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Trolling
I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book... The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee, hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge, my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.
-- Groucho Marx
Tuesday, April 27, 1999
One year ago: Reading
I always have this problem when I've been crying -- it messes up my contact lenses for the next twenty four hours or so. They get cloudy and gunky, and the world looks like I'm peering through vaseline. Several times today, I had to go in the restroom, pop the blessed things out and rinse them under the tap. (They are hard lenses, and old. Don't try that with your new-fangled soft lenses!) In the late afternoon I even went down to my car and got my personal-care-items bag and used the actual cleaning solution and wetting solution on them!
I continued to have the same problem when I was out dancing tonight, but tomorrow they should be ok.
* * * * * * * *
I had such a good dinner tonight! I'd bought one of those packaged rolls of polenta, thinking to heat some of it up in the microwave with tomato sauce. But when it came time to fix it, I was out of sauce! But I noticed that in the refrigerator I still had some of those feta cheese cubes packed in oil. This product is very tasty -- lots of good herbs and red peppercorns with the cheese -- but rich, to say the least. I sliced the polenta into a glass bowl, poured the cheese and oil over it, and nuked it for several minutes. Really satisfying! I'll be "cooking" that combination again, if you can call it cooking. Of course, this does cancel out the benefit you get from the low-fat nature of the polenta.
* * * * * * * *
Something rather strange happened on the swing-seattle-chat email list on Monday. This message appeared (Sender's name omitted because it's not his real name, and I don't have his permission to post this):
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 00:20:34 PDT
From: OMITTED
To: swing-seattle-chat@cs.washington.edu
Subject: I WANT TO CHAT
Well, its been awhile since Ive sitten down and chatted. Hey, are there any chatters out there from Federal Way, I sure would like to hear from ya, cuz that's where I from! Oh, OMITTED Here. Ya know, the last time i chatted about basement swing, askin whether or not they're gonna be at the UDUB dance, no ones took the time to chat back to me. Is this a snobby chat club? All I wanna do is dance and make some swing friends. I sure would be happy if someone would chat back to me. Now let me tell ya, that George Gee was sen-sational at the Century on Friday! And blasted if I didn't just come back from Portland with sore feet. I'm probably gonna have to band-aid the old blisters and hot foot it down to the fenix to see em on Monday. That kinda band only comes round but once and hot darn it I'm gonna get my money's worth. There's a little swing cutie out there that I'm just dying to screw up the courage to dance with. Someone told me her names was Anita, and she sure is pretty--bruntte, short and curves fer days, and a good dancer, too. She sure is popular with the century dancers and since no ones ever wanted to talk to me there, I'm scared to ask her. she's always with a group of those dancers. You see, I grew up doing west coast, where everyone was friendly. Now I'm trying really hard to be a good lindy hopper. Gosh darn it-- makes me feel like I'm in high school again, but from the wrong sides of the tracks when I'm there cuz everyones kinda clicky. I keep going to century because of the live music, but I's tell ya I'm much more comfortable at the Zoot Suit, cuz then atleasts people are social and dont think there noses are so high. Does anyone know this Anita and how can I contact her?
Well i guess I gotta say Beam me ups, now scotty-Its bedtime
--OMITTED. P.S. hope someones gonna chat back!
Well! This was certainly strange! I suspected the sender of trolling the list, posting controversial stuff to get teh list all riled up, but decided to respond anyway. (I'll leave out most of the parts where I quoted the person in my reply.)
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 07:43:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: Anita Rowland
To: swing-seattle-chat@cs.washington.edu
Subject: Re: I WANT TO CHAT
Hi, OMITTED!
(Anita thinks to herself -- "I guess the best way to take this is at face value, even if there might be some trolling involved. Perennial topics, no harm in talking about them again.")
On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, OMITTED wrote:
<snip>
> Is this a snobby chat club?
Well, you might not have gotten an answer because this isn't the swing-kids list. Maybe nobody knew whether that band would be there or not.
As for whether this is a snobby chat club, you'll have to make up your own mind. It certainly isn't very chatty (compared to other lists I'm on).
making friends is always a good thing. Because this isn't a real-time chat line, you might not always get a response right away (or at all!). I know I post sometimes and no one follows up, but I try not to take it personally. That's the way of the net!
one way to increase responses is to ask open-ended questions. people do seem to love to give their opinions (I know I do!).
[...]
gee, thanks for the compliments, OMITTED!
if you read my journal, you'll know that I often dance with folks I don't know (and I often am asking them). I certainly wasn't dancing every dance on Friday. If you see me, please do ask me to dance.
[...]
It can be tough breaking into a new group. I know that I had to work on it for quite a while, taking class different places (cause you can always ask classmates to dance), going to friday night practice, and going to different dance places (I *think* I've danced at all of them in Seattle, that are lindy-oriented at least). All to further the cause of meeting lots of folks and increasing the number of people that I felt comfortable asking to dance. (If they ask me, it's a bonus!)
Cliques (which is what a social network feels like when you aren't in it yet) exist everywhere. I wonder when the *real* seattle lindy group is going to let me in? Wheels within wheels, man. it's like a lodge or secret society!
It's been a while (too long!) since I was at Zoot Suit sunday, but the main differences I've noticed are smoke, more rockabilly from DJ hubbahubba, and lots of chewing gum on the floor. I didn't notice a huge difference in how people acted there, but our experiences might differ. I've certainly enjoyed dancing when I've been there.
> Does anyone know this Anita and how can I contact her?
lol! Jeff, does more than a day or two go by without a post from me here? I'm also listed at http://lindyhype.com in the Roll call. Even a web search on Anita lindy Seattle turned up a page with my info on it!
feel free to email me off-list if you really have something to discuss that's not of general interest. Please introduce yourself and ask me to dance, the next time you see me out dancing!
Will you be at the David Dalmo workshop this weekend? I'm looking forward to it.
So, no one knows who this person is, but the email name is obviously a fake name. He followed up this evening with a personal message to me (but bcc'ed to the list!), written in ALL CAPS and containing a lot of very unrealistic spelling and grammar mistakes. Before I only suspected a troll, but now I'm sure of it, so I haven't answered. It has made traffic on the list go up, though, and the subjects of snobism and asking people to dance are perennially on topic, so that's ok. But the whole thing is wierd, eh?
We had plenty of time to chat about this at the Washington Dance Club tonight, because there was a shortage of leads! Clumps of women were actually standing around with no partners, which isn't usually the case there.
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