Even at that naive date I knew that domains were going fast. The doubtful had but to spend an hour riding the waves at DomainSurfer, checking variations of their favorite names, to see how many were already grabbed.

My site was to serve two purposes— a global gallery to fortify my sagging painting career, and as my principal exercise in teaching myself how to design websites, which was to be my sustenance when art was down.

My art career should have done fine, but even after sales and a couple of prestigious shows I found myself unable to attract women. As a result I descended into a lonely funk— watching television, keyboarding bad poetry, and painting little if at all. With neither job nor income I lived on credit cards, running up a sizeable debt.

I did self-publish a pamphlet of verse, consigning it in batches of five to whatever shops would take it. While the books didn't sell, they were so slight in appearance— a folded pamphlet bound by staples— that they were apt to be lost or discarded as handouts, so when I returned for them the embarrassed manager had no choice but to pay up.

Finally my parents loaned me money to pay off my debts. Insisting that I find a back-up career, they helped me into website design tutorials at the community college on decrepit, buggy Macs, ten percent of my time there spent with Photoshop and the rest trying unsuccessfully, day after discouraging day, to scan the same slide of one of my paintings.

Lacking even a web-worthy computer, I’d arrive at my parent’s house just before bedtime, toting books and Thermos of coffee, and toil far into the morning on my dad’s Windows 98 Dell that he won in a multilevel marketing promotion. They were hoping I’d get design jobs, but all I ever did was work on my own projects, beginning with Art of Warren Farr.

As I built my site I made a mental note that if I thought I might ever want to do something that was more suitable for an entirely new website I’d better decide what it might be, so that I could reserve the name. While there were— and are— still plenty of good unregistered dotcoms, the selection wasn’t getting any better.

Although it had been only about a dozen weeks since I learned the difference between the www and the WWF, and my copy of HTML for Dummies was still months away from acquiring its now-familiar coffee-stained corners, in my imaginings I was already a dotcom genius.

By melding creative ability that I knew I had to business foresight that I convinced myself I had, I hoped to finally expurgate the twin monkeys of poverty and debt. Mentally I was already a playboy of the net— without a mansion, but thinking ahead to having my own harem of attractive female admirers, vying for my attention.

Why not, I thought? I could both attract such and further parlay my attraction by having a live webcam for them to perform in front of— a haremcam, so to speak.

Haremcam. That had a nice ring to it, not unlike the sound I imagined would issue from the clink of gold coins. Surely I thought, haremcam.com— of all cams— was already registered. What cam offered better potential, or more imaginative allure?

Such in their thousand variations are the last glimpses of hope and the first of ruin.

The registrar I chose offered a free web site with domain registration. Unfortunately, at a maximum of four “wizard” (meaning junk) pages, it ended up little more than a parking space, topped by an ungainly banner that was part of the deal. Oh well I didn’t have a webcam yet anyway, much less a harem.

So it sat, a cipher of its potential glory, a distinctly non-risqué “modeling and fantasy site for women,” awaiting its first applicant. I put it up for sale, figuring to at least get around to developing it. Finally the lack of even the modest renewal fee resulted in its loss to wealthy speculators, with no return on my time or money.

What I really needed was a name more expansive, less confining. A name hinting at playful romance, troubled passion, and everything in between, while not excluding either adult or non-adult.

An art or modeling site perhaps that would defy classification while vanquishing repression. It would, in its uniquely-creative way, tap and stimulate both fear and hope, as well as the inexplicable desire to learn French.

Surely bondsoflove.com was taken. I looked it up. Org was taken, but not com. It could be a twin site with bondsofpassion.com.

Both sites could connect the intellectual with the erotic, admitting on the one hand that the two impulses were symbiotic, and on the other that they were incapable of being balanced. At bondsoflove the intellectual drive would predominate, at bondsofpassion the erotic.

Still I’d need props and models. For years the domains’ parking space displayed a rotating red heart on a black background, a beacon of hope. Finally those domains as well were lost for want of a mere renewal fee, the better of the two (bondsoflove) being snapped up by rich investors, again with no compensation for me.

I opened an account at a new pawnshop. What could I get running and generating income right away?

With my imagined early luck at picking names, why not a site about naming? I could tell people— for free— how fun and easy it was to find good names for their business or organization. I would make money via affiliate advertising and links on the site (eventually dropped in favor of non-paying links, money to be made via domain sales instead).

Ironically, picking the name for what would become namedance.com was hardest yet, thus ultimately the most satisfying (maybe there is a purpose for life not being easy). It had to be my best yet, so people, seeing at least some ability, would give my advice a chance.

To make things even more challenging, the domain-site name area had already been well picked over by both builders and investors, all of whom seemed to want a naming site, potential or otherwise, if for no other reason than to use it to sell their own domains.

Since “name” was a short, one-syllable descriptive word, I wanted that in the name. After a few days of listing ideas, of which only about ten percent were unregistered, I thought I had it. Two syllables, eight letters. Luckily I followed the advice I had already planned to give others.

Despite the fact that I knew someone else could register the name that very hour, I forced myself to sleep on it. Good thing I did. The next day I no longer liked the name. Looking back now, it seems weaker still— which is why, as you probably guess, I’m even reticent to say what it was.

Further my finances were so tight I probably would have gone ahead and used it rather than write off the fifteen bucks (the cheapest registration that I could find at that time, they’re half that now) in favor of a better name. That would have been a big mistake, since I probably would have ended up putting at least a grand’s worth of time into it.

I went back to work and came up with three finalists. Finally it was a toss-up between namedance and one of the others. Again I slept. The next morning the choice was obvious.

The site was to be serious, but I couldn’t resist the thought of having a page of silly, humorous naming-ideas— ItsHowdyDoodyTime.TV, for example— both to offer a laugh break if desired, and to stimulate creativity.

You guessed it. I decided on a separate site just for domain-naming humor. I’d been scanning country-code TLDs and already had the perfect name for one— no.com.do. There is such a name, a two-letter Dominican com. True there was a confusion issue. Was nocomdo.com taken? How about nocando.com? And no.can.do wasn’t even an address.

Yet wouldn’t no.com.do look great in a small ad, or on a placard? The only accompanying description would be zan-e, the e-variation of zany. I decided to see if zan-e.com was taken. It wasn’t.

Well, you guessed it. I liked zan-e better than no.com.do, despite the hyphen. (The hyphen was necessary, I rationalized, since ‘zane’ was one syllable.)

I would have gotten no.com.do as well, despite the latter’s non-English registrar (that’s what language dictionaries are for). But I found it would cost a hundred bucks to register the ‘do’ for just a year.

So the last time I checked, it was still available, yet perhaps not worth it, at least in its undeveloped state, as an investment. Its value lies in its uniqueness as a name. Other than as a humor site, it might make a clever domain-sales venue where only non-coms were sold.

On the other hand, while zan-E probably has to be humor or humor-related, it isn’t limited to domain-related humor. I’ve yet to post my original impetus there. The page was to have been titled zan-E-nic (a play on internic as well as afternic) but I've since changed the site name to gurf.com and may not even renew zan-e.com.

I was now well-hooked on site naming and developing. Besides my Dummies book, a copy of Designing Killer Web Sites, cherrypicked from a Half-Price Books on a visit to Indianapolis, sported coffee stains. That same Thermos leak also nicked the zan-e notebook, one of several I keep for each site.

I’d also upgraded my editor from the simple one that came with Windows to NoteTab Pro, a Swiss product that happily refuses to jumble Java, with more gizmos than the famous army-knife from that country.

As I toiled hopefully into the wee-hours, I found occasion to wonder about the thousands— even millions— of dreamers, designers, and builders throughout the world, who might ever see but a small— if any— profit.

All that nightsweat. Nightsweat.com.

Ah!

Home of the soon-to-be-famous Nightsweat Award, for inspiration— and perspiration— beyond the norm expected of the average obsessed artist/ designer/ inventor. Yet nightsweat too would eventually be lost for want of a renewal fee and nabbed by an apparently well-heeled developer, who used it to set up a traffic page— again with no recompense to me.

By this time my parents somehow found out about my domain-naming exploits and were appalled, confusing it with cyber-squatting. That misunderstanding gave me little incentive to tell them about russianbelles.com, Russia Marriage Tours and Introductions, much less luckymaiden.com, Lucky Maiden Cyber-Casino and Sportsbook.

Further I’d yet to sell a single name to vindicate myself, though I’d gotten a couple nibbles. Claustrophilia.com, oddly, was one of the first to generate interest, though in hindsight I think I scared the potential buyer away with too high an asking price. It is slated for obsessive stories, while the better algolagnia.com is a sculpture in cyberspace.

I hit the big renewal dump after the dotcom-bubble burst so was able to replace the domains I lost due to poverty with much better ones, like abodes.net, tieups.com, scandalized.com, shantyboat and shantyboats.com. Also short four-and-five-letter dotcoms like suras.com, gurf.com, and zerks.com, three of which I quickly sold.

So here I am in June of ’04, a domain small-timer with a total of four profitable sales under my belt and this modest website. With my one remaining credit card safely maxed I think I've licked the craving to over-register, and am more excited now about the time-intensive yet rewarding task of developing some of the ones I have.

But let’s see— maybe just one peek to see what deleted this week before I go to bed.