Friday, November 19, 2004
Let’s say you never met me in real life (RL), gentle reader, and oddly enough the lack of RL contact compels you to imagine your beloved CEO. With only our discussions and some random links to guide you in your visualization, you proceed to paint a real scorcher of a picture. And you know what? You’d probably be really, really wrong. That’s one of the greatest joys of the Internet, this medium we call home.
You see, anonymity is arguably the most seductive gift bestowed upon us by the web. For all you know, I could be a wrinkly octogenarian–a ginghamed grandmother, more accurately–sitting on a porch, gardening hose in one hand and optical mouse in the other. Or “I” could be a baker’s dozen of unemployed clowns huddled around a 15-inch monitor, taking turns typing and smearing each other with custard. Imagine if I were an amazing talking dog based in Roswell, New Mexico, whom doctors just groomed and injected with 813 new adjectives. Let me tell ya, they don’t make these keyboards easy for paws.
It’s anonymity that gives Internet dialogue such spice, such unchecked verve. Surf around and you’ll witness humanity committing mental seppuku in chatrooms big and small, red and white, articulate and Cro-Magnon. Here are three types of forums that conveniently correlate to different stages of life. Keep in mind they aren’t representative of the entire ‘Net, just most of it.
The “13 and under” Crowd
There are intelligent adolescents everywhere, this is true, but they very likely avoid these chatrooms like the dickens. Rightly so, I might add, because the collective IQ usually rounds up to approximately, oh, 43.7.
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BIONICLED1194
WHO SAW SHARK TALE. IS IT SCARY. I MUST TYPE IN ALL CAPS FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY.
(_..o(–Death_Dealer21–)o.._)
i d/l’ed it. movie is okay. don’t pay to see it.
BIONICLED1194
DON’T WORRY, I NEVER PAY. BUT IS IT SCARY. THAT IS MY QUESTION, PLEASE ANSWER.
LiNdSaYLoHaNd
lindsay lohan is soooooo hottt.
omgwhokilledkenny
STFU, u r so ghey. she is an ugly bitch.
LiNdSaYLoHaNd
WTF, ur the ghey one. here is a cockticon for u: ===D u like? shithead.
King_AMD2049
ur both wrong. my BOX is teh shit. will it run half-life 2 good?
triathlon 6000 oc’ed to 15000 GHz
256…GB DDCQR RAM (heh heh, got u for a moment)
poshtek radeforce w/950 MB VDRAM and iSear technology
small gnome inside who makes sure all parts are spit-shined
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And so on and so forth. Eventually, these children slog through puberty, become more articulate, and turn into…
Star Wars/MMORPG/Matrix Enthusiasts
The moral of the story? Don’t ponder too much about whether Boba Fett’s boxers are Force-sensitive.
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Leia_Lover24
I beg to differ with you, RebelScout_1138, but Grand Moff Tarkin was indeed in league with the Corellian smugglers. I also must object to your second point: he has very lustrous hair. I will fight to the death to prove this. En garde!
w00kieBreath
That doesn’t make any sense. Are you pulling from EU? You’re going apocryphal on me, L_L. Snap out of it.
mAyBeChLoRiAn
u are both stupid, very stupid, like a very, very retarded cowboy bebop.
Mr_Mythril
Hello, everyone. This is not spam. I carry a fine assortment of Everquest wares. Mayhap I can interest you in a Dwarven Two-Handed Long Sword of Hurting with a +77 modifier? Paypal or Bidpay, plz.
The_1
Whoa.
w00kieBreath
Hey, how about I sell you my +20 Greaves of SHUT THE FUCK UP.
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Such naughty language, dear reader! My ears are certainly crimson. Let’s conclude our journey with adulthood.
InstaKillMeNow
Instapundit is perhaps one of the largest blogs in the webiverse. It naturally follows, of course, that there are many ugly stepchildren in its wake, rooms in which people discuss “politics” and barbeque (BBQ).
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NaderH8er
You’ve got to concede that we went in without any real international support. Poor Blair got dragged, keelhauled, into the firestorm.
Shoot_Bartman_n0w
I agree. We’ve gotta get out of NAM right now.
NaderH8er
What? o_O
IM_MONOCLED1194
WHO VOTED FOR BUSH, I HATE BUSH. HE IS LIKE A MONKEY. DID YOU SEE THE PICTURE COMPARING HIM TO AN APE. LOL. I ALSO HATE KERRY.
LakersFan44
Whoa there, buddy, ease up on the capslock.
IM_MONOCLED1194
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. I HATE NADER.
NaderH8er
Right on!
IM_MONOCLED1194
DID YOU SEE THE GRUDGE. IS IT SCARY.
CubsFan4Eva
Do any of you know where my husband (CubsFanAlways) went? I know he sometimes goes here. I am his wife. Where did he go? I’m so lonely.
Conooseur
I am sooooo lonely and depressed. You know what, CubsFan? I feel for you. I went from 2.5 bathrooms to 6.25 bathrooms, but it still isn’t enough. I want to die. A/S/L?
King_AMD2049
zOMG, my new BBQ roxxerz. will it cook sirloin good?
50″ titanium reinforced military-grade shell
butane/charcoal/sunlight ready grill, oc’ed to oven capabilities
coal
green spatula
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This has been a very informative discussion, at least IMHO. See you on Monday.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
If I said that work isn’t always fun, gentle reader, would I be so far off the mark? It almost seems like common sense, and I’m not sure it’s a topic worthy of debate. I mean, you’ve got your good days, sure, but you’ve also got your bad days as well, right? I’d go so far as to label this a fact, if it weren’t for a job fair I attended a year or two ago.
There was a representative from the CIA at this fair, and after conversing a bit I asked about bad days in the agency.
“Oh, every day is great,” she said. “I don’t have any bad days.”
Right. I didn’t need intense training on The Farm or even a math class to realize that this probability was the special kind, the kind that makes statisticians giggle with glee. This is all merely a prelude, however, to our real discussion.
Whenever I have a tedious day at work, I imagine landing a plush job in Hollywood. In my mind, the grind simply doesn’t exist there. It just doesn’t have room to breathe. I’d spend my time jetting from place to place, drinking cool beverages with famous people, composing Oscar-winning screenplays on a willfully shitty typewriter, purposely dirtying my pants with caviar, that kind of thing. Hollywood, or so goes my fantasy, is the kind of place where people eat Lucky Charms the way they were meant to be consumed–with free-range oats and real gold and diamonds.
Over the weekend, I saw some filming done for Derailed, a thriller that comes out sometime next year. Clive Owen and Melissa George were both in Wilmette, while Jennifer Anniston was somewhere else. zOMG, WTF, I’m going to have an aneurysm from the excitement, right? Wrong. What surprised me most was the 9-to-5ness of the whole deal. Although they probably made much more than the average bear, the actors and the crew were grinding it out, same as all us other Joes, on a Sunday afternoon no less.
It was boring, and there was a guilty pleasure to this boringness. You get the impression from interviews and documentaries that, really, all you need is a director with a “vision” and lots of Evian spring water to make a movie. And the actors, hell, all they need are assistants willing to twist the tops off their water bottles.
Of course, maybe they started rolling out the caviar and the Really Lucky Charms after I left, but I doubt it. A job is a job is a job. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my first love, Microsoft Excel.