Life and times (7/20/98)
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I don’t know what I should do about this. True, it seems that the only point in having a business card these days is to allow you to hand out your URL. But, then, this argues that you shouldn’t have a webpage at all if you can’t use it to make the proper impression. This would mean something addressable directly as www.whatever.com, running my own cgi scripts, keeping my own personal statistics, etc. Under the aegis of Supernet this would run a hundredsomething a month, with a potentially nasty surcharge for downloads exceeding a few megabytes per. [So much for that Pam-and-Tommy Lee subpage that was going to attract all the traffic.] The expense has therefore seemed prohibitive. But nothing less would be adequate for the purposes of selfadvertisement. — On the other hand, web consultants make money. — For that matter hightraffic sites may by now be intrinsically profitable. I haven’t kept track.
Nor am I conversant with the latest in browser enhancements. I used to collect these things and try them out, but, since everything crashed the machine almost immediately, I rapidly lost interest. Even Sandra Bullock in
The Net couldn’t make the life of a betatester look interesting. — Anyway it’s all too fucking slow. — So I’m more than a little behind on what passes for website flash; and [I reiterate] the point of this is selfadvertisement and flash is essential.
Moreover when I pause to think about it it seems to me that the usual browsers suck. Unfortunately the exotic experimental jobs seem to have been designed exclusively for SGI workstations [or whatever]. — There are interesting questions regarding threedimensional representation, intelligent search mechanisms, web visualization, and the like. But [as usual] none of this will make you a nickel.
Accordingly: I dither.
I’m fond of popcorn while I’m dithering, and, accordingly, meandered over to the theater this evening to see
The X Files, in which agents Scully and Mulder pursue a Truth which seemed to be Out There somewhere in Texas or Antarctica. — Predictably, Antarctica looked more hospitable than Texas; or for that matter Washington, D.C., where most of the rest of the action was supposed to be taking place. — Since I never watch television and haven’t absorbed the presuppositions of the series, I have a few problems with all this. — Why are these people allowed to do whatever they want? FBI personnel, when last I heard, had tedious daytoday obligations to their superiors, their caseloads, the beancounters to whom they submit their expense accounts, et al.; in short, they have jobs. This isn’t consistent with jetting around randomly pursuing a series of intuitive whims. — If Mulder is the most dangerous opponent of a global conspiracy which controls everything from the boundaries of Mongolia to the ingredients in toothpaste and which presumably whacked McKinley Archduke Ferdinand Kennedy King Lennon River Phoenix and Princess Di pursuant to their aims, why don’t they just whack him too? or is there some restriction we don’t know about in the fine print of the lease agreements on those black helicopters? — If the aliens want to take over the world, why don’t they just do it? why bother to cut in the Bad People In Expensive Suits? I mean, didn’t they see
Independence Day? — And why does Scully wear that same outfit all the time?
Of course there’s a wow finish: a sort of simultaneous homage to
Alien,
Close Encounters, and the Carpenter remake of
The Thing. — If only they’d got Dan O’Bannon to write it, Spielberg to direct it, and Kurt Russell to star in it, they might have been onto something.
Later.
____________Essays in blockbusting (7/13/98)
