Instant gratification and the internet

(First, my apologies, but this post has nothing to do with porn. Sorry.)

This morning as I was going through my usual routine of reading the news on-line, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes, Mrs. CaliBlogger was flipping through the cable-guide, looking for a Sunday afternoon movie to watch.

One movie she mentioned was Dark Horizons, which stars Vin Diesel.

Not being a particular fan she asked me if I was familiar with the film, which I'm not.

However I did vaguely recall that I'd read once that the movie was a sequel to another Vin Diesel movie I also hadn't seen at the time Dark Horizons was being advertised. A movie whose name I couldn't recall.

Now there was a time, not so long ago, when that would have ended the conversation. She would have gone back to channel flipping and I'd have gone back to whatever I was doing, and perhaps I'd think of the movie later, perhaps not.

But as you've no doubt guessed, this being the Internet age and all, that sort of situation has an entirely different ending.

A quick search of "Dark Horizon" yields the IMDB page where reading the reviews reveals the name of the movie in question. (Google it yourself if you're really interested).

What occurred to me is just how frequently this sort of thing happens to me, and just what a boon it is.

You see, once was, when a thought, "just on the tip of your tongue" as the saying goes, could be quite troublesome for me.

One case in point. Back in the (pre-Internet) dark ages I was talking with a friend about the Eagles, (and yes, this was in the eighties, so I might well have been a little stoned at the time) and I could not for the life of me recall the name of the guy who first joined the group for the Hotel California album.

The net result was that at 11 o'clock at night I found myself driving to Tower Records (RIP) which I knew stayed open 'til midnight, where I spent a half hour thumbing through the alphabetized record bins until I realized that just finding Hotel California would probably answer my question (did I mention that I was probably a little stoned?).

Anyway.

That is just the sort of episode I'll never experience again, and not just because I no longer smoke pot, but because of the Internet.

Frankly, nothing remains at the tip of my tongue for any longer than I take to Google it.

No song lyric remains indecipherable so long as I can remember the singer or the title, not even Blinded by the Light.

Now I wish I could say that having freed my neurons from pondering such trivia has improved my mental abilities, though frankly, I have no empirical evidence that this is the case.

But it certainly leaves my mind clearer for the important things in life.

Like blogging.