Tails From Rainbow Bridge: Giving Thanks for the Internet

When the Internet first began no one knew what to do with it.  You had to use your phone line, people’s importance was verified by a mechanical voice telling them they had mail, they gathered in chat rooms to type at strangers, and, of course, there was porn.

We are still in the early stages of the Internet.  Someday people will look back on us using the ‘net as we look back on people using cars for the first time, cranking them up, rolling around slowly in open carriages with skinny tires.  It will all seem so very comic.

This week I think we might have found out what this mysterious tool is to be used for.  Certainly giving us pups a way to bark at one another is noble, and bringing friends together is important, but it seems for each positive use for this marvelous apparatus the evil people have used it to spread their wicked beliefs.   

Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to see clearly.   The Internet only has one clear purpose, and that is to let us communicate with the ones we loved when the world had been blown upside down.  Twenty years ago what happened in Houston, and again a few days later in Florida, would have left friends and family members deeply concerned about loved ones who took the storm’s full brunt and were now unreachable.

Today we could stay in touch with our friends throughout the storm:  We knew the Laambies left New Port Richey just before the storm hit and made it safely to Orlando; we got a message from the Triple T’s Mom that they were safe in Yalaha even though a small tornado touched down in their yard; we were able to keep in contact with Freddy Girl and her dad who escaped with roof damage and the fence that keeps Freddy from escaping, Angel Lady Bug and her neighbor Hobo Hudson in Ruskin came through the storm with no damage.  When Hurricane Andrew hit all these people would have been out of touch, and we would have been consumed with worry (or not, because we would never have met any of these wonderful people.)

So, people may use the Internet for whatever foolish reasons they want.  It can make us happy, or sad, or infuriated, during the calm, but during a storm, it becomes nothing but a force for good.

And, as always, porn.