Review: The Internet (part 2): The Internet Explorer

Your personal computer is now able to communicate with The Internet thanks to an Internet Box and The Internet Explorer. Congratulations! (Hint: No really, a lot of people have died or been shuffled among institutions as a result of attempting this!) But before you can begin your journey you must become familiar with the conventions of The Internet Explorer. Let’s start with its face.

Face the face

As you may know, a personal computer has what is known as a face; specifically, its outer face. This is the term data people use for what your personal computer looks like when it’s not operating—dull, putty-colored, menacing. 

But it has another. After initiating its startup sequence from behind your computing room’s lead shield (Hint: Remember to wait the full 15 minutes for the remaining neutrons to dissipate, otherwise cramping will result!) anything that appears on the glowing ray tube is referred to as the personal computer’s inner face. 

Each personal computer program (also known by its nickname percomprog) has its own individual inner face. This face can be wistful, joyous, or squinchy, but nearly all of them exhibit an underlying anger to complement the outer face. The Internet Explorer’s inner face has all of these and more. For the time being, however, we’ll try to look past its glower and concentrate on how to use it.

Packed with parts

As do all things in the data world, The Internet has parts and there are names for them. When you later speak with other Interneters (Hint: It’s now okay to do that! The old law was repealed.) you’ll want to be sure to use the proper names, otherwise the kind of confusion that could break The Internet will result.

You can think of The Internet as a massive industrial complex that contains many rooms, offices, cubbies, closets, and open spaces crammed with 24-year-olds sitting at long tables wearing earphones that blast an incessant drum beat in rhythms dictated by company policy. As you travel through The Internet you’ll do so one place at a time. For example, when you visit TGIF on The Internet you’ll see its place along with images of its Cool Ranch Pork Hinds on your personal computer’s ray tube.

The first thing you’ll notice when you turn on The Internet Explorer is a generic The Home place. In the very earliest days of The Internet you would spend an hour or more entering such information as your name, address, age, pager number, blood type, and sexual orientation into lines found on The Home place so that The Internet would know what it could (and shouldn’t) show you. Thankfully, there are now organizations such as Facebook and The Google that will do this for you. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Going places

As interesting (and a little creepy) as your The Home place is, you probably don’t want to spend all of your allotted The Internet time there. There are a couple of ways of going elsewhere.

The first is to look for a blue underline. This is a link to another place on The Internet. When you mouse on it, eventually you’ll be taken to that linked place. These links are called, naturally, underlinies.

At the top of the place is a long rectangle known as The Google Box. If a place doesn’t have an underliney that directs you to where you want to go, you just mouse on The Google Box and type into it the closest word you can think of that might take you to the place you want to visit.

Boxed in

So what exactly is The Google and why does it have a Box? The Google can best be described as a presence rather than a person or industry. Like tinea cruris, it’s just everywhere.

The Google’s name is derived from Great Googly Moogly, which is an ejaculation of surprise. And that makes a lot of sense in this context. When you enter a word or more in The Google Box you could be very surprised at where it takes you. For example, I entered bear trap, and hoo boy was I surprised! (Hint: Never ever enter bear trap in The Google Box!)

Other place elements

Places you eventually visit can hold more than underlinies and the omnipresent The Google Box. Some may display words, produce sounds, show pictures (some pictures can operate as underlinies and are referred to as picturinies), and play video movies even when you really, really don’t want them to. (Hint: These video movies freeze all appliances in your home so that you can’t adjust them in any way until the video movie stops playing of its own accord, which may not happen until it’s looped 12 times just to be sure that you’ve clearly absorbed its advertising message! If you look away, it will start all over again.)

Certain places have their own elements not found elsewhere. For example, Facebook has something called Like midges. These can be confusing in that it appears that they should be used to approve of something that another Interneter has placed on their place. This is not the case. These Like midges appear on Facebook so that you can purposely not use them. 

This goes to the core motivation of the Interneter. By not mousing on a Like midge you demonstrate that you could have done whatever it is so much better than the person whose place you’re visiting. This is also known as The Silent Sneer and happens just everywhere. 

Again, I'm getting ahead of myself. We’ll be devoting a great deal of time to the Motivation in later parts of the review. For the time being, you now understand the major components of The Internet Explorer’s inner face and know how to get from place to place.

Next: How does The Internet work?