TECH SUPPORT NOTES: The last two sentences were jokes, one "topping" the other. People tell jokes in order to laugh, rather than express a lot of angst about technology. I won¼t do it ever again, I promise.

--- Wolf DeVoon

From our Mailbag 03/26/00 - 04/02/00

And You think WHAT?

(a.k.a. Ed C's Homepage)

Wolf,

I have read this week's MOIA article with some dismay. This piece of inappropriate **** properly belongs on AFF. (Adult Friend Finder a.k.a. All Fantasy F****ers!) If this is representative of your friends & you plan to publish more of their thoughts I, for one, have no interest in reading it. Could we stay on track as IT professionals with thought provoking comments to make about our virtual, or real, world --- or am I looking for another list to subscribe to?

Regards
Dee


Ed C. (No City Provided,) USA:

Dear Mr.DeVoon:

I am currently a loyal reader of G21. This "article" was pathetic. It had no relevance, it was disingenious, it had no real point, it ....it......it.... What was the f'n point? Geeeeeesh! Make up a story about somebody who is way too addicted to the 'Net,or a game, or to doing upgrades, then fill it in with some ingenious, believable faux pas, personality quirks or tribulations stemming from their addiction. The "article" at issue tried to carry off what would be passable VISUAL material for a Saturday Night Live (American comedy show) skit, without considering the limitations of this media (unless you want to supplement the story with .jpgs of the blood, etc.. I give thanks to God Almighty that few trees were sacrificed in the name of the McSnortles.

Please, send me your kudos, brick-bats and snide comments,

Ed C.

P.S. Having upgraded several IBM machines, I really don't understand the poke at them - they really have some of the cleaner guts. And they don't need "special" memory modules like most Compac, Toshiba or HP machines.


From Vincent T., (No City Provided,) USA:

Wolf & Rod

Being new to the WEB, I feel that I've got a lout of catching up to do. I discovered your magazine yesterday, and read most of your columns from the ARCHIVES. G21 is ahead of SALON and FEED on my list.

Thanks very much
Vincent T.


From Ed C., (No City Provided,) USA:

WOW! I was (pleasently) stunned by the succinctness of Kevin Carey's article. Not much can be added to that.

Ed C.


AND

Dear Rod:

Sorry your B-day wasn't "all that".

Re: Wolf. It appears from his writing that Wolf is not an idiot. In fact he writes pretty decent stuff; different than Rod Amis, but palatable. The fact that you are getting asked to work on page layouts,etc. sounds like either:(a) a misunderstanding of your respective responsiblities,;or (b) a miscalculation on your part regarding Wolf's technical abilities to do the hands-on aspect of maintaining a Website;e.g. doctoring up code, fixing links, uploading the site. You have indicated that you have a tendancy to be overly helpful at times, so IMHO(in my humble opinion) you should think about A & B above, and then make yourself unavailable and see how bad things get.

Re: the play. How about: a Website operator, H.T.MeEl(html), who is suffering burnout/stress/ real-world-responsibilities recruits a buddy to help him out. But this just leads to more work. Slip in some faux pas revolving around mispelled links that take users to the new guy's favorite hard-core porn site(Wolf,you are a dog!!), rather than the site for some good cause.......have the owner suffer from a hysterical Bahamian accent that only slips out when he is really stressed......sprinkle in a few bodacious babes that the site owner goes a-gaga over......top it off with a chorus of smart-assed and dumb-assed visitors who's e-mails serve as comedy relief and an excellent opportunity for the site owner to start mumbling with that Bahamian accent. WHAT DOT.COM UP TO? (Say it with a Bahamian accent and it makes sense.LOL

Hey, you even have my blessings to make it politically incorrect: just include everyone in the jokes and play them both directions.

PAX,
Ed C.


AND

Dear Wolf:

My name is Ed C. and I am a faithful and regular reader and heckler of/at G21.Net. Welcome!!! I loved the story [Tree Wars]: it didn't make a lot of sense, but then again it wasn't supposed to. The sobering aspect of this, for me, was it reminded me of an altercation between two neighbors of my brother's: in that case, the older neighbor Leo, incensed at the tree planting of his much younger neighbor (the lot line was at issue) pressed the issue, fatally, with a twelve gauge shotgun. Leo is now doing 7-10 in Jackson prison, Michigan. :(

Keep an eye out for that Rod guy, he is a real stickler on accessibility/speed issues and I think he's still is in the "who's dating my little girl" mode when it comes to G21. LOL :O

Adios,
Ed C.


From Phala R.-O. (No City or Country Provided:

Dear Rod:

We will keep in touch -- here's a take on you from me:

"(s) . . .He was as cool as the other side of my pillow on a hot summers' night."

A terrific line of remembered dialogue from an already forgotten inane film.

At the outset, I thought of you as a pompous, pontificating, braggadocio, slick dick -- you struck a resonant dis-chord (sic - intended.) I found myself impelled to read more and I'm glad I did. Frankly, my dear, I discovered that we share so many hook-ups that it's a tad bit too eerie. Black male - white female, pink on the inside people!

Keep the net's rips in sight - gettin' out might be trickier than gettin' in (and, we both know - thatÝit's been some Mean Trick!)

Phala

THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE, THE WORLD'S MAILBOX

Dear Friends

Please help, if possible. This is important to me...so I am asking you to please forward it. Please send this to all your contacts. If anyone you know has survived NONSMALL CELL LUNG CANCER, please contact me at the address given below. My husband has it and I would like to know what treatment was used. Please forward to everyone on your contact list. From the bottom of my heart I thank you.

Divya Singh
Siemens Information System Limited
#84, Keonics Electronics City
Hosur Road, Bangalore-561229
India
Divya Singh
Tel.+91-80-8521122 (10 lines)

MAY GOD BE WITH U AND BLESS U ALWAYS



From Darryl C., Hershey, PA, USA:

Applaud Denzel, Not Hollywood

03-30-00
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
ðððððððððððððððððððððððððððððððððððððð
The much anticipated moment when pre-Oscar night favorite Denzel Washington would clutch the Oscar to his chest for his winning performance as boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in the film Hurricane never came. Washington's chance to become only the second African-American to win the top acting award almost certainly went down the tubes when critics waged a relentless back door campaign to tarnish the movie. These critics publicly wailed that Hurricane's makers took colossal license with the film by glossing over Carter's violent criminal past and falsifying the facts in the fight to overturn his murder conviction. They charged that the filmmakers elevated Carter, a black ex-convict, to near sainthood to satisfy the politically correct crowd. The critics hoped that if they splattered enough mud on the film it would hopelessly taint Washington's towering performance and scare Academy votes away from him.

It worked. Academy members caved into the barrage against the film and snubbed Washington. But don't count on any remorse from Hollywood for blowing its chance to make Washington a poster boy for racial diversity in the film industry. It has been nearly four decades since Hollywood named Sidney Poitier best actor for his role as Homer Smith the happy-go-lucky traveling laborer who cheerfully helped nuns build a small church in Lilies of the Field in 1963. Since then only a minute handful of blacks have even been nominated for top awards. None have won.

There's no mystery why the film industry has stubbornly refused to select another black as its top award winner. Less than 200 of the more than 5,600 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science members that pick the Oscar winners are black. In the 72 years that Hollywood has showered its top awards on its leading lights, exclusive of the Poitier best male actor award, here's how blacks have fared on Oscar night: "No black has ever won an Academy Award for best female actress. Only 5 blacks have won Academy Awards for best supporting roles. Hattie McDaniel who won the best supporting actress award for her role as a maid in Gone With The Wind in 1939 was barred from the "whites only" premier of the film in Atlanta. Only one black has been nominated for a best film director award. No blacks have been nominated for a best film writer award. The great Hollywood whiteout of blacks goes far beyond refusing to nominate and award black film performers, directors and writers its top awards. Only 5 percent of Hollywood motion pictures are directed by African-Americans. Only 5 percent of the Directors and Writers Guild members are black. Only 2 percent of the 4,000 member union local that includes decorators and property managers are black. Film industry bigwigs say that the shameful exclusion of blacks from the industry is changing. They point to the score of black male actors that have made a big splash on the screen in non-racially stereotypical roles and their general acceptance by the film going public.

They also cite the decision by the Directors Guild of America in 1999 to strike the name of filmmaker D.W. Griffith from its annual award to top film director. Griffith was rightly dumped for making the grotesque, racially assaultive film Birth of a Nation in 1915 that played a monster part in poisoning racial attitudes toward blacks for much of the 20th century. While these are welcome steps by the film industry they still skirt the issue of Hollywood's refusal to create more opportunities for blacks. This is not a matter of begging Hollywood to open its door. It's a matter of dollars.

During the four decades between the awards to Poitier and Washington the black movie going audience has soared. The estimate is that blacks purchase an estimated one-fourth of all movie tickets in the United States and have helped fuel the huge renaissance in Hollywood filmmaking.

The NAACP nailed the TV industry to the wall for its ethnic sanitizing of the airwaves. It got TV executives to at least make a paper promise to hire and promote more minorities on and off screen. But film executives make no such promise. They have tightly tied their racial blinders and gear much of their filmmaking toward dissecting the frolics and foibles of pubescent white teens and neurotic middle-class suburbanites. Their emphasis is on showcasing film performers that appeal to them. In future years when the Academy dishes out its awards these will be performers, and not the current crop of black film names, likely to bag the awards. This is why Denzel should be applauded, but not Hollywood.

+++ THE PREVIOUS VOX POPULI +++ THE NEXT VOX POPULI +++

We want your feedback on this stuff. Go to the TALK BACK page and tell us what you think!

via e-mail