The New Sound
[Ed. note: I thought you promised to never mention Chinese food again.]
Oh, come on. I mean, give me a little leeway here! First you totally redesign the site, just at the point I was finally getting able to tell the difference between visited and unvisited links, and now you're going to hold me to that promise, which was made under extreme emotional distress? What kind of hideous italicized monster are you?
[Ed. note: I'm Ed, that's who. Now look, you said yourself it looks like a newspaper in here now. Why don't you talk about some news stories? Certainly you've picked up on some current events during your two, three, possibly six hours of websurfing that you do every day at work, yes?]
Okay, I'll try. I'll warn you though, don't know much about hisss-tory.
[Ed. note: No singing. Okay, first thing is, what are your feelings about the recent presidential election and all of the unprecedented controversy that proceeded, and is continuing to proceed it?]
I think it's... bad?
[Ed. note: Okay, great answer. Now when the recess bell rings, come up and get your chocolate milk and graham crackers. What the hell is wrong with you? You have no other thoughts on this whatsoever?]
I think Al Gore should stop with all of these legal proceedings and concede defeat, thereby respecting the will of the People, which was to elect Pat Buchanan. Also, none of this would have ever happened if you people had done what I did and just stayed home. I mean, why bother going out to vote, they're just gonna make you do it again in four years.
[Ed. note: But if you do not vote, then have no right to complain.]
Yeah, watch me. For one thing, I don't like how out here in LA, the phone company sends you bills in envelopes that look like junk mail ads. I mean, back where I'm from, when the phone company sends you a bill, you can tell it's a bill. Wanna know how? Because if you look very carefully at the front of the envelope, you'll notice big black letters which say:
[Ed. note: What do they say out here?]
They say, "Try Our New Three-Way Calling Plan!"
[Ed. note: Are you only mentioning this because when you got home Friday night and tried to log in to the internet, you got a message saying that your phone line had been temporarily disconnected, and then you had to call them up on your cellphone the next day to plead with them to turn it back on, and that you double-super-promised to pay your bill right away, plus an additional $65 deposit because they no longer considered you a decent credit risk?]
Yes.
[Ed. note: That's pitiful.]
But I mean, the envelopes didn't give any indication that they were bills, and certainly gave no indication that they were increasingly important bills. What they should do is make the thing on the front get more and more urgent...
[Ed. note: Why didn't you just open one of them?]
Hey man, I'm an artist. Know what that means? Right-brained! That's right. And as a right-brained individual, it is unfair to expect me to keep track of such left-brained activities as paying bills, cleaning the dryer lint shield, and making sure there's no holes in a wadded up bunch of toilet paper before I wipe.
[Ed. note: Ewwwwwww.]
Well, see, this is going to be really tough now. I mean, look at this place! Look, look up there at the menu bar. That is one professionally-done menu, friends! The slick, three-dimensional curves and light sourcing just scream "mature, expertly presented material". And now I'm supposed to write one of my columns? I just don't know if that's going to be possible anymore. I mean, I was just gonna get on here and start a new column like this:
Hey, man, you ever like, when you're bunching up the toilet paper after you pinched one, but then the way you bunched it together, there's a little hole left in the middle somewhere, so when you go to wipe, really bad stuff happens? I mean, ewwwwww!
But I can't rightly do that now, not in these new conservative, couthed environs. It feels like I should write something like:
My friends, we live in times during which we as a nation, and as a people, must strive always to look deep within the most hidden depths of our souls, and that which truly makes us who we are, and ask ourselves if we ever leave a hole in a bunched up wad of toilet paper when we wipe. I mean, ewwwwww!
I don't see how I can possibly go on, given these sorts of constrainments upon my creativity. I mean, look at the background! It's white! Where do you see webpages with white backgrounds? I don't know where you're doing your online shopping, but the places I've seen with white backgrounds are highly-respected news periodicals like the Washington Post and the New York Times and places like that, on none of which you will find the word "perv-o-matic", or even the words "pork mei fun". It just seems wro--
Just something, anything to let me know that I better pay that bill pronto, or bad things are gonna happen.
COPYRIGHT 2001 BY BEN PARRISH