From: jose@csd.uwo.ca (Jose Thekkumthala)
Subject: -- The Psychology of a Net-Writer: Part II -- by Jose
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London
Distribution: alt.culture.kerala
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 19:55:34 GMT


   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
   +                                           +         
   +   THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A NET-WRITER          +         
   +                                           +
   +             PART II                       +                                
   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
   
       -------------------------------------------------------
NOTE:  The flames on this article will not be entertained.
       They will simply be sent to the Canadian Arctic, to
       heat up the ice caps there. We do not want to stay cool.
       -------------------------------------------------------
       
            TOPICS COVERED
            --------------
            Introduction
            Njan
            Icarus
            Njan and Icarus
            Mathai Chundathil
            Ravi
            Other ACK Net-Writers
            Before Signing Off
       
       
       
       
       INTRODUCTION
       ------------
   
The flame war between Mathai and Ravi as to who should write whose
biography is interesting in itself and significant in the broader
context of rattling the dormant ACK. As for me, I thought that I
would fish in the troubled waters. I would be a self-proclaimed
biographer and write the portraits of the net-writers of ack.
While the biography war is raging, I am contributing my humble bit
to write about the characters of this interesting drama.

To write about a net-writer is a very formidable task. Net-writers
are a very strange breed of creatures who have this irresistible 
urge to log on to their sun system as soon as an idea is conceived.
They are very much prone to constant attacks of high anxiety and
are always in constant fear of somebody else conceiving that very 
same idea and writing. They are ill-reputed to be bad sleepers at
night, continuously having nightmares about another net-writer in
another time-zone writing while they are asleep. They can hardly
wait for the bright morning to set in, bringing forth the 
glorious sun in the sky and the sun system in their office. They
tend to become notorious drivers running the red light in their
panic-ridden morning ride to their computer hidden away in their 
office. There are even rumors that some net-writers became
overnight somnambulists, walking to their office in the middle of
the night, entering their office and silently logging on to the net.

Those of you lucky enough to read Part I of this article already
know that the impression we form about a net-writer would be
totally wrong. The art of guessing the features of a net-writer 
from what he writes is not yet perfected. I hear that the 
University of Vayanad is contemplating introducing this course
in their Computer Science Graduate Program starting in the year
2065. Therefore, as of yet, we are left with no guidelines as 
to how we go about delineating the net-writer characteristics 
from his writings. The state of the art is purely a function of 
the figment of your imagination.

Suffice it to say that there is no group of people in this world,
who is more misunderstood than net-writers. Look at my own surprise
when I realized the grave miscalculation I made in guessing the
identity of my net-writer friend as I described in Part I. It seems
that there is no correspondence between what a person net-writes 
and what he really is. This hypothesis was proved beyond doubt 
in Part I, through a comedy of errors that culminated in a high
drama in a Computer Science conference that I attended in the Pacific
city.

I recently attended a net-writers' conference that was again held in
the Pacific city. I was appalled to see that there was no net-writers
union formed yet. Are they awaiting the arrival of a Net-Karl-Marx
to urge them "Net-writers of the World, Unite, because you have
nothing to lose but you net"? I simply do not know. Be that as it
may, I sure hope that time is around the corner when a net-writers
union will be formed. 

Therefore it is with a dubious heart that I set out to get this
enterprise underway. This project of writing the portraits of
the ack net-writers was probably not a sound idea considering
the very high probability that my predictions would be wrong.
However, we can only make a try; the rest is in the stars.

So, here goes:

               NJAN
               ----
Famous one-liner. How come he does not write more than one line in 
his articles? Is he afraid of his pen running out of ink? I would be 
happy enough to send him some BiC pens. In fact, here is one -- I am
sending this through the net.

Is he trying to imitate the most famous one-liner, Ronald Reagan?
	(As an aside, let me tell you that my astrologer told me that the
	achievements of Ronald Reagan's presidency and the California
	governership would go down in the history books as a one-line. 
	His achievement as a Hollywood actor would go down in the books as
	one word or even a letter or, worse still as a bit. He made these
	predictions as I recently visited Kerala and he based these 
	predictions on the migratory patterns of crow in the arid land
	between the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats). 
I see Nancy Reagan sending an approval smile through net. That blip
you just now saw is her smile riding high on the net.

If Njan keeps up this trend of one-lining, he has all the potential
to become the future president of the United States. Good luck to
him. I probably would vote for him.

How in the world did he proclaim himself as Njan? Did the University
of Colorado hold a special convocation to confer 'Njan' degree upon
him?

Before I started my career as a net-writer, I had a dream -- that was
to call myself Njan when I net-write. When I opened the doors of the 
net, I was appalled to see that by some devious act of the Providence
somebody else was walking around with that name. My dreams were 
shattered. After that I thought of calling myself 'Nee'. But then
I gave up this idea at the inception itself, since I became prone
to frequent attacks of Identity Crisis.

Currently I am looking for a nickname. I am turning my attention
to Indian mythologies. I could not find anything worthwhile in the
Greek mythology. If everything fails, I will start calling myself
MahaBali.

         ICARUS
         ------
         
       or   Paul Chemmannoor               
               
       or   Atharvan
       
       or   God-Knows-What
       
       
Is he God? Only God is known by so many names.

I guess his life's ambition is to become a story-teller. Keep those
fairies busy, Icarus.

Now, for God's sake, why is he obsessed with staying cool? That beats
me. He even wrote to me once requesting me to stay cool. Did he not know
that I am staying close to the Canadian Arctic and hence I am cool?
In here we do not even need special mummification procedure unlike
in the ancient Egypt. Here, a dead-body kept in the open air in 
one's own backyard will be preserved for centuries. If ancient 
Egyptians knew about the existence of Canada, they would have 
mass-migrated to this mummification land. They would have gladly given
up their elaborate mummification technology and settled down for
the open-air mummification that comes naturally in this great country.
Our capital would have been called Cairo and we would all be speaking 
Arabic and we would be ruled by somebody like Saddam Hussein and our
oil-wells would be engulfed in a constant fire. This great country 
is a vast physics lab where Laws of Thermodynamics are challenged.
While the entropy is increasing in the rest of the universe, here in
Canada it is at a standstill! In fact it is downright zero.

The biggest curse that we Canadians can bestow upon an American is 
to wish that he turn into a snow-flake.

Moral of the story: Don't ask me to stay cool, Icarus; I am always cool.

500] Stay cool, Icarus.



        NJAN and ICARUS
        ---------------
        
I have a fond theory. This is a deeply-guarded secret theory and I have not
told this to a single living being so far. I am going to break that silence 
and tell you ack readers that secret for the first time. Here it is:

Njan and Icarus are one and the same person. Their combined name is Njacarus. 
One fine morning, Njacarus decided to replicate himself into Njan and Icarus,
got hold of two computer accounts and ever since became the net-anarchists.
Njan is impersonating as Icarus and vice versa.

One day, I would love to prove my theory.

I see Njan and Icarus stay in Boulder. Why did they stop at Boulder and not
go to Boldest? Do they lack courage? Think of the great hero, Aromal
Chekavar, Njakarus!


       MATHAI CHUNDATHIL
       -----------------
       
Quite romantic, this guy Mathai. His choice of sweet and old Malayalam 
songs is commendable. If he is as romantic a guy as his choice of songs
indicates, then he must be getting venerated by all those beautiful girls in
the University of Oklahoma.(Now, I have to be careful how I pronounce
Oklahoma). Maybe he is like Lord Krishna walking around with his ten thousand
and eight girlfriends. As we know, Lord Krishna is far more famous than
Hugh Hefner; he is an Intergalactic playboy. He not only had his ten
thousand and eight wives, but also managed to keep alive! Talk about
surviving your marriage!!

Quite patriotic too, I think, my friend Mathai. I remember that he 
tried to patronize Sanskrit and market it as the unifying link of
India. Too bad, he got flamed beyond belief by the subjects of the
great Chozha Kingdom. Smart guys from Tamilnadu were on a warpath with
Mathai for extolling the virtues of Sanskrit. One guy even went to the 
extend of declaring Tamil as the national language of India. The 
flames started on ACK engulfed SCI and SCT. The aftershocks of that
flame are still reverberating in the net.



         RAVI
         ----
         
Who is this guy? Where did this guy drop in from? I never heard about this 
dude until recently. (But then I knew about the existence of ACK only
last month; when did ack start, any kind soul care to explain?)

Why is he declaring peace all the time? Is he a self-appointed one-man
commission on the world peace? Does he think that the world is waging
war on him or what? Why does he not join ranks with Maharishi Mahesha
Yogi and take up transcendental meditation as a means to establish world
peace? Or fly with the Flying Swamy here in Montreal and shower flowers 
in the war zone?

His adolescent love-affair with IIT hopefully will mature into more
romantic involvement and a mature relationship that will eventually
lead to marriage. ACK should be proud to give him away in marriage
to IIT. Hopefully some of us would be invited to attend the wedding.

Ravi, please write about IISc also sometime; I am from there myself.

Peace, Ravi, Peace!!


       OTHER ACK NET-WRITERS
       ---------------------
       
Don't despair; you will be appearing in the future chapters of this 
on-going series of "Psychology of a Net-Writer". Stay tuned.


      BEFORE SIGNING OFF
      ------------------
      
I sometimes believe that Fate plays funny games with our lives.
He (She?) could not care less what happens to us. (S)he is enacting
a drama which is predestined. Like Shakespeare said:

      Like flies to wanton boys
      So are we to Gods
      They kill us for their sport
      
I am quoting this to emphasize the point that what we think and hope
may not be what would really happen. This statement is very 
important in the current context  of my guessing as to what our
eminent net-writers are like. For all we know, one of them
may be a communist impersonating as a capitalist and living in the
U.S.A. Another one may be a Buddist monk impersonating as a 
graduate student; yet another one may be the incarnation of Elvis
Presley -- I could go on with this list forever. The gist is 
that you never know a net-writer until you really meet him
and see him face-to-face. Lucky are the ones who believe after
seeing the net-writer. In this context, Christ stands corrected
as far as his advice to St. Thomas goes. St. Thomas was right
in believing the resurrection only after he saw Christ. I would
urge our ack readers to be like St. Thomas, to be doubting Thomases
and not make any hurried assumptions about any net-writer until
they really see him in person.

 
                    ----- TO BE CONTINUED ----- 

============================================================================
       From My Ivory Tower in the Basement,

	 jose                                          email: jose@csd.uwo.ca
                                                    Dept. of Computer Science
                                                    Univ. of Western Ontario
                                                    CANADA
============================================================================