I love Google.

And, by “I love Google,” I mean, “Google is a direct competitor of the company from which I’ve chosen to accept remuneration for services rendered, and it seems that there may be, at least according to some anecdotal evidence (rumors, really), a possibility that the mere existence of Company G has had a negative impact on the financial standing of my company, and therefore my own net-worth as a stockholder, making it more and more difficult everyday to attain the goal I’ve had since I was a little girl, which was that of buying a four-hundred horsepower speedboat, a pair of wraparound Oakleys, a cooler in which to store all my Schlitz, a bright red thong that I would wear over my pasty thighs, and a shotgun that I’d use to defend my vessel in the event of a nuclear apocalypse in which people started riding around the world in boats run by beer (‘cause there obviously wouldn’t be any gas, so the boats would HAVE to run on beer), ramming into each other and slitting throats just to get another can of Coors Lite for the engine, which is a situation that could easily be summed up as ‘Mad Max meets Waterworld meets the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson porn video (which I’ve never watched, so I wouldn’t know).’ Therefore, I hope that a new and rare breed of termites evolves which only feeds on Google servers and eventually tears the company down to its foundations (literally), leaving the founders, the employees, their families, and their children all broke, starving, and learning pretty damned quickly that searching for a sandwich on the street and for change in your couch is very different from cashing in stock options and googling for shops on the internet where you can spend your bajillions.”

That’s what I mean.

So, obviously, I love Google.

“Why?” you might ask.

That would be a stupid question. I just wrote the world’s longest sentence back there to explain why I love Google. So don’t ask that question. Ask another one, and don’t ask me. Ask somebody who cares, like the wall or the ashes of your dead cat that you keep in an urn on the mantle in spite of the fact that it’s really weird to do that.

What I will do, since you’re being so insistent that I relay the tale, is explain why, for once, I don’t see Google as a menace to my whole way of life as well as a useful tool for finding information on the vast network of horse-pee-porn web sites we collectively refer to as The Internet.

It began on April 24th in the Year of Our Lord, 2006, when Some Girl in Some State typed my name into Company G’s search engine:

She was looking for some movie star named Rory and clicked on my page since it’s the first Google search result for “Rory” (oh, yeah – BAM – put that on a business card – YEAH).

Then she read my site. And then again. And, according to the email she sent me afterward, she read it again. And then one more time in case she missed something. She didn’t miss anything, but it’s good she was thorough.

In the email she sent, she was all like this:

lol dude ur awsome lol lollllll

So I wrote back and I was all like this:

totally ur lol 2 lol!!!!

And then we started emailing each other back and forth, and it turned out she was a hell of a writer. We eventually started sending each other 3,000–6,000 word emails. She’s part of the reason Neopoleon isn’t updated as often as it used to be. By now, only three months later, we’ve probably sent the equivalent of a couple novels to each other.

Not just any novels, either, but those big novels that smart people used to write back when people had attention spans that lasted longer than I feel hungry and my toes are warm apple pie is good OK.

Then we started texting each other, and it wasn’t much better. You know when you try to call someone and the stupid electronic voice is like all, “All circuits are busy,” and you get all mad? Yeah. That’s us. Writing novels back and forth on our mobiles.

After that came the talking, and there isn’t a full-duplex system that is either full or duplex enough to handle the conversational exchanges we have. Imagine two streams of data flying right past each other at the same time, each syllable communicating in bits the rough equivalent of a volume of an encyclopedia (pick any encyclopedia you want for this thought exercise, but don’t pick a kid’s one or something because they’re mostly pictures and so OK?). That’s what our talks were like.

We would have had these chats in person, but the problem is that she lives in a state called “Michigan” which is a suburb of the North Pole:

Long story short, I decided to go to the suburb of the North Pole where she lived. That’s what I did this weekend. I went there.

And my friends and family thought I was crazy. And her friends and family thought I was crazy. They thought she was crazy, too, but because I’m the guy, I’m obviously the crazier one.

Her friends and family were freaked out because we met through a Google search, and they figured I was this guy:

My friends and family were freaked out because we met through a Google search, and they figured “she” was this mildly retarded elderly perverted guy with a mysterious skin rash:

What happened instead was that she turned out to be exactly what I was hoping for, and I turned out to be, like, everything she ever possibly could have wanted times ONE SPUJILLION SQUARED.

And what did I do?

Did I try to chop her head off, remove her face, and then wear it as a mask for laughs? No. I mean, that would have been funny, but I didn’t think of it at the time, so I didn’t do it. Plus, my axe made her uneasy, so she usually asked me to keep it in the car. She’d be all, “Why do you carry that blood-stained axe everywhere?” but then I’d get all like, “What’s the name of your mysterious facial skin rash?” and then she’d be all “Touché!” and then I’d be like all, “I DON’T THINK SO.”

And what did she do?

Did “she” really turn out to be a “he” who had a problem keeping his pants buttoned up and around his waist while discharging thick yellow fluids from the erupting pustules covering his face which sat just in front of an IQ 57 brain? No. We got him a belt, and then his pants stopped falling down, and everything was cool.

Fortunately, just for the sake of demonstrating what idiots and freaks we are, I happen to have a photograph of the axe-wielding internet murderer (myself) and his prey, the elderly maletard whose face leaks pus like a thatched grass roof that’s just been hit by a large chunk of acne hail that’s starting to melt:

Yup.

Google: I owe you in a very big way. There are six billion people in the world, approximately five zillion web pages cataloged in your little magnetic platters, and you somehow managed against the odds to deliver a highly intelligent (major: aviation science / minor: journalism/creative writing), dynamic, gorgeous human being to my doorstep. I’m willing to pretend for a few minutes like our two companies aren’t out for each other’s jugulars with piano wire.

Naysayers: You can suck it.