i've heard of people that would put a message in a bottle and throw it in a river or ocean to see if someone would find it and contact them to say how and where they found it. sometimes kids let helium ballons go with little notes attached to them. somehow i missed out on these activities, maybe i had better things to do, like masturbating and teaching cats how to swim.

a few days ago lisa was going through some old crap and found about a hundred old floppy disks in a box. we were going to drop them down the trash chute, which makes a very satisfying rumble for four stories followed by a crash at the bottom.

then i remembered the idea of the message in a bottle. so i made a condensed version of fuckitall.com with a redirect that takes you to the real site after 20 seconds. i reformatted the floppies heartlessly erasing lots of spreadsheet business data and copied my files to them.

next i got out a sharpie marker and started to think of interesting titles to write on them. 'top secret', 'confidential', and 'classified' were the first things i could think of. followed by 'porn', 'disgusting pictures', 'big boobs', 'proof', and 'treasure maps'.

the next day was one of those rare warm days in san francisco and i headed out the door on my skateboard with a backpack full of floppy disks. as i approached a nearby cafe i was nervous like if you tried to throw a bottle in the ocean with a message but the lifeguard saw you and made you swim out and bring it back because it was litter. so i kept pushing a little faster and didn't hesitate to fling one onto an outdoor table at the next corner coffee shop. soon i was putting them under windshield wipers, in mailboxes, on benches, and anywhere else i passed.

a few hours later i left the last one on the subway and came home feeling good. maybe it was because i had just skated across the city on a nice day, or maybe it was the feeling of putting a note on a helium ballon and letting it go. i'm unemployed so i have a lot of time to kill.

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