There are only so many ways to be cool these days, no? Gizmos are definitely in the limelight at the moment. You've got to have your cell phone and your pager - oh, sorry, actually that's supposed to be a digital phone (cellular is already way too passe) and your alpha-numeric pager. If you're not cutting edge, you're just not cool.

OK, so digital phones and alpha-numeric pagers are getting to be a-dime-a-dozen - what next? Cars are cool, but cars aren't to the point of being gizmos just yet. Maybe once we have other reasonably "fashionable" means of travelling that will replace cars (personal hover craft??) cars can become a little more gizmo-ish, but for the time being they're still just cars. Personalized plates are beginning to touch on the car as a way of showing your "coolness", but it's not enough. Funny bumper stickers and witty license plate frames are also good, but neither are they nearly enough. (Sorry if I've just dashed anyone dreams of having been cool enough).

I'm very disappointed if you haven't seen the point I'm ever-so-slowly approaching (as is my cool and fashionable way of approaching any point)...your own domain name for crying out loud! What could be cooler than that? Well, I guess it could be cooler if you owned things like tacobell.com and batman.com and sold them to the rightful owners for big bucks...yeah, rightful owners, there's a funny one. Maybe it's bad taste to bring this all up in the wake of InterNIC's big booboo, but regardless of some of InterNIC's dumbass former employees, it's still the coolest thing you can do these days. It's all an idiot race for fame, but it provides us with the hilarious PETA sites [yes, I realize this is a little outdated now, seeing that peta.com has been apprehended by the rightful (?) owners]. And with more browsers acknowledging top level domains the battle will wage on more fiercely than ever!

I think my story is a special one, so I'll share it with you now. madi.com was free and floating in cyberspace 2 years ago and I vaguely thought of how neat it would be to own it, but knowing it was there and it would remain there led no urgency to the matter so I just let it sit. Silly me, for before I knew it, it was snatched up by a small internet provider in India. I still don't know what "madi" means in Indian, but it must be something terrific! I was thorougly depressed for a few days, but nothing short of a miracle and a million bucks is going to win any domain name once someone else has registered it, so I resigned myself to remaining just another long and unmemorable URL.

But lo and behold madi.com's web site disappeared a year and a half later and whois deemed the domain name "On Hold". Oh was that music to my ears! I celebrated and bided my time and before I knew it, madi.com was available! You can't imagine the release one feels knowing she has her own domain name. I'm sure you don't believe me, but you'd really have to live the life yourself to understand. You're really only half a person until you're thatperson.com

8/97