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Again Uncle Gus helps parents with the difficult task of explaining biological realities to delicate young minds! Hello children, I'm glad you came back to listen to another little story from me, Uncle Gus! You are all looking so nice and clean today! And you are so attentive! None of you are squirming like the naughty children do! Your Mommies and Daddies must be VERY PROUD OF YOU. Let's all clap our hands for how GOOD we are being! YAY! Today I'm going to talk about "homosexuals." Can you say "homosexual"? Come on, it's easy! Say "Homo." GOOD! Now say "Sex"! Aren't you talking JUST LIKE A GROWN UP! Okay...now "YOU-All." EXCELLENT! Now put them together like cars in a choo-choo! "Homo-sex-you-all!" Yay! I think you deserve a great big hug! Now I'm going to tell a story about Billy and Bobby. They are two "Homosexuals." They live together in a house JUST LIKE MOMMY AND DADDY! Isn't that nice? They love each other very very much. JUST LIKE MOMMY AND DADDY! Sometimes they kiss each other. Sometimes they hug each other. Sometimes they sit and watch teevee together and hold hands. How many of you have seen your Mommy and Daddy hold hands? Yes...many of you have. Billy and Bobby hold hands just like Mommy and Daddy. Now we learned yesterday that Mommy and Daddy sometimes get together so that Daddy can put his wee-wee in Mommy. They do this when they want to make a baby, but they also do it just for fun. Now Billy and Bobby can't make babies. This is because you need a Mommy and a Daddy to make a baby. Two Daddies can only use their wee-wees to go wee-wee and to have FUN! How many of you like to have fun? Lots of you! Well...when Billy and Bobby have fun like Mommy and Daddy, they can't do it the same way. This is because Billy and Bobby are both boys and their wee-wees are the same. They don't fit together the way Mommy's and Daddy's do. They have to do something different. One thing they do is that one of them will put his wee-wee in the other's mouth. This is a very very fun thing for them to do together. It sounds gross to you, but some day you will understand. Another thing that Billy and Bobby do is that Billy will put his wee-wee in Bobby's behind, in the place where Number Two comes out when you have to go to the bathroom. This is also very fun for them. Most of you probably think that is weird. But grown-ups do lots of things that are weird. We have wars. We drink beer. We even put plants in rolled-up pieces of paper and suck in the smoke when the plants burn. Someday you'll understand.
The truth about Infoseek is even more disturbing than I had thought. They have apparently launched a massive purge of their index. Now only about half of my musings remain to be found. All the individual Big Fun Glossary content pages are gone from the index as well. Trying to resubmit them, I get the standard error message that speaks of the horrors of what is called "adult content." I don't know what artificial intelligence their robot is using, but it mystifies me. Simple occurrence of obscenities no longer trip it (as was the case two days ago); some other factor is at play. Last night I tested it long and hard with successive levels of obscenity. A test page with "fuck" and "shit" on it was indexed just fine. It only stopped indexing pages when I included phrases like "anal sex." Based on the evidence, it seems Infoseek must have been purchased by Pat Robertson. This has left me fearing the same fate might befall Altavista some day. Forgive me for sounding alarmist but: what are the safeguards to our ability to speak as equals on the Web when the search engines are owned by corporations with all manner of vested interests? It could be that search engines will some day be regarded as utilities, and they will have strict guidelines imposed on them as to who and what they can or cannot index. The alternative is a world where relevance is sold to the highest bidder or given to those whose ideas best promote a corporation's image. That world already exists at the dry, souless and completely mercenary OpenText corporation. Does anyone out there use OpenText? If you do, you are promoting such a world.
What are the safeguards to our ability to speak as equals on the Web when the search engines are owned by corporations with all manner of vested interests? Someone from Infoseek responded by email to my complaints by saying
[The] new Add URL feature has been abused over and over again by adult content sites using unrelated keywords to get into the service under such searches as playgrounds, kids, teens, etc.That just doesn't seem credible. And no one has yet explained the ongoing purge to me. I am demoralized.
8:00pm Eastern Daylight Time
I'm at the University of Virginia's Cocke Hall and I just got email from Glen Roberts. He wants me to create a "boycott Infoseek" banner. I'll work on that tonight.
Of course, every bad thing in my life has had its good effects. My problem with Infoseek, which really isn't that big of a deal, is no different. The preposterous notion that someone would try to get their porno site to pop up in a search for playgrounds (see above) is what, last night, got the creative cogs turning within my brain to produce the little "children's" stories you've been seeing at the start of my entries. Explaining graphic and bizzare sexuality "to children" in the style of a gushing kindergarten teacher is my latest obsession. Infoseek gave me the idea. Thanks go out to Pat Robertson and the other fine folks at Infoseek.
