MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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Baltimore - 30 January, 2000 - We are only days away from the New Hampshire Presidential Primary here in the United States. That means the Mouthpiece Media is all a-blather about the Inside-the-Beltway buzz on the Democratic and Republican Party nomination horse races. The people of New Hampshire, a state that looks nothing like America, are afforded the signal privilege of being the only voters to whom most of the Presidential candidates will ever have to talk to day in and day out.The rest of us will only see them in parades, a few brief and orchestrated public forums, and on our television screens.
Yet, by all the metrics that the Mouthpiece Media hold sacred, tiny New Hampshire will determine who goes on to meet the rest of America and receive the mandate of their political party. How can anyone pretend that this is even *a continent* close to a genuine democratic process?
It would be a bit more logical and understandable to me if the "pivotal" campaigning and primary took place in a truly representative, populous state like California, Illinois, Texas or New York. But New Hampshire? Get real.
They don't have many minority residents in New Hampshire, they don't have all the taxes the rest of us must live with, they don't even have a major metropolis.
It's bad enough that the people of New Hampshire will be winnowing the Seven Dwarfs being foisted on us as Presidential candidates.
What's worse is that our special corporate interest - sponsored political parties have designed the structure of the American electoral process so that most of America gets a virtual election, not a real one. They love it this way.
And that's why We the People hate it this way and continue to turn our backs on the political process. The commodification of the Presidency has made it little different than deciding between Pantene and Pert Plus. It's a sham and a shame, a very cruel hoax force fed to us over our airwaves.
But let's not think about that. There are Super Bowl parties to attend this Sunday.
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.
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Because of an article I wrote about the recent redesign, and then reversion back to the old cover page design at WORD magazine this week for Andover News Network, I entered into an e-mail conversation with one of the editors there. It was cordial and informative.We both talked about design styles and decisions and wrestled with what Web surfers, in general, and our readers, in specific, want from a magazine-style Web site.
It's a discussion that many of us in this business have from time-to-time.
If you look at the design over at WORD and the design here, especially as regards our cover pages, it is obvious that we come from diametrically opposed aesthetics. Neither philosophy is a bad one, I'd venture to say. Each reflects the type and sensibility of the audiences we are attempting to attract.
G21's design could be considered static, staid, and unexciting. WORD's could be considered busy, distracting and glitzy. But both designs work for the audiences who are most loyal to each of us.
Meanwhile, in order to attract NEW readers and keep them coming back, both our magazines are moving toward (in our future plans) compromises which will make us more like the other. WORD will never become completely staid, as we will never become completely glitzy. But expect to see changes at both magazines because that's how the Web works.
******* For those of you who follow our Eastern European coverage and are interested in international coverage, here is a MUST READ piece that appeared in the New York Times Book Review a week ago by Timothy Garton Ash (thanks and a tip of the hat to our pals at Blue Ear): "Anarchy and Madness".
*******
Related to the design and content issues above, I had my part-time assistant do a little market research for us this. We did a human-factors study on WORD, SALON, FEED and G21. ["Whoa! This is progress. He is actually admitting who his main competitors are!"]
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Event # 201: AMONG THE ELECT
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LAST WEEK's EDITION
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The clear winner in terms of user-experience was SALON. Of the four of us, FEED was the clear loser. What came out of this study was that G21 had become „too narrow,¾ in the view of many of the participants.
I was a little taken aback by this conclusion since the rationale for much of what we did in the last makeover was in response to the complaint that we were „all over the place.¾
My response to this bit of evaluation was to beg Thomas Hart back into the fold. TABLOID HART relaunches with this issue. Let me know what you think.
*******
It was during my time working at the state mental hospital that my horndog tendencies began to heat up. Maybe it had to with the adrenaline necessary to work on the locked, Male Admissions ward, the main point of entry for every man committed to the institution. More likely it was because I was in my twenties and my hormones were raging. I went through a series of women at varying levels of intensity.There was Gale, the one who I came closest to marrying, from New Britain. She had olive skin, jet black hair; a Cleopatra look that would make any man turn his head. She was a working class girl going through a divorce in her early twenties. She already had a young son and wanted another child so that he would not grow up alone.
All my pals (wisely) advised, "Don't get yourself into a built-in family thang, Man! Pussy is pussy." She and her husband were fighting over custody of the existing child and it did not help her that she was suicidal. It helped me, though, because her decision to voluntarily commit herself to the very hospital where I worked put the kebosh on any marriage plans.
There was the Mafioso's daughter from New Haven who drove my roommate Albert crazy with her blatant sexually.
She made no bones about the fact that she lusted after my young bod, but I got shed of her fast because I was quaking at the idea of having my nuts fed to me by some Wiseguy when he found out his little girl was boffing a moolie.
But the relationship during this time that most demonstrated my impulsiveness was with Maria, the woman from the Azores. I met her one night in a bar I used to frequent.
As soon as she walked through the door with another couple, I was riveted. Everything about this woman said "HOT." I could imagine cigarettes self-igniting upon touching her lips.
When I watched her swaying over the jukebox menu, so smooth, so erotic, I knew I just had to have her.
I went to the table where her friends were sitting and sat down. "Listen, I said, I have to meet your friend! You can drink free for the rest of the night if you introduce me. Just tell her I'm an old friend who has recently come back from overseas and that you ran into me for the first time tonight. Will you do it?"
The guy and the girl looked at me like I was nuts.
Then they looked at each other and laughed. Sure, they said.
"But what's your name?" the guy asked.
When Maria came back they introduced us and she and I spent the rest of the night dancing together. We decided to leave and go back to my place. (I slipped the couple twenty bucks to cover their drinks for the remainder of the night since I wouldn't be there to buy.)
Maria had a bottle in her car's glove box, so we just went straight back to my place on Burr Ave.
We drank and romped in bed and told each other about our lives. She had gotten to the States by marrying an American sailor who had been stationed in the Azores, they had had two children and then he had dumped her. The louse.
So now it was me and Maria. She would come over whenever I was not pulling a night shift (I was in rotation, it being a hospital). She loved to dance and make love as much as I, we were starting to get close. It was about this time, of course, that I got a taste for some strange...
This was the beginning of the end of my relationship with this hot-hot-hot woman. Part of my motivation was that I was falling fast and Maria provided more of a "built-in" family than even Gayle. I was too young to die.
Hey, Kids! Check out this page. We want you to join us.
Things That Bother Me This Week
- The old Repetitive Stress Syndrome pains are acting up again.
- I should have bought winter clothes when I moved back here to the east coast of USA last winter and I didn't. Now I have no clothes to suit the weather.
- Going to Manhattan on business instead of pure pleasure to learn what my future holds.
- Wondering if we are prepared to reinstitute a daily feed again.
REMEMBER: Tell every single one of your friends about this Web site.
Why do we keep doing this? Because we like you.
Thanks for coming back this week."Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
This is another Web site made on a Macintosh.
EDITORIAL CORRECTIONS: All the errors last week were in my DAY ONE piece, of course. It took us 24 hours to correct them.Many of you probably didn't notice because our server CRASHED almost immediately after last Sunday evening's launch. Then it crashed again on Thursday. Reason? We migrated to a faster machine. Oops!
I apologize for all of last week's inconveniences. We're working to do better.
ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services.
Rod is now a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he writes on web design and development issues every Thursday. He is principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviews technology issues five days a week. His opinions on the Info Age began appearing on MethodFive's HYPER technology newsletter in March. 1999.
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