Tilde ~ Awareness Starts at Home(html)

Many of the TA (Tilde ~ Afflicted) put on happy faces, but you don't have to hang around them for long to know that they truly suffer, if silently.

At first meeting, the TA may seem quite normal. They have jobs, friends, family, and often, they converse like ordinary people. But inevitably, some callous individual will mention the Internet . It is then that one may perceive a dark shadow beginning to pass over the face of a TA. Actually, it's more like a curtain dropping behind their eyes ...or ...maybe it's akin to a ghostly pall radiating from them. Something like that.

Anyway, in a nanosecond, the hapless TA will be in the early stages of a cold sweat. The tilde-afflicted are dying to blurt out and talk up their way-cool websites, websites that YOU SHOULD REALLY check out. But if they do, they know what lies ahead: The Recitation of URL.

Sure, they try to be nonchalant, perhaps a bit too cool. The more adroit practice for hours and can gush "http colon slash slash dot www dot slash dingbat dot org slash tilde PsychicPlumbing," without taking a breath. Then they will quickly divert attention to matters of substance having to do with megs, bandwidth and hits.

But more often than not, it just won't work.... "Tilde? What? How do you spell that?"

The yammering and foolish gestures now begin. A self-conscious finger will draw up and down wiggly lines in thin air, this accompanied by the futile attempts at allusions to real things and almost real things. "It's like a little worm ...or an 's' laying down ...backwards, that is. Actually, it's more like a wave, sort of.... Look, it's that squiggle-thing above the Tab key... in the upper left... on the keyboard..."

It's almost always a completely frustrating experience, leaving the questioner confused and the TA feeling humiliated and guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of some nameless sin, perhaps committed in a former incarnation, something that requires the soul to ponder the mysterious benefits of participating in, time and time again, a totally inane conversation.

But enough talk. By now you are probably asking yourself, "What can I do to help these unfortunates? Can I do something to shed some light on this fast-growing problem?"

The answer is simple: I don't know. Maybe we should join together, discuss the issues, examine the possibilities, decide on a course of action and then ...... I don't know about you, but I"m tired already. Let's just forget it, OK?

Looks to me like it's out of control anyway, what with a new generation of the Tilde ~ Afflicted seemingly being born as quick as we can educate those who came witless (as it relates to matters Tilde) before them. Probably, the best thing to do would be to ignore the whole thing. If enough of us do that, it just might go away. Then again, it might not. It could continue to spread like wildfire, adding a discordant note to an otherwise orderly universe.

I suppose it couldn't hurt if tilde got some more visibility. So, if you want to help, feel free to download and exhibit on your website any of the swell tilde-recognition graphics displayed here.

Also, if for some reason you are now intellectually stimulated and have a bunch of great ideas on the subject and absolutely must share them, by all means let me know. But remember, this is not an invitation to any of the Tilde ~ Afflicted to come crying on my shoulder. I've got problems of my own ..