Originally posted on August 24, 2006. Edited and updated for this special recap of events.

When toenails are allowed to overgrow they become some of the most grotesque and useless part of the human body. If the growth is allowed to continue for an extended period of time, they will become discolored in the most putrid fashion, become a major health risk, and render the foot completely useless. But all we have to do is clip them off and they cease to be a problem.

There is a man who resides in Syracuse, New York, an abject failure in life, who is the human equivalent to an overgrown toenail. Not only does his face have the same attractive values, all we have to do to get rid of him is to ignore him just as easily as clipping a toenail.

This guy’s only purpose in life is to do anything for attention. He has staged numerous ridiculous publicity stunts including creating intentionally inflammatory websites, faking his own death, publishing personal information (i.e. names, phone numbers, email addresses, work and home addresses, etc) of people on a metaphoric enemies list and encourages his readers to harass them. He does all this in an effort to expand his infamy.

Believe it or not, this column is not about him. He just happens to be a part of it. This description of him is necessary to set up the series of events that led to what this is really all about. “When are you going to say his name?” I am not going to say his name, because that would be giving him exactly what he wants, and I will not be responsible any longer for continuing to inform the world of his pathetic existence. He can rot to death under a bridge for all I care! For the purposes of this narrative, however, he shall henceforth be referred to as “Toenail.”

So anyway, Toenail’s latest pathetic grab at getting people to say his name is to complain to any web hosts who have sites that have fallen prey to his tricks and have written about him in the past and actually quoted things he has published. He claimed that these sites were violating his copyright and threatened legal action. Obviously his intent is to enrage the owners and authors of these sites again, because the mere threatening of a website shut down or legal action would “make it personal.”

Sugar Ray Dodge.com was one of those websites. Only at that point in time, I was making it a point not to even acknowledge that Toenail had ever been born, and was unaware of any such campaign or my unwitting involvement.

Yahoo Webhosting, whom I have been going through to publish my incoherent, scatterbrained ramblings since April 2003, received the complaint. They sent me an email advising me of the complaint on August 17, but they sent it to my default Yahoo mailbox, which I rarely check because I primarily use my website side of Yahoo Mail. In the email they told me that Toenail had complained and that I was allegedly in violation of the terms of service and that if I did not remove the material that they would shut my website down.

I continued my useful and productive life unaware of these crazy goings-ons. On August 22, Sugar Ray Dodge.com was shut down. Not only was my website shut down, all services related to my website were removed from Yahoo account, including the website side of my mailbox. At first I thought it was a glitch, but around lunchtime I realized that my website has been intentionally deleted from Yahoo servers. I searched through my email and found the “Notice of Infringement” underneath a pile of spam and found that this was done at the prompting of Toenail.

I called customer service and they said that the abuse section put the website itself back up but only granted me the ability to edit my website to remove the alleged infringement. Further, they said that my service for sugarraydodge.com had been cancelled because of the incident, and that if I wanted to completely restore all access and relevant services I would have to sign up all over again. What nerve!

Toenail proudly states on his website that he is a “future lawyer,” no doubt taunting the victims of his latest escapade. Future Lawyer, eh? I think a future lawyer would have broad knowledge of the U.S. Code, particularly a fundamental copyright law known as “Fair Usage.” Allow me to quote directly from Title 17,107:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work …for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Oops! You’re an idiot! Future lawyer my ass!

I looked through the article I wrote about this moron back in May of 2005 and I counted exactly one hundred words that I quoted directly from this malcontent’s website and a conflicting article he wrote in 1999. Of course if you’re a pathetic attention whore who stages all kinds of dumb pranks and crappy inflammatory websites people are going to write about you! But that trick only works so many times, and we’ve already covered this guy’s motivation in this particular stunt.

My main beef now is with Yahoo Webhosting. They sided against a paying customer of over three and a half years with, literally, SOME GUY who cried wolf. And they did it WITHOUT DOING ANY INVESTIGATING WHATSOEVER INTO THE ALLEGED INFRINGEMENT! If they had, assuming their legal team had more of a working knowledge of the US Code than Toenail does, they would have said “Hey stupid, do your homework before you bother us again!” Instead, they tossed a loyal customer to the curb and said “Thanks for your money, chump! We can’t believe you bought all that crap about being reliable!”

In closing, I would like to send the following message to the principle subjects of the column.

To Yahoo Webhosting: If you think I am going to trust you with my credit card numbers after this, well, you are beyond mistaken. You have become about as useless as, well, an overgrown toenail. Clippity-clip!

To Toenail: Coo-coo-ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know. Good luck rotting in obscurity and failure, I am not wasting my time on you ever again.

To My Loyal Readers: Sugar Ray Dodge.com will live again. I have taken my domain and started a supercool new website over here at blogs-about, which I highly recommend. And if you are considering starting a website to publish your ideas, feelings, and nonsensical partisan ramblings, do not sign up with Yahoo Webhosting.

That is all.

Elvis has left the building.

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