Feewing Wucky

Don’t ask me why, it was on a whim, but last night I changed the language settings on Google from English to Elmer Fudd. For those who don’t know, Elmer Fudd is the hunter who is always trying to catch Bugs Bunny in the cartoons. He wepwaces some consonants with ‘w’ and Google now does that for me. But the programmers have gone further than just weplacing with ‘w’s. The ‘Search’ button now alternates between ‘hunt’ and ‘Seawch de Web, you scwewy wabbit’. As you may guess from the title of this blog the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button now says ‘I’m Feewing Wucky’. The Elmer Fuddisms have permeated the whole search engine: even in the settings page I can select ‘gwobaww pwefewences (changes appwy to aww Google sewvices)’

As a child I felt sowwy for poow old Elmer Fudd even as I was rooting for Bugs to escape. He was doomed to failure: always outsmarted by Bugs Bunny and on the moments when he seemed to have cornered Bugs (by virtue of the cartoonists’ imagination) the wascawwy wabbit would pop up in another part of the screen and ask, “Ehhh, what’s up Doc?” Elmer Fudd never got to catch the wabbit. Or almost never.

According to Wikipedia (this is a well-researched blog!) there are three occasions when Elmer won. The most famous is the highly acclaimed ‘What’s Opera Doc?’ (voted the best ever cartoon by 1000 cartoonists). This was an operatic cartoon using the music from Ride of the Valkyries. In it Elmer chases Bugs wewentwesswy (figure that one out!) while singing “Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!”; falls in wuv with bugs dwessed as Bwunhilda; and finally after Bugs’s subterfuge is wevealed the music swells to a cwescendo and Bugs is dwamatically struck down as Elmer calls down all the forces of nature on him.

At the moment of victory, Elmer is suddenly filled with wemorse. “What have I done?” he sobs and gathers the stricken wabbit in his arms, walking off into the distance.

In this tragic scene of pathos the apparently dead Bugs suddenly raises his head to face the audience behind Elmer’s back and remarks, “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”

Sevewal thoughts came to me out of this. One is that sometimes what we think we want is not what we actually want. We can become so fixated with getting our own way that we forget to stop and think whether that is the best outcome.

The second thought comes from my new Google wangwauge. It is so pervasive that I am constantly aware of it at the moment, but I guess eventuawwy I will become used to it and it will be ‘normal’. I do the same thing with God – his fingerprints are everywhere but I have allowed them to become part of everyday life so that I no longer notice them.

Dwat.