Dan and I exchange dozens of e-mails a week about Sporkful. I use gmail and love the confusion our often bizarre e-mail conversations evoke in Google's servers while they attempt to toss relevant ads our way. It's pretty hopeless for them.
In the runup to last week's episode on water, Google's brain tried and failed so hard that I felt sorry for the poor little lines of code. First, it assumed we were hapless homeowners with a flooded basement. Ad after ad on "flood damage remediation" popped up. Nope. Wait, are you cold, it asked? Please, click on these hot water heater ads. No dice. Then it thought maybe we had the flu and tenderly offered up hot water bottles, like a mom frustrated that her child won't tell her what is wrong.
Lately it started reaching, encouraging me to click on something called "private label water." I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds very expensive and pretentious. Sporkful fans know I'm not inclined toward either of those words. I must admit, I'm mildly curious as to what it is, but fear clicking it will unleash a barrage of search results on it that I'll have to endure for weeks. Maybe I'll switch off my browser's cookies and ask Bing. /mark
