by Ryan Mathews

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January 1998

Y'know, writing a column is tough. I'm not sure I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to do this column. Heck, I practically begged for the chance to write it. I figured what was the big deal? Browse a few sites, write a few comments. Well, surprise, surprise. Journalism is actually work! After barely making the deadline several months in a row, that's finally beginning to sink in.

So this month's column will be a little shorter than usual. I knew I needed to do a short column, because the work would need to be done in the month of December, when I'm busy with Christmas shopping and other holiday-related stuff.

For example, I couldn't get any work done the third week of the month, because I was on vacation in Toronto, having fun with a friend of mine from the Great White North. I spent a little more money than usual, because the entire nation of Canada was having a 30%-off sale. If you hurry, you might be able to catch it. It's called the "Canadian Dollar is Going Down the Toilet" Sale! When I was up there, the exchange rate dropped to only 69¢US to the Canadian dollar. Prices in Canada don't look so bad when you lop off a third. Plus, they have stores that sell nothing but Sailor Moon stuff.

Before I begin, I need to gripe about something. What is this business with the extra advertising windows on GeoCities? It's especially annoying for us anime fans, since so many anime pages are hosted by GeoCities. Whenever you visit a home page with this annoying new "feature", another browser window pops up with an ad, on top of the window you're trying to read. You can get rid of it, but each time you return to the home page, the stupid thing comes back. I realize that there may be nothing the individual site maintainers can do, since most of them can't afford a real hosting service, but if they can get rid of that window, they should. Annoying your readers is not a way to get hits. (What the hell was wrong with the banners, anyway?)

Okay! So, January, right? It may be December 19th as I write this, but this is the January column. That means New Year's Day, which means resolutions! So I hereby resolve to serve my readers better by occasionally doing a column on sites for an anime that I don't care for personally, but which is very popular.

Curious?