out millennials soak up like a sponge. How about Google in your wristwatch like George Jetson? Yes, please! How about Google in a computer you strap to your face? I’ll look so cool! How about Google you wear in a ring on your finger? Yes, I do.
These are people living enhanced reality sorts of lives. Why just look at a boring street when you can wear goggles that superimpose text (in the font of your choice) and describe what’s in view so you won’t have to hurt your brain? And it’s free, not counting the 20% of display real estate devoted to blinking advertisements.
Speaking of which, the ad campaign for Google Play is promoting the ability to watch Hollywood blockbuster movies like “Yankee! Look at me! I am the Captain now!”
Of course, with Google involved, it doesn’t quite stop there. In Google’s opinion, while watching the movie, you should be multitasking. Perhaps using some Google Docs to manage your money. Manage tomorrow’s expenditures and consumption. Let’s devote about 20% of the display to that.
Google is known for search (an admittedly archaic service they continue to offer for nostalgic reasons) so of course they recommend that while enjoying movies. In the commercial the clever viewer realizes, “Holy shit! That’s Tom Hanks. Click pause. Let’s google that sum bitch. I bet this isn’t his first movie. What else has this guy been in?”
With proper utilization of the myriad of services offered by Google, it’s possible to give less and less screen to the movie itself. If done properly, the movie can be shrunk to the size of a single twinkling pixel, much like a real star in Google NightSky.
Of course, at that size, the only part of the movie that can actually be enjoyed is the audio, and that is easily overwritten by Google Radio.
A good movie prompts a feeling of suspension of disbelief. It takes you out of the moment. Google doesn’t like people who are present in the moment. That’s why they launched Google Omnipresent Stimuli. Movies should never get your full attention. They should just be a tiny slice of the stimuli spectrum. With advertising, of course.
“Yankee! Look at Google! They are the Captain now.”
Today Is Your Dearthday!
When I hear Christian music I often ask myself a question.
Jesus Christ across the galaxy
Bringing toys and goodies for you and me
Are you singing for His glory? Or your own? You have to dig deep for the true answer.
That might be an awkward opening, but here’s the point of this post:
Today is a new day. It’s my friend’s birthday. So I decided to go on Facebook and send him some cheese-ball greetings. “Congratulations for being alive on a day that signifies the number of rotations of this planetoid around its star being a whole number. Jolly good, chum!”
I expected to see Facebook jam the birthday in my face. But it didn’t. There was no mention of my friend on the birthday dailies. Hmm. What to make of this?
Using logic and deduction, I theorized that my friend didn’t share his birthday with Facebook. Wise move. Extrapolating further, I reasoned that my friend probably didn’t wish his birthday to be generally known. That seemed to me to be a reasonable hypothesis that fit all the known facts.
What to do? What to do?
I had a choice. Post publicly on his wall, thus announcing the occasion to all of his friends, or respect what I assumed were his wishes and keep it private?
Since it was his special day, and not my own, I decided to recognize that he’s an individual who exists in the universe and has feelings. I decided to show respect for that.
I sent my greetings in private.
Feeling warm and fuzzy about being a considerate friend, I went back to my homepage to see what other flotsam Facebook had washed up on my beach. I do this daily to remind me about the true nature of humanity and such.
Bazinga!
There it was, on the very top of the news feed. Someone else just wished my friend a happy birthday. In public. For all to see. Bastard! Quickly his Facebook was overrun with the bloody things. They say it’s the thought that counts. So how do you take a good thing and convert it into the equivalent of peeing in your so-called friend’s Wheaties?
There it sits.
Happy birthday to you? Or me? Who exactly are we celebrating here?
“Psst! Hey, everybody! Look at me! Look at how wonderful I am remembering my friend’s birthday and shit. Aren’t I good? Don’t you love me? You love me, don’t you? Why hasn’t everyone liked this? Click like or you’ll be unfriended! Somebody call the whambulance!”
Again, to this birthday interloper, I ask: Whose glory is motivating your behavior, you narcissistic creepazoid?
Apple Bamboo
We recently hosted a quasi-invited guest. (She sort of invited herself. It was a Thanksgiving kind of thing.) We took this person downtown for shopping, out to dinner and put her up for the night. But this guest wasn’t alone. She was possessed of an uninvited interloper. It was an iPhone.
Introducing the “bamboo” sound.
DA-DA DA-DA DINT DA! Thwap!
The sound was a lot like that coffee commercial jingle only a lot more woody, with a strong, robust finish. It was like Juan Valdez had chugged too much tequila and was getting jiggy on the marimbas.
DA-DA DA-DA DINT DA! Thwap!
That sound haunts me. It chases me in my dreams, where it is the size of the Death Star and I’m running but making no progress. “The rebel base will be in range in 15 minutes.” Only, in this dream, there was no Luke Skywalker to eject a torpedo pulse into a tiny little hole and save the day. The floating space-suited black helmet dudes fired that sucker and blew me and my planet up. And guess what? The sound the Death Star beam made? It was the iPhone bamboo.
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The iPad Conversationalist
What is it to have a conversation? Don’t ask me, I sure as hell wouldn’t know. I live in a land populated by bulldozers but I am decidedly not a bulldozer.
It is common for babies, once they’ve reached the age of two, to go through an “I have a ball” phase. “I have a ball,” they say. They grasp a ball tightly in their little hand with their little kung fu grip and show the ball to everyone they meet. “I have a ball.” They can be rather monotonous.
It really boggles their little two-year-old brains so much that they have a ball. And they really love it if other people show interest in the ball, the one thing they’ll never ever share. “Ha! I have a ball!” At least until people show interest in something else which they’ll immediately covet and take for themselves. Then they’ll say, “I have this other thing.” Damn two-year olds.
I don’t want to put too fine a point on it so I’ll get on message and I’ll be brief: “I have an iPad!”
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The Motorbike Sonic Boom
Click for Source: Vishweshwar Saran Singh Deo (Flickr)
It was a hot day and I was out for a ride in the car. It was the kind of hot that made people wish they could die and hurry on to Hell so they could cool off a bit. Since my A/C was broken (like always) I had all of my windows rolled down. Suddenly an infant rolled by with a binky in his mouth.
Um. Wait one. Scratch that. Let me try that again.
Suddenly a grown man rode by on his motorcycle. And when I say “rode by” I mean that he whizzed by (illegally) so close that the cute little pink tassels hanging from his “ape hanger” handlebars literally dug ruts in my paint.
Ape hangers. Has there ever been another vehicle part in the history of time so aptly named? Methinks not. I love it when products describe their owners so accurately.
Meanwhile, since my windows were rolled down, my ears were in for a real treat.
BRAAAAOWN, BRRAAOOOM, RROOAAARR!!! BLAT BLAT BLAT!!! VROOM!!!
Nice onomatopoeia, eh?
A Boeing 747 taking off from inside my pants wouldn’t have been as loud. (But a lot more fun.) The sound waves from this dude’s audio wake slapped me in the face, driving my head back and into my car. With blood leaking from my ears and my ears ringing from a mild concussion, I paused a moment to ponder the psychology involved in this sort of event.
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Allow me to be your social valet
Fraud. Deceitful intent. Narcissism. Caring way too much about what other people think. Either it’s time for another blog post from your favorite Guru or I have a business idea.
If you’re lucky maybe it’ll be a little bit of both.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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