Welcome to BenWoods.com

Those of you who have mastered the art of building a Web site have probably encountered the most important tool known to designers: the protractor.

Coming in second would have to be tables, the backbone to many pages you have visited in your lifetime, or at least within the last three weeks. Tables are the most primitive of the HTML tags because people like to have things in nice readable fashion, excluding tabloid magazines. Most people prefer tabloids that look similar to newspapers more than 40 years ago, which contained at least 343 headlines on each page.

I have one simple request for Christmas -- that someone, ANYONE, will finally be named president. Yes, we have George W. and Al, but if they name Al W. George out of Minot, N.D., instead, that would be fine.

What caused this whole problem? The people of the United States, of course, always trying to stir up trouble, whether it's at the local moose lodge or bingo hall. Can't people fill in the correct circles? Can't people count votes right? Can't people use turning signals when changing lanes?

Is this what the world is coming to? People sitting 6 inches away from each other will not talk to each other but instead, write short e-mails?

An example:

From: Someone

Sent: November, Wednesday 1, 2000 11:41 AM

To: Someone else

Subject: Outside

Did you see that?

Maybe you are one of those people who are completely terrified of computers, the Internet and lemon-flavored cough drops. If so, you probably are no where near being able to read this column, and if I had to guess, you are most likely hiding in a basement in Turkey. That is, if they have basements in Turkey. So if you know someone like this, please print this column immediately and send it to them because it could save their life.

I bet you $100 you've visited an online gambling site.

Ha! What a trick. See, if you said no, but I had to pay you, then it would be gambling.

Online gambling, much like the beginning of this column, seems to be frustrating and silly. For the sake of every potential column reader, I've looked at a few online gambling sites and come to a simple conclusion -- I am sick of blinking Web sites.

Well, they're not here ... at least, not yet. I'm hoping to come up with something in the near future. Stay tuned!

With the multitude of problems facing education in America today, it's oftentimes difficult to even consider that anything will ever be resolved. However, there is one thing afforded to U.S. citizens that can give educators hope: the ability to vote. With the presidential primaries in full swing, and the general election coming up in the fall, here's a quick rundown of where each major candidate stands:

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

As people are constantly complaining about whether or not MySpace is a good community building site or detrimental to the youth of today, there's little doubt that a ridiculous number of people have created profiles on the popular social networking site.

Now, instead of just going to pimp your profile or watch videos of animals doing strange things, there's a legitimate reason to visit the site, or at least, MySpace Impact.

It helps tremendously to have the chance to work with an actual editor with any writing project ... especially a full-length novel. Patrick Coyle provided a lot of great feedback with "Polos to Ties," which is probably one of the main reasons I've received decent feedback so far from literary agencies. I'm still looking for a reasonable deal, though, as finding the right agent isn't always the easiest thing to do.

In the near future, I plan to post the first five chapters of the book, but I'm also waiting a response from a second editor as well.

I'm becoming rather disappointed in the Internet's search engines. The other day, I couldn't find my keys, and neither could any of them.