Domains
My Needs are Modest
Newsweek gives me special recognition for missing out on the booming multimillion-dollar market in Internet domains: When a Florida man, in anticipation of the naming of the new pope, registered the Web site BenedictXVI.com, the Vatican was in luck. Rogers Cadenhead, who has since used the site to publicize a nonprofit organization and plans to transfer control to the Vatican, could have been an investor looking to get in on a booming business: the domain market. Indeed, owners of similar sites ... (read more)Everybody Carl Jung Tonight
A voicemail message received last week: Hey, it's Mancow, we're trying to get you on the radio show here. It's an Illinois guy, he probably knows this show. But he got the pope's web site. And the story is he's going to turn it into a porno ... I didn't get this message soon enough to return his call. I suspect that if he heard my actual plans for BenedictXVI.Com, I would have been a great disappointment to him. WashingtonPost.Com reporter David McGuire wrote a followup story yesterday about ... (read more)I've Been X'ed
I did an interview yesterday with AVNOnline, believing the "AV" stood for audiovisual, like the A.V. Club entertainment site published by The Onion. I liked the final piece, although I thought it was odd for the reporter to quote another papal domain registrant talking about "nipples and snatch." That kind of talk hasn't appeared much in the media since the end of the Clinton administration. When I showed the story to my wife, she noticed that the ads around the piece were for X-rated sites and ... (read more)Master of My Domain
The owners of other Pope Benedict XVI domains are taunting me. Jacopo Di Trani, an Italian who got Benedict16.Com, has declared that pornographers and online casinos are welcome to buy it from him: The first time i didn't believed Cadenhead when he said "i'll never give my domain to gamble/porn site developers"! He's a very kind guy, but, first of all, his hair CAN'T be real, and, second, although i have respect for his decision to give for free his very valuable domain (with a billion of ... (read more)You Heard It Here First
Without interviewing me, Jacksonville TV newscast First Coast News reported Thursday that I was selling the domain: While the World Wide Web might not be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, one local man hopes someone will think it's worth some cash to him. Roger [sic] Cadenhead of St. Augustine registered the domain name BenedictXVI.com along with other potential choices before the Pope selected his name. Cadenhead wants to sell it to the highest bidder. This was news to me. I had been telling ... (read more)Fame or Something Like It
I wasn't prepared to be famous for 24 hours, but now that my weblog traffic has subsided to normal levels, I can relate some of the experience. The rest has to be filtered through therapy first. For anyone wondering how I became a television personality as well-known for a day as the Virgin Mary grilled cheese, my friend Matt Haughey has digitized the interview on the Today Show where I talk about BenedictXVI.Com. After the Today Show, I began receiving calls from TV producers. Almost to a ... (read more)Supporting Modest Needs
A funny thing happened today: Modest Needs received more than five times the normal donations from people coming from BenedictXVI.Com. I'd like to think it has something to do with my understated good looks, which were revealed to me in an e-mail from a Today Show viewer this morning. But I suspect that people are simply gratified that I am not a pornographer. I will never be a pornographer, so please keep helping Modest Needs. I sent an e-mail to Pope Benedict XVI's new e-mail address today ... (read more)Holy See, Holy Do
I'm getting a lot of comments like this one by Concerned Canadian: I think it would be in your best interest to use this site to better humanity. Use it to donate to some sort of Catholic charity, or use it to write about the history of the Catholic church. Cashing in on it would be very typical, and if you have any personality at all, you won't want your 15 minutes of Internet media fame to be seen as typical. I haven't decided what to do with the benedictxvi.com domain -- my goal was to keep ... (read more)People of Poland: Nie Rozumie
The pope has to be multilingual -- upon his selection, Pope John Paul II wowed the crowd at St. Peter's Square by addressing them in fluent Italian. Apparently, popesquatters have to be multilingual too. My weblog has been overrun by discussions in Polish. I don't know what they are saying, but I've been told that it's bad. I can handle that, as long as you lay off my matka. I've created this weblog entry as a place to hold all of the comments in languages I do not understand (i.e. everything ... (read more)Habemus Domini!
"A spokesperson for the US Conference of Bishops declined to speculate on whether the Vatican would ask Cadenhead to transfer ownership of BenedictXVI.com and the other potential papal name addresses he controls. Messages left with the Vatican's embassy in Washington were not returned." When I registered six domain names at the end of a 14-hour writing day earlier this month, I didn't realize that my actions would reach all the way up to the Vatican. I figured that some idiot was going to do ... (read more)
Social Media
Subscriptions
Blogroll
Projects
Statistics
This blog has been published since Nov. 7, 1999 (a span of 8,928 days).
Thank you for visiting Workbench.
