Near Eight.

Eight years.

Okay, that's premature. Not quite eight years yet. But we are slowly creeping upon that mark. And I do mean creeping. I was looking at the board statistics, being bored and yearning for a simpler time when I didn't worry about bills, melting glaciers, and super-viruses, and I noticed the trend in postings, and number of postings.

And I also have been re-reading some of our thoughts, many juvenile, some almost prophetic. (Okay, there really weren't many of those... I'm not even sure there was one of those.)

I really doubt this board will survive past this year because in the last three years it's pretty much been me reminiscing about how we don't post on the board. And then there is Heather who posts something arguably inane or downright scary. Then Bradbury who posts something that amounts to a solid, "Yeeeup."

Gone are the days of Jimmy and James screaming "buuuutttsexxxxx" to each other. (My bad, that was Jimmy and Zach.) Gone are the photoshop-wars that were launched from cities apart. Gone are the days of Chrissie and Bonnie half-bitchingly whining at each other about God only knows what. Gone are the blogged-about BBQ's and MEGAposts that almost never come to fruition. Gone are the lists and rap-battles. Gone are the days when Michael would get online, rant about something involving cows, and scare the living shit out of me.

I have occasionally come to a point where I think, "Man I miss the board the way it was..." and think of efforts to resurrect the finer, best points of it. Maybe even introduce a few new things, like podcasts (maybe of movie reviews), another shot at a MEGApost, a comic book series involving some of the slugs as characters, etc...

But then I think of all the wasted effort as no one reads the board anymore. Few probably know it still exists in some fashion, and I'm sure many of the original authors have hit puberty and are now into girls (or guys, I'm not judging). James has lost his creative-motivation or something, because he can't muster then mental-libido to fire anything back these days. I think he was right when he posted years ago that when he got a job, he would become corrupted:

However - my parents are seriously considering going down to some car-store and getting two cars for the price of one. You know what that means? That means I get a car, and I have to get a job. And when I get a job, I'll be corrupt and wallow in the filthy pollution known as MONEY. God I hate the concept of money.

Jimmy is in a relationship, and having been in one, and being in one know, I know what type of time-resource-consumer that can be. Last I heard, he doesn't have a computer again.
Joe, as in MEGAjOe or just jOe, well... he's still around in some fashion or another, but I doubt he uses his computer for anything other than looking up Pokemon-related porn. (Hentai, sorry, gotta get my nouns correct.)
Bradbury... he too will always be around in the same way that fog is around... ethereally, with his trademark "Yeeeup"-type comments. I don't fault him for that, half the time my life is a yeeeup-type situation (with regards to career).
Are Mr. R and "Slim Jayee" (I still don't know who the hell this is) still alive?

There are more names, many more than I can recall on my ever-shortening lunch break... and maybe I'll get the inclination to write more about times-since-past. But then again, I don't want to be that loser that attends his HS reunion every time because he can't let go of the past and move forward.

Perhaps that's what I'm doing now... trying in vain to grasp as a past, instead of what I think I'm doing, which is trying to preserve a potentially meaningful outlet into my darker, laid-back side before it succumbs to the titanic pressures of adulthood, responsibility, children, and death.