Echoes from my Past

I rarely delete anything.

I will (and do) have about a dozen external hard drives which would constitute a digital archaeologist’s wet dream or nightmare… all filled with pictures, documents, music, and PDFs from way longer than I care to ponder.

Unless it was part of the digital void from 8Jun2005 to 1Apr2006 – when the first external did the “clickclickclick” of death and took with it 10 months’ worth of data, I still have a copy of some random file, photo, or document somewhere.

That Excel spreadsheet capturing all the scheduled maintenance for our Med birds? Still have it (noted, the main rotor blade spar pressure check for my favorite bird of the four assigned is now 5,771 days overdue… and the #2 engine HIT check was 7 degrees above upper limit).

The question of when I first wrote about one mission in particular? Monday, May 28, 2007 10:22 PM.

Great if I can remember where I saved things… not so great if I am looking for something vague or trying to stay on topic.

About an hour or so ago, I found a MySpace post I had been looking for… and tangible proof that I was noticing things getting weird seventeen years ago:

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Sunday, July 08, 2007 11:39 PM

[Edit: The day I came across the website for “Democrat Match” – seriously, a site for partisan dating. Though the site is gone, others have taken its place.]

Has the world gone mad and no one told me?

I typed this up already, but Myspace locked up when I went to select the music.

This is a map of How I Got Here.

Time to purge my Favorites…

The New York Times Arts “And Don’t Even Get Her Started on the War” Hm… this is about Janeane Garofalo… did I even finish reading this?

Hm.

Air America Radio… what is this? Click.

Read. Scroll. Readreadscrollreadsc… wait.

What the hell?

There is a market out there for everything, evidently. There is also the unmistakable sound of a wooden box getting dragged out.

I wonder what the testimonials are like… Never mind:

“You DO have a great singles site. I figure– the worst-case scenario is, if we can’t vote the Republicans out- we can hook up Democratic couples and breed them out. Hee hee– well, we could have fun trying. Anyway– thanks for all your hard work to create the site—its brilliant. Regards, C*”

“Hee hee”?? The voiceover in my head as I read that defaulted to squeaky, pre-adolescent, female. “Breed the Republicans out. Ew. Republicans are poopyheads… big, doodie-filled poopyheads. With cooties.” Go Team Republican!

“Was so sick of those stupid websites that were ridiculously lewd and torrid or corny, straight religious balderdash from the religious right..I love this site where you can say what ever you feel like without walking on eggshells. I just joined yesterday and already I’m getting responses. Thanks so much. Wish I would have known sooner… D”

Not BALDERDASH! No! The fiends! I do know that it is a huge relief to be able to say whatever you want without regards to the person on the other end. As long as it’s not ridiculously lewd/torrid/corny. Mildly lewd/torrid/corny is acceptable, though.

“When one comes to Democratic Match, it feels just so much more sane, civilized and prinicpled — and like a much richer, thoughtful pool of folks are there… it also is my impression that there is a larger proportion of smarter and/or educated folks on your site .. D*”

So what does that make the “other” sites? Are Republicans a wicked, chaotic bunch with no morals? Are their sites populated by partially-evolved and severely retarded trilobites flailing helplessly at an old Commodore 64?

“Yours is the best webpage for a democrat soul on the entire internet – T*”

“I really found yor concept directed more cool people towards me and visa versa than any yet. M*”

PENALTY. Team Democrat. Violation of Rules 1 and 2, 15-minute power play awarded to Team Republican.

“I don’t care to date narrow-minded, judgmental, religiously fanatical, etc., etc., Republican women. J*”

Whoa. Holy hypocrite. Ect., ect…

You get the idea.

So, am I left, or am I right. Republican or democrat? I ask only because I need to know if I’m cool or not. I don’t want to be uncool. Or a trilobite.

This whole thing seems completely out of hand. These people get paid to nothing but talk about crap, widening the rift and not getting anything done. All the important matters are tossed into the bottomless void between the two – unwanted articles of blame and accusation. Political S.E.P.’s. [“somebody else’s problems”]

Oh yeah… there’s more. All the way at the bottom:

Learn About People:
Al Gore, Howard Zinn, Dennis Kucinich, Michael Moore, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Barbara Boxer, Rachel Carson, Julia Butterfly Hill,

Learn About Things:
Global Warming, Air America Radio, Democracy, Democratic Party, Green Party, Liberals / Liberalism, Progressives / Progressivism,

[26Jun2024: all hypertext links were removed as what they might have been in 2007 are more than likely nowhere near what they are today.]

Ok. “Learn about people”…”Learn about things”?? Why does this seem odd? Oh yeah, probably because after reading the testimonials, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out where all the self-titled smart people went on this site. Hell, even I know who Julia Butterfly Hill is… Really, though. You get that far on the site, and you have to click on Learn about Democracy?? Whoa again.

“This dating service is run by liberal democrats and donates half of any profits to heroic environmental groups. Our sign-up is quick and painless ~ what are you waiting for?”

Oh, I dunno. A theme song on kazoos? Confetti? A bed of shale and the inevitable paleontologist?

More on commercialism later. Remind me.

Last thing: compose on Word. I lost this twice already and had to revisit my irritation more times today than I had planned. And I haven’t even been in to work yet.

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It feels good to browse some of my older stuff. Much of it serves as a sometimes painful reminder of the ham-fisted early days of posting from Hawaii, then Iraq… but it also reminds me that while some things haven’t changed that much, other things have.

Perhaps I am a better person than I was from the first recorded entry on MySpace… Monday, December 05, 2005 10:54 PM.

Perhaps I am a bitter person from 19 years’ exposure to social media.

Regardless, I do know that my observations from long ago still ring true: that folks lost their minds then and continue to do so. Alls I can do is just try to keep up and add another layer to the digital sediment layer…