Jun 22nd, 2007
Um, okay…
I set up an e-mail account at Yahoo many, many years ago. It became thoroughly spamified not many years later, so you can imagine my joy when a friend who worked at HP sent me an invite for Gmail account right after Gmail launched. I moved all my personal and professional correspondence there and let my poor Yahoo account serve as my “when you have to register to buy/read/whatever someone online” place.
(Let me just take this opportunity to say that I lurve my Gmail. It’s right up there with sliced bread and flush toilets. Okay, flush toilets still win, but just barely.)
Unless I’ve ordered something online, I rarely check that Yahoo address. I pop in there once in a while to take a look around. Occasionally, I find an e-mail from someone I haven’t heard from in ages and who doesn’t know my current address. Today, when the My Yahoo page loaded, I was amused to see that #4 on the top-ten list of “Today’s Top Searches” is Cats That Look Like Hitler. This came in ahead of “Harry Potter News,” mind you–which astonished me tremendously, since that’s all everyone seems to be talking about. (In fact, yesterday I read about some moderated blogs and forums deciding to shut down temporarily for the week after the new book’s release, just so no trolls could post spoilers. I am not a Harry Potter fan. In fact, I am pretty unimpressed with the books. So all of this prepublication excitement is sociologically fascinating to me, but doesn’t really elicit more than a “Meh.”)
Out of curiosity, I clicked on the first link in the Yahoo search list: www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com. To date, there are 1231 “Kitlers” with little Hitler ‘taches. Wow.
2 Responses to “Um, okay…”
I use excite.com for my crap e-mail. I must say, the cat named Hitler does indeed look the most like Hitler of the few cats I perused. However, still wouldn’t name my cat Hitler.
Around here (youth services at a public library), HP stands for Harry Potter not the computer folks. My big dilemma–for my job, mind you–is trying to get a hold of a copy of HP7 while at summer school and get back to town and get it read before anyone gets a hold of me with a spoiler and before my office fills up with rabid fans. When HP6 came out, I checked out my copy from the library on Sat. (tax dollars at work!), read it Sat. and a bit on Sun. before I went in to work on Monday morning at which point I was set upon by several fast readers throughout the day who needed to talk to someone about the big character demise in that volume; they were looking for someone else who finished early so no spoilers were involved. I stocked up on candy and Kleenex in the office just for that purpose, and kids were in all that first week using both items. So, you might say get a life, and Rowling is a hack who writes crap (I’d agree with the latter two), but I gotta tell ya to see teens get that excited about reading–and not just all library geeks, either (can say that because I am one)–is amazing and gratifying. :)
Now, the movies…those are crap. ;)
Welcome to my world…heh.