the damage to my hearing (after 20 years of listening to good music) wasn't repaired

I hate to break it to you, but Rush sucks. It appears that your hearing loss has been in vain.

...and I suppose a guy with a link in his sig for "get paid to take surveys online" would know a bit about this subject, no?

I am a native English speaker and I did not hear of habeas corpus until recently.

Dubya, is that you?

it will be useful for some of our descendants to have a record of our communications, thoughts, hopes, dreams, etc, plus the real reasons why W invaded Iraq

"He done tried to kill my daddy :("

It even fits in 140 chars. Just imagine, the memoirs of the greatest men of our generation, preserved in the twitter DB for future generations to re-tweet. It brings a tear to one's eye.

Ah, that's a good point. And to think, I was only minutes away from pressing the big, red "launch" button on my spacecraft to fly myself over there for a drink.