Hell, each time he hits refresh on the Techdirt home page, my friend Tim Cushing has enough time to go milk the cows and fashion another belt from a rope in that high school graduating class of a town he lives in before the browser is done loading. And he has to sacrifice a family member every third moon for that service.

On the internet, no one knows you live in a town of 1,300. That being said, I have been offered the opportunity to “upgrade” to high-speed dialup, but, you know, the cows won’t milk themselves, even after a 30-slide Powerpoint presentation and a stuttering “How To Milk Yourself” video piped in fresh from Youtube. (If only Youtube would offer something lower than 240p… perhaps some sort of a flipbook…)

As for the belt situation, we have a saying around here: “Give ’em enough rope.” While most of you are probably entertaining images of mass suicide (some of you because of what I just typed), the reality of the situation is less horrifically tragic. Whenever a youngster* in our town is spotted wearing sagging, below-the-ass dungarees**, the town elders*** are prone to firing off the above statement in the general direction of anyone with enough rope, most likely the town ropesmith. Once the new belts are fashioned, the youngsters are restrained (often with OTHER rope) and said belts forcibly applied, bringing said dungarees in accordance with Township Statute 112-24.B — “All dungarees, riveted jeans, skorts and sweatpants must be word at ‘retiree’ level (defined as “no more than 2.5″ below lowest nipple).”

* Township Statute 84-5.1: The word “youngster” must applied to all citizens below the age of 50 years, regardless of sex, color or creed.

*** “Town Elders” – (From the Township Lawbook and Mad Lips Combo Pack) n.; Any person or persons who has
(a) lived in the Township longer than 30 consecutive years
(b) lived in the Township since birth but looks older than you
(c) the cop
(d) any denizen of the retirement home(s), regardless of origin, because for damn sure, they lived a lot of life and seen a lot of things, YOUNGSTER, possibly even the Great War(s) and the Great Depression(s) and Gerald Ford’s “presidency.”

So, that explains the rope-belt and the cow milking, but really doesn’t address the continued offering of “high speed dialup.” This is available via the local cable company which also handles phone service and I would imagine it targets customers who last purchased a computer during the latter half of the Clinton administration, back when having a built-in modem was “thing,” rather than just a waste of a slot.

Of course, sometimes we just like to do things at the pace of life here in rural America, including loading images and banner ads. The cows DO need to be milked and we can’t just waste time sitting around in front of the computer waiting for the porn gif to load all three frames before moving on to a series of shopworn “milking yourself” entendres. (“Shopworn” is what happens when you don’t take a break. Especially with sawdust in the air…)

Suffice to say, no one around here hits “refresh” if they can help it. Our internet is like a Hubble photo of deep space. Each web page is view into the distant past, much like Main Street itself, which is a picturesque look into yesteryear, before the town was “booming,” filled with a mixture of viable businesses and abandoned shopfronts whose interiors look like the kitchen junk drawer, only filled with many of the things you’d need in a kitchen. Like, drawers. And sinks. And irregular lengths of pipe. And floorboards. And about 20 years of newspapers. And a set of tractor tires.

Well, I’m off to milk the cows (possibly in quotes) and see if the ropesmith can whip me up some sort of cummerbund for tonight’s Fall Harvest Spectacular. (Suit and tie required. The latter is mainly used as a makeshift tourniquet for the many inadvertent limb removals performed by various horrifying farm implements being operated by drunks in cummerbunds.)