Last Chance To See

Several years ago I made a website, or rather my late alter ego made a website. It was called Darth Gumby: I sense a disturbance in my brain. Clicking on that link will take you to the proper official page, which in a few weeks will be all that is left.

There was a mirror site, see. A Geocities mirror. Which, along with every other Geocities site, is about to be taken down.

Yes, Geocities is going away. If you know any Geocities sites you liked, you better go save what you can. Hint, hint.

DarthGumby.cjb.net points to the site that won't be going away, so you don't really need to go laying flowers on the mousepad for anything but The Twelve Days of Star Wars and the guestbook.

The guestbook hurts. I love the people who signed it, and while I have about three hundred copies saved on various media, the Internet is supposed to be the immortal repository of all forever and ever and you kinda suck for shutting it down, Yahoo!

The other thing that will be going, never to return, is a decade-old Star Wars Chistmas special of sorts that starts like this:



Yes, I was that twisted once.

My Darth Gumby is mostly dead, so I'm not going to save The Twelve Days Of Star Wars. In a few weeks, there will only be the Netcom page saying I plan to turn it into Flash one day. I did convert it to Flash, mind you, but the file was so large it wasn't worth the load time to watch what was once called a waste of forty minutes by someone who didn't even bother to sign the guestbook.

So that's that's that. The Darth Gumby Geocities mirror is going away, everything but The Twelve Days Of Star Wars will still be available on the Netcom page, and I'll miss the guestbook most of all. There's also a Lynda_N page which, much like its author, did not reach its full potential and is very nearly not worth mentioning.

As a side note, darthgumby.blogspot.com now points to a blog by someone else, someone I don't know beyond the blog but totally enjoy reading. I'm glad the address went to someone I think is a good writer and who I happen to agree with on several things. If anyone is looking for my original blog, Inane Ramblings of a Porkinite, it's...at that link right there. If the text disappears when you mouseover, don't mouseover. It's another site which will never be updated again because fiddling with the past is pointless and I wouldn't have appreciated myself doing it unless there was something better than perspective to offer.

Last Chance To See

Songs of My Misspent Youth: America

America by Neil Diamond may be the only song of my misspent youth that has evidence of the misspent time posted on one of my old websites. One night in @rassm, I brought up a drawing I did based on The Jazz Singer, a movie I watched (say it with me) while out of commission with a migraine. Jade, wise leader of The Porkinites, suggested I put my drawing online with musical backing and call it The Neil Diamond Experience. I still consider it one of the greatest uses of webspace ever. Go ahead, look at that and see how much better I draw now.

The drawing of course was based on this:

For the non-U.S. readers, today is the 233rd anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was a pretty bad-ass leap of faith for its time. To this day even people from states that weren't represented by the original thirteen states blow stuff up and have cookouts to celebrate the firing of King George III for acting all crazy by a bunch of dudes who did a way better job running the country on what would now be considered a shoestring budget. I just like to re-read the Declaration each year and marvel at how a relatively small group of people got things done back then.

I realize the song I chose is sort of more or less a wacky '80s pop tune about immigrants, but one of the problems the signers of the Declaration of Independence had with the old rule was that he was preventing immigration and I'm descended from loads of immigrants, and I love sequins, so it's perfectly logical that I would pick this song for today, really.

I could have gone with Miss America by David Byrne, a song I loved from the first time I heard it in the summer of 1997, during the time when I had to give up the idea of ever getting back to finish my degree because the roof needed to be replaced and carpenter ants were eating the laundry room and the water heater was gassing us and the mulberry tree had to be cut down and my mum was sick as hell but just had to sleep it off because she was uninsured and I spent a lot of time gardening and fixing computers because that's what girls like me do to turn a buck legally while staying really close to home where they're needed but that's all kinda depressing and I don't have a crazy drawing associated with that time, only the beginnings of a blog, but the color scheme was horrendous. Perhaps one day I'll doodle David Byrne in his kilt and link to this very post so it doesn't seem completely random and unwarranted.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to go off on your own if it means you ultimately get a standing ovation from your parents, but remember embrace your heritage, kids. It's probably got some weird history and maybe some parts you aren't entirely happy about, but it's all yours, so celebrate the good times. Don't lose any parts with the firecrackers tonight. Unless you're a hater, then feel free to blow off your reproductive parts in a spectacular fashion.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: America

Reality Check

I watch American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. I've watched Idol since Clay Aiken sang Grease on Bee Gees week, and on a good day I can tell you who was on the past two seasons of Dancing.

Do I consider myself the target audience for these shows? Hell no. Sara Evans dancing the Pasa Doble to Phantom of the Opera damn near killed me, but I grew stronger, and of course Scissor Sisters were a guest last year and that helped.

This season, Joey Fatone danced a tango to Meco's Star Wars theme, and it wasn't bad, and dammit, I'm man enough to admit that. I very nearly regret seeking out Christopher Cross to destroy //\//*Sync five years ago. Fatone's a fan. He wore a padawan braid. He knows what a padawan braid is and isn't ashamed to admit it, and he didn't let a little thing like the sound of millions of fanboys crying out in terror at the idea of him taking part in the biggest movie series ever put him off that fandom, and that's the way to live.

I'll pretend watching television shows is why I haven’t posted much lately. Really. Nothing at all to do with my body taking extended breaks to go find itself and my brain getting that second job as a whirligig. Tonight’s two-hour American Idol promises to be extra scary fun, so don’t expect me to recover until next Monday.

Reality Check