For larger versions of these gifs, look here. (about 60k total).
To be a bozo on Netnews is a term of honor. Bozos have more fun.
In November 1993, Thomas Boutell (the WWW-god) was inspired to commemorate the recent death of Bill Bixby by newgrouping alt.radio-shack.bill-bixby.dead.dead.dead, and initiating the Bill Bixby Memorial Haiku Bake-Off, inviting haikus on the topic of his life and career (including Radio Shack commercials). He set the tone with this sample:
Cherry blossoms fall
Bill Bixby is lost to us
God is such a wank.
(To qualify as a haiku, a poem must have five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Here's a serious haiku page.)
There were hundreds of witty entries, Netnews at its finest. The winners were announced in January, and first place went to a lengthy haikubio by Jeff Swanson. Second place went to James Cowie for this gem:
Don't make him angry,
St. Peter. You wouldn't like
Him when he's angry.
My favorite was from saint@express.ctron.com:
Bill Bixby is dead.
A moment of silence please.
Lou, please stop growling.
In my own ( losing :^( entries, I aimed for true sentiment:
The catch in his voice
showed the real love in his heart
Bill Bixby... rest light!
And I also did a series of flame-haiku:
What's the difference
between Love-Hounds and pit-bulls?
Sorry, Bill. There's none.
Silly haiku are becoming a true usenet artform. Here's <the recent ones Altavista offers>.
Netnews can be performance art-- you open your intimate life to the e-masses. Here are images of two of my favorites on Netnews, Doctress Neutopia and John_-_Winston:
For larger versions of these gifs, look here. (about 60k total).
The Doctress is a great advocate of Paolo Soleri's architectual arcologies. For more about the Doctress, check out {alt.society.neutopia}, or here's her FAQ.
And another GIF:
The megabozo of all bozos is <Kibo> (KAI-bo). He writes funny stories, including hyperfictions like Christmas 2000, here in a highly interactive version. The archives of {alt.religion.kibology} are at <ftp.std.com>
Another group where some talented bozos hang out is {alt.fan.warlord}. This group has been around forever, secretly scanning the rest of the net for ludicrous ascii-art in people's .sig files. These are reposted to a.f.w, "warlorded" with sarcastic comments, and often by ascii-animation. Here's a fairly tame warlord, using two unattributed .sig's, and a form of 'paging' that works much better in a text file using "^L" than in an html file...