Do you feel that there is a lot of potential in the pop-up box?

The pop-up box can be used for all sorts of things and we have only begun to scratch the surface, or scroll over its substrata.

I would love it, for example, if I could read (i.e., try to read) an article written in French that were festooned with pop-up boxes pop-uppable over every word, you’d just glide your mouse and the illumination would come, the English translations and concise explanations of every nice grammatical and stylistic point. Maybe some of the pop-up boxes would have other pop-up boxes that pop up.

It turns out that pop-up boxes can even be used to express coy reservations or second thoughts. Instead of sticking such asides in brackets or footnotes or addenda, you could have a little pop-up box ready to leap out of the text you wish to nervously explicate. I saw this form of annotation in an essay on authority and authoritarianism by Timothy Wirkman Virkkala (I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly), to which I was led by an article about presidential candidate Ron Paul’s disowned newsletter copy, long story.

With regard to the line in Virkkala’s piece about “who is he to tell me to accept his categories,” I thought it was obviously a little ironic joke about authority and questioning authority, in line with the button slogan that annoyed Lew Rockwell, not a seriously indecorous implication that in the essay to which Virkkala was responding Rockwell had offered no argument but only demanded agreement with tough-sounding authoritarian assertions. Be that as it may, Virkkala now disparages the wisecrack as “indecorous.” He has had second thoughts about it; the tone is too jarring in light of the relatively elevated tone of the rest of the essay or whatever.

But…indecorous?! Why do persons kick themselves in the groin like that, accusing themselves of indecorousness and the like?

Hold on, though. Our pop-up box encases one of the more-sinuous sort of second thoughts, those that come with their own airbag and trampoline. Note, uh, Benny, the full text of the apologia that will accost you if you take the trouble to scroll: “Does this seem harsh? An editorial snafu led to this indecorous moment.”

Huh? Are you like me? Are you shaking your head, tall, just showered, enjoy books and movies, and making yourself a glass of chocolate milk as you get ready to turn in for the evening?

First of all, the author says he’s guilty of indecorousness, or rather that the moment was (hmm…), but then fobs off the responsibility for this renegade moment on an anonymous factor called “editorial snafu.” See, these Editorial Snafu gremlins clatter across escritoires at many an inopportune moment, and there is nothing to do about them but sigh and erect your self-accusatory, self-exculpatory pop-up box which nobody will ever see who does not click on hyperlinks expecting to be led to yet another damn web page….

We’re just at the beginning of all this. The more we see from the pop-up box, the more we can expect to see.