FRIENDS, I know you come to this web site for one reason: a search engine sent you here after you typed in something like "teenie girls drink urine". Don't be ashamed, its how most of my fans found The Inner Swine. I would say, by way of incredibly useful effort-saving cliché (of which I am fond) that you'd be surprised at the odd phrases entered into search engines that direct people my way - I'd say that except it obviously isn't true, since every single personal web site in the universe has at one time or another put up a humorous page describing the humorously oddball keywords which make the AI of the world think of their site. Screw that! I'm the Humble Editor of The Inner Swine, dammit, and I am all about originality. Or at least not getting sued for blatant plagiarism.
    That last part is tougher than it sounds, because coming up with new, "fresh" material all the time is a burden I tire of quickly. But, once I've lured you here by putting the words "Spears Breasts Honey-Glazed" into the META tags of my home page, I have to devise some way of keeping you for a while, and getting you to come back. And after my offer to take tasteful nude photos of the TIS Ladies Auxiliary (Misty Quinn, [CENSORED BY ORDER OF WIFE], Cassie Moore, Karen Accavallo, and Lauren Strutzel) and post them here was turned down (regretfully, I'm sure), I hit upon adding some web columns here. Why will web columns get you to come back? They probably won't. But they're better reasons to come back than the rest of the site, which pretty much gets updated four times a year with stuff most of you have read before. Hence, web-only content! Whoo-hoo! Can't read this in the print issue, bubba.
    Once I'd decided on web columns as the newest avenue for my shit-runneth-over personal contentville, however, I couldn't find anyone to actually write a web column for the longest time. I floated the idea to Rob Gala, nemesis and Official Radical, and he seemed offended, probably thinking that it was just a ploy to ghetto-ize his writings and keep him out of the printed issue. I proposed it to Karen Accavallo, who seemed enthusiastic but never wrote an article, sort of the same way she nods enthusiastically when I demand her phone number during the waning hours of office parties, backing up and suddenly sprinting for the elevators. I asked a few other people, but in the halfhearted, halfassed way I'm famous for, because I knew they wouldn't do it. So, I realized that I'd have to write at least one proposed column myself. Sort of like the "What the Fuck's Been Goin' On" page in the issues, except more of a "From the Webmaster" flavor.
    Naturally, since this is just another few hundred words I have to squeeze out of my soul, this falls squarely in the More Shit I Gotta Do category. It just means more shit I gotta do.
    Right here is about the point in this column where I would normally state the topic of this essay and get on with the show. unfortunately, I don't have a topic. I don't have much left in the gas tank, to be honest. I've been doing this zine for 5+ years now, and this web site for 2+, and all that writing means I've mentioned all my anecdotes, made every joke about six times, and fallen back on half-assed bromides and insult-humor more than once. There just isn't much more to say. I must admit I'm amazed that you're even still reading it - I'm a fraud! I'm also often tempted to just reissue older articles and see if anyone noticed, but I have the sort of luck that dictates someone will notice and rub my nose in it. So, like a marathon runner reaching back for those last few miles despite the squishy sound of blood soaking into his sneakers, I'll fill up the rest of this column with an explanation of what this column will be about. Unless I have to get drunk just to write it, which happens sometimes, and then it will probably be just an incoherent collection of upset words.

    Basically, my column will be what you'd expect: a general overview of the Joys of Webmastering innerswine.com. You'll thrill to the secret knowledge of how this smooth technological wonder gets produced every few months. You'll scream and tear out your hair as I mope on again about Microsoft and Unix and all sorts of boring technical issues. You'll hear about my horrifying years as an AOL member, and how glad I am that I got out before version 4.0. You'll hear about the amusing emails I get. You'll get a peek inside my server logs, and the interesting facts they contain. Most importantly, you'll get even more me than you're used to getting - and that is what this web site is all about, Bubba. Me. And my web site.
    Let's start with my philosophy of web publishing: Keep it simple, stupid. I think the main strength of the Internet and its flashy cousin the WWW is its open, standard architecture, which allows us to share information easily. I don't like all the fucked-up extensions to that simple, graceful standard. I design this web space to be accessible to everyone - from people using Lynx or Arachne on Unix and DOS boxes to the poor souls who actually run IE 5.5. There is no Flash. There is no javascript. Flash is fun but is just a useless hunk of chrome right now. Javascript is pure evil, and I rarely go to a site twice if it requires javascript. I set no cookies, and have only one multimedia event on the whole site: that annoying and slightly broken WAV file that plays when you hit the index page. I use some nested tables to format text, but I eschew frames. I also categorize animated GIF files as pure evil. So there.
    Basically, what I want is a clean, text-based collection of HTML pages that will look equally good on your Pentium IV box running Windoze 2000 and your 486 running New Deal Office. The tables muck that up a bit, but I confess to giving in to some mild page formatting over usability. But even if the text looks a bit cockeyed, you'll be able to read every page here pretty easily on any system out there, and that's the goal. It should be the goal for every web site, in my humble opinion. You put up a site to reach an audience, whether they're consumers or readers or what have you. Telling us we need to have a 4.0+ browser, javascript enabled, and patience for the Flash intro to finish is just stupid.

    Finally, let me address the whole green-on-black issue. Some people think green-on-black is one of the worst color combinations I could have chosen. It probably was. You can blame Jeof Vita for that. He did the initial web page design back in 1998. Personally, I like the green on black look, so you can all go soak your heads.
    Well, that's it for my initial column. I'll be updating this sucker every 2 weeks, so check back if you want to. In the meantime, please feel free to drop me a note.