A Million Dollars Isn't Cool. Know What's Cool? A Billion Dollars!

I stole my title from The Social Network, but I was wondering, what is cool? I've received "interesting" and "funny" responses to my blog, but no cool. Maybe blogging about video games and google isn't cool, so let me put on my shades, turn up the jazz, pour myself a glass of Absinthe and explore cool, man.

Why is a billion dollars cool? Money's not cool at all... And it becomes even less cool when it is apparent. When an artist makes money he becomes uncool, doesn't he? The bohemian artist and all that he embodies is cool until he finds financial success and its trappings at which point he becomes instantly uncool. The bohemian creates for the sake of creation, and his inspiration inspires us, while the artist who creates for commission is inspired by the motivation of his own reward, and in so is self-absorbed and greedy. So you'd think a billion dollars isn't cool, but you'd be wrong.

What is a million dollars? It's the alpha male roaring up to the club in his Lamborghini. He's cocky. He's got a pocket full of money, his choice of women and he doesn't afraid of anything. He is the master of his universe, and he thinks he is cool. But he's not. He's not cool. He's a tool! At the end of the day, the only thing he's proven is that his worth is measured by the length of his tab.

So, what is a billion dollars? A billion dollars doesn't have anything to prove. A billion dollars is the quiet man sitting alone in the crowd at The Spotted Cat, listening to the Jazz Vipers. He's happy there, and he is doing what he wants to be doing. He is not putting on airs or impressing anyone. He is content just being. Being... cool!

So, a billion dollars is cool because it doesn't have to be anything else. It can just be. And so is the starving artist, confident and content. He's not chasing success because he is success. He doesn't have a billion dollars. He is a billion dollars, and THAT's cool.

Google Is, In Fact, Smarter Than I Am!

OK, so we have had tools to protect us from ourselves forever, but we take them for granted except when they don't work. Spell check is great, but no matter how many times I tell it to learn my last name, which is "Starr," it always tries to change it to "star" or "starry." My iphone has developed the habit of changing "if" to "i'f" for some reason, and my old Mac in college used to tell me that my papers were 8th grade level unless I inserted ubiquitous ten cent words that served no other purpose than to add pretentiousness... Still, layout editors, spell check, auto-complete and any number of other tools do, in the end, make our lives easier to some degree.

Apparently, now, google has taken this to an entirely new level, and I'm thrilled that it can, but I am saddened that it needs to. You see, this morning I wrote an email on my gmail account to an associate reviewing a conference call that we were on and it covered several topics, but at one point in the email I mentioned that I would be attaching some tower photos to the email for her due diligence, but then I forgot to actually attach them before I hit the send button. Oops, not the first time I've done that, but something different happened this time. Gmail gave me a pop up that said, and I paraphrase, "Hey dummy, didn't you forget something! You said you were going to attach some pictures, but I don't see any pictures attached, so why don't you go back and try again before I send this email and embarrass you!" Holy shit, man! Google is reading my emails now, and not just for spelling and punctuation, but for meaning and intent! Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that it caught the mistake, but now I can't deny that google is, indeed, smarter than I am, and THAT makes me sad face...