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Hoses of the Holy in the Parallel Universe

July 14, 2004

Grrr!

Now, we all know that the innernet is clogged with all kinds of unnecessary crap, but possibly the most annoying stuff out there are sites that set out to deliberately set out to generate hits so they can sell advertising. These sites are often content-free, but even when they have content, it can be misleading.

I was looking for the lyrics of a Steve Forbert song I used to own many years ago. I wanted to quote it apropros of my bro-in-law's new car, which is an ugly-looking (from the outside) Toyota Avensis. There's a line on one of Forbert's songs which says, "The [insert name here] is a very nice car / But you can't watch it go by". But I can't remember for the life of me what car was in the song.

Back to that in a moment. Meanwhile, a fruitless search for the lyrics generated any number of Google search hits, all of which ended in a message along the lines of, "Sorry we have no [insert name here] lyrics. Please submit them, thankyou."

So, essentially, page after page of Google hits returned saying, "Here is what you were looking for" only to end up saying, "We don't have what you were looking for, but hey, thanks for clicking on this site, I just earned 0.0000001 pence."

Bastards. Because you're not going to "submit them" when you are, you know, looking for them, are you?

Anyway. Someone at work has a new Audi A4 Estate, which is one of the best-looking estate cars around. It just looks brilliant: mean, moody, and magnificient. But sitting inside it, it was a bit of a swizz. Very spartan, very cheap, not even particularly roomy (smaller than my Passat). It even has leather seats, but it's the kind of leather that looks and feels exactly like cheap vinyl. On the other hand, the Avensis looks like a thick-waisted ugly japanese repmobile, but on the inside feels very comfortable and well-appointed. Which is why the "But you can't watch it go by" line came into my head. It's nice to be able to look out of your window and see a well-designed car sitting there. But if driving it is like sitting in a transit van, the point has been missed somewhere.

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