[SITH WAR] ... but my sorrows learned to swim
Steve...@rightbehindyou.com
was RASSM City. Far from Red Six, far from home, far... far from *her*.
The Jedi Hacker looked inside the bar before he went in. No one was in
there but the barkeep and a couple of overweight waitresses smoking
hand-rolled cigarillos at a corner table. A Porkinite establishment? What
with the pending annihilation of the Porkinite homeworld at his hand, it
might be touchy going in there.
Hacker threw the door open and stomped in. He had a bowling-ball bag in
one hand, and the other rested on his lightsaber hilt.
The barkeep, passing a filthy-looking rag over some disreputable-looking
shot glasses, nodded curtly to him.
The waitresses blew out gusts of smoke and went back to their gossip.
Hacker strode to the bar and sat heavily on a chromed stool at the end near
the door, setting the bag down on the floor beside him. The barkeep
finished wiping several more shot glasses, then trudged down to him.
"What's yer poison?"
"Bourbon," Hacker said. "Cheapest you got. Straight. Double. Now."
The barkeep whisked a bottle of evil-looking liquid off the shelf behind
him with one hand, produced a cracked shot glass in the other, poured, and
set the drink down in front of Hacker. Hacker picked the glass up,
pondered it for a moment, and drained it in one gulp. Liquid fire seared
his esophagus. He slammed the glass down. "Another."
The barkeep poured. Before Hacker could get the drink up to his lips,
however, a familiar blue glow lit up the room from somewhere just behind
Hacker. Hacker set the drink down, put his hand on the hilt of his
lightsaber, and turned slowly to face the glow.
Just as he'd thought: Tilson was standing directly behind him. Tilson's
hand was on the hilt of his own lightsaber.
Tilson looked at Hacker. "Top of the morning to you."
"It may be morning to you," Hacker said, "but it's the long, dark
afternoon of the soul to me."
"Oh?" Tilson sidled closer. "Do tell."
"I'm not telling you anything."
"Suit yourself." To the barkeep, Tilson said, "Mitch, the usual."
The barkeep slid a tall glass of something brown across the bar. Tilson
picked it up and sipped it. "Ah, that's good chocolate milk."
"Look," Hacker said. "I know we're at war and all, but I'm trying to get
my load on, here. So if you'd be so kind, take a long walk out of a short
docking berth."
"No need to get hostile," Tilson said. "Mitch's is neutral ground. I've
come looking for you. You seem troubled."
"HA!" The laugh surprised Hacker as much as it apparently did Tilson.
"You think you know trouble, Tilson? You and your... your star destroyer,
and your TIE squadrons, and your ability to teleport, and ... and... your
automatic garage door opener... you came looking for me?"
Tilson took a long swig of chocolate milk.
"How'd you know I was here?"
Tilson tapped his forefinger to his temple. "A little nannite told me."
Hacker considered Tilson. "You're putting me on. Get lost. I was here
first."
"I didn't know you were a lush," Tilson said, pointing to the undrunk
bourbon at Hacker's fingers.
"Yeah, well, I *wasn't*, but things change, you know."
"You want to tell me," Tilson said. "I can tell. Go ahead."
Hacker sneered at Tilson for a moment.
"Ah, what the hell," Hacker said. "You know what a friend of mine told me
once?"
"'Stop stalking my mother, you mouth-breathing freak'?"
Hacker frowned. "Before that. You know what he said? He said 'Hacker,
women are like computers.'"
"I figured that's the kind of friend you had."
"'... if you want them to work, you gotta keep fooling with them all the
time.'"
Tilson pondered this.
"This friend of yours... did he bother to tell you the ways women are *not*
like computers?"
"He did, but I didn't listen to that part. I was already trying to figure
out how to get an open port, if you know what I mean."
Tilson made no indication that he understood what Hacker meant, so Hacker
went on.
"So I finally got a chance to test his hypothesis. With... with... " He
couldn't bring himself to say her name.
"Was your friend right?"
Hacker smiled sadly.
*********
BEFORE: ABOARD HACKER'S GIANT PDA
"HACKER!"
No answer.
"HACKER!"
No answer.
"HACKER, IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE AND ALL YOUR APPENDAGES, ANSWER ME!"
Hacker winced. "Yes, dear?"
Suddenly she was standing there in the door to his workroom. The fetching
skin-tight leather suit she'd worn the first time he'd met her was gone,
replaced with baggy sweat pants and a T-shirt that read I'M THE ONE YOUR
MAMA WARNED YOU ABOUT.
"'Yes, dear'? That's all you have to say?"
He managed a smile that he hoped wouldn't be interpreted as condescending.
"I love you?"
"You said you were going to cut the hydroponic grass," Mara said. "You
promised me two weeks ago you'd do it last week, and you promised last week
you'd do it this week. It's starting to choke out the food. You know, the
stuff we *eat*?"
Hacker bit back the first reply that jumped to mind, which was that the
hydroponic grass was choking out the food *Mara* ate, because all she ate
was macrobiotic salads with olive oil and vinegar.
"Honey, I'm a little busy right now," Hacker said as reasonably as he
could, gesturing to the disassembled antimatter warhead on the workbench in
front of him. "How about having one of the droids do it?"
"The droids," Mara said testily, "cut the watercress and the sprouts every
time they go near the hydroponics. They can't tell the difference between
food and weeds."
Hacker bit his lip to keep *neither can you* from escaping.
Mara sighed, gave her best put-upon look. "You know, I'd gladly do it
myself, but *someone* left such a mess in the forward equipment lockers,
I'll be lucky to have them cleaned up by Unity Day. You don't have any
idea who might have done that, do you?"
"The forward equipment lockers?" Hacker said weakly. "Where I was doing
my standing-wave communication experiments?"
"Oh, is *that* what it was? Print-outs all over the place, pieces of
radios and computers and Force only knows what scattered everywhere? I
swear, I could hardly walk in there! *Something* had to be done -- "
She went on, but Hacker tuned out for a moment. How much damage could she
have done to the transmitters? How long would it take him to find all the
parts, which she undoubtedly would have catalogued and filed according to
some esoteric system of classification that only she could understand? How
much time was he going to lose?
" -- trying to impose some kind of *order* on the whole mess, I missed half
of _As the Chronometer Blinks_.... Are you LISTENING to me?!"
"Of course, my darling."
"Well, then, get off your ever-expanding ass and get down to the
hydroponics station! I'm going to the planet -- "
"Again?" Hacker said, and caught himself before he added *you just went
last week* or something else that would get him dressed down even worse;
fortunately, Mara didn't seem to have heard him:
" -- and I want to see that grass *mowed* when I get back, or else I can't
guarantee there'll be anything for dinner tonight. Understand?"
"Fully, my gloriously beautiful one."
"Hmph," Mara said. She swiveled on one heel and marched off.
Hacker sighed heavily, gazing over the parts of the antimatter warhead.
Well, she'd put her foot down; looked like the attack on Red Six was going
to have to wait...
He looked over to his left, at R5-P1, who had been taking the whole thing
in. P1 beeped a series of codes.
Hacker checked his translator. It read: SHE'S GOT YOU WHIPPED.
Hacker sighed and headed for the hydroponics section.
******
BEFORE THAT: IN RASSM CITY
It was a palace of commerce. A mile-high temple of merchandise. A
kilometer-long cash sink. It was Whale-Mart, the best department store
ever crammed into the gutted body cavity of a Calamarian mega-cetacean and
dropped in the middle of RASSM City, and Mara and Hacker had been walking
around in it for what Hacker thought must surely be forty or fifty hours.
Mara was as happy as Hacker had ever seen her, wandering through the rows
upon rows of lavish dresses and hideously expensive jewelry, while
sales-ladies smiled at her and complimented her on her outfit and seemed to
try to conceal their loathing for Hacker. They weren't rude to him,
exactly; it was just that they all seemed to be wondering what a beautiful
creature like *her* was doing with ... well, with *him*.
"I think I like this one," Mara said, pressing a shimmering blue silk...
*something*... against her front and turning slightly in front of the
holo-mirror. "I think maybe it sets off my eyes. Do you think it sets off
my eyes?"
"Hmm?" Hacker said, trying not to think about the holodisc players they'd
had on special in the Electronics department, which Mara had dragged him
through after what she'd considered an appropriate amount of time,
approximately 12.7 seconds. "Oh -- er, yes, it's pretty."
"It is pretty, isn't it? Oh, I don't know. I just don't know." Another
ninety seconds of self-examination in the holomirror followed.
"Are you going to buy it?" Hacker asked after what he considered a long
time.
"Don't rush me," Mara snapped. She turned and looked some more. "Maybe I
should try it on."
"Okay," Hacker said, his hopes of getting out of the store anytime soon
turned to ashes.
"Be right back."
Mara disappeared into the dressing room. Hacker sighed and leaned back
against the dressing room wall, watching people shopping, all of them
apparently happy.
A few minutes passed.
"Sir," said a voice beside him. He turned; a saleslady was looking at him
over severe horn-rimmed glasses.
"Yes?"
"Please don't recline against the dressing room," she said. "It makes you
look... slovenly."
Hacker was suddenly sure that she had been about to say "more slovenly than
you already are."
"Sorry," he said, and stood upright, despite the aching of his legs.
"Thank you." The saleslady disappeared into the racks of dresses.
Hacker stood, legs sore, and looked for some way to occupy himself. There
were holograms showing physically stunning models, of several different
species, wearing only underwear but engaging in things that normal people
never do in their underwear, like washing their spaceships or walking their
(completely non-metaphorical) dogs.
He watched the underwear models cavort for a while, until he saw a mother
with three small children looking at him with evident disgust. He smiled
apologetically. The mother sniffed, gathered up her children, and stalked
away, muttering something about "family establishment." Hacker locked his
stare on the carpeted floor and did not move it.
Time passed. On some distant planet, cooling from the heat of its birth,
chemicals conjoined in life-promoting environments, giving rise to
single-celled organisms. These developed specialized organelles and moved
onto dry land. Photosynthesis began and increased the oxygen content of
the atmosphere. Pseudopods gave way to articulated limbs. Certain
organisms developed vertebrae. Some of these followed the earlier algae
onto dry land. Tectonic plates collided, pushing up mountains. Insects
appeared, eating plants that had just developed roots. Large, complex
reptiles ate the insects. Larger reptiles ate the smaller ones. Mammals
appeared and began to displace the reptiles in certain areas. The largest
reptiles died off. Others developed wings and took to the skies. On the
ground, hominids appeared, multiplied, learned to use tools.
Hunter-gatherer tribes moved across the plains and forests. Some learned
to grow food reliably. Centers of food growth, commerce, and religion
coalesced into towns, into cities. Trade routes were established and
fought over with edged weapons. Edged weapons gave way to gunpowder-thrown
projectiles. Steam power gave way to the internal combustion engine, the
fission reactor. Horse-drawn carts were displaced by automobiles.
Aircraft took to the skies, to the edge of space. Computers were invented,
developed, brought to the pinnacle of technological innovation. AI
flowered. Fusion reactors were developed. Antimatter was harnessed.
Nanotechnology brought prosperity and danger. Other planets were
colonized.
Hacker yawned, checked his chronometer again.
Mara came out of the dressing room, wearing the dress. "I don't know. I
think maybe it makes me look fat." She locked her eyes on Hacker. "Does
this make me look fat?"
"There's no way that dress could make you look fat."
It had seemed like such a flattering thing to say.
"Why?" Mara demanded. "Because I already look fat? Is that what you're
saying?"
"No, I don't think you look fat already -- "
"But I will eventually, right? Why don't you just say it? You are so
*cruel*!"
"No, no, that's not what I meant! It looks fine on you, it doesn't make
you look fat, you don't look fat, you never will look fat -- "
"Oh, quit it." She disappeared into the dressing room again.
Hacker sighed again.
The saleslady who had told him not to lean on the dressing room was beside
him again.
"I'm not leaning on the dressing room," he told her.
"No, you are not," the saleslady said. "I was just observing your exchange
with your friend there." She smiled approvingly. "She's got you whipped."
"Thanks for noticing."
"Don't mention it, sir." She walked away.
This time, however, photosynthesis had barely started when Mara reappeared.
"They don't have anything," she said. "I'm hungry. Let's go get
something to eat."
Hacker resisted the urge to cheer. "Let's go to that new pizza place down
at Handley Square."
"Pizza?"
Hacker sighed. "Or wherever you would like to go, darling."
"There's a bistro over in the Twi'lek Quarto my friend Marta told me about,
" Mara said. "Let's go there."
All Hacker really heard was "bistro." In his experience, "bistro"=$$$.
Despite the store's "not having anything," Mara managed to load Hacker down
with boxes and bags of merchandise purchased on his credit card. He
staggered out to their rented speeder while Mara urged him to _go faster_,
_watch out where you're going_, _watch out you're going to drop
everything_, and _well you deserved to fall if you're not going to look
where you're putting your feet_. As he loaded the packages into the
speeder's trunk, Mara took out each bag and box as he put them in, moving
them six inches to the left or right until she was satisfied there was no
dress in danger of being crushed by a box of shoes.
Hacker had thought things would get better once he was in the driver's seat
of the speeder. What a naive and shortsighted belief that was, he realized
as he maneuvered out of the parking lot.
"That guy's pulling out. Watch it."
"I see him, dear."
"Why did you go this way? This is the long way."
"Sorry, dear."
"Watch out! Are you planning to run over that woman and her kids?"
"The thought had never crossed my mind, darling."
They pulled to the parking lot exit after waiting for thirty minutes in a
string of speeders. Hacker stopped at the stop sign. The speeder's engine
chose this moment to stop working.
"Wha -- No, no no... "
"What is it? What happened?"
Hacker stabbed the ignition button. "Come on, you stupid thing. Start."
"Why are we stopped? What's going on?"
"Well, dear, the speeder engine appears to have died."
"Well, start it."
"I am *trying*, dear."
Mara _hmphed_ and crossed her arms.
Hacker pressed the ignition button repeatedly. Speeders behind him started
beeping their signal beepers.
Nothing. The engine was truly dead.
"Well?" Mara said.
Hacker unbuckled his harness and got out of the speeder. He waved for the
speeders behind them to pull around. Several types of obscene gestures
were flashed his way by the drivers behind him.
He raised the speeder's hood and saw the problem immediately: the main
charge coil had separated from its docking port by the turbine intake. He
tried to reset the coil, and saw to his horror that the entire mount had
cracked. He was lucky it hadn't electrocuted him right there on the
Whale-Mart parking lot.
There was nothing that could be done for the speeder outside a
fully-equipped shop. Hacker got back into the speeder compartment.
Seeing Mara inside was almost a surprise. "Well?" she said.
"It's the charge coil. The mount's cracked."
"So? Can't you fix it?"
"A cracked charge coil mount? I'd need an arc-welder and a differential
capacitor module, and I'd have to use a wave calibrator to make sure there
wasn't a field imbalance."
"You can't fix it?"
Hacker blinked.
"I believe that's what I just said, my darling," he said neutrally.
"You don't get snippy with me," Mara said. "I just asked a simple
question. You go rattling off all these... things, as if they meant
anything to me. You're supposed to be the one who repairs the speeders,
remember?"
"I remember it well, dear."
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I am going to call the speeder rental place and tell them what happened.
They should have known there was metal fatigue in that mount; it should've
shown up in their last inspection. They'll send us a taxi or a new
speeder, or they'll be sorry their fathers ever fertilized their mothers'
ovae."
Mara shook her head. "It's just a problem. No need to get violent over
it."
Hacker activated the speeder's hologram and punched in the number for the
speeder rental agency. A Rodian appeared on the hologram. "Can we help
you?"
"Yes," Hacker said. "This speeder you rented me had a defective charge
coil mount. My... my... " Wife? Girlfriend? Significant other? "My
companion and I are stranded at the RASSM City Whale-Mart."
"No defective charge coil mount," the Rodian said. "Inspected. Passed."
"I assure you, sir or madam, the mount was defective."
"Not defective," the Rodian said. "User error."
"We can figure that out later. I need a ride."
"Get taxi."
"You'll reimburse me, right?"
"No. User error. Charge your account fifty credit for service call."
"Now look here -- "
"Hacker." Mara's voice was quiet -- meaning she was at her most dangerous.
"Let it go and call a cab." He started to protest. "NOW, Hacker."
Hacker sighed and killed the hologram link.
"Just remember," Mara said. "This wouldn't be happening if you could fix
the speeder."
******
AN HOUR LATER: DOWNTOWN RASSM CITY
At the bistro, Hacker ordered a spiced Havarti tuna melt with potato wedges
and a glass of the cheapest blush wine they had. He dug in and ate with
gusto. It wasn't bad, but he'd hoped for better, for the eighty-seven
credits it had set him back.
Mara ordered a sprout salad and a bottle of expensive spring water. She
picked at the salad, occasionally deigning to put a bite into her mouth and
chew as if she were tasting the last harvest of Atlantis. Mostly she just
watched Hacker as if wondering how he could be such a pig.
The waiter who served them, like the taxi driver who'd brought them here,
gave Hacker a surreptitious, knowing glance when Mara wasn't looking, as if
to say "I feel your pain, brother."
Or as if to say, "Man, you're whipped."
*******
A FEW DAYS AGO: THE GIANT PDA
It wasn't often Hacker had old friends come over. It was even rarer that
Locutus got a holiday from the Borg Collective. When the latter happened,
Hacker always tried to make sure that the former did, too.
They were in Hacker's living room aboard the Giant PDA, watching the
universal broadcast of the Interplanetary Warball Association
Championships. Deathbowl XXXIV was in full swing. Hacker and Locutus sat
on opposite ends of Hacker's couch, munching cheese twists and swilling
root beer, watching the carnage unfold on the hologram before them.
Locutus, as always, watched the game without comment, his head swiveling
slightly as he followed the action, playing his laser designator beam
across the picture.
"Oh, that wasn't good," Hacker noted, as a ten-yard run by the quarterback
was brought to a conclusion by a well-aimed blaster bolt. "They should've
gone with the option to the fullback and tried to turn the left flank.
With the receivers covered, and the halfback under aerial bombardment, the
fullback could've gone around the left while the linemen took the enemy
under fire from defilade... "
Locutus said nothing, just swiveled his head a little.
The skirmishers hadn't even formed their line for the next play when the
living room door hissed open. Hacker's heart sank.
"Here you are," Mara said. "I've been looking all over for you. I just
wanted to let you know I'm going down to the planet to shop; since you're
wasting your whole day with that ridiculous game, it's only fair I should
get to go waste -- " She saw Locutus, who had risen and was scanning her
with his laser designator. "Who is this?"
"Oh, honey; this is my old college buddy, Locutus of Borg. Locutus, this
is my... my... " Main squeeze? Girlf? Task-master? "... my *very* good
friend, Mara Jade."
"Oh," Mara said. "Pleased, I'm sure."
"I am Locutus of Borg," Locutus told her. "You will be assimilated. We
will add your cultural and technological distinctiveness to our own.
Resistance is futile."
"He's a VP of product development at Microsoft," Hacker said, leaping up
from the couch to stand beside Locutus.
"What does he mean, 'resistance is futile'?"
"Your life as it has been is over," Locutus said. "From this point
forward, you will service -- "
"Locutus, ixnay on the ervicesay," Hacker whispered out the side of his
mouth.
" -- us."
Mara cocked her head at him ever so slightly. "Really?"
"Oh, he's a kidder, this one!" Hacker burbled, leaning over to give
Locutus a noogie. "Always joking around! Voted class clown, real
practical joker -- completely unpredictable -- "
"You cannot withstand us. This maneuver" -- he clamped a hand on Hacker's
arm and removed it from around his neck -- "is futile."
"Well, that's nice," Mara said. "I'll be home in about three hours. I'd
like you to have walked the dog before I get back. He's dying to get
outdoors."
"Walking the dog is futile. Death is irrelevant."
"Okay, honey," Hacker said. "Love you, miss you, see you."
Mara swept out the door with a final contemptuous glance at Locutus.
Hacker picked up a newspaper and whacked Locutus across the head with it.
"What are you thinking, going on about resistance and death and technology
to her? Don't you know the lecture I'm going to get when she gets back?"
"Lecture is futile."
"Futile to you, you hulking Shakespearean dope; not to her... I'll be lucky
if I ever get some from her... "
"Getting some is irrelevant."
"All right. I hate to do this, but leave. Okay? Leave. I have work to
do, and you... you... "
Locutus stared at him silently.
"Look, I'm sorry. You can go down to the bar and catch the rest of the
game. Okay? If I don't have this place straightened up and the dog walked
by the time she gets back... "
Locutus started toward the door.
"I'm really sorry, man. I'll make it up to you, I swear."
At the door, Locutus turned and gave him a cold, contemptible look. "She
has you -- "
" -- whipped. I know -- "
" -- assimilated."
*******
"And all that was before she tried to kill me," Hacker concluded.
Tilson was staring at him, aghast.
"I can only conclude that whoever planted her with me not only wanted to
kill me, but completely and utterly emasculate me in the process," Hacker
said. "Whoever did it is a bastard who deserves to burn in all nine hells
at the same time. When I find out who it was, and how... "
"I don't blame you," Tilson said. "I mean, what I did to you was bad, but
*that*... I mean, sheesh... "
Hacker took a sip of the bourbon.
"Just one thing," Tilson said.
"What's that?"
"What you said to Locutus. 'I'll be lucky if I ever get some from her... '
You meant you'd be lucky if you ever got some from her, *again*."
"No," Hacker said. "I meant what I said."
Tilson stared at him.
"You mean, all she put you through, and you never... you never ... "
"Oh, she threw me around a lot," Hacker said. "Kept putting her tongue in
my ear, pinned me to the ground, that sort of thing. I always thought
eventually it'd lead somewhere... but it never did... "
Tilson shook his head. "That... is the most horrible thing I've ever
heard."
"Yeah. Well... "
Hacker reached into the bag beside his barstool and pulled something out
that caused Tilson to jump off his own stool and dance two meters away,
yelping.
Mara's severed head.
"I kept it," Hacker said. "After we fought and... well, I just couldn't.
I may be pathetic, but you know, I... I loved her. Maybe, maybe I can... I
don't know, *fix* her, or something... "
Mara's eyes opened.
"HACKER!" she bellowed, in a thin electronically-distorted voice. "You
are DEAD! This is really the last straw! I put up with a lot of stuff
before, but now THIS -- "
Tilson looked pale as a ghost. He shot a hand out. It caught Hacker's
half-finished glass of bourbon. Tilson drained it in one gulp. "Later,
Hacker."
He vanished in a blue flash.
Hacker examined the table where his drink had been and sighed.
" -- LISTEN to me! Put me back on a body RIGHT THIS INSTANT! What are you
waiting for? Answer me, you simpering, pathetic -- "
Hacker began to sob.
*********
SUMMARY:
I wrote this out of annoyance.
I think it was just the utter unreality of Hacker's posts about Mara.
She's always doing things real women don't. I know she was never real, and
that was part of the point, but it was still annoying.
So I set out to bring balance to the character.
I apologize for the gargantuan length of this thing. I planned it to be
short, but it just grew and grew. I cut a lot of stuff out midway through
the planning phase, which began about 9:30am local time this morning...
some seven hours ago as I write this.
Sorry I didn't post it two hours ago, but I had classes to teach.
Anyone who points out to me that Hacker and Mara were both droids anyway is
invited to plant a big sloppy one on a part of me where the sun never
shines.
Steve Tilson
--
"How many more, Harry?" said Dumbledore, eyes puddling with tears. "How
many more have to be buried before your thirst for vengeance is satisfied?"
- www.pointlesswasteoftime.com
Muuurgh
<Steve...@rightbehindyou.com> wrote in message
news:20031016163819.528$D...@newsreader.com...
This is a great post, I was almost inspired to write myself.
-Muuurgh
C'Pi
>>
>
> This is a great post, I was almost inspired to write myself.
I was almost inspired to read it. Almost.
--
C'Pi
Smell my finger
Policrat'
Steve...@rightbehindyou.com at Steve...@rightbehindyou.com wrote on
16/10/03 9:38 pm:
<snip>
I don't give a damn.
Best post ever, Steve.
> Steve Tilson
Pol'
Steve...@rightbehindyou.com
> in article 20031016163819.528$D...@newsreader.com,
> Steve...@rightbehindyou.com at Steve...@rightbehindyou.com wrote on
> 16/10/03 9:38 pm:
>
> <snip>
>
> I don't give a damn.
Eh?
> Best post ever, Steve.
Thank you.
> > Steve Tilson
>
> Pol'
Policrat'
> Policrat' <policr...@GUMBYSHELMEThotmail.com> wrote:
>> in article 20031016163819.528$D...@newsreader.com,
>> Steve...@rightbehindyou.com at Steve...@rightbehindyou.com wrote on
>> 16/10/03 9:38 pm:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> I don't give a damn.
>
> Eh?
I dunno, it 'felt' right, even if it was a nonsequitur...
>> Best post ever, Steve.
>
> Thank you.
=)
Was the anger that inspired it experimentally repeatable, or a one off?
>>> Steve Tilson
>>
>> Pol'
>
> Steve Tilson
Pol'
Steve...@rightbehindyou.com
> in article 20031017091534.635$6...@newsreader.com,
> Steve...@rightbehindyou.com at Steve...@rightbehindyou.com wrote on
> 17/10/03 2:15 pm:
>
> > Policrat' <policr...@GUMBYSHELMEThotmail.com> wrote:
> >> in article 20031016163819.528$D...@newsreader.com,
> >> Steve...@rightbehindyou.com at Steve...@rightbehindyou.com wrote
> >> on 16/10/03 9:38 pm:
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> I don't give a damn.
> >
> > Eh?
>
> I dunno, it 'felt' right, even if it was a nonsequitur...
Ah. Well, that makes perfect nonsense.
> >> Best post ever, Steve.
> >
> > Thank you.
>
> =)
>
> Was the anger that inspired it experimentally repeatable, or a one off?
Oh, I'm sure someone will annoy me again eventually. But I'm going to need
a few days to recuperate.
> >>> Steve Tilson
> >>
> >> Pol'
> >
> > Steve Tilson
>
> Pol'
Steve Tilson