This is Satire. Not the Saturday Evening Post
© 2001 Donotgo.com

I am here with netesq Chief Evangelist at wherewithal.com

Mr. Esq, or can I call you Net?

David would be fine.

So what exactly is a Chief Evangelist? Should I be careful not to take the Lord's name in vain?

It's an industry term well understood by people in the know. You see, our little start-up company is like a new baby Jesus, and I go out among the heathens and let them know their savior has arrived.

And they listen to you and believe you?

Well, the blind follower types do. They generally have a favorable opinion of evangelists, you know. Then there's the magic words.

Magic words?

Yes, Extra Special Super Duper Technology--a lot of people really go for that. I call it ESSDT. People also like things reduced to as few letters as possible.

So why wherewithal--isn't that a lot of letters and syllables for a web address?

Well I didn't pick the name, but I think the idea was to get extra traffic from all the people who would misspell stuff like whatthehell.com or whereitwithyourbluedress.org

Getting back to the subject of your super technology...

Super Duper Technology!

Yeah, right. So, what does it do?

It innovates and totally redimensionalizes the search experience.

How so?

With Super Duper Technology!

What I would like to know is how does the Super Duper Technology do the redimensionalizing?

Well, I don't know all the details, but you can ask our 12-year-old CD Technology Manager. All I know is it works great, and it makes all kinds of things possible.

Like what?

Well I used it to make some exceptional toast the other day. It was just right for making the perfect tuna salad sandwich. I really like sandwiches. Do you think it is near lunch time?

The ESSDT--what does it look like?

Well it's super shiny and has these magic slots in the top. You put stuff in and the technology pops it back up completely redimensionalized. I made these keychains this morning out of the lid from a Cool-Whip container. Aren't they neat?

Yes, very nice, aah... let's move on to the WWA "community." Is it growing?

Like an infectious boil. One day we had 16 editors, the next it was 17. There are so many now I am having a hard time keeping track of all the names. The weird thing is, a lot of them have the same real name but very different screen names. Coincidences can be funny.

How does everyone get along?

Well pretty good. The Gottis don't like the Corleones much, and sometimes they all start picking on me calling me Hitler and stuff. But I deal with that by getting on my hobby-pony and typing stuff about clarifying amendments to subsections of whatever article in part b of somesuch guidelines and that usually shuts them up. Sometimes just saying "fortiori" works.

I have forgotten, what does that mean?

Extra Special Super Duper Technology.

Do you have any aspirin?

Sure do. I live on these things.

I have never seen a yellow and black aspirin before.

Neat huh, I get them from a local vampire health food store.

I think I will save it for later, thanks. Speaking of dark creatures, what's your opinion of arttworks?

I like him, but as I always say after I say "but", I also like to pull my eyeballs out and wash them in the toilet. The big problem with arttworks is he doesn't realize that I am smarter and funnier than he is. And he has this persistent habit of continuing to defend his opinion after I have told him he is wrong. It really can be very irritating.

It is his contention that your community is the same community that is at all the volunteer directories. What do you think of that?

Well if our community is here and theirs is over there, how could they be the same thing. There and here are very different words, so they can't be the same thing.

It is also his opinion that the community is so protective of its advantage and so void of ethics that it will allow no real expansion. He claims this is why goguides never grew in spite of hundreds of millions of page views.

Goguides was a completely different atmosphere. They only had one message board, so the likelihood of someone getting harassed by a stoner to leave was very high. We have a whole lot of message boards, so that will not be a problem here.

You really believe that will make the difference?

No, but I had to say something, and I didn't want to use my last ESSDT wild card.

What about his comparison of the group to a termite colony?

That is so unfair--termites eat the world and build useless mounds of saliva and dirt. I'll bet a shiny nickel our directory will be a lot more than that. Wasn't that the lunch whistle?

Just one more question. If there is nothing to prevent an editor from spiking the directory with their own sites, what's to stop them from spiking the directory with their own sites?

The Extra Special Super Duper...

Technology. Right, I should have seen that coming.

Sure shoulda.