Fun_People Archive
16 Dec
A Test of Character... Will I Pass?

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 96 19:11:35 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: A Test of Character...  Will I Pass?

    So I'm happily sifting through my mailbox trying to winnow the mail from  
the spam from the humor from the political activism from the ... what's  
this?  A strange piece of e-mail starts out:

> Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 18:00:57 -0800 (PST)
> From: athenia@coolcentral.com
> To: psl@acm.org
> Subject: Congratulations! You're the Cool Site of the Hour
>
>
> Dear Webmaster,
>
> Congratulations! Your site will be the Cool Site of the Hour for the
> next hour.
>
> Cool Site of the Hour is the first of its kind, and you are now one of
> the chosen few to participate in this historic event. Cool Central is
> devoted exclusively to the best sites the Web has to offer, and yours
> is definitely one of them. To see your name in lights go to:
>
> http://www.coolcentral.com/hour/ (but you better be quick!)
>
> After we spotlight your site for the appointed hour, it will be listed in
> the Cool Central hourly archives, which will generate a steady stream of
> hits.

    Oh no!  It's bad enough that the Fun_People Archive site will be asked  
to survive another barrage of hits (this time from people who have no idea  
what it is) but worse yet, I'm being given one of those awards that I've been  
making fun of for so long.  Do I swallow my pride and stop parodying the  
FOOL awards?  Or do I simply move any awards that I get from the FOOL group  
to the COOL group?  Or do I simply ignore the award?  Oh well, it's only for  
an hour... it'll be over in another few minutes.

    Oh no!  A little browsing uncovers another awkward fact: the Cool Site  
of the Hour guys got it from Pirate Pete's Pick o' the WWW who gave the  
Fun_People Archives their award for today (12/16/96).  I KNOW I've seen that  
logo in the FOOL group...
    What to do?  Should I pretend that those stochastically selected (picked  
randomly each time it's loaded) awards I make fun of on my home page (check  
out <http://www.empire.net/~psl/index.html#Awards> to see what I mean) and  
the awards on <http://www.empire.net..> (the Fun_People  
Archive page) are unrelated...  What would you do?  What will I do?

Peter

[UPDATE: Peter's home page moved in September 1998 to:
	<http://www.langston.com/>  -psl]

 Peter Langston - psl@acm.org - Seattle, WA - http://www.empire.net/~psl/
prev [=] prev © 1996 Peter Langston []