Two weeks ago in this space, Jeremy Zitter invited us to contemplate our “Cellular memories, A to Z” – to scroll down our cell phone memory lists and see who’s there. I don’t store many numbers in my cell phone, so my trip down that particular memory lane would be short and uninteresting. But there’s another catalogue of strange encounters that I love to periodically revisit: the sprawling, unruly, unweeded-out bookmarks list on my browser.

For years now, I’ve dumped weird and/or interesting links into a giant bookmark repository folder called “Goonie.” There are subfolders within Goonie – folders I’ve dubbed “froot loops,” “flakes” and other silly cereal-related words – but they don’t serve any real organizational purpose. There’s no rhyme or reason to my Goonie bookmarks, which makes wandering through them that much more entertaining.

Last night, when I started clicking through some of those links, I thought of Jeremy’s post. Not only do I never delete any of these links, I’m even loath to delete them when they no longer work. Just because the twinpiers.com link doesn’t work anymore, I still like being able to glance at the URL and remember that someone proposed two gigantic piers, as long as the Twin Towers were high, to stretch out into New York Harbor as a post-9/11 monument. (When I found the link no longer worked, I Googled “twin piers” and found this site, but I won’t bookmark it. I’ll just keep the original twinpiers.com as a reminder).

In addition to innumerable odd little links that have some personal resonance for me (such as this, or this, or this), there are links for sites that are now part of Internet history. And as short as “Internet history” may feel to you, dear reader, when you look at these sites they feel like they’re from another century. Whoops, I guess they are.

Who can forget the Hamster Dance? One of the first sites to combine motion with music, hamsterdance.com led legions of bored office workers to stare dronelike at their screens, lulled by that infectiously insipid pop tune in the background. Or the multitudinous Dancing Baby sites, a legacy of an Ally McBeal dream sequence? Or Mahir, the Turk who gave us the immortal phrase “I kiss you!!” And of course, the inevitable development of sites where Mahir danced like the hamsters… and so on.

Then there was Claire Swire, whose intimate email to a boyfriend went worldwide, the Howard Dean rap songs inspired by his “I Have a Scream” speech in Iowa, and more recently, the cheerleader toss — is it real, or a camera trick? Here’s a frame-by-frame analysis to help you decide.

Like Jeremy and his old cell phone contacts, I can’t imagine getting rid of any of these links. In 20 years, I expect to have a Goonie folder that will require its own hard drive to maintain. But it’ll still be fun, even in an age when we’ll probably have 3D imaging, streaming everything, and who-knows-what-other technological improvements, to watch these oldie but Goonie clips. Especially this one, my new favorite: The laughing babies!