I don't get Google

I spend a good ten minutes crafting the finest picture of a whale clad in trousers that the world has ever witnessed. I label the file "Mr. Splashy Pants." I label the post "Mr. Splashy Pants." I use the name 'Mr. Splashy Pants' about a dozen times in the post.

Go to Google images, there are no pants-wearing whales to be found. My whale is not present. Google "Mr Splashy Pants" and my blog does come up--on page 13.

But not that image! Instead, it's the cover of an album I posted six months ago! No splashing or pants or whales to be found! What the F (as the kids say)!

If I was making a major Hollywood movie....

-It would star the Official Character Actor of the Idea of Progress, Zooey Deschanel.

-It would involve robots, or zombies, or perhaps zombie robots.



-I would cast Dane Cook, only to have him butchered onscreen by a zombie robot.

-I would play the zombie robot.

-It would be rated G.

-It would make children cry.

-It would make you cry.

-I would make sure to fill it with as many expensive products as I could, in hopes of getting freebies. Such products would include Bentley automobiles, Rolex watches, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

-It would be six hours long. There would be no intermission.

-The trailer would feature a voiceover from the "In a world where..." guy. The voiceover for the trailer would begin, "In a world where..."

-Bono would make a cameo appearance.

-He would be killed by a zombie robot.

-It would be the same zombie robot that killed Dane Cook.

-I would still be playing that zombie robot.

-The zombie robots would also be ninjas.

-The movie will be called Mr. Splashy Pants.

-It will gross $10 trillion on its opening weekend.

-It will open next summer.

Mr. Splashy Pants!

Greenpeace has been running a Name the Whale competition in which people can vote for what a particular whale will, cleverly enough, be named. The names are mostly boring, like "Kaimana - means 'divine power of the ocean' in Polynesian" or "Sedna - is the name of the Innuit goddess of the oceans." However, somehow someone got another name into the running.

Mr. Splashy Pants.

Not only did someone get the name in, but he or she then sat at their computer and voted for it for hours on end. Greenpeace eventually caught on that someone was trying to, in the immortal words of Chicago's own Richard J. Daley, "Vote early and often," and removed the votes from the guy with too much free time on their hands.

But someone had posted the current results to Reddit and Boing Boing, and of course, then everybody know about it, which drove people to the Greenpeace site in droves. Guess which name they all voted for?

The ballots are still open until Dec. 7th. Greenpeace has had a really good sense of humor about this, and for a more detailed (and much funnier) description of the above events, I heartily recommend reading the blog post that 'Richard' posted on the Greenpeace site. Really read it, it's hilarious.

And to their credit they left the name in. Currently it's leading it's closest competitor by something like 74%, so it looks like a done deal.

Somewhere out there there will be a whale. And that whale's name?

Mr. Splashy Pants.