More Letters!
Late for the Party
And This Too Shall Pass?
Love the Man in the Uniform
A Morning in the Life
Give This Man a Flamethrower
Being "Sticky" Is Not Enough
Don't Me.Com
Under the Volcanoes
The Cyberslouch
e-Slacking
Stock-Suck

I was going to write a feel-good rant about the Internet and connectivity and the new Information Age. About how technology has transformed the nature of human contact. I wanted to say nice things, people, I really did.
     But then our service provider, JPS.Net, got bought by OneMain.com. Our e-mail vanished, and I spent two hours on hold to talk to some dumb-ass tech monkey who couldn't find his port with a GPS unit.
     I do yoga. I know that nothing exists, and all that Buddha crap. But I got so pissed off I booked an e-ticket to Virginia and bought a flame thrower on eBay, just like they did in the Old West; gonna swing by the OneMain office and give them bastards the what for.
     There is a distinct spirit of western expansionism in today's Web realm. The e-Land Rush is still on, despite the gobbling of a few major portals. And like the Old West, there's really no one to hand out justice in the new frontier. We sit with the phone pressed to our heads while assuaging machines occasionally coo and prattle. Can you imagine what Cool Hand Luke would do if some punk-ass CS drone said: "We apologize for any inconvenience this wait may have caused"?
     I think the Net oughta make me Sheriff. Get me a matrix-blue Boxter and a cell-phone dispenser, so that every time I end a conversation with my trademark, "Just fix it, varmint," I can chuck the phone at a passing billboard—probably advertising some goddamn new website full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.
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