289. It's Pronounced VRML

Lords: * CisHetKayFaber * https://www.patreon.com/CisHetKayFaber * Andrew * https://luxurybunkers.bandcamp.com/album/killer-karen Topics: * People say the craziest stuff in front of janitors. * Revisiting development of a creative work after 20 years * Naming conventions in the demo scene vs. the ZZT scene * How to Be Perfect, by Ron Padgett * https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57243/how-to-be-perfect * Floops, a 3D cartoon character generated in VRML in the mid-90's internet Microtopics: * Putting all your stress from the last three months into a single EP. * Brains pooping right into your ears. * Refusing to talk about Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. * Are you allowed to talk to janitors?? * Being assumed to be part of a group (openly racist people) that you are not actually part of. * The risks of letting other people clean up after you. * How do you know when it's time to eat candy when you don't have the candy gland? * Giving yourself heat stroke because you don't realize it's too hot. * Making a plan for how to not get heat stroke! * Not having a thirst meter but your snacking meter is pegged 24/7. * The inability to sleep and eat at the same time. * How to tell if you're on SSRIs. * Cyclothymia. * "You have to do this now or I'm going to stare at you." * A VR exercise app where if your heart rate drops too low all the NPCs start staring at you. * The cost of not taking care of yourself. * Clinging to your flow state for dear life. * Feeling like you've done a thing vs. actually doing the thing. * Sedarising and unsedarising your essay. * The many eras of cancelling David Sedaris. * Independent tabletop game developers in the Osaka area. * Writing to explore your own thought space. * Writing the program and then running the program. * Taking a twenty year break between essay drafts so you can revisit your ideas fresh. * Cyberpunk-coded online handles. * Attaching a political ideology to the ZZT scene. * Role-playing bring a small business owner as you make art in your bedroom and share it with the online community. * Social capital in the cracking community. * The era in your life when you didn't even know it was possible to pay for computer games. * Who'd win in a fight, Slayer, or Mega Slayer ZZ9 Final? * The revealed philosophies of different online communities. * Shareware and early web nostalgia. * A wild time to be on the Internet. * Enjoying lo-fi versions of a thing. * A movie with bad special effects that look great in the pirated cammed version. * Straightening your room before you save the world. * Not doing anything to make what you want impossible. * Using attractive stamps, like the one with the tornado on it. * Carrying the only poem you like around with you on index cards. * Living in a culture where respect for the elderly is out of control. * The age at which you get to elbow your way to the front of every line. * Getting paid to tell people how to do things better. * Things you had to learn outside of school. * A guy who looks like he's eaten every lemon in the world. * Ron Padgett celebrity lookalikes. * An alarm clock that wakes you up by shouting "I'm looking forward to the Internet of things!" in your own voice. * Who's been to cocktail parties and when, and did you discuss VRML? * Hand animating 3D cartoons by typing VRML. * Vtubers in the 90s. * Making things and putting them on the Internet and everyone just assumes you just prompted an AI to make it. * Demystifying the magic pixie dust. * The burly wizard with a hammer and anvil who knows how to make the metal not brittle. * NAND to Tetris and Cryptopals. (Not the blockchain kind.) * Learning to never roll your own crypto. * Magic. (Derogatory.) * Punished for understanding the assignment.