`~'o.  cThUlU'S .o`~'
        ...o...TABMeet (TABNet FOUr YEar ANNIVERSAary!) REVIew...o...


It is then that I discover that my long lost twin brother, who had abducted 
my wife and sold my controlling share in my rival's company, was even now 
lost in a violent tropical storm in MY yacht, run aground on a sandy shoal, 
and that I was the only one who could save him... were it not for this 
blasted dyslexia!  (and the eyepatch doesn't help too much either.)

Wait a second... something's not quite in keeping with the objective nature 
of the universe here, and I think that what follows on the next few lines 
will be somewhat indicative of that.

---   ---   ---   Woop woop!  TabNet soap opera alert!    ---   ---   ---

Well, sort of.

It involves me, and someone who tabs on and off regularly, but has 
consistantly for the past 3 years and like 9 months, much like myself.  It 
also involves the best friend of a small black bird whose name is a 
palindrome. (No, not racecar.  No, not saippuakauppias.  No, not A Man, A 
plan, A canal: Panama.) But this bird, you see, is in some sort of 
relationship type thingy with one of the original old school tabcore elite 
people, so anything involving her or any of her friends, particularly her 
best one (as has been proved at recent meets) is intrinsically linked to 
tab.  Hence, this qualifies as tab soap opera (tabera?) material,  
especially considering that at least two people on various links of the 
chain of these degrees of separation have been involved in past tabnet soap 
operae as well.  Consider this the spin-off that appears a couple of seasons 
later.

I'm very afraid that me and another tabber both continue to pursue the 
attentions the same member of the opposite sex (but not only that but a 
bloody cool person regardless) that I wull not only lose the popularity 
contest, but feel obligated to hate the victor in any event.  Regardless of 
how things turn out, I don't know if the friendship can be maintained.  I 
don't know if I'm strong enough to lie on the floor in the presence of more 
than one couple, or more to the point, to be willing to suffer the 
exponential exclusion of such circumstances just to enjoy the mere presence 
of the individual I failed to interest.  Practically everyone in my social 
group could simply become a trigger to really really painful memories.  
Can't lost love be casual enough to suffer through without having the rest 
of your life forcibly reshaped as well? (and is the strong one the one who 
can stay with his friends in spite of the memories or the one who 
acknowledges defeat and goes on to greater things with different people?  
since when is spite a good thing?)

ya pansy-arsed pontificatin' lier! nae, ya just want a warm place ta stick
yer noodle!  don't be so freekin' idealized about the whole thing! for
chrissakes, boy! do you have to be so melodramatic about everything?  It's
just love, for crying out loud!  There are so many more important things in
life!  (this is the denial voice, best said in a scottish accent) I am
always, always, always just interrupted before getting to the juicy bits
which I'm really just aching to confess to anyone who'll spare me the ears,
but I never get to the meat of the matter.  Still, my anguish is apparent
enough for Barbara, at Benny's, to impart unto me the wisdom that jealousy is
the worst possible thing to incur on my part.  (denial voice back) Damned
straight, lad!  There noo need ta be like [persons whose names were given to
me in confidentiality] an' screw oop a parfarctly good friendship for
th'attentions of a flavour 'o the day!  Bloody hell!  (the rest of me agrees
with that last sentence, but has a hard time accepting the sincerity of the
rest of it.  well, in regard to the previous paragraph, the insipid melodrama
of the whole thing yes, the denial was pretty right on.)

(Hm.  I really wish my denial voice ranked my attentions at higher than the
carnal level, [hm.  noodle.  amusing, but a cheap shot at myself? ] because
truth be known, it is one aspect which hadn't occured to me before.  and
despite easy words, it still hasn't.  if it had, I'd probably be in a much
worse place than I'm in right now.  That's right, Surrey.  That's where 
people with sick minds end up.  Well, that, Burnaby, and New Westminster, he 
amends, making room to inculde Soema and the location of Mugs 'N Jugs.) (Not 
that there's anything sick about thinking about sex, mind you.) (Unless you 
visualize the people's faces at the moment of climax a bit too vividly.) 
(That's enough, Rowan.  In fact, that's more than enough.  In fact, the soap 
opera ends right here.)

Will the trained monkey recover from the drugged dates soon enough to free 
the valiant doctor from the biker's insidous deathtrap?  Will the heroic 
lawyer make it to the courtroom in time to belay the injunction to demolish 
the orphanidge [gee, that's not how it's spelt] housing the long-lost love 
child being desperately searched for by the mysterious tycoon?  Tune in next 
year, and until then...

---   ---   ---   ---   TO BE CONTINUED...   ---   ---   ---   ---   

(yes, I guess I felt that I had the need to squeak something intensely 
personal out, but I didn't feel clearly enough about it either to articulate 
it well or to present it as anything other than being hedged between lots of 
pseudo-entertaining babble to prevent it from being taken seriously in any 
context.  of course, I don't really see anything wrong with keeping in 
style, in form, in character - too much melodrama makes my head spin, but 
then again, if I didn't find anything wrong with it, the first half of this 
disclaimer wouldn't be present.  and if the first half weren't there, this 
second half wouldn't be neccessary.  can I protect myself from exposing 
intimacy and insecurity by wrapping any vital statement in folds of 
contradiction?  I suppose you can find that answer by re-reading this 
paragraph.) (However, if I stick the word "fish" at the end of it, an 
entirely different answer can be gotten.) (small piece of aquarium life, 
destined for a fate on the skillet.) (aha, another contradictory message! 
these answers come too easily!  and I never need be taken seriously again!)
(For I suppose that no one else should bother to take me seriously until I 
can take myself as such.  What's indicated above is probably a sign that I'd
like to be taken as such, perhaps taking a first few steps in that 
direction, but am not secure enough to strip away this 90% of packaging 
making my messages the most obsese in the western world. that will be a nice 
image to end on - not entirely serious, not intentionally silly, but simpy a 
peculiar image (that happens to coincidentally synchronize with your 
implications of contradiction.)) (shut up.) (shut up. shut up. shut up.)

(insert token Scud the Disposable Assassin (tm) reference here:
"Early to bed and early to rise, blah blah blah, shut the fuck up.")

(shut up.)

(just one more aspect of my life I may feel compelled to ignore.)

(shut up.)

thank you.

so, where was I?
    
ah yes...

---   ---   ---   ---   TO BE CONTINUED...   (cont'd) ---   ---   ---   ---

Day 2 starts when we go to sleep.

snore.  twitch.  spasm.  roll.  tickle.  cough.  snore.  spasm.  copulate 
discreetly (don't worry, it wasn't with joanna.) spasm. (unrelated to the 
previous item.) snore.  cough.  look at clock.  snore.  procrastinate.  
snore.  have grand dreams about drowning kittens.  think that would be a 
great thing to put in a meet review.  snore.  get up.  get down.  play that 
funky music white boy, play that funky music 'till you die.  snore. snore 
with one eye open.  all right already, I'm getting up.

ah, 2:30 pm.  Several people called while I was asleep.  I'm pretty sure 
that at least one of them was chris.  Another was brooke, at about 12:30, 
alone at Robson Square.  On my parents' line, Joanna's parents had called, 
and both of us had heard my mom answer downstairs and neither of us had done 
anything about it.

and woody's feet were not just cold, but FUCKING COLD, wreck beach style,
(that reminds me, someone don't let me fall asleep after The Pope's new 
years' eve party this year (to which we're all sort of extended early 
invitations, in his new pad downtown,) 'cause this year, THIS year, I DO THE 
POLAR BEAR SWIM!  and I'll need one person to hold a towel, another person 
to hold a camera, and a third person to man the defibrulators. (zappy chest 
paddle things that go zzzzzzz... CLEAR! (beep) ZZZAP! just like the original 
TST chat screen. oh yes.) the signup sheet will be next to the punch bowl 
for this glorious duty for the betterment of all mankind.  Hm, maybe I 
should take pledges or something, and donate the money to the beached whale 
foundation.  I can finally do some good for them beyond being their poster 
boy and mascot and subject of the upcoming calendar!) and I was talking 
about woody's feet, you may remember, wreck beach style (baby!) because he
had chosen to sleep with bare feet rather than to let his toes rot in sweaty
socks, replete with the multifaceted grimes of a tabmeet (marshmallow dust, 
bumfoam, cat saliva, bitterness particles, unrequited love (tm) (now in a 
bottle, for squeeze-a-ble convenience!), homoerotic tension, bits of power 
beads, duct tape, and that strange secretion eliteness entails.)

Wow.  Less than one quarter of that paragraph was actually outside of
parentheses.

Suffice it to say that his feet were cold enough to warrant a paragraph of 
that length, even if the paragraph they got wasn't entirely dedicated to his 
feet, or rather, their temperature.

Woody and Joanna waken, make plans to return home and do boring things, then 
proceed to do so.  I go downstairs and take care of Slut.  (and do I EVER!  
He's not gonna sit down for a WEEK!)



"Odd... how [directly in front of the car] two men crossed the same 
intersection kitty-corner at the same time, and passed each other right in 
the middle.  And one of them was carrying toilet paper."

"And the other was carrying a rocket launcher!"

"You who squeezed the Charmin now must DIE!"

"(insert bloom county reference here!)"

Brooke gets dropped off.

Let's go around the roundabout!

that inspires fake book captions:

"Round and Round she goes... where you stop... YOU DIE!"

"Kermit the Zombie - it's not easy ... being DEAD!"

"Monstrious Caesar - He Came, He Saw, He KILLED!"





Then Rowan throws himself backwards onto the futon next to his computer, on 
the flocatti aka big furry thing and lets waves of weariness flood over his 
brain, wishing that perhaps he hadn't used quite so many parentheses, and 
considering snipping out the 100 lines or so of soap opera, and then comes 
to the realization in the quiet, alone on the futon, that he can hear his 
parents snoring A FLOOR ABOVE him.  (That ain't snoring you're hearing!) 
(Shut up, Travis.) (Rather, Rowan says shut up to that part of his brain he 
has named after Travis, it being prone to appreciate bouts of such nature as 
dropping your drawers in public and singing what the old grey nag used to 
be. or rather, isn't.) (in all fairness, I really make more such comments to 
him than he does to me, but only because I suspect he appreciates them more 
than anyone else.  is all that laughter anything more than polite aversion?)
(yikes.  introduce one grain of public doubt into a man's mind and he 
questions everything down to a tendancy for rude humour (if it can even be 
called that)... maybe if I had more doubt my odious personal habits would 
vanish!  I no longer will tell dead baby jokes at every occasion! Nah.  This 
really isn't proving a good point, but I consider those things part of my 
essence. some essence.  If I can't have certainty, I can at least have 
integrity.  stick with what I know.)

(hey, remember what you just said about too many parentheses?)
(and remmber what you said about waves of weariness?)
(and WHAT time is it again?  in how many MINUTES do you have to get up to go 
to school?)

        W       A       S       H       s       s       s       h       w

Date: 10:16 pm  Sat Nov 29, 1997       Number : 210 of 213
From: Zinnia Kray                      Base   : --tab- alt.cabbage.die.die
To  : Cthulu                           Refer #: 207
Subj: Re: hmmm..                       Replies: None
Stat: Sent                             Origin : Local

C> It is then that I discover that my long lost twin brother, who had
C> abducted  my wife and sold my controlling share in my rival's
C> company, was even now  lost in a violent tropical storm in MY yacht,
C> run aground on a sandy shoal,  and that I was the only one who could
C> save him... were it not for this  blasted dyslexia!  (and the
C> eyepatch doesn't help too much either.)
C> ---   ---   ---   Woop woop!  TabNet soap opera alert!    ---   ---  ---

Hey, that's no fun.  If you're going to spill your guts in a public forum,
you might as well do it in a way that the whole world can understand rather
than just a select few initiates (or, like myself, very intuitive people).  

Er... like me... and my.... evasive.... dream.... sequences..... er.....

I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH EACH AND EVERY MEMBER OF TABNET!!!!
 
(very diplomatic, Mr. Premier. The proles will lap that one up. Democracy
for all!)

If everyone told everything at the same time, I would be on hand, willingly
and gratefully, with a big Magick Marker (tm) and a huge piece of white
paper stapled to the wall, to draw the Evil Soap Opera Flow Chart. Then
someone could convert it to ASCII.  There would be different levels of
connections.

---- went out with
==== had sex with
-=-= nearly had sex with
~~~~ fell in love/mild infatuation with
><><> jealous of
::::: brief moment of fleeting passion
{}{}{ wrote poetry for
..... cheated on
,.,., dumped for
\\\\\ sent confessional emails to
 //// sent angry "keep your hands off ______" emails to
!!!!! had sexy dream about
&*&*& considered suicide over

etc. etc. ad nauseum  (this topic interests me greatly. I find it very
amusing in a semi-detached sort of way.)