I’m The Guy

Before Rube Goldberg was known for the cartoons of contraptions for getting simple things done with complicated mechanisms, he popularised the slogan ‘I’m the guy that put the…’ often (but not always) followed by a geographical pun. The most obvious, as I recall, was “I’m the guy that put the ‘Sin’ in Cincinnati’, but Goldberg generated many others — to the extent that ‘I’m the guy’ became the unmistakable recognisable lead-in to a joke, as ‘A guy walked into a bar’ or ‘Knock, knock’ or other equivalent phrases have become. (Some of the extant slogans strike me as bizarrely uninteresting, but that’s not the point for now.)
 
Well, this weekend I accomplished something with global ramifications, provided that you’re in Singapore and you want to know how to get from my flat to Partick Station or Morrison’s. About a week ago, I noticed that Google Maps lacked a particular byway — yea, even The Lane of Doom — and I decided to click the wee rectangle that offered to send Google World Headquarters news of anything amiss with their cartography. Just yesterday they emailed me back to say, ‘You’re right! We checked out your suggestion, and have now changed our maps to reflect your correction’. It’ll be a while before it shows up in ‘Directions’, apparently, but as of now you can look at our street, zoom to the maximum setting, and see the faint line that descends from Partickhill Road to Peel Street.
 
I’m the guy that put Partickhill Lane on Google Maps!
 

2 thoughts on “I’m The Guy

  1. Now you’ve got the Newfoundland song “I’s the b’y that builds the boat” stuck in my head. Let me tell you, it is hard to get the word “Partickhill” to scan in that tune.

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