A gag is making the email rounds:
1. Go to the Google home page.
2. Type in the word failure.
3. Don’t click “Google Search,” click “I’m Feeling Lucky.”
4. Spread the word before the people at Google “fix” it.
This has been done before, but better. The type-in was weapons of mass destruction, which brought up a “cannot be displayed” page that was really funny because it looked so right and was such a dead-pan gag. The page lasted for a while as a Google re-direct and might still exist somewhere.
Aaaahhhh, here it is. We took note of it a couple of years ago — on Aug. 11, 2003 in our first Straight Up post, to be precise — and pointed out that the Web wit who thought up the gag and commandeered the Google site was a guy by the name of Anthony Cox. We didn’t realize it at the time but he’s a blogging pharmacist with a taste for Tom Lehrer and the Amateur Transplants. How ’bout that.
— Tireless Staff of Thousands
Postscript: Have a listen to the Transplants’ tune about a “brand new wonder drug”: Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin. “It can cure the common cold / And being struck by lightning. … It reverses impotence/And makes you good at fighting. … It makes you smart as Einstein / And as muscular as Tysin.” And, not to put too fine a point on it, “It’s an antidote to Ricin.” We want a prescription.
