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| 24 new of 48 responses total. |
jp2
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response 25 of 48:
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Apr 21 18:05 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 26 of 48:
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Apr 21 20:01 UTC 2002 |
I remember a spate of pseudonymously entered parodies on M-Net around
1992, mostly entered under various *wood names. (Was the mulberry name
inspired the the other wooden pseudos?) Some of them weren't exactly
parodies - they were stories with starring characters whose names were
the same as actual M-Net users, but had no other obvious points of
similarity.
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slynne
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response 27 of 48:
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Apr 21 20:14 UTC 2002 |
A few of the "wood" items can still be found in Mnet's classics.cf.
resp:17 Barry, how come you never call me up to talk about bbs?
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happyboy
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response 28 of 48:
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Apr 21 20:59 UTC 2002 |
re27: i just...can't. next time we go out for
chicken fried steak and grits, maybe.
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jp2
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response 29 of 48:
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Apr 21 22:24 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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md
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response 30 of 48:
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Apr 22 12:34 UTC 2002 |
Ah, I see. [takes notes]
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edina
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response 31 of 48:
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Apr 22 16:38 UTC 2002 |
Jamie and I talk about a lot of things - especially when I am kicking his ass
in pool.
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jp2
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response 32 of 48:
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Apr 22 16:39 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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edina
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response 33 of 48:
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Apr 22 16:45 UTC 2002 |
I'll put that on a t-shirt and make you wear it when we go bowling next.
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polygon
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response 34 of 48:
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Apr 24 15:09 UTC 2002 |
Re 26-27. Thanks for the pointer. The "wood" items are 12-27 in the
M-Net classics conference. They date mostly from March through May of
1992.
I think the point of these stories, at the time, was that many or most
M-Netters had never met a lot of the major figures. Dan Napolitano
(keats) in particular avoided meeting any M-Netters he didn't know
already. So there was a lot of lurid speculation and gossip about what
people were like in "real life". The *wood stories took this speculation
to sometimes hilarious extremes.
Chelsea, Michigan is a small farming community, about
fifty miles west of Detroit. It's here that Jiffy brand
cooking mixes are made. The renowned Chelsea High School
football team won the state Class B championship last year.
We traveled to Chelsea on a recent sunny day to visit one of
its best known residents, Daniel A. Napolitano.
Mr. Napolitano's farm is located just west of town. Any
visitor would be intrigued by the unique fence surrounding the
property, a sturdy compound of black creosoted timbers; the
word "NAPOLITANO" is spelled out in glittering razor wire.
Mr. Napolitano, a big, bluff, broad-shouldered, muscular
man with a shock of graying blond hair, opened the roadside
gate and greeted us warmly. He wore a tattered green T-shirt
bearing the emblem "World's Greatest Grandpa", faded jeans and
penny loafers. He led us into the nearby ranch house,
distributed chilled cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and
introduced us to his wife Brenda and dog Shep. Brenda took
our coats, and we settled down in the living room for the
interview.
Between sips of beer, we asked Mr. Napolitano who had
been the three greatest influences on him. "First, John
Wayne," he said quickly, stabbing the air with a thick finger
in a decisive gesture. "Second, Meg Geddes. Third, Steven
Jobs." He guffawed loudly, knocking the ashtray off the
table.
On the subject of foreign competition, we asked him what
cars he likes. "Cadillac's the best -- Lincoln second," he
stated with authority. "No other car on the road can touch
them."
How did he feel about the breakup of the Soviet Union?
He shook his head. "It's tough to lose something so familiar,
even an evil empire," he said sadly. "But those people
deserve a hell of a lot better than what they were getting!"
Where did he expect to go from here? He grinned
enigmatically. "You'll keep hearing from me, never fear!"
Posted by Al L. Maplewood, March 24, 1992
(now item 23 in the M-Net Classics Conference)
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polygon
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response 35 of 48:
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Apr 24 15:35 UTC 2002 |
Another one:
It was an otherwise tedious Sunday morning, involving the usual
rapid-fire channel changing to find some interesting tidbit among the
morning's dreary religious programming. As I quickly passed talk
show after gospel hour after talk show, my eye chanced upon a
brightly enamelled studio set. I lifted my finger from the remote
control device as I further noticed a glowing neon logo, entitled
"The Gallivanting Gourmet," displayed on the back wall. The studio
consisted of a sparkling ocean blue kitchenette, complete with
convection oven, gas range, rotissiere, wok, hibachi, microwave,
bread-baking machine, salad shooter, and an impressively sized
juicer. Racks of copper-toned pots and pans were artfully arranged
on one wall, while a dizzying array of ladles, forks, knives, mixers,
whisks, spatulae, spoons, and other implements lay in trays attached
to the opposite wall.
The show's theme song, apparently some sort of plucky little banjo
duet, died down. Our host stepped onto the set to the eager applause
of the studio audience. He was dressed in a frilly dill-colored
apron and little else, a toque perched at a saucy angle atop his
head. Even so, I was unprepared for the shock I received when I saw
the show's credits flash across the bottom of the screen. Their
curlicue letters boldly announced that our host was Chef Aaron!
I had never met the elusive Mr. Larson, but I am certain that I could
now easily spot him at any PicoFest. A soft halo of blond ringlets
suffused his rounded, cherubically smiling countenance. Two
well-fed, quivering chins underscored every cheerful word he spoke.
His aqua-blue eyes sparkled naughtily as he flirted with the
delighted home audience. A suffusion of rings adorned each of his
fat, sausage-like fingers, and his startling girth was such that he
might easily be Paul Prudhomme's younger brother.
The centerpiece of Chef Aaron's show on this occasion seemed to be
desserts, as he began to chatter with his adoring audience about the
preparation of a delicious torte. He placed his ingredients on the
counter in precise order. He used no recipe card or cookbook. I
wondered if there were some sort of teleprompter in use, as Chef
Aaron seemed to have an impressive ability to keep the long and
complex list of ingredients in their proper places. I hastily
grabbed a pad of paper and began to scribble down the recipe as the
Maitre rattled it off. Treacle? Where, I wondered, would I be able to
purchase treacle locally? Perhaps the local Kroger's might stock it.
Chef Aaron kept up an effervescent monologue as he worked. "I'm so
happy to see all you ladies here bright and early this morning! I
feel so lucky to be here myself. Did I ever tell you that I almost
ended up as a lawyer?" He shook his head as the audience murmured
sympathetically; the studio lights glimmered for a moment off a small
tear that had gathered at the corner of one eye. "I had chosen law
for its financial rewards, not for any joy it might have brought me.
My first love was always cooking. I remember Maman scolding me for
ruining her convection oven with my mud pies! I pleaded with my
parents, but Maman insisted that I enroll in a respectable career."
The camera focussed on his hands as he fastidiously kneaded the
butter and flour of the torte. Not a crumb of dough dulled the
surface of his shiny rings. "It was in my final year of law school
that I was whisked away from what promised to be a dullard's life.
You see, I had long ago brought suit against a cagey ex-lover who
left me for a ground-breaking career in religious physics. Just as I
was prepared to accept my degree and accept a back-breaking job as a
slave at some tedious New York firm, I was awarded millions of
dollars in a palimony suit." He smiled knowingly at Camera Two and
winked. "Oh, I know it sounds cruel, honey, but if you want to make
an omelette, you have to break a few eggs!"
Muffin, my cocker spaniel, chose that very moment to hurl himself
into my lap, striking the remote control as he did so. Instantly,
the screen was filled with images of cheap stained glass, and the
room echoed with the sound of gospel music: "Send your money to God,
send your money to God...." I quickly recoved the remote device, but
strangely, I was unable to find that channel again, and TV Guide
provided no clue to any "Gallivanting Gourmet." Disappointed, I
headed to the kitchen for a Sarah Lee cheesecake.
posted by Phineas Taylor Balsawood, April 16, 1992
(now M-Net Classics Conference item 19)
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aruba
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response 36 of 48:
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Apr 24 16:11 UTC 2002 |
Wow, those are great.
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jaklumen
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response 37 of 48:
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Apr 25 08:39 UTC 2002 |
silly midwesterners.
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morwen
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response 38 of 48:
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Apr 25 15:38 UTC 2002 |
lol. Remember, they can say the same about US, luv.
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polygon
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response 39 of 48:
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Apr 25 16:11 UTC 2002 |
Here's another one. I can't believe I actually wrote this!
A Morning with Steven Michael Rosenwach-Gordon
----------------------------------------------
"The transcendental function of the connection of feedback-
controlled action with three modes of inference is shown in the fact
that we progress through learning from problematic views to new ones
capable of habitualization only if we apprehend reality under a
determinate schema," intoned Professor Steven Michael Rosenwach-
Gordon. "This objectification of the reality of nature is grounded in
the forms of inference coordinated in the behavioral circuit."
His students shifted uneasily in their seats. "Bullshit," one
of them muttered.
We were sitting in on Professor Rosenwach-Gordon's class on the
Logic of Inquiry. The shabby lecture hall was packed, but it' seemed
that today's material was a bit over the heads of some of his
audience.
The professor looked down at his notes and continued earnestly.
"Only if we attribute something like instrumental action to nature
itself can we deductively discover new hypotheses, deductively derive
conditional predictions from them, and confirm them through continued
induction." He took off his heavy wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them
on a hankerchief. "Questions?"
A voice drifted from the back of the room. "Is this going to be
on the exam?"
Professor Rosenwach-Gordon looked up, startled. "Why, yes, of
course it will be. This point is quite central to the understanding
of the pragmatistic framework of the learning process!"
Once the class hour was over, we accompanied the good professor
back to his office in the Philosophy Building. He laughed when we
asked him about his name. "I was christened Etienne Michel," he
explained, "I Americanized it to Steven Michael after I was expelled
from the Sorbonne."
His office was unexpectedly spacious, and contained a prodigious
library. We noticed many volumes by and about Hegel, Kant, Marx,
Schoepenhauer, Habermas, Dilthey, Descartes, Freud, Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein. Another section, partly hidden from view, was stuffed
with what appeared to be Harlequin romances.
He cleared away some papers and turned on the espresso machine.
"But the symbolic structures taken by hermeneutic understanding as
its object cannot be reduced to components of pure language
completely defined by metalinguistic rules of constitution," he said,
laughing heartily at his own joke. We accepted a cup of very
passable espresso in a white china cup.
"The coffee bean offers us the answer to all the questions of
life," he said, downing a cupful. "All it asks of us is proper
treatment to become the nectar of the Gods."
We agreed heartily.
-Posted by Al L. Maplewood, March 26, 1992
(now item 25 in M-Net Classics Conference)
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jmsaul
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response 40 of 48:
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Apr 25 16:23 UTC 2002 |
You also inspired some imitators. I was trying for a specific style very
different from yours in this one. I hope I'd do it better now, and it's got
some references few people here will get, but what the hell (note that this
is pre-NaiNai, or it would have had a different flavor):
INSTIGATOR ON THE INFOBAHN:
An interview with M-Net's very own
Brian D. Howard
by
James M. Seldon, Special to the
_Arbornet General Times_
His Chicago apartment is located in
one of the worst neighborhoods in the
East Side, sidewalks littered with
garbage and drug paraphenalia. Under
a portrait of Zippy the Pinhead, a
sign on his door reads "F*ck the Dog --
BEWARE OF OWNER!" A tattered bumper
sticker, admonishing readers "Don't
Mess With Texas!" partially covers a
jagged hole in the metal door, legacy
of a bygone shotgun blast. With some
trepidation, I knock.
The door opens, revealing a large man
wearing a priest's cassock and fuzzy
moose slippers. "Brian Howard?" I ask.
"That's right! Come on in!" The 350-
pound, 5'4" Howard leads me to a sofa
slumped amid clutter. Dazed, I can only
stare in awe at the mess. A rack of
firearms completely covers one wall;
another is almost obscured by stuffed
canvas sacks labeled "Texas Dirt." I
realize it's the outside wall, and can
only assume they're for protection
against snipers. The room's most dramatic
feature is a huge wooden cask, reeking
of alcohol. Howard fills two beer steins
from the cask, and I accept one gratefully.
I realize it's bourbon. We begin the
interview.
Q: I'd like to thank you for agreeing to
be interviewed. I realize you don't
grant too many interviews.
A: Aw, Hell, that's okay. (Takes a swig.)
Q: A lot of people back on M-Net think
you're a racist. Care to comment?
A: Heh. Some people just don't get it.
I'm really trying to show people how
stupid racism is!
Q: By using racist slurs?
A: I know lots of people don't get that one,
but that phrase was a badge of honor
during the civil rights era. I'd be
proud to be called that.
Q: Don't you think that, by continuing to
use words like that, making people think
that way, that you're contributing to
the problem?
A: (Hiccups, takes another gulp) Nope.
Q: Aren't you afraid you'll offend people?
A: Nope. I *wanna* offend people! It
makes 'em think! Besides, it's fun!
Q: Don't you think it can go too far, go
beyond the point where it's effective?
A: Not a chance. (Drinks.)
At this point, Howard's wife, Whats-her-name,
enters the room. In sharp contrast to Howard
himself, she's a tall, slim blonde with "big
hair." She places a hand on her husband's
shoulder.
"Honey, if you're going to talk to the man,
you might as well tell him the truth."
"Nope."
"Dear, he's our guest. You treat him polite,
now."
I notice that she, like Howard, is
wearing a gun. I remember that she is a Texan
and probably knows how to use it. I plot
escape routes to the door in case this turns
into a domestic shootout.
Howard sighs, takes another drink. "Okay,
you win." She gives him a smile that would
melt tungsten. "Let's get on with it."
A: What was the question again? (Whats-
her-name nudges him in the ribs, hard.)
Q: I asked if, in your opinion, your
attempts to agitate people had ever gone
too far.
A: Right. (Drinking.) Well, there is that
pseudo thing.
Q: Pseudo thing?
A: Yep. I created a pseudo on M-Net, and
used it to enter all kinds of crap. As
usual, people didn't get the joke.
Q: What kinds of stuff?
A: Well, I thought it would be funny to
make this pseudo a Jewish guy, have him
enter all kinds of really stereotyped
stuff like "All of us have six lawyers;
we're really rich!" And accuse people
of anti-semitism if they criticized him.
Q: You're kidding. You're the person
behind vous?
A: Yep. Me and Jim Beam, here! (Hefts
the mug; tilts it back to get the last
few drops.) Come on -- "S.M. Rosenwach-
Gordon?!" Does that sound like a real
name to you?
Q: Well, yeah. I mean, we've had users
named "Jan Wolter" and "Art T. Fischel"
before. Who can tell?
A: Anyway, the funniest moment was when
I got "him" made FW of the jewish.cf.
I mean, here's this guy, out to utterly
destroy any chance of civilized
discussion on the topic of Judaism,
and those boneheads give him a whole
conference to play with! I bought
myself a fifth of Stoli to celebrate.
Q: Wait a minute. Some people claim to
have actually *met* vous.
A: Right. I used the name of this kid
who lives in Ann Arbor, and I pay
him money to "be himself" at happy
hours, weddings, and stuff like that.
He goes a little overboard, but it
just adds to the image. Probably
spends all the money on "Mortal Kombat."
Q: Okay. When you talk about "going too
far," I take it you mean the scribbling
thing?
A: The whole nine yards. See, they don't
let *me* be a FW, so I just *had* to
try those cool commands out. Then all
the trouble started, and it was just
so much fun pissing everyone off.
Q: What about killing the entire jewish
conference?
A: Um... that was a mistake. I was
passed out on the couch and Junior
discovered my keyboard macros. Even
my *kid* wouldn't have done that on
purpose.
Q: Well, you certainly did go too far.
Nobody even listens to vous any more.
A: I know. When I started to get email
from the Aryan Nation, thanking me for
doing more than they could have done,
I decided it was time to stop. Now I
only go on as vous when I'm drunk, and
I enter really incoherent stuff about
birds and things.
Q: Actually, I thought it was pretty
funny.
A: You would.
Q: (Turning to Whats-her-name, who has
sat patiently through all of this)
What do you see in this guy, anyway?
W: (To Howard) Open your robe, Dear.
A: (Grinning broadly, exposing a grubby
T-shirt that says "BIGGER LOVER")
Taa-Daa!
Copyright 1994 Joseph M. Saul. The
preceding is a work of satire, and is in
no way intended to accurately represent
reality. Those characters are fictional,
and if they happen to resemble real people
you're probably seeing things.
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jep
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response 41 of 48:
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Apr 25 18:17 UTC 2002 |
I had always thought Dan Napolitano (keats) was the person behind the
*wood pseudos on M-Net. I have never in my life successfully
identified the "regular" loginid or person behind a pseudo, though.
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janc
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response 42 of 48:
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Apr 26 12:40 UTC 2002 |
Well, if we are confessing, then I might as well say that I sort of
started it with the Al L. Elmwood pseudo. Except that was a completely
different game. Al was supposed to be a nut case who had invented some
new things to worry about, rather than the same old aliens and black
helicopters. Eventually he focused on the postal service though
bowling and bicycles were involved too. Most of those postings aren't
in the classics conference on M-Net. They are on my website, with
slight annotation:
http://www.unixpapa.com/bestthings/elm/01-coins.html
Other people started using *wood names for these parody things, and
eventually I joined in. I wrote the Leeron one that is in the Classics
conference, and also a Frank Lessa one (roller-skating backwards
through the diag while playing the violin) that isn't. I may have
written others. I can't remember.
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oval
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response 43 of 48:
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Apr 26 21:57 UTC 2002 |
heh. those were great. i especially like
"Staged accidents can be spiced up with fake blood and phony severed limbs
to give the passers by a thrill."
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polygon
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response 44 of 48:
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Apr 27 02:17 UTC 2002 |
I think my pseudo -- Al L. Maplewood -- came next after Jan's. I had
some specific things in mind, like the keats thing, and kept it in the
kind of old-time New Yorker magazine style piece I don't remember why I
named the pseudo so similarly to Jan's.
Jan's character was posting seemingly plausible paranoid rants about the
Postal Service. They were extraordinarily well done, yet much more fun than
the real thing would have been.
In those days, Jan was in Texas, logging into M-Net via Merit. Uploading a
file via Merit was extremely chancy because it would get overloaded and lose
characters, sometimes several lines of text at a time. At one point, he
posted an Elmwood story that was missing big chunks because of this, but
didn't notice the problem and went away for a while. When Jan came back
many hours later as janc, he had to relogin as Al L. Elmwood and redo the
story. So it was not much of a secret that it was Jan.
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janc
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response 45 of 48:
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Apr 27 20:01 UTC 2002 |
Al was originally supposed to be a full-fledged schizophrenic. In the
later episodes he pretty much evolves into a nice guy living in a
universe invented by a schizophrenic. I actually did a substantial
amount of research for some of those, since Al is supposed to know a
lot more than I do about things like dogs, horses and bowling.
This was all ten years ago. Funny how many M-Net users from back then
are still around here.
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bdh3
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response 46 of 48:
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Apr 28 06:33 UTC 2002 |
I don't drink hard liquor ('cept tequila and I don't do that
much on 'count it makes me hallucinate).
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other
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response 47 of 48:
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Apr 28 14:17 UTC 2002 |
Ahh, things are so much clearer now. You don't happen to keep the
Tequila in proximity to the keyboard, do you?
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bdh3
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response 48 of 48:
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Apr 28 16:56 UTC 2002 |
Nope. Haven't drank tequila since winding up in jail in sonora,mexico
decades ago (whole nother story altogether). Tried tequiza -
the 'beer' - couple times, with milder effect.
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