I thought if I could overcome the academic pretensions of the name I'd probably find something of interest in Impossible Object, a hypertext journal from Brown University, home to Robert Coover and other seminal figures in literay hypertext folklore. And sure, it has a great design. Yes, there are some fancy-schmancy hypertexts here. But when you get right down to it, this journal doesn't satisfy. Maybe it was the first sentence of Steve Reed's piece that put me off: "Upon a person entering a wet dream coma with one arm tanner than the other, meaning his original race cannot be deduced, he must be cared for according to these laws..."

The "Hypertext" section of Impossible Object starts off decently, with a bit of a rant about how the journal aims to present some high-quality hypertexts from Robert Arellano's seminar at Brown and elsewhere. I started to wonder just what it is that Bob Arellano teaches when I took a closer look at the Japanese-animation style cartoon sex-pot wearing fishnets, a dog collar and chain-and leather-braces that don't quite cover her nipples. I decided to move on when I read that Jeffery Zimbalist and Izel Silam's "Silent Pinkhouse in Cahoots" contained "more perverted sexuality and mindless violence than the Bible".