The lovely and talented
Rhonda Leah Kirk Fries
(circa 1985)
******************
Your mild-mannered APP reporter
Dick Stuckey
(circa 2014)
APP: Good morning Rhonda. It's nice to finally get the chance to interview such an old UseNet maven. How are you doing?
RLKF: Oh, I'm fine but try to keep your questions simple. My chemo brain is acting up again and when it does I can't really think straight. My husband says it makes me even more bitchy than usual. (snort)
APP: Of course, Rhonda, After having researched years of your posts to various newsgroups and to AUK in particular I intend to ask simple questions. I sure don't want you in over your head.
RLKF: Thank you very much. Who did you say you were again?
APP: I'm Dick Stuckey. I'm with the APP which stands for American Press Pioneer, and I do interviews.
RLKF: Oh yeah. I remember now. Let's go.
APP: Let's start out with some general questions. There are some who say you are at least a little nuts. What do you have to say to them.
RLKF: It would be so nice if everyone could just believe whatever the fuck they believe without stepping on everyone else's toes. Humans are such control freaks. That kind of insult - it's had a very long run, just like an old time soap opera. Personality disorder does not equate to genuinely nuts.
APP: OK, I can see that's a touchy subject so let's move on shall we?
RLKF: I don't blame you one little bit.
APP: You are known in AUK as a coward because you kill file everybody that doesn't say good things about you. You've been hiding from Gregory Hall whom some call your nemesis. Why won't you discuss topics with Gregory?
RLKF: Seriously? You're really reading and believing the worst outerfilther auk has ever seen? Greg' s apparently had several accounts worth of banning. Yeesh. He doesn't give up. I suppose I can live with it since I neither have to feed him nor clean his bucket.
APP: Some people say you *own* Gregory Hall?
RLKF: Wow. I guess I really do own him, after all. I'd prefer not to own him, and I'd pay someone to haul him away.
APP: (Laughs) Seriously, what is it about Hall that bugs you so much? He seems quite popular in various news groups and he definitely is as intelligent and erudite as the come so it seems you are in the minority.
RLKF: I post in auk, so I expect that both Cujo and I will be the targets of verbal abuse from half the posters at least 99% of the time. I don't have a problem with that, because, as I said, it's auk.
But Greg, like Respondant before him, attacked my real-life marriage. That would normally get an immediate plonk, but I gave Greg one warning. His response was to double down. The way I see it, he wanted to be plonked so that he could embark on an all out nuclear bombardment. You know he should be happy, but I don't think anything will make him happy, because he's a sad, lonely, miserable old man. And soon to be older still--our Greg will be 67 in May, in fact.
APP: So you and he are contemporaries, so to speak. Why is it so many old people are on UseNet?
RLKF: Probably because none of us have a life (rolls eyes). Proof is how I'm obsessed with Emmett Gulley.
APP: Oh yeah, Emmett. I've read many of his posts and I'd say he owns you, Rhonda. Why can't you quit stalking Emmett? Your actions toward him are rather bizarre for a women.
RLKF: No sympathy for the devils who stalk and threaten and rant and rave. I guess he thinks the rest of us share his intellectual limitations. Emmett is one sad little maggot. (I'd have said puppy, but I like puppies. Of course, even maggots have a useful purpose, unlike Emmett.) I'd wager that Emmett pisses off all ladies. All he has to do is stop saying that I'm doing things I'm not doing. Pretty simple. Pretty stupid. One of the upsides of auk is that it allows the harmless venting of this common human trait in a voluntary environment. Of course, some people seem to have an endless need to jerk around stupid people, so I'm not sure it really does any good. Emmett certainly never learns. And, I'm no better.
APP: But, Emmett says you're stalking him and it seems he might be right or you'd just leave him be.
RLKF: But he's not stalking anyone? Oh no. Not him. (guffaws) Ah, ha, ha. Seriously? Where does he get this shit? Emmett tried to friend me on FB in January 2010. I denied his request, with a short explanatory note, on January 9, 2010. Since then, he won't fuck off. He posts bullshit about a lawsuit in which I was a named defendant. He calls me a whore. He screams, he rants, he raves, he threatens. But now that good old Greg's in my killfile, he figures he can still get my attention by posting bullshit to rival Emmett's. He's a sad, sad man, our bucket bullshitter.
APP: You seem to have Greg on your mind even when the topic is Emmett. It could be that you have a crush on him and are in denial?
RLKF: Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. When he drowns in his shit bucket, I plan to nominate him for a Darwin.
APP: Hmmm! I'd say you are, indeed, owned by this Gregory Hall. But, let's move on. Let's talk about your cancer. I understand you are a survivor.
RLKF: I was really lucky. Good doctors, good choices, good drugs and a good drug trial. Except for fatigue (which will soon be addressed) and a touch of chemobrain (which seems to be more surgical anesthesia brain in my case), I'm in fabulous shape and certainly not blighted.
The relationship between smoking and lung cancer seems to rely heavily on the NAT1 (n-acetyltransferase 1) and NAT2 genes. If you don't get the right alleles, it's a problem. (Quite a few non-smokers also develop lung cancer, and quite a few smokers never do, but "don't smoke" is the best medical science has been able to offer for many years.) Smoking is also a limited risk factor for many other cancers (lots of known carcinogens in cigarette smoke), including breast cancer, but so is breathing.
Greg gives me a hard time saying smoking caused my breast cancer. As usual Greg has a history of failed assertions, but this one tops the list. The primary risk factor for breast cancer is being female. Smoking is pretty far down on the list. A lot of non-smoking women get breast cancer. Greg's not as smart as he thinks he is. I've had email correspondence with Greg. We've never met, though, and we never will. I have to say
that in case Cujo reads this.
APP: Greg again! You are SO OWNED!
RLKF: I have to admit, he's good for a laugh, even if it's only the horrified kind that ends in an upset stomach. I say I plonked him but I really haven't. I just act like it so I don't have to engage him. He makes mincemeat out of me every time. But, I can't help being drawn to him. Go figure. I've never been good at choosing men. Take my husband -- please! Biggest mistake in my life.
APP: Sorry to hear that. Well, our time's just about up. Do you have anything else, any parting shots?
RLKF: Greg doesn't have the brains that God promised a two-by-four. Novins isn't doing anything. I want so much for Emmett to go away that even a glimmer of hope is enough for a happy dance. What a pair of imbeciles. I love how Greg keeps screaming "stalker, stalker, stalker" when he's the one who stalked me to a breast cancer support site (which is the only way he could know about the after-effects I experienced from chemo).
APP: I think you love Gregory Hall, Rhonda. Perhaps you should bed him down and take out your frustrations on him.
RLKF: Fat chance. Well, maybe I'll think about it when I happen to be vacationing all by myself in Florida. Well, maybe not maybe. Definitely.(twerks)
