Every week, usually around Wednesday afternoon, a special, magical, delicate hunk of my soul withers like a flower petal and falls off.

Any time I put something online, I have the hardest time grappling with that moment when the blog post or column or bon mot I wrote disappears from the site’s front page, having been replaced by the latest piece of new content after an agonizing descent. No matter how many times it happens, it still fully obstructs my craw.

“Don’t go, my precious, precious words!” I cry as each gem drops into eternal obscurity. “O sweat of my brow, how I toiled on you, forever immortalizing the time my little sister put the Capri-Sun in the microwave! Now who will remember you there in history’s dustbin, the ‘Older Posts’ link?”

Sometimes, it gets to the point where I let the whole site come to a standstill. “Ooh, I worked really hard on this one. I better not post anything else for a while so it stays in the spotlight.” It’s like the online marketing experts always say: “Always let your content stagnate. Visitors love that. The constancy makes them feel safe in a changing world, like a big fluffy blanket.”

Or am I remembering that wrong?

It feels bad enough when it happens here, on a site where I control everything, but on the always-fresh iFanboy it’s like a staple gun to the throat every week. I mean… that’s no Jimski.com. I actually work on that stuff. People are looking at that site.

Lately, though, I have been better at putting it all in perspective. Whenever the drop-off gives me the blues now, I cheer myself up by remembering the ultimate futility of mortal existence. As Ted Koppel put it the night he left Nightline:

There’s this quiz I give to some of our young interns when they first arrive at Nightline. I didn’t do it with this last batch. It’s a little too close to home. “How many of you,” I’ll ask, “can tell me anything about Eric Severeid?” Blank stares. “How about Howard K. Smith or Frank Reynolds?” Not a twitch of recognition. “Chet Huntley, Jack Chancellor?” Still nothing.

David Brinkley sometimes causes a hand or two to be raised; and Walter Cronkite may be glad to learn that a lot of young people still have a vague recollection that he once worked in television news.

What none of these young men and women in their late teens and early 20s appreciates, until I point it out to them, is that they have just heard the names of seven anchormen or commentators who were once so famous that everybody in the country knew their names. Everybody.

Trust me. The transition from one anchor to another is not that big a deal.

The world is full of stuff like this, people and things that were so unbelievably well-known and beloved that Amish toddlers could tell you about them, only for those same things to be completely forgotten within a generation or two. John Belushi died in 1982, and seven years later I mentioned his name in the cafeteria one day and had an entire table of blank stares for dessert.

Even Belushi pales in comparison to Vaughan Meader, who had a life so amazing it’s begging for me to write a book about it. He was the most successful comedian in America, ever, as of 1962. Unfortunately, his claim to fame was his amazing JFK impression. He went from selling 7.5 million records to being banished from public life in the span of a year; he was a comedian, and just looking at his face broke people’s hearts. He suddenly reminded America of the worst thing that had ever happened. 7.5 million records forty years ago, and you wouldn’t meet three people who know his name.

One of the best gifts I have received in the last several years is a cast recording of the original 1902 Wizard of Oz Broadway musical. Well… they didn’t really do “cast recordings” since they had just, you know, invented recordings. It’s actually a collection of every remaining Edison Records wax cylinder and piano roll of the music that they could find. (I know they were Edison Records because back then apparently every single began with some carnival barker who sounds like W.C. Fields announcing the names of the singers and the recording company, a tradition that P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records carries on to this day.) At the time, this show was phenomenally successful; it ran for a ridiculously long time on Broadway before beginning a ridiculously long tour. Performances would go on for four hours because of all the encores. The sheet music was in every home and/or bird cage. The success of the play was what inspired author L. Frank Baum to write the rest of the books. It was bigger than Jesus Christ Superstar as performed by Jesus Christ.

Have you ever heard of a single one of these blockbusting hit singles that captured a nation’s heart? Let me save you some thinking time: no, you have not. Not one of them survived in the popular culture, mostly because 1) all the jokes were 1903-topical and 2) the people of that era seem to have spoken some kind of crazy made-up twin language. I understand Shakespeare’s jokes better; I listen to some of these comedy sketches by turn-of-the-century Laugh-In on the CD and think, “Man, I’ll bet there were some Irishmen steamed about that zinger! Since presumably they knew what a ‘codswallop’ is.” My favorite track is “Budweiser’s a Friend of Mine” (I beg you, do not ask me how it relates to tin men and scarecrows) which contains the line,

Although Bill the Kaiser’s a friend of Budweiser,/ Budweiser’s a friend of mine.

“Bill the Kaiser!” Sassy World War I jingoism from the Tin Man and an effing barbershop quartet! I wish this had been my prom theme.

But it wasn’t, because nobody remembers the most famous play in the world. And that’s not even the worst of it.

Ever heard of Franklin Pierce?

I know what you’re thinking: “Wasn’t that Alan Alda’s character on M*A*S*H?” In fact, no! He was the president of the United States.

I know what you’re thinking now: “No, I’m almost positive that was Alan Alda’s character on M*A*S*H.” I’m telling you, he ran the country in the 1850s. His incompetence reopened the wounds that ended up starting the Civil War.

Pierce’s eleven year old was squished to death right in front of him in a train derailment right before his inauguration. Franklin’s wife believed God was mad at him for taking the presidential job, and apparently Pierce was mad right back at Him because he was one of the few presidents who didn’t get sworn in with his hand on the Bible. The three historians who know anything about him remember him as a man completely overwhelmed by the challenges of his office. In 1856, when it was time for him to run for a second term, the Democratic Party flat-out didn’t renominate him.

Can you even imagine? You’re the damn president, and when reelection time comes your party sits you down and says, “Frank, we… we’ve just decided to go in another direction. It’s not anything you did; the kids have just got Buchananmania right now.” Rush Limbaugh’s heart would launch itself through his ribcage if that happened today.

I was delighted recently when a friend of mine designated Pierce the hipster president, primarily because it confirmed that someone else had heard of him. I think he may be my favorite president, not because he made a bunch of sly moves or because he was a misunderstood genius. (It sounds a lot more likely that he was a breathtaking drunken imbecile.) No, I love Frankie Pierce as a symbol. For one thing, he makes President Bush look like Franklin goddamn Roosevelt, and yet the damage he did does not even live on in anyone’s memory, so that’s sort of inspiring. More importantly though, he achieved the highest office in the land, landed the job that gets you put on money, and unless you’re from New Hampshire the name doesn’t ring a bell.

What chance can any of us have at immortality, or even fleeting public success, if Frankie Pierce doesn’t have any staying power? Even if you get published, what does that buy you? Ten years?

All of this actually cheers me up immensely, because it frees me from the notion that my words are some precious, delicate time capsule, that every whimsy that falls out of my word-hole has to be spun gold. Bad news: in the long run, none of it matters. Good news, though: in the long run, none of it matters. I don’t have to craft and hone every turn of phrase like I’m carving my statue for the park. It’s not one for the ages. Hell, it’ll be off the home page by Wednesday. Be free, little words! Scamper along and join your friends. Be as creative as you can with the time you have, because there won’t be any time devoted to you after you’re gone. Get yourself out there while you can enjoy people enjoying you.