In 1999, I was a happy, new presence on the web, editing HTML files and uploading them to splotchy.com.  I talked about records I bought, milkshakes I drank, motel signage I fancied. It was the 90’s!

Then, after a long hiatus from having a presence on the Internet, I came back.  I started blogging in 2007.  I made blogger friends.  Some bloggers I met in person, some I only knew online.

I blogged pretty seriously (is seriously the right word?) for several years.  Gradually, many bloggers stopped blogging.  Some went to Facebook.  I know at least one died, though she wasn’t someone I knew well.  Friends of mine were friends with her.  Her old Twitter account still gets recommended to me from time to time, and it’s a mixed feeling of poignancy and uneasiness I get every time it happens.

One of my blogger friends deleted his blog back in 2009.  He said it was because of the new job he was getting. I still have his blog in Google Reader.  Google Reader will cache posts for a time.  I’m not sure how long it does, but his blog still sits there, even if it no longer exists in the blogosphere.

I noticed that there were 50+ posts in my RSS feed for his blog today.  Someone has apparently taken his blog address and is using it for spam.

Crap is what people will see if they visit his quirkily-named URL.  They won’t have any record of what was there.  But I still remember.