Friday, March 19, 2010

Okay, Okay Google Asheville Fiber Initiative

#googleavl. Googleavl. Google google google, my fair city, great googly moogly and so on and so forth. If you live here, you probably know what I'm talking about unless you are one of my under rock dwelling readers in which case I say, hello, kinfolks! Can't wait for that Mole People family reunion! For you, my mud loving friends, I will explain the whole dealio. Dealio! I have been saying this a lot lately because it is so fucking annoying as to be golden and beautiful. The dealio! Anyway, Google - the company, not the verb - is looking for a test market for something called The Google Fiber Initiative, which sounds like a particularly unlovely breakfast cereal but actually will be some kind of blazingly fast (everything says blazingly fast so I'm assuming that's some kind of scientific measurement adverb there) internet service that will go to everybody in Asheville and will be, um, fast. This would be a Good Thing for Asheville, as I have heard from many people including my old friends Gordon Smith and Clarke Mackey who have impassioned and highly comprehensible pleas up all over the place (including blogasheville and here) explaining the whole thing. I went to a meetup/meeting last night that went into it all in some detail and now I can say in an educated manner that, okay, I am For It. Rock on with your Google Fiber Initiative for Asheville bad self! Google on with your flugelhorn on!

In order to make this happen, certain other cities who shall not be named (one is in NC and they are big on chairs and rhyme with Dickory while the other is in KS and I know nothing about it other than that it rhymes with Dopeka) have changed their names to Google. This tactic is, frankly, pathetic. I mean, I'm sorry, but if you are wooing someone and you change your name before the first date, well, that's the kind of behavior that restraining orders were invented for. It is creepy, is what it is, and it smacks of desperation, whereas we, here in Asheville, are so totally not desperate that we are not begging at all. We are pointing out that we are Awesome and therefore they should come here. This is a dating tactic that is supposed to work, actually, but I have never had much luck with it, primarily because I can never really keep a straight face during the I Am Awesome speech. Anyway, we're not begging. Mostly. Oh please please it might bring more living wage jobs here please please we will rub your feet every single night for the rest of our lives honestly and do all the dishes too, we swear.

Anyway, if you would like to nominate Asheville then you can do that here and there is a handy guide here and another one
>here.
I confess that the guides exist partially because I am intellectually challenged: last night at the meeting I said out loud that the application was too hard for my sad little brain and lo, people leapt into action and fixed stuff up for the Moron Americans among us, which is to say, me. Actually it's not all that hard - I did it today while wearing my Professional Hat and I plan to do it again this weekend without any hats on - but if you wish talking points other than Bring Me Fast Porn Oh Yeah Google Baby, well, they have them. Although let's face it: it will. Bring fast porn, I mean. No more staring hopefully at the pixels as they oh so slowly resolve!

However! All is not cool with this because, honestly, the name sucks. I'm sorry, but when I see fiber initiative, blazing fast internet is not what comes to mind. No, what comes to mind is Metamucil and bran flakes. Take the fiber initiative and things will move faster! Yeah, see, the jokes: they write themselves. And also, please, blazingly is not an adverb that you want applied to fiber, because, okay, chili cookoff? Jalapeno morning afters? Not so good, Google. You need a better name. You know who could come up with one for you? Somebody in Asheville, that's who.

1 comment:

honeytoo said...

Brill yant article.