Cleaning Up

So lately I'm going through the back reaches of this blog, rediscovering where I've been and what I wrote.  A diverse and head-spinning collection of thoughts and rants.  It's been 5 years.

I'm also finding out a certain amount of pictures (especially earlier) are missing now with that Google giant negative sign on it.

Deleted or reported by someone?  Is it possible there was a minor digital catastrophe a couple years back in which my Picassa album got moved?  Or renamed?  Is this Google+'s fault?

So I'm trying to replace those images (please have patience) by first figuring out what I had, seeing if they are in the bowels of my albums and worth reposting - or hell, just deleting the old post and being done with it.

I'm sure I had some good stuff I'll never find again.  There's a picture I spent about 2 weeks trying to find last month.  It was in my head but I didn't know where it was or how it was indexed/named.

Got it. (How could you find this without specific information? Google "ass phone fuck."  101 million hits.)

An unsolvable mystery is why the pictures here are now gone and the ones above and below are apparently fine.  It's not that only the hardcore ones are disappearing.  I get most of the pics from the internet to illustrate my points.  Everyone likes looking at pictures.  It's a way to get your attention.  Sometimes I'm clever and the picture actually makes its own point, beyond just posting another beautiful redhead with her legs open.

I actually suspect some rightsholder reports the image wherever they find it and Google deletes it across its entire platform, everywhere it appears, automatically by image recognition software.  No human intervention needed.

How all this stuff in connected behind the scenes is increasingly making me (and many) nervous about what we're really sharing online.  Unhappy surprises are often reported on how much Google or Facebook is collecting from us.  This panic is the reason for the initial success of Snapchat.  Self-deletes in 2 days.  If you're into that.

There's a tension between wanting to reach out and not doing something stupid.  I try to be pretty cautious about what I reveal online (yeah, except my dick).  But in reality there's nothing social about social networks.

They're not in person, you don't "talk" with all the body language or the hints or the cues in real space you're both in.  "Hey, listen to that."  There are no smells, or the nuance of a whisper beyond the mere words, uncaptured by a text, a Skype, a hang-out.  No matter how much I show you you still don't really know me.

You don't get my best.

Not that I don't try.  This place here is my documentation, my journal of the road trip.  It's a rather one-sided commentary but it's motivated by a yearning to talk with you.  To validate what I feel and ask, do you feel it too?  Does this get you hot?  Ever do this?  Am I crazy or are we all in this together?

I really appreciate those of you who have given me a kind word through the years.  A thumbs-up in the comments or a personal email means a lot.  Others have found me in more clever ways.  We're all anonymous, even if a name or an avatar gets tagged, accidentally or on purpose, to your comment.  The occasional feedback makes it all worthwhile.

They can delete my pictures but I got your attention in other ways.