Dousing Yourself In Gasoline Sheds New Light On Some Things

Last night, I sat down in the middle of a busy street, poured gasoline on myself and lit a match in protest of our poor hit count. I thought it would give LostBrain.com great exposure. I read somewhere that the producers of AOL, Excite, Salon and Hindu.org all did the same to grab attention and become successful on the web. Unfortunately, I forgot to tell anyone about my plans-not even the media or the fire department.

"It's the little things that count," I later wrote in my daily planner.

As I sit in a hospital recovering from severe burns and forcing myself to watch Queen Latifah, I can only reflect on what caused me to do such a crazed stunt. First, fire is pretty. Second, and most importantly, the editors and writers of LostBrain.com will do anything for a decent hit count. ANYTHING.

In a recent meeting, we decided sex with inanimate objects on public access television, bodily injury (obviously) or selling exercise machines on Saturday afternoon television are all viable options for a high hit count. The bottom line is: we need an audience. We need people to check in daily to see if we've conjured up more madness, or at least point out our spelling errors. We need your support. We need to do it cheaply because all of our disposable income is spent on gambling and women.

As we launched, we had a visionary plan: Get an audience; start selling advertisements; start selling t-shirts with our logo on it; sell a book of collected LostBrain writing; create a network of poets who write dirty limericks on bathroom walls; sell a book of those limericks; retire.

It's our own version of the American Dream, fueled by "There Once Was a Man From Nantucket."

We launched only four weeks ago, so we don't have much of an audience, except for insomniacs, porn webmasters and writers of the Drew Carey show. From what I can tell, our sanest reader seems to be a 10-year-old who keeps pushing Girl Scout cookies. Sure, the thin mints are great, but it doesn't improve this website.

The feedback we're getting on this site has been zilch. Since we've launched, we've had few postings on our message board that were not from LostBrain staffers (yes, the mystery is over, I am Sickboy.) One was an odd rant on overweight people owning handicap cards (as if being overweight and owning a Sam's Club card isn't worse) and the second:

"I wont antivirus program."

It was signed from someone named "Zolon", whose thought and insight into our modern lives is more powerful than anything I've ever encountered. "I wont antivirus program" speaks to me in a Dionne Warwick kind of way. Obviously, Zolon is an alien who accidentally stumbled into LostBrain, mistaking us for Will Smith from Independence Day, trying to find some way to destroy that PowerBook.

I've been told that success takes patience. One friend told me I would have to wait at least a month until parents put us on their "Net Nanny" list of sites not to visit. I simply can't wait that long. Instant gratification is my drug. Lighting myself on fire is a poor form of sobriety.

In desperation, I must ask, just what does it to take to be successful on the web? I think we offer a funny, creative product. However, I have this fear that no matter what we do right now, no matter how many articles we offer, we'll get the same response over and over. "I wont antivirus program." I need to know—what do you want? What do you need? We want this site to be as much about the readers as it is about our ego and hatred of normal society. We're just itching to get that dirty limerick book out to the public.

-Brandon Stahl