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What is My Mike n’ Ryan Online?

T.S. Elliot described television as “a medium of entertainment that permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.” My Mike n’ Ryan Online is the answer to Elliot’s cynicism. It is not simply the only place to enjoy Mike n’ Ryan’s Show, the half-hour comedy series updated monthly, it is a community. Right now, it is a community of two. But in time and with your help, it can be a community of some.

Why do we do it? Why do we donate our time and energy to a site devoted to the sharing of ideas?

“Houses are connected by means of magnetic telegraphs that allow people who live far from each other to communicate,” Russian Prince Vladimir Odoevsky penned in his 19th century vernacular. “The thing is that many households here publish such journals that replace common correspondence. Such journals usually provide information about the host’s good or bad health, family news, different thoughts and comments, small inventions, and invitations to receptions.” Describing civilization in the year 4338, Odoevsky provided his contemporaries with a window into a future much less distant than he imagined. Was it his idea of a future where magnetic strips of information could update the community as to the status of family fortune and favor that eventually led to the Web 2.0 revolution? Russians have thought so for years.

Odoevsky was appreciated in his time, but more so as a public servant, working on a committee for Moscow’s poor until his death in 1869. Some say he died of plague contracted from direct contact with the destitute, others that he drifted away in sleep. I like to imagine that he suffered terribly, for years lingering between life and death as painful sores enveloped his body until he could only run his withered hand down his wife’s face to remember how she looked on the day of their wedding. I like to imagine his suffering because it is the fate of all whose generosity reaches farther than the length of his arm. Odoevsky and Prometheus sleep now side by side in our legends, friends and allies to mankind whose only reward was the solemn pride that comes when one knows that his contributions will last forever. And to carry on such a grand tradition is to honor every day of that suffering.

Welcome, friends, to My Mike n’ Ryan Online.