Message
from the Editor —
The Frutcake Outlet hit an all time high yesterday of 7 hits in one day. The irony here is that out of those 7 hits, nobody read the articles. I'm averaging about 3 or 4 hits a day. I estimate that 1 in 4 people who visit the site read one or more articles. Pretty pathetic. It is very difficult to maintain this web site under such demoralizing conditions. I am however determined to go on. I am planning to add more structure, separating the articles into various categories. I am currently working on a special column. Although I think this is rather futile, I also plan to barter my used books in exchange for people posting links to my web site. I believe the search engines have increased my hits, yet I don't believe they're really increasing the amount of people actually reading the articles.
I had originally intended to update this web site every week. Now this seems too lofty a goal, as I don't have enough time nor enough to say. I suspect that if people actually came to this web site I would find the time and things to say. At this point, I think that updating the web site on a biweekly basis is adequate.
I am very happy that the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the smug New York Yankees in the World Series. It was a weird and sometimes exciting World Series. Before the Boston Red Sox attempted to push the independent hot dog vendors off of the public street outside their ballpark, I was a Boston Red Sox fan. The Red Sox and the Yankees are rival teams in the same division. One of the few things I have in common with fellow Bostonians is an extreme hostility towards the Yankees. It's a tribal thing I guess.
Best known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the great writer, Ken Kesey died yesterday of complications after surgery for liver cancer. He was 66 years old. I knew he wasn't too healthy but I didn't realize he had cancer. I was not very saddened by the news. I expect I will be, but all I felt was anger—anger that this brilliant writer had pissed away so much of his life dicking around, riding around the country in a Day-Glo colored bus dropping acid, when he could have been using his God-given gift to write. I am being harsh, very harsh and judgmental. Who am I to judge him, I seriously ask myself. I do not understand the consciousness that was taking place in this country during the 60's, in which Kesey was a part of. I doubt if many people in my generation—the Reagan generation, really understand what was happening in the 60's, even if, like myself, they were children at the time.
Dickie Richards, Managing Editor
11/11/2001
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