This *is* cool ASCII art! I can't take credit for it, though, because it was made last century by someone named Joan Stark. I got it from the archive of her online art gallery, which was originally on Geocities.

Joan was very prolific. You can find hundreds if not thousands of works on her site, and some of the ASCII art floating around today still bears her "jgs" signature.

She seems like an interesting person, willing to share her hobby with the growing internet and only asking for a little credit in return. I'm sure she had, and continues to have, a full and enriching life outside what we can see on the internet, too. It's interesting how we get to see slices of people's lives on the internet. On social media, this idea is formalized into personal "brands" and warped into a caricature of human experience. On old, personal creations like Geocities sites, I feel like we get a much more captivating view: a little more honest, perhaps, if not outrightly so.

On the internet, no one knows you're a donkey.

Unless you tell everyone that you're a donkey.

And then, many people will still have their doubts, because is anything truly knowable? Can we actually perceive the world around us? Is it wise to trust what we can see, hear, and touch over the confident assertions from a cavalcade of charlatans who want little more than to separate us from our hard-earned money?

The world is large and it is stange. But it is there. No, it is here, within our reach.

You know what else is within my reach? This keyboard. Here in the reach of my clippy-cloppy hooves. Because I'm a donkey and I'm on the internet.