Note: After a certain amount of pointless drama at my previous webring provider, I decided to relocate this ring onto James Huggins' system, where I hope it can enjoy a more peaceful and enjoyable existence. The move does leave me with one inevitable question, which I expect to hear over and over for the next few years, though:


"What the H*** is SSNB?"


SSNB is a piece of Javascript thrown together by Webring, that worked reasonably well after some early bugginess. Maybe a little too well. The new provider I'm relocating this ring to doesn't use anything like SSNB, and yet there it is, right in the middle of that join page, an insistence that the new member make use of SSNB. Have I lost my mind? How is he supposed to do that? Of course he can't, and so I don't expect him to. He is welcome to use HTML, because there's nothing else to use. So why haven't I removed that comment, so bound to create turmoil in the lives of those who must not have lives, if they're getting that upset about a stupid ring?

Download the page and you'll find out. It weighs in at exactly 6.66 KB. This was not by design. It just happened, but not that it has happened, I just can't bring myself to ruin it. The join page on a ring with this name having that number appearing in the column; not in a million years would that happen again, so I'm going to leave it alone and expect new applicants to read and use their common sense, which on a ring like this is fitting, anyway. Black comedy is no hobby for the anal retentive, and the Internet has such people in abundance. (1)

But we're drifting off the subject of my depravity, so let's get back on track. You were talking about selling me your soul. When should I expect delivery?










That's what you were expecting to hear, perhaps? If so, this ring is bound to disappoint, as it's likely to about as sinister as a trip to an English Departmental tea, and a good less sinister than one would be over at the School of Business, if only they knew what tea was.

Compared to what some have had in mind, my own evil ambitions have been mild ones, indeed. I set up something called Café Satan, or rather, have tried to set it up. The results were as amusingly absurd as the ones to Pepe Ozan's opera, which I mentioned in my former Webring profile. Even with frequent mentions that the whole thing is a (would-be) improvisational theatre company and (like theatre in general) an elaborate put on, and that the theology of the fictive background of the cafe is in no way similar to anything I personally believe, I still heard from a few interesting people who wrote to me, trying to save my soul from the forces of darkness, or taking issue with my fall from G-d's grace into a lascivious embrace of moral turpitude, undoubtedly. Consider the case of the gentleman who signed my guestbook, filling out every line with the same repetitive phrase: "men like you never last", using the broken record game from assertiveness training in an attempt at psychological warfare against this servant of the Dark One in his midst? He was absolutely serious.

Some people really need to get a grip on it, and that's a large part of what this ring is about. I'm looking for sites like my Cafe Satan page which, if not necessarily philosophical in emphasis, tell the relatively few very loud people who've been holding the process of conversation hostage in this country, with their screaming tirades over nothing, to lighten up, merely by refusing to take their fixations seriously. "Irreverent humor", it used to be called, and some of us miss it, longing for the days when comedy used to have a little less scatology and a little more substance. I don't care who you offend or how many career protesters are ready to line up to throw a temper tantrum to express their concerns about my admission of your site to the ring. My only questions are, did you go against some of the sillier, more arbitrary or ill-informed societal expectations, and did you make me laugh without giving me real cause to take offense?

If the answers to these questions are "yes" and you're not running a commercial site, odds are that I'll let you in. Yes, the ring is closed. After noticing that nobody had been signing up for a while, I got tired of checking in for nothing. However, if you get in touch with me and have a site that took a little talent and a little effort to put together, and which fits in with the theme of the ring, just send me a message and I'll be glad to open the ring for you. By the way, as you may have guessed by now, yes, I do allow people to customize the HTML code, but would ask that you talk to me first before doing so, and tell me what you have in mind, because there are some alterations which I might not agree to (eg. removing one of the links, or changing the title).

There are two versions of this ring, one at World of Webring and the other at Ringsurf. The one you're travelling right now, the one at World Of Webring, is a closed ring, so you'll need an invitation from me to join it. To ask for one of those, I'd suggest that you sign up for this list and post a request for one. Don't worry, you're not spamming the list. I specifically set it up as a place for the discussion of such things. If I like what I see, I'll get in touch with you.

You can apply to one version of the ring or the other, but not both, as I have no desire to turn these rings into clones of each other, on a continuing basis. I believe that should answer all reasonable questions, and I look forward to seeing what people have to offer.













Satan, frozen in the center of the 9th circle of Dante's Hell. Print by Dore. Click here to find out what Cafe Satan is.
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