Open Subchannel D

I never thought about this, but now that it's come up:

I do know that when I'm called upon to read out loud — mercifully, these days this is for the benefit of a child or occasionally two, not for a grade which goes on my Permanent Record — I do my best to provide the inflections I think are indicated by the material, and try not to sound too much like a dork. (Exception: when I'm reading something that's supposed to be dorky.)

It's been suggested to me once or twice that I should put out some of this here drivel in book form, and I've always fended off the idea with "What would I do with the links?"

Actually, this question has already been answered. In 1997, Wired Books (then related to the magazine) put out a compilation of articles from my favorite Webzine under the title Suck: Worst Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet, edited by Joey Anuff (who used the Suckronym "The Duke of URL") and Ana Marie Cox (then "Ann O. Tate," more recently "Wonkette"). The articles were printed with the links highlighted; a line was drawn from the link to a sidebar, which contained the pertinent section of the linked material and its URL, in a wholly-different font so you wouldn't be confused by all this linear digression. At the time, it seemed freaking ingenious; today, it seems, well, freaking ingenious, even if you can click on a link in a PDF file these days.