Subject sent some messages, observed without interest the start of another pointless gun control flamewar, went a-random-noding, and benched the following:

  • droopy by senorbim, Sat Nov 13 1999 at 10:17 utc

    "the state of being drooped."

    Useless, linkless, user long gone. There's a little bit of a transitive/intransitive verb problem there, too, if I remember the terms correctly. To be droopy is to droop, is it not? A thing can be drooped, but then it's far more likely to be merely drooping rather than wholly droopy. Nothing about being drooped by an outside agent necessarily implies that one has an essential quality of droopiness. Any one of us, regardless of virtue, could be drooped by celestial forces unknown at any moment, and it's hardly fair to blame the droopee (the object of the action) in that case.

    Please, be careful with your verbs.

  • servitude by coldguy, Sat Nov 13 1999

    "What 90 percent of the population is in to Microsoft, Disney, Pepsi, or Bob." User never logged in.

  • Several by coldguy, Sat Nov 13 1999, never logged in:

    prophetic: Webster 1913 does a much better job on it.

    Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast is a longwinded admission that the author has no idea what "Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast" might signify, other than that it "has something to do with Frank Zappa". The author admits an inability to define "Alfonso".

    opposition adds nothing to Webster 1913.

    headbanger: "A person who bangs their head." There's a meaningful definition in another writeup.

    strive adds nothing to Webster 1913.

    kind of frightening: "vaugley scary." You know what? That is scary!

    vaugley: "Somewhat." I'll take that under advisement.

    Somewhat: "Probably. More or less."; Webster 1913 has this reasonably well covered.

    appears to be: "Seems to be true." That doesn't tell me much.

    formula: A decent effort, but completely redundant with Webster 1913.

    almost: "Not quite, as in 'almost, but not quite' ". The author mentions that he's listening to Beethoven. Another departed author very elegantly defines "almost" as "Nearly, but not." I like that.

    387175: The author's ICQ number.

    massive conspiracy: "A conspiracy of a large size."

    enslave: Another decent effort made redundant by Webster.

    slaves: It's a solid but very minimal definition, and Webster has the singular. Sorry.

    single person: "coldguy, for example". There may be no more to it than that, of course.

    human information collection centers: "A device or place designed to collect information about various humans." Thanks for the heads-up.

    nihlistic nature: "Of a nature that is devoid of anything." Oh, yeah?

    devoid: This one doesn't really cut it.

    These, I'm not so sure about:

    seems needs a spelling fix ("percieved"), but it's the only writeup there and I'd just as soon keep it.

    my mind: I just can't pull the trigger on this one. It's not charmless, and the other writeup (also Nov 13) needs it to make whatever kind of strange and very appealing (non?)sense it seems to make. So I can't kill it, but I won't chain myself to the gate if the deed must be done.



There's something charming and appealing in a lot of the old E1 writeups defining common words, a sense of a children's crusade forging ahead Quixotically into the unknown. I envy the first users, at the dawn of the world.