Blogtrek

Bomb Iraq with...

One of the more interesting pastimes I found on the web is to hunt in Google for a famous phrase with one word changed. Take, for example, "Loose lips sink ships." If I want to get the entire phrase except the word "lips", I enter "loose * sink ships" -lips, telling Google I want "loose" followed by any word (the wild character *) followed by "sink ships", and that I don't want the word "lips". The first entry I get is "loose chips sink ships", which may be appropriate for today's cybernetic world. "Give me liberty or give me *" -death yields "Give me liberty or give me, um, a Game Boy", and then "Give me liberty or give me Microsoft". Have it your own way. If I star the liberty instead, I get "Give me pixels or give me death." They probably mean the Blue Screen of Death. "Read my lips, no more *" -taxes yields "science" first, then "terror" and "Bush". The choices get better all the time. I tried "Bomb Iraq with *" and got this list:

Ballots
Food
Lots of smart bombs
Blair's backing
our a*hole smart technology
Prayer
Sh*loads of DU
No provocation
Love
Really bad jokes

As you can see, some interesting alternatives.