God Bless The Internet

The internet never forgets. It’s like a giant fiberoptic elephant in an infinite temporal archive made of peanut butter. This can be a bummer if you’re Sanford Wallace or Bernard Shifman but on balance the creation of a broadly democratized, high availability, modern day Library of Alexandria is probably worth a little embarassment. And it never forgets.

It never forgets, for instance, that I have a couple of websites older than this fine, upstanding blog. And I haven’t even linked to the really old ones findable only in archive.org. Silly websites, serious websites, why, even The Coming Revolution is still up, in all it’s crusty glory. For your reference:

[root@lubis html]# ls -l revolution.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nobody 17445 Jun 23 2002 revolution.html
[root@lubis html]#

4 years crusty. But this is the internet. So it is with less surprise than you might imagine, that I occasionally receive email about this, or other pages. This one came in earlier today:

Hello. I’m starting a revolution of my own and this site is like a virtual goldmine to my search for those interested in joining. Though I’m looking for those with more serious complaints againts the world we live in, I would appreciate anyone who reads this to seriously consider doing something about the life we are stuck in. In our society(all of humanity)we are bound by what lives we have been living without reaching out to the idea that there is more than we know. I believe that a revolution in sociology is upon us and we will soon learn that a human mind is capable of much more. Break free from the life you know. Be happy. Oh, I also have a complaint. Let me start out by saying that I am a contract killer for the us government and have seen more stupidity in special operations than in the face of the retard in isle twelve stocking shelves. You would not believe(and I half don’t expect you to)the idiots that are running certain operations in certain parts of Afgahnastan. I, with my very own eyes, witnessed a “professional” explosive ordanance disposal team playing catch with a 120mm mortar round they found roadside on patrol. Perhaps they had secret knowledge as to the status of the round(live or dud)but I certainly would rather suck on an M-4 than toss a explosive projectile for kicks. Is anyone with me? -revolutionary

Um. So first of all let me emphasize that if you, any of you, ever ever EVER throw a 120mm mortar round at me, you better fucking pray it is live or so help me I will shove it so far up your ass that you will quite simply die.

But I digress. My real purpose in mentioning all of this is to draw attention to the fact that this fine upstanding gentlemen is, reading between the lines here, a little less than completely gruntled; one might go so far as to say disgruntled. One might, but I won’t, because reading between those same lines also indicates that this nice man of unknown gruntledness is currently armed and outfitted by the U.S. military. And planning a revolution. Dear me. Now would be a good time to underscore the fact, for those who haven’t read it, that The Coming Revolution is mostly about crappy tech support and Old Navy commercials.

I wish him well, though. I’m reading A People’s History of the United States just at the moment, and it is thus far rather pro-revolution, so why not? I’m with Chris Rose though, let’s start with the people that stand on the left side of escalators.