Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Don’t think this reflects poorly on your company, dear reader, but I drifted off to sleep within minutes of writing to you, clipboard in hand and pillow tucked snugly under my head. Obviously I don’t expect you to sing and dance and excite me, all the while tossing ribbons in the air, and in fact I’m often compelled to entertain you.

Here’s the question for tonight: dare we rock the boat and implement a forum of some sort? I used to believe meaningful interaction required a room, or at least a table and chairs, yet I’m told things have changed. There are free ways to create our own summit. There are also, if I may use the parlance of the Web, feature-rich discussion boards, smatterings of code that promise to rub you down while you’re typing. For a price, of course.

You know what? It might be worth it. There are days when our parlor fills with damn near a hundred people–real live human begins, in addition to the mannequins I bribe to boost readership–and it’s a prospect both welcome and unsettling. We’re not talking “hits,” mind you, we’re talking two hundred eyeballs, which I plan to harvest eventually for my unholy plans.

It’s welcome because what we discuss clearly needs to be proselytized. Unsettling, because I still harbor suspicions that two of you in the back row drive Hummers, walk your pet centipedes twice daily, kill on sight, count every corner in your bedrooms before going to sleep, and continue to amass uncensored pictures of hobbit feet. Yes, naked, hairy depictions of Shirefolk toes, the true cause for Sauron’s unquenchable thirst.

I also have another concern, a nameless terror made real whenever I skim the IMDB forums for who knows what reasons. Forums tend to attract idiocy as if it were an undiscovered currency, and this I cannot encourage. We are caught, it seems, in a dilemma.