FidoNet History

Originally published
Vol.11 No.26
(27-Jun-1994)
(with some '98 revisions by the author)

POLICY 33.5 - THE FINAL INSULT
Charles Herriot (1:163/110)
(this had to be done, Doc,
now where's my Ibogaine?)

1. TITLE: (amateur policymongers probably don't realize the importance of leading off with at least one "tit"... capture their imaginations and their hearts and minds will follow)

The title of this document shall be:

"Policy 33.5 - The Final Insult,

otherwise known as:

"Mom! Mom! He/she dissed me and I'm gonna whump his/her sorry ass with this policy document until he/she either apologizes or else gets locked in a room and is forced to listen to John Denver singin' 'Rocky Mountain High' until her/his ears bleed."

2. PURPOSE: The purpose of this policy is to create more policy. The Region has recognized quite clearly that if more policy were created then, incredibly, we'd have more policy. If we had more policy, then we would definitely need even more of it to expand upon the previously created policy. Hell, in no time at all, this policy stuff would be breeding on its own and provide sustenance to unemployed cod fisherman.

3. DEFINITIONS:

AcetyleneMail

The polite staple of inter-sysop communication which must include, at a minimum, at least one demand that the recipient engage in an act of self-replicating his/herself. It is entirely appropriate to substitute the preceding with a suggestion to the recipient that they engage in an act of procreation with anyone having the surname: "Off."

Cod

Humiliated trout. Not to be confused with the traditionally refrain of grunt sysops to *C-beings which loosely paraphrases into: "Who named you Cod?"

Beer

The official sysop monetary unit. Debts can be satisfied upon payment of these units, and *C-beings are obligated to buy grunt sysops copious quantities of this particular resource.

CRPs

Mistakenly identified as "Cost Recovery Plans", these are really guileless attempts to extort money from Grunt Sysops. The money is expended on fast women and loose cars.

Echomail

A system of distributing the latest gnarly-rad path lines, and logoff macros, by "K00L D00DZ" which are rivaled by Sea Slugs for their intrinsic wit. Also, any quote of the preceding is considered "echomail" and the high fibre content helps to improve echomail regularity. Humungous amounts of megabytes of this stuff are sporadically sent throughout the Region. All of this echomail was spawned by one message which was entered in 1985 and everyone has been quoting the hell out of it ever since.

EchoPol

Any policy document which is written by confused and bored trolls who don't realize that putting policy into the hands of children will almost always lead to self-inflicted injuries.

Grunt Sysops

A strange infestation which has plagued Fidonet for years. No one has figured out what sort of toxic spray would be effective in eliminating them. The freshly hatched sysop-beings, shortly before mastering the basic skills of mailers and echomail distribution, plaster messages all over the known universe announcing yet another new net.. one that promises some feature so outstanding that it probably isn't replicated in more than 500 of the existing 600 Fidonet echomail areas.

Hubs

Dwarf-like creatures who live in tinfoil lined, darkened caves, where their multi-node, Lan-based, 69 gazillion baud modems, poot forth echomail. Hubs are recognizable from the fact that their plastic pocket pen protector mounted pagers beep whenever they receive an inbound mail packet. Hubs secretly dream about bringing the entire Sports Illustrated Swimsuit modeling group to gaze at the diode arrays winking from every corner of their kleenex-piled rooms.

NECs

Pituitary challenged Hubs who can often run a mailer for almost a whole day without having the system crash. NECs spend hours explaining batch files to bored and miserable people everywhere. NECs have LAN work-stations in their bathrooms where they do their best work.

Nets

Nets are largish containment devices used to bag various *Cs who have run amok. These are not to be confused with "Network" which is also herein defined.

Netwar

An exchange of pleasantries between sysops culminating in at least a dozen threats of policy complaints, filled diapers, and about 20 megs of brainlessly quoted text.

Networks

Are collections of nodes who have mastered the incredible mentation powers to remember the same sequence of digits. Networks are loosely centred on geographic areas within easy mortar range of each other.

Network Coordinators

(see also "Mazola & Bondage") Network Coordinators are selfless individuals who are reluctantly railroaded into wearing a large bullseye on their foreheads for the amusement of grunt sysops who are bored and have already painted the cat.

Region

Regions are hard-fought geographic fiefdoms ruled by RCs who are renowned for exchanging grapeshot whenever they fell that their turf is being poached by an adjacent region. Regions are defined in a manner akin to the following (which happens to be Region 12):
The region shall encompass that area in Canada lying to the east of the Manitoba border (unless they lower their taxes and sell cheaper beer) and continuing past the welfare states in the Atlantic provinces to whichever dead cod happen to wash up on the beaches of Sable Island. The Region shall also include the Free Republic of Quebec, but only insofar as it does not impinge upon their God-given right to rant endlessly about their contused and paranoid cultural identity. The region shall extend as far northward as the North Pole and proceed to a depth (drilling straight downwards) that includes selected parts of Malaysia.

Regional Coordinators

The larval stage of Small Animal Psychologists. These beings are to be humoured and indulged since their are obligated to buy rounds of beer for all sysops at social gatherings. Regional Coordinators can be identified by the horrible sucking noises they make while applying Vulcan lip-locks to the ZC's nether bits. After weeks of sheep and sleep deprivation, these poor souls can be spotted, buck naked in the moonlight, howling for more policy.

Technical Standards

A basepoint for launching into some sort of penis-envy type message comparing baud rates, how many terrabytes of online GIFS can be shot through the phone lines, or how some moron has pissed away a small fortune on a Pentium chip so that they can display messages at 14 million times their visual comprehension rate. I mean, let's face it, if you happen to have cute blossooms, nobody is going to give a damn whether your mailer works... in an ideal world, your mail would get hand-delivered.

Users

Like, get serious wouldja? Screw 'em if they can't take a joke.

ZCs

Self-idolatrous Fido elflords who wake up each morning imbued with the erroneous belief that they know what's good for the network. Other than tossing them a few slabs of raw meat, these individuals should be given adult supervision if they attempt anything more complicated than waking up in the morning.

4. Official Titles:

In this Region, a group of sick minds will choose some relatively innocent soul and propel the poor sucker into the job of Regional Co-ordinator. The Regional Coordinator shall have all the powers biologically granted to bread mold, but otherwise can be safely ignored.

The Region shall be hacked up into small fiefdoms, called "Networks" which shall elect mascots, order pizza in bulk quantities, and participate in the annual Node Draft to choose the players for the upcoming Netwar season. Nets will dragoon someone into being the Network Coordinator who will be obliged to either undergo spontaneous human combustion before a full term is served, or else stand for re-election to the particular purgatory for which they are ideally maladapted.

Network Coordinators will not be surprised to discover that they commune directly with either God or if they want to sink right to the bottom; to Bob Satti.

Network Coordinators are entitled to screech that "they need a really big net." Judging from their post electoral behaviour, most grunt sysops would agree with their appraisal, and might further suggest a cell of the padded variety as well.

Any grunt sysop who has stood in the blinding white light of their own ego too long is entitled to pile nine or ten listings of their own number into the nodelist and appoint themselves as Net Coordinator. They will be entitled to exhibit multiple-personality disorderly conduct and pontificate about "what their net wants." Spray misting these lost souls with regular doses of crystal-meth is advised.

5. Elections: Anyone who actually wants a title in Fidonet should be put in a bottle and sent out into the Japanese current. If their lives are so incomplete without the fame of a Fidonet title, then they should be encouraged to get their pictures on milk cartons, but don't elect the poor bastards because they'll inflict bad grammar on you until you lie in a pool of drool, clutching your "I Adore My 64" button, babbling about the good old days when men were men and sheep were not particular.

6. The Netwar Season: The netwar season shall commence nanoseconds after the election of each new Regional Coordinator. A season can be kick-started to a promising beginning by any Regional Coordinator who campaigns on some sort of "peace" platform. Like, nudge nudge, wink wink, we all *deplore* the fights in hockey games, so we'll be sure to take these kind of lame promises just as seriously.

(snicker)

(Incidentally, don't trust any candidate who quotes Arlo Guthrie in "Alices Restaraunt" and says "I wanna kill. I wanna kill. I mean, I wanna see blood and guts and veins in my teeth. I wanna kill. KILL! KILL!" because these are the kind of milquetoasts that probably brake for whales and will screw up a perfectly good netwar season with their puerile sniveling for calm. C'mon, fess up... you tryna tell me that you forked out five grand for a BBS system that was just gonna bring in the DOGTALK echo?

At the beginning of each season, grunt sysops will make irrational decisions about who they hate at the moment, and will bounce up and down in their cribs, asking to be picked by their most favoured Network Coordinator. Top draft choices will always be those sysops who are prepared to nitpick the hell out of issue that occurred way back in the late fifties.

Network Coordinators should not ignore the "specialty teams" that make netwars so fascinating. Getting one of those tight-assed weenies who quotes every obscenity that comes down the turnpike and then appends some cloacally-challenged moralizing, should be counted as almost as important as the wankers who brag that they are the very first to be running the "new" Fido Version 1.01 software. The latter can be be guaranteed to smoke out some peckerwood who counter-brags that he/she has been running that version for three nanoseconds longer.... under Windows, no less.

A truly successful Netwar season can be measured by the logarithmic expansion of new nets, and the number of excitable, intrigue-filled, messages that Zorch and John write.

7. The Stirring Conclusion: Just as this policy document was about to end. Just as Luke in his X-wing fighter was about to drop the Neutron bomb down the exhaust shaft and put this puppy out of it's misery. Just as the Bikersluts were about to perform peculiar ablutions in the lap of the good Rev. Visage. Just as your RETURN button was begging for mercy like some spaghetti flogged, Jesse Hollington -type combination fax machine and gratification device... just at that moment... a rock fungus will burst it's spore pod and some flatlined-on-the-EEG sysop will suggest that "we really oughta have lots more policy."

###30###