someone slipped a mickey into the ground zero

Dear Friends,

Have I ever explained to any of you my blogging moniker? I mean, what is a “ScotValkyrie” anyway? Well, “ScotValkyrie” (or scotvalkyrie, or even Scotvalkyrie, they’re pretty much synonymous) came about very early in my internet career, probably about 12 and a half years ago.

Remember life before the internet, kids? Hell, even before faxes and email in general? We had to wait a week before something got done, and then it was considered a “rush job”, and we were happy to have it. If we want to make life better, we should make things that make the process slower again. Or make marijuana legal so then everything will just seem a whole lot slower.

Either works for me.

So anyway, a long time ago, my Dad set up the AOL account in our house. No, I’m not that young, I rebounded back to my folk’s house after grad school and a year of trying to make it on my own in Tacoma, WA. I didn’t do too well up there. I couldn’t tolerate the 4-5 months straight of grey skies and drizzle, despite my training of living in Florida my entire life. It turns out that even though I am of the “fishbelly white” skin tone variety, I am still in need of sunlight. Also, I am not a coffee drinker, which is compulsory in the Pacific Northwest, so I had two strikes against me. I had to leave.

So anyway, Dad set up the AOL account, using his mother’s maiden name as the screen name. Erg.

No, that wasn’t her maiden name. Grandma’s maiden name was just as terse, but it was at least Teutonic in nature. But for the sake of this story, we’ll make it “Erg.” At the time, I dealt with that and explored the internet and became a junkie of certain BBSs and chat rooms of a particular British show called Red Dwarf, and one of the regular things I participated in was this sort of “daily digest” in which all of us would send lengthy emails at each other to one particular address, which was then cut and pasted into another even lengthier email by the monitor of the digest. I guess it was to be precursor to Message Boards or whatever.

At any rate, discussion wasn’t limited to Red Dwarf, naturally, and one thing I do happen to remember is arguing discussing with a vegan why he felt it was okay to wear leather shoes and silk boxers and how could he then remain vegan in both name and action (I seem to remember saying “ANSWER THAT AND STAY FASHIONABLE”) and Mr. Vegan then started a bit of a smear about whether I was actually male or female.

Remember, “Erg” or something like it @ AOL.com doesn’t exactly denote gender, and I so I replied with a bastardization of a line from the Red Dwarf series itself:

I am a 6 foot tall Scottish Valkyrie Warrior Maiden with cleavage you could ski down.

And there it all began. And remained. Forever and ever.

Amen.

I wonder what happened to all those people. I suspect that Mr. Vegan is no longer a vegan. However, if he is still vegan, then I suspect that he is still a jackass. Most of the vegans I have personally met have been jackasses.

I think it’s because they’re hungry.