G21 TRIO: A Series of Voices
Want a quick and easy way to identify your web site as a nifty little hobby that gets updated whenever you get around to it, and is meant for the enjoyment of your family and friends?
Allow me to be of service. All you need to separate your fun family site from the "serious" and intense web sites out there are four little words: "Please Sign My Guestbook." It's that easy, and thousands upon thousands of web sites are doing it!
With those four words you immediately let the casual visitor know that yours is a safe, cutesy, amateur endeavor in vanity publishing.
I never sign the damned things.
 TRIO, our thrice-weekly commentary column, features our new Third Coast writer, Austin's own THOMAS HART "GUESTBOOKS ARE LAME
TRIO, our thrice-weekly commentary column, slugs you again. RAHEEM on "CHEERLEADERS!"
 JEFF WINBUSH looks at CLINTON'S POSSIBLE WAR(Wag...)!
 JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences!
 You knew the Media column as "Trend Bends." For version 3.0.1, it's reborn as CULTURECAST: Jennifer Blue looks at "Informers"...
G21 COMIX: Bix the Snowboarder - The Legend Continues! 
VOX POPULI, YOUR page for talking to us, is updated. This week Carlene, the Misanthropic Bitch, fires off a response to THOMAS HART. THOMAS fires back! Rod breaks out the flame extinguishers!! The second TRIO of this week features Austin, Texas's THOMAS HART: "Why the World Wide Web Failed!"
 FLISS USSHER's LONDON CALLING! talks about finding the "Common Ground. " AND at the end of this month: FLISS REPORTS FROM BERLIN!!
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BOB POWERS finally gives some clues about 
In most cases, by the time I reach those four telling words --- IF I haven't clicked away already under the barrage of blinking text, acrobatic schnauzers, flashing lights, auto-looping renditions of Celine Dion, bell, book, candle and the kitchen sink!!! IF, I say, I do stay long enough to see those four words, God bless them, the last thing I'm inclined to do is click even further into the hodge-podge to read little Delbertina's poetry or that your Aunt Hildy surfed in on October 3rd and thought our site was pretty!
The web is still a young medium, but already there are certain things you can depend on. Nine times out of ten, right after you see those four words, "Please Sign My Guestbook," right below them you can depend on finding one of those freebie, digital counters letting you know that you are (usually right around) the 1,057th person to visit this site. And that's including Delbert himself having clicked on it, oh, 350 times, to show it to his friends, or admire his own handiwork.
Now, Gentle Readers, please don't get me wrong this time.I like the potential of the web. I even like web sites such as our Delbert's here.
I'd, sure as you're born, cotton to there being A THOUSAND more "Welcome! My name is Delbert and this is my Homepage" sites before I saw ONE MORE frame-heavy, Java-enhanced, Macromedia Flash site by Multinational Megabucks, Inc.'s hired-gun team of criminally over-priced webslingers!But that Ain't Gonnah Happen, and we both know that.
So I've got some advice for all the Delbert's out there reading this column, and I hope ya'll will take this friendly suggestion to heart. Son, what you're doing is charming. Your site probably represents the last great flowering of inexpensive, globally-accessible self-expression. But it would be even more charming for arm-chair critics like me if you lost that silly digital counter; all it does is show how few people have bothered to drop by.
And then, Delbert, take if from me, trash that lame guestbook. E-mail serves the same purpose and does it better, Bud.
Then, maybe, next time, I'll stick around long enough to read little Delbertina's idea of soul poetry.
Surf's up!