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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.

Grangousier: the first time I needed a pseudonym, I took it from the nearest book, which happened to be Gargantua and Pantagruel.

I never considered the Internet to be a place for freaks - my first brush with it must have been quite soon after the World Wide Web took off - 1993? 1994?.* A friend had a modem set up in his office and decided to give me a quick peek. Four hours later I was still there and had to be forcibly dragged away. Of course in those days you could see about three pages in four hours, and that was with graphics turned off, but all the same...

I found a lyrics site.

There were Cocteau Twins lyrics on there.

Nothing sums up the combination of bravery, pioneering spirit and hopeless endeavour quite like attempting to transcribe Cocteau Twins lyrics. Even Elizabeth Fraser doesn't know what they are, and she wrote them.

Bravery, pioneering spirit and hopeless endeavour, yes. Freaks, definitely not.

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*I just realised it must have been more recent than that, though not by much more than a year, and that I've been deluding myself, somewhat.