I pretty much had my fill of AOL just a few weeks after the first time I went online, about six years ago. And then I forswore them forever. But then, about three years ago, I acquired a couple of friends that use nothing but AIM, so I installed it.

And the mischief is incredible – it’s as if the have license to run roughshod over your computer! I finally all but uninstalled AIM about a month ago.

Well, having some wild hair up my ass, I decided to start AIM tonight – just to see if I had any messages. E – Freaking-Gad!. By no action of my own, I had two new things on my buddy list – “Shopping Buddy”, and “Some Sort Of Fucking ‘Bot'”. I am sure that the next time I do system maintenance (and I just spent three hours making it sparkling clean last night), I will find all sorts of shit related to this. And I will bet, the next time I restart my system, AIM comes up automatically.

If I had a Rocket Launcher…”