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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate August 2000 |
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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate August 2000 |
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INSIDE SCOOP |
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EVERYBODY'S FREE TO RE-INSURE Ladies and gentlemen of the universe: always re-insure. If I could offer one tip for the future, always re-insure would be it. The benefits of re-insuring have been proven by countless people, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my occasionally inebriated wanderings around the universe. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of being an Explorer. Oh, never mind. You won't understand the power and beauty of being a Explorer until you've promoted. But trust me, when you reach Thane, you'll look back at logs and recall in a way you can't grasp now how needed you were by POs and how powerful you really were. You do not have more typos than everybody else. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to compete in the "Cup of Fearlessness" in a freighter. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that you know can happen but can't control, like being punted. Do one thing a day that will scare the people in the Cantina. Singing should do that. Don't be reckless with other people's planets. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Refuel. Don't waste your groats in the casino on the Moon. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The chain of promotions is long and, in the end, you just end up porting around. Remember the donations you receive. Forget the loans that aren't paid back. If you succeed in doing this, you're a step ahead of most of us. Keep the coin. Throw away the sandwich from Slarti's. Overhaul. Don't feel guilty if you can't find Earth from the link. The most interesting people I know I met because they found Mars first. Most of the people I know now still can't find Earth. Get plenty of Trader-Credits. Be kind to your benefactors. You will miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll get a planet, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll get a duchy, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll DD at Merchant, maybe you'll throw parties as a Baron. Whatever you do, don't throw a tantrum every time you're shot down by a mobile. They don't just hate you. They hate everybody. Enjoy the bribe-accepting system we live in. Don't be afraid of investigators or what other people think of it. They're doing the same thing. Dance, just not in front of people who have logging turned on. Read the room descriptions, even if the exits are broken. Do not watch other people haul. It will only make you feel slower. Get to know your Factory Owners. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your Duchess. They're your best link to new Factory Owners and the people most likely to stick with you when you're so drunk you can't remember if you're alive or not. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in duchy and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need people who can tell you what your address is when you're too drunk to tell the travel agency yourself. Live on someone else's planet once, but leave before you become a lush. Live in your ship once, but leave before you start to smell. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Snerts will always exist. Haulers will demand high wages. People show no respect of rank, and you, too, will grow old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, snerts didn't bother people, haulers were reasonable, and people respected higher ranking individuals. Respect higher ranking individuals. Don't expect anyone else to pay your bill every month. Maybe you have a credit card. Maybe you have a savings account. But you never know when either one might screw up. Don't mess too much with your description or by the time you've been in Fed for six months, you'll read like Tolstoy. Be careful whose bays you buy, but be patient with those who offer them. Bays are a form of taking substandard goods from factories, hammering out the dents, repainting them, and selling them for a 200% markup. But trust me on re-insuring.
DANNY
GIVES HIMSELF EVERY TITLE IN DATASPACE MARS, SOL - The seldom revered, often reviled Danny, longtime Overlord and Squire of Raptorian, has publicly decreed that he holds every real or imaginary title in DataSpace. Keeping with the current trend of inventing a title for yourself, pretending that it's real and that you have real power, then finding gullible saps to follow you, Danny has given himself every title from King to Duchess to Celtic Elf Prince. "If you can think of any title to call me by, male or female, real or made-up, it fits. I'm now everything," the new President said in a press conference. Reactions to the self-proclaimed CFO of IBM's decision to make himself self-proclaimed everything have been good. "I think Danny holding the title of Empress is great for the Sol economy. I hear that CDs is flourishing and opening up branches all over the galaxy," said Zrasputin following the announcement. The Representative from Rhode Island (D) has already used some of his newfound titles to quell disturbing trends. As Prime Minister he has decreed all brackets to be unconstitutional. As Chief Bard he has declared all amateur poetry to be heretical. As Galactic DMV Safety Inspector General he has declared the Mammoth-class ship to be a safety hazard. And that's reportedly just the start. "I plan on using all my titles, from Senate Committee Chair to Sultan to Pope, in beneficial ways. The galaxy will benefit from my term as Agent in His Majesty's Secret Service," said Danny in his commencement/inauguration speech. "You probably won't be sorry."
SCOUNDREL'S
CORNER: STRANGER STILL IN A STRANGE LAND I'm still in Texas. It's still strange. I think I mentioned last time around that I hate bugs. Let me take a moment here to quantify for you the extent of my hatred for bugs: I hate them so much that I am going to write about them some more. I must confess that in recent years I have been somewhat taken in by the environmentally-conscious trends and general tree-huggery that have been one of the chief characteristics of the last decade. I had been aware in recent years of feelings of guilt and remorse as I would heartlessly smush hundreds and thousands of our little insect friends into wet puddles on the pavement. These feelings had grown so strong that I would even make some effort to shoo the various insects I would find in my house outside without slaughtering them, provided they weren't too yucky or scary looking. No more. Death to them all. This recent return to bugicide on my part was provoked by an object roughly the shape and size of a 1976 Ford station wagon with wood-paneled doors thwacking me in the head as I was trying to mind my own business and simply cut the lawn*. *The term "lawn" in Texas refers to green scruffy stuff with the general consistency of razor blades that is the only thing that will not wither in the heat that bears any resemblance to "grass". After my return to consciousness following the head trauma resulting from being hit with something similar to a 1976 Ford station wagon with wood-paneled doors, I looked around to see if I could spot the thing that was surely similar to a 1976 Ford station wagon with wood-paneled doors. There was a clicking sound not unlike small-arms fire to my left, and as I turned my head to look I spotted a thing which was surprisingly unlike a 1976 Ford station wagon with wood-paneled doors in shape, but right on the money in size. Now, we have grasshoppers in Michigan. Some of them seem pretty large. Some Michiganians might even go so far upon witnessing these pretty large grasshoppers as to say aloud, "Wow, that grasshopper seems pretty large." It is a forgone conclusion then to assume that such Michigan natives have never witnessed a grasshopper such as the one I was looking at, which I may or may not have mentioned resembled a 1976 Ford station wagon in size and looked almost totally nothing at all like a 1976 Ford station wagon in shape. The grasshoppers in Michigan are these cute little green things that hop around boink boink boink. Cute. This thing before me was eyeing me balefully with its beady little eyes as it reclined on the hydraulically-assisted shock absorbers that served for its hind legs. It bounced rhythmically in place to the beat as "La Bamba" played from somewhere nearby. The spiny things on the back of its legs looked as if they were up to the task of sawing through an average-sized petrified redwood tree. I mustered up all the courage I could – which was none – and ran like hell. I dimly remembered my girlfriend telling me that locusts were common to the area and that a locust was basically just a jumbo party-sized industrial-strength grasshopper. Perhaps some of you remember the old cartoon series that featured Kimba the White Lion. Images were flashing through my mind of the episode where the locusts came in a swarm and ate everything – crops, trees, animals, stone edifices – everything. If memory serves, it seems like the black swarm of locusts in that episode in a remarkable feat of hive-mindedness would also spell stuff out, such as "Kimba, death has come for you", "Kimba, abandon all hope", "Kimba, your mother was a gerbil". I could not help but think that the swarm of one locust behind me was spelling out, "Michigan man go home" as I pumped my legs for all they were worth. My girlfriend – sweetheart that she is – has often looked at the top of my head and commented, "Looks like the crop is thinning". I figured that if she could mistake the top of my head for produce, so could this thing, and I haven't returned to the unfinished "lawn" since. I'll return to it soon – the suit of Kevlar full-body armor I ordered from www.bobsarmysurplus.com should arrive any day now. Besides, it's just too hot for yardwork. It's so hot, in fact, that I can't even tell you how hot it is. Back in my grade-school days, I distinctly remember that everyone seemed to be trying to push the Metric System on the students. They claimed that in a few years everything would be categorized in centimeters, meters, and other mystifying terms. We would be required to be able to convert our old archaic English system to Metric or risk suffering a terrible, agonizing death. "Hey Bob, it says here on the can that I am supposed to pour 4 milliliters of this lighter fluid onto the coals before I light the grill. How much is four milliliters?" "'Bout a gallon, I reckon." "Okay." Boom. We of course laughed at the time. It all sounded like a bad episode of Battlestar Galactica. "I read four Cylon Raiders, Starbuck. Range two-hundred fettucine alfredos." "Got it, Apollo. Estimate intercept in ten cuisinarts." Naturally, the United States rejected the Metric System like an artificial heart made out of Plaster of Paris. It's simply a matter of incompatibility. English converts well to Metric up to a certain point, then the whole system breaks down. For example: "Nice" The Metric System is able to accommodate this conversion. The English System's "Nice" falls between 18 and 23 degrees Celsius. No problem. This sort of conversion between English and Metric is fairly straightforward and can be expanded with a workable mathematic equation to include such concepts from the English system as "A touch warm out there" and "Somewhat stifling" all the way up the scale to such things as "Hot enough for you?" and "Damn it's hot!". The Metric System is, however, completely inadequate to the task of converting temperatures in a land of extremes such as Texas where the statement "Damn, it's hot!" falls into the same sort of Realm of the Blatantly Obvious as "It is often light out during the day". Temperatures such as those found in Texas require a completely different scale in the English system and there is no way to directly translate these scales into Metric. An example of the breakdown point:
*It is impossible to translate this terminology to the Metric System because it is impossible for a non-Texan to understand why a handgun bought for two dollars would contain more thermal energy than a handgun of a different dollar-value or why the thermal energy therein would increase for any reason on a Saturday evening of any given week. **It is likewise impossible to convert this measurement to Metric Standards as the definition of the word "Palacious" is unknown to anyone but a Texan. The Unabridged Webster's dictionary offered this as a definition: "Palacious: (adj.) Ask a Texan." The Texans were, for their part, rather tight-lipped on the subject and I could only conclude that the term "Palacious" is some sort of sick state-wide in-joke. ***The difficulty here is the general ambiguity of the term "Depot". This could mean anything from a train depot to a weapons depot to, say, Office Depot. It may also be of interest that most of these sorts of place would not, in fact, have a stove, which can only be a good thing in the case of a weapons depot. ****Another Texas-specific terminology, as most folks do not have ready access to a horned toad to see just what happens when it sunburns. Does it turn darker green, lighter green, brown, what? A question easily answered in Texas. There was a rather fat and ugly horned toad which also bore very little resemblance to a 1976 Ford station wagon with wood-paneled doors sitting right next to the locust. I would like to remind those of you who are now thinking that I have managed to settle in to some ridiculous and pointless tangent that this whole stupid bit about English versus Metric did in fact have something to do with what I was talking about. I distinctly remember saying that it was so hot down here that I could not tell you how hot it is. So there you go. At nightfall, when the temperature drops back down to the Metric-Friendly "Damn, it's hot!", the job of indescribability falls squarely on the shoulders of the darkness. It gets dark. Really dark. Pre-"Let There Be Light" kind of dark. I know how that sounds. I would have been the first in line to berate any idiot who claimed that it gets darker in one state than it does in the other. I would have publicly shamed that person and punctuated my jeering with a few well-aimed tomatoes. Most folks that take a moment to check out the "Have You Seen Me?" photograph of the missing child on the back of a milk carton generally assume that the poor kid has been abducted by a kidnapper, serial killer or alien. In Texas, missing children are most often the result of their parents telling them to "Come in when the street lights come on." They don't come on. Or they come on and are immediately eaten by the oppressive dark. Who knows, but these poor confused children are left to wander aimlessly, becoming vagrants, alcoholics, transients, and newsdroids. For those of you reading this in Texas, suffice it to say that it gets as dark as night under a skillet.* *Whatever the hell that means.
FED
OP-ED: WORKTHINGIES, PART V Last time you heard from me, I was ejected (rather rudely) from an area I shouldn't have been in by a irate workthingy. Let's just say this gathered quite a lot of attention, and I found myself surrounded by a crowd of WTs. It seemed as if they suddenly realized I did not belong there. I screamed "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ITS AN ENERGY BUILD!" and took the commotion it caused as an opportunity to run. I ran and ran as fast as I could, back to the door I originally entered through. Being there was still no handle on the door, I was just as stuck in WT land as before. Besides that, I was now with my back to the door with many, many WTs coming after me. I had nowhere to run. One stepped forward from the crowd. "How would YOU like to feel what it is like to be taken by a build?" I was shaking in fright. The group was moving in closer and closer, and I did what seemed like the only reasonable thing to do. I screamed. Soon, I thought I heard a muffled voice. I paused my screaming in order to hear. "Stand away from the door!" I stepped to the side and called out that I was no longer in front of the door. Soon, the door fell flat down and a furry foot stepped through the door. With a roar, he lunged at the WTs, eating the leader of the group in one gulp. Seeing this, the others ran in fright. (Or as close as WTs could get to running.) I looked to see who my hero was, and found him to be Bearclaw. "My hero!" I exclaimed. After over a month trapped in this world of WTs, I was finally free. After I repeatedly thanked and thanked Bearclaw, he left to return back home to Ladybearclaw. And I admit, as soon as I stepped out, I kissed the ground. (I just wished the cleaning droid had gotten to that part of the ground recently. Eeeyuck!) Want me to poll YOUR planet now that I'm out of WT land? Have any questions/comments? Email me at Jelly@columnist.com.
ALSATIAN'S PLANET REVIEW: WHERE OH WHERE HAS THE PLANET REVIEWER GONE? She told me I that I was going away for a few weeks to be tutored. Or that is what I thought she said. She never disagreed with me when I would mention my excitement about being tutored. An appellation like "Demi-Goddess" surely is someone who has transcended past the limits of human (or canine) existence and can be counted on to be a pillar of moral integrity and divine wisdom. Such a person certainly would not be party to a bending of the truth to serve her own twisted and evil purposes. Would she? There we were, making our way up the road to Chez Diesel. I was happily trotting alongside Hazed, eager for our arrival at my tutoring session. One must always be prepared to perform cute tricks at a moment's notice in order to share dinner with gullible humans, and I was eager to add new feats of feigned obedience to my repertoire of roll over, sit, play dead, and eat planets. Upon our arrival, Her Semi-Holiness and I were greeted by my friend Ashkellion, who is also someone I feel great trust for, someone who I have faith would keep my best interests always in mind. I yapped happily at my friend, to which he smiled in a seemingly uneasy way. I guess I didn't think anything of it at the time. The bar was uncharacteristically empty, but I gave this little thought at the time. I was in a terribly happy mood as this gala event represented the first time I had ever spent more than five minutes with Hazed without her whapping my snout. I decided to jump all over her to let her know just how happy I was, and accidentally tore a hole in her Demi-Radiant blouse. Even this mistake did not earn me a snout-based correction, which served only to increase my good mood. Imagine then my excitement when there was a knock at the door. I nearly wagged my tail right off at the prospect of a visitor whom I could jump on and crotch sniff and generally annoy. Hazed answered the knock and I was given pause as a rather sinister-looking individual entered the bar. I immediately recognized the scent of DataSpace's Public Enemy Number One: Mario the Knife of the Lunar Crime Syndicate! I knew better than to try any leg loving on this visitor. This vile monster of a human was wanted in more than thirteen systems for alleged drug-dealing, larceny, assault, capital murder and... worst of all... cruelty to animals! I suddenly got the impression that my tutoring session was not going to be of the positive-reinforcement variety. I inched my way under the nearest table, but to my great relief Mario seemed to take no notice of me and instead turned to Hazed. He pressed unusually close to her as he spoke and slipped an arm around her waist. "Here's that... uh... prescription... you asked for, doll face," he breathed in her ear as he held out a paper-wrapped package. "Just half of this stuff could take down a good-sized elephant and it should make your little doggy nice and docile for his little surprise. Now, as to the matter of payment..." He waggled his eyebrows in lewd fashion. Hazed pressed her index finger into the center of Mario's chest and pushed him back to a reasonable distance. "How does not burning you to ash for your crimes sound for payment? Fair?" There was a dangerous glint in her eye and I was sure Mario was about to receive the nose-whapping of his life. Mario perked up straight. "Sounds like a bargain to me, ma'am!" he clumsily blurted and, with a tip of his hat, fled through the doorway. Hazed handed the package to Ash, who eyed it uneasily. "Lighten up, Ash. You know this needs to be done," she said. Ash nodded sadly and affixed a leash to my collar. With a gentle tug and a mumbled, "Come on, boy," we made for the exit. I glanced up and barked good-bye to the Demi-Goddess on the way out, but for some reason she would not look at me at all. I'd swear my sensitive ears picked up the sound of a snicker from behind as we headed to the landing pad. I love spaceship rides, and I attempted to communicate my gratitude to Ash by slobbering all over his viewscreen and pulling the stuffing out of the passenger seat as his Imperial cruised its way to Venus. He didn't seem to respond well to my show of thanks; rather, he said little of anything and spent most of his time just eyeing me sadly. Once on Venus, I took great amusement for about thirty seconds trying to run the wrong way on the slideway, until my fun was interrupted by a sharp tug on my leash from Ash. He seemed genuinely troubled by something, so I decided to show some obedience and followed him dutifully into the office of the esteemed Doctor Fogg. I was astounded at the doctor's wide assortment of canine-oriented equipment. There on the shelf before me was all manner of rubber chew toys in various shapes and sizes. Dr. Fogg instructed Ash to lift me up onto a stainless steel table, which Ash did while I thoroughly licked his face. With such a fine assortment of dog toys I was surely in for a treat! Ash, for his part, seemed to be in an even greater state of discomfiture and was staring stonily at a curious looking solid rubber chew toy. Dr. Fogg explained that I need a preliminary examination and I endured his poking and prodding stoically. I was in such a good mood that the loss of the packed wax and mite population as Fogg cleaned out my ears hardly seemed to faze me. I'll miss my little passengers, but the thumping of my tail sure sounded clearer for their absence. Despite my good mood, I was growing rather concerned about Ashkellion. He seemed to have gone from discomfiture to full-fledged agitation. His eyes appeared to be wet and I'd swear he was trembling. His eyes kept darting from the brightly colored Venusian forked condoms – which I can only assume means "dog toys" – and back to me and his mouth was twitching at the corner. Suddenly his eyes snapped up and locked on the approaching Dr. Fogg and I turned my head to see what had captured his attention. When you are first appointed as a planet reviewer, that is an epiphany. When your skull is ripped open and your brain is enhanced, that is an epiphany. When you go over the waterfall on Tempest for the fifth time, that is an epiphany. When you find the female mutt of your dreams on Discworld, that is an epiphany. When your ears are cleaned of years of debris, that too, is an epiphany. When you see Dr. Fogg standing over you with a scalpel and talking about how much he's been looking forward to this neutering, that is when it's time to light a shuck and get the hell out of Dodge. I turned a baleful eye on Ash, who was once again staring at the Venusian forked chew toy. His eyes found mine and he seemed to come awake in an instant. It looked like he had found a moral epiphany of his own, and realized that he was about to be an accomplice in a shockingly evil deed. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled so loudly I wished I still had the ear mites and wax. My legs started pumping, and after about three seconds (or two years in dog time) I actually started moving on the stainless steel table. I bounded over Dr. Fogg and landed squarely on Ashkellion's face. He grabbed me by the waist with both hands and gave me a solid shove towards the doorway. Though my feet were scrabbling to find purchase on the linoleum, the momentum was enough to carry me out the door. Ash found his own feet and fed a stout knuckle sandwich to the pursuing Dr. Fogg, and we beat a hasty retreat to the Facet system. It took me a while until I felt I was able to trust my friend Ashkellion again, but the several canisters of VOX he and I consumed over the next few weeks were medicinal to that purpose. He also considerately allowed me to eat his shoes to make up for it. I laid low, entertained by Ashkellion's blubbering apologies and the outrageous stories told to us by a grizzled old space geezer who seemed a permanent resident of the bar. Eventually our revelries were ended by the sound of last call, and we were forced to bid our hideout and the space geezer farewell as Facet once again closed for business. I wandered off to the Celi system, which is my next planet review assignment. Ashkellion headed back to Venus to have a little chat with the dubious Dr. Fogg. He had stuffed the package from Mario down Fogg's gullet as we made our escape, and figured Fogg would be waking up any time now. With a little luck, a little coercion, and a little altering of the computer's records, Ash is convinced we can bamboozle Her Semi-Holiness into buying the neutering bit. I must remember to keep my hind legs discreetly crossed when I see her and act like the eunuch she thinks she has made of me.
Inspiration sometimes comes from strange places. Like head trauma, for example. Earlier today, I was bashing my head against my uncooperative car's steering wheel as it refused for the umpteenth time to start when I realized: I've never done this in Fed. True, I've only infrequently owned a ship, but in all the times I have, never once has it refused to start. Given, it didn't always get me all the way to where I was headed, but at least it was nice enough to start in the first place and give it a try. This, on the whole, is a good thing; it relieves us from the hassle of going through the Dance of the Nonworking Car, which starts with a call to the local mechanic. A few hours after the call, a tow truck arrives bearing a mechanic with a name that is either monosyllablic (Ed, Joe, Zeke) or a compound (Billy Bob). The mechanic will open your car's hood, stare at the parts as though he were telepathically communicating with them, then announce that your car needs to go to the shop. It's a system that has worked since the mid-1950's, so we feel no real reason to do away with it. And yet, there are no such mechanics in Fed. I personally have never seen a tow-ship, and I don't think AAA is still around. Or maybe I'm just lucky; I don't know. In either case, whenever I turn the key in my trusty rusty ship, it always starts. Of course, nine times out of ten, I've lost my keys, but that's no fault of the ship...not usually, anyway. There was one amusing incident where my keys fell into the fuel tank while I was topping them off, which led to me feeling around in the tank for the next half hour trying to find them, a process which succeeded in netting me a major toxicology bill, but that's another story entirely. So maybe I shouldn't be tempting Fate in bringing this up. Perhaps we should take this as the blessing that it is and cheerfully start our ships on the first time every time. We sure wouldn't want to be held up from hauling. As I've mentioned more times than I think even CalTech could count, if there is anything, ANYTHING, you'd like to mention, please don't hesitate to e-mail me at Horatio_TheWriter@excite.com! Go ahead! It's fun, fast, easy, and you might even get a mention in the paper for something other the one you got in the Funnies page for slipping on a drink in the bar and sliding through the front window!
FED
OP-ED: WORKTHINGIES, PART VI Last time we left off, I had just been saved from certain death (or at least, certain pain) by Bearclaw. However, it seemed as if I leaped from the frying pan into the sun. Why? Well, I had a busted up WT to explain to the planet owner. Unless - Unless I could stall the Planet Owner until I could leave, so the blame wouldn’t be put on me. Landing Pad Q. Hi there, Macnbc! Being that, uh, you are, um, the host of Who Wants to be a Billionaire, (Yeah! That’s why!) I have decided to poll you. Okay here’s the first question: How much respect do you have for your workth... ::looks nervous and quickly scribbles that out:: Forget about that one. Q. If you could spend the day in the life of a wor... Pardon me for a moment. ::whips out some white out and slaps it across the question:: Q. Has anybody ever vandalized any of your workthing - Okay THAT question is definitely out. ::rips that page out of her note book, crumples it up and throws it over her head:: Q. How about I just ask a simple question about what you are wearing? >ex macnbc ::runs away screaming:: I ADMIT IT! It’s my fault there is a maimed WT on the floor. I spent over a month in there with those things. I snuck in without asking! I DID IT ALL, ME ME ME! Just don’t EVER mention a WT again!
ALSATIAN'S PLANET REVIEW: DR. SCIENCE Last night I linked my ship's onboard computer to the galactic net for some Internet surfing, anxious to find out if Dr. Science had come up with an answer to the monumental question, "How do you make a corn dog bark?" For those of you not familiar with the esteemed Dr. Science, he is America's foremost authoritarian on the world around us. Or at least the world around him. "There is a thin line between ignorance and arrogance," he says, "and only I have managed to erase that line." Before I could finish my research into the corn dog bark, my eye was caught by another topic. One of his readers had written in with this thought provoking question: 'They say that on the Internet, no one can tell if you're a dog. How many household pets really log on in a given day? ' Dr. Science, in a brilliant display of deductive reasoning combined with compassionate empathy and a firm grasp of the topic on hand answered with this: "It depends on the cycle of the moon. Come a full moon, many pets grab the nearest mouse and start clicking. I've heard it said that most of the creatures logged on in chat rooms after 10 p.m. are animals, usually domestic pets with an axe to grind. Cats usually use foul language and are the source of much of the call for net regulation. Dogs tend to be much more moderate, loyal, and dull. By the way, the symbol for e mail slobber is ampersand asterisk." I did my own Important Scientific Research, braving the hoards of macro haulers on channel 9 and asking for a show of paws. The response was dismal. Answering the summons were one rapper dog, two cats, one mouse, Rythion - who wasn't sure if he was an animal or not - and this response from Keshrika: Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Keshrika, "::writes a list of the guys that are dogs but don't know it yet and sends it to you::: ;)" I'm still waiting on the list, and consider it My Duty to let those poor unfortunate canines know of their true heritage. I continued my research by asking Important Sounding Research Questions. The results were, once again, dismal. >xt Locksnatcher, do you have any Deep Seated Emotional Conflicts with humans that have lead you to seek redress via the Internet? Total silence ensued. >xt Um, I'll try again. Do you log on because humans are stingy with the milk? Your comm unit relays a message from Locksnatcher, "No... well, er, yes! That's it! I do it 'cuz he's stingy on the milk!" Obviously I will have to massage the data to fit the conclusions. All of you should be aware, however, that the next time you gaze into the eyes of the love of your life, your Fed soul-mate, your confessor and best friend, and you see the full moon reflected in their orbs – there might be a real tail wagging at the keyboard. The wisdom of Dr. Science, and the answer to the barking corn dog question, can be found at http://www.drscience.com.
TOP TEN
WAYS NOT TO LEAVE FED So, you're leaving Fed? You're not alone, a lot of people have done that and are doing it. But you're wondering, should I post? Should I invite people to the event? Email everyone? HOW should I do this!!? I mean, this is a BIG DEAL! You want to say goodbye, but it's hard, I know. So, after careful consideration, and after seeing so many former Fedders go, I put together this little list as a guide for you, to give you an idea of what NOT to do, what's really TACKY when you DD:
Get your story here! Email Bizcarp@aol.com.
(In case you haven't read BizCarp's article yet this week, I'd advise it before you read mine; we'll both make more sense.) Yes, folks, it's an usettling fact, but many people are leaving Fed. Some of them go quietly into that sweet goodnight, while others prefer to invite everybody and their siblings to the event. Biz, who happens to be one of my best friends, outlined for you all this week how NOT to DD. Well, folks, as a service to you all (and to avoid a lawsuit for bias) I'm providing you with the (insert drumroll here): Top Ten Ways TO DD! DISCLAIMER: Do NOT under any circumstances attempt these things in the real world. Not that I think any of you are dumb enough to do so, but my lawyer told me I either put this disclaimer in here or risk living in a refrigerator box for the rest of my life.
Now, this is far from an authoratative list. To be perfectly frank, it's more of a list of things you could do that would give me something to write about. But that's not all bad. You'd make it into the paper! I also realize that there might well be something REALLY bizarre that I haven't thought of here. Remember: originality is always good. So if you do come up with something pretty amazing for your final show, go with your ideas. Points for creativity! Okay, people, we all know the drill by now. If there's anything you'd like to share with me (idea-wise) go for it. Send it to me at Horatio_TheWriter@excite.com and I promise I won't ignore it.
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STRANGE LAND