shinyPlasticBag

One of the most interesting things that one can do is to dig through other people’s crap. Oh, don’t get all high and mighty on me: you do it. If you find that somebody has lost their wallet on the side of the road, you’ll dig through it. If you’re visiting someone’s house, you’ll (stereotypically) look at the contents of their medicine cabinet. The vast majority of web browsing is pure snooping (come on, how long has it been since you’ve come across a directory listing instead of a web page and gone through all the files there?). The high pinnacle of snooping, however, is digging through somebody elses hard drive. It’s unfortunate that the opportunity to do this (in a morally kosher circumstance) rarely presents itself.

I’m at work, and I’m bored, and I’m snooping. The person in question? Myself, years and years ago. Now that SpindeXML Explorer is all but done, I’m finding it fun to dig through my old indexes and look at the files within. It’s basically like going through the files of a stranger, because I would never have remembered a file called !-Schedule.txt (random, and boring example…that happens to contain my grade 11, fall 1999 class schedule). It’s lead to some real gems, though: for example, Britney Spears VS Drag Queen.txt

. I don’t know what blows my mind more: the vast, vast majority of things on the Internet that are weird and absolutely hilarious, or the shocking rate at which we seem to be losing them. How many people out there make as conscientious an effort as I do to retain everything they’ve ever seen? Seriously, I dare you to try it. Go for a month and keep every single file that you come into contact with. Come up with some way of organizing it. Stash it away. In six months to a year, go back and look at it, and see how many great things you’ll rediscover.

I’ll be right back. I gotta take a dump.