The History of Spatula City BBS!

 

Spatula City BBS was born as the result of many hours of hard work and dedication. In 1992, I was working two minimum-wage jobs just to make ends meet. During one period in October, I found myself with 90 hours of pay and no imminent bills to cover. It was at that time that the prospect of buying my first IBM-compatible PC presented itself.

Some background: I had been online for about 3 years, logging into various services. I started with an old Apple II-compatible box, a 300-baud acoustic modem and not much else. The first online entity I ever called was an electronic rag operated by what is now Star-Telegram.com, called StarText. In reading StarText, I happened upon the online Forum, which was made up of a motley crew of participants, mostly moderate-liberal, who participated in an ongoing, daily, online argument. I quickly became a regular, and participated intensely and well in that venue until the StarText management arbitrarily & capriciously decided that I could be slandered, but not defend myself. It didn't take me long to yank my money from their filthy clutches.

During those latter days, though, I had latched onto a new concept - other online portals. These were home computers operated by amateurs (some of them pretty rank (grin)), simply for the love of what came to be known as the practice of "BBSing" (calling BBSes, or Bulletin Board Systems, or the operation of said systems). These systems were for the back-and-forth swapping of messages and files; on many of them, you could play a game against the computer, another player, or the sysop (SYStem OPerator) himself if he had time. You could also page the sysop for a real-time chat every so often, although sysops generally had better things to do - like sleep. (Mind you, these "pages" usually came at 3 a.m. Hell hath no fury like an awakened sysop.) I began to call several of these systems and become involved in the day-to-day life.

As I was a twenty-something who simply didn't know any better (grin), I began to - gasp! - speak my mind. Naturally, this didn't set well with other users, who usually were good friends of the sysop. As a result, I've been thrown off quite a few boards in my day.

It was with that in mind that I decided that I wanted a place where I could say what I wanted, when I wanted, and not be looking over my shoulder for some angry sysop. I began to look at the possibility of purchasing my own PC for that purpose. Thus, when the 90-hour workweek kicked in, I was ready.

I plunked down about $450 for what, to me, was a dream machine - but was actually, even by 1992 standards, an obsolete dinosaur - an 8mHz XT with a 30-meg (with an M, not a G) Seagate RLL hard drive, 640K of RAM soldered onto the main board (along with the chip), a 2400 Everex modem and an old monochrome monitor that already had a ton of burn-in. The keyboard port was a plug-in external port. I could fit my current machine, case included, into the XT case.

The thing was, to put it bluntly, a piece of crap. But - and this is a big "but" (grin) - it was mine.

I quickly went to work. A good friend (liberal though he may be), Aaron Goldblatt, helped me set up the system and get it operational. Spatula City went online on October 31, 19s long as you don't know where they are.  With such anonymity, it's easy for them to spew their Nazi-like hatred.

I'm different.  I tell you where you can find me.  And I'm not afraid to get in your face and tell you what I think.

 

Q.  Do you ever expect anyone to show up at your doorstep?

A.  No.  Like I just said, they're cowards, remember?  They wouldn't dare.

 

Q.  But what if they do?

A.  Then I'll kick ass and claim self-defense.

 

Q.  And what if they're bigger and/or stronger than you?

A.  Granted, I'm not the world's most imposing physical specimen.  The one thing I have going for me is a white-hot nuclear temper.  Now, it doesn't get set off as easily as it used to - must be some sort of age thing (grin) - but when it goes off, watch out.  Those who know me and have seen it go off, don't want to ever see it do so again.

 

Q.  So you'll keep doing it?  Inviting people to "come say it to your face", that is?

A.  Realistically?  I doubt it.  I've married (again) since I first wrote this, and my (current) wife isn't really someone I'd prefer exposing to this risk.  Besides - in all the years I've been doing this, no one's ever had the cojones to show up.

 

Q.  Does your wife read the blog?

A.  No, but she knows about it.  And she has no problem with it.  She knows how I cherish her, and she can see the difference between her sweetie and Darth Venomous.  She's a pretty amazing woman, y'know.  :-)

 

Q.  You said she knows the difference between you and Lord Venomous.  How much of Lord Venomous is you?

A.  Well, Darth Venomous is the alter-ego, so to speak.  But whereas he's a pretty over-the-top, abrasive sort, I'm a pretty nice guy.  Give you the shirt off my back, work on your computer for free if you can't afford my outlandish rates (grin), that sort of thing.

At least, until you piss me off.  Then I turn into Darth Venomous again.  :-)

 

Q.  So what's this deal with Mykeru?

A.  You mean Mykki Chickenshit?

 

Q.  Fuck you, he's my butt-buddy!

A.  Then you're one of the pussies in the Church of the SubTarded, right?

 

Q.  I just might come down and kick your ass!

A.  And I might win the Powerball lottery, too.  But I ain't holdin' my breath.

A.  Anyway, back in 2005, I was tipped to the existence of this little pussy up in Virginia or West Virginia or somesuch, who liked to go around ripping on Christians & conservatives while taking personal-site-caliber bathroom pictures of himself brandishing his M-1 pop-gun.  I emailed him, challenging him to show up on my doorstep if he was such a bad-ass

Naturally, he declined.  Just like every other libtard chickenshit who's ever tried to convince me that his were brass.

It led to an email exchange (complete with videos of him playing with his inflatable dollies) which the pussy then posted on TinyURL and Slashdot (where a good many of his fellow libtard douchebags congregate).  You'll have to look it up yourself if you want to see it that badly.

The bottom line is this:  He was challenged to show; he didn't.  His sockpuppet, an asshole named "Von Vockerman", offered a measly $66 to show up at a neutral site in Tennessee.  Never mind $66 wouldn't even cover the trip up there by car (which I wouldn't have done, anyway) - the check still hasn't shown up nearly six years (as of this writing) later.

Yeah, he's a real bad-ass, alright.

 

Q.  How long do you plan on doing this blogging thing?

A.  Depends on how long I enjoy doing it.  I got tired of running my BBS after about four years, and the Web site incarnation was fun only as long as I had time to invest in it, which wasn't often.  I'll pro'lly keep doing this until such time as it isn't that much of a burden, I s'pose.

 

 

Spatula City BBS!