I was getting these kind of bizarre e-mails from someone calling herself "Poodgims Smythe." She had read my journal. She wanted to send me books. I was (I think) understandably freaked out. A complete stranger on the big scary internet wants my address! Isn't this exactly how all those Reader's Digest articles that warn about The Dangers Online start out? You can't trust people you meet on the internet. Everyone knows that.

So I wrote to her, asking for a little more personal info about her. She told me she was in Germany. A town called Adirolf. She said she had gone to school abroad, in a place called Nwotwoc. (Let me know when any of this starts being glaringly obvious.) She started reading DiaryLand because one of her friends, Gnana, had a journal here.

My brain registered two things. 1) She lived in Germany, and thus probably wasn't going to be able to hurt me. 2) She knew a lot of people with funny names. (And just in case you also have the brain of an iguana today, try reading those backwards.)

I dismissed the second one as irrelavent. (I think a Chris Farley riff is appropriate here. "Stupid stupid STUPID! What the hell is wrong with me?") The really important thing was that she lived far far away.

We continued exchanging e-mails. I created even more melodrama for myself by trying to involve Lynne. (It was clever, I tell you! Poodgims could address the package to Arnold Rimmer at Miscatonic U., and Lynne, who works in the mailroom, could pull it out and give it to me. Poodgims would not know my address or real name, and I would still get a lot of free books. It was a damn good idea! It was! It was!) It turned out that Lynne believed it would be Mail Fraud to address the package to a fictional character, and she didn't want to do that.

So I decided my options were having the package addressed to "Lynne Ng" at her address or to me at mine. I decided it would be far simpler to have it sent to me. I e-mailed Poodgims with my real name and address. She stopped writing to me. Oh, I guess she really was a stalker, I thought. Splendid. I wonder when my mailbomb will arrive.

A few days later, I got a random e-mail from Abu (see footnote 1). Abu is a Tau who I hadn't heard from in years. I thought, "Goodness. This certainly is my week for bizarre e-mail" My brain still refused to make any sort of connection.

I wrote back to her. She wrote back, and signed her e-mail with Poodgim's tagline. Then, finally, all was made clear.

So, yeah. I don't have a cyberstalker. I have a very cruel friend. In a way I'm almost sorry she turned out to be someone I know. Even though I was a little freaked out, it was neat to think that some complete stranger liked my writing enough to want to give me stuff.

***

(Footnotes)

(1) Abu was her Tau pledge name. Goddammit. Why didn't I just call everyone by their pledge names? It would have been a lot easier than trying to think of new names for everyone I know. Of course, that would have been a little surreal. There was the semester Jake went insane, you see. "Bobo Billnose the Galloping Horse! Sacrificial Mudpuppy of the White Creme de Menthe! Banana Fitzgerald and her Floating Boat!" And of course, I'd have to be calling D. "Lady Godiva." Hee.

(2) It's probably obvious, but I've wanted to point this out for a while. The person I call "Christine" is most decidedly not named after the Tau Christine. A long time ago, I knew someone else with the same sort of self-destructive behavior that "Christine" seems to have. "Christine" is named after this person, and not after Tau Christine. This alias thing is harder than it looks. There is also a current Tau named Alys, who is in no way at all the same person as the Taunie I call "Alice." I just thought you should know that.

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