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Surfing
For The Saviour
by Mad Dog
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Something tells me that when the day comes that
I need to point my browser to "www.e-z-bail bonds .com" I’ll wish I had
memorized their phone number instead of their internet address. |
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I predict that by this time next year everyone on the face of the Earth will
have their own website. As it is you can’t go anywhere without seeing those three
w’s smacking you in the face. They’re on the sides of buses, candy bar wrappers,
even TV commercials, which makes no sense at all. I mean, who has time to watch TV
commercials when we’re all so busy putting animated images of dumb Scottie dogs
running back and forth barking on our website just so everyone else can sit around staring
at their computer screens waiting an eternity for a page to download and say, "Oh,
that again?". Though a recent
survey shows that San Francisco is the most Internet-wired city in the country, with 70%
of the population online (the other 30% being just plain wired), Los Angeles has to take
the prize for most blatant website promotion. There’s hardly a restaurant, gas
station, ice cream store, or shoe repair shop there that doesn’t have a banner
hanging out front broadcasting its web address.
While there’s no doubt this is convenient for some
things, I’m not sure it’s always practical. Sure it would be nice to check out
the daily specials at the doughnut shop before I leave the house in the morning. And yes
it would save gobs of time if I logged-on to the DeliCam before going to lunch so I could
make sure the roast beef is rare enough. But face it, they’re not all this useful.
Something tells me that when the day comes that I need to point my browser to
"www.e-z-bailbonds.com" I’ll wish I had memorized their phone number
instead of their internet address. Unless, that is, the police start letting us use their
computer so our one phone call can be to get online.
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Now you can drop by www.messiah cam. org any time of the day or night and look at live
shots of the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem, which is where they claim Jesus will show up. Of
course they don’t say when. |
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No one wants to
be left out of this stampede. Big corporations have websites. The pimply kid next store
who just wiped out your bank account by buying bomb supplies online with your credit card
has a website. Even revolutionaries like Mexico’s Zapatistas and the Kosovo
Liberation Army have websites. More and
more of these sites have webcams. These are stationary cameras which are kept on 24-hours
a day so people can log onto a site and watch nothing happen for very long periods of
time. Think of it as the Al Gore of the Internet. One which is a big success is the
JenniCam, where a young woman goes about her life while grown men fork over their
hard-earned cash hoping she’ll do, well, the types of things they dream about doing
with Jennifer Lopez. Or Shania Twain. Or just about anyone other than their wife.
There are webcams that show traffic, the changing leaves in
Virginia, and even the inside of a refrigerator so you can sit around and wait for someone
to open the door and reach in for the milk. A religious group, Daystar International
Ministry, has taken online voyeurism one step farther by setting up the MessiahCam.
That’s right. Now you can drop by www.messiahcam.org
any time of the day or night and look at live shots of the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem,
which is where they claim Jesus will show up. Of course they don’t say when
he’ll show up, which creates a big problem. At least with the ChangingLeavesCam I
know to watch during the fall.
The MessiahCam raises the proverbial bar
for the religious use of technology. Until now the prize was in the hands of the Lubavitch
Jews, who a couple of years ago took to carrying pagers so they can be alerted when the
Messiah shows up. Wouldn’t it just be too embarrassing if they got paged by someone
watching the MessiahCam?
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If this becomes a reality it won’t be long before we can sit in front of our computer
while it boots up and offer a prayer to Saint Isadore, asking her to protect us from
crashes, viruses, and Microsoft. |
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The Vatican,
never liking to be more than a few hundred years behind the times, is taking this
seriously. Not the MessiahCam, the Internet. They already have their own website at www.vatican.net. I guess www.pope.com was already taken.
But they want to do more, so they’re thinking about—hang onto your electronic
rosary!—assigning a patron saint of the Internet. And why
not? They have patron saints for television, headaches, and postal workers (Matrona,
Teresa of Avila, and Gabriel). They have patron saints for comedians, sore throats, and
hairdressers (Vitus, Blaise, and Martin de Porres). They even have a patron saint of
married women (Monica) and one for snakebite victims (Hilary) which makes you wonder if
Nostradamus had a hand in choosing them.
The frontrunner for the title of Patron Saint of the Internet
is reportedly Saint Isadore, who set up the first webcam over 1,400 years ago but had
trouble attracting anyone to his site since, well, there weren't many
computers in Seville, only barbers. Just kidding. Actually he wrote a 20-volume encyclopedia which they say is
kinda sorta like a database. In a way. If you squint real hard.
If this becomes a reality it won’t be long before we can
sit in front of our computer while it boots up and offer a prayer to Saint Isadore, asking
him to protect us from crashes, viruses, and Microsoft. We’ll be able to download
screensavers of Isadore that play "Amazing Gates", I mean, "Amazing
Grace" while little animated angels run back and forth across the screen barking.
We’ll even be able to email prayers to everyone in our address book asking Isadore to
save us from being flooded with chain emails.
On the other hand, we could just keep doing what we’re
already doing—staring at the MessiahCam and JenniCam while we place bets online about
which will be the first to show the Second Coming. I know where my money will be.
©1999 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read
them while waiting for Jenni to come out of the bathroom.
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