Because stuff happens and a promising column on another subject fell apart at the twelfth hour, and because follow-up in the newspaper business is always considered good form, I give you Afghanistanism: Part II. The management requests that you stifle the yawns, and have at it.

Readers with functioning memories may recall that last weekend’s bill of fare concerned “Afghanistanism,” which is time-honored newspaper jargon describing the tendency for some editorial writers to write about controversies in faraway places while avoiding controversy in their own back yards.

The theory is that it is a lot safer to complain about corruption in Kabul than to take on the hometown power establishment; that the writer is unlikely to ever come face to face with his Kabul target of opportunity, but is guaranteed to bump into the local ward heeler he has just maligned in print, and probably before the day is out.

Because the world is shrinking at such an alarming rate communications-wise, I suggested that Afghanistan is no longer the inscrutable, remote and impenetrable place of yore, and we probably ought to find a new word to replace “Afghanistanism” to describe editorial page timidity.

To illustrate how compact today’s world has become, thanks to the awesome power of the Internet, the article cited responses I have received from around the globe to recent columns. One involved correspondence from a Canadian chap in Calgary after a column that dealt with Canadian recording artists. Produce something for your local daily newspaper that you naively believe will be read mainly by those citizens residing in the paper’s circulation area, and – because the newspaper’s online version is read literally around the world – “odds are decent that someone in, well, yes, Afghanistan, will crank out an immediate response,” I wrote.

Well, guess what, my little chickadees. Exhibit A in support of my thesis was not long in arriving from the land of the Taliban. The weekend e-mail included a message, ostensibly written on the column’s date of publication by a woman I won’t name because I was unsuccessful in obtaining her permission prior to deadline. “The Canadian Embassy in Kabul puts out various alerts from here and there. Today it was your article on Afghanistanism,” the writer explained. “I am working here in Kabul, so found your comments of interest. And I just wanted you to get something from Afghanistan.”

Talk about your rapidly shrinking world. Talk, as well, about your self-fulfilling prophecy. Troll for response from readers in far-flung Afghanistan, and, poof, the Internet genie springs out of the bottle to make your pipe dream happen. What could be more globally gratifying than that?

A card-carrying skeptic aware of the potential for e-mail mischief on the part of one of my chums with too much time on his hands, I replied to my Kabul correspondent, seeking authentication of her note. And I checked the Web site of the Canadian Embassy in Kabul in search of the posting she had cited.

Alas, because my computer software predates the Stone Age – a perfect match with my computer skills – each time I seemed close to striking possible pay dirt on the site an ominous pop-up notice on the screen would block the information highway.

“THIS MACHINE HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND WILL BE SHUT DOWN,” it threatened, and the lashup would come to a frustrating halt. In “Nicholas and Alexandra,” his classic book about the last of Russia’s Romanov Dynasty and the fall of imperial Russia, author Robert K. Massie quotes a high government official saying of his successor, “He was a man in whose head three cocks were crowing at the same time.”

At this moment I was that man. Still, above the din the message seemed quite clear: Don’t be spying on the Canadian Embassy in Kabul, Chummy. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out while the getting’s good.

And so I backed off as gracefully as any other computer-challenged geek might under such intimidating circumstances. Some roads are better left untraveled; some things better taken on simple faith. As far as I’m concerned, Afghanistan has checked in on Afghanistanism, and that is that. My shrinking-world theory has been validated. From Kabul, with love.

Now I’m thinking it might be a swell idea to attempt to crack North Korea’s wall of silence before the chowderhead dubbing around with the nuclear missile aimed at our Left Coast has the opportunity to light the fuse.

Come this time next week perhaps I’ll be running on about my correspondence with my newest best cyberspace pal in Pyongyang. Or not.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.