Got some mail last week:
is there a way that i can get in contact with the owner of the domain? We are planning to launch a heavily media rich site and the channel we plan to use is 42. we would keep the domain owners original content and leave it available for viewing, plus add all sorts of new cool realVideo and audio on the site. We want to make an new type of web channel on the internet.
--
andrew and the executive team
chief schmuck
unit59/sticky film/neurotic sound/splurge! interactive
I responded thusly:
As it turns out, the domain actually does see a moderate amount of use. Most of it is not web-based, and much of what is is not available to the public, so I can understand your confusion regarding the abandoned nature of the domain.
As it so happens, I personally loathe 'media rich' sites, streaming audio and video, and other such nonsense. I'm enough of a technophile myself to make some distinction between 'elegant new technology' and 'silly inefficient crap.'
You will note, in fact, that what little is publicly visible is not even so 'media rich' as to include, say, images. After some internal debate, I did allow myself colored text.
I thank you for your polite inquiry, and wish you luck in your venture.
His response:
yeah. we make art. we make music. we use hotline. we ftp. we like to feed on consumers. telnet isnt really a big secret. we know how to program in a shell (tcsh anyone?) . we also know how to reach as many humans as possible.
comand line is our friend. weve pushed an origin 2000 pretty hard.
dont reject hamburgers just because McDonalds has sold over 9 billion of them. some people still make a pretty good friggen hamburger.--andrew soria
imagination is more important than knowledge--albert einstein
youre sounding kind of high and mighty. windows user? computer science is just a high level of math (yeah,i wrote programs when i was seven) and computers are really about the user.
we dont mind if you dont like to get your culture on the web. we still like museums too. thats why we have one.
just branching out. thanks for the reply. good luck in life.
--
andrew and the executive team.
By this point, I was ready to be done. Tempting as the above bait was, flamewars with random unkown individuals are not generally my thing. But I did forward the above to my girlfriend, who is always willing to provide supplemental vitriol:
Ok. This guy is so pathetic. He's probably in Hollywood. I hate hate hate name dropping people. It is one thing to discuss the minutae of something you love... but quite another to tell someone whom you've only had one rude email from that 'command line is our friend'. My favorite part: the name dropping of tcsh. He is such a moron I dont think it is funny I just want to slap him. He sounds like someones asshole uncle trying to impress them, he sounds like fucking Archie Bunker. I'm sure he knows as much about computers as he does about 'how to reach as many humans as possible.' Which is why we've never heard of him. This is what pissed me off so much about his first email "content rich media streaming audio!!!". Just more buzzwording. I'm sure I'm over-reacting to this. It is probably a big chunk of insecurity that makes me loathe people who try to impress me. 'we ftp'?!?!?! Jesus fucking Christ! Of all things to think is cool and try to sound impressive with! I would be so much more impressed with a thousand other skills. I would be much more impressed if he could crochet.
Shortly thereafter, my new friend andrew apparently happened back to this page, and sent another missive.
i cant crochet, but my friend tony can. He taught me how to make hemp necklaces recently though... Really wasnt dropping a name. the "ftp" part was sarcasm, but i guess you loathe that too. I dont want to yell at people, you just are such a better computer guy that i am. I only use computers to make things and help me organize information.
you're cool to put jesus and fucking in the same sentence.(i just did it, am i cool?) You must be a really smart computer guy.
I have the utmost respect for you and all of your smart smart computerness. You must use linux...oops , didnt meen to drop a name. You probably enter your shit with punch cards. I am extremely impressed by you.
I dont mind if you never hear of me or see some of the work my friends have done. Its not really for you. We just like james worthy, so in homage we push his jersey. 101010. thats what we do. we have fun. Your life must be very exciting!!!
Maybe you designed ARPANET. Maybe youre the guy who invented cat5 wire. I just plug the stuff in and use it. Roach level consumerism, i guess.
I really do want to let everybody know about some of the things weve been involved in. Some lady friends of mine are opening a vintage clothing store this weekend in Pomona. I tell everybody about it and feel it my duty to do all that i can to help them succeed. Does that offend you? You seem to react with hostility to any suggestions from those outside your cubicle.
The World Wide Web is an interface that combines text, graphics and sound to present resources in a coherent, attractive and easy-to-use manner. With a world-wide audience of 40 million Internet users, businesses can receive national/international exposure for their products at a small fraction of the cost of equivalent conventional advertising. I personally dont have an adult check password, but i wont hold it against you if you do.
we built an online database system for health care recently and used the internet for practical productivity, now we want to get into show business and have some fun.
rude? my earlier messages were not meant to be rude. Its the venacular of this new generation. They listen to loud rock and roll music, eat less red meat, wear funny lookin shoes, have blue hair and watch TV on the internet. watch out, soon they might use "bitch" on television regularly.
I hope it didnt disturb you too much to inquire about your little domain name. It seems to have caused you much stress and thought. Please do not harm your children when you get home, they had nothing to do with this.
yeah. you are right. Streaming media on the internet sucks a pickle right now, but its fun. what else would corporate america do with thier T3 connections? we are just trying to make something more interesting than pornography. I'm sure you know all about that and have done what you can to use this global network to further peace, justice and the pursuit of happiness.
I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. You seem to be a very busy man with many things on his mind like: elegant vs. useless technology. Without pioneers like you , we might not have CD players or nuclear weapons. You are a testament to humanity and may your life be full of all the joy you can handle.
you are my hero, you are the wind beneath my wings. (despite your apparent lack of respect for religion)
andrew a. soria
I've put off responding to this for some time. I felt that if I were to respond to any of it, I'd be obligated to respond to all of it, and I just don't have that kind of time.
But I'll admit that a few things here are so amusing that I feel the need to put up something, even if I'm not terribly thorough.
My primary point of indecision was this: which of the accusations/assumptions made by this gentleman was the most laughable? This is a harder question to answer than it might, at first, seem. He seems to have assembled an impressive collection of assumptions which are a) very safe, statisically speaking, and b) amazingly incorrect.
The first of these, that I possess children, was easy enough to discard. After all, he probably hasn't the sense to realize what an insult this truly is, much less realize that there are people for whom it is not true.
The runner-up assertion, that I'm a Windows user, is much more amusing. I've a loathing for Microsoft which strangers have politely described as "unsettling." So, despite the monopoly-bound margin for error which he had available, this is once again astoundingly off the mark.
But even such an error as that does not compare to his conclusion that I have some abnormal fear of people with blue hair. (Those of you playing at home get three guesses as to the current color of my hair, and the first two don't count.)
I must also admit to a bit of confusion about whether he is asserting that CD players are bad, that nuclear weapons are good, or that he intentionally chose a meaningless group. And I'm certainly puzzled by the random PR-speak web-brochure clipping which he inserted into the middle of this message. But more mystifying than either is why he chose to CC about fifty people, previously unknown to me, on this last missive. Perhaps he felt that he was being witty enough to justify an audience?
Fortunately, I need not resort to such inanity to distribute my own petty, snide comments to the world at large. After all, I have my own domain.
Long after the above exchange, another message arrived:
hehe...this is actually kind of funny. i was going to the site i have to check on things and enteredd the address wrong (leave a letter off and you get sent to......) and i saw your site. its was funny 'cause i had almost forgotten all about the ridiculous mock conversations we had about nothing. see, i'm the guy who you dedicated a miniscule portion of your site to...the little "can i have your domain cause i like the name" thing.... its pretty funny in hindsight. it was pretty funny then too, come to think of it. i think iwas rambling on and on about "uber multimedia sites" and "making art for the internet" or some sort of ridiculous things.... and the telnet and shell type comment! ha, that was loopey..... well, the world seems to have embraced this whole media over the internet thing. i guess america just cant get enough television. there is some pretty funny stuff on though. adcritic has that snappy superfriends "wazzupp" commercial. its funny cause i saw that thing before i saw the actual budweiser commercial (yeah, i'm deprived and dont get to watch enough tv).
anyways....its funny. that was funny. sort of embarasing to see it again. i tihknk that it has been a while ago.....a year? i dunno......
you wouldnt want to take my name off that, would you? ah, maybe not. its pretty funny. it actually was a bit of a mistake forwarding the thing to my address book....HAHA i got a bunch of "what the hell was that" mail. hehehe.... take it easy and may the days be filled with full gas tanks and seedless watermelons.
well, have fun,
andrew
(and the monkey chariot racing team)
(The most common vector seems to be people asking dogpile for unusual words which appear on the names page. Also common is a search for "bureaucracy", leading me to believe that the number of pages on the web which spell it correctly is rather low. But at least one person has come here indirectly through Mr. Soria's graces, having searched for "how to make hemp necklaces".)
I checked with a couple of engines myself, and was amused to see that they were offering a total of three hits on this gentleman's name, the top one of which was this page.
I that know in the past I've certainly done general queries on, say, job applicants, curious as to whether they've left any impression upon the web as a whole. Must suck to have this page as one-third of your claim to fame, eh? Ah, well, one of the others was some incoherent rant in a DV editing forum, so at least I know that this wasn't completely out of character.