Today’s  Google doodle informs me it is Teacher’s Day, 2015. Fittingly, it is also the day that, via  Groucho Marx’s mustache, I accept the fact I’m a Google slut.

A character in the screenplay I’m writing referred to his mustache, and said it was taped on. This is a long-ago nugget of information that I thought I knew. However, best to make sure, and that’s what Google can so often allow. It turns out Groucho used grease paint in the movies. He indeed had his own mustache for the TV shows. And perhaps, if I had kept following link after link, I would have found some reference to black tape once used.

It was all relatively moot anyway, because the character uttering the comment is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and could make such a mistake. However, unless announced on high like Mrs. Malaprop’s comments in Sheridan’s “The Rivals”, the doubt probably falls upon the author.

But, just as I this minute used Google to confirm the information about Mrs. Malaprop (I would have spelled Sheridan’s name incorrectly), so, as with Groucho’s mustache, I find myself a willing slave to Google.

Last week I was reading an online Atlantic Monthly article about how our minds are altering with this great influx of information. Our attention spans are becoming fragmented. I have not yet finished reading this article because I moved on to other things. I cut-and-pasted it and emailed it to myself for later consumption. I do this more and more often. For instance, I eventually read Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize speech just last month.

So, does Google bless me as it ruins me? Does it offer me the wealth of the ages yet diminish my own innate abilities? I know I’m not going to rein in my use.

By the way, I just Googled “Google Slut”.  According to Urban Dictionary, it is  “A person who is on the computer so much that it is like they are f***ing it”.

Well, asterisk them, say I

DE

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