Service Permanently Unavailable

As wonderful a resource as the Internet can be at times, the thing I dislike most about it is its impermanence. Web sites shut down, YouTube videos are prone to disappear, blogs go out of business, and suddenly all those links the rest of us created to interesting, valuable, or entertaining information don’t work anymore. The carnage will be wholesale today, as GeoCities, “once the Internet’s third most visited domain,” closes up shop.

Not many GeoCities sites feature on The Rap Sheet’s lengthy blogroll. But there are certainly some there that we’ve come to respect, among them The Nick Carter Page, Pulp and Adventure Heroes of the Pre-War Years, Shamus: A Tribute to Philip Marlowe, and the Rex Stout appreciation page Merely a Genius ... It’s sad to see these sites suddenly vanish from our radar. I hope they all find other domain homes in the near future, and that their authors will contact The Rap Sheet with their new URLs. (My e-mail address is available in the All Points Bulletin blurb at the top of this page.)

For the moment at least, all of these sites appear still to be operating. Visit them while you can.