Spent a few hours browsing through the deeper recesses of RenegadeMime's digital libraries today.
I love to read, and as a result have read an enormous quantity of books: somewhat in excess of twenty thousand. I've read a little of everything, and an awful lot of science fiction.
( Does it show?)
I realized today that I've read a lot of philes as well.
Most of them are weird documents, a kind of surrealistic folk art. the information value is largely useless, and what is accurate is outdated.
But as a art form, they are quite fascinating.
They contain the strangest blend of naivety , hostility, and laziness that I have ever encountered. Are they the teleological cousins of the text porn stories that flood Alt.Sex.Stories and its ilk?
Are they going to be collected in some future date, archived and sorted, arranged by author and subject.
Is elderly versions of ACFST-X or Vortex going to interviewed by earnest Ph.D students?

Getting my first tractor bizarrely has a similar feel to dating my first girlfriend.
A previously unsuspected Rite of Passage, I guess.
This is a 65 year old Farmall A, equipped with a homemade pusher blade, and a accessory hydraulic pump that is rusted onto the PTO, and has its inlets & exits capped off.
It needs some tender repairs, but it does run!

Interesting to think that this was state-of-the-art for tractors when Doc Savage was being written.