PLATE V- The Harpy

he Story Of Picori

When II was a sophomore and living in the dorms at Cowell College, I started to get to be friends with some people who lived around me.

The weird thing was, that we'd go to the dining hall or to study together, and they always had to run over to the 'stat lab' to 'check their mail' or 'talk' or 'write' some chick over at Porter or something. Often I'd go along with them, and sit in a chair, bored to tears while they did whatever they did on these totally boring looking black screens with green letters (no graphics and no tetris like my cool mac!).

Apparently a lot of this involved talking to each OTHER on the COMPUTER, even though they were all sitting in the same room! The only sound they made was an occasional burst of laughter.

I used to run into vadge in there a lot, sitting around and waiting for some friend or another, also bored. After a few months of this, I actually started to feel like I was missing out on something -- people started calling me over to read stuff that crazy Banshee has 'posted' on a 'bulletin board'. And it was pretty entertaining! So pinniped and I decided it was time to get our own LOGIN. I think we still thought the whole thing was a little stupid, but we figured, what the hell. As I recall, grendel had been bugging me to get a login quite a bit, so I wanted to come up with a login name that would entertain him or maybe one he thought was dumb (since there seemed to be this trend towards PRETENTIOUS login names), either way was fine.

Now, everyone who knew me knew my parrot Pico, and many of them had witnessed that when he gets excited he likes to say his name over and over again, and that when he gets really excited, he likes to say 'PICO-RI! PICO-RI!' over and over again. I think grendel and his friends used to mimic my parrot and say 'PICO-RI! PICO-RI!' to me too, so it seemed only natural that 'PICO-RI!' become my login name. However, it had to be one word, so I figured if people pronounced it 'pih-COR-ee', that would be okay too.

So I became Picori, and was known by that name for years!

The Story Of Enola

As I soon learned, you can make your name in ICB whatever you want, and change it at will -- a game that probably gives us way too much pleasure.

I often used other names in ICB. I think I was eloise for a while, maybe some other things, nothing that stuck. But after years of being picori I started to get really bored with it.

One day in about 1995, I got the OMD song 'Enola Gaye' stuck in my head. There it stayed for about a week. In tribute, or perhaps in protest, I made my name on ICB Enola that week, and during that week I got very attached to it! I've been Enola online ever since, although most of my email addresses are still picori.