“Rapture porn.”

I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking this way; Ty Burr at the Boston Globe positively nails it. Though his score of 1.5 stars is, I believe, too generous.

I am often disappointed by movies, but I am rarely disgusted, and almost never actually offended. Knowing pulled off a hat trick with its impressively bad writing, acting, and heavy-handed allegory. After that it’s hard to care how technologically impressive a film may be.

Avoid at all costs.

Four hours later I’m angry, my forehead is red from all the slapping, and I’m completely disgusted. (Also, probably, hungry.) Because either this simple, obvious tool does not exist, or I — with all my intertube experience and Google-fu — cannot find it.

Here’s the latest example: I do a lot of writing for websites, right? But I’m a freelancer, not on staff, which means that most of my writing gets sent to an editor rather than inserted directly into the site’s content management system, or CMS. That means that I have to send over a document file of some type, a document file created in some sort of word-processing apparatus.

And here’s the problem: Every word-processing apparatus I’ve tried is positively horrendous at generating HTML, the code-level backbone of internet writing. Every single one, when you attempt to save a simply formatted text file as HTML, inserts all kinds of crazy formatting information that would be an absolute horror for any editor to have to remove on a regular basis.

This is bad for business.

So I started searching for a very simple tool: A word processor that allows the writer to mark up his or her document with basic formatting — bold, italic, underline, and links — and then allows the document to be saved (or God, at the very least, viewed) in HTML that includes nothing but paragraph breaks; markers for bold, ital, and underline; and links.

I want to be able to type, just as I am doing now with my blogging software’s online content management system, using the near-universal commands of Ctrl-U, Ctrl-I, Ctrl-B, and Ctrl-K — or at the very least buttons on a toolbar — and have those turn out <u>, <i>, <b>, and <a href=”"> tags, and nothing else. And when I add a new paragraph I want to see a </p><p>, dammit!

Can I enter these tags by hand? Sure. But here’s the problem: Right now I’m doing a weekly music-game column for Green Pixels that is almost entirely links. And like most sensible sites, when GP links to a page on another website, they instruct your browser to open a new window. That means that each link needs to say <a href=”http://URL” target=”_blank”>Link Text</a>. You try typing that about fifty times and see if you don’t start looking for a better way.

This is the solution I’m working with right now: I type the big lists of song releases into Microsoft Word, because I like to keep them alphabetical and Word is good at stuff like that. Then I copy the list and paste it without formatting — a key distinction! — into Google Docs. I use Google Docs to turn all those lists into links, one for each artist and one for each song, because Docs includes a simple key-mapping for that and also allows you to automatically add that “target=_blank” attribute to each one. Docs also allows you to view the file in HTML, so I do that, copy it, and paste it back into Word. Because Docs also inserts a bunch of unnecessary crap like titles and ID tags (for some unfathomable reason) on each link, and also uses double line breaks in place of paragraph breaks (for an even less fathomable reason). So I have to do a find-and-replace to remove all that extraneous gibberish that drives editors crazy, and Docs’ find-and-replace is garbage.

I know I’ve probably lost most of you already, but the point is this: My needs are simple, but I have yet to find a tool that meets them. I’ve tried word processors…I’ve tried notepads…I’ve tried desktop-based blogging software…I’ve tried online options. None of them seem to solve a problem that I have got to imagine has been bugging web writers for a decade now.

I asked folks on Twitter for recommendations, and the results were almost comically diverse. Most people seem to either be entering all the formatting tags by hand, or relying on their editors to make traditional word-processing documents web-ready. No two people used the same software.

Clearly there is a need here. But you tell me: Am I asking too much? Or am I just missing that one awesome bit of software that everybody knows about but no one’s bothered to hip me to? I’m getting desperate here, people. Please help me out with your suggestions before I’m forced to teach myself a modern programming language and write my own damn software.

Attention game journalists:

Can we stop overselling Flower please? Yes, it’s a lovely little game. Yes, it does a lot of interesting things with control. Yes, it has wonderful atmosphere and a nice message. But how about we let players discover these things for themselves? Do we really need to engage in a Most Embarrassing Hyperbole contest every time we talk about the game?

Here, I’ll help. Here’s a handy list for anyone planning to review, blog about, or otherwise cover the game:

Things Flower Does Not Do

• Redefines gaming forever
• Cures cancer
• Justifies, on its own, the purchase of a PlayStation 3
• Reverses global warming
• Personally fellates the player
• Magically turns your significant other into a gamer
• Rescues us from the post-holiday lull
• Saves the whales
• Feeds the hungry
• Allows you to stop considering other games for Game of the Year
• Sticks it to The Man
• Helps you clean your apartment, you filthy troll
• Brings about peace in the Middle East
• Takes the place of real flowers for your loved one
• Makes you any smarter, hipper, or more attractive
• Loves you

Things Flower Does

• Kills a couple hours in a soothing, and yet thought-provoking, fashion
• Surprises the player…if you people will let it

Thank you for your attention.

We regret to inform you that your order for Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace cannot be fulfilled at this time due to product unavailability. It is the policy of Amazon to sell more copies of our books than we have in stock, on the chance that earlier orders may be cancelled. Unfortunately we have drastically underestimated demand for this title.

We do value your business, thus we will be sending you an only very slightly used copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment instead. It will be arriving in four to six weeks. We understand that your original order was due to be shipped in three days, and that your replacement title has a significantly lower retail price, and we regret that we are not able to offer any refund or adjustment to your payment. We remind you that these policies are clearly outlined in our Terms of Service (which you may obtain by sending in a self-addressed, stamped envelope to our corporate office).

As always, we thank you for shopping with us, and we look forward to your continued business.

Sincerely,
Amazon Customer Service

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Dear Valued McDonald’s Customer,

Thank you for your recent e-mail about our new Value Meal pricing structure. To answer your question: no, what you read was not a misprint. We do, in fact, charge double the amount for a single cheeseburger than we do for a double cheeseburger or, in fact, two cheeseburgers. We recognize that this may be perplexing to some of our customers, but this policy is governed by advanced formulae of supply and demand, which we have found to be incomprehensible to the layperson.

If you should find that you are in need of only one cheeseburger, we recommend ordering the two-burger value meal (the “Number Two”) and disposing of one of the burgers in one of our handy trash receptacles. (We regret that we cannot allow transferral of the extra burger due to security reasons.)

Thank you as always for your input, and we look forward to your continued business.

Sincerely,
McDonald’s Customer Service

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Dear Valued Kaiser Permanente Member,

This letter is in response to your phone call of last week. We understand your concern with your recent emergency room service, but unfortunately we are unable to make any adjustments to your bill.

As you know, emergency rooms can become quite busy. As a result, it becomes necessary to increase the cost of service during peak times. We strongly encourage you in the future to make an appointment for emergency room service four to six weeks in advance. You may find that you pay a slightly higher premium than if you were to request immediate attention during off-peak hours (e.g., 4:00 to 5:00 am), but you will be able to rest easy knowing that you are guaranteed service at a reasonable price.*

We look forward to your continued business.

Sincerely,
Kaiser Permanente Customer Service

*please note: “Guaranteed service at a reasonable price” shall in no way be interpreted to mean that reasonably priced service may be guaranteed. Kaiser Permanente reserves the right to deny service to any patient arriving later than fifteen minutes prior to a scheduled appointment, or in the event of the arrival of a newer patient willing to pay twice the reserved price.

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Dear American Airlines Flyer,

We’ve got your money, so go fuck yourself.

Sincerely,
American Airlines

p.s. We run this place now, bitch!