Googlicious

I will freely admit that I was late to the Google party. I've been using the Internet for quite a long time -- I love it when I take a survey about Internet use and the choices for how long are "Under 1 year," "A year or more," "2-3 years," and "More than 3 years," as though anything more than that was unexpected -- but I was never someone who turned to Google first for my Internet searches. I can't really tell you why, other than that I just gravitated toward Yahoo! more, especially when they came up with My Yahoo! and that became my default page. (Anyone who's going to give me grief about that -- save your breath. I've withstood the "Why are you still with AOL?!?" barrage for years.)

Then, when Google started to become a household word I got ticked off by the use of it as a verb. I'm still not okay with that, as a matter of fact, not that anyone asked. And, frankly, being the obdurate nonconformist I am when it comes to stuff like that, that was enough to make me avoid it.

But one day I came across an item on a blog (Little.Yellow.Different, if I'm not mistaken) that mentioned you could use the language tools to set the Google interface to different languages...real and imagined. That intrigued me enough to check it out and I got a kick out trying out different ones before settling on the one I use to this day -- Elmer Fudd. It cracks me up and happens to be a manner of speaking I lapse into when I'm being silly. Weawy!

Since I know that so many people rely on Google to find everything from the dirt on their potential suitors to how to get the dirt out of their suits, I'm wondering if anyone else has selected an alternate language preference that isn't their native tongue. If I knew how to throw a poll up over there to the right in some of that beautiful blank space, I probably would. (Damn, there are so many things yet to learn about all the little doodads available for blogs.) For the time being, comments are the way to go -- lurkers get the lead out; I know you're out there, the water's fine and it really doesn't hurt.

But you should know that the Elmer Fudd thing didn't hook me into regular use. The free pop-up blocker on their toolbar did that.