Rant #2,530: Stop, Look and Listen

First of all, happy Veterans Day to all who have served.

 
You deserve all the plaudits that you are receiving today, and then some, for the sacrifices that you have made in defending our country.
 
I am the son of one of these veterans—my late father—and he was a real Marine until the moment he took his last breath.
 
I honor all of you today.
 
Next subject:
 
I received a Yahoo alert today about a subject that I had no idea that I put n an alert for.
 
Me.
 
The alert told me that there was something new and vital that I had to click onto concerning me.
 
So I did.
 
All it was was my Newsday letter from Monday that was now online.
 
It is the same exact letter that I had in the newspaper the other day, and if you have a need to access it again, you can at https://www.newsday.com/opinion/letters/newsday-reader-letters-opinion-1.50059183
 
That’s nice, I guess.
 
Now people the world over who did not see my post where I put up a scan of my letter can see it, and see it into perpetuity.
 
After seeing this, I decided to do something that I had not done in a long time: put my name into the Yahoo search engine, and see what came up.
 
The very first thing that came up using my nickname and my last name was a Facebook link, which was a little dismaying. Am I defined by my Facebook account? I hope not. There is so much more to me—and to all of us—than our presence on Facebook.
 
The second thing was a group of videos, only one of which I ever put up myself, the short clip showing me playing ball in the Rochdale Village Athletic League. That clip is from approximately 1966 or so, and I do look pretty good in it, if I do say so myself.
 
The third thing that came up was that I am an author at a site called WhoWhatWhy. Heaven knows why this link even exists. I wrote for them exactly one time, and never heard from them again.
 
The next thing that came up was my LinkedIn profile—which is under my real name, “:Lawrence,” as an “editor in transition.” What a waste that profile was and still is, for that matter.
 
Next, we had some image results, leading off with one of Robin Williams. I don’t know why these are under my name, but they are. I think the Williams one was because years ago, I was comedy editor of the maiden All Music Guide, and I reviewed one of his comedy LPs. A photo was attached to the review, so Voila!, it has since become my photo, even though I had nothing to do with its placement.
 
My Twitter account followed. I had no idea I even set up such an account, and I must have done it years ago for work-related reasons, because I don’t ever remember being on the site on my own. Occasionally, to get better information about somebody I was profiling in a job notice, I would go onto other sites to collect information, and I must have gone onto Twitter for just that purpose.
 
What followed that were a few All Music entries, for comics Hudson and Landry and for Barnes & Barnes
 
This was followed by a “President’s Message” where I was mentioned, and before you get all tangled up in a knot about this, it had nothing to do with President Trump, it had to do with my current position as a remote writer. My work is often featured as part of the message that the president of the American Logistics Association’s president puts out on a regular basis—heck, that is why I am employed by them in this nice quasi-retirement job that I have—so it would stand to reason that the Yahoo search engine would pick it up.
 
And you know what followed this?
 
Well, we are back to square one, and that is my most recent letter to Newsday.
 
And no, I did not look up my name with “Lawrence,” so who knows what might turn up?
 
I have to say that this was an interesting process, one that all of us should try once in a blue moon. It is interesting to see what your name is hooked up with, and I am sure if I used Google or another search engine, other things would have come up—and I looked, and it did wield some different results, but I am not going to go into them here.
 
And yes, I did check the photos and videos, and just about all of the entries are haphazardly credited to me, even though many of them were credited to me only because my writings included them, not because I actually put them up myself.
 
I guess I am satisfied with the results.
 
I could have sworn that possibly a mug shot of me that I never had taken would show up, or even a police record attached to my name that had somehow materialized out of nowhere but wasn’t real in any way, shape or form.
 
And nope, no “birthday suit” photos of me, although I have approximately five and half months … nah, not those kind of birthday suit photos.
 
So I would definitely say that this was a fun exercise, and that you should try it yourself on a slow day.
 
But honestly, it would have to be a r—e—a—l—l—y slow day for me to try this again.
 
“Seek and ye shall find”—I think that is something out of the bible, but sometimes, it is better to leave well enough alone, which is something of an idiomatic phrase meaning—
 
Fugghedaboudit!