morgandawn | Back When Dinosaurs Roamed The Earth Part II

My friend

sherrold posted this to a private mailing list in 1995. It's been edited for brevity (keeping all the wit, I hope, intact) and a few details removed to protect the ~~guilty innocent~~ does any really care 17 years later? Last year, she agreed to allow me to repost some of her earlier private emails to Fanlore, subject to my discretion. This one I am reposting under friendslock, but felt it was worthy of sharing. It is, IMHO, very Sandy.

A bit of context: Back in 1995 if you wanted to see a photo, you had to go to a 'bulletin board' called Usenet. There, jpgs were stored in multi-part binary files (strings of 100011000s). To "see" a picture you had to download each part one by one off the net, assemble them and then use another application to view them. This often took 10 steps - just to view a single image.

At some locations (cough cough ~~work~~ s~~choo~~l ~~government defense facilities~~ you didn't hear it from me), you could access computers with the ability to assemble all the binary files automatically and, with two clicks, view them (one click to 'decode', then double-clicking on the created icon)

Sandy wrote: "Once I realize these facts, it is no time at all before I am glued to my screen, checking out alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.gaymen.

Here I am, 2:30 in the afternoon looking at stills of two men, fully, ahem, inserted, and it took me just seconds to do it (so I immediately went out looking for more). I downloaded a few (trying to be alert for visitors) mostly misses (i.e., what I think of as 'male' porno), then I saw something called an .mpg. I thought it was just another picture format, so did the usual, 'hit the decode button, then doubleclick.'

Another application came up on my computer: a video player. Next thing I knew, two men were going at it like ferrets on my desktop. I could resize them, pause them, speed them up, slow them down (but I couldn't get them to act more romantic. Sigh.) At this point, my paranoia *finally* kicked in, and I banished them to the electronic roundfile, but hey, for a minute today, there were men fucking on my computer!"

For me the best part is this: "I could resize them, pause them, speed them up, slow them down (but I couldn't get them to act more romantic. Sigh.)"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Do you think Sandy would let me quote this? It'd be perfect to talk about vidding with... Maybe I should ask B.

And of course you know the joke: if you want to hide something for ever, put it an academic book. :D

If you're planning on attributing it to her in the book (which I think you should), then yes check with B. I already sent the unedited version of Sandy's email to her and wickedwords earlier in the week.

You may want to ask for a blanket permission to quote in case something else from Sandy comes up.

Edited 2012-09-08 19:22 (UTC)