The Internet

The internet is a battlefield where every hour of every day some motherfucker is trying to get you to click on their useless link instead of the other guy's useless link.

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.

Dear /b/,

Tahnk U 4 all teh lulz.

Sincerely,
Matty Lite

The Internets' Preferences

I'm probably late to the party, but have you heard of this site where you can pit two keywords together and see which one wins the Internet?

Here's a result that may shock you:



But on the other hand...

The Internets

I was thinking about these internets. They are getting huge. I mean huge. Doesn't it blow your mind? I don't want to sound like an old man or something, but holy shit everybody.



Yesterday, that person who comes by six days a week to put a bunch of trash in a little slot in my door brought us the yellow pages too. Yellow pages? Wow, remember that? That was a different time. Now, again, I know I'm starting to sound like an old man here, but let me explain. What has been blowing my mind about the internet has a lot to do with those yellow pages.

I'm sure I'm the millionth person to have this revelation, but the hugeness of the internets has changed how we find information. The search is what I'm talkin' about. Yellow pages? You know how long they'd have to be to cover every subject on the internet, even to list just the top few sites for any subject? You said it. Long as shit.

There are a few ready-built reactions to this. One can be amazed and stand in awe of this information superhighway, or one can decry the internet as some sort of lowest-common-denominator cesspool, which, after all, is probably built and maintained for the most part by people procrastinating doing something else. One can see it as a way forward for liberty and freedom, or one can see it as the beginnings of a Big Brother sort of thing. I figure whichever way you look at it, you gotta admit it is a giant world of culture, of cultural information and cultural traces, maybe cultural trash at times, maybe more the leftovers and refuse of culture, but culture nonetheless. And I for one am someone who takes culture seriously, wherever I find it. So when I think about how huge these internets are, and I realize that it's all culture on there, it tends to blow my mind.


It's vast and confusing and complicated out there in that "series of tubes." Too intricate for something like a yellow pages to be of much use. That's why searching has gotten better and better. But even just searching isn't quite enough in this huge, huge world. Searching can tend to be either too directed (do you really trust those top few ad-type hits on a given search?) or too neutral (i.e. unpredictable) with regards to quality or taste for lots of people. Enter all these "social bookmarking" kind of business, enter thousands of people writing blogs, etc. Now you can search the searchers, so to speak. Find ones you agree with, or disagree with, or sometimes agree with, but ones you can get to know and trust. Like a good music reviewer who you don't always agree with but who writes with enough personal opinion that you can get an idea how you would feel about the record from how they feel about it.


Hey, man, sure this is all trite. But I don't care, because these internets are huge, my friends, they are gigantic, and they blow my mind. I mean, they blow my mind without my having to notice anything about them other than what is plainly there, without looking too close or thinking too hard.