MattyL I T E

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.