It's International Become a Plurker Day!

But first: Lacey's Completely Non-related Picture!


And believe you me, I tried. And we didn't even have Nintendo!



So. International Become a Plurker Day. And just what is a plurker, you may ask? (If you already know, you're more of a geek than I am. Just sayin' . . . ) Well, sit back and get ready for story time.

*insert cheesy sitcom dream sequence wavy thing here*

My freshman year of college was . . . well, rough . . . in multiple ways. Particularly the roommate way. We got along (except for the one that hated all of the rest of us) but I didn't really "click" with them. And being the horribly, paralyzingly shy person that I am the thought of going to some campus event to meet people by myself - well, it did actually occur to me (believe it or not) but my shy self always talked my lonely self out of it. I think my record was about 2.8 seconds - and that's the record for the time it took the longest! So, yeah, I got pretty lonely sometimes. Luckily, I finally had my own computer, a laptop I semi-affectionately dubbed the Craptop. Because it was. Whenever I actually needed to do something important for school I typically went to a lab because those computers were far less likely to crash. But I digress . . .

Anyway, since I now had constant high-speed internet access as opposed to the constantly-disconnecting-itself-dial-up I discovered that - wonder of wonders! - there was a whole lot more to do on the internet than just check one's email. Woot! First there was the amazingness of MSNMessenger. Then I signed up for hotsaints.com (which after a quick search appears to not exist anymore . . . sad!), my very first (and only) internet dating profile, AWWWWWW!! Two reasons for that: 1) I was chatting with a friend from high school and it seemed like a fun/funny thing to do to both of us at the time and 2) to freak out my mother when I told her I'd done it. It worked. :-) I only logged in again once or twice, and there was absolutely nothing resulting from it in the form of male contact. Story of my life, y'all. Well, most of it. But I digress again . . .

Okay, coming to the point now. Remember, this was 2002. Attack of the Clones had just come out that sumer. Everyone was still holding onto hope that Revenge of the Sith would redeem the prequels, even though we didn't know what it was called yet. So naturally I wandered over to starwars.com before long. And since it was free to register I did - even though that didn't really get you anything at the time. BUT - that meant that you could post on the forum message boards. Now I'd done the random chat room thing once or twice, and of course I was on msnmessenger pretty much all the time at this point in time, but this message board thing was new to me. So at first I spent most of my time reading what everyone else was saying, only posting a little bit. Over time I started posting in a couple of threads pretty regularly, and I actually made some good friends . . . who's real names I couldn't tell you if my life depended on it. :-) Sadly, upon my return to the land of dial-up for the summer I didn't spend much time on the boards, and my sophomore year was drastically different from my freshman year so even though I meant to start hanging out there again I never really did, and I'm betting if I were to go back now no one would even remember me. Assuming, of course, that anyone I knew is even still there. It has, after all, been almost ten years. (And it weirds me out profoundly to say that!) I miss the boards and the people I met there sometimes, but it's more in a nostalgic than sad way. It was the perfect situation for me for that one year - I'd even go so far as to say I needed it. But then I got some awesome, social, friends for roommates and I didn't need the (sort of) virtual friends I'd hung on to the year before.

So anyway, plurker. If you haven't figured it out already, in message board-ese a poster is someone who posts a lot. A lurker is someone who never posts, but is always reading what everyone else posts. Which can be a little creepy because there's no way to know they're there. (Now I want to use "their" in a sentence just to prove I can use all three correctly. Holy biggest pet peeve!!) And which is also why you have to be especially not stupid (also known as careful) with what you say on message boards. Good thing I knew that going in, eh? Anyway, obviously, plurker is a combination of the two, and is exactly what I was when I first started hanging out on the boards. Actually, I never really fully overcame my plurker-ish tendencies. I'm even shy online!! Grrrrrr.

So. Today. International Become a Plurker Day. I'm really hoping you've guessed by now that I totally made it up. But if someone else can declare today Teflon Day, then I can make up my own holiday too, dangit!!! (btw, how's that for a totally circa 2002 looking website? Holy retro, lol!!) So - have you been watching the insanity that is my blog and not commenting? Comment!! Has it been so long since you commented that it up for debate whether you're still reading or not? Comment!! Do you comment on every single post? Comment!! It makes me feel popular, and everybody deserves to feel popular sometimes. :-) Also, it tells my shy self that not everyone is laughing at me and thinks everything I say is utterly ridiculous and dumb. Post with no comments = big box office blockbuster that flopped. Epically flopped. It's illogical. It's irrational. It's silly. It's me.

To be completely honest, while I have had this post simmering in the back of my head for a while now, I posted it today because it's spring break so I have no work to go to all week. It's been two days and I'm already bored out of my mind. I am sooooooo not looking forward to summer.

P. ost S. cript

A friend of mine sent me this one. I've seen a couple of others done this way, but I think this one is my favorite. Long live books!!!!!