I have only one ambition in life.

Well… Two ambitions, but the other one is more of a long-term goal. For now, I just want to become the first search result on Google for my given name. This in itself being a crucial step in my larger world-domination’s plot, since we all know Google controls the world already.

As it is, I already have pole position for my old ‘dr Dave‘ moniker. But, and you read it here first, I am hereby setting in motion the switch in online identity from ‘dr Dave’ to just plain ‘Dave’.

No, I wasn’t sued by the American Board of Medicine, or any equivalent local institution. Beside, that Honorary Ph.D. in Curse Removal and Sexual Healing from Kinshasa’s University of Black Magic is all but legit.

However, crazy as the idea may sound (I have a hard time believing it myself), I might one day not too long from now be a bona fide doctorate student: it is likely that my honorary ‘Doctor’ title would by then confuse many people (not that it hasn’t already) which was never the intent. Hence the shift to unambiguous, simple, likable ‘Dave’. I’m guessing there are only a couple millions of us out there, someone has to be the one.

So, how are we doing on the Google front? Well, guess what: not so fucking bad!

Six, if you count them, six people (or things) are standing in the way to intercontinental online stardom.

Of course, I could rely on the quality of my content, my shining bright personality and ever-increasing public appreciation to slowly climb to first place. But I know better.

Instead, I have devised an infallible 6 Steps Program that shall shortly take me there, whence I will finally be able to rest and contemplate the world at my feet, laugh and move on from that Internet fad once and for all.

Please allow me to develop. Note that for obvious reasons, I cannot allow my now mortal enemies any extra link publicity and you will therefore have to Google their websites for yourself. Do it while you still can:

1. First on the list, right above this site on the Google results page, is a site devoted to learning that quaint obsolete little language they used to call “HTML”. I believe only minimal course of action is warranted, seeing how nobody cares anymore about learning HTML. Achieving that cool blinking text effect on their personal webpage no longer requires such lengths. They all have MySpace now and showing off their bad taste to the rest of the world, requires but a few clicks of the mouse. HTML is dead. Just to be safe, though, I did start spreading a couple nasty rumours about HTML 5.
   By the way, did you know HTML 5 was originally a Microsoft standard and is coded through children slave labour in Malaysia?
2. My first serious serious opponent on that merciless race to the top is Dave Shea. And it saddens me that I have to do that to him, ’cause he’s a rather cool guy, whose feed has been sitting in my aggregator for years. But let’s face it: who cares about CSS anymore? Boring web accessibility nazis, that’s who.
   Cool sites are made in Flash with Ajax and a metric crapload of dynamically-generated drop-shadow webtwozero buttons.
   Plus he updates his blog even less often than I do, which is saying something.
   Anyway, strychnine-laced camembert is on its way. We’ll all miss you D.
3. Just next, comes Dave Letterman. Who I also kinda used to like. Although that was a time when I was also into Miami Vice and collecting pin’s (hey, everybody was into collecting pin’s, back then), so I guess my appreciation might be different nowadays.
   I don’t plan on doing anything about Letterman: I’m relying on his weak heart to take care of itself by the time I’m done dealing with the rest of that list. We will miss you also, Mr. Letterman. But you gotta realize Jon Stewart is much funnier than you these days, it is time to go.
4. The next two spots on the list have me completely stumped. Who seriously remembers that stone-age utility that allowed your MacOS 1.2 to speak with DOS 0.02a, over copper cable networks? The only people still running computers old-enough to have a need for Thursby’s “DAVE” software, are my grandma and Dave from 1991. And they both haven’t heard of that crazy worldwide network thing yet, so what’s the point in advertising online?
   There again, probably easiest to wait for the latest Finder 7 mac users to die of old age (most already did, of a stroke, upon catching glance of the latest Intel Macs running Windows in Parallel) and that software to gain its final resting place in the Museum of Obsolete Technologies.
5. Dave Winer, on the other hand, might take longer to retire or die from natural causes. Luckily, I am said there are already a couple lucrative bounties on his head. A quick rundown of my blogosphere acquaintances revealed that over 70% were ready to pitch in for the expense of hiring a professionally trained ninja assassin and sic him on Dave. Most of them would have done it themselves, actually, but they all had this really urgent paper to write about the latest cute-kitten-dressed-in-a-starwars-outfit YouTube craze, sweeping the Interweb right now.
   Waiting for the Social Web to develop sentience, acquire a will of its own and strangle him with its bare digital hands, might work too. But I’m just not sure I want to wait that long.
6. Disappointingly first on that star-filled list of Daves stands, last on my way to absolute power, a highly forgettable early 90’s movie, featuring its namesake US president molesting every single romantic comedy clichés in the book, living in a far, far away, fairy tale White House where, I kid you not, Gandhi is Vice-President (boy, did we go a long way since then).
   Since a quote speaks a thousands snarky comments, allow me to cite one of the movie’s many enthusiastic fans on IMDB’s website:

   I’ve recently had the opportunity of viewing “Dave” and thoroughly enjoyed it. As did the whole family. Three of my grandchildren watched it and I didn’t have to explain a thing. No sex (well none worth worrying about), no violence, and not too taxing on the brain, a wonderful tonic.

   Frankly, I don’t know how to tackle that one. But failing any other plan, I believe murdering all pre-menopausal women in the English-speaking world, might somehow reduce this movie’s faithful viewership on the Hallmarks Lifetime Channel to a near-zero, thus ending its repugnant dominance over my given name.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a dastardly cunning plan to set in motion.

Yours faithfully,

Dave.