We recently managed to get Archy the cockroach to take a few minutes out of his busy schedule and sit down with us for a few minutes to discuss E2. What follows is the unedited transcript of our interview. To preserve the feel of Archy's words we present his text in his typical unpunctuated fashion. It may be worthwhile to the reader to note that at times throughout the conversation Archy appeared unsteady; on occasion we thought we smelled alcohol on his breath, but were unable to get him to co-operate with our later attempts to verify whether or not he had previously been drinking.


How did you discover E2, Archy?

well i was stumbling around on a dark night on the boss s desk trying to get into a cappuccino cup to see if there was anything left a vers libre cockroach is always on the lookout for coffee when i tripped on a spoon and went sailing and landed on the boss s quietkey the boss had forgotten to leave notepad open for me so i made do with what i had


What are the noders like?

noders are alright mostly but it is a lonely existence i think i am the only vers libre cockroach here


Have other noders accepted you as a part of the database, in view of your being a cockroach?

once they learn to look down when they are talking it is alright
humans and cockroaches do not really mix at cocktail parties we get along alright provisionally but sometimes they make me take a timeout when i am getting too close to their olives


Do you have any suggestions that would help E2 improve, Archy?

well i wish you would track down mehitabel in her reincarnated form wherever she is i think she would like it here there is one fellow in particular by the name of pseudo intellectual who seems to have taken her motto toujours gai pretty seriously he keeps repeating it to anyone who will listen and to some who wont


What do you think the place of a cockroach should be on E2?

i think the corner is a good place for a cockroach we are used to it


Do you have any favourite nodes Archy?

well there is one node i like it is called indeterminacy 41 it is a node that pretends to be about freedom but is really about birds
currently i am doing my best to make more cockroach nodes but the road is long and my six legs are short


What about favourite noders?

well i like some noders but i dont want to list them all here it could get me in trouble some people raise cockroaches to see them fight with each other but i am quite firm in thinking if you are not raising a cockroach to be your next president you have no business adopting


What purpose do you think E2 serves?

well it is like i tell the boss some people make it in the big world and some make it in the small world and some make it in a virtual world


What is your voting philosophy?

i do not want to force my voting philosophy on anyone they are sensitive to philosophy around here but i will say the thing about votes is when you dont have any you want to give them to everything you see and when you have them you cannot find anything worth voting on


How do you feel about Getting-To-Know-You nodes?

i feel anything that gets people to know me is a plus but i am not so pleased when other people think the same thing


What do you think the future holds in store for E2?

well right now many noders are aligned in opposing factions some of them want poems and daylogs and others want facts and details and others want xp
if you want my opinion as a cockroach there are only so many facts in the world once all the easy ones are noded there will be nothing left to node for generalists so the generalists will all go away or the ones who stay will take to writing second opinions on the easy facts that were written before them
the people who come along and are experts in some field like stereotaxy or psycholinguistics will node long academic nodes that no one understands and many noders will get bitter about it because they dont understand them but they will be unable to comment because they dont understand them
the people who write poems and daylogs will continue to write poems and daylogs forever
they may or may not realise one day that they are all writing more or less the same thing either way they will continue to vote and cool nodes that they think they could have noded themselves beforehand but forgot to and will node variations of afterwards when they think no one is watching
the learning curve will continue to escalate until new users are sent to everything university to get a graduate degree before they can begin to node
the database will get so big backing it up will take forty five hours out of every day
the gods will keep putting in new levels to climb and i predict sex will continue to sell

please tell the boss i did this interview of my own free will and do not need to be reimbursed for my time
however a crumb or two would be nice all this talk about mutually filtered databases has made me a hungry cockroach a poet must eat or die
yours for less philosophy and more practical application

archy