Although Cool Site of the Day is still confused by the bell-bottom jeans/cool paradox, we did discover that all coolness shares one thing in common: an actual chemical element that we call Coolium. Coolium, unlike other elements, also occurs as a compound, which can be expressed as C*O*O*L, or for the chemistry nerds out there, CO2L. (NOTE: Anyone tempted to find fault with our grasp of chemistry, should keep in mind that we're, get this, making this stuff up.)

Who discovered Coolium?

Coolium was discovered in the spring of 1996 by Richard Grimes, who was actually looking for the chemical make-up of Yoo-Hoo chocolate flavored drink - in addition to his regular duties on Cool Site of the Day.

Is Coolium dangerous?

Coolium is highly explosive when combined with Anti-Coolium, a trace element found in the clothes Richard Grimes wore as a child.

Is Richard Grimes dangerous?

Only to himself, although his superiors aren't too happy with the way HTML reacts when touched by Richard. Richard's superiors try to keep in mind that he grew up in a nudist camp near Disney World (This part, we're not making up) and that may have fundamentally affected his thinking. Also, his first real job after college was writing obituaries for the local newspaper. Richard Grimes, like Coolium, isn't the most stable isotope - if you get our drift.

How can I create Coolium? (and be selected as Cool Site of the Day)

Some suggestions:

1. Create something useful.

On a bad Internet day, downloading a Web page is like watching the grass grow - only with commercials. Make the wait worthwhile by providing some kind of service. We don't expect your page to cure the pain and heartache of psoriasis, but you'll have a better chance at being Cool Site of the Day if you provide goodies for your visitors. These goodies might be images of a favorite actor (hint #1: for any guys planning to send us your Pamela Sue Anderson worship page - it's been done), a search engine or even your careful thought-out opinions.

2. If you can't be useful, be entertaining.

Sometimes things have entertainment value but are otherwise useless. Cool Site of the Day naturally values this phenomenon not only because it justifies our salaries, but because it explains why we bought the Kiss solo albums when we were teenagers.

3. Be aware of bandwidth.

The average Cool Site devotee will have to wait one second for every kilobyte of information he or she downloads. If you have a 100k file on your site, that devotee would have to wait almost two minutes to see the results. If you have an addiction to huge file sizes, Kai's Power Tools and Adobe Photoshop, think about using your free time in an activity that wastes the time of people who are not on the Internet - try dating, for instance.

4. Think twice about your picture.

Use this rule of thumb: unless 100 people have told you that you're beautiful or remarkable looking, don't put your picture up on your Web page. You'll notice that our pictures are not up on Cool Site of the Day and that's because, not counting our mothers, we're 100 people shy of that number. Exceptions: Do you have a third eye? An extra limb? Are you strangely proportioned? Does your picture qualify under rule #2?

5. Surprise us.

How can I submit a site?

E-mail us at cool@infi.net.

Some tips on submitting:

1. Include a description of your site.

Cool Site of the Day receives 400-600 submissions a day. If you want to stand out, describe your site. If you want to stand out even more, describe your site in glowing terms. Huge preposterous lies, of course, will get you the most attention.

2. Don't forget to send me the URL for your page.