Goddammit, We Already Have Television Part II

    Just in case someone out there doubted that The Internet is going to eventually become a newer, crappier version of television  -television with cookies! television with buffer overflow exploits! television with computer virii!-  I am here now to drop the last stone in place. The combined genius of our World Media Conglomerate - we can hardly refer to them as separate companies with a a straight face anymore, can we?- has finally managed to have an epiphany and realize that things must change, that what's they've been doing isn't working. And in the end result they will swagger out and hand you: television! And most of you will be happy, or at least too groggy from watching Facts of Life rerun marathons to complain.
    I'm talking, of course, about advertising on The Internet. Up til now, this has come to us in too basic forms, equally filthy and ineffective: SPAM and banner ads. SPAM is universally loathed, of course, and a complex system has been erected to combat it. Even the lethargic and exhausted US Justice Department is finally getting into anti-Spam movements, and if we ever do manage to cut the flow of Spam down to a trickle, no one will miss it. Spam is at least effective in the sense that any time you can simultaneously contact 5 million people cheaply, you're bound to get a few suckers hooked in. Someone out there is sending $1 to the first six people on the list and adding their own name to the bottom, after all. Someone out there is purchasing Evidence Eliminator, presumably so they can laugh smugly when the FBI crashes through their door and some pencilneck in G-Man grey demands to see the Kiddie-pRon.
    Banner ads, on the other hand, are practically useless. First of all, they're too inconspicuous, sitting forlorn at the top or bottom or on the side of a web site. They're too easy to ignore as you try to read the content you came for. Advertisers have tried various things to draw your eye to them: they've animated them, put them into annoying javascript pop-up windows, plonked them down right in the middle of the text. Somehow, we annoying humans manage to look right past them  -in fact, a study concluded last year that teenagers are already conditioned to not even see banner ads (I dunno, I read it somewhere). As the bottom has fallen out of the Internet Boom, advertising rates have plummeted - if banners are useless to begin with, when it's revealed that no one is coming to your site anyway it's hard to justify paying for them.
    So, what have the brilliant innovators of today's technology come up with? Interruption Based Advertising: inserting a flash advertisement which much be viewed before the next portion of content is delivered. In other words, commercials.
    Here's how it would work: You go to www.somewebsite.com and click on an article that's 5 web pages long. You read the first two pages, and when you click on the link to page three, instead a flash advertisement will play - twenty seconds which you will not be able to turn off until it's over. Then the third page will load. It'll be just like television. Advertisers like it because it will take over your whole screen, so you won't be able to ignore it. Sure, they can't stop you from turning away, doing something constructive with your time, but come on, who's going to bother for 20 seconds? The bastards are working on an acceptable standard for this sort of thing, and you can expect to start seeing it soon. Televison, kiddies. Pretty soon it's all over.

The Loneliness of the Published Author

    Recently I set up a reading of my book at a local book store (get details at my book's page, if you want) and since then I've come across two disturbing descriptions of book signings, one sent to me by a helpful fan and one found on Jeff Kay's great site for his zine The West Virginia Surf Report. They read as follows:
 
 

    For an unknown and generally annoying author whose book is an amazingly overpriced $14 for a slim 160 pages, reading things like this just before doing a reading at a book store is not helping. FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME TO MY READING. I'll pay you all a dollar each, two if you ask a question.
     I can certainly see myself standing there, filled to my eyeballs with whiskey, nervously fondling the microphone as Legal Counsel [CENSORED BY ORDER OF WIFE], my Mother, and possibly a deranged homeless person who has confused me momentarily with the voice inside his head sit with painfully cheerful expressions on their faces. Oh, I can picture it. As a matter of fact, these days I can't close my eyes without picturing it. On that note...thanks for reading.

    New column in about two weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to drop me a note.