Please read this...Cute kitties. . .and puppies. . .and snakes. . .
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<p class="p1">Thank goodness, we live in such wondrous times. Sunday evening, The Other Half and yours truly were doing our best impressions of attempting to stay awake.</p><p class="p1">At one point, she looked at her timepiece and sighed. "Is it really only 7:30?" she asked.</p><p class="p1">I was trying to stay awake by reading a good book and watching the Grammy Awards program on the tube. To tell you the truth, the book was doing a better job of keeping me awake.</p><p class="p1">In her attempt to stay awake, The Other Half was looking at some exciting stuff on the Internet. At one point, she actually found a cute picture of kittens, which she shared with me. </p><p class="p1">A CUTE PICTURE OF KITTENS ON THE INTERNET????</p><p class="p1">How could that even be possible?</p><p class="p1">Actually, it's quite simple. At any given point in time, I was pretty sure that there are approximately 49.3 billion cute pictures of kittens posted on the Internet. Makes me wonder how ancient civilizations lasted for much longer than a day or two, since they couldn't share cute pictures of kittens on line.</p><p class="p1">My sophomoric ponderings about kittens and the Internet served as a catalyst for intense on-line research on Monday afternoon. Hey, yet another deadline was fast approaching (actually it had passed hours ago) and I needed some award-winning material to fill this space.</p><p class="p1">So, I decided to do a Google search for "cute kitten images." I typed in those three words on my faithful laptop and tapped on the "return" key.</p><p class="p1">"Cute kitten images" turned up a paltry 6.79 million results. I figured 6.79 billion, or maybe 6.79 trillion, would have been more likely. </p><p class="p1">Next, I tried "cute cat images." I thought there would be about half as many results for "cute cat images" as there were for the cute kittens. Wrong. A staggering 90.8 million results showed up "cute cat images." I figured that by the time kittens had turned into cranky, grumpy, grouchy cats, nobody would care what they looked like.</p><p class="p1">Well, I was on a roll. Let's try "cute puppy images." Wow. 26.3 million results. That's like a gazillion more than the cute kittens. Guess folks would rather look at cute puppies.</p><p class="p1">OK. Let's try "cute dog images." Holy, moly. 90.2 results. Go figure.</p><p class="p1">Let's take a different approach. Let's try "cute snake images." Who doesn't like a cute picture of a snake? This search turned up 19.8 million results. How could this be? 19.8 results for cute snakes and only 6.79 million for cute kittens. </p><p class="p1">All right, let's try "cute black widow spider image." 1.34 million results. "Cute vampire bat images." 877,000. "Cute blob fish images." 500,000. "Cute skunk images." 772,000. "Cute tarantula images." 334,000. "Cute sea slug images." 205,000. "Cute fang fish images." A paltry 76,000. (Just in case you were wondering: until Monday afternoon, I didn't even know there was something called a "blob fish." Check it out. Do a Google search. 1.02 million results.)</p><p class="p1">All righty. How 'bout "cute road kill images." Sorry, folks, sometimes I just can't help myself. And, guess what. "Cute road kill images" outnumbered "cute kitten images." 9.02 million to 6.79 million. Really. I am not making these numbers up. Besides, they were on the Internet, so they must be true. </p><p class="p1">I don't want to spend much time sharing with you what showed up under "cute road kill images," other than the "roadkill squirrel plushie." Yes, indeed, we do live in wondrous times. </p><p class="p1">Got to finish up with this research. One last search. Let's try "cute editor images." Sigh. Not a single result. Just a simple message: "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING. TRY SOME OTHER INTERNET, PERHAPS IN SOME OTHER UNIVERSE. LOSER."</p><p class="p2">***</p><p class="p1">Almost forgot this one. . .happy Valentine's Day to my sweetheart, who puts up with all of this silliness, and a whole lot more.</p>