MemeMachineGo!

I met Pocahontas online. After our initial cafe date, we met for dinner. “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said then. “I did a Google search on you. And you’re all over the place!”

She didn’t want to have an unfair advantage, you see. Now, I just assume that any given person might find any given thing I say in public on the Net, and have written my blog with that in mind. So I was favorably impressed by her initiative and geekiness, but didn’t think much about it thereafter.

We hit it off. A few weeks ago, she said “You know, when I said I’d done a Google search on you, you never asked what I found.”

“I thought you’d read my blog.”

“Well, I did, some. But you know what was the thing that really got me, that made me think: I like this guy.”

“What?”

“It was this funny thing you wrote on footnotes.”

“What?” This was ringing no bells.

“It was about footnotes, and it was told using footnotes — it was really funny. It had things like footnotes can be bred in captivity and are shy and easily startled — oh I don’t remember it all.”

“Uh, I don’t think I wrote that.”

“And you got to see the footnote text by rolling the mouse over the footnote.”

“Wait, you needed to do a rollover to get the footnote text?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve harbored an anti-javascript bias for years, one I’m only recently getting over. So I knew then I hadn’t written this. Yet the piece was sounding vaguely familiar. So next I was in front of the computer, I googled myself . A couple of pages into the results is Notes on Footnotes . By my friend Jed . Who had quoted me in one of those footnotes, hence the page showing up in a search for me; Jed’s name isn’t present.

I called Pocahontas over and showed it to her and explained.

She looked at it.

She looked at me.

She shouted “You’re getting someone else’s sex!”

Thanks, Jed. I owe you one. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t pay you back in kind.