Google had made my life unbearable, but thank goodness there was a workaround.

The world is full of enough Catch-22's to make the nomenclature feel both appropriate and ancient.

Like when the post office demands you give them a physical address for your PO Box. You comply, but it takes getting the county rural addressing officer involved. He visits. He calculates. You're good.

You are, sometime later though, forced by a vendor to give your physical address for shipping purposes, though they decide along the way that a 16GB memory card is better sent with first class postage. But their rules are "no PO boxes."

And the keeper of our PO box says, upon receiving mail to this physical address, "return to sender - addressee unknown."

After all, no mail carrier visits this address. Not even in the dead of night.

Irony hurts sometimes.

But on to Google.

Their search box insists on filling in the field for you.

One may follow the trail of disappointment with this "feature" to Google sponsored "help" forums where the moderator implies you are nuts not to want to have this "feature."

And, conveniently, there is only hard enough advice to eliminate your own search history from triggering "suggestions" as you type.

The Internets writ large will still supply suggestions in its place. An Hobson's choice when typing "Jennair Grills." With "safe search" off.

Hurtful, hurtful irony!

I stumbled upon a cool workaround though.

According to the Internets writ large, this URL will turn off "suggestions" while simultaneously informing Google of its "dickishness." (They know how to keep track of things.)

If you have a bookmark/favorite for Google, change its properties to go to

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0

and change your image search link to 

http://www.google.com/imghp?complete=0

Thank you Internets writ large.