Whatever Seems Reasonable To You

It's April 6. How long they going to leave that thing up? Just plain cruel. Especially the second page, where the smiling Gmail Delivery Person hands you all your email, all printed out and neatly boxed up.

Plus I like their attitude:

“You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand ... It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.”

And the customer testimonials. Especially the Web 2.0-looking guy who confesses,

“I've always felt uneasy about the whole internet thing ...”

You know he ain't alone.

Lastly, a satisfied Bill K. says,

“I sometimes find myself wondering: what will Google think of next? Cardboard?”

And in this strange place, so subjective, so dependent on our own Hegelian appeareance in the world, plausibility takes wing.

I wish. I dream of WebVan, and the way well-mannered hunks in shorts would bring my groceries to my kitchen, help unpack, flowers gratis at Easter ... sigh. I could strangle that CEO for over-expanding. First rule of business: get it right (which he did—what an incredible setup, like a big clockworks) and let it run for a while in one fuckin city. Gimme his address. I got a few things to say to him.


postscript: Sorry, no links for WebVan cuz I hated them all. On grounds of stupid or made me weepy. Geez, those were some times. My old boyfriend was in Dot Com in San Francisco, and every Friday, along about three p.m., WebVan showed up with imported beers and trays of damn fine snacks. Then one day the BF came home and said, Dot Com is over. I said, No. And then I said, WTF?

And that's the way it was, folks, ca. 2000.