Excalibur

Jane Goodall needs some good lovin'.

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Google says: Excalibre is a unique turfgrass species that combines excellent salt tolerance with a beautiful rich blue-green color.

How right they are.

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I am found in these places

/msg forward: ex
email: excalibre@gmail.com
last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/Excalibre (you can examine and pass judgment on my musical taste there.)
AIM: VileExcalibre
Address and phone available if you ask. I'm not all secretive and shit, but EMAR and our homenodes are indexed by Google and I don't need the whole goddamn world getting that stuff just from knowing my screen name, you know?

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On E2

This place has always meant one thing to me in particular: brilliant writing. At its best, that's what this place fosters - I don't think there's anyone who participates on E2 who is not made into a better writer in the process. The content of the site doesn't have much else in common - some of it is stories and poetry, some of it is pure factual information, and some of it is little glimpses at people's lives. We're willing to read anything here on E2, so long as it's good, and whatever you might think about the overall quality of the content here, I don't think you can deny that there's more gems hidden away in the corners than you're likely to find anywhere else.

Brilliant writeups

There's way too many to choose from, but here's a selection of stuff that I just think exemplifies what this place is about. Some of it's fascinating, some of it's funny, some of it is just bits of human experience - E2 has a broader spectrum of content than anywhere else.

• 1,340,666 women just like me by radlab0
• Mi Esposa Supermercado by Igloowhite
• The Unbearable Anguish of My Awful Existence, an Un-Sestina in Vague Villanelle Form by Evil Catullus
• Magnolia by panamaus
• The Ten Commandments Judge by haze

As for what to emulate if you're new? Look anywhere on the site. You'll find something wonderful. I've given examples above, but here's some more brilliant writing to look at.

• Wired, old school: Information exchange and the explosive popularity of 17th and 18th century coffee houses by izubachi
• The New Jews (An Intensely Personal Discussion) by JordanM

If you look at the things I've linked to, you might notice one of the things that makes this place unique. On E2, there's room for a personal touch; even dry knowledge can be made funny, and interesting, and more thought-provoking when the writer lets their voice through. The best factual writings are the ones that integrate the writer's feelings, or the impact they've felt. The human side of E2 is what separates it from places that offer only bare fact.

E2 and me

A few pieces of my own best work (even though it feels presumptuous to juxtapose them with the above).

• How Maria got herself a pussy
• Codpiece
• Tapeworm

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The Von Wicked Chronicles

A joint project by Evil Catullus and myself, telling the story of Herr Doktor Robert Von Wicked and his sometimes-wife, sometimes-arch-nemesis, the Contessa Julia Von Wicked, supervillains and hopeless romantics.

By me

• I remember when it was me who made you want to take over the world and enslave humanity, set a few years after Julia's ninja assault on Robert's second wedding, in which Julia reminisces about falling in love with Robert.
• Latex. High heels. Knives, which tells the story of Julia's attack on Robert's wedding.
• Lady Deathblast's Lover — the life and times of Robert's cyborg second wife.
• The Thanksgiving battle. It's always difficult to spend the holiday with your family.
• Robots and comic books — Robert and Julia attempt to find and kidnap the young Erik Jones-Nakata.

By Evil Catullus

• I remember when it was me who made you want to take over the world and enslave humanity, a letter from Robert to Julia in the wake of his destruction of her house and failed attempt to kill her.
• It's not my fault that I'm so evil — the trials and tribulations of growing up the son of supervillains.
• I was a teenage Overlord, in which Robert and Julia's son Julian describes a typical day in high school and a budding romance.
• This little light of mine, a romantic moment between Julian and Erik.
• My funny villaintine — Love makes a liar of Julian Von Wicked.
• This wicked life, in which Julian meets his parents again after years apart.

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Once upon a time I promised to do node audits, and I enjoyed it, but I'm really, really bad about sticking to things like that. My apologies to the people who asked who I never got to.

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Free yourself of the tyranny of no outside links! Through the use of any of the Mozilla browsers (I use Mozilla Firefox) and the linkification extension (http://www.beggarchooser.com/firefox/) you can turn plaintext links into real ones!

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