After an arduous couple of weeks spent deep in the heart of software, I have to spend some time not typing. I'll be back to my old online self in the third week of April.

While I rest my fingers, I've asked my friend Doug to take over this page and do whatever he wants with it.

April 10, 1999

Hi it's Doug sitting in for Adam again. Adam mentioned he wanted me to fill in for him and do some writing about gin and workshoes. I worked up a really fascinating thesis entitled "Extropy and The Drinking Working Class During Prohibition" but after 17 revisions, selling the motion picture rights, and offers to appear on Oprah, i realize he asked me to write about sin and virtue rather than gin and workshoes. So I guess I'll try to come up with something as brilliant as my recent thesis.

I think what I will do is cover one sin and one virtue every day. These will be my particular opinions and will not be based on earlier works by Popes, Prophets, Depak Chopra, or Bill Bennet.

The Great Sin
Nobody really talks about this sin but in my mind it's the most pernicious of them all. I think you know what I'm talking about. That's right: stupidity. Let me begin with an example: I have been dealing with this internet company for about a month trying to get one small simple task done by them. For a while I just assumed everyone I was talking to was on CRACK COCAINE until I realized that to be as dense as they are they would have to be doing MASSIVE amounts of it and would probably have died in their own vomit by now if it was a case of drug use. Then I realized that these people are JUST PLAIN STUPID, a few cents short of a dollar, a few fries short of a happy meal, elevator doesnt go all the way to the top floor, not the sharpest knives in the drawer, etc.

The kicker came yesterday when, during my 20th telephone conversation with them, a woman asked me to send them THE SAME FAX I'VE SENT THEM FIVE TIMES ALREADY!!! But THAT wasn't the kicker part: the real kicker was that when I told her my name she said, and i quote, "Dung? like D-U-N-G?". What can you really say to that? Nothing. In the face of such idiocy one can only laugh and try to forget that this is Internic and they are the folks holding the keys to the ENTIRE World Wide Web.

Try not to think about it.

The Great Virtue
Well gee, that's a tough one. Let's start by weeding out a few things first. In general, anything that Bill Bennet considers a moral defect I am probably in favor of so he's not a good source. I would say if we are looking for virtues we would be safe to not bother looking too closely at anyone in Hollywood except Gwyneth Paltrow who I would like to look at very closely, in my arms if possible. I was at the store today and, this is true, I saw a headline in the Star that said that she was mad because her boyfriend hooked up with Mariah Carey. Ummmm, so this guy gets Gwyneth AND Mariah???? It's bozos like that that make things so hard for the rest of us. But I would say that whoever that rat bastard is that he probably is doing SOMETHING right and we might want to use him as some sort of baseline for our efforts at determining the great virtue.

Let me interject a personal note to our women readers and say that I hope I haven't alienated you from any further interest in this page. Adam will be back soon and isn't as much of a blithering idiot as I am. It's those bastards at Internic... they've turned me into some kind of animal... reduced me to my most basic instincts. It's my theory that I'm part of a larger psychological study being done by the CIA using Internic as a front. They want to find out how far a man can go before he will break and be driven to madness. Clearly they are using a highly effective means of psychological torture.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, well to be honest I really know nothing of virtue, but I know it when I see it and that guy who's dating Mariah and Gwyneth seems to be on the right track. Maybe he'll write a book or something.