If you have not yet begun to Tweet, doing so may be your one remaining shot at immortality. If you don’t mind being immortal in a crowd.
It turns out all the tweets ever tweeted will be archived by the Library of Congress. One blogger connected with the New York Times said “the library has attached itself to the firehose.”
An open, gushing firehose running into a library? That doesn’t end well.
Best of luck to the Librarians of Congress as they address the monumental task of keeping up with the flow, and Godspeed to the historians of the future who will wade into this vast ocean of data to locate a meaningful pebble. By one estimate, the library has already absorbed over 130 billion tweets.
On the plus side of that equation, I now feel a little better about the condition of my basement.
People are already worried that the things they say and do online will inadvertently be remembered forever. And people do post surprisingly revealing things in places where anybody else can see them. Whenever I stumble across an embarrassingly personal photo or an unusually thorough and detailed confession, I say to myself “Here’s someone who has decided they do not want to be anybody’s first grade teacher. Ever.”
And there are plenty who fit that description.
And now to give such people a second chance at teaching the littlest tykes, there comes a web service called “Snapchat“. Material posted using this thing is literally designed to disappear after a short time in existence. You can share your less-than-flattering I-just-out-of-bed picture to all your friends confident that, like the taped instructions delivered in every episode of “Mission Impossible,” it will self-destruct.
But can something that promises to leave without a trace really be counted on to vanish? Does anything in the digital world go away? I can’t help noticing that all those smoking Mission Impossible recorders, supposedly gone to the great smoldering beyond, are still around for your viewing pleasure, on Youtube.
What item of yours is gone forever now, and happily so?
Trail Baboon 
That would be my wasband.
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Oops – I didn’t see the word “item”
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Not to worry – it was my first gut reaction as well!
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Mine too… 🙂
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Good morning. We were very glad to get rid of the Renault that we owned many years ago. It would just stop running as you were driving down the road. The cause of this problem was never found. We could never be sure that it would not come to a stop without any warning. Some parts were replaced that would keep it going for a while, but no repair solved the problem permanently. I think the car had some other problems as well. It seemed to be a good deal because it was a good looking car that we bought new at a low priced. I remember seeing a story about a Renault, like ours, that was crudely painted lemon yellow and returned to the dealer.
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i had some friends who tried dealing with a renault and found the same thing to be true. i think they got theirs right after renault pulled out of the us market and there were still dealers who had sold them around but none who cared at all about the terrible engineering that went into the last of the line here in the us. i think they still exist in other parts of the world but so does typhoid
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I had a Renault Encore that I bought new in 1984. It was the WORST car imaginable – constantly in for repairs. I don’t miss it at all.
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Oh, yeah. I was so angry at the dealer when I took it in for repairs once that I had Leo Kottke’s song, “Why Can’t You Fix My Car?” all queued up at an ear-blowing volume on my cassette deck when I dropped it off. They would have turned on the ignition and that song would have come blasting out of the stereo. I was pretty mad to have done a thing like that – but that CAR!
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I have been reminded that one the most disturbing problems our Renault had was a speed control that would not disengage. The car would continue to try to go at the speed at which the control was set when you wanted to slow down and tried to turn off the control. Also, the paint on the car turned bad in a way that it shouldn’t have even thought the dealer said that we must have done something to cause the paint to go bad.
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like cb my ex popped into mind first. i remember writing the countdown numbers on the kitchen wall with how many more months it would be until i could legally be able to tell her to stop involving me in her life. we split when my kide were like 2 and 4 and i had to hang in there for 16 years. about the 2nd or 3rd year i put a big number 144 on the wall in the kitchen for 12 years x12 months of her getting under my skin where the kids were involved. 144 seemed like a lot and i would cross of that number and write the next and i could see progress was being made. only 100 ore months, then 90 then 70 , 50 hell 40 is a cakewalk…. b
and look… it passed. i hear gallstones are bad but years of consequence for bad judgement was my favorite discarded relic form the past
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This makes me laugh! The consequences of bad judgment can last a long time. My wasband was not overly involved, he was passive and expected everyone to come to him. While I had breast cancer and was in chemo treatment, he STILL expected me to drive the child 110 miles for a visit (I said no). Allthough he loved our son and was a pretty good dad, to this day he expects our son to make all the effort to keep up the relationship. I still rue the day. I don’t want to hear from him, but he could extend more energy towards our son.
Hmph.
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You are glad–I would bet–that your cancer is gone.
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Excellent point!
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
More often I lose something and feel regret about the loss. Rarely do I think of this the other way around. Several cars pop up–the Volkswagen with the bad battery that could only be accessed by removing the back seat, the Chevy Cavalier with a cracked engine block.
Then there is a cousin who lived with me for awhile, but would not get a job or leave my house, except when she would leave her kids with me. I finally had to ask her to leave and she sent me a poison pen letter with a hex on me. Don’t see her much! We are not Facebook friends.
By the time my former business partner, who created buckets of trouble, left the building I was not sorry to see her go either.
My sister’s lunatic dog is high on the list as well. A neurotic, abused dachshund, she would hoard doggie treats, bark incessantly at NOTHING AT ALL, and rush out the door for a game of catch me, catch me, catch me that could last for a really long time.
Well, after this post, I just feel so much lighter thinking about all the dead wood in my life I left behind. Maybe it will be a good day.
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and there is my ex business partner (schmuck). i feel bad putting my sister in the list but florida is about exactly the correct distance.
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I also have a list of people that I don’t particularly appreciate due to problems they created for me. It is hard for me to let go of my resentment of some of these people and that really isn’t a good thing. I don’t see any reason why I should forget about what these people did. However, I think it is best to move on and not revisit that wrong that was done too often.
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I’m glad to be free of the shame and self-loathing I carried so long.
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Wonderful, Steve!
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hey dale
thanks for helping us all unload baggage
about things from the pated that we hated
the weight left my shoulders with saggage
from things in my life that related
what was i thinking the song goes
mistakes never do go away
i wish i could clear it like i blow my nose
but thats not how it works so they say
take your medicine stand up be a man
you made you bed now must sleep in it
i look back and laugh cause i can
too many episode with a creep in it
the choice of a suit coat never causes despair
my drinking has caused some regret
i dont have to worry about pulling out hair
and quit those god damned cigarettes
of all of the things in my life that have gone
of everything life has shown me so far
if i laid it all out on my own front yard lawn
the lost item that would certainly star
is my anger with twits and my hate of inept
i used to let it boil my blood
id get so upset smoke 45 cigarette
and the negative vibes they would flood
now i try to cut slack to most dweebs
understand that doofs are status quo
they may think the same of me
but where did that come form huh bro?
in blissfull ignorance i do like living
thinking man is good deep down within
that all have the heart that is giving
forgiveness of mans original sin
but if i get caught up in whats wrong
it affects everything that i do
poision messes with me all day long
nothing left of me to share with you.
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You are in rare form this AM, Tim.
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Nice….
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This is great, tim.
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I will be glad to be done with having a child in Elementary/High School. I have had a child in public school since 1991. I am really ready to move on to new things with daughter starting college and son finishing up his master’s degree.
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I’m having trouble thinking of an item; I have way too much stuff so clearly I’m not getting rid of enough, although when I do I rarely have regrets.
For several years I rented out a bedroom in my house (to balance daycare costs). Not a particularly social person and he had some issues with alcohol during his time with us, although Teenager says it was a good experience to see first hand how you can screw up your own life. Even though he never drank in the house and I never got involved in his rehabilitation attempts, towards the end I realized I was always on edge, wondering whether he was drinking at night, whether he would lose another job. The day he moved out (when Child was getting to be old enough to graduate from daycare), I felt an incredible weight off my shoulders. It was almost a physical feeling of relief and happiness.
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I like killing two birds with one stone, and that’s how it feels having found a new home for my oil-free turkey fryer. I’m rid of it, and in its new home it will be put to an unconventional use: making beer! Now what else do I have that I’d like to get rid off? Hmm, this could take a while.
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And you have that nice bit of space it was taking up…
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Sorta, BiR, it was stacked on top of a toaster oven that I bought in anticipation of remodeling our kitchen, a project that is going nowhere in a hurry.
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I am glad to never have to see another pair of “pretty plus” jeans from Sears. I learned at an early age that girls and boys who are “fuller figured” are not treated the same – boys got to be “husky” and often got clothes not unlike their slimmer brethren. Girls got perfectly awful stuff that did not look anything like the “regular” sizes. Brown denim with floral print – seriously? Who thought that was a good idea for a 10-year-old? It was the 70s, but still – gah. Glad not to have those around anymore. I may still need the “pretty plus” sizing, but at least there are better options now.
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Where, Anna. I hate clothes shopping because it appears to me that if you wear anything larger than a size 12, they seem to think you must also be either visually impaired or have no sense of style.
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I don’t have a single go-to source, unfortunately. It’s sort of a piece from here, a piece from there. Some of it dependent on how willing I am to spend money (e.g., TurnStyle has provided some good stuff when you hit it on the right day when I am feeling like spending less – Macy’s is also hit and miss and the higher end, Penney’s can be okay for basics, especially if you are close enough to the larger Misses sizes to have that work…), some of it dependent on my patience level for shopping (see: hit and miss nature of each retailer). At least I am not confined to only Lane Bryant and double-knit from the Penney’s of old like I was 15 years ago…
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I’ve found Lands End to have very nice, good quality, nice fitting, stylish but classic clothes in ALL sizes. They even have Talls, which I love. Most of the dress pants, jeans and chinos you can have hemmed to your exact length for free. They’re more expensive than Target or Wal-Mart, but so MUCH better. I usually shop the Clearance and Overstocks to get needed clothes at a reasonable price. Their swimsuits are the BEST, bar none. You can even buy separate tops and bottoms with tankinis. And they have an excellent return policy.
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I used to love Lands End…then they quit carrying the jeans I loved. Being a long-waisted (but not tall) gal, I do love their swimsuits – but their slacks offerings of late have not made me squeal with glee (and they just don’t fit as well as some of the older cuts). Good basic stuff, but not where I go for “fun” stuff.
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Cigarettes and the aforementioned Renault.
I’m out of time – I wish I could find more time!
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I think I would have to agree with others about the Cigarettes… in that What was I thinking? category. When a friend introduced me to my first one, it was a menthol, otherwise I don’t think I could have stood the taste. And “everyone” was doing it (freshman year at ISU). Didn’t think ahead; had NO idea how hard it would be to quit. But first year of teaching kdgn., after about a dozen tries (and having a roommate who was also quitting), we succeeded. Whew.
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but you were looking good
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Yeah, you look so cool blowing smoke out your nose with your eyes watering. I got teased a lot because I would kind of back away from the dang thing. And once when I had clean hair wrapped up turban style, I set my towel on fire…
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Like Jacque, my list of things lost and gone forever that are regretted and missed is pretty long, so I am having trouble with this one. No wasband, no cancer, no cigarettes….. Possibly the odd wretched job. I guess I will be glad when the old stove is gone, as that will mean there is a new stove, ergo scone production can resume.
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Ooh, yes! The stove! Ours is a work horse we have used and abused for years. When it finally dies I hope to get a gas stove, but that will mean refitting the kitchen with a gas line, so that adds a bit (quite a bit, I think) to the cost.
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ach, you had to remind me. I really do want a gas stove, but like you, it would require the gas line. Ours is a small house, so it would not be a long line (have the gas water heater and dryer already, and I daresay, given the vintage of my house, there probably was a gas stove in there in the first place, but like the Twin Cities trolley tracks, all that remains of that line is evidence).
and then there is the whole convection oven calling me as well.
This may well be the only new stove I ever buy, so I want to get something I can really feel happy about, not just the cheapest thing that will fill the bill.
But will I bake more pie if I get a really nifty oven?
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I’ve always wanted one of those big Viking ranges, with the extra wide oven and six burners on top. But alas, finances and kitchen space don’t allow. And like you, would I bake more pie if I got one???
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Our house is small, too, and we have gas heat and water heater, but the basement is finished, including drywalled celings, so they would have to cut holes in the ceiling to put in the pipe to the kitchen.
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if you want a freebie give me a call. i may have one for you
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tim, are you talking to me?
Verily-the electric one I am looking at is the standard 30″ (because they all are, except for the landlord specials that go “tink” when you shut the door), has the ceramic top (can we be trusted with that?), convection oven and extra big window.
Thing I love about it is that it has these dandy 1/2 shelves and lots of them, so you could actually do a month’s worth of brownies and lasagna in one go.
but would I ????
what I really want is an AGA, but then, I also want a Border Collie and the acreage to go with it too 😉
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MiG… even if you only get carried away every other month with lasagna and brownies, it would be well worth it!
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Afternoon-
This is fun reading today.
I have several pieces of machinery and a few cows I was glad to be rid of. Ornery, kicking cows or machinery that just did not work well. No cars though.
Oh, and I suppose there has been a few co-workers that I wasn’t sorry to see move on.
Curiously, there are people I get along with that others don’t and that makes it difficult when we’re all having lunch together or something. While the others are busy trying to make excuses for NOT going and I’m the one saying ‘well, I don’t mind’.
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A few cows, roosters, and pigs come ti mind, now that you bring them up. And horses, every one we over had. Glad to be free of all horses. Go ahead, hate me for it.
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You could have turned them into steaks, Clyde.
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I’ve talked to a farmer or two that liked farming with horses and at least one who, like you Clyde, was glad to be rid of them. I think he said that he didn’t enjoy riding behind a horses and spending a lot of time looking at their rear ends.
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I am reminded of the first episode of All Creatures, in which James Herriot is riding the bus to Darrowby for the first time, and observes to the farmer next too him what a shame it is that there are fewer and fewer horses being used in farming. Farmer asks ,”you ever farmed with horses?” James: “no, I never have.” Farmer: ” I thought not.”
makes this hopeless romantic smile every time I see it.
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That was my dad; hated the horses and sold them and bought a tractor as soon as he could.
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An old farmer I knew in Denmark had been talked into trading in his horses for a tractor. He was in the habit of going out to the barn every night before bedtime to say goodnight to all the animals, and each night he’d return from the barn and shake his head ruefully. He missed his horses; just couldn’t have much of a conversation with that big hunk of steel.
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A few cars I will never admit I owned, our association townhouse, some of our son’d girlfriends and our daughter’s boyfriends, a Wards table saw (What idiot does not buy a Craftsman table saw?), yeah the cigarettes 43 years ago, 5-7 of my teaching colleagues, my partner, our last church, I wish I could say one of my wife’s friends but she is still here, a few guilts but many remain, and a few pair of shoes that never fit.
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I had a 1965 Mustang that was likable until it began to make ominous sounds during shifts. I wasn’t canny about cars, but I quaked at the thought of replacing the transmission on my feeble salary. I advertised the Mustang for sale. The only guy who responded was an arrogant young man who owned a rumbling, snarling muscle car that was faster than stink but VERY expensive to run in that era of the first big “energy crisis.” This guy’s wife was pregnant and he needed a car that got good mileage. I offered to ride with him during the test drive, and in that time I managed to distract him every time the transmission moaned in pain. Even better, I chattered at length about cars in such a way as to suggest I didn’t understand cars any better than our cat Pippin did. He paid cash for the Mustang.
A week later, he came back, driving his muscle car. He told me he’d owned the Mustang two days before its transmission died spectacularly. “I’d ordinarily be furious with you for selling me such a sick lemon,” he said, “but I could tell you didn’t know jack shit about cars.” I stayed in my Village Idiot character long enough to shake his hand and wish him well. And, oh, was I happy I’d gotten rid of that Mustang!
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it would only be worth about 15thou today even with the tranny blown out if it
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how much did you get for it?
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Next to nothing, tim.
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We got rid of a car with a cracked cylinder head without letting anyone know about the cracked head. We didn’t feel too guilty about doing this because it was picked up by a car salesman as a trade in. We are fairly sure that the car salesman wouldn’t have had any trouble selling us a car with a cracked cylinder head without telling us about it.
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We had a car that we suspected had a cracked block. But I sold it – cheap- to a home mechanic with full disclosure. He did a fair amount of work on it; brakes, tires, ect. Owned it for a month, took it out for a midnight test drive after the latest repair and it went up in flames. He caught it on video. Glad we weren’t still driving it!
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Since I’ve on a year-long quest to purge most of my possessions, there must be quite a few items that I’ve been glad to say goodbye to. But I can think of one specific item.
Got rid of two round cake pans that bugged me because they had nothing to grab onto when taking them out of the oven so I always made a dent in the cake with the potholders as I tried to get a grasp on the pan.
The car before the one I have now. It had many problems, such as not having enough power to accelerate well and erratic brakes. For some reason, the brakes baffled several mechanics. Almost every drive was a white knuckle experience. It still makes me shudder to think of some of the experiences.
I can think of a few relationships and “friendships” that I will be glad to say goodbye to, but unfortunately they are still hanging on. I do my best to set boundaries so these people don’t drive me stark, raving mad.
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Greetings! I’m utterly thrilled to have left behind a bad stutter and bad eyesight (I see like a hawk after having cataract surgery).
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glad the cadarac surgery went so well
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Oooo, congrats on that surgery going so well. From what I have heard, that is a pretty miraculous procedure. Glad it was for you as well.
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For no good reason, other than that I haven’t lost my sense of humor, here’s my musical interlude for the day:
Love these folks.
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