After creating the alternate site for Campus in Flames, I print up the URL on slips of paper to give to my classmates and other people I know, but whom I'm not interested in actively directing to this site and whom I'm not going annoy by spamming with the URL. I wish I could have had the slips put into fortune cookies, but I don't have access to a fortune cookie manufacturer, so that's out. Besides, slips of paper are easier to carry in my pocket. The cookies would get all smashed, I would end up eating them myself, and then I'd be passing out sticky slips of paper with crumbs on.
Another advantage slips of paper have over fortune cookies is that they can be unobtrusively placed in strategic locations. Figuring that other area residents will be interested in fire pictures and unsatisfied with the lame ones that the newspaper posted (some of those pictures were good, but by and large, lameness ruled), I make my URL available to the general public, meaning those members of it who eat at the same restaurants I do, by placing the slips in the plastic cardholders that restaurants use to display the drinks list, for example, on every table. No, I don't go through the restaurant putting one in every cardholder, just in the cardholder on the table where I'm sitting.
So. This evening we eat at the Thai place. I have forgotten which table I seeded and I figure that by now the staff has removed my slip or a customer has taken it away. However, I am abruptly reminded when the people sitting at the next table suddenly start saying my URL out loud, over and over, and incorrectly. At least they understand the connection between the URL and the fire.
With monumental effort, I restrain myself both from correcting them and from laughing at how even the Internet expert of the group isn't too clear on what a URL is. Oz sees me grinning, but has to wait for an explanation until after they leave.
347 words | April 11, 2004 09:50 PM | Real true story