Build Date: Fri Mar 14 11:20:14 2025 UTC
Somewhere people are plotting against you and I am probably among them.
-- Doctor Murdock
Acid Tripping with Buffalo Bones
1999-12-08 14:10:17
Before the Internet Revolution first exploded into the mainstream public, there were BBS systems. You will rarely hear about or see them anymore. Easy Internet access all but led to the extinction of this form of communication. The smart ones evolved and thrived. Now, some systems are returning to the graves of their predecessors to reminisce and re-unite.
If you are unfamiliar, BBS stood for Bulletin Board System. A Bulletin Board System is simply a computer hooked up to a phone line. People would call the computer with their computer using a modem and communications software. The typical BBS would have message areas to communicate with others, downloadable files, and sometimes a few games to play.
At first, BBS systems were fairly harmless, devoted to academic studies, sciences and discussion, with names such as "East Bay Astronomy Club" or "Computer Discussion Central". But the users of these early systems started getting bored. They wanted to include things like sex, drugs, Rock & Roll, explosions, and other not-so-nice topics. So they began branching out, and forming their own systems with names like The Temple of the Screaming Electron, Rathead, Sanctum, Lies Unlimited, dISCO hOSPITAL, and others. Most of the Pigdog Staff met & evolved on systems such as these, exchanging information, transforming these systems (and their minds) into horrible mutant monsters hell-bent on destroying society.
But as access to the Internet became increasingly easier and cheaper (and BBS systems became more mainstream), BBS users operators began switching over their systems to the Internet in the forms of mail-lists, MUDS, ftp sites, and later, web sites. Soon, the micro-universes that flourished like buffalo before the coming of the white man soon became as few in number as there are condors left in California. As of late, some former users have banded together to both mark the remembrance of how these systems changed the landscape of personal communication, and to meet up with old friends that may have fallen to the wayside when the revolution came and threw the systems up against the wall.
And while this initial attempt may be rather cute and sweet for most, it's only a matter of time before it sprouts horns and demands anal sex on crack with the local minister's daughter or son.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
You need to make a fruity tropical drink and you have no recipe? Here's a mix recently tested by Pigdog's crack bevertology team that's made with ingredients available from most any grocery store. It tastes sweet, fruity, and is perfect for guzzling on the last hot days of summer. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)