I used =laugh= at my roommate for spending 'til 3 a.m. in the computer center. Well, I was also laughing because he was short and funny-looking and acted -exactly- like the Rain Man. I was also laughing because his name was Donkers Hoddlesnoot. But but. I ++laughed++ when he told me he was going down to Tennesee to visit a girl he had met, whom I saw on an exchanged videotape, sitting in her bunker-like fluorescently-lit dorm room. I felt a little bad when he came back from Tennesee smut-free.I mean, he was the Rain Man, after all. Then I went and opened an e-mail account. Now here I am planning a trip to England and hoping just hoping that I'll get to meet people I've never seen. Now I don't know what I'll do if I don't. More like I don't if I'll go if I don't. I have dreams that star people whom I ostensibly know but in dreams they are just faceless composites of traits that I've chosen for them. I have crushes on these people. I spend mornings in a library I despise so as to communicate with people who don't even know my name, nor do I want to give it to them. I wear sickeningly ugly glasses rather than contacts for most of the day because I no longer care what I look like. I ignore the sniggering of the real-live humyns around me who call me funny names for having my head in a computer all day. Oh well, they suck anyhow but that used to really bother me. I'd never craved anonymity until I realized I could be anyone at all. The beauty and tragedy of the internet is the mutability of its characters. They can be (and are), really, anything you want them to be. If you ever had self-confidence, however illusory, the internet will destroy it. The internet gives you illusory friends and destroys the time you spend with real ones. Someday soon people will write about the internet being the loneliest ghost town of broken dreams and dashed hopes, right before Yahoo stock slides right into the dumper. A lonely highway and a long stem rant indeed. P.S. just because you laugh at short, funny-looking people doesn't mean you aren't short and funny-looking yourself. Oh, and I still love you all. ______________________________________________________ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". For list archives and searching, list rules, FAQ, poor jokes etc, see http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +---+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" +---+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+