"The Tubes Are Filled With Crap"

I don’t usually use such language here (I usually refer to The Tubes as “Fee Waybill’s Band”), but the last week online has been so weird I just could not keep up…

The news came out last Tuesday that Yahoo! (don’t forget the “!”, just like “Jeopardy!” and “Not in the face!”) had allied itself with Symantec (formerly Ed Norton’s Computer and Sewer Clean-Up Service) for a semi-new internet security package. No big deal, but it did top the Tech News section at the computer-generated Google News summary. And the first listed story (of several) had this headline : Yahoo and Symantec join forces to battle internet security. Assuming the headline writer would discover and correct his mistake, I screen-grabbed it:

I didn’t need to. It’s still up there in all its clueless glory. Even the stock photography people in the article’s illustration seem stunned. Stock Photo Dad: “I can’t believe somebody could write such a stupid headline.” Stock Photo Daughter: “I’m bored with this. Let’s go to my MySpace page and see how many perverts signed up as my friends.”

Then again, this is a news site with the domain name Pocket-Lint.co.uk. Now, I know that many of the most successful web-based enterprises have names that do absolutely nothing to describe what they are or do: Amazon, eBay, del.icio.us, Google, Yahoo!, BoingBoing, Fark, the late great Brunching Shuttlecocks and, of course, Fox News. But Pocket-Lint? Pocket-Lint? Pocket-Lint? Pocket-Lint? POCK… (Sorry, I got a bit carried away).

An interesting side issue is the fact that the embarassing title was first choice at Google News. Over PC World, CNET, Ars Technica and apparently 64 other news sources. At Google News. Non-human edited Google News. Top competitor to Yahoo! in a whole lot of areas Google. This is where conspiracy theories are born.

Then MySpace crashed at the same time MY space did, and Ken Jennings got Punk’d and SlashDotted by the New York Post (more about that later) and I had to step away from the computer. And considering the size of my apartment, that required standing in either the shower or the refrigerator (I chose the shower; considering the Global Warmwave going on, I think I erred). I have no finish for this, so here’s a bunny with a pancake on its head.

ADDENDUM: For the benefit of readers who are not up to date on Internet memes: Oolong, the rabbit. And, a smaller, more browser-friendly bunny: