bob has an IRC relapse and nominates 2 guys for Nobel Peace Prize

Khaled Mardam-Bey (top)
and Jarkko Oikarinen,
NGO Vleeptron's nominees
for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I think there's a FAQ page on the website of the Nobel Prizes, and it probably explains how people get nominated for the prizes.

I think I'll look it up and nominate Jarkko Oikarinen and Khaled Mardam-Bey for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr. Oikarinen (he eventually got his Ph.D. in medical imaging technology) already won the Dvorak Award in 1997, and in 2005 he received a Special Recognition Award by Finland's Millennium Technology Prize Foundation.

In 1988, Oikarinen was bored during a summer job at the computer center at the University of Oulu, and wrote a program which became Internet Relay Chat.

God only knows who used IRC before 1995 (I first used an IRC client on CompuServe), when Khaled Mardam-Bey wrote mIRC, a wildly popular and wildly powerful IRC program for Windows machines.

It's wildly popular because idiots like me can manage to download it and go clickety-click, and about ten minutes later, the idiot is chatting with a hundred thousand people in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, Oceana, and Antarctica, and it would not in the least surprise me to find myself chatting with somebody orbiting Earth in the International Space Station.

Khaled Mardam-Bey

خالد مردم بي

was born in Amman, Jordan. His father is Syrian and his mother Palestinian. He went to college about a mile from where I grew up, American University in Washington DC, and now lives in London and continues to pour his love and life into improving mIRC and adding all sorts of astonishing bells and whistles to it.

It's shareware, and Honest Decent Human Beings who download and use mIRC are supposed to send KM-B about $25. I did. I hope he got a good restaurant meal out of it.

After I nominate both these gentlemen for their well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, I'll have to sue them for addicting me to IRC and stealing years from my life. It will probably be a class action lawsuit, with about 1,000,000 other plaintiffs from all over the planet.

That should be some trial. All the plaintiffs will want to hug the defendants.

I've been in Chat Rehab for the last few years, trying to pay more attention to my Wife and my Cats and people I can really see and touch and smell.

But like any powerful addiction to Stuff That's Enormously Fun and Pleasurable, I have relapses now and then.

Like last night.

Because I am certifiably insane, I believe Internet Relay Chat is the antidote to the hatred and violence that are consuming Planet Earth. My response to the ghastly wars that have erupted since I became addicted to IRC is to click onto Undernet and send hippie lefty peacenik refusenik pacifist messages of peace pax paz paix shalom salaam selam etc. (Please send me the word for Peace in any lingo.)

Wars are easiest when you can't see or hear the people your side is killing.

Wars get more difficult when you can read the words, more or less in real time, of the people underneath the Shock And Awe. Most people on IRC can type in English, if that's the only lingo the Shock And Awe side understands.

Meddling in perfectly good wars on IRC is a heartbreaking and horrifying business. During the Balkan Wars of the late 1990s, on the chatroom Undernet #kosovo , a guy from Belgrade typed

{Ygor} must go, bombs falling
* Ygor has quit IRC

and I never saw his nick on Undernet again, but that doesn't mean anything, there are typically 50,000 people on Undernet at any given moment. But I never saw Ygor again.

What hurts the most are the vile threats and insults hurling back and forth through the Chat-o-Sphere in times of war. It's still much better than the actual war

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But names can never hurt me

but there is a huge volume of particularly ugly hatred especially reserved for Peace Assholes like me. A Hezbollah guy would rather French-kiss an Israeli soldier than read Peace Crap from anybody, and ditto the feelings of an IDF soldier.

Once war starts, it's like when sex starts -- nobody wants it interrupted or stopped. It just feels so good, you want it to just go on and on and on and on and on. Peace doesn't offer any emotions that feel nearly as good.

Peace is complicated and confusing. Israeli Jews will have to learn how to be day-to-day neighbors with Palestinian and Arab Muslims. Hezbollah will have to learn how to be day-to-day neighbors with Lebanese Christians and Druse. Shia and Sunni will have to go shopping for groceries at the same market, without firearms. I'm not joking when I say that's going to be incredibly hard.

War is simple and easy. It's so easy that the United Nations is trying to make every country and combatant on Earth stop using Child Soldiers younger than 16. Without much success. The government of Sri Lanka was just accused of using Child Soldiers, a nasty rap previously reserved for the Tamil Tigers. In Africa, the Lord's Resistance Army usually wins the prize for accusations of abducting children to be soldiers and sex slaves. The Lord's Resistance Army is a religious movement, and teaches the child soldiers that if they believe, enemy bullets cannot harm them.

But war is so easy that little boys make excellent soldiers, and little boys and girls make excellent sex partners for older soldiers. You don't need to be mature to be an effective soldier; in fact maturity usually just gets in the way.

Tonight's Relapse ... well, I really didn't want any war or any politics or any anger or any flame wars. I didn't want to read KILL THE JEWS or KILL THE FUCKING SAND NIGGERS. I just wanted some easy, fun, innocent chat, so I didn't click on any of the Hot Button chatrooms.

#worldchat seemed safe. I'd been there before, and it's usually all Hi and I like ABBA and I have a cat named Muffin and My bf is working in Abu Dhabi.

We somehow began singing musical theater songs from "My Fair Lady," and it was all very pleasant, but then I lost the first half of my chat because we were chatting about doors, and @girlscout said she wished that someday she'd have a house with a purple front door, so I said

{Droog4} I hope you get your wish. If you have any more wishes, could you wish that this fucking war ends immediately?
* Droog4 kicked by KillaZ (do you use that mouth to kiss your mom?)

and the Bot instantly kicked me off the channel for using the F-word, and that means I lost the first 20 minutes of my #worldchat. But I was just kicked in the teeth, not banned forever, so I was able to re-join immediately.

Meanwhile a boy from Jordan named arrow was struggling along with some pretty bad English, but as it turned out, he reads and understands English a lot better than he types it.

Jordan is almost entirely Arab and Muslim.

Its next-door neighbors are Iraq, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. There's no war in Jordan. It even has a peace treaty with Israel. War in Iraq, war in Lebanon, but Jordan itself has stayed pretty peaceful, or at least pretty Lo-Violence. Not an easy trick. Uneasy lies the head that wears that crown.

But please note so many interesting things more than my bad manners and vulgar mouth.

See all these people from all over the beautiful planet Earth, from every Time Zone, just chatting (or trying to chat) with each other.

Here I am in Northampton Massachusetts USA, and in this little college town I could get on the phone and have 50 Lefty Peacenik Quaker Commies in my living room in a half-hour.

The Congressional election a few weeks ago made it abundantly and noisily clear that all over the United States of America there are people who are very pissed off about the War in Iraq.

But read on down to what the Jordanian kid arrow typed.

He has a computer. He has a television. He has a radio. He has a phone. His English is pretty competent.

But read on down to what arrow typed.

*******

* Now talking in #worldchat
* Topic is 'Welcome to #Worldchat (http://www.worldchat.org) enjoy your stay.'
* Set by KillaZ on Sun Nov 19 11:29:35
{Droog4} whoops sorry
{girlscout} hehe
{gumnaam} salaam
* catty_29 has quit IRC (Quit)
{girlscout} people need to believe in it again for it to stop
{Droog4} salaam gumnaam
* ieza80 has joined #worldchat
{gumnaam} h r u
{Droog4} pretty good gumnaam how r u, did you have good Ramadan and Eid?
* SwEeTy_InDiG has left #worldchat
* Fevil has left #worldchat
{gumnaam} yup
{Droog4} excellent
{gumnaam} where u from
* ieza80 has quit IRC (Quit)
* X sets mode: +l 68
{Droog4} USA, sorta near Boston
{Droog4} u in PK?
* neat40 has joined #worldchat
{gumnaam} yup
{gumnaam} in karachi
{girlscout} what's boston like?
* neat40 has left #worldchat
{Droog4} oh actually it's a real interesting and entertaining city
{girlscout} I have never been there
* Fevil has joined #worldchat
{gumnaam} yaaaaaaa
{Droog4} lot of Big Brain Places there, MIT, Harvard
{gumnaam} u r rite
{girlscout} *nod*
* Fevil has left #worldchat
{Droog4} aha gumnaam has been to Boston
* SwEeTy_InDiG has joined #worldchat

{arrow} this is the first amarican i see like to stop the war

{gumnaam} ok{gumnaam} friend
{gumnaam} i have to go
{ashley} hi
{Droog4} arrow i can fill a very big stadium with americans who want to stop the war
{gumnaam} ALLAH HAFIZ to all
{Droog4} salaam gumnaam
{girlscout} they want to stop it for the wrong reasons though
{arrow} droog4
{Droog4} there is no wrong reason to stop any war
* pink_24 has joined #worldchat
{girlscout} I don't condone war in general
* X sets mode: +l 70
{girlscout} but what's done is done
{girlscout} it seems even worse to back out now
* Droog4 confesses he is a bit of a peacenik refusenik commie pinko lefty
* Bojan_ww has joined #worldchat
{gumnaam} droog ALLAH HAFIZ answer is ALLAH HAFIZ
* pink_24 has left #worldchat
{gumnaam} not salaam
{Droog4} gumnaam thank you for the free lesson, i really need it, my Urdu really sux
{gumnaam} okz
{girlscout} lol
{gumnaam} ALLAH HAFIZ
{briar} hi
{Droog4} Allah Hafiz to you also
{gumnaam} girlscout y u laghing
{girlscout} just because
{Droog4} girlscout is guessing i know zero words of Urdu
{gumnaam} dont laugh
* girlscout chuckles
{girlscout} why not?
{girlscout} don't tell me what I can and cannot do
{girlscout} I happen to like to laugh
{Droog4} Group Hug!
* isloo has joined #worldchat
{girlscout} heh
* zeek has joined #worldchat
* X sets mode: +l 72
* KFEPKFEW has joined #worldchat
{GrimLurkin} Group hug my ass. Die.
* SwEeTy_InDiG has quit IRC (Quit)
* solitario_77 has joined #worldchat
* zeek has left #worldchat

{Droog4} hmmmm i guess for the last 5 years of the Vietnam War lots of people were saying: Well, you're right, this really is a sucky terrible war, but we can't back out now.

* Crazy_Devil_ has quit IRC (Quit)
{KFEPKFEW} DFDDDD

{Droog4} that cost about 20,000 guys' lives

{GrimLurkin} Droog4 I'd appreciate if you kept such political matters under wraps.
* briar has left #worldchat
* X sets mode: +l 70
{GrimLurkin} Or I will escort you out.
{KFEPKFEW} HI
* natashe has quit IRC (Ping timeout)
{gumnaam} Droog4 i thnk she dont have sense to talk any person
* jane has left #worldchat
* durb1 has quit IRC (Ping timeout)
{Droog4} gumnaam i have just been warned not to talk politics here or i will be kicked, banned, sodomized and made to wear polka-dot clothes.
* Tommy} has quit IRC (Read error: EOF from client)
* kaYaL_viLLi has joined #worldchat
{gumnaam} okz
* kaYaL_viLLi has left #worldchat
{GrimLurkin} Humerous as that was, don't test my patience.
* ComicS_GirL has joined #worldchat
* KFEPKFEW has left #worldchat
* X sets mode: +l 66
* ishi^_^ has joined #worldchat
{gumnaam} tum kabhi aye ho khi ya pk Droog4
{GrimLurkin} You've gotten a lot more warning than others woul dhave gotten.
{Droog4} okay chill our grim
{Droog4} our = out
{GrimLurkin} Thank you.
{GrimLurkin} =)
* FayRa has joined #worldchat
{Droog4} gumnaam, speaking Urdu is a good way to get around the censorship, but there is just one tiny little problem with that ..........
* X sets mode: +l 68
* co_cr_cw_ml has left #worldchat
* SweetieDoll has joined #worldchat
* ComicS_GirL has quit IRC (Quit)
* Chastity_Sun has quit IRC (Quit)
* gumnaam has quit IRC (Quit)
* layla92 has joined #worldchat
* ruthie has joined #worldchat
{layla92} who from malaysia in here
{ruthie} halleeerr
* vdvdv is now known as erie^
* chiquilla has joined #worldchat
* Droog4 leaps off the roof of Petronas Tower
{layla92} ...
{layla92} lalalalalala
{chiquilla} hola!
{Droog4} hola chiquilla
* MrLuvr has left #worldchat
* MATET has joined #worldchat
* ComicS_GirLy has joined #worldchat
* arrow has left #worldchat
{MATET} hello
{chiquilla} hace mucho tiempo que no entraba a este lugar
* IR-45m has joined #worldchat
* layla92 has left #worldchat
* ishi^_^ is now known as he_she
* he_she has quit IRC (Quit)
* MATET has quit IRC (Quit)
* X sets mode: +l 66
* ruthie has quit IRC (Read error: Connection reset by peer)
{Droog4} okay i am gonna find some other Commie Pinko Lefty Peaceniks to talk to about ending this fu**ing war like by tomorrow at 9:30 am
{Droog4} nite girlscout and grimlurkin
* melissa27fph has quit IRC (Quit)
* X sets mode: +l 64
* ComicS_GirLy has quit IRC (Quit)
* kerei_f has left #worldchat
* X sets mode: +l 62
* cute_bi has quit IRC (Quit)
* big__dck has joined #worldchat
* X sets mode: +l 54
* KillaZ sets mode: +b *!*@*.satgate.net
* M_M was kicked by KillaZ (Blacklisted- Pervertistan)

==============
private chats:
==============

{arrow} sory man are you english
{Droog4} nope, worse
{Droog4} USA
{Droog4} u?
{arrow} im frome jordan
{Droog4} salaam how you doin?
{Droog4} i wanna see Amman and i wanna see Petra
{arrow} itry in this chat to speak english
{Droog4} you're doing a lot better than my Arabic
{arrow} patra very baetiful
{Droog4} alf layla iwa layla
{arrow} romans city
{Droog4} did the Romans build Petra? thanks
{arrow} no iam not mean roman
{Droog4} they show Petra in lots of Hollywood movies
{arrow} tray to visy patra and jarash om qes
* Droog4 tries to find jarash om qes on a Map
{Droog4} I found Jerash!!!
No such nick

[arrow got disconnected but managed to get back on Undernet]

{arrow} plz your email
{Droog4} oh
{Droog4} hmmmmm
{Droog4} hey -- I found Jerash on the map!
{Droog4} it's in the North!
{Droog4} (you know that)
{arrow} thank
{Droog4} bobmerk@earthlink.net

=================
here a big Lag (delay) tsunami hit Undernet. I could tell I was still connected, but it was taking a long time -- minutes or longer -- for anyone to get my messages or reply to them. But before I left ...

===========================
private chat to @GrimLurkin
===========================

{Droog4} yeah i respect your No Politics rule
{Droog4} i'm an Army vet from the Vietnam War
{Droog4} wasted young american lives is a very real thing for me
{Droog4} i want it to stop instantly
{Droog4} here is what Staying The Course does: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/
{Droog4} their families and sweethearts will never see them again
{Droog4} i lost friends and still miss them bitterly
{Droog4} the kid arrow from jordan said he'd never seen an american on irc who wanted to end the war
{Droog4} i wanted him to know there are lots like me
{Droog4} this is where i speak about these things: http://vleeptronz.blogspot.com