Web site to go from
no-mayo to no-more-o

To: Mayonnaise Haters Everywhere From: Your leader It is with a heavy heart but a heavier wallet that I tell you that nomayo.com will no longer be Internet home of the Worldwide I Hate Mayonnaise Club, the only organization to use hate in a good way.

I wanted you mayo haters and club members around the globe (we have members in almost every country, including those near Russia who are mostly consonants) to hear the news from the source before word leaks out on CNN and Food TV. I'd like to say you are like my children, but that wouldn't be right. That would imply that I am head of the largest dysfunctional family in the world. No, you are more like stockholders in a company -- a large, dysfunctional near-bankrupt company whose associates are held together by a dream, a dream of seeing the world eventually wiped clean of that gross, yellowish slime that restaurants and drive-ins insist on contaminating our food with.

Granted, it's not as grand as Martin Luther King's dream, but what can we do? Our dream is to one day see sandwiches judged not by the content of their cold cuts, but by the fact that they are mayo-free. Sadly, since I formed the I Hate Mayonnaise Club more than a decade ago, mayo has spread. It has begun to appear on things like pizza, chili and, strangely, Jessica Simpson.

BUT THAT HAS nothing to do with why the no-mayo club will no longer be found at nomayo.com. The reason for that is that someone offered me a lot of money for the Web site address. It turns out that while the club itself was racing toward financial ruin, the Web address was racing upward in various search engines. That's because it was one of the first private Web sites on the Internet, having been launched in 1995. Apparently, the longer a site is on the Web, the more prominent its address becomes on search engines.

So when you type "mayonnaise" in Google, nomayo.com is the second site listed out of 644,000 sites. On Yahoo it is the second site out of a whopping 1.2 million. Type "no mayo," and it takes you over to the No. 1 site on Google out of 3 million sites. That kind of visibility apparently translates into big bucks for everyone except the management of the Worldwide I Hate Mayonnaise Club. Which is why someone just bought nomayo.com from me for, well, not enough to retire on, but enough to cause a wry smile.

I'm not sure what kind of a site nomayo.com will become under its new management. The purchaser said it would become an auction site. But I wouldn't be surprised if it suddenly becomes something along the "human sexuality" line. I have no problem with that as long as mayo isn't involved.

Hopefully, the no-mayo club will find a new home on the Net. I've heard that the address "hotczechoslovakiancheerleaders.com" is for sale at a reasonable price.