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From: barry@aurora.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.flame
Subject: Eric Mading, by Doyle, King and Blatty
Message-ID: <1274@aurora.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Nov-87 00:44:32 EST
Article-I.D.: aurora.1274
Posted: Mon Nov  9 00:44:32 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Nov-87 02:32:36 EST
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 45
Keywords: Soon to be a major motion picture

[]

	OK, let's consider this logically. Who/what is Eric Mading? We
begin by eliminating the impossible:

	1) He can't be serious. People who actually "think" like that
are either locked in padded rooms, or live in Sheboygan. They do not
have access to terminals and, if they did, would think they were
typewriters, and never get past trying to figure out where to put the
paper in.
	2) He can't be an AI project. People have posted of actually
seeing him, in the flesh (but WAS it flesh?).
	3) I can't remember 3.
	4) He isn't Rich Rosen; Rich has taste.
	5) He isn't a true pseudo at all. Real pseudos never backpedal,
never turn down the heat they glory in creating, and Eric does this.

	As the Master said, "when you have eliminated the impossible,
that which remains, however unlikely, must be the answer". There is only
one answer left. The net is now haunted. A spirit has awakened, growing
in the mouldering darkness of abuse, stupidity, arrogance, absurdity,
lies, slanders and mean-spirited sickness of spirit that we all know
(and love) as Usenet. Like the Overlook Hotel in _The Shining_, a kind
of composite miasma of twisted evil has fed on this atmosphere, and
spits back the distilled essence in the insane, patternless fashion of
an evil poltergeist. Sometimes we get the hatred of the net's most
twisted souls reflected back at us, but what we get the most of, is the
most common failings of typical Bad Netters. Ego and arrogance;
unsupported assertion; juvenile whining; hypocrisy; meandering
thought-patterns; unselfconscious inconsistency; trivia; trash.
	Eric is, in short, the distilled essence of the worst in all of
us logorrheic net addicts. All the spleen and stupidity ever vented here
has taken on a life of its own, and cackles back at us.
	There is only one thing we can do: an exorcism. Can we find
anyone with the pure spirit needed to banish this demon? Who can save
us? The hunt must begin; I appeal for nominations. Where is the One who
can accomplish this monumental task? For the sake of the Net, for the
sake of our very souls, who can point out our savior? Speak up! The time
grows short.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
         QQQCLC                                 NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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