God’s Underwear

Hypertext is dangerous stuff.

In a prehistoric article from 1989 titled Hypertext: Beyond the Hype, the author says the following:

Another criticism of hypertext is that users are presented with so much information that their human circuits burst with cognitive overload. While reading through a document, choices must constantly be made about which links to follow and which to ignore. […] Although this problem is not new with hypertext, computerized access does add a sometimes overwhelming dimension to it.

The same article mentions that prototype hypertext applications are in development at several educational institutions, but they are not yet commercially available. At this point in my little story (which is growing longer and more bloated by the keystroke) I’d like to ask all of my readers (ie. both of you) to grovel at the feet of Tim Berners-Lee, not just for creating the HTTP protocol, but for giving it to the world free of charge. Other people, I dunno, Bill Gates for instance, might have tried to profit from their invention and we wouldn’t have the internet we do today.

So what was I saying? Oh yes, hypertext is dangerous stuff.

Sometimes I’m amazed at the journeys the web takes me on. And on some nights I do find my human circuits bursting with cognitive overload. Tonight was one of those nights.

It started innocently enough. I was kinda bored with the web. I’d read all my usual sites (over there on the right, below the archive) and didn’t know where to go. Then I remembered I hadn’t read Robot Johnny in awhile. So I went there, and he just mentioned kind of offhand that he had a new favorite Wikipedia entry. It was the entry for undergarment.

Now as I’ve said twice already, hypertext is dangerous stuff, and possibly it’s most concentrated form is Wikipedia. If plain hypertext has a danger level analogous to, say, drinking beer, then Wikipedia is like smoking a mixture of hashish and crack while mainlining heroin and getting a blowjob. I’ve learned that if I want to be productive, it’s best not to follow a link to Wikipedia, because once there I’m pretty much done for the day.

So I read all about underwear. I learned its varieties, nicknames, and history through the ages. But most interesting to me was the link regarding the Mormon temple garment variety. This just in: Them Mormons is some goofy fuckers.

Unfortunately for me, that article referred to the Judeo-Christian God by name, and before I knew it I was not just knee-deep in the etymology of the tetragrammaton (and learning fancy big words to boot). Of course as close as anybody can figure, His name is Yahweh (pronounced ee-ah-oo-ay), but the real pronunciation may have been lost due to strict adherance to the “name in vain” commandment and the general lax rules regarding vowels in early Hebrew.

This led me to my theory (which is mine) that the original, lost pronunciation of the name of God is “Oy Vey“.

It was just one innocent link. Now it’s 3 hours later, my eyes are bloodshot, my head aches, and I know way too much about underwear and ancient Hebrew texts. Is there such thing as hypertext detox?