The true Evil Empire isn't Microsoft...
Let's start off with something simple: trendy catch phrases. You know, like "Information Super Highway," "Cyberspace," etc. It's getting a bit tiring, people.
You know the type. America Online, Compuserve, Microsoft Network, Prodigy, etc. Millions of people shell out their bucks on their mediocre services without seeming to realize that they can get better deals locally. And these same nationwide ISPs like to keep their customers ignorant of other places because they don't want their subjects to discover that there are better things out there and that they are being ripped off over mediocre service (especially AOL).
"Hi. This is a picture of me. Here's a picture of my dog. Here's a list of my favorite bands and their homepages." And that's it. How boring can you get? It makes me wonder how I ever came across these types of pages to begin with. Since you've wandered your way this deep into my pages, I can presume that you have found some sort of redeeming quality about my homepage that would hold your interest long enough to arrive here. I at least have something here of interest, right? My challenge is for these people to make their pages more interesting.
For an example of a completely stupid homepage made by a moron, I created one to illustrate my point. Click here to see what I mean.
Go check out The Site Fights page. Isn't that the most irritating web page you've ever seen? Just the concept of this is irritating. I've seen some pages out there that are about 60% garbage about the Site Fights and how everyone should vote for their page, while you are unsure as to what's so cool about the page that would make you want to vote for it and not push the "Back" button on your browser. Plus, I really hate pages with tons of animated images that take forever to load up.
It seems like once you think you have all the Plug-In applications for your favorite web browser, you come across a page that does not load up properly and some pop-up windows displays, telling you that you need to get the plug-in to view the page properly. The chances are, is it really worth getting the new plug-in? Erf!
For you anime fans, don't you think that one Sailor Moon Web Ring is enough? There's gotta be at least 20 of them out there so far. It seems like so many people get jealous over an original idea and they just beat it to death until none of it is interesting anymore. Webrings alone are a pretty cool idea, but when there's a whole ton of webrings on the same subject, it kinda defeats the purpose of having a Webring, doesn't it?
Let me talk about my limited experience with IRC a bit. The idea of Internet Relay Chat kinda interested me in the beginning, so I chose a few topics I was interested in and joined the channel. I soon learned that there exists a social hierarchy in all of the channels I visited that reminded me of my experiences in high school. Nobody will ever talk to you if you are new there, unless it is somebody who is new there as well. You've gotta spend countless hours day after day until you become a regular before people treat you as "one of the gang." And what's with these people who swear their love to someone who they've never met before in their life? I don't care how long someone has been online chatting with someone. You'll never really know if you love someone unless you actually spend time with them in person. I can only imagine what those sex-chat channels are like. From what I hear, most of the "women" are actually guys in disguise (hey, that rhymes!). I had this guy in my Economics 112 class telling his friend that he had modem sex for the first time earlier that day with some girl, and that they were both modem sex virgins. I asked him if he knew whether or not the "girl" was actually a girl, and I told him that a lot of the time, it's a guy impersonating a girl for whatever screwball reasons he may have. "Nuh-uh!" Okay, fine then.
People have always thought I am weird because I've never been into pornography. I've never collected the magazines, nor have I filled my hard drive space with the images and motion pictures. I've visited friends who have all this stuff on their computers. They have these adult passwords and download from these porno sites. I personally don't like it because it just feeds on people's minds and I've seen the lustful thoughts that grip people's attitudes. I have a friend who wishes that he didn't have such a dirty mind, yet he has all sorts of junk on his computer. And he wonders why? My reasons for disliking pornography go beyond just that. I agree with the Kantian philosophy that people should not be used as a means to an end. Therefore, women should not be used as a means to getting one's jollies over some lewd picture. But it's not men who are exploiting women, women are exploiting themselves to feed the sexual hunger of men by portraying their gender as sexual objects and not as the real people they are.
Plus, I guess I just have a different view of what beauty is. Some cheap bimbo slut with frizzy blonde hair, huge, intimidating breasts and shaved privates doesn't really make my heart flutter. Why should I fill my heart and head with longing feelings for someone like this? And don't even think about flaming me and saying that I'm being prejudiced and "judgemental." Don't even start with me. "Oh, you can't say that about all of them." Well, how many virgins do you know who pose for such crap? And besides, I never once used the quantifier "all." Looks can be deceiving in more ways than one. I've seen pictures of pretty little Asian girls who look very sweet and charming and they're standing there in the picture with a look of "I'm naked, tee hee hee" written on their faces. Rather disillusioning.
Now, I'm not saying that people can't use the Internet for pornographic reasons. If they so choose to fill their minds with smut, I'm in no position to tell them that they can't. But what irks me is that I can't escape from it! It's plastered everywhere on the Internet. For instance, I once did a search for "Sailor Moon Video Game" on Lycos and the first hit was some porno spam with a 100% relevancy rating. I'm sorry? Hello! What's with this? I'm trying to find web pages dealing with a video game based off of a children's show aimed towards young girls, not smut pages. Pornography has really given the Internet a bad name. I could mention in public that I'm on the Net and have some old ladies thinking that I'm a child pornographer or something. And it's progressed to e-mail spam. I still get a steady flow of several mass e-mails inviting me to their respective smut sites. Are they sending these mass spams to accounts owned by underage kids? That's sick!
This brings me to another issue: lack of e-mail security. To the best of my knowledge, the same rights you have that protects you from the various evils in your regular mailbox do not always apply to your electronic mailbox. I see all sorts of exposes on the local news about mail fraud, but I never see any about ones on the Internet. Unfortunately, owning a homepage that is fairly popular targets you to a lot of unwanted e-mail. Lots of unwanted spam. I've gotten all sorts. Get rich quick pyramid schemes, porno site promotions, male hair loss remedies, mortgaging your house, golf balls, spam on getting mass email programs that allow you to do your own spamming. . . I can't even begin to remember them all. And you know about those chain letters? You know, the ones that say, "Copy this letter to 20 other people and you will receive lots of luck/career success/sexual exploits/fluffy kittens/etc." They can get rather threatening. "Sally Vacuumcleaner of Vancouver, BC sent this message to 20 people and she won the lottery, met the man of her dreams, and had a highly successful career. Bill Potatoslicer of Sacramento, CA disregarded this message, and he was riddled with bullets by a drive-by shooting right before he was ran over and decapitated by a school bus on fire." The ones in your normal mailbox are considered illegal, and your local attorney general can actually prosecute whoever sent you the letter. That's why they never put their return addresses on the envelope. But I've even written back to the webmasters of the ISPs that the user has their account with, and they just shrug it all off, thinking "Aw, shucks. No harm done." Why must I be plagued by letters from these superstitious idiots who feel it's necessary to send me chain letters via e-mail? To make matters worse, not too long ago I even received a death threat from some moron using an account at Lyndon State College in Vermont. With a really limited vocabulary, he managed to tell me exactly how he was going to do me in and my whole family by noon the next day. I think it's real cute how stupid people use swear words in order to communicate. After all, profanity is the linguistic crutch of inarticulate bastards. You can read his death-threat e-mail here.
Since I have several pages that attract attention from a lot of people, I've certainly had my share of strange messages sent to me. Not surprisingly, most of them are sent to me through my Sailor Mercury page. Sometimes I ponder removing the statement at the bottom of my page that says that comments, contributions, and questions are welcome. I seriously used to get lots of questions from people asking me how to make web pages. Now I certainly don't mind if someone asks me a specific question about HTML, but I don't have time to explain how web pages are made to any person who happens to ask. A lot of these were from AOL users. AOL likes to keep their customers in the dark to prevent them from finding out about the Internet, because their customers might discover that they're being had by a greedy nationwide ISP.
Sometimes I think that there should be some sort of mental aptitude test before Internet access is granted to somebody. Some are just a bit too unstable and should not be allowed to access the Net. There are a lot of complete idiots out there. Just like that bozo who threatened to kill me and my entire family for no apparent reason. I'm still rather unsure what it was about something on one of my pages that upset him so much. Reading some of the Usenet newsgroups remind me a bit of my elementary school years. People often flame each other over the silliest things. People shaking their fists at the computer screen, tears streaming down their cheeks, swearing up and down at someone because they happened to disagree with them about how one pilots a Veritech Fighter from the old weekday afternoon show Robotech I used to watch as a kid. I remember during the 50 year anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan a few years ago. (Anniversary is hardly a correct word, I think. It sounds to festive.) These people were demanding that the Japanese people who posted to the soc.culture.japan newsgroup should apologize for the atrocities that their country once committed so many years ago in Manchuria and Korea. I had several people applaud me because I simply pointed out that the Japanese users should not be held accountable for what the Japanese military did so long ago because they probably weren't even born yet back then, and only those who committed such acts are the ones who should apologize.
And what's with President Clinton and his stupid speeches about putting every 12-year-old on the Internet? I really don't think that the Internet is really a place for children. It's just not safe for children yet. Being the one who made the very first Sailor Mercury page on the Net, I have had several very young girls who are barely even teenagers send me friendly little e-mail letters. This shouldn't be a problem in an ideal society, but it is in ours. Their parents let their children have access to the Internet, yet they don't bother to warn them about the potential dangers of what lurks on the Net? In one short e-mail, one girl supplied me with her first and last name, how old she was, and the general location in the city in which she lives. What if I was a psychotic child-molesting stalker who lived in her town? Tell me, Bill Clinton: do you really think that every 12-year-old should have access to the Internet? Get off the trendy bandwagon and face reality.
Am I the only one who is sick of seeing these stupid little blue ribbons everywhere? It's almost to the point where I'm willing to sacrifice my right to freedom of speech just to see these blue ribbons forbidden. Sure, I believe in freedom of speech, but I also believe in freedom from speech. I fail to see how a page devoted to something like beastiality qualifies as "freedom of speech." Besides, they aren't even saying anything! They've just got their dumb clothes off.
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"I'm not goofing off... I'm multitasking." --Me