MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

Before examining the user profile, say "[if month is may 2010]I'm participating in [otherwise]I participated in [end if]Second Annual MeFi Interactive Fiction Competition, May 2010! View my profile"

Standing to one side, a devata addressed the Blessed One with a verse:

Living in the wilderness,
staying peaceful, remaining chaste,
eating just one meal a day:
why are their faces
so bright & serene?

[The Buddha:]

They don't sorrow over the past,
don't long for the future.
They survive on the present.
That's why their faces
are bright & serene.

From longing for the future,
from sorrowing over the past,
fools wither away
like a green reed cut down.

-aranna sutta

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better to get drunk and cry
than show off your learning
in public.

-otomo no tabito

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"Why should I be bitter
About someone who was
A complete stranger
Until a certain moment
In a day that has passed?"

-saigyo

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once, far over the breakers,
i caught a glimpse
of a white bird
and fell in love
with this dream which obsesses me.

-yosano akiko

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come at last to this point
i look back on my passion
and realize that i
have been like a blind man
who is unafraid of the dark.

-yosano akiko

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This is not the moon,
Nor is this the spring,
Of other springs,
And I alone
Am still the same.

-ariwara no narihira

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Tomorrow I was
Going to the Spring meadows
To pick the young greens.
It snowed all day yesterday
And snowed all day today.

-akahito

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"The force of gravity
is not what pulls me down.
It is the snow on the rooftops
Lining the road back home."

-kaibutsu

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'Kaibutsu' is a Japanese word for "monster." More particularly, a monster that walks like a man. I'm not sure whether or not I actually fit the name, but every now and then, when I look into the mirror, I catch a glimpse of a terrible face lurking just behind my real one...

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a few of my all-time favorite sites:
Cat and Girl
McSweeney's
TalkingPointsMemo


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comments people liked:
MetaFilter and Political Discourse
Tattoos as Autobiography
Defining Communism, Socialism, and Anarchism
Discussion on the Sociology of Classical Music

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my words at:
BookFilter
Kuro5hin
But most of the words are at Letters From Nowhere.

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Leper

"Man sits on the subway sipping a cup of tea. The homeless guy sitting next to him starts coughing - hacking like he's about to cough up a lung, and our man glances over at him, wondering what's wrong with the guy. The bum starts coughing again, but louder this time, and you can hear the sound of the cough tearing up his throat. Then the bum's ear falls off, and he catches it and tries to stem the bleeding with his free hand. Everyone else in the train is trying to get away from him, rushing towards the doors at the other end of the car, but our man, he sits there, and he turns to the bum and says, 'Hey, ain't you got any fucking manners? This is a subway, not a goddamned leper colony.' And the bum, he's sitting there with his ear in his hand, and he turns to the man and says, 'Mind saying that to my good ear?'"

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