From The Washington Post, Sunday, May 27, 2007; Page W36,
at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301290.html
Zero-Based Journalism
You can find just about anything on Google. Except this.
By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, May 27, 2007; W36
It's pretty hard to find a phrase or expression that is not out there
somewhere on the Web. I know. I've tried. No matter how unlikely it may seem
that anyone has ever put certain words together, someone, somewhere, probably
has. When I Googled the exact phrase "Santa Claus nude," I got 278 hits.
It's tricky. For example, I tried Googling "unintelligent Jew," which not
only denies a ubiquitous cultural stereotype but uses an unusual adjective to do
so. I figured I was safe, but this is what came right up: "I have yet to meet an
unintelligent Jew."
More failures followed. After a while, I got mad and decided to do something
about it.
Want a phrase that doesn't appear on Google? Try searching for the
Magritte-inspired, epistemologically impossible sentence "This phrase doesn't
appear on Google." You should find only one hit, and that hit is from the very
paragraph you are reading. When I wrote this, before it was archived, that
sentence was nowhere on the Web.
Voila. The assault begins.
When a phrase cannot be found on Google, I call it a Googlenope. Once a
Googlenope is discovered and written about, it is no longer a Googlenope.
Every single exact phrase that follows could not be found on the Web before
today:
 | Googlenope. |
| Queen Elizabeth's buttocks. |
| Varsity pinochle. |
| Caviar 'n' taters. |
| . . . much to Paris Hilton's embarrassment . . . |
| I was helped by the federal government. |
| I (heart) my zygote. |
| . . . that nappy-headed ho, Barbara Bush. |
| Next, boil the toast . . . |
| If you take off your bra, I'm calling the cops. |
| Jesus loves you for your money. |
| Rove should just shut up and look pretty. |
| I believe dust mites have souls. |
| This lobster must have been Roman Catholic. |
| Plush Osama doll. |
| I'm fixin' to solve me the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture. |
| The best pork chops in Jerusalem. |
| Tiffani Suarez. |
| Antwaan Rothschild. |
| Rajneesh Roosevelt III. |
| Billy Bob Nussbaum. |
| Mohammed Ciccolini. |
| Moishe Goebbels. |
| Please accept these underpants as collateral . . . |
| I owe my life to unprotected sex. |
| I'm going to be concentrating on my home-wrecking now. |
| Bad, bad Leroy Moskowitz. |
| Thor adjusted his mascara. |
| Richard Cheney in '08. |
| Nelson Mandela is a doo-doo head. |
| Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-esque. |
| My grandchildren are so ugly. |
| The Iraqi Regis Philbin. |
| Hey, this tastes like aardvark. |
| Laura Bush's secret tattoo. |
| I'll take Deaths by Autoerotic Asphyxia for $400, Alex. |
| Hot cheese sundae. |
| Cancer, heart disease and zits. |
| "I'm Stephen Hawking and I'm a Capricorn." |
| Pizza with Condoleezza. |
| Dogs playing poker and mah-jongg. |
| The dainty Hillary Clinton. |
| Man-boob implants. |
| Acid klezmer band. |
| Wearing only a codpiece and a sombrero. |
| Cancer of the bellybutton. |
| The yodeling librarian. |
| George W. Bush's subtlety. |
| Sonnets by Elmer. |
| Insufficient cellulite. |
| Lou Dobbs's hash pipe. |
| The sensual feel of the speculum. |
| Sören "Porky" Kierkegaard. |
| The billionaire manicurist. |
I should note that I sought, and used, the help of Post colleagues in
assembling these lines. Several of my co-workers dryly suggested that I would
find zero Google hits for "Gene Weingarten is hot." Actually, they were wrong.
There was exactly one. Unfortunately, it began this way: "I know it's sick and
unnatural, but I kind of think . . ."
Gene Weingarten's e-mail address is
weingarten@washpost.com.
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