233 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
233 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
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_____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________
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| ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ |
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| | _/_/_____ | | > > _/_/_____ | |
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... Remembrance of Things Past
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by Pixie
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5/1/1998-#352
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__///////\ -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- /\\\\\\\__
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\\\\\\\/ Everything You Need Since 1986 \///////
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___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___
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|___heal_the_sick___raise_the_dead___cleanse_the_lepers___cast_out_demons___|
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So I am now officially deeming this my manifesto. May I also clarify now that
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I am almost 16 years old. I reside in the tiny community of Middlesex, NJ
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where the kids are homophobic racists and act five years younger than they are.
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So basically, you can see why I am such an outcast and why I came into the
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Internet. I'm very grateful to have experienced a chunk of the online world
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before it was contaminated, much like my offline world.
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I first want to say that I began BBSing when I was 11 years old, calling local
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Wildcat and Maximus BBSes, meeting people who were just like me. At first I
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was laughed at, being just a little 6th grader and all, and I was even afraid
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to talk on the phone (Go figure!) I enjoyed all the typical BBS games, The
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Pit, Trade Wars 2001, Barren Realms Elite, and Legend of the Red Dragon (whose
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creator, Seth Robinson, sent me a birthday card once - a way wonderful
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underground BBS person kinda thrill).
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At first I was accepted as an annoying little gnat because I bothered people
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for information. When they finally saw that I'd cause no harm, they took me in
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and accepted me. No sooner than later, they realized I was something kind of
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special because of my wealth of knowledge and my precociousness, and so, they
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named me Brownie. As in the Girl Scouts.
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The world was so good back then. Kids in school thought you were powerful
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because you used words like BBS and modem. Today they're common terms except
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they are used in a way that most online veterans despise.
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"Do you use online? I have an e-mail address and my own web page! It's way
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cyberpunk!"
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Oi vey.
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That's one phrase that pisses me off "Do you use online" as if the whole system
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is just called "online". And it really gets to me that nobody respects the
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Internet today. People abuse the Internet. Considering I find it easiest to
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use a person (Johnny Roberts) to portray the Internet, I will use him from now
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on. So anyway, people exploit Johnny, and they treat him like crap, just so
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they can get their precious information. Just so they can get their naked Brad
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Pitt pictures, whatever. Despite those pictures, that's what a library is for.
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Give those old ladies some company before the brick buildings become obsolete.
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As for the Brad Pitt spreads? They sell magazines at mini-marts.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not against all people on the Internet, I'm just
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against the attitude. Nobody takes the time to learn about how hard it takes
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to keep a UNIX shell up. You ask someone about UNIX and they'll say they don't
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care, not knowing that if it weren't for UNIX, there would be no Internet. But
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of course, I digress.
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Back in 1994 I think, I was calling a local Maximus board and was so excited
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about the new UNIX shell-based Internet service that would be up and running.
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The World Wide Web was like this amazing thing that I could soon go on. Back
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then I think maybe a total of a few thousand people would go on there during a
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day. Now it's that many a second. It's preposterous! The consumption rate of
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bandwidth these days by ignorant people tampering with their Prodigy and AOL
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tools reminds me of Brave New World. Sooner or later, we'll be decanting
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screenames.
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Yet I already find programs now that do that.
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If you can't get the vein of my argument here, then stick around, because I
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hear the public likes a good feather-ruffling, and that's what I'm going to do.
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Being a teenager who likes to learn, but not teach her know-how, I get
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thoroughly irritated when people ask me questions about BBSes that I know but
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can't answer in as simplistic Layman's terms as they would understand. "First,
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I dial a number with my modem" .. "wait, wait, wait, how do you dial?" Then of
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course, there are the people that ask you questions like procedures are so easy
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and you can explain them in a second (if you wanted to) such as "How do you
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hack?" Third off, the only people I can seemingly get along with are the ones
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I've known way back in Brownieland who I can reminisce on about old Wildcat
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BBSes and dreaming of RIP and ASCII graphic drawing.
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But as I quote J. Levi, "F**k reminiscing, lets do something about it!", I
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think and I really like his idea. I don't want to reminisce anymore, I want to
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LIVE THE EXPERIENCE AGAIN. Where oh where have my forum posters gone? Oh where
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on the Net can they be?
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This all brings me to the Evil Empire. Corporate America, AKA Microsoft
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sometimes. Anyway, Corporate America has killed the whole essence of the
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Internet. Picture this, the Internet as little Johnny Roberts. Corporate
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America buys him up, he sells out, and BOOM! big media storm, everyone LOVES
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Johnny. Yeah. So when are they going to stop and let everyone who was on here
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before all the noise enjoy their homeground? Probably never.
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And as J. Levi states again, "Figure it out, it ain't home anymore. Time to
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find a new home...."
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Yes! Let's all be squatters, seemingly normal homeless persons, inhabiting a
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piece of cyberland. A chunk of cyberdata with enough bandwidth to feed our
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emotions and spontaneous posts. Nobody can kick us out of our space because
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we'd have inhabited it for so long. We will make a new home!
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But you can't help but remember how once you could turn a dial in cyberspace
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and get a few people discussing the possibilities of typical school lunch
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mashed potatoes, a few others philosophizing about the day, and even more just
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shooting the breeze in a fairly nice fashion. Today we can turn a dial in
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cyberspace and get nothing but noise. People in their teens thinking they're
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hackers because they stoles someone's password off a notepad in their room.
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People who are old and just joining the Internet world, wondering about what to
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do and asking people. But we are fending the land from these people who are
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trying to take it over, as so fluently said by author J.C. Herz:
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"The Net is one of the only fantastic things we have that our parents didn't
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have and, more importantly, that our yuppie uncles and aunts, who had
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EVERYTHING, didn't have. It feels like our turf, whether or not our name is on
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the deed. We settled it. We live on it. And now we are being invaded by
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direct e-mail carpetbaggers, publicists, and online mall developers ready to
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"streamline" it for the consumer. It stinks"
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And I can't help but agree. It is our place to get away from it all, we don't
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need people trying to sponsor us or place thousands of little tiny ads in our
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zines and newsletters, exploiting us. We don't need those high school girls
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looking for cute boys in MTV chat rooms on AOL. We don't need those 25 year
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old Harvard dropouts trying to get rich quick by sending mass mailings to
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people. We don't need the virusphobics who send 2934829034829348 copies of one
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virus warning e-mail to everyone when 99% of them know you can't get a virus on
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your computer unless you download it and execute it. Duh.
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And don't get me started on the overpopulation of pervs on the Internet. Sure,
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there were always pervs online back when times were good and we'd sip lemonade
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and watch the text roll by on our ircII programs. But today they're even more
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horrible. They linger and they annoy and not even AOL Terms of Service can
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stop them. They comply to their 9 cents a minute long distance deals they hawk
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whenever you call customer service, and bada-bing, bada-boom, they're back
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online.
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Newsgroups were better back then also, less spam as I said, more talk.
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Speaking of newsgroups and messages, MindVox was a big staple back then. First
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time I logged on, I lurked, I always lurked, I never posted. But now I go into
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the irc channel sometimes. (except I don't make the mistake of doing that while
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on this AOL account) That was some good time message boarding. Oh what I'd do
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for a good post today.
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I miss the old days. The "new" days in short reek like nasty digested chicken
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grease and vomit. I'm tired of all this "BE IN THE NOW, SURF THE NET, GET
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CAUGHT IN THE WEB" hype! Every movie now has a web page, every TV show, every
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PERSON. It's really sad!
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So considering if I ever really took action against Mr. Corporate America, I
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would probably lose anyway and not have anything to do about it, you know? So
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I guess all I can do right now is sit here and reminisce about all those good
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times, calling people with call waiting to knock them offline and steal their
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node on a 5 line BBS just to talk to someone else. Creating fake accounts
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(What? Fake accounts? Aren't they like, outlawed now or something?) to get more
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time, not to mention hacking when nobody knew what the hell it really was.
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Then I stop and realize, my words are stronger than my fists and my words can
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also help me fight an unspoken battle. (Yeah like that made sense.) I mean, I
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want to fight a battle with all those people out there who buy $2500 computers
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and don't know how to use them when there are computer experts like me running
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on a buncha fifth-hand pieces of computer junk! I say we make a federal
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government thing about it. Formal trade of computers. There should be a
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welfare for computer systems. Yeah.
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"We experienced the golden age. The problem with golden ages is that it
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is a description used after it is over. The net will probably never
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return to the good old days but small pockets of freedom will always
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exist, like hidden oases." - Stein Gjoen
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I picked this quote out of an E-Mail I received because it is so profound to
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the situation. We all are afraid of history repeating itself, and we think it
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doesn't, but it is. On the Net. Call me paranoid, but battles are ensuing on
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the Net faster than wildfire, and there are full-fledged wars between systems
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and people with no end in sight. It's World War III, and maybe it won't kill
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the world physically, but electronically it could take it's toll.
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And here I sit, staring at the monitor, just wondering about netlife. It's a
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good thing especially when you're on a crappy computer because you can enjoy
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the no-frills parts of it. The whole essence of the Net lies in pine, pico,
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and ircII. Can't forget good old lynx web browsing. And telnet. Nobody knows
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what that word means anymore. I feel bad. I also feel bad about using AOL,
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but the only reason is because there are no local Internet services left that
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have my precious UNIX shell *sniff*.
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Anyway, I leave with one request. If you get this and it affects you somehow
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and brings at least a tiny tear to your eye about the days of yore on local
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bulletin board systems, then please post this message to anyone else out there
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who might possibly remember the good times.
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And reply. I like mail, I miss real humans.
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With lotsa fight and writing power yet to come,
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Linda MacIntyre
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DinerPixie@aol.com
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.-. _ _ .-.
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/ \ .-. ((___)) .-. / \
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/.ooM \ / \ .-. [ x x ] .-. / \ /.ooM \
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-/-------\-------/-----\-----/---\--\ /--/---\-----/-----\-------/-------\-
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/lucky 13\ / \ / `-(' ')-' \ / \ /lucky 13\
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\ / `-' (U) `-' \ /
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`-' the original e-zine `-' _
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Oooo eastside westside / ) __
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/)(\ ( \ WORLDWIDE / ( / \
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\__/ ) / Copyright (c) 1998 cDc communications and the author. \ ) \)(/
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(_/ CULT OF THE DEAD COW is a registered trademark of oooO
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cDc communications, PO Box 53011, Lubbock, TX, 79453, USA. _
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oooO All rights reserved. Edited by Omega __ ( \
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/ ) /)(\ / \ ) \
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\ ( \__/ Save yourself! Go outside! Do something! \)(/ ( /
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\_) xXx BOW to the COW xXx Oooo
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