Gutter Bawl

Proving that this is one webmaster that will not go gently into any supposititious good night

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Webmaster of the United States of America.



Thank you very much.



I'll stand here for a few seconds looking important, and then I'll take your questions.







3, 4, 5.... That should about do it.



Now then, who has a question for me?



Yes, Nell.



Yes, Mr. Webmaster, an informed source tells me that big changes are in store here at your American Egghead site at Quass.com. Can you comment?



I can neither confirm nor deny that I will be instituting any big changes as early as tomorrow afternoon.



And what time, exactly?



No later than 3:00.



And what do these changes concern?



All right, already, you win: I'm sick of hiding. The fact is that I'm working on a site subscription system: There, I've said it.



What about those who say --



What, that I'm STILL going to die in a gutter anyway so why bother?



Well, yes, quite frankly.



First of all, I don't even know where any gutters are around here.



I see.



It is true that the family Colonial in Seaford, Virginia, has a gutter, but it would be very impractical to die in it, since it is only inches in width and exists exclusively on the second floor of that time-honored residence.



Time-honored, your Disgrace -- I mean, your Grace?



Hey, watch it. Yes, time-honored, Nell: We hired an archaeologist to come in recently and he dates the place all the way back to the early '70s, possibly as early as 1970 itself, you know the late Stoned Age?



How can they be sure?



Well, that's a question for the archeologist himself, big with brains, distinguished -- although I have heard that he found a pair of bell-bottoms in the crawl space under the living room.



Oh, really?



Yes... I was always wondering what happened to those trousers.



But about that gutter --



Yes, so it's almost impossible for me to die in a gutter that doesn't exist.



I see.



Of course, a sloppy linguist might possibly refer to the region immediately surrounding the gutter spout as a, quote, "gutter," but that's just word games. Besides, it's really more of a culvert in our case, since there's an actual trapezoidal slab of concrete there to collect the rain.



I see.



I could, of course, fall, as it were, onto the slab in question, but any potential onlookers would be hard-pressed to find anything emblematic in that.



So then they wouldn't think that you had fallen, as 'twere, in any existential sense of that word.



No. But hear this, Nell: I most certainly will not end up in some gutter, thank you just the same, I'm sure.



So you can go on record now as saying that you won't die in penury?



Hey, what's with all the gloomy questions, Nell? Jeepers.



I'm just curious.



Yes, morbidly so, right?



Okay, look: In the rare rare case that I MIGHT die in penury (which I won't, so don't worry about it) I think I'd rather buy the farm while I'm stood, so to speak, right outside the palatial digs of my millionaire father, as a sort of flesh-and-blood reproach to the King of Stinge.



I didn't know you had a rich father, let alone a stingy one.



Oh, he's not stingy. Yet. But then people do change in this life, don't they? And by the hypothetical (and highly improbable) time that I land in any so-called "gutter," (which, I repeat, is almost certainly not going to happen ANYWAY so don't worry) there's at least an outside chance (1 in 1,000 perhaps) that my old man will have soured on the milk of human kindness by dint of some personal experience that would be far too strange and improbable to speculate on now.



Does that answer your question, Nell?



Yes, sir



Good.







And what was your question again, if you could just remind me?



Of course there are also those that say you're going to go on, so to speak, to greater and great things.



Oh, there are? How nice of them. Do you have their names and addresses?



What do you think of them, these seemingly improbable well-wishers?



Aw, shucks, Nell, they're swell! And I promise to spend the rest of my life proving them right -- starting with that already partially disclosed site modification thingie that starts tomorrow afternoon sometime before 3:00. Fair enough?



Gutter indeed! I think your mind is in the gutter today, Nell! Humph!



Now then: Next question!

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