La Page Aux Folles
Credit where it's due and all.
Credit where it's due and all.
Well, The Sigfile Follies started back in August 1994.
(Just sit back and pretend I'm your grandfather telling you stories about the war.....)
So anyway, there I was surrounded by huns......
For about 6 months I'd been trying to come up with something for my signature file that would be original, with little success. Of course I wasn't putting much effort into it, the little effort I had expended was an e-mail that read:
Hey Gilbert, think up something witty for my signature file, willya?
Of course he was no help, and it wasn't until I was talking with someone about the old Letterman Shows (The morning show he had back in 1980 or so) that I came up with the idea for the Sigfile Follies. And so on August 16th the pilot episode was sent out.
The pilot episode was quickly followed by two more single episodes, "On Her Majesty's Secret Cervix" and "The Old Man in Ward C", and the first reviews rolled in:
From mayor Fri Aug 19 02:24:21 1994 Subject: Re: Sigfile Follies: The reviews are in Content-Length: 131 X-Lines: 6 Status: O jeff, you're _killing_ me with these stories! do you write them? i hope you're collecting them for your book! cam the wanton
The first stories were all one shots, but since my intent was to do a serial, I wrote a 5 episode set entitled "Nineteen Ninety Four" which was filled with in jokes about the University of Manitoba. It was also notable for being the first appearance of Winston Salem, a character who I created pretty much for the exclusive purpose of killing off. He would show up again and again in future storylines which I may have subconsciously intended since he was loosely based on Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout. Of course, aside from inflicting the "longer than 4 line netiquette sigfiles" on my friends, they were also being appended to any posts which I sent through USENET. And it was here in USENET that the first non-Manitoban to enter my twisted world showed up. Imagine my surprise when a USENET correspondent sent me the following:
From cary@as.arizona.edu Thu Aug 25 15:35:14 1994 Date: Thu, 25 Aug 94 13:35:10 MST From: cary@as.arizona.edu (Cary Kittrell) To: carrie@ee.umanitoba.ca Subject: Re: "rule of thumb" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.science Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ In article <33ge26$2fb@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca> you write: [...] >****************************************************************************** >Today on sigfile follies we continue our classic story of repression at >Canadian Universities: > Nineteen-Ninety-Four > (Segment 14) > >****************************************************************************** pretty intriguing! are there prequelae and sequelae to this .sig? cary kittrell steward mirror lab university of arizona
Being Mr. Nice Guy, and also being only too happy to increase my extended family of nutcases, I naturally complied with the request. Whether or not this act was appreciated was answered by Cary's next letter:
I laughed, I cried, I pissed on the cats!
If a book is ever made out of the collections, I think I'll put that
at the top of the dust jacket. Something to notice, is that Cary responded to
a post of mine in alt.folklore.science newsgroup, so the next time
one of us claims it was in alt.fetish.girl-scout or alt.binaries.gypsy-nude
you will realize that we are in fact joking. Or that I lied and edited the header, I can't remember which. Other USENET readers would post similar endorsements:
As soon as I clean out the Diet Dr. Pepper from my keyboard and monitor (I must stop laughing first!), I'll probably say something witty about the subtle Canadian-thoroughbred-horse-urine references. Truly amazing.
I think that's one of my main goals in life, the spit-take. Everytime, someone sends me a note saying they sprayed their drink all over the keyboard, I know I've made the world a better place to live.
Of course not everyone was thrilled with the waste of Bandwidth, but other people were quick to defend me.
From huw@isgtec.com (Huw Leonard) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban Subject: Re: Judy Judy Judy! Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 18:02:38 GMT In article <36csdu$q3l@matrix.eden.com> (Joe D) writes: >jeff carrie (carrie@ee.umanitoba.ca) wrote: >[9 lines of body] >[62 lines of sig] >Please trim your sig a bit. Nay, Jeff, do not! Joe, thou foul varlet that wouldst extinguish Art! Twas by far the best post in quite some time! Out, out, get thee to a punnery! ------------------------------------------------------------ Huw Leonard Speaking only for himself, unless you happen to agree with himThis background stuff goes on for a while, so I won't blame you if you want to start on one of the Storylines .
Or you can continue with The Further Adventures of The Sigfile Follies.