by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
Fuggedaboudit version 8.3.6.74e? Fuggedaboudit!
After 50 years in circulation, what is believed to be the last copy of the programme that seeks out and erases all traces of information relating to a specific person, place, thing or conceptual squidgit has been removed from the Internet.
"It gave us a merry chase, let me tell you," said informatics ethnographer Miranda Hibachi. "At one point, it was hiding behind the Raydi the Dinks blog. That was a good ploy - nobody had read Raydi the Dinks since 2004!"
Unfortunately for Fuggedaboudit v8.3.6.74e, members of Hibachi's team had been looking for it for so many years that they had started to think like the programme. Millicent F. R. Vessent, for example, used a pencil eraser to remove her name from official documents. "She probably should not have done that to her pay checks!" Hibachi commented, "although, I won't kid you: it did help us to make payroll on more than one occasion."
Arthur Dentifrice had electroshock therapy to try and erase all memory of his high school graduation. "Very messy, that," Hibachi tsked. When pressed to elaborate, she responded, "Very, very messy."
Then, there was Aldo Renminbi: "Aldo - poor Aldo! He was hypnotized so that he could imagine what it was like to travel down electric circuits. It was Aldo who ultimately found Fuggedaboudit v8.3.6.74e. But, he had to spend several days under and he never was the same after. I...I visit him in the sanatorium every so often. It's a nice place, really. Very good for him. I just have to remember not to bring him anything to drink..."
What about the privacy concerns that had resulted in the creation of Fuggedaboudit in the first place?
As 26 year-old professional surfboard waxer Randy Mulch said: "Oooh, chillato, vato. Domo arigato."
"If I may put that into English," said cross-generational translator Phil Gazpacho, "what Randy said was that we now have a different understanding of privacy than they had in the past. Let's face it: everybody has done stupid things, bad things, hurtful...criminal things in their lives. But, now, everybody - uhh...did I say criminal? I meant...stupid. Things. Stupid things. But, now, everybody's dirty laundry can be found on the Internet, complete with trial transcripts and sentencing recommen - hee hee. I get carried away sometimes. The point - the point is that now that information transparency is the norm, nobody is embarrassed by anything, so everybody can relax."
"Wowzers bowzers, information nation station much?" Mulch asked.
"Yes, Randy," Gazpacho, a Professor of New Media and Toffee Pulling at the Knotatawl-Shadee University until an unfortunate run-in with the unavoidable consequences of dire circumstance, responded. "You really did say all that."
Although it took as long as it did, eradicating Fuggedaboudit version 8.3.6.74e may have been the easy part. The Internet now has so many holes in it that it makes a teenage boy's underwear look like reinforced concrete. (Parents of teenaged boys take note.) This can make using the Internet as a research tool tricky.
"If you believe what you find on the Internet," Hibachi pointed out, "the World Series wasn't played in 2009, 2011, 2017 and 2034. Edible French berets somehow managed to invent themselves. Nobody lived in Finland between 2014 and 2027! Not a single person! Do you have any idea how many undergraduate papers I have marked in the last 10 years that claimed that nobody lived in Finland between 2014 and 2027!
"What the creators of Fuggedaboudit did was a...crime against memory!"
[TECHNICAL NOTE: if you did not hear anything when you read the previous line, make sure your browser is set to "background music - dramatic stab" and refresh the page. If you are reading this article in print, hum "DA DA DA!" to yourself dramatically.]
[LEGAL NOTE: with the exception of short-lived legislation passed in the Westfalian Parliament in 1237, crimes against memory have never been codified in any country's laws. Unless they were, and we don't know about it because all references to them have been subsequently removed from the Internet. But, surely, someone would have remembered if they had.]
[WISTFUL NOTE: have you ever noticed how fluffy clouds look like floating freeze-dried bunnies? I don't think anybody has ever remarked upon that before, unless they did, and we don't know about it because their observations were subsequently removed from the Internet. That would suck for them.]
Given the known holes in our knowledge, should we, perhaps, reconsider our allegiance to our records and accept that history is not set in stone, that it is, in fact, always an incomplete reconstruction of past events?
"Hasta la vista, Mistah resistah," stated Mulch. "Tech dreck das schmekt!"
I couldn't have put it better myself.