Inappropriate, Part Two

Hello!  Guh, I must move past the last post.  And I noticed that recently, I've had a lot of things that, were I completely honest about my personality and my thoughts with my facebook "friends", that I would post there.  But since I don't and I can't, I'll write it up here.  Also this is just a general way to ramble about things going on.  As John Lee Hooker said about the blues in a song once, "It's in him.  And it's got to come out."  God, I hate John Lee Hooker.  Just want to throw that in.  And football.  An averse reaction to my dad's obsessions.

Anywhoo.  Let's start off with Scumbag Google Chrome internet surfing format...thingie...whatever.  I've noticed that when you spend some time searching a specific product or subject, that all of a sudden, you get  the same banner on all general pages that closely relates and/or is about the exact subject you searched.  They track you so they can specifically advertise to you.

Unrelated, but hilarious - from here and here.

About the-tracking-me-to-advertise-to-me situation, here's the thing - knock it off, fuckers.  And here's why.  Let's take a hypothetical situation.  Say you're searching to find out about a horrible horrible disease that you knew the name of, but because your knowledge of biology/medicine is limited, plus because generally you don't want to know about horrible diseases, esp of children (although I used to / do want to know all about serial killers - bring that shit on).  Err, what?  Oh yea, let's say you're searching about a horrible disease.  Let's say cystic fibrosis.  You don't know what it means, really, you just know it's really bad.  Kind of like multiple sclerosis, oddly.  And let's say you actually do discover how bad that disease is.  That, amongst all the trying to be positive stuff, you find the truth, which is that there is no cure.  That these children may have (emphasis on may) relatively healthy childhoods, but that the average lifespan is 37 years old, because eventually, after years and years of pain and slowly drowning in their own mucus, their lungs give out and they die young.  Younger than they should.

Christ, right?  I'm probably ill-informed and there's probably more to this than I could possibly know, but this is what I got from the few google searches I could handle.  So then what happens every time I get on the internet?  While I'm waiting to find out whether my son has this horrible horrible disease?  And what is still happening a week later (even though my son eventually, after an ambiguous test result, tested negative in the sweat test for cystic fibrosis - thank God)?  Google Chrome has chosen to target me based on my searches.  So I get bombarded with the same few banners.  Banners for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a lovely organization I'm sure, saying things like  "Jena and Eric were both born with cystic fibrosis.  Jena lost her battle at age 13.  Help Eric keep fighting."  Actually that's the only one I specifically remember because it's horrible.  The others are more vague, but still frightening and involve children with oxygen masks.

I think in summary, I'll just write what I wanted to write on facebook (if I didn't hate all my "friends" there and wanted them to know anything at all about me - oh and I should say, there are some notable exceptions to the hating of facebook friends, but by and large, it's true).  "Question, for $200:  What are two very serious, in some cases terminal diseases that you know, just by the name, are horrible, but don't know enough details about to know if you or someone you love actually have them?"  "What are multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis, Alex?"  "That's correct!  We would've also accepted cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy!  Next question in the 'Things Not to Google' category...for $300: Two ___, One ___"

I've got more inappropriate things, but this is already getting too long.  I think I've got the biggest one off my chest.  Oh, jeez, I forgot, one more thing- I was telling the saga of the cystic fibrosis testing that my son's been going through (and really it was only for a week that we were scared) to a friend of mine who's about thirty years older than me and who has had MS for about forty years and she said she went through that with her son too!  And I said, "Oh, how long did you have to worry before you found out he didn't have it?"  "Well...let's see.  About a year, I guess."  I'm kind of an asshole.

Oh, and the very last thing, I will be donating to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation today, in an effort to not feel like an asshole and to help in some small way the people who are actually having to suffer through this.  That Scumbag Google Chrome, man.  Making me a better person after all, maybe.  Dammit.