…ALL your freaking stories start disappearing off the internet. There was a time we inkstained newspaper folk honestly thought those words of ours might live forever in the great wide web. Of course, back then, 10 years was right next to forever. I fully expected to be dead by 30, if you wanna know the truth. I just figured I’d wind up doing some stupid shit, then get to watch as my face melted off—literally—in a big ol’ ball of flames sent to take me out.

No such ball ever came. Not for me, anyway. I’d like to NOT YET, but let’s face it: If it happened yet, I’m getting a mite outside my window of opportunity. If fiery balls were headed my way, I’m pretty sure they would’ve found me by now. Truth is, I’m a lot more concerned about getting poked by some random stick out in the yard, getting an infection and having whack off a chunk of my leg.

Seems a lot more likely than flamming balls. Of course, you never can tell…

Seen a buddy of mine do some pretty stupid shit with some flaming balls, but that’s a whole other story. Sadly, it’s now been more than 30 years since I soapboxed about being dead at 30.

That’s a math problem that’ll keep you up nights.

I went clicking through some of my Linked In stories I had posted there, not sure really what half even did anymore. Not a damn thing is the answer to that question, incidentally. Not a damn thing at all.

So, I’m going to try and remedy the situation, posting a few now, if it’ll let me and if I remember how. Here goes nothing:

So, does anyone care to know why all our stories vanishing, on this, the thing we once thought infinite?

Cell phones… No really, that’s the answer.

What’sa one got to do with the other. Simple, really. You how it sucks to log on to one those old-school websites, the kind they all used to be, with a phone asnd suddenly you to nine miles east and about 40 miles south just to find anything on the page? Well, somebody a much kinder page design that was specific for smart phone users, one that still looks like q functioning website on a computer monitor, but its programing responds to whatever device you’re using and adjusts it features accordingly. And thanks to the corona virus, most anyone who ever wished for a mobile friendly website has pretty much got one now, because such platforms were ideal social distancers and the government was hand cash in wheelbarrow loads to restart the economy (that it, the government, shut down). Things it takes some serious software programming to pull that off.

So all these newspapers that have building these impressive libaries of stories for 20 some-odd years now were basically told that between big ol’ databases of stories they’ve been storing at this time and the program they’re going to need to make the websites easier to use on a phone, they would either 1) Need to spring for a new server capable of holding them both, or 2) delete something.

Most surely had to ask, so what’s a new server gonna set me back?

When they were told it was the equivalent of about three arms, half a leg and somebody’s first born, most newspapers — all now broke as Mother Teresa, especially post-pandemic — quickly responded wityh a “So, do I just this big red ‘delete all’ button or is there a faster weay to do it?”

And just like that, most every story researched, project undertaken, words I might’ve been really proud of, once — vanished like farts at a cesspool — you’re pretty sure they’re there still someplace, but you just can’t make them out for the other bullshit involved.

That’s how it goes, though. Out with the old, as they say. Destroy a perfectly useful thing so we can improve it. Somehow that defies my notion of logic. But then again, I’ve always been wierd like that.