23 years on. (One Shot Blog Thing)

[Doktor Howl]

PD turns 23 in a couple of months, and due to this on-brand anniversary, I thought I'd make a few comments for posterity, mostly because only posterity will see them.  If anyone else does, please forgive a little self-indulgent wankery.

PD started in December in 2002, and was for the first year about as busy as it is now, led by long-forgotten figures such as Poib, Vertaine, Velvet Jesus (one of the nicest young ladies I have ever met, albeit briefly).  The end of the first period of PD was charicterized by "secret mods", mods reading people's PMs and then passing on gossip, etc.

Then, by means which have never been properly explained, ECH took over, and the heathens were vanquished.  The new order came along just in time, as in 2006-2009, the golden age of PD occurred, with the arrival of the East Coast Spags, led by Professor Cramulus, Richter, Suu, and a couple of hundred others.

Late stage PD consisted mostly of people - including and especially myself - trying to keep a dead golden age aiive.  Oddly enough, this period was also when the vast majority of content was generated (There was plenty of content during the golden age, but it was more structured and aimed at evangelism (Golden Apple Seeds, the newsletters, etc).  This all ended in October of 2015, during The Incident, which caused 3rd degree butthurt to everyone involved.  As Eris would have wanted.  Troy?  We gotcher Troy right here, pal.

This board, as it exists today, is the end product of Discordianism. 

A year ago tomorrow, a "friend" told me about the other board.  I have no idea if this is true, because I never tried checking.  I consider the fact that I was never even tempted to check a personal milestone.  If something like this had come up in 2015, I'd be a white-hot ball of butthurt, and I'd have obsessively contemplated some kind of revenge, because at the time I wouldn't have been able to let it go.

Happily, I haven't been exposed to a narcissist in those 9 years, and my general mental health has improved accordingly.  As such, I find myself happy that I have not had any inclination to see if this alleged "other board" exists, or who is on it, or whatever.

This is because, it turns out, with a few exceptions, that the late state crowd was essentially a pack of losers.  People who had been doing well, or at least getting by, but who later left massive craters on their surroundings. 

One person drank themselves right out of their career.

Another lost his job and never really got back on his feet.

The Misery Princess, who turned everything she touched into shit.  Nuff said.

One (the above-mentioned narcissist) crawled so far up her own ass that she insists that her sycophants have to ask permission to speak with her.  That's hilarious all by itself, but what makes the others losers is that they agree to do this.  It's one of those things that makes you laugh out loud and at the same time cringe so hard you suck your jeans right up your arse.

There are of course some exceptions. 

ECH has a lovely wife and family, and is enjoying life more than should be possible.  Out of everyone here, he showed the most personal growth.  He's a fine example of a father, a good man, and I am better for knowing him.

Faust is also living the dream, in much the same way, but not in the manic "WE'RE HAVING FUN SO SUCK IT" manner as ECH.  He's the quieter type, a more recognizable family man who has kept this jalopy running far past its expiration date.

Cain remains a man worth paying attention to.

Also, though I am not flouncing, I consider this board to be a combination scratch pad and museum, so I guess it's finally time to set the record straight on the stories I wrote in first person.  I had set this out in MSY #1, but it was lost when Syntax's board went down.

Millions of Screaming Yahoos was, as I mentioned in the first episode, a combination of truth, fiction, and Tuckerization.  The story about the girl and the dog and Bud and crazy Steve was true, almost verbatim.  Everything else was a combination of other people's stories or outright fiction.

The part of that one story omitted my wife, to whom I have been married for 32 happy years.  Maria never existed.  She was a character my wife invented and sometimes voiced.  The Maria character was basically the inverse of my wife, who isn't a brawler or a criminal, but does have a truly wicked sense of humor on occasion. 

This will explain why I never showed any interest in anyone I met at meet ups. 

I was never a cop.  I was never a thug in the employ of a crooked judge (Judge Richardson DID exist, and I knew him well, but he spent his entire career running a traffic court).

The Sasol stories (the infamous ball mill, for example) were 100% true.  That was one of the best times of my life, despite the aggressive stupidity. It was 8 years of hilarity and doing things that had never been done before, and it is one of the few times of my life for which I am nostalgic.

The brain flukes were real, and I look upon that 6 years of my life as a preview of hell.

The PM replies were entirely fabricated.  Sorry for pulling the vinyl back.  I HAVE received some hilarious PMs from crazy people, but not that many, and only 6 of them ever made it to the list (they did, however, inspire the idea, which was then given the Johny Carson treatment).

Shitpocalypse was real, and in fact just happened again as predicted, this time in Moscow.

The Billy stories are about 80% true.  He and I made the rest up, riffing on the things that did happen.

I do work on robots for a living these days, and have been since 2019.  I'm doing okay.  Shit, my life is brilliant right now.  I drive to work in an ancient Lincoln with the radio blasting in The City of Eris, I have a lovely wife and two grown kids I'm very proud of. 

And who could ask for anything more?

[Menger, Avatar of New Chaos]

my word means absolutely nothing as a newbie who has stumbled in and has been skimming through the ancient texts like a burnt down library but... beautiful introspective. i'm glad some of the ultra oldheads here are living their best lives being family guys/gals. if only i were born 20 years earlier... maybe i would feel less guilty partaking in this nostalgia...

[Pergamos]

My life has improved, since the more active forum times, which I did participate in, all aftermathy stuff, but still, participation.

Improved, calmed down, I've gotten quiet, but I never did post that much and most of it was shit stirring, which is never really needed, and is much less fun on a nearly empty board.

[Cramulus]

Cheers, Rog

I don't have a lot to add. This forum was a huge and formative part of my life. When I idle on the brower address bar, my fingers still automatically type "pri". Some of my best friends were made here. While I don't come here too often anymore, it's always nice to know that there's a light on.

[Dimocritus]

I have some things I'd like to express, but it'll have to wait for when I have a bit more time to type a wall of text. In the meantime, are we gonna, like, turn this place into an air b and b or..?