e-scetics

Some of the brothers here, including Brother K.B. and the Prior, Charles, are learning about the World Wide Web. Lately, in their fast spiraling (down) into niche-internet-addiction, they refer to it simply as "MySpace".

Myspace.comPANY appears at first glance to be an internet portal. You know, a starting point, going out.

But it is not a portal. Every link directs you further into the beast. There are about 25 million people there, it's the 'internet' all right, but it's MySpace, and it's bad. Internet crack.

At one time it was going out of business, but I think Rupert Murdock bought it.
I have this screen capture, when they announced they were becoming a ghost site of the internet, and sent it to K.B. as a little prank.

Then I was so concerned how he might react, I ran down the hall to tell him the announcement was from 2003, or whenever.

Now the scriptorium, which used to have a pool table, is a media room and we have a couple or three hermits, who weren't hermits a month ago, in competition for computer time.

(This is all my fault. I'm going to hell for it , I just know. I brought in the first computer, I ordered up the cable high speed. And come to think of it, the brothers almost didn't let me move in to the dorter at all, since I'd admitted I might have a problem with internet isolation.)

Can you imagine? Some of these guys have been behind bars for a few years.

Their first discovery, I believe, was Yahoo Matchmaker. (One fellow, since departed, actually clicked on little-bunny-fufu-try- to bop him in the head WIN A PRIZE! ads.)

Those personal ads were a thrill, leading to anonymous chat rooms, where I actually worried about their safety. So damn naieve.

Internet days later, the concept of peer to peer music/video theft shook their souls and rattled their brains. This was happening so fast I couldn't keep up, I was like , god's will be done, I been there. And those songs download fast, and can be transfered to CDs.

And then of course, the almost pre-historic most revolutionary discovery of all: internet PRon. Which led me to warn them about viruses and trojans and haha, do you hear that, viruses and trojans, man alive, I put it all down for them to pick it up, get smart.

I changed their computer to use a safer browser, I installed firewalls, search and destroy machines, etc. All this while they hooted about onanism and what is the expression for a monastic order of master debaters? Etc. Yeah yeah, ha ha. They thought they'd discovered why I was always online.

But,--- not so odd, and thankfully--- this phase passed quickly. They have their DVDs, after all. Some of the brothers even have girlfriends.



This is when MySpace was discovered. Which meant internet photography, and MY digital camera.

It also meant BLOGGING (something I used to do. This, this is a scroll, not a blog.) (Because I say.) (Because it's my blog and if I want to call it a scroll, it's a scroll, gdmit.)

BLOGGING is what's got K.B. hooked for good, and I can't help him, nobody can. He is a terrific writer, funny as hell, three lols a post at least; and he is a self-absorbed, immature ADDICT of course, checking for feedback constantly, the poor fellow.

His list of "subscribers" is growing everyday.

What is it Zigfield calls this? He told me again just today. "Scheduled intermitent positive reinforcement".

K.B.s got a comments section, natch, and he's got what amounts to a sitemeter. He has a blogroll, of sorts, "friends of Kevitron", that is growing and growing. From those he is cultivating penpals, which I think is healthy at least.

He is on the computer all night and all day if he's off work.

He's like me. It's hard to witness.

I blogged for years. Yesterday as we were driving upt'town for a speakers meeting, I told him about it, and how I eventually began to drink again. Then I had the internet and my substance addiction going at the same time. I said, "Can you imagine what happened then?"



"Shares plummetted, that's what."