today i have tried something new and it was fun. i think i’ll have to do it again, and perhaps more times still. if i were a different sort of character i might even begin trying to convince you all that my actions were somehow meaningful, that the result was somehow important. i might begin explaining at yawn inducing length why it was “original.” i might concoct a manifesto with many big words and begin ever after referring to this undertaking as art. i might use exclamation points when i typed it, like this: art!! as it is though i’m not that sort of guy. i’m thinking of what i’ve done as a small homage perhaps or if not that at very least a bit of record keeping.

“record keeping?” well…

what if, lets say, there is some semi-apocalyptic event in which the internet vanishes and we are forced back to non-digital methods of entertaining one another? what record will there be of the websites we loved? sure the odd printed screen grab might survive here and there but how can you know you’ll be lucky enough to find one? you’ll likely be too busy scavenging for food amidst the rubble. you’ll be too weary from long days of hauling gasoline through the deserts to craft an evocative enough explanation for your curious, mutated, little ones. what a shame. (much woeful shaking of the head here)

for me it will be different. i will have in my possession documents of our glorious digital age which i can pass around the campfire to the children. the resulting oohs and ahhhs will bring me joy.

so what have i done? i have immortalized, in number 2 pencil, the contents of a single browser window’s worth of a web page. i’ve loosely sketched it. (felt good to pick up a pencil.) i’ve said i will do it again, and i will, but for my first act of record keeping i chose to recreate a window’s worth of giornale nuovo for the date august 22, 2005. i enjoy giornale and thought it would be a fine place to begin what is sure to become the premier almanac of web content sketched on typing paper in number two pencil.

so here it is. click for roughly “life-sized” version.

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you might be next.