Everything2 Decaversary Interviews: allseeingeye

1. What is your name?

All know of the Lord High Executioner Omniversal Pontifex All Seeing Eye! My mother calls me Ian. You know that already, Scott. Who is behind that curtain? WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?

Now, I'm changing this back to the way you had it before, which was subtly hilarious.

2. What is your quest?

no no, go back a little bit... ahem... "Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I am not afraid."

Bridgekeeper: What... is your name?
Sir Lancelot: My name is Sir Lancelot of Camelot.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
Sir Lancelot: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your favourite colour?
Sir Lancelot: Blue.
Bridgekeeper: Go on. Off you go.
Sir Lancelot: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
Sir Robin: That's easy.
Bridgekeeper: Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.
Sir Robin: Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I'm not afraid.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your name?
Sir Robin: Sir Robin of Camelot.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
Sir Robin: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What... is the capital of Assyria?
(pause)
Sir Robin: I don't know that.
(he is thrown over the edge into the volcano)
Sir Robin: Auuuuuuuugh.
Bridgekeeper: Stop. What... is your name?
Galahad: Sir Galahad of Camelot.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
Galahad: I seek the Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your favourite colour?
Galahad: Blue. No, yel...
(he is also thrown over the edge)
Galahad: auuuuuuuugh.
Bridgekeeper: Hee hee heh. Stop. What... is your name?
King Arthur: It is 'Arthur', King of the Britons.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
King Arthur: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Bridgekeeper: Huh? I... I don't know that.
(he is thrown over)
Bridgekeeper: Auuuuuuuugh.
Sir Bedevere: How do know so much about swallows?
King Arthur: Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.

BAHAHAHA! ah... I love it.

3. What is your favorite color?

We did that bit already.

2. Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately?

Office work. Office work of a nature and volume as to dilute the very soul of a man. But the pay is good and they let me have window so I can't complain. Seriously. It's like number 4 or the list of things I can't do.

3. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?

On Thursday, November 8th, 2001 at 14:18:03, I must have been bored. Also, I had a different username when I started. You're late. If I remember correctly, it was a link from slashdot. I was fresh out of college working a big boy job and I was wasting time at work. I had been lurking for a while before I made a user account, and on September 11th, E2 was one of the only places you could get to refresh. That day sucked. I was still a student and I was working on the 4th floor of an office tower and you couldn't even get CNN to load. The guy next to me said "Welcome to World War 3" and I just felt god awful and afraid. They let us go home early and I had to get a bus across town and everybody just sat in silence until this college age kid got on at sort of the midway point transit hub. Kid was from the Middle East, or maybe India, God only knows but people on that bus were afraid and I just wanted to puke because this kid didn't do anything and I was embarassed for the people who muttered and whispered and few that bailed out at the next stop. Then I went home to my new-ish apartment and lay on the covers of my bed in the dark sort of paralyzed. I lived by the airport and all the planes landed in a big rush and then it was so weirdly quiet for the next week. It was a bright sunny beautiful day and the sky, after all the planes landed, became a strange super intense blue. I'd never seen anything like it.

So, yeah, I was out of sorts for a few months, like everybody, and I remembered E2 and how everybody cared about one another, and I logged in and never really left.

How's that for some heavy cream! I can be introspective and shit.

4. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?

I'm not gonna answer that question because it's a bullshit question and I want the name of your journalism teacher mister, no foolin! What i do like to do is when I log in, after scoffing at the "Don't use jukka you dinosaur" message (jukka 4 life jessicapierce!) is to read old writeups of mine that got chinged or bookmark or just generally roll up in my inbox. Because maybe I'm getting old, I forget my own stuff. Some of it seems like somebody else wrote it. Or the E2 event that inspired it has come and gone and I get to rerun it in my head. It's sort of nice.

Then the nurse mashes my brain medicine into my peas...

Bugs go to jaybonci worked out nice when he bought the place.

5. What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history?

A decade is a long time. I've been sitting here reminiscing and there is no way I can summorize almost a 1/4 of my life in any sort of context that would make any sense. Here's some things I do remember...

I wrote Casshern after watching a trailer for a Japanese movie, in Japanese, and having no freaking idea what it was about, but just falling in love with it. I can run hot/cold on things and this just had all the right stuff. I was fired up and wrote a giant love letter to an incomprehesible movie trailer. Where else in the world would this have any audience at all? A few days later, MrHotel msgs me and says "Dude, you want a copy? - he mails me a CD with the movie on it and it meant so much to me, a simple geasure that said people out in the world were reading this nonsense I was spewing and that they thought enough to respond. It struck a cord.

It's where the unreal leaked over into the real that I remember most. It's almost a parallel world, in a way. These voices in catbox are real world actors. It gives me comfort to know they exist in the world. I've always been too chickenshit to meet anybody from here in meatspace. I've got a fairly robust helping of social anxiety than most people imagine. I've spoken to E2'ers on webcam, received a bunch of fantastic, life changing books unsolitcited (Halspal has the record), and one lunatic sends me a card every Christmas. It's like a secret imaginary world exists for me, and I cherish that illusion. I don't remember what year I did the Secret Santa, but somebody from England, and I never did figure out who, sent me The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Whoever it was should get some kind of special citiation from the Gift Givers Oscars because they nailed it. There was a flood at my house a few years ago and I lost tons of books, but the only ones I was upset about where the ones I got from E2 people, because of the memories. yclept made me a sweet knit cap I lost on the bus, I mailed Roninspoon a geiger counter and I hired Habakkuk to fix an old tube radio for me one time...

Also, my memory fails me but one of you wingnuts took a bunch of writeups and made a bunch of poor actors speak the lines in front of an audience and taped it. It was freaking tickled pink when I watched that. I felt like a freaking screenwriter for a month.

The Bag of Crushed Child movie crushed all further Hollywood dreams from my soul... ha!

I've read this site for hours and hours and hours. When I first got the Web, in say 1992 or so, I would get these hilariously poorly written books about it at the library. One had a description of the Web as "a book with infinite pages." E2 is as close to that weird descriptor has ever come, for me.

6. What keeps you coming back (or not coming back, as the case may be)?

People. It's all about the people. As fun as writing things is, I stayed for the people. I written thousands more words in the catbox than I have in a writeup. I lived for an audience. I saw dancing with EDB as a great and noble pursuit. The catbox is the heart and soul of E2 for me. ascorbic used to mirror the catbox on a separate site and keep a "Top 10 Chattiest Users" Hall of Shame than I regularly populated. All the silly personas and games... messing with the bots like EDB and Klaproth, chiding the gods and editors into clearing the box, that bot that used to turn everything off at night... automaus? Giant Squid's grand election campaigns, SPACE MADNESS, the hu-mon loathing of OFFENDULON...The mighty Triumverate of amnesiac, Halspal and I... I WAS BORN FOR THIS LITTER COVERED STAGE!

EDB has swallowed allseeingeye. moist noder flesh

7. What do you hope for E2's future?

I think we've both been here along enough with about 100 other people to know that you never can quite tell what E2 is going to do. I'd love to see the user numbers go up to what they used to be, when the catbox had 70 people in it. "and all is quiet..." makes me sad.

8. What does E2 mean to you?

E2 to me meant, and still means, that there is a place out there in the wilds of the internet, where I feel like I am were I belong.

You know, like the Island of Misfit Toys!

9. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?

I am a complete egotist and when I read other Decaversay Lists, I always look for my own name. Let me make this offer to you, dear reader. Don't assume that I don't love you to bits if your name isn't here. Sleep soundly in the knowledge that my memory, like my personality, is greatly flawed and fragmented. Also, these people paid me.