Sweet! You know what's awesome (besides, like, volcanoes and wolverines and fucking Gears of War!!)? Okay, so the first time I came here I was a goddamned imbecile. This website has embiggened my reality. That's the truth: it improved both my existence and things external to it, via some osmosis/voodoo. Sorry if that makes me a GROTESQUELY UGLY FREAK. Since we're all here together, you know what is not awesome? Showing up late for a party. Also not awesome: re-opening old wounds and saying stuff that's already laid out elsewhither, and then (hopefully not) re-starting discussions already discussed. Consider yourself warned, shitheads.
I've been really busy in the big blue room. Its restless and timeless companion, the Orb of Fire, comes when it may, and men fear to glance up at it. But let me tell you what I remember.
I have listened to people talk about E2 since, I don't know, FOREVER. And if not, it was somewhere around FOREVER. So I won't talk about E2's changing seasons, the Quest For Better Content and Also Maybe the Holy Grail. Hell man, I don't care.
I remember two things, and they are as follows, using something called an "unordered list". I found it on the internet:
- The red shirt node. Hah! What's always seemed funnier (to me) is the coalescence of that "joke" and the "joke" about red-shirt ensigns in my brain. I no longer separate the two. They are one. So, by way of association, any time I watch Star Trek and there is a red-shirt ensign, inevitably it proceeds that I visualize cowofdoom's death. I'm not sure what this means.
- The other one's hard. I got here in March, 2001 sometime (I'd give the date, but I'm typing directly into the box below, and I'm afraid that dark internet sorcery will destroy everything ever). I didn't know shit about shit. At some point I became an editor, and due to technical difficulties, I stepped down. And aside from "How did I get here, Sarah?," it's the only writeup that chafes my brain daily. I don't remember when, but some interweb hoodlum (who, I assume, must bear a strong meatspace resemblance to the peerless Interstellar Scrotum) crafted a writeup in the daylogs--this was about the same time that "Wore a red shirt today. More later." appeared, mind you--about his day. Except he did it as a text adventure. And aside from the aforementioned story by jp, it is the best and most flawlessly executed writing, in my estimation, that this website has to offer. And I only read it once, six years ago, and have not been able to find it since.
Serendipity: a dumb-sounding word that means something like, the time when you find an unexpected thing, so inexplicable in its excellence that, in the time it takes you to remember that it wasn't what you were searching for, great and wonderful change has already occurred. You are forever improved. I was searching for some other comfort, some other solace in my otherwise problematic life, but instead, through some external benificience, found this place. Like a syphilitic lesion inexpertly bandaged on the upper thigh of a high-priced, famed callgirl from the "Business Personals" section of your local newspaper, I will never leave. Glad to be here.
That's when I decided I loved this goddamned place that doesn't exist. Man. Talk about your good times. I get this thing in my chest, right about here, when I think about that place in my life. That's what I remember. That's what I remember.