[lore] A little contribution

[Sophie Divliaev]

I've written a little something for the next issue.  Please edit at will.

Sophie - adrift in Adelaide


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Geek Comedy: Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie is one of the Internet's most popular 
comedy troupes.  Hailing from Edmonton, Alberta, the group have been 
entertaining geeks and other, less-deserving life-forms for twenty-odd 
years with their music, videos, TV and Flash animations.

They are best known for their recording "Welcome to the Internet 
Helpdesk" from their album "Skit Happens."  This lead to them being 
slashdotted and brought them a leap of fame, a little fortune and a 
legion of fans, including Apple Computer (which screens a censored 
version of the "Welcome..." video when training their own helpdesk staff.)

Before mp3.com was shut down in 2003, Trolls CDs were some of their most 
popular items; at one point the group had four of the site's top 10 
selling comedy CDs and fans acquired over 3 million downloads of their 
MP3s.

So let's take a brief look at some of their work...

"Welcome to the Internet Helpdesk" portrays a hilarious exchange between 
a veteran helpdesk employee struggling to help a computer-illiterate 
customer over the telephone while a new recruit to the company's support 
team looks on.

"Every OS Sucks" is for the retrogeek in all of us.  The group 
reminisces about an unwired, Window-less world when mouse-free computers 
like the Amiga, the TRS80 and the Apple ][ had a mere 32 KB of RAM, 
black-and-white plain text was the order of the day and the hottest 
games were Pong, Zork and Zaxxon.  If you lament the current state of 
affairs and wish for the golden age of computing when computers "did 
what they were supposed to do", this track is for you.

But it's not just all fun and games.  Need some advice on how to deal 
with your folks' persistent whining at you to help them get online? 
Look no further than the tips offered in "Keep Your Parents Off the 
Internet!"

If you're an armchair anarchist concerned about Big Brother, "The 
Privacy Song" offers handy hints on how to spread a little organised 
chaos in your life: "lie about your income, your age, gender and race," 
and "spell your name incorrectly so you're harder to trace."

If you're one of the Dark Cabal That Controls Everything, aka a 
sysadmin, have a listen to "The System Administrator Song," especially 
if your colleagues STILL expect you to do desktop support...

Some of their best work is obviously their geek humour, although they 
also yarn about university and youth, write religious satire (not for 
the faint-hearted), poke fun at politicians and carp on about Canada.

Much of their work is available for free online at their site or at 
AmpCast, though many of their tracks are also available through Apple's 
iTunes Music Store.  Check them out in iTunes, at their main website of 
www.deadtroll.com or at the site for their cable TV show: 
www.thegeekshow.com