So What IS The E2 Thing Anyway? Sometime around 2001, I was goofing off on the Internet, playing that dumb game where you just type a word, phrase or name inot a search engine and see what you get (if you have never done it, give it a try! It can be fun!). So, I typed in cat and one page was titled cat@everything2. When I went to this page, there was a good description of the cat command in UNIX. Now, UNIX commands can sometimes trigger flashbacks to may days at Xerox, so I almost hit the BACK button on my browser and went on searching. Instead, I scrolled down. There was a definition of the animal, then a silly write-up on B. Klibin's book Cat. What the heck was this site? Everything2 (E2 to its friends) is a lot of things: it is an online encyclopedia, a knowledge base and a forum for amateur (and professional) writers of fiction and non-fiction. E2 also contains great essays, humour, satire and miscellaneous ranting. Political opinion pieces are not in short supply---there are a few conservative writers who can make William F. Buckley look like Al Franken and a few liberals who can make Jon Stewart look like Rush Limbaugh! It is what it is named...it is everything. E2 writers (called "noders" in the specialized parlance of the site) get to review each other's work (and can vote on what they like and do not), editors can remove inappropriate material, all members can write messages to on another and various awards are given for good writing. As a result of the smart users, a lot of informal fact-checking also goes on---factual errors do slip past, but usually not for long. The noders come from every corner of planet earth (and maybe other planets as well!) and subject matter runs from the sublime to the extremely ridiculous---from extremely difficult writeups on medicine, sociology, history, science and math to very silly popular culture, dirty jokes (some are rather R-Rated material) and funny stories. I read E2 for years, using it to look up trivia, household hints, even recipes. Then, in the autumn of 2005, I took the plunge and joined. For the man who wanted to write an encyclopedia when he was a kid, it is perfect. I have written about 150 articles for E2 since then (and almost everything has been enthusiastically accepted), some about massage, some about silly popular culture stuff (including writing up all five members of the 70's rock band Styx, for something, then turning around and writing an article about the mythological character named Styx!), and a few essays about life. A couple of editors took me under their wings and this has really helped me to improve my writing. I've even had a real author put one of my essays in a real book. I am on there under the name Junkill---which is a name I sometimes use online. Come by www.everything2.com and look me up. You can click on my writeups to see what I've written, then click on a title that catches your eye---or you can just wander the site, reading whatever strikes your fancy. I have added my own massage writings from E2 to my site here, so that they will be easy for my clients and future clients to access. Enjoy! Copyright 2007 by Kellum Johnson, Jr. LMT Back to HOME PAGE |