From: rigler@galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu (Max Schnell)
Subject: Re: My Lamest Moment
Organization: IFA
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 19:31:31 GMT

In article <grendel.02xw@canetoad.UUCP> grendel@canetoad.UUCP (Rage y Romance) writes:
>In article <1992Aug29.080709.29120@news.Hawaii.Edu> rigler@galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu (Max Schnell) writes:
>>grendel@canetoad.UUCP (Rage y Romance) writes:
>>[an adventure story from his poverty-stricken youth]
>
>(stuff deleted about Rigler's glance of this Hell we call Earth)
>
>1st: how do you know I'm a "him".

Sorry.  I botched your gender because I mistook you for another t.b
poster whose name starts with a 'G' (now I can't even think of who
that is but maybe it will come back to me in the next few minutes).

My point is that I did NOT mistake your gender because I'm some sort
of sexist pig who by assumes by default that only a man could have 
mastered the skills required to post to Usenet.

I am, in fact, not a sexist pig.  But I don't have time today to give
you a three page proof so you'll have to take my word for it.  Or not.

>2nd: Adventure??? The 1st time on a rollercoaster ride is a fucking
>     ADVENTURE. I just like to think of that story as a particularly
>     fucked up moment in my poverty-stricken youth.

Sorry.  That was, perhaps, a poor choice of words.  But, technically
speaking, my use of it still falls within the bounds of the dictionary 
definition:  (1) a risky undertaking, (2) a remarkable and exciting 
experience.  Note that this does not exclude *negative* experiences,
like yours.

>3rd: You need to ask yourself what do we teach each other in society
>     that you could have fallen back to sleep. I think your 
>     subconscience, (which is taught a whole bunch of shit by
>     the majority society) was driving and felt your
>     preservation was more important than that woman's life.
>     We as people are occassionally responsible for other people.
>     Eventually we have to wake up and smell the slime and admit that
>     fact to our conscience-selves.
>                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is actually the statement which prompted me to follow up your message.

It took some courage for me to admit my failure to help that person.  I 
suppose I could have instead chosen to tell a tale of success, like you 
did.  But I didn't.

And I must draw that line here and deny the implication that my failure 
stemmed from cowardice or societal brainwashing.  As I said in my article, 
I fell asleep because (a) I mistakenly believed the victim was being as-
saulted in a location very near a large crowd of people, and (b) I was 
completely physically and mentally exhausted to the point of obliviousness 
to my surroundings, because of the hours I put in at work.

But I know that there is no way I can describe what my first two years of
graduate school were like without my tale being met with disbelief or even
ridicule.  At this moment, casting my mind back into that dark well, I fish 
out three arbitrary selected memories to share with you.  At the time of 
my story: (1) I had lost 30 lbs of body weight from malnutrition during 
the preceding 2 months, (2) I was drinking >>10 cups of coffee a day, and
(3) it was my habit to read (and re-read) chapters from The Gulag Archipelago
(parts I, II, and III; by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), searching for inspiration
like other people search in the Bible or the Koran.

But that was long ago and has nothing to do with the real world and I have
digressed.  I found both your stories interesting.  Keep up the good work.

Rigler
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre