I'd ask you to read this post, but if you try to read it, you'll likely get a message telling you, "The file you are looking for has not been found. Return to the home page." The same message you've gotten for nearly two weeks.


I'd be tempted to ask you to compare the complete and utter failure of this site to accommodate the entirely predictable level of traffic during a historic election season with the government's failed response to Katrina in 2005 during the annual hurricane season, but I can't rely on the server to handle the basic function of loading basic text.

The server can flawlessly load the ads, I've noticed, just not the customers.

Today I commented on several reader blogs, but my comments never appeared due to an Internal Sever Error. Cyberspace ate them. Backspace, refresh, nothing.

The fierce urgency of now has passed. There really is such a thing as being too late. The cafe din has died.

I might have waxed poetic on the ramifications of our dependency on technology and hand-wringing helplessness when it fails, but the steam coming out of my ears clouded my ability to see the computer screen. So I went for a walk.

On my walk I was reminded of a trip to East Germany in 1980. I had stepped into a china shop in Meissen, and much to my ignorant American surprise, the shelves were bare except for a few Blue Onion samples. Back then, no East German could have afforded Meissen porcelain, it was all exported.

I feel like I'm in East Germany again. The TPM shelves are bare, my favorite posters frolicking on more functional sites or pursuing more productive projects, my friends silenced, trolls sprouting like weeds in an abandoned lot.

I'd ask you to share your own frustration and recommend this post, but when you click on Recommend, your vote won't register. Much like what may happen to some of us in November.