Motivation, I needs it

[icepixie]

Arrrggh. If I don't post by midnight to say I've accomplished the revisions I plan to make tonight, will someone please slap me with the wet fish of your choice?

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[graycardinal]

Once upon a time, near the dawn of online fannish history, there was a service known as GEnie, and upon that service there was a Science Fiction RoundTable (or "the SFRT" for short).

And upon the SFRT, there were gathered many authors and many fans, each unto their own communities. Yet authors and fans did traverse the length and breadth of the SFRT, visiting and posting unto CATegories and TOPics in each other's neighborhoods (for GEnie was a wholly text-based environment).

And among the denizens of the SFRT was one Lady Susan, known in the offline world as a writer of some renown* and among the folk of the SFRT as the Green-Eyed Kzinrret**. And her TOPic on the SFRT was among the most thickly populated and most frequently archived of all the TOPics (for there was in those days a limit of nine hundred ninety nine messages in a TOPic, and upon reaching that limit one could no longer post until the TOPic had been archived).

Now the denizens of the Kzinrret's TOPic were mostly well-behaved. And yet they did upon occasion post flames, or intemperate language, or puns of rare and powerful vintage (and very rarely ASCII art, but that is another story for another time). And so, that she might maintain order among her visitors, the Lady Susan did obtain from Her Eminence Esther, Mistress of Cheeblemancy*** and Mome**** of the High Church of Chocolate, the Trinity of the Sacred Salmon.

And the Sacred Salmon were these: the Salmon of Correction, the Salmon of Retribution, and the Salmon of Contrition. And the Salmon of Correction was bestowed for use upon the flamer and the troll, that they might mend their ways and become once again part of the greater community. And the Salmon of Retribution was bestowed for use upon the punster and the cattle raider*****, that they might recognize the folly of their ways.****** And the Salmon of Contrition was bestowed for use upon...well, actually, the present author does not recall just now, for it was used but rarely and largely forgotten in favor of the other two.

But GEnie fell upon hard times, being sold first unto certain infidels known as Yovelle (but referred to by the SFRT-folk as Yoyovelle, after the norotious Yoyodyne), and then unto certain other infidels known as IDT, and eventually the CATegories and TOPics and RoundTables were cast adrift and vanished into the darknesses that lurk beneath the Internet, and GEnie was no more.

And yet the Sacred Salmon did not perish utterly, for their legend survived in certain quarters of the Internet, and even today the Green-Eyed Kzinrret holds forth in a different Webspace.

And so doth the present author stretch forth his hand and call up the Sacred Salmon of Contrition from the darknesses beneath the Internet (since borrowing that one is likely to arouse the least attention from the Powers That Be, and also because it seems appropriate for the occasion).

And he sayeth, in the manner of the Green-Eyed Kzinrret, "This is for your own good, you know,", and he goeth:

[[WHAP!!!!]]*******

And so it cometh to pass that you have been WHAPped by the Sacred Salmon of Contrition. Thou mayest consider it an honor or a bane at thy discretion, but the record doth show that thou didst in fact ask for it....

////

NOTES:

* Susan Shwartz, author and co-author of various Star Trek novels as well as assorted excellent historical fantasy and SF novels.

** After the Kzinti, denizens of Larry Niven's "Known Space" universe (and one episode of the animated Star Trek series).

*** Cheeblemancy: an art of divination inspired by Huey the Oracular Hamster and his successors, variously practiced by setting a hamster loose on a computer keyboard or in later times, spinning the Wheel of Cheeblemancy. Its inventor and chief practitioner is author Esther M. Friesner.

**** Since the High Church of Chocolate is overseen by a matriarchal order, it necessarily has a Mome instead of a Pope.

***** On GEnie, a "cattle raid" cinvolved posting messages consisting of many screenfuls of ASCII art (usually depicting cows) in the TOPic being raided. Some of the raids ranged across many TOPics....

****** Curiously -- or perhaps not so curiously -- the punsters and cattle raidesr tended to keep coming back for more retribution.

******* The act of wielding a Sacred Salmon always produces a WHAP! (and sometimes, more than one, as in WHAP WHAPPITY WHAP!).