Did you hear the one about the new portal home page that's in beta testing, but that is just like another big company's site?

Or the one about the executive who got a call from a head-hunter asking if he'd be interested in a job at a certain portal company--working for exactly the same exec who'd laid him off two years before (and doing fairly the same job)?

Welcome to AOLHell, the world where everyone means well, but getting out of that big crater in the earth is, well, kinda tough.

TechMeme's got the story on the new front page; a friend called last week with the head-hunter tale.