In early 2001, when I was at the stage completely caught up by the whole culture and mystique of the internet, I was able to somehow convince 41 very talented people, who were friends, acquaintances, and the like, to submit to various free-form stories which ran on a simple server side script on my flagship website “cynicworld.com”. It was a pretty advanced web site for its day, running multiple skins using server side html includes, and various perl scripts which automated the publishing of data.
I was merely a sophomore in college, but I had a wide ranging network to draw from: friends from high school, online friends, personal bloggers, etc. In retrospect, the writing was somewhat typical of the young, but on the whole, because of the quality of people I knew, it tended to be quite strong.
The web application worked like this: an author would start a story line, by typing into a form, and another author would add to that story line depending on how he or she felt. After a while, there would be a web of many stories that different readers (all word of mouth) could add to, with each thread of stories often with a common theme. After awhile, a lot of people had contributed to the stories in their different ways.
This was before blogs were very popular, and experimentation of various dynamic elements to the internet was absolutely new, and I found it completely compelling. In fact, I find this free-form type of blog very compelling, to this day.
After a few months of this, my server host had a meltdown (quite common, in those days), and shortly after, my computer hard drive had an unexpected failure that was caused by me and all the data was lost for a period of 5 years. It was only in 2006 that I spent the $600 necessary for a lab to retrieve my old information, and it was only today I was able to dig through the garbage and retrieve many of the stories. I tried for a few hours to get the old perl script to work with my new web server, but alas, it’s using ancient code that is no longer compatible. I was able to extract the stories into individual HTML files, which is composed of each story arc or line.
This is the first story line. There are a total of 46, many with multiple authors. In this first story line are my high school friends Shinah and my college friend Waylan, who I met through James.
Shinah was one of the first people I bothered to “contribute” to my free-form story application, and she obliged with an open mind.
Waylan was much easier to convince– he didn’t need any convincing at all. To this day he never does need much convincing at anything to do with experimentation in terms of the communicative arts.
[skchang at fas.harvard.edu]
April 29, 2001 11:33 PM
Fresh Start – Not so fresh mind
Wow, the first one to write on a brand new slated Cynicworld and I have nothing much to say. Why? I’m thinking about pornography and censorship and why pornography tells men to dominate women and tells women that they are objects to be dominated and they better f*cking enjoy it. Does it cause the power-dominance relation between men and women or is it a symptom of it? I don’t know; it’s late and I’m tired of thinking. I want a hug. And a cute, black puppy.
[editorial note: my family was breeding black pugs at the time, and i was boasting to shinah at how a black pug was a girl magnet]
[skchang at fas.harvard.edu]
April 30, 2001 05:30 PM
Spring
You know you’ve been living in winter too long when you look up at the trees everyday, watching the buds’ progress as they slowly swell and finally uncoil into delicate new-green leaves. It’s the prettiest sight when it’s just rained so the trees’ bark is stained a deep brown and the pinkish-white blossoms stand out against that darkness. The greener it gets, the happier you feel. You even find yourself encouraging the soft blades of grass that are finally pushing through the hard-packed earth. As bad as Boston winters are, spring has never looked this gorgeous.
Waylan
[TuShort007 at yahoo.com]
May 1, 2001 03:03 AM
A Cleansing
for a single night, the sky unleashed a downpour unlike any other, drenching and flooding all in its path, leaving nothing dry in its wake. and for a single night, it seemed alright.
It seemed fine, even noble for nature to wash itself, to fully cleanse itself, removing and purging all impurities.. to attain a newborn balance; perfection.
4/7
for a single night, everything in the world seemed to be in perfect equilibrium. the moon shined brighter than ever before (99% visibility in fact); the skys were curiously clear, serene, and tranquil after a night of harsh rainfall; trees still, grass damp, the night completely peaceful… flowers and colors more briliant than flowers and colors had ever seemed. And a smell that can only be described as “fresh,” “clean,” and “new.”
It was as if the world itself had come alive again, reveling in its new appearance. Like a flower blooming from its slumber within a bud, the night had sprouted anew. Like a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly, nature had managed to evolve itself, if but for one night only.
Glorious, beautiful, picturesque, natural, breathtaking, relaxing, surreal; perfect.
** This is what I believe to be the perfect night, one that follows unexpected sudden showers. Akin to a much needed shower after an overdrawn physical ordeal, and the cleansing of the body as a result, the result following a rainstorm is the cleansing of the earth. from this, nature becomes relaxed, rejuvenated, and balanced as a whole. everything is in equilibrium. **
