There's something about the news

of a mid-grade disaster that

brings out the appetite for a

full-blown apocalypse. With

fewer than 1000 shopping

days 'til the end of the

millennium, it almost makes

sense - pile a little bad news

here upon a little bad news

there, and soon some kind of

theological tipping point is

reached. One minute it's Wired

woes and news of Suck's imminent

demise, the next minute the site

is gone, and by the first

commercial break the faithful

are disappearing from behind the

wheels of the cars in

mid-traffic jam, leaving the

tailgating heathens more irate

(and doomed) than ever.

Which isn't to say it's not the

end of the world, but for the

time being, you're stuck with

Suck. Had our facility with the

arcane methodology of media

manipulation extended a lick

past the tips of our tongues,

we'd have played make-pretend

and disappeared for a few weeks

or a few hours, depending on how

many vacation days we'd kept

tucked away. But while an

infantile mortality hoax might

have been good for a headline or

two, our reappearance would

likely have seemed less like a

third-day resurrection than a

post-lost-weekend walk of shame.

At best, we'd have enjoyed a

fate similar to the Violent

Femme's dopus opus "Blister in

the Sun" - celebrated 10

Web-years later by people so

pleased by familiarity they

completely forget that their

nostalgia isn't rooted in the

tune, but in how passionately

they hated it in the first

place.

We think it was Beckett who

wrote "the day that you die will

be like any other day, only

shorter," but when you're

creeping into year three of your

coma in SoMa, that's hardly

helpful. Or, as one of our

silver-screen heroes once

mumbled, "S.O.S. Kill me." So,

with apologies to those lucky

enough to have kept their hands

clear of the rumor mill - the

ones who never had the

opportunity to contemplate a Web

that doesn't suck - we present

instead these three brief

paragraphs of ominous

protestations instead of the

much-more-agreeable business as

usual.