PORNOGRAPHY ON THE INTERNET (C)1996 Alan M. Schwartz is overhyped and available mostly only for cash payment except for maybe 300 Usenet newsgroups. Is there anyone up for news:alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality today? Mercantile dealings on the Net are similarly bereft of passion, purpose, and profits. No, boys and girls, the Internet is by far the pizza and sneakers of mankind - the lowest common denominator among folks who can type (one-handed). The most trivial babble can incite international furor for days and megabytes. Consider this heartfelt plea broadcast across all Terra: "Though 'Zest' cleansing bars are clearly superior to soap bars, they still have an annoying shape that makes them next to impossible to hold when wet! I wrote a letter to Proctor & Gamble about this, however my wife removed that letter from our mailbox, as she said, 'Only kooks write such things, and I don't want P&G to think you're a kook.' If anyone here has a similar observation, tell me about it." Consumed within a flood of humanitarian compassion I ran into the bathroom, flung open the vanity, and seized a Zest three-pack. There it was amidst the wrapper printer's art and beneath the incredible list of chemicals. I ran back to my terminal and started typing... "If you look upon the Zest outer wrapper there is written the magic telephone number 1-800-846-9480. A vapid young thing at the other end of the line is all tingly, waiting to talk with you about Zest. She lives, breathes and sleeps Zest. Her entire life is wrapped around syndet bars pigmented with chromium oxide and preserved with traces of stuff which could have felled dinosaurs. With every sigh she inhales the heady scent of Zest volatile xenobiotica. With every touch she caresses the waxy bas relief surface, drawing inner strength and nurture through her fingers from sodium/magnesium tallowate and/or palmate, sodium cocoglyceryl ether sulfonate... "Ever since she was a little girl she has suffered outrageous slings and arrows of approbation hurled by her little girlfriends playing with their Malibu Barbies as she snuggled and decorated her bars of Zest. She wore folded Zest wrappers as bracelets. Zest headbands adorned her golden locks. Her purse cherished a little Zest bar. Zest cleansed her skin and furtively introduced her into the private mysteries of womanhood. "Zest is her objet d'art, her raison d'etre, her god, and her feminine hygiene friend. Talk to her, you animal, talk to her! "As for the slippery part, do what I do: Hold it between your teeth." What sort of reply do you think I received? My e-mail in-box soon beeped with the abundant outpouring of his gratitude: "There is far more in life than chemistry. For example, I'll bet you don't know what a locally convex topological vector space is..." In point of fact I do - it's useful as an abbreviated analysis paradigm when hogtying subjects during extreme bondage - but that is another story entirely. How sour and empty must this nerd's life be to have never slithered a slippery Zest bar about his mate's hillocks and hollows. At the other end of 1-800-846-9480 there awaits a passion which now never will be consummated. The man is cold, very cold. But he did send me 49 e-mail pages about convex topological vector spaces, sharing his commitment. (It makes you wonder why he could not handle the convex topological space of a Zest bar.) What the heck, it's an 800 number. I picked up my telephone and punched in the code. The whole of modern technological civilization drew a deep breath, rallied its powers, and within seconds a slim but decisive electromagnetic tendril stretched from here to there. "Welcome to Zest," crooned the nasal, high- pitched, lisping male voice. Whoa! Wrong number! "Ever since he was a little boy he has suffered outrageous slings and arrows of approbation hurled by his rough and tumble peers playing with their GI Joes as he snuggled and decorated his bars of Zest. He wore folded Zest wrappers as slave bracelets. Zest headbands adorned his sweating forehead. His knapsack cherished a little Zest bar. Zest cleansed his adolescent zits and..." Not for a second did I contemplate giving my mate Linda her right of first refusal, jointly or severally. I don't think it will play in Peoria. So much for Equal Opportunity. Affirmative Action be damned. At least Ivory Soap had Marilyn Chambers as its public model (something my body needs anyway). Logoff!