Naked in Cyberspace (annotated)

C'mon DJ, don't you know anything. Everything is related. If you go to a German restaurant and order bratwurst with a side order of farvegnugen and yak's breath, not only will they look at you funny,

The Jorgensen Family visits Taconic Brauhaus. Film at 11.

but they'll stuff shmeeps up your nose and try to expose you to the Great American Intergalactic Space Fnords.

Remember, the fnords can't eat you if you don't see them.

Then you'll have to listen to Englebert Humperdinck albums over and over, until you learn how to correctly fold your toilet paper.

We were having a discussion on the proper way to fold toilet paper back then. Or it was a voting topic or something.

If you're lucky, they'll let you remove Vanna White's eyebrows with an SOS pad.

A reference to The Sun And The Moon, a zine published by Kurt who lived up in Connecticut but moved to Albuquerque where the towels are oh so fluffy, where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer, where the shriners and the lepers play their ukeleles all day long and anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a nickel.

For free.

No, not for free! For a nickel!

That's where the valuefest part comes in. Most people would pay good money for you to do that. Some smart folks might even videotape it and send it to America's Funniest Home Videos. But you'd be lucky, you would. It's what we call the theory of relativity. Everything is related.

This post you're reading now is another example. It seeks to answer questions that get burped up from the backwater and shadowy reaches of the vortex. Sick puppies of the world unite. Is this all it comes down to? How do I go about getting an exorcism? Can I buy a vowel? It's not what you say but how you say it, and how much you're paid to do so.

Logging on boards in the wee hours of the morning is fun. That's when all the horrible chaotic sludge gets belched up into your mind from the Uncertain Areas.

The wild horses made me do it. Obscure Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy reference: "They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as huge children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thundered through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the Uncertain Areas."

They say you use only 10% of your brain. You gotta wonder what's lurking in the 90% that isn't being used. Why not find out?

Penguins, according to Douglas Adams: "She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins."

It's easy, and fun.

Y'know, it's really humid tonight. There's a thin coating of slime all over everything I touch. I'm in the basement right now, sitting here in my underwear thinking talk is cheap at 300 baud. That's what I'm stuck with, ya know, because I get too much gibberish and big yawps when I dial in at 1200. Nasty stuff.

I got vast quantities of line noise if I tried to go any faster than 300 baud.

Anyway, I've got this slime, y'see, and it's just everywhere. There's some really nasty stuff near the garage, though. Residue, all over the floor, from the time my 1980 Plymouth Arrow blew itself up.

The Dances With Wolves Curse. See also: http://www.xydexx.com/journal/j990610.htm

I haven't gotten around to cleaning it yet, because I never have time to do stupid things that need to be done.

Procrastination, one of my Bad Habits even today.

What I'd really like to have time for is devoting my life to creating entropy and chaos. I'd like to be High Priest of Latex. That would be fun.

When I get around to it.

I'd like to meet Gobi, Goddess of Upstate New York, because she's really wild.

She ran a zine or did mail art or something.

There's a lotta cool people in my letterbox. I'll have to meet them all someday.

It's a shame, you know. Some people are afraid to meet me.

Yeah. It's Renfield they really have to worry about.

Some people and their silly expectations, you know? They called me mad back at the academy. I'll show them though. Them and their simpleminded conformity, snorting yak dung as they spew their bigotry and hatred like great smoldering globs of hell-phlegm. I stopped being prejudiced when I realized you miss out on meeting a lot of really cool people if you have these uninformed ideas about them. I love my ability to annoy the blithering melonheads, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying to help them, either. Chaos makes the world go 'round. Fun fun fun.

I haven't eaten in a while. I do some pretty wild things when I'm hungry.

All hunger and no sleep makes Xydexx more interesting than usual.

Like chaos art. That's wild. Damn it's hot down here. Fuck this. It's 1:25 in the morning. I don't need clothes right now. Hold on a sec.

I got undressed! Invoke Rule #1 cuz I'm NEKKID! Woohoo! It's nekkid time!

Ah. Much better. Where was I?

Ah, yes. I was right here, on Uncensored, totally naked. I wonder if you can be arrested for being totally naked in Cyberspace?

"Naked In Cyberspace" would become the name of my BBS a few years later, and a few years after that, the title of a book about online privacy. Savor the irony.

Fuck it. There's no dress code. That's the nice part about the final frontier, people can't judge you by how you look or what color you are or any other superficial B.S. like that. Of course, that always makes things interesting when you finally get to meet these folks. I mean, you could meet someone in Cyberspace and form an idea that they're, say, a graham cracker. But when you finally meet them offline you stand a chance of being totally blown away because they don't resemble the mental picture you have of them.

I love watching people's heads explode when they find out I really am an inflatable unicorn.

Or maybe they do. Who knows? I do, yes. But alas, some people never will. Too bad.

Now I'm scratching my bare feet and enjoying every minute of it, as per Wonko's suggestion.

I love having my feet rubbed.

Hmmmmm... this is neat. I should do this more often.

I've been hopping around the local boards since, oh, 1985 I think.

See what a $1700 Compuserve bill will do to ya?

The first folks I got to meet were from the now-defunct Melnibonean Council. A partying crowd, they were. We got together for a few drinks at Rockwood.

Along with Xakor, who I think owned the 1980 Plymouth Arrow back then.

I've met lots of users since then. Most have gone off to college now, though. It was fun back then.

Hell, it still is fun. I love the alternative media. I think one of the neatest things about boards is the generally uncensored opinions you're able to get. Unrestricted, for the most part, with the exception of some boards that won't allow fucking profanity.

Well, it's 1:42. I suppose I'll get some rest now. Tomorrow's my day off.

I was working for SoundScan and had Thursdays off, so I could go hiking in the middle of the week, wearing my toad-stomping boots. I'd be listening to Chainsaw Kittens while driving up through the Hudson Highlands in my 1991 Honda Civic which now has > 206K miles on it.

I'll be doing some more hiking and picture taking to prepare for the Celebration of Grunginess.

"Celebration of Grunginess" a/k/a our annual trip across to Bannerman's Island.

It'll be the cows, man.

It'll be cool.

Scary, too. Lots of sludge and other horrors.

The water inside the breakwater is only a few inches deep. The bottom of the river is this horrible brown muck that you'll sink into if you try to walk on it. There's also these long plants that grow on the bottom of the river that have a tendency to freak me out.

It's an adventure though. Latex and good friends.

We go over on inflatable rafts (>>Scream oooo!), generally get covered in River Grunge, and have a wonderful time.

You can't ask for much more than that.

Well, you could, but where would you put it?

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