I received a nice email from a reader regarding A Fragment of “Hotel Hack” [1], written some twenty years ago [2] wherein I mused about hypertext. The sad thing is that most (if not all) of the links I referenced have not survived. Yes, I could go back in and update the links, only for them to slowly rot again over the next two decades. Or perhaps changing the links to point to The Wayback Machine [3] are in order (archived version with most links working [4]—I've long since forgotten what I linked to).
Or perhaps I could change the links to a “director's commentary”—that might be an idea, but the commentary itself would dwarf the scant few paragraphs and might make for an interesting NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) [5] entry (even if it's not technically a novel). I mean, the commentary for “making him think he's Ethel Merman” would be something like:
Ethel Merman was a singer and actress in the mid 20^TH century, known for her powerful singing voice. The reference here is not to Ethel Merman herself, but to a scene in the movie “Airplane” (1980), where Lieutenant Hurwitz had delusions of being Ethel Merman, and was played by Merman herself, breaking into song as orderlies tried to restrain her.
The movie “Airplane” was itself, a remake of the 1957 drama “Zero Hour!” which did not star Ethel Merman, sadly.
One could do a deep dive on all the references in “Hotel Hack”—Phone Cops, Boys from Bell, Leni's films, hoomei, tons of references to cover.
Maybe one day I'll get a round tuit [6].
[1] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/hypertext/fragment/
![[6] /boston/2020/02/26/tuit.png](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2020/02/26/tuit.png){kind=link}