Alright, that's it. I'm loading the shotgun and lubing the barrel.

Social accountability on this whirling ball of rock is rarer than humility at a KISS concert. People who lower their voices when commenting on someone's choice of body jewelry in the next booth at Denny's are turning into machete-wielding psychopaths once they're out of touch (and I mean that in every sense of the phrase).

I'm not talking about Road Rage when people presumably think nothing of pulling the sort of crap in their rolling biospheres of isolation that they are incapable of in person. Someone who barges into the offramp line three molecules from your front bumper, then slams on the brakes and shows you Mr. Happy Digit while ordering another hair piece via cell phone, but cannot walk through the office door ahead of another person without hemorrhaging, is not the subject today. At least you can see those vermin and perhaps show them a digit of your own, or introduce them to Mr. Tow Truck.

No, I am talking about those swollen pustules of the Internet who hide behind free email accounts and taunt, harass, abuse and generally rile other people like malicious children poking sticks at the gorillas in the zoo, knowing the gorilla is behind 2-inch bars. Net Rage. Remember where you heard it first.

This type of unaccountable taunting and abuse has been going on for centuries in various forms long before the wonder of the cyber world. Royal siblings would demean the peasants, then hide behind battlements and privilege while Bob the Dung Gatherer fumed. Spoiled kids taunted other kids, then hid behind Mom. The KKK. There are few frustrations worse than not being able to retaliate against someone who asks for it louder than Metallica turned to 11.

We are inherently a vengeful people, let's face it, and when someone wrongs us we ALL want revenge. ALL of us, if only for a brief moment, would take great pleasure in hanging our tormentor upside-down buck-naked and pouring molten fiberglass in their ass while playing "Keanu Reeves sings the hits of Slim Whitman". Most people control this, others go off and wind up in brawls or Professional Wrestling, still others are pushed to the point that can only be described as "Made for TV movies".

Now we have the Wonderful World of the Internet, and another layer of anonymity hides these social outcasts from accountability. Millions of carbon-based life forms (I hesitate to call them people, but I will refrain from calling them mealworms) who can't look another person in the eye are now using a free, essentially untraceable, means of slinging abuse and grief to anyone who uses the 'net.

You see, on the Internet they can seem powerful and try to affect something, but the fact that they have no social skills or anything remotely meaningful to contribute eventually comes through and they resort to abuse and taunts. While they are going "yousuck what r u gonna do abot it dumass youca nt get me nyah nyah nyah" we are doing a slow burn. Whoever said "Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" never went to Junior High School. Words are very powerful. Words start wars, impeach presidents, bring down corporations, ruin relationships and bring 75 cents a pop in certain markets.

At least when that brat at the wedding reception stabs you in the leg with a fork and then hides behind Grandma for the 11th time, you know that you could walk over there and drown the little bastard in the punch bowl if you didn't mind sharing a cell with some guy named Goots who has a pocket full of butter and a spoon named Plunge.

The 'net is supposedly a free place where anything goes. Anarchy in practice. The same gits who scuttle under the carpet of hotmail and yahoo are the ones who scream the loudest when any regulation or attempt at forcing accountability on the net is proposed. Fine. If it is to be anarchy, so be it. I want a tracer that will instantly find these rejects from Romper Room the next time my gorilla gets poked.

And when I stand before the Judge and show her the transcripts, alongside the jars of Geek Parts in Mole' Sauce (exhibit A), she will thank me for my service to Darwinism and award me a cash prize. I dare you to whine about it.

There, I said it. I feel better.