If you're a fan of "The Simpsons" you might remember the episode in which Homer turns out to look just like "Mr. Sparkle," the spokes-cartoon for a Japanese laundry detergent. In the end it was all coincidence; when the light bulb logo of one company was merged with the fish logo of a second company in the joint venture, the resulting image looked exactly like our anti-hero.

Because my last name is misspelled and arugably misapplied -- it's a long story -- I know that everyone named Tanzilo is one of us; a member of my relatively small clan. So, when I see the name on the Internet, I always take notice.

Today, I got an e-mail that alerted me to a computer programming blog with Tanzilo in the URL. I wondered which of us started blogging and I clicked the "about me" link and learned the blog is by a certain Tanzil Al Gazmir in Bangladesh. Not likely even a distant cousin. Did his finger slip while creating his blog profile? Maybe once it was up and running, it didn't seem worth correcting the error.

It reminded me that a few years ago there was apparently a hit song in Germany with a title that included the word "Tanzilo," which must mean something in German (just don't ask Alta Vista's Babel Fish Web translator ... it doesn't know). Or maybe some drum machine jockey over there was paying tribute to or lashing out at me or a relative. That, however, seems unlikely. What did we ever do to the German club scene? And what on Earth does this mean? " Tanzilo -- huhu -- komm und beiß ein Blättchen ab... *genausofrechzurückwink*"

I also found 24-year-old Ilonka's page on which a commenter refers to her (I think) as "The Tanzilo."

More recently, I saw this blog which refers to "Tanzilo" and a fictional conversation with "Paulsen (the other one)." And that one really caught my eye because it mentions "Mozilo," who I presume is former Countrywide mortgage CEO Angelo Mozilo. One of my oldest friends is named Mozzillo. But it's not Angelo.

All of this tells me that the Internet, while simplifying and clarifying a lot of things, has also turned into a veritable tower of Babel, dishing up tons of matches for virtually any word, name or random string of letters in nearly every language.