> Ping your it.
>   
Leland,

Great. Encourage me.

Once upon a time there was a listserv for historic preservation called 
Preservation-L. It had no rules, it was thought up by a computer geek in 
his lab, and he had no interest in historic preservation. It was there 
like a fish attractant at the bottom of a stagnant pool and in a short 
period of time a whole bunch of people that identified themselves as in 
the historic preservation business signed up for the list. But they did 
not know quite what to do with it. So there were 600 people connected 
but not communicating.

I got some bright idea and using my mother's e-mail address (for which I 
had to apologize and make amends later) I sent to the list an e-mail 
about Gabriel and Etidorpha Ogrease (for those in the know about novels 
pertaining to cave utopias reference the novel *Etidorpha* by John Uri 
Lloyd) -- their father Buck had brought back a fiberglas portable toilet 
from a 1970s War Moratorium in DC that he suspected the hole in the side 
was kicked there by Alan Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky... and they wanted 
to get some professional advice on how properly, best to make repairs 
without losing the heritage significance. That request for advice got 
some folks excited, some agitated. So for a while there I took to 
writing a new installment once a week. It was not long before I was 
getting all sorts of really angry back channel threats from what I can 
only assume in retrospect were the blue-blood wannabees, Bastards of the 
Revolution, or whatever but it was an incredibly negative aura. Also a 
good deal of support and people jumping in with their own characters -- 
and animals. Eventually the collection of outhouses grew to cover 40 
acres and set off SOS... Save Our Shitters. So, thoroughly pummeled by 
the unpleasantries and while resting up from a heart operation I 
solicited a new place to start a new list. Those G & E weekly 
installments I think went on for about two years before I gave up on it  
-- where can you go after eating Etidorpha's squirrel brain tarts? 
Eventually I took as my writer's pseudonym the Gabriel Orgrease brand 
name. But along in there we got us a list sponsored by St. John's 
University psychology department. I will never know for sure if we were 
considered a specimen for close observation, or not. It has been 
interesting. We have rules, as opposed to the list with no rules.

One rule is not to get on anyone's case if they can't spell or make a 
coherent sentence.

Another rule, often not followed, is to include some histo presto 
content in every message. Though I suspect that simply posting a message 
on a listserv can be construed as archaic enuf to qualify.

For a time we used to raid the Preservation-L list just to see if they 
could still be agitated. It is kind of funny to me that nobody ever says 
anything on that list, least ways not that I know of.

There is a good deal of irrelevant horsing around, often poor 
signal:noise ratio, but what I have learned is that the games, jokes, 
stories, play provides a context by which when real questions are asked 
the veracity of the information can be well gaged.

Beside all that people that survive to hang, linger, emote, or otherwise 
not suffer from terminal attrition here tend to like each other, here 
and in RL.

COD keeps us running. Sharpshooter keeps shooting at us. Py gets lost in 
Argentina chased down by flying rocks and UFOs. Sometimes we hear from 
Bullamanka. And Rudy has a time machine. Ruth is keeper of the screw 
drivers. Ralph is the Humor Czar. Larry (1) is associated with the 
Political Graveyard but sometimes we get confused and think he is from 
Toledo. Twy is the VI. I've lost track of most all of the nuances... but 
I am sure in a leaftime I will be brought up to the holy crapper.

][< (shaman)

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>