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Nuz
That's how most of the phone calls and email missives began that poured into our office these past few days. Apparently, last week's cover for our annual bargains issue looked just the tiniest tad different on newsprint than it did on the drawing board.
We were amazed at the creativity behind the range of guesses from our readers. For the record, it was not "something on its side with juice coming out of it," "juicy ooze," "a cow on its side" or, the quintessential Santa Cruz suggestion, a "portal to another dimension."
One wonders what Rorschach zeitgeist possessed reader Moon Rinaldo, who gazed on the cover of that fateful Metro Santa Cruz and saw "a horse giving birth to a hamburger bun." Ms. Rinaldo was not beyond delivering a smart comeuppance about "that illustration chosen by your oddly inclined arts director."
For the record, it was a close-up of the goose that laid the golden egg. Bargains ... golden egg--get it? Around the office, however, that week will go down as "The Furry Hole Issue."
Prisoners of Discount Love
Okay, kinksters, Valentine's Day is looming on the horizon and you haven't even gotten your sex toys yet. So, where to shop. Frenchy's? Leather Masks 'n' Things? May we suggest your local family drugstore, Walgreen's. Imagine Nuz's surprise when we thumbed through the Sunday paper and there was our favorite drugstore's ad supplement offering "Valentine Love Cuffs" for your "prisoner of love."
Ex-queeze me? Shocked and curious, we called the honcho of the Soquel Avenue store for a little more info on this charming gift idea. "Personally, I didn't order them," says the nervous anonymous manager, quickly referring us up the ladder to corporate headquarters. Walgreen's spokesperson Michael Polzin, back in Deerfield, Ill., was a bit more forthcoming. "I noticed that ad, too," he said, laughing. Asked if he would consider getting some Walgreen's handcuffs for him and his loved one this Valentine's Day (you know he gets a discount), Polzin paused only briefly before answering, "I myself haven't purchased any at this point."
Peeking Around Radical Cheek
Ah, the beauty of cyberspace. Through chat rooms and email, people finally have the ability to develop complex relationships without superficial worries about image. On the Internet, it doesn't matter what you look like. Right?
Wrong.
It can matter quite a bit. With the development of a desktop video-conferencing program called CU-SeeMe, Internet users now have the option of seeing--and being seen by--their cyberpals.
With a connection to the Internet and a computer capable of downloading video images, you now can invite total strangers into your home. And, if you're in possession of a handy little hardware device called QuikCam (around $100), you can enter their homes as well.
CU-SeeMe users pop up on the screen in video windows, and you can talk to other users by sending messages through "message crawl," which is similar to sending messages in a chat room. Or, you can really chat with them by using a microphone and CU-SeeMe's Push-To-Talk mode.
To connect one-on-one with someone, you need the IP address (the numerical code for an Internet address) and the agreement to meet at a certain time. To connect to a larger party, just access a reflector site (currently, each reflector site can host up to eight individuals). Think of reflector sites, which are similar to Web sites, as the meat markets of the future, your new, friendly neighborhood bar or cafe.
CU-SeeMe technology is still shaky. The video images are still on the primitive scale--they're small and the resolution is rough. In all, it's less a high-tech, real-time, person-to-person flesh feast than a sometimes frustrating, peep-show tease.
Initially, CU-SeeMe was designed in 1993 for business and educational purposes--business meetings, lectures and demonstrations. Others have touted it as a video outlet for concerts and sporting events. But the possibilities for video-conferencing don't end there.
Take two--or more--consenting adults and you've got an instant party. With the proper software and hardware, you can even set up your own private reflector site. In other words, you can enjoy the right to behave in any way you please. You can flash body parts, send sexy come-ons or act out digital foreplay without the omnipresent fear of exposing yourself to minors or other inappropriate parties.
The implications of CU-SeeMe cast the Internet into a whole new realm, both in terms of personal freedoms, privacy and free speech, and in relation to the honesty of communication.
For a long time, the Net has been heralded as a sphere where only words and ideas count. Fine and dandy, but that leaves an awfully big loophole to hide in. With CU-SeeMe, there can be no inflated body part sizes. No self-congratulatory lies about attractiveness. CU-SeeMe is a window of truth.
Pauling's Own
First it's Paul Newman's mug on jars of spaghetti sauce and salad dressing. Then Frank Sinatra's ol' blues appear on his own ragout. So what's it gonna be next, a Nobel laureate on a jar of vitamins? Well, now that you mention it.... Father Chemistry himself, Linus Pauling--winner of two Nobels (chemistry and peace)--now has his own post-mortem line of vitamins.
Pauling died in August of 1994 at the age of 93, and a Southern California company called Irwin Naturals signed a 50-year licensing agreement with his family to market six nutritional supplements bearing Pauling's name. Irwin released the tabs in January amid much press-release hyperbole. Example: "Pauling, who is most commonly regarded as being the father of vitamin supplementation and research, single-handedly initiated the worldwide knowledge that vitamin C should be taken when one has a cold." ... Not!
On the other hand, Pauling, who became a vehement advocate of vitamin C in his waning years, did give consent for the commercialization of his name. "It was his idea and he spoke to the family about it a year and a half ago," says Pauling's daughter Linda Pauling Kamb, who is in charge of the family corporation. "I think my father thought he could continue to spread his word this way and get people interested in vitamins."
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What in God's Name ...?
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From the Feb. 8-14, 1996 issue of Metro Santa Cruz
Copyright © 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.