C00LeS WaReZ UNiON MeMOiRS: cHApTER #0x9A

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0x9A  -  Iisalmi  -  DaRK FuCKeR  -  1999-03  -  175 lines
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And buying that Pentium Pro didn't even help! Most of our group don't have a Pentium, so we can't do any of that Pentium-future stuff together. I guess I could maybe hang with Meka, since he's got a Pentium II, but he always declares Quake and all the good games as lame shit. Can't really suggest anything to someone like that! The rest of the group is still stuck in the past, especially Stuffis, who's always going on about how "hardware upgrades are indeed decadent." Yeah, well, screw *that* dammit!

Sometimes I miss junior high, things were better then. We saw each other every day, and we were always doing something cool! Playing the same games, calling the same BBSes, doing all sorts of weird occult rituals, tuning our mopeds and riding them around, swigging homemade kilju, and all that! And everything felt so exciting back then. But now it feels like I've seen it all, even all the Pentium-only stuff.

Sometimes I try to astral project or do some other occult thing. But it never works out. Stuffis thinks my Pentium and playing games on it have lowered my vibration level -- screw him! His is probably lowered just as much!! I think it's more because when we're outside Lietevesi we no longer are within the Lietevesi energy field or supported by the Lietevesi spirits. And that's why the astral is suddenly so hard to reach and we actually need to travel in flesh to meet people!!

Well, Masa at least lives in Iisalmi, and I can visit him anytime, he's a pretty hospitable guy. But somehow hanging out at his place isn't that inspiring, he just talks about cars all the time and repeats the same old jokes! And especially since he turned eighteen last fall and bought our family's old Datsun, he barely talks about anything else but fixing it up! I have chatted with him a bit about our junior high days, but still he mostly just talks about cars. Especially when his vocational-school friends are over at his place, then it's all about cars, dammit! I haven't bothered visiting him this year, I'd rather just be alone.

Hanging out with Jussi is better for remembering the old days. I went over to his place in Kiuruvesi a few times last fall and early winter, and he usually has some kilju brewing with the our reciple, at least if I've told him early enough when I'm coming! Totally awesome! Sometimes when I'm kilju-drunk, it feels like we're really back in Hönttölä's back room, and everything's like it used to be! All the forests full of magic and stuff!!

But even Jussi can be a drag sometimes, because he's not really into the future stuff. It was fun checking out his Frontline server, but nothing new ever happens on that board, just reminiscing about the golden age of the BBS scene and longing for the past! It started to feel like a waste of time visiting him, always going over the same stuff -- Hönttölä meetings, Civilization I, our first time messing around with modems, our demoparty trips, the Markkasen house and the special kilju. Now I haven't even dialed Frontline or visited Jussi this year. I don't want to be nostalgic, I want the future, dammit! The year 2000!!

I haven't been to Meka's place because train tickets all the way to Helsinki cost a fortune. And maybe it's better to save that money for the CWU meetup this fall! It's bound to have a cool vibe, especially since it'll be the first time I've ever seen his place, his Pentium II, and especially his FIXED INTERNET CONNECTION!! I'm seriously thinking about bringing my own computer and surfing the web like never before. I bet I could even convince Meka to install Quake if he's drunk enough and then we could reminisce about our old gaming sessions!

I've been thinking about visiting Stuffis and Dikkis in Kuopio, but I don't really have good vibes with them anymore. They always mock and trash-talk me and my games on IRC, and whenever I bring up a game on #cwu, Stuffis shows up to preach about how decadent it is and whatever else. Let them just play that stupid TetriNET, dammit! And make those crappy MSX demos on that worthless MSX! I totally agree with Meka that MSX has LOST THE COMPUTER WAR like ten years ago, so it's just a bunch of pointless morons who do anything with it!

Samppa lives in Oulu, and the train ticket prices from Iisalmi are still pretty reasonable, but I'm not sure if I want to see him or if he wants to see me. He seems to be in his own world, and often has long breaks in chatting on #cwu. He apparently spends more time on that #fu!ror thing or whatever the channel of their shitty MSX group is. I don't care about any MSX garbage stuff, even if I knew the channel key.

I think if you only see one or two CWU guys at a time, it's gonna be a lousy meeting. I'd rather see the WHOLE GROUP AT ONCE, like back in the day! If we had some proper future virtual reality, we could meet up every night, way better than this lame text-based IRC. But I doubt Stuffis or Jussi would ever use something like that! Future haters!!!

I've been studying to be a computer mechanic at the vocational school for a year and a half, or almost two years now. It was exciting the first year, but now there's not much future shine to it anymore. Just learning how to install Windows and run network cables. A lot of this stuff is already basic to me from my junior high days, when whe had CWUnet and did about everything with computers all the time. Besides, when the future arrives, Windows will install itself, and all the networks will be wireless, so it's kind of pointless to learn that! Most days I just go to school to chat on IRC or muddle around (or if I can get my hands on a decent computer, play Quake). The classes are worthless!

I don't really care about my classmates either. They're all just clueless lamers who have trouble learning even the basics of a lot of things. And most of the QuakeWorld players are just horrible idiots I don't want to meet in real life. Honestly, the CWU guys and maybe a few other scene people (like the MAHTI guys) would be good company, but I don't even really feel like hanging out with the scene anymore. Sometimes it feels like it's stuck in the past, because the new demos never use any 3D cards or anything.

That Voodoo Rush was a pretty useless purchase, to be honest. If I'd been smarter last summer, I would have bought a VCR instead! I would have recorded Babylon 5 every Saturday and watched it every day, multiple times! There's not much else good on TV! Voyager is okay, but anything "okay" is pretty lame compared to B5. And it only comes on once a week! I have to watch some trashy shows like "Salatut elämät" out of boredom! Why can't Finnish people make a decent sci-fi show for once instead of just cloning "The Bold and the Beautiful"?!

Luckily, there are now groups that digitize movies and release them on the Internet, kind of like warez and MP3s. I've been grabbing new stuff to watch from FTP servers now and then. Now that I have a Pentium, it's got enough power to play MPEG videos smoothly, it's such a pleasure to watch them!!

But there's always the problem with warez, because I don't have a fixed Internet connection at home, so I have to burn CDs of the movies at school. Blank CD-Rs actually COST MONEY, so I don't want to waste them on any disposable crap! If I had a fixed internet connection, I could warez a movie straight to my hard drive, watch it from there, and then delete it so I have room for another one. I'm waiting for the new Star Wars to get warez-ripped, that's something I'd definitely burn. Even if it's a bootleg, I want to see it as soon as possible!

You don't always have to go to warez FTPs to find something to watch. There's tons of porn available online these days, for example. And there are a couple of Finnish guys making short films called Star Wreck that you can download for free! The fifth movie is actually really good, I'd definitely watch it if they released those as a weekly series! But they don't, they don't even release them every year! They just announced that the sixth Star Wreck won't come out until next year, and they'll be just releasing a trailer this summer. Totally UNFAIR!

But, thankfully, when the year 2000 arrives, EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE! Star Wreck VI will be released, and VII, and VIII, and a new one every week, and we'll have virtual reality headsets, and I'll finally get a dedicated internet connection at home! Pentiums will be able to do more, and everything won't just be the same old crap at a faster speed, like Stuffis always says. And the CWU guys will graduate from school, and we'll be able to hang out in the same place and do all sorts of cool things TOGETHER again!

And before the year 2000, there's gonna be my SUMMER VACATION! I'm thinking about going to Suonenjoki to pick strawberries after Midsummer again. I miss last summer's strawberry picking and especially the strawberry girls so much! I might even give them my email address. And maybe someone of them might even use IRC.

And then after the summer vacation starts there's gonna be my final year at the vocational school, and then in the fall there's gonna be the UNFORGETTABLE CWU MEETUP IN HELSINKI, and then at the turn of the year, the FUTURE begins! YEAH!!!!