One day, whilst I innocently sifted through the Web, a disturbing new development cast a bitter pall over life and sucked out any hope for the future like a giant hope-sucking mosquito. The Seven Deadly Sins Homepage, the definitive electronic voice on human vice and folly, was no longer utterly unique. An imposter, Jeff Heimberger's Seven Deadly Sins, had strolled like a preoccupied gazelle into my established predatory territory on the creative savanna. I could only assume that he was either 1) sadly unaware that the idea was being done elsewhere, better, or 2) willfully borrowing ideas from the 7DS Homepage in cheerful admission that this made him look uncreative. Given my extraordinary (some friends even say tragic) faith in humanity, I could only believe the former. So I sent off the following letter, in order to clear up the situation before it degenerated into greater unpleasantness.
November 28, 1997
Dear Jeff,
I recently perused your website, "Jeff Heimberger's Seven Deadly Sins". As the proprietor of the Seven Deadly Sins Homepage (http://www.deadlysins.com), I'm pleased to see renewed interest this age-old architecture for human damnation. There's nothing quite so satisfying as risking an eternal roasting session in the festering flesh-pits of Hell by satirizing someone else's conception of right and wrong.
The wonder of the Web is its capacity to display the creativity and originality of its participants. If we are willing to explore new and untapped ideas, we expand the horizons of those around us. Since I've already got the Seven Deadly Sins pretty well covered, let me offer some suggestions of alternative topics into which you might channel your considerable talents:
1) The Seven Heavenly Virtues - Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Temperance, Prudence
2) The seven days of the week
3) The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - The Great Pyramids of Egypt, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, The Colossus of Rhodes, The Lighthouse of Alexandria
4) The Seven Dwarves - Dopey, Sneezy, Bashful, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Doc
5) The Seven Ages of Man - Check Shakespeare's "As You Like it" (II, vii)
6) The Seven Continents
7) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - 1954 musical, directer by Stanley Donen
I hope these suggestions will be useful as you make your future plans.
Oddly enough, just around this time, the listings for the Seven Deadly Sins Homepage
inexplicably vanished
from several major search engines. I could barely contain my
growing sense of mistrust for
Jeff Heimberger's Seven Deadly
Sins, but vowed in the name of my faith in the human race to reserve judgment.
Days went by, with no response. At long last I wrote another letter.
December 16, 1997
Dear Jeff,
A couple weeks ago I wrote to congratulate you on your fine, if redundant, website. Like you, my professional obligations at times prevent me from responding to the deluge of fan mail pouring into my homepage. So in the spirit of fine colleagues who sit by a roaring fire and discuss trifling events while sipping fine cognac, blissfully unaware of the brutality of the world outside their wood-paneled cloister, I'm writing to stimulate some dialogue on Ideas.
I think Ideas are far more important than the unpleasant reality of everyday life, don't you? Political prisoners who have been jailed for decades will sometimes preserve their sanity by imagining all the other places they'll go if they're let out of their cell, and not left to rot there, or taken outside and shot. I take this as proof that the world of Ideas is more important than the so-called "real world". I feel only pity for the many people who possess such a limited imagination that they cannot transcend this shoddy everyday existence.
And what is the Web, but the vastest marketplace of Ideas ever imagined? I sometimes attempt to sit as comfortably as possible, free of binding clothing, in a darkened room while I surf the Web, so I can receive the Ideas it contains without the unpleasant mediating influence of my corporeal form. Wouldn't it be nice if, like David Bowman at the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey", we could be entirely free of the humiliation of the flesh and exist in a state of pure thought? I think the Web comes so close that sometimes, anonymously searching through the cultural accretion of our age in a darkened room, I feel free and immensely more powerful than the people outside, who are forced to live in the "real world".
One of the Ideas I consider very frequently is that all life extends its boundaries by Extension and Assimilation. A simple example is the mechanism by which a coral reef expands: a few component species go out and begin to populate an area beyond the reef, transforming it into a more reeflike environment, then other species gradually "piggyback" and follow them, establishing a complete and homogenous ecosystem. Ideas themselves are accepted in very much the same way. Someone Extends our imaginations by placing new Ideas at the edge of the cultural gestalt (The Seven Deadly Sins Homepage!) and then other species Assimilate the newly-acquired intellectual territory, homogenizing it and make it palatable for the common, less hardy components of the ecosystem (Jeff Heimberger's Seven Deadly Sins!).
Truly you and I represent the dual forces through which human thought is expanded and solidified into tough yet living fiber. It gives me genuine pleasure to have come to terms with our two web pages as complimentary components of the same living process, rather than as brute competitors for the limited attention of the surfing public. I wish you all the best and eagerly await your stimulating response.
Yours in pursuit of a better world,
Adam
No response as yet, but the Seven Deadly Sins Homepage will
keep you informed of developments as they get uglier and more lurid.