Some time to kill...

I can say with full assuredness that the Internet is for people with too much time on their hands.

Something that I've felt for a while was only reinforced by a discovery I made yesterday. I was googling myself - WAIT, before you say anything - I only did it in order to find photos I had taken for the paper so I could update my portfolio. Anyways, somewhere between a link to some fiesta photo I had taken and a memo listing judges of the KSPA competition, I found a link attaching my name to Marihemp, the marijuana and hemp network.

Obviously intrigued, I clicked through to see what it was. On one of the message boards "Libertarian Toker" had gotten into a heated debate with "forced registration" about "Canadian Jewish Authors Castigating Anti-Christian Media Bias."

I scratched my head as to how in the world my name was going to be anywhere on this message board and scrolled through countless messages about Canadian tyranny and a gay person pinching someone's ass, etc. Apparantly, between these burning social issues, "forced registration" was able to segway from censoring hatred to protect minorities to the US censorship of coffin pictures to protect US foreign policy. There - lo and behold - was an opinion piece I had written a year and half ago about Bush censoring coffin pictures. It had my name on it, but its words seemed strikingly out of context and only half of the original piece appeared on the post.

While I don't doubt that I have a large, cultish following out there somewhere, I was curious as to how in the world this anonymous marijuana supporter had gotten a hold of my thoughts on Bush's political actions. That is until I googled "bush censorship AND coffin pictures." My opinion piece was the first result of thousands.

The original University Daily Kansan version had been picked up and published by the student newspaper of Boston College, who misidentified me as a University of Mississippi student writing for the Daily Mississippian. And the likely reason that "forced registration" only posted the first half is that a free login was required to view anymore of the Boston College paper's content.

It wasn't the first time I've found some of my work pilfered on the Internet, but it was probably the most bizarre. And one of the better examples of how the Internet is just a big time waster for people with a lot to say about nothing at all.

Maybe like Tom Wolfe said in a magazine interview, "The Internet is the modern form of knitting. In the old days women who had nothing to do would knit, but at least you got something out of it -- a pair of socks, maybe a scarf, occasionally a little bedspread. That's mostly what the Internet is, just passing the time. But unfortunately you are dealing with words that can have meaning."

Courtney

PS. I am well aware that I am one of these time wasters since I am posting this long-winded rant to a blog, and I found the quote from Wolfe by googling "Tom Wolfe AND internet." What can I say - I've tried knitting and couldn't ever get the hang of it.