To: Dobbs                   
Operation: Tower of Babble  
Status: Proceeding According
 To Plan 9                  

The Stim launch was a successful

one, despite the delays, which

were unfortunate, but necessary.

The cover story was that the

Stim staph lacked and slacked,

but, as you know, this was

largely the same teem that put

together bOING bOING, HotWired,

The Happy Mutant Handbook, and

Spiv, working on a purely

finger-painting-by-numbers

project. The tale that the geeks

can't tweak doublespeak

concealed our need to stall the

launch in order to devalue our

most recent new media prodigy,

so that our operatives could

take stewardship from the IBM

and Sears megacorps for a song.

Stim is our most polished media

hack to date. The suggestion

that we could better integrate

our technology and natural

systems research by dosing our

UI experts with LSD-25 was

brilliant. Stim is "virtually"

impossible to navigate, and the

wasted brain cycles of the Mutes -

not to mention the inevitable

cell mutations from the

minoxidil treatments that the

Mutes should incur as a result

of their hair-pulling - makes

the planet ripe for a Mutant

takeover from the disoriented

managerial class. The number of

clicks to get to the center of

our Tootsie Pop is phenom, and

we've undoubtedly brought

obfuscation to way new extremes

of toasted oat goodness with the

section names "Sparky,"

"Trender," and "Automedia."

While we assemble our Mutant

forces, the Mutes click and

ponder.

We recently tweaked Spiv, with a

pulsating "Subscribe" button to

grab the same demo-grafic info

once again, just to keep the

Mutes dancin' the jitterbug with

multiple usernames and passwords

on "different" sites. We call it

our "nervous system." Other

brain candy anims have been

sprinkled throughout Spiv, as

well as Stim (and HotWired and

Suck, which we'll get into

shortly). It's almost as much

fun as when we named our last

twitch toy "Java" - they're too

busy laughing with us to get the

joke. The Mutes are so obsessed

with the possibility that they

might be Normals that they're

only too happy to make

themselves toolz and kooks.

Some deep within the bowelz of

the movement make the argument

that Spiv's "portal to the

digital revolution," "nrrrd,"

should link directly to HotWired -

and HotWired's Pop should just

link straight to Spiv, with

other interchangeable content

sections to follow. Such an

arrangement could produce a

tangled Web, indeed. However, we

feel that the current setup is

justified, given the cost

ephectiveness of repurposing

content over multiple sitez,

what with the natural youser

frustration at reading the same

article multiple Xs (with only

slight variations, and under

different bylines).

Unfortunately, parts of the Spiv

redesign got away from us.

Turner's Normals snuck subheads

into the section names in the

redesign, so that the Mutes who

aren't totally brain-addled from

our other mutations have a

chance to recognize "Antidote,"

for example, as Spiv's music

section.

Our decision to transfer Agent

Kreth from the HotWired

draintrust to Stim's digital

daisies almost lost our

phlagship project to the

non-Muted Normals. However, our

operatives were able to take

advantage of a recent Wired

restructuring, and install

Mutant Wolf into a position of

"responsibility." Though Wolf

is, as usual, wildly

unpredictable, his own internal

confusion spreads like a

retrovirus throughout the

HotWired knetwerk, with his

gnewest brainchild, the front

door "splash," taking HotWired

to the glory days of the threat

or menace of 1.0's "Login or

Join?"

Phinally, the takeover of the

Suck website was an unkualified

"suck-cess." After the sellout

of Suck to Wired Ventures we were

able to rid ourselves of those

pesky Original Formula Sucksters

and appoint Shake 'n' Bake Agent

"Wired Online" Frauenfelder in

their place. The committee-

designed Suck 2.0 is a clear

success, with that just-outa-beta

crash-n-burn-baby-burn feel and

an unnatural coupling of daily

and weekly content - mischevious

phun for "higher" primates!

Thanks to the happy mutation, we

can now send cleartext

transmissions to HQ, disguising

our posts as mutated "parody."

Nanoo-nanoo.