IRC, Mosaic, and Old School Communication

Or, /me slaps #nick with a large trout

Susan Herring, writing in 2001 (ah, the golden days!), questions the matrices of gender, power, and online communication. Something I'd like to think about: intersections of magic, the internet, and gender. Why "Wizzards"?

So here we might mention something about synchronous and diachronous textuality?
[15:06] *** driscodl has joined the chatbox
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[15:06] what is "diachronous"?
[15:07] It's much 'quieter' now....
[15:07] huh...amy...huh....what is it?
[15:07] in a standard time line
[15:07] nothing is equal - all rhetoric is political
[15:07] oh, okay
[15:08] What are we talking about?
[15:08] Here I'd say something about fanfiction and authority and gender


Conversations With Jon
Let's all be quiet and praise Robert Redford
for his contributions to Mankind. All the President's men
can't put order into chaos.
Again, I wonder: Do artists play guitar?
The answer is always Madagascar.
Where was the President when the Vietnamese died in our capitalist schemes?
Madagascar.
What is the fourth largest island on Earth?
Madagascar.
How do we reconcile pacifists and patriots?
Madagascar.
Who is our god?
Madagascar, Madagascar, Madagascar.
Let us all join hands and encircle the whole of our universe: America!
Send rice and pork.
Let them all eat cake, Jon, with Canadians while they wait for their friends to become pop stars.
But when push comes to love, a country in Africa will always be Madagascar,
so we can share inside jokes. Mix the small world's known images (Elm tree, Dog, Chair),
in the cauldron of the body until Paris is just a tower, New York was just two towers,
and Egypt is towers shaped like pyramids.
The smog we breathe is dope to the soul. But you know that.
In the baptistery, in blue costumes, in choir gowns, we will always have television. And Madagascar.
I miss being self-conscious of: bomb dropping, War Memorial Criticism, and the reporter's gaze right into our mouths;
she strings out quotes like handkerchiefs from a magician's sleeve.

Biblical language now: Thy grace befalls our plaster globes, oft colored sienna. Thou art Madagascar,
maddening allure of Madagascar drawing backward solid bodied objects.

Now you have etched yourself with frog brains and red ink. Hit play on the VCR, and wait to be overcome
with Disney and the urge to utter

Ethiopia.