ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC SHANSBY
Gene Weingarten Below the Beltway
A place called Nope
Gene hunts for undiscovered gems from the far regions of the mind
harder to find; the explosion of the Web, with its indiscriminate tastes, are herding the noble Googlenope toward extinction. Hopeful, enthusiastic searches increasingly deliver crushing disappointment. I just now tried “Rumpelstiltskin’s underpants,” and got one hit. It’s actually become a Googleyup. You can define a society by
I
the breadth of its Googlenopes, for they represent no less than the frontier of human thought — the places in the mind we have not yet dared to go. So, I feel it my duty to
soldier on in the search, a Job-like task because even in success, there is failure: Every time a new Googlenope is created and published, it dies as a Googlenope. In this manner, inexorably, phrase by phrase, we shall create a nightmare world where absolutely nothing has been left unsaid.
Googleyup: “Obama is a vicious KleptoMarxist.” Googleyup: “Obama is the savior of the world.” Googleyup: “Obama is a pantywearing jackass.” Googleyup: “Obama is an evil human-race-enslaving robot.” Googleyup: “Obama is goodness personified.” Googleyup: “Obama is literally Hitler.” Googlenope: “I’m not sure what I think about Obama.”
Googleyup: “eating soup with a melon baller” Googleyup: “eating soup with a shovel” Googleyup: “eating soup with a knitting needle” Googleyup: “eating soup with my wrists” Googlenope: “eating soup with a teal yarmulke embroidered with the Detroit Tigers insignia”
Googleyup: “sexually attracted to Elmer Fudd”
E-mail Gene at
weingarten@washpost.com.
40 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | May 30, 2010
t’s been three years since this column last visited the “Googlenope,” a term I coined to describe a phrase that returns no hits when Googled between quotation marks. Alas, Googlenopes are getting
Googleyup: “sexually attracted to Foghorn Leghorn” Googleyup: “sexually attracted to Care Bears” Googleyup: “sexually attracted to Shrek” Googlenope: “sexually attracted to female genitals”
Googleyup: “My dog ate my urine sample.” Googleyup: “My dog ate a battery.” Googleyup: “My dog ate a balloon.” Googleyup: “My dog ate a rock.” Googleyup: “My dog ate a whole tube of triple antibiotic ointment.” Googlenope: “My dog ate some kibble.”
Googleyup: “alcohol-related assault” Googleyup: “Facebook-related assault” Googleyup: “glue-related assault” Googleyup: “football-related assault” Googleyup: “bacon-related assault” Googleyup: “Monopoly-related assault” Googlenope: “marijuana- related assault”
Googleyup: “I want my daughter to be like the first Mulan, willing to give her life
for an extremely noble cause.” Googleyup: “I want my daughter to be like the puddingcup girl.” Googleyup: “I want my daughter to be like Paige Fiedorowicz.” Googlenope: “I want my daughter to be like Sarah Palin.”
Googleyup: “I want to get gonorrhea.” Googleyup: “I want to become a paraplegic.” Googleyup: “I want to become homeless.” Googleyup: “I want to go blind.” Googlenope: “I want to get yellower teeth.”
Googleyup: “My breasts are too large.” Googlenope: “My wife’s breasts are too large.”
Chat about the Post Hunt Tuesday at noon at
washingtonpost.com/magazine.
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