I've known for years the service AOL delivers is outmoded, and the customer experience has rarely been anything but frustrating as all get out.

But, it's the devil I know. What if I give up my address and the other services are worse? (I know. I know. They're not. But, still...)

Besides, sticking with AOL has provided some macabre entertainment.

For example, I have been able, via periodic memos from headquarters, to watch the company become unraveled, piece by piece.

It appears that all the ideas thrown out in recent years by AOL, which was undoubtedly the figurehead of this region's amazing Internet boom in the early 1990s, have been failures.

Total flops.

And a lot of those AOL flops are chronicled hilariously on one of AOL's own flops — something called peopleconnectionblog.com.

What was designed by AOL as a "Social Media Blog" for AOL devotees to keep tabs on each other has turned into an obituary page for the company. The death notices for one service after another are now posted in one place.

It's just a bam-bam-bam of a media giant going to hell.

Some of the most recent posts on the front page of peopleconnectionblog.com: "Circavie Will Be Shut Down Permanently." "Ficlets Will Be Shut Down Permanently." "Transfer Your Pictures to PhotoWorks" (posted when AOL Photos shut down permanently). "Hometown Has Been Shut Down." "Transferring Your AOL Journals Blog to Blogger.com" (when AOL Journals was shut down permanently).

And so on.

There's a hint of poignancy amid the disaster.

Though no announcement about this has yet been posted on the site, it appears that even peopleconnectionblog.com has been, to use the parlance du jour, shut down permanently.

On Dec. 22, 2008, the site's main blogger, Kelly Wilson, put up something titled "Ho Ho Ho! Merry...Holidays!"

In it Wilson invites the blogs readers to "Share your funniest holiday joke or story with the rest of the AIM community!"

It's the only non-death notice on the front page. And there hasn't been a posting of any sort on the site since.

BTW: RIP, AOL.

I have the answer. When something has well and truly jumped the shark, it lands...

...on a banana.

This is obviously a key cultural moment; I'd appreciate it if anyone who uses the phrase "jumps the shark and lands on a banana" would kindly link back to this post. If for no other reason than when a piece of fruit with a sticker that says "I CAN HAZ POTAZZEE-YUM" appears, my own cultural capital (which is measured in page views) will soar. And let's face it, "Dead Balls Era" is getting this blog nowhere.