Google this

Little known fact: there are actually FIVE Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, War gets a lot of publicity, and Pestilence has a neat name, but the most dangerous horsemen is one most people don't seem to fear at all: it is Google.

Yes, I despise Google. I am disgusted by what is has done to me. I used to have a memory--you know, that thing you use when you want to remember a fact or detail. In high school, I must have memorized thousands of dates, names, bone processes, proteins, equations, events, numbers, etc. When I covered the same topics in college, it was easy because I readily remembered the information I had learned years before. My memory was like a giant filing cabinet--thousands of documents all right there were I left them.

But now--no more! Google comes along and suddenly my memory is useless. I'm sure the files are still there, but it's as if with Google around to do the searching, my brain outsourced the search function and laid off all my cerebral file searchers. Here's a scenario:

Some Guy: I wonder how ants mate....
Me thinking: Hey, I know this.... To brain: Yo, what's the answer?
My Brain: Ask someone else; I'm too busy thinking about Survivor.

So I go ahead and Google it and then relate the answer. And then everyone (Some Guy in this case) says, "Oh, you are soooo smart. You know everything." And for a moment a think, "Yeah, I am amazing."

But, of course, I know it's all a lie. And Google knows it's a lie, too. And everytime I turn on the computer Google is sitting there with that look on it's face saying "I'm the master!"

I've tried other search programs, but they're useless! Jeeves makes you ask a question and then answers something else, MSN thinks the only reason anyone uses the Internet is to buy something, and Yahoo!...well, Yahoo! returns nothing but dating, crazy fan, and 'those' sites for every search.

Sometimes I get angry and try to take back my life. I fight the urge to Google. "I can do this," I say to myself. "Just get the brain going again." But all the time I see Google over there laughing at me. "Go ahead," it cackles. "While you're over there trying to start a rusted engine I'll be working on yet another way to dominate your life."

I resist, I struggle, then I admit defeat and enter my query. Google quickly--you could even say kindly--displays the answer as though we hadn't fought at all. Sheepishly, I scold myself, "You called Google all sorts of bad names and then it goes and helps you out. What a forgiving program it is and what an ingrate are you."

Then I see Google rubbing my face in it: "Results 1 - 10 of about 1,280,000 for blah blah blah." What a jerk. It's like it's saying, "You couldn't come up with a single answer and I came up with over a million. 'Higher life form', hmfph!" I am belittled. And that's the best case scenario, when I don't misspell my search terms. When I do, Google snidely asks, "Did you mean: blah blah" as though it really thinks I meant to write "Nwe York" instead of "New York". To top it off, Google rubs salt in my wounded ego by showing just how fast it is: ".08 seconds," it proudly displays--but I'm sure what it's really saying is "Beat that, pinhead!"