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The page you've tried to load doesn't exist.

There are a bunch of ways that may have happened, but the odds are that you've followed an incorrect link.

It's not that I'm ruling out a disturbing government cover-up or some mad scientist meddling in things that Man Was Not Meant To Wot Of. Because that happens all the time. It's just that statistically, it was probably a bad link.

Of course, an event like this does make you stop, sit back, and think a little about what makes something “real”. I mean, I've told you that the page you wanted doesn't exist and you probably took my word for it, even though we've never met. That's a little odd when you think about it, isn't it?

I mean, I could as easily have said "Hey! That page used to exist, but it was in Nebraska - and Nebraska was just swallowed by a gigantic tunneling flatworm from the Earth's Core!"

Would you have believed that one? Probably not. I mean, for all I know, you're in Nebraska, and you'd have seen right away that I was pulling your leg. If you are, in fact, a Nebraskan, I've been meaning to tell you how polite I found Nebraskan drivers when I blazed through the state from end to end, a couple of years ago. Nice!

These questions of relative reality always remind me of a line from the Illuminatus! trilogy: “Is the thought of a unicorn a real thought?”

Is there anything intrinsically more real about the thought of a motorcycle, say, than the thought of an imaginary creature? The thoughts themselves are on a pretty level playing field. I mean, they - as thoughts - seem equally real, and equally unreal. It's the subjects of the two thoughts that differ. The thoughts themselves are just electrical impulses darting around in your brain, when it comes down to it.

Now when it comes down to it, everything you perceive is just electrical impulses darting around in your brain. So when you think about the chair you're sitting on, the thought itself is essentially the same as that thought of a unicorn. And your perceptions - like your perception of that chair - are the only means you have to distinguish between the real and the unreal.

So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the page you tried to load, and this page you got instead, are in fact equally real. The problem is that I have no idea how to locate the one you wanted. So, please, have this one instead.

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Down in the Basement. Where it Strains Against its Chains and Turns a Gigantic Wheel of Pain, for all Eternity. Muahahahahaha.