404 – file not found

Scrubbed. Wiped. Redacted. Eighty-sixed.

86 is an restaurant term for out of stock, unavailable. It became part of the lexicon for a while. On the ladder of careers leading to death most of us worked food service for a while. Not, however, as many of us as surf the web. 404 – file not found will, I believe replace 86, at least 86 will.

I could write some rambling pseudo existential entry on the concept. I think I won’t. I think the point is made. Some of us keep a small digital footprint; none of that some are here reading this. Reading this leaves a digital footprint, writing it sure as hell does and for no discernable reason.

I don’t fear 404-file not found, in fact if I were going to have a tombstone I might just put it on there. In fifty years no one will know what that means. At the risk of sounding fatalistic there may not be anyone left to know meaning. If there is it’s unlikely it’ll be me, and so why the fuck should I care. A grand scale apocalypse makes for a good tale, a petit apocalypse, however, is guaranteed, and though Eliot implied his bias with the whole bang and whimper theory of going out and Thomas with his not going gentle, the fact remains nigh or not there is an end.

To be optimistic just for the hell of being optimistic, no data is ever really lost, is just further gone than the average skill set can access. The web is another firewall of immortality. No one really believes that shit though, that we live on through our children, or through the memories of who we’ve touched, on digitally or as energy. Some believe in the whole clouds and harps, or the seventy two virgins, or a vast nothingness or something somewhere inbetween (which is what most people mean by ‘Im spiritual not religious’ it means I’m afraid of the void. And yet the most famous nihilist seems to think if one stares into the void to long it stares back, so even the void is a restless ghost).

It’s late. I’m tired. I’m covered in dog hair. My file is found but 404 is not to bloodly far away. I’m of the mind that all is not lost; just categorically misplaced. You be nice to one another; I’m spent.