ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Getting Jason to Endorse You: An Example —

I’ve bitched out a few people who’ve tried to get me to “endorse” their little messy get-rich-quick schemes, especially when they do so in a way that shows they neither know me, care to, or even tried to understand why I do what I do and work with that.

Finally, I got a letter that succeeds! So here we go:

Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:59:46 +0000
From: Bogart DeJoint 
To: Jason Scott 
Subject: Uncle Bogart wants YOU...

...to join the Free Internet!

We crazy mofos at the FreeNIC (freenic.org) have started an alternate DNS
root for non-commercial sites. In a nutshell, that means no ads, no spam,
and no fees for being listed in our top-level domain (.free). We want to
bring back the anti-corporate spirit of the BBS age, to return to a way
of life where Internet users are not viewed simply as consumers to be
exploited for financial gain.

Now, normally we wait for people to come to us and say "I want my free
domain. Bitch best recognize." But in this case, we think your site would
be such a tremendous asset (not to be confused with a tremendous asshole)
to the project that we're making this request the other way around.
Really, we're nothing like those 247 WhoreMedia douchebags. Nobody is
trying to profit off your work. We hate profit. We just see that
textfiles.com provides enormous amounts of interesting content without a
single ad, and that's exactly we're looking for on the Free Internet.

All we'd like is to point a .free domain (be it textfiles.free or any
other domain/s of your choice) to the textfiles.com servers, and then for
you to post something on your weblog along the lines of "I'm on the [Free
Internet] (linky-linky to freenic.org) at textfiles.free, and wouldn't it
kick ass if more people joined us. It's free as in freedom *and* as in
free weed!" Now that you're on a six entry a week schedule, surely there
are slow news days where you can fit in this kind of stuff? Surely an
Internet root that says "fuck the corporate world, biaatch!" deserves a
mention on your weblog?

Well, there you have it, that's the pitch. With your help, the Free
Internet can get past the concept stage and on to the "free porn" stage.
We have an IRC server at irc.freenic.org, where we answer serious
questions (#free) or generally monkey-ass around while getting high
(#hash). If you dropped by, you'd at least get some free virtual pizza.
With pot. Which you know would totally own, so come on, help us take back
the Internet! NOOCH!

w3rd, I'm out.

What wins here:

  • Humor.
  • No attempt to get me to put “ads” up on textfiles.com.
  • No attempt to make it sound like they’re doing me a “favor” instead of the other way around.
  • Profanity. (See: Humor)
  • Drug references. I don’t do drugs but I do do drug humor. (See: Humor)

So there you go, there’s this alternative NIC thing running which is apparently run by toked-out hippies using their nameservers as a bong but also giving you essentially free DNS for your trouble. If this attracts you, go for it. Otherwise, relax; smoke some of this.


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4 Comments

  1. Frank says:

    Now the question is, why doesn’t ascii.textfiles.free work but textfiles.free does? Phooey.

  2. Woot! First of all, the fact that this entry exists on this weblog kicks major ass! Jason Scott OWNS.

    To answer your question, it’s because ascii, like many textfiles.com subdomains, is a VirtualHost. I’ve now added all the subdomains I can think of to the zonefile, but the webserver on ascii.textfiles.free currently leaves the unsuspecting reader swallowing a huge mouthful of cow.

  3. Woot! Third post. Sometime or later I’m going to write about the benefits of BOINC and distributed parrelle processing, but for now, getting high and third posting is important.

    Oh and making sure the heatsink stays on the CPU, that kinda blowed.

  4. Lazlo Nibble says:

    Heheheheheh. Drugs.