By GARY BARKER
Blast San Francisco Bureau

As any scraggly backwoods yokel or random militiaman or senator will be happy to tell you, the Internet is chock-full of all sorts of hush-hush stuff and probably ought to be shut down or blown up (the sooner the better).

Whether the secret is something worrisome in your P-TRAK file at Lexis-Nexis or the secret story of how Martians left Mars and migrated to earth, you can bet your appendage of choice that the secret has been revealed on the Internet somewhere. And frankly, you're doomed.

People on the Internet just can't keep secrets. They're like those baby dolls where water goes in the mouth and exits elsewhere immediately thereafter -- Netizens are nothing more than conduits for partially digested confidential information. If you search online for "top secret" or "don't tell anybody" or "confidential," you'll have at your fingertips a wealth of information you have no right to see, and shame on you for even thinking about it.

But some secrets are baffling even after you know them.

It's not particularly useful to read in the Confidential Guild Background file for some guy named Aeric that, "Aeric's adaptation left him with no obvious loss of senses, except for a reduction in the sense of smell."

I'd recommend he cut back on the adaptation schtick and stop to smell the roses, but, well... bummer, Aeric.

And thanks to the custodian of a document available at http://www.ftaent.com/emit%20file.htm, it's no longer much of a secret that "Kemuri mysteriously disappeared in Earth Year 1997" -- though phrasing things that way implies Kemuri was maybe from another planet. Brrrr. Spooky, huh?

[If you've got $4,505 burning a hole in your pocket, you could do worse than to buy the complete CIA Research Reports collection] at http://gopher.upapubs.com:70/0/upa/171 -- though well-dressed men in Ray-Bans will beat you up if you try.

The WWW Confidential Informant site at http://kcpd.org/informant/evidence.htm has such top-secret stuff as OJ Simpson's post-arrest mugshot and a WAV sample of a police siren. Yes, it's the same Simpson photo that graced the covers of Time and Newsweek, so it's rare and valuable and you've probably never seen it before.

For those of you who don't know how to behave in the presence of secret information, there's an extremely helpful 10-step guide available online at http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/top_secret4.html

Follow this instructions!

1. Do not eat or drink any food!
2. Close your eyes! Secret radiation!
3. Do not breath!
4. Forget all after leaving this sector!
5. Do not say anything to your mum!
6. Destroy your clothes after leaving! Ultra invisible secret dust!
7. Do not copy!
8. Touch your screen for grease-spots!
9. Sorry! Do not read this instructions! Very very secret!
10. Click here for entering!

For those who are determined to learn all the secrets available out there, it's not just general behavior that matters. It's important to know how to accessorize.

Just so you understand how the Intelligence community operates: The intrigue food chain works its way down from the Trilateral Commission and the Bavarian Illuminati, through the chief of the CIA, through generic federales, through local law enforcement officials, through Avon ladies and the PTA, through everyone who knows the basics of HTML, and finally through disgruntled office workers and police basic training screwups who buy their paranoia and mayhem accessories from NIC Law Enforcement Supply.

When NIC sells coffee mugs and file folders, they are deadly serious about the products' secretive mystique: "Protect your valuable documents with our SECURITY FILE FOLDERS! Each folder has been designed to command immediate respect," NIC reveals. The folders are available in a variety of designs, but the best one says "WARNING: SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED TOP SECRET," with TOP SECRET in huge letters and the whole enchilada emblazoned with a striped red border.

As you continue your top secret shopping spree at NIC, be sure to buy at least one DEA Jungle Ops patch ($4.95). It's a fashion forecast -- simply everyone will be wearing them next year, along with Stasi uniforms and visor hats ($45 for both). Or buy the CIA Duluxe Collectors Set (including stickers, a coffee mug, a keychain, and more) for $54.