Jolt Country

This: http://www.voy.com/47897/

Go there. Read the first thread. The one started by Spinner!.

The year was 2003. America was at a crossroads. I certainly had a lot of time on my hands. Benjamin "Pinback" Parrish had created, and abandoned, one of my all-time favorite websites, Pinback's Web Central 3.

In the scouring of content that was his abandonment, there were few of us left. Me and ChainGangGuy mostly. I started a thread, under the guise of a man named Spinner!, who declared:

Spinner! wrote:Hi! I'm the fastest man in the world. I'll answer your questions about speed!

Hi guys! I am the fastest person who has ever lived. Do you guys have any questions about speed? I would love to answer them!

The gimmick was that Spinner! was going to take forever to actually answer any questions about speed. Har har har, whatever, right?

But then a funny thing happened. The voy.com website got indexed on Google, and there were actually people - teens, mostly - who did have questions about speed. About running. About jogging.

For instance, "ashely" from parts unknown said:

Ok, im a girl and my school record is 1.01 and thats until i got there, girls arent as fast as guys so i made the new record at 55.21, and i go stay a little bit behind the others until the last 200 when they are all tired and than i run like death is behind me./

This... was a real question! Someone wanted to know!

A month later, I wrote her back, under this Spinner! persona, and said that I was putting away my track shoes, and would answer the question shortly.

This has now gone on for over six years. Six years! I am pretending to answer questions about speed very slowly on the Internet, having never abandoned that thread, having never given up the ghost, having never forgotten.

And now I want some GOD DAMN FUCKING PROPS.

That is nothing short of fantastic. For the most part, they've all been so patient.

Should have told her it's not about how fast she crosses the finish line, but the time from first date to crossing the state line.

Yeah? Is that what I should have told her... or is that what I haven't told her yet?

i'll give you your props in a little bit ok?

Someone told me this joke once, about a snail who got a job as a waiter. A customer walks into the restaurant and orders a glass of water. The snail slowly slinks off. Minutes tick by and the customer starts getting upset. The more time that goes by, the madder the customer gets. After an hour or so the customer starts screaming for his glass of water. About that time the snail sticks his head out from behind the bar and says, "you know what? Just for that, I'm not going."

Building on that, I think you should respond in about a year with, "I didn't understand the question, could you please repeat it?"

OK so she's in college now... and she'll never know...


This brought on a weird line of curiosity. What happens to stuff lying around the internet? I mean old stuff. I imagine websites abandoned and left to sit for years. Just weird.

I imagine what happens when people die- does Google kill it after a year? 2? Facebook, what do they do? Rss feeds, usenet, are these logins still active when 4 years go by, or are they assimilated? Should we start writing this shit into our wills? Whereas we'd all like to be remembered after we die, or maybe have our ashes floating in an ocean, having some page exist on the internet that nobody can access again is depressing. How can I friend someone who may need me when I'm gone when I am not in a position to approve them? Nobody needs this guilt.