What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.
In the winter of 1992 (I think), Rick and I had just finished the Mumbles Walk. This is the pub crawl along a seaside stretch of watering holes in Wales, near Swansea, that apparently used to be a regular night out for Dylan Thomas. I'd like to say we were appropriately reverant, but we were just shambolically pissed, basically.
At some point, we stumbled by a phone booth that looked out over the mud flats and dejected-looking rowboats that had been stranded by the outgoing tide, and decided it was a simply great time to give our buddy Derek, back in Vancouver, a collect call. When the operator asked for a name to give for the call (this was back in the last century, before this stuff was automated), the name "Stavros The Wonder Chicken" just bubbled to the top of my brain, with no precedent whatsoever. The operator balked, but we begged, and when we overheard her telling James, his roommate, that she had a collect call from "Stavros the Wonder Chicken", we laughed like the drunken poets we were.
A few minutes after his roommate James accepted the call, we found out that Derek had returned to his hometown because he'd found out that day that his father had died.
We went back to drinking.
Rick was caught in
the Bali Bombing in Oct 2002, and
he died of his injuries in hospital in Melbourne less than two weeks later. He was a fine man, and a good friend, and I miss him. My weblog was
repurposed as an information clearing house for friends and family from the time of the bombing until after we lost him.
Our Team Fortress 2 discussion board for the mighty Team MeFite. Join now!
In honour of the gates being opened and the new faces all round (November 2004), I dredged this post of mine up from this
September 2002 thread (with a few edits):
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
(to the tune of Billy Bragg's Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards)
It may have been Camelot for Matt and JKottke
But on the Information highway thick with micro-celebrities
A kind old Mefite spies a newbie there who's crying
Over a posting's disappointment
So he clicks over and he's trying
To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That Metatalk is just around the corner
Submission queue at Plastic, and Carl's vision is blinded
By the trolling of a newbie user and he is reminded
that Metafilter's Matthew Haughey's optimism fell
At the first Double
Sitting at my PC and the only thing I see
Is the blue of #006699
And a post about I/P
And someone playing troll and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the weblog writer
Mixing Web and Politics they ask us what the use is
We offer them embarrassment and our usual excuses
While checking the latest Bush thread
Where some angry folks are posting
I'm looking for the Newbie Influx
Ebay sales are organised and rants have all been posted
There isn't any closing time and there's weblogs to be hosted
You can be Meta with the Mefites
Or Fark Off with the Farkers
While you're waiting for the Newbie Influx
One leap forwards two leaps back
Metafilter's more addictive than crack!
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
Called out on MeTa and you can't run from it
Checked your profile but there's no email on it
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
It's a mighty long way down the totem pole
From MeFi at Work to drawing the dole
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
If no one seems to understand
Start your very own weblog, cut out the middleman
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
We're all in this together, but give me some room!
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
So join Metafilter while you may
Tiresome trolling's just 5 bucks away
Waiting for the Newbie Influx
If I Should Fall From Grace With Jess
(to the tune of the Pogues' If I Should Fall From Grace With God, from Rum, Sodomy and The Lash)
If I should fall from grace with Jess
Where no poster can relieve me
If I'm banned for my excess
And mathowie won't reprieve me
Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me digg down in the mud
Where the Farkers all say hi
This site was always ours
Was the proud site of our fathers
It belongs to us and them
Not to any of the others
Let them go, boys
Let them go, boys
Let them go to Metachat
Where the bunnies are quite nice
Bury me in blogs
Where no journo's words can sway me
If I comment in the threads
Web 2.0 AJAX will save me
Coldfusion's crashing again, boys
Keeps crashing again, boys
Let them choose some favorites
Let them bitch in Metatalk
If I should fall from grace with Jess
Where no poster can relieve me
If I'm banned for my excess
And mathowie won't reprieve me
Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me digg down in the mud
Where the Farkers all say hi
The Double Posting
with apologies to WB Yeats
Posting and posting in the lengthening thread
The chicken cannot take the chickenneck;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere horsecockery is loosed upon the world,
The photoshop tide is loosed, and everywhere
The propriety of our thread is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some bannings are at hand;
Surely the Thread Closing is at hand.
The Thread Closing! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of the SA Forums
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with chicken body and the cock of a horse,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant moderators.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That a twentieth century of Metafilter
Was vexed to nightmare by a filthy .gif,
And what rough callout, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Metatalk to be born?
I like this too, from
goodnewsfortheinsane:
The Mefite has been drinking, mathowie is asleep
And the images weren't Safe For Work, the Jrun has to take a leak
And mcgraw needs a week off, and the frontpage looks like a prison break
And the tagline's out of cigarettes, and the preview button's on the make
And the Mefite has been drinking
And the ponies are all freezing, and the search box's blind in one eye
And he can't see out of the other
And the newbie's got a hearing aid, and he showed up with his mother
And the Mefite has been drinking
As the flag link is a sumo wrestler cream-puff Casper Milquetoast
And the poster is a mental midget with the i.q. of a fence post
’Cause the Mefite has been drinking
And you can't search the archive with a Geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends and you just can't post without her
And the title field is drooling, and the guidelines are on fire
And the newsfilter posts were fooling, and the 0ks have retired ’cause the mefite has been drinking not me
The following is not true.
