Speechless

this poem was posted at daily kos in a discussion thread about this post.

[WARNING]
the post contains a photograph that _might_ not be safe for work. of course, you probably shouldn't be reading *this* blog at work. ;-).
[WARNING]

on the rarest of occasions, in the vast roar of white noise on the internet, i am exposed to something that i will never forget. this is one of those things. i wonder if i ever would have known about this poem if, by chance, i _hadn't_ been following that particular thread today.

the category of 'things from the internet that i will never forget' mostly contains things like goatse [<== no image, just a wikipedia article] and tubgirl [<== no image, just a wikipedia article]. do yourself a favor and do not search for those at work. in fact, don't ever search for those. i am a survivor of an assault on top of an assault. goatse and tubgirl were cruelly sprung on me by probable asshole teenagers who, instead of trying to get laid, delight in twiddling away the finite and precious hours of their lives finding ways to trick people into looking at those revolting images.

stumbling upon an astounding piece of writing in the midst of what is mostly forgettable in the long term is a sublime experience. surfing the internet is all about devouring enormous quantities of text. the signal to noise ratio varies from community to community, but the noise is _always_ noticeable. the old pre-internet-boom BBS communities were no different.

one could argue that BBS communities were 'local' and that my small sampling of those operating in eastern tennessee in the early nineties is hardly sufficient to make such a claim. i chuckle at that objection. the fidonet backbone [there were other systems like this, but this is the only one i remember] tied a lot of BBS communities together. the 'conversation' progressed at a much slower pace than it does now because a BBS had to shut down for several hours each day to download new messages from the fidonet chain and upload the new posts from its own users. usually, only one person could log into a BBS at one time.

despite the obvious technological restrictions, there was a fair amount of dialogue between people from all over the country. i don't recall any international crosstalk. i think that would have been too expensive for most sysops. computer equipment was outrageously pricey, and so was intercontinental phone service. a BBS required at the very least a second phone line. one BBS in my area had 4 lines, but they were constantly busy. i imagine that it was a bitch to operate and maintain. the complexity of that responsibility grew quite a bit faster than the number of users and phone lines.

people were just as pig-headed and stupid online back then as they are now. the online dialogues regarding abortion, homosexuality, the drug war, liberalism, conservatism, feminism, poverty, welfare, race, racism, sex, sexism, gender, religion and the wisdom (or lack thereof) of legislating 'moral' behavior haven't changed in the fifteen years that i have been reading and participating in these debates.