Post by Akbar Le Grey on Jul 23, 2006 3:11:17 GMT -5
July 23rd – July 30th.
Editor-in-Chief: Akbar Le Grey.
Sub-editor: Linda*.
Columnists: Une femme auteur anonyme, Jemima, Sixteen, Snicket, Sora, J, twistedbrain, Libitina, Descartes.
Published by 667er Publications, ltd.
A subsidiary of the 667er Group.
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Swans remained silent on the issues of the random board and jacktripper yesterday, even after repeated inquiries from this reporter. Derik, the other gmod, told this reporter that he, too, knows nothing about the new board; which raises questions about exactly how coordinated the administration is.
PMed twice, swans replied both times with simply ‘no comment’. She was asked for official comments on both the board and jacktripper, and his new guise of General Lee.
It seems, however, that she doesn’t want 667 Dark Avenue to know what’s going on behind the scenes, as she simply refused to give us any sort of comment. However, covertness seems to have become a trademark of the swans regime. We can only wonder as to when we will get an answer.
(Editor's Note: We aplogoize about the earlier contents of this news item, which were opionated. They have been removed. Again, we apologize for this unprofessional behaviour.)
-Akbar Le Grey.
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THE USUAL BEGINNING-OF-THE-WEEK INITIAL OBSERVANCE BIT
Things seemed to have much improved at the start of this week. I could have sworn I saw Dupin online for a few moments, no doubt communing in secret with the other mods, and likely somewhat recovered from the whole Plastics affair. Twistedbrain, too, seemed to have revived her deleted account, not entirely recovered from her tendency to follow whatever more prominent members are doing. (Eoghann, I understand, never really left for more than half a day.) This is the bit I'm writing at the beginning of the week, and I may remove it if something terrible happens, or keep it in for the sake of showing you all my writing processes.
A bit later, Tragedy apparently sided with whatever group is opposed to the Plastics(The Papers?) and gave Ann a strike for being rude(to him, but I suppose it counts). This led to some bickering in which Tragedy made typically cryptic comments, and various others demonstrated their rudeness and inevitably alluded to last week's flamewars. Nothing much really came of this, and overall those flamewars seem to have blown over.
OBLIGATORY SUSPICIONS OF SOME NEWCOMER
A newbie called Logan showed up early this week, and clearly wanted to be controversial. He decried our colorful censorship policies as abusive, and joked(or possibly not) about wanting to take over the forum by instantaneously gaining mod powers. Some compared him to the legendary disastrous co-created parody snob Best of the Best, and he participated in the flood of criticism against General Lee's gaudily colored sitcom forum. Indeed, he falls firmly into the category of "newbies I suspect of being returned older members, or just very suspicious". Or he would, if Libitina hadn't rather spoiled me by mentioning that he was BSam, unless that happened to be just her suspicion.
THINGS ARE INDEED IMPROVING, AS OF THIS WRITING
Before long, Dupin changed his name back to Dupin from "not on 667 anymore", and he did appear to not be not on 667 anymore-- as my kind editor helpfully mentioned in his helpful midweek news report. Meanwhile, the matter of choosing a new FFanwork mod remains confusing, although the applications seem to be done with. My kind editor, like others, was inspired to post in that section by the promise of a mod position. And there are many of the usual, "I won't get the job but I might as well apply here to inspire pity and get my post count up", applications of the sort I understand Tragedy doesn't like. No doubt there's a lot more of this controversy raging where I can't see it.
THE PART WHERE I GUESS AT MODERATORIAL PLANS I HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT
One day, I happened to see this mysterious board added onto the password-protected ones at the bottom:
It was likewise password-protected, and called "destruction" at the end of its URL. Ominous! I suspect that we've either been hacked again, or a hacking is being faked again(unless all of our alleged hackings were fake, in which case only that second suspicion applies), or the moderators are planning another contest of some sort. Later, though, a drastic change happened-- the board was at the very bottom of the Restricted section! I apologize if I'm not supposed to be commenting on this for some reason(I saw a couple of threads mentioning it mysteriously vanish), but I do notice these things, and keep in mind that my speculations are probably wrong anyway. Not to mention that the board has disappeared, as quickly as it came, or at least as quickly as things go away when deleted.
PLEASE NOTE THAT GAMBLING IS OFTEN CONSIDERED A SIN...
...if you're reading this, General Lee. Because you seem to be quite a religious man, spreading the words of some God by making up crude nicknames for evil subversive gay cowboy movies in the process of criticizing people you assume are fans of such movies. And later, insulting people by describing them with inaccurate conceptions of Neo-Paganism. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that Lee made a bet with another, more sensible, relative newcomer. The goal is for him to get 20000 posts by the end of this year-- sadly, with no minimum length specified. So his name has been running down MMisc and at least one other section continuously for the past couple days.
Also, I ought to note, once again, that I believe Lee's Jacktripper-- who had the same goals of being supposedly helpful and increasing his post count. These two goals are not necessarily compatible. Neither is the goal of helping people compatible with the goal of making a huge joke by "pretending to be crazy and mean", as it seemed Lee was doing. Such was the fury stirred up by his supposed joke(though I wonder if Lee really needs to pretend to be bothersome and unpleasant) that Lee apparently must rely on Twistedbrain to explain his own actions. Also like Jacktripper, his account seems to have been disabled, and I suppose his identity as Jacktripper is confirmed.
SELF-REFERENTIAL SECTION HEADLINE
I merely wish to note that our newcomers' names are getting odder and odder. "supremecourthunny"? Could an actual Justice have registered, or does someone have a crush on Justice Scalia, or is this a reference to some wildly popular emo band I am as yet unaware of? Later came "lettuceeightcake"-- were "lettucecake" through "lettucesevencake" already taken? I suppose these are a good sight better than putting numbers on the end of something, but before long we may be seeing "legislaturecutie49" and "lettucetwohundredandthirtyfivecake", and eventually the supply of decent usernames(and the ever-popular indecent sort)will be depleted. It is less reassuring, though, that at least some of these accounts may well have been mass-produced for the express purpose of smiting Dupin, Akbar, PJ, and others. Shame on you, completely unidentifiable person who may be a prominent member! Or Jacktripper.
-Une femme auteur anonyme.
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On Thursday, July 20, a new board was created. Titled 60023101, it had no description, no moderator, no boards, no posts, and held its place right below Nasty None-of-Your-Business. Most, when first witnessing this board, thought it was just a simple one-time glitch. After refreshing the window and exiting to check again, it was still there. This reporter started a thread in MM about it, but, unfortunately, Twistedbrain was the only one to view before it was mysteriously deleted. We exchanged numerous PMs and thoughts.
It wasn’t long before another thread about it was made about it by Shruti. But it didn’t take much time before it too was deleted. By now, a few members had spotted people viewing the board. This board was password protected, of course, so we could not go in. But the topic count remained zero.
Started by PJ, “Who is deleting all our threads?” was the question raised in the third thread about this topic. PJ posted a screen shot of every person who was online just a moment after Shruti’s thread was deleted. Four invisible users made this a particularly hard case. This thread lasted the longest of the three, but was still deleted. Since then, no new threads have been created.
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EYEWITNESS REPORT
By PJ.
Conspiracy? Cover-up? Or is Tragedy just messing with our minds?
So, Thursday afternoon, a random board known only as “60somejumbleofnumbersthaticantremember” (it was numbers, not the text) managed to sneak it’s way into Ruefully Restricted. The URL for the board read only “destruction”.
Of course, threads were made. What was this perplexing and sinister board? And, more importantly, what was the password needed to get in? Then something happened that only heightened the confusion of the few members who had spotted the board: the thread on it was deleted. Sure enough, Calamitas (I think) made a new thread, again asking about the board, as well as the reason for the deletion of the old thread.
Enter PJ. I was equally perplexed. I hadn’t even noticed the board, before seeing the thread. So I did what I always do: accuse random people with little or no evidence whilst typing in caps. People started arguing, and voiced their puzzlement out loud. The name of the board (the jumble of numbers) was google’d and wikipedia’d to no avail. And then, the second thread was deleted. By me. I did it for the hell of it, and cos some higher power had deleted the first thread, so I figured I’d be able to get away with it.
I quickly took a screenshot of the members online: i6.photobucket.com/albums/y228/PJTheHatter/evidence.jpg
…and made a new thread, once again drawing attention to the sinister and perplexing new board, as well as demanding to know who had deleted the second thread. I also confused some people and ranted a bit.
I also noted that, according to the ‘members online screenshot’, there were 7 possible people who could have been able to delete the threads: Shruti, Trish and me, and the four invisible members. Calamitas soon admitted to being one of them (and was promptly accused of deleting the thread by me for this suspicious activity), which drops the number of suspects to 6.
Now, who could these three people be? Swans, Tragedy, Snicket or one of the other G-mods. As Derik was on MSN at the time, it’s highly likely he was one of them. As for the other two, I suggest swans and Tragedy. I think only Tragedy can make boards (emphasis on “think”), and swans is the G-Mod who is online most.
Then the issue died down a bit. A few hours later I noticed, with mild irritation, that my thread had also been deleted, and after that, as far as I know, there were no other threads.
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On July 21, the board moved down one space and was then at the bottom of the list of boards, just under Dreadful Dark Avenue. Did this show that the board was still being handled? (If it was ever handled in the first place) But still no new threads were created. Swans had this to say after a simple question of if she knew what it was. ‘I don’t know.’ And then, without any warning, it was deleted. At that time, we knew nothing about it; it had not posts and no topics to post in, no moderator, no description, and no name we could understand. None have stated any real knowledge about it. One would think that it was just a glitch that lasted for a couple of days and we made a big deal about it. But then, why were our threads deleted?
Swans has said 'no comment', and Derik says he knows nothing about the board. Tragedy has still not replied to our inquiries.
Only time, or possibly some member who knew all about it, will tell.
-Descartes, staff reporter.
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Through The Dark
by Sixteen
It's confirmed.
For everyone out there who couldn't accept "The End" as the title for Book The Thirteenth, this is for you. Not including all the AuthorTracker e-mails, the booksite listings and actually seeing pictures of the cover, Daniel Handler has said it himself. In a BBC news interview, he was quoted as saying, "It is to be expected on Friday 13 October. The title is The End." Now if that isn't concrete evidence, I don't know what is. There's a possibility he could be lying, but why? We know the title. He wants us to know the title. Accept it.
I know it's a bit early to tell you to set your TV to record, but Daniel Handler will be on The Today Show on Friday the 13th of October (the release date of The End). He's also starting a 13-city tour on that date. The first stop is at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, Manhattan. Brett Helquist will also be there, along with The Gothic Archies, who do the Audiobook songs.
The July AuthorTracker came this week. It was titled "Beatrice Unveiled". As usual, Gigi was the first to post it. The e-mail implied that Beatrice may return in The End, and that TBL contains events far beyond TE. It also implies that there will be some Verse Fluctuation Declaration, telegrams, notes and other forms of correspondence - and we thought we were just getting letters. TBL has been compared to Griffin and Sabine, a novel by Nick Bantock, in which one must remove letters from envelopes to read them and has maps and other documents along the way. Maybe the idea that TBL would have removable paper wasn't that crazy after all.
Applications for the Caption Contest in Depressing Diversions are now closed. Each photo has the submitted captions underneath. All you need to do is PM Gigi with your choices before Wednesday the 26th. The winners will be put up in polls next week.
TRR distractions are up! Trivia questions are now being submitted through PM, along with the Allusions. There is also a word search and another version of the anagram game with TRR phrases. A new game called Reptile Recognition invites you to invent a reptile and submit it for others to comment on. Don't be afraid to be as wacky as you want!
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By Libitina
The 667er: Greetings, Shruti. Thank you for joining us.
Shruti: You're most welcome, O gracious interviewer.
The 667er: When did you first join 667?
Shruti: Oh, I created an account over two years ago and forgot about it; I returned in March 2005 and started posting.
The 667er: How has the forum changed since then? Do you like things better now?
Shruti: I think what's most different now is the absence of certain members - I mean, Dante and Antenora, Ennui and Amber - they were - I don't know, staples. And now none of them are around, and the forum seems to have a completely different atmosphere. One of which I'm not nearly as fond.
The 667er: What are some of your interests or hobbies?
Shruti: I adore reading, as do most of us here. I also play the flute, and the alto sax to a lesser extent.
The 667er: What is your favorite book?
Shruti: No, I can't answer that. There are too many great ones. I'm reading The Satanic Verses right now, by Salman Rushdie, and it looks to be excellent, but I can't name a favorite. It would be traitorous towards all the books I didn't name, because there are tons that are amazing. The last great book I read was The Picture of Dorian Gray, though.
The 667er: What is your favorite book in ASOUE?
Shruti: Probably The Slippery Slope, although I love the first three as well.
The 667er: Explain your obsession with Stephen Colbert.
Shruti: Haha, I figured this was coming. Actually, I didn't. But one can dream...
Anyway, I first saw his show a few weeks after it debuted, and I fell in love. With the show, not him. Not yet, at any rate. But it was the day that Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court fell through. And the Word was "quitter," and ended with this sentence:
You, Harriet Miers, are a quitter. Not an acquitter, because only judges can acquit, and you will never be a judge, because you are a quitter.
Basically, Mr. Colbert - Dr. Colbert, if you count the honorary D.F.A. from Knox College - but the point is, his show is brilliantly witty and satirical, and I adore it.
The 667er: How...interesting. And slightly disturbing. Who are some of your best friends on 667?
Shruti: Oh, I don't know. I admire several people on 667 tremendously. I frequently converse with Alice, J., Dupin, and Akbar; also with PJ and Dante at times. And you too, actually.
The 667er: What are your fondest and most vivid memories of 667?
Shruti: I don't know, really. Nothing stands out. I just enjoy being able to come here and talk to people with similar interests and such.
The 667er: What events have you organized or participated in on 667?
Shruti: I don't think I've organized any; I participated in the 667 Apprentice and am in Big Brother 4 right now.
The 667er: What is your favorite board on 667, and why?
Shruti: I really like being able to discuss various books in LLit; I like WWriter because Handler's other work deserves attention as well; I like DDiscussion because of the - er, well, the discussions that take place there.
The 667er: Is there anything you'd like to tell the general 667 public?
Shruti: No, not really.
The 667er: Thank you for your time.
Shruti: You're most welcome.
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THE JACKTRIPPER CHRONICLES
Leaving vague remarks and regrets about his actions, General Lee (also known as Jacktripper) provided a new source of forum drama. To start with, he apologized for his actions, but did not specify what his actions were. The administrator, Tragedy, and some other members, began trying to get him to be more specific, but General Lee wouldn’t budge, so other members began to tell their stories. According to the member, Kate:
“He took me to a cockfight and then beat me up with his peg leg while shouting inaccurate racial slurs -- I'm not Chinese, General! You can't call me that! It doesn't make sense! -- before leaving me on the side of the highway without my favorite pair or shoes or the rest of my clothes.”
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Twistedbrain also admitted to being a victim: “He insulted my religious beliefs, called me insulting names, and was generally an @$$hole.” At last, it was General Lee’s turn to speak. According to him, he faked a marriage proposal to Zavi, and Twistedbrain found out and got involved. Among other things, he annoyed Gigi and accidentally, (and later, intentionally,) insulted Twistedbrain’s religion. Despite General Lee’s regretful confessions, Twistedbrain responded harshly, arguing that she was looking out for her friends, because General Lee was harassing them. The thread, now on page 5, began with General Lee’s taunts of “witch witch witch broom riding witch.”
The fight soon degraded into religious slurs from General Lee, as a deeply offended Twistedbrain defended her religious choices, as Calamitas tried to respond to General Lee’s comments. Even though General Lee had apologized before, Twistedbrain demanded apologies for his recent attacks on her religion. General Lee was given two strikes for “rudeness, harassment and terrible representation of Christianity,” in addition to two given for posting in the Hall of Records when he was not a staff member. General Lee was then banned, and the thread was temporarily taken over by Ann and Kate. If there’s one thing we learned from all this, it’s that if you weigh as much as a duck, then you are made out of wood and therefore, you are A WITCH! BURN HER!
Swans also confirmed that General Lee was also controversial member jacktripper, who was banned for being rude and annoying.
Among Jacktripper's numerous "pranks", he once lamented about his fake break-up with twistedbrain, which prompted numerous 667ers to yell at him.
-J, staff reporter.
STRIKES RECEIVED BY GENERAL LEE
General Lee. Jacktripper. Same person, and he’s OUTTA HERE! Events spiraled to a large finale last night, after Lee scored all three strikes in one day.
Strike One: Posting in the Hall of Records in complaint of a warning given to him by Gigi. You can view the entire PM conversation leading up to that warning here. I think it’s pretty evident Gigi was in the right, and Lee overreacted.
Strikes 2-3: “Rudeness, harassment and terrible representation of Christianity.” The whole mess can be viewed here. Basically, he said he had a confession to make, but that he wouldn’t say it since I wasn’t(Note: I wasn’t even online at this time. ). I stood up for myself and my friends when I finally posted my side of the story and he flipped out, because it didn’t match up with his twisted reality. He flung religious insults at me, called me a devil worshipping witch because I study Wicca and paganism, and was being totally unreasonable. Eventually Tragedy stepped in and gave him two strikes for the reasons listed above. His account is now frozen, and hopefully it’ll be deleted in the near future. Apparently jacktripper’s second try at 667 failed worse than before.
If there’s one thing we have in common it seems, here on 667, it’s the hatred for jacktripper. At least that’s how it seems. May he never come back.
-twistedbrain.