La Bassine

I like blogs. This may come as a shock to those of you (I know there's at least one of you!) who read my post about twitter. No, I'm not adverse to social media. I'm just against the social medium that encourages concision at the expense of being at all clear. It's called twitter. Blogs, on the other hand, are complete. They may not always be as direct as a tweet, but at least they are complete. I'd rather blog than tweet. I guess I'm just old-fashioned.

I was down amongst the weblogs reading a weblog post by a friend whose weblog I follow. I will call him Sven, since that seems to be how he refers to himself in the Blogosphere, and that is where we are now. Sven wrote cleverly about the dilemma brand-new parents must face in the hospital when wanting to be sure that the newborn they are about to take home is really the one that was made from their bodies. In a comment I was writing on the post, I found it necessary to use the word "bassinet". As you can see, I know how to spell that word. But I didn't when I was commenting on Sven's post. And that is the catalyst for today's story.

I didn't want to seem ignorant in my comment, so it was essential that I spell "bassinet" correctly. Naturally, I turned to Google. Man's best friend. The China of the worldwide web. Now, we're going to dig deep into my psyche right here, so put on your gloves and masks. I doubt I'm alone in this computer searching practice: when I am searching a name or word on any search engine, I rarely type in the entire name or word. Especially when the spelling of the name or word is my primary concern. For example, if I was searching for J.K. Rowling in my Famous Authors database so I could send her a work of fan fiction in which I am a witch and Ginny Weasley accidentally suffocates during a sleepover at my house and I end up marrying Harry, I would just type in "row". This would likely be enough to get me to a list of at most three or four people, from which I could select the victim of my obsessive tendencies. When you type a complete name or word into a search engine, you put pressure on yourself to nail the spelling outright. So I never do.

This seemed like a prudent spot for a new paragraph. So I needed to figure out how to spell "bassinet". I navigated to Google, set my cursor, and proceeded to overshoot with my only-type-part-of-the-word strategy. To correctly practice this strategy, I should have searched for "bassi" or "basi" to start with, and then decided whether or not to add more letters based on the results of that search. But I was overconfident, and audacious enough to search for "bassine". Can you imagine? Searching for "bassine" right out of the gate? What on Earth was I thinking?! Those who are (duly) shocked by my impudence will be happy to know that Google punished me. It turns out that "bassine" is actually a full search result in its own right, as the load-bearing portion of the name "La Bassine". La Bassine is a company that manufactures top-of-the-line tubs used for in-home tub births. And thanks to the all-encompassing nature of Google, not only was I greeted by a list of links to sites where I could learn more about the tubs or even buy one to grace my own home, but it was also my happy lot to be smacked right in the eyes with pictures of the tubs in action! I would include one of the reality-grade photos here, but that would just be too much. I mean, have you ever seen a tub birth? I've seen pictures (now), and it looks like Horrible Soup. The beauty of the child's arrival is totally overshadowed by the awful pink goopiness of the water into which the child has just been forced. So instead, I'll give you the Italian soap-opera version of La Bassine:

It means "We're almost there." According to Google.