Fun_People Archive
16 Dec
Confessions of a Returning Fun_Person

Date: Fri, 16 Dec 94 16:45:40 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: Confessions of a Returning Fun_Person

From: dss@**n*t.**.n*t (D*n**l St**nb*rg)
To: psl
Subject: Boy, you don't waste any time, do you?

So, were you, like, waiting around with your hands neatly folded,
patiently, expectant, knowing that sooner or later i'd return, meekly
suckling, to the proverbial breast-stop on the Disinformation Highway?
Here i'd gotten along for a whole year just peachily without the daily
dose of anecdotal trivia, and my first attempt to shyly test the
inter-nettal waters re-opens the flood gates, yielding a tsunami of
recycled effluvia.  And there i am, without my surfboard.

"Such presumption," i'm thinking, "that my return to the electronic
frontier from monastic solitude should be interpreted as a sign that i'm
anxious to be a cowboy again."  And, with cursor delicately poised over
the Delete button, i happen to glance at the first of several completely,
totally, ridiculously, predictably lame pieces of recirculated tripe and
it occurs to me to jump ship, bail out, or, at least, cancel my
unrequested subscription, stamping further junk mail "Return to Sender:
Addressee Outgrown."

Inevitably, my eyes descend to the lower limit of the scrolling window
where, mid-sentence, they poise on the ledge, hesitating, with that barely
conscious half-knowledge that, if they don't jump now, quickly, before a
crowd gathers, indecision and fear will paralyze, and this moment of
clarity will be replaced by an eternity of regret.  But even as this
notion barely begins to form, my fingers instinctively dip into the
well-spring of digital muscle-memory, glide effortlessly to the scrollbar
elevator and, pressing "Down", send me into the abyss.

The words fairly fly up and, like Alice reaching for shelved tins in her
hole-y descent, i catch a few phrases here and there and, to my vast
bemusement, wonder again, as i had so often in years past, at the marvels
of a society that can produce an Information Age that inevitably reverts
to early childhood.  (My exact words were more like, "Who writes this
crap?!")  Quite involuntarily, i feel my cheeks twitch in a smile that
belies a humour derived from a combination of incredulity and a
vague sense of moral superiority, not unlike the satisfaction one gets
from hearing about really stupid criminals who, for instance, get caught
trying to return their rented getaway car.

And, there it is, i'm hooked again.  There goes any chance i had of
getting any work done this afternoon.  If the volume of earth-shaking
trivia and nonsense is growing anywhere near as quickly as the Internet
community itself, i'd better hurry up and finish this project soon before
i'm buried under the avalanche of forwarded mail.

-d*n**l

PS: Who reads this crap, anyway?!

© 1994 Peter Langston