Pre-Preface
So, why Stupidopolis? Well, we have been calling this stuff GRAFFITTI forever, but when it came to actually purchasing a domain name, I discovered that GRAFFITTI.COM belongs to a legitimate graphics business (snicker – makes me wonder if there’s a company out there with “NUCULAR” in its’ name). Anyway, I brainstormed – I had a little spreadsheet with nouns, verbs and adjectives to combine – and I learned something. Don’t bother doing that; it’s a waste of time.
Another problem was Graffitti was a motif under which the whole site was constructed. There was a wall of graffiti, there were dirty limericks. It just felt like a filthy public restroom if you know what I mean. Without the name, we would have to change the motif. And we weren’t going to settle for “MYGRAFFITTIONLINE24.COM!” Yeah, that’s catchy. Stupidopolis came from a verbal brainstorming session, and I just thought it was catchy. The name is not really significant, although as this site evolves, it may become so.
Welcome therefore to Stupidopolis! I like saying it so much I paid Bob Parsons $9.19.
Fred, Editor
Preface
Concerning what follows: This web-page is by and large garbage. We know it, and we admit it. But it is our garbage. Some of it is real (like My First Death Threat), some of it is not, most of it is intended to be funny. What you will not find here is a log of any of our thoughts or daily activities, unless we consider doing a blog parody…
We welcome criticism, constructive or not. You could even flame us; bad attention is still attention. We do ask that anyone who wishes to comment register a username with us first. We will not send you anything (unless you specifically ask us to), nor will we give your information to anyone else. Your privacy is your own delusion and we will not be an accessory to shattering it.
Please be assured that what is contained herein is really entirely the property of Stupidopolis.com (except where noted), regardless of what you or anyone else might think. If you begin to think otherwise, please read our disclaimer. We will not entertain claims to the contrary.
Lastly, what follows was born of countless (or more precisely, uncounted) hours of (sexual) frustration as computer science majors at a minor university. Even now, 20 years later we still have not worked it out. So browse around, laugh, cry, or fume all you want. We can’t hear you.
Fred, Editor
A Brief History of GRAFFITTI (Stupidopolis)
or: I Was Drunk, The Devil Made Me Do It
A few possibilities occur to me when I think about the types of people who might be reading this. You are either:
- Looking for the funny stuff. “Where the hell is the funny stuff? I clicked on every link and I can’t find anything funny!” Our sincerest apologies to you, we will endeavor to cater more to your specific humor needs in the future. In the meantime, please sit in your closet and wait for us to call you.
- Curious as to the origins of Stupidopolis, and maybe even interested in just who would write stuff like this in quantity.
- Similar to above, but pissed at the writers, and looking toward whom to focus your aggressions.
- A web page addict who must hit every link at every page to which you surf. My advice would be to spend a few days creating the most elaborate Rube Goldberg suicide machine you can come up with. It must involve at least 25 actions and take more than two minutes to execute.Or, maybe you are just:
- Bored out of your mind cuz it’s too (insert most hated adverse meteorological phenomenon here) outside at the moment, and you are tired of playing with yourself because you always know what you’re gonna do.
Whatever the case may be, you have come, and so I feel obligated to tell a little of this timeless tale of love and gardening tools. It all began thousands of years ago in a galaxy not far from your living room. Woops, that’s the wrong story. This story began thousands of years ago in a University Extension not far from your living room. In those days the years started with a 1. I didn’t own a PC then because they sucked. Not that any of that mattered, because we did all our programming on the mighty VAX-11/730. We submitted our code for compilation via the ultimate user interface, the VT-101. And every Friday, I entered the “Holy of Holies”, as my brother did before me, and his brother after him, to communicate with the VAX directly via its teletype terminal. In praise of the mighty VAX, and to vent our frustration over having to spend many more hours in front of its interfaces than we could ever dream of spending wooing members of the opposite sex, we wrote. We erected an account named GRAFFITTI, and gave it a personality which we called System Dump. And therein we poured our love, our anger, our Mountain Dew, and our No-Doz. It amounted to 383 Blocks of text when we finally left that fine Extension for the big University of Flatville in the kneecap of Cowland. Knowing that without our care and watchful eye our work would not last long, we preserved it on paper, and every few years I would look at it and say “I gotta either throw that crap out or put it on the web.”
Then Grad school happened and I began writing again. Much of the original material made it to the web for a few years, and some new stuff was written. HTML made things so much more fluid and colorful, but the interactive aspect was gone. Back in those days the Web was different; there were no blogs, no forums, no Java applets, no PHP or MySQL. There was only email and guestbooks. I am pretty certain that in three years two people signed our guestbook, and only one person sent an email.
Here’s our old counter from GRAFFITTI:
“Let Mr. Web Counter depress you! Put a Web Counter on your page and learn the insignificance of your work!”
Whether it’s a masochistic streak, or just that I think life is too good right now, I do not know, but here once again is the old crap from long ago, and hopefully some new crap will be added soon.
Enjoy.
About Me
Lastly, about myself. Excepting a very small and dwindling percentage of articles and silly posts, everything here is a product of my own brain cells. One noteworthy exception is nohil08, who I think will be ranting about politics or something like that.
I don’t pretend to know what I am doing, or that any of this is worth the photons it is bombarding your retinas with, but I like the dynamic that is evolving here. The tension between the various characters will drive some of the article direction, and I think I need some direction…
Anyhow, visit often, leave comments, participate in the random polls, and if you enjoy anything you see here, please spread it around. It really is depressing to see only 10 or 15 hits per day. 🙁
Erk, Editor