Free Republic

This is the dream. It involves a shiny cool small premium new car and a big happy beautiful dog sticking his head out the window and a longish solo road trip up the West Coast from San Francisco to the northern tip of Idaho in the middle of the summer. There is music playing. There is a huge sunroof open at all times. There is a small cooler full of ginger beer and spelt pretzels and Odwalla bars and organic turkey sandwiches. There is an in-dash CD multichanger loaded with dirtystupidfun '80s hard rock and badass electronica and Rufus Wainwright...

I am a walking time bomb. Like millions, I live deep deep deep in the digital storm, aswim in the electronic morass, irrevocable and irreversible and never to return to the ways of old because, as everyone knows, once you step foot into the rushing miasma of Net commerce and e-communication, you are imprinted onto the digital Void pretty much forever. The Net, it washes over your life in a tidal wave of logins and passwords and cookies and AutoFill forms and account summaries and credit card numbers and semisecure Web sites, each promising on a stack of ridiculously defective...