We could almost hear the Odwalla

spraying out the collective nose

of HotWired Ventures LLC when

the various board members sat

down to their morning Wall

Street Journal last Tuesday. We

wonder if prez Andrew Anker

imagined he'd be reading about

HotWired's elephantine 500,000

hits a month in the WSJ when he

told the Red Herring back in

December that "some of the

public numbers are generally the

least relevant. We like to play

the public perception game by

throwing out meaningless

numbers." Sure, there are at

least three ways to measure

"hits," and they're all equally

meaningless when stacked up

against the zillions of quick

blips the search engines must

enjoy daily, but 500K? A month?

The Sheet Metal Workers page

probably gets that kind of

traffic just from confused

Pantera fans.

But while the HotWired execs were

smarting from the amusingly

blithe mixture of questionable

facts and switchblade op-ed,

the Suck "exo-brain" (don't ask

us!) was whinnying with glee at

being compared favorably to

cheesecake shots of Teri

Hatcher. Granted, our prose has

been fittingly described as

"wooden." We can almost forgive

the paper's omission of our URL -

the WSJ is geriatric even by old

media standards - but the sheer

artistic laziness that went into

their decision to not include

the traditional dot portraits is

hardcore unforgivable. Even Jim

Rose got one - and all he had to

do was parade freaks with 10 lb.

weights fastened to their

genitalia! Just when we thought

we'd cleverly reinvented the

"Circus Sideshow" concept, it

turns out we'd been played for

clowns. As usual.

Apparently some of the chefs in

the Web kitchen are following

our recipe by salting their

pages down with copious amounts

of cynicism to assure voracious

consumption by the masses.

Witness Bonejangler, a curious

amalgamation that masquerades as

a literary mag with a sick sense

of humor and amounts to,

predictably, "some shit we

wrote."

Given the fact that the requisite

merchandise for sale features

images of women in bondage,

finding "The Pocket Reference to

Appropriated Love: Man's

retaliation against ALL MEN MUST

DIE!" shouldn't have come as a

surprise. But the content to

this section, seemingly a how-to

guide for men trying to score

via romantic cheese ("[w]e know

there are more women out there

just waiting to be duped!") left

us totally stumped:

Is this wiseacre maxim, heartfelt

schmaltz, or notes from a concept

meeting for the next Obsession

ad? It makes us proud to see

just how many young writers are

finding better and better ways

to garnish their shit.

"Who Do You Want To Be Today?"

A. Download Microsoft Internet

Explorer.

B. Go to the "Compatibility" part

of the Preferences/Options

popup. Type in the user agent

string of any browser you'd like

to masquerade as.

C. Surf your favorite sites.

It wasn't that long ago that, in

the name of sledgehammer

opinion-mongering, we allowed

our bile-gagged reminiscin' to

cloud our expectations of

Macromedia's Shockwave tech. It

seems like our self-satisfied

proclamations have emerged with

the same idle integrity as a

snail in salt. The unravelling

of our folly took place

incrementally - we had thought

ourselves vindicated by the

useless 300k spinning Shockwave

logo downloads on the Macromedia

site, but by the time we planted

our tired bungholes on Patrick

Joiner's Beavis and Butt-head

Extravaganza site, we knew the

ruse had been played. Who

would've thought that the

totality of human interaction

could be encapsulated in a

concise 8-button menubar?

Although we all know that an app

can't truly be labeled killer

until something dies, we'd be

happy to mug at the gallows. But

that'll be ten smackers for the

rope and another $17.50 for the

admission to the execution. It's

not like we forced you to pull

our fingers...