Beyond Metamora

We are the same people, only farther from home

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“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

So, you found the website. Good, good. I’ve been quietly tinkering with this site for weeks. Maybe, in the broader sense, it’s been years in the making. Not continuously, of course, as you can probably tell by my rugged, hand-hewn CSS and ghetto-fab graphic design. No, like the rest of my life, it’s come together in fits and starts.

But aside from a crash course in [XHTML], most of the design snags were psychological, not technical. In terms of personal identity, a site like this means crossing a line of no return. As any child of the [Napster] generation knows: once you toss something into the Internet, you can’t ever take it back.

In the past, and probably even now, the easy solution to this was pseudo-anonymity. You could mouth off on the internet and then disappear into the ether, because nobody knew who the hell you were anyway, at least ["IRL"]. I still remember the halcyon 90s– when the only people online were geeks and visionaries– and the web was a big digital masquerade ball. The allure of the ‘net was a promise of tabula rasa; people knew you only by what you disclosed, or didn’t disclose, or flat-out lied about. As an anonymous Usenet poster once said, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

But the Internet has changed. As the web has become more intricately connected with our daily lives, it’s become more complicated and more personal. It’s become less a world of icons and handles, and more and more a world of real names and real faces.

By and large, I think this is positive step. It shows that the internet is “growing up”. collectively. and becoming a more mature medium. Consider that in 1996, the pop-cultural avatar of the Internet was the Ph34rSuM HaXX0r. Today in 2006, that image has been replaced by the painfully earnest, street-level blogger.

“Getting real” is a scary notion. But I look at the websites that I admire, like Matt Baldwin’s [Defective Yeti], Rolf Potts’ [Vagablogging], John Dreyer’s [All My Life For Sale], and the one common thread between them is that they’re not anonymous. They’re attached to unique human beings who smile into the camera. “People with faces”, as [Ston] would say.

When putting this site together, the #1 bullet point was that I wanted this to be my website. As if someday others will mention “Mike Kelley’s [Beyond Metamora]“. My goal for this site is to create a single point of connectedness between all the things I say and do, online and off. Its intended audience includes future employers, former classmates, aunts and uncles, extraterrestrials, friends, neighbors, internet stalkers, NSA wiretappers, and people I’ve never met in my life. In short: EVERYBODY, including yer Mom. And my Mom, for that matter.

I don’t intend to make this site the story of my life. Treat it more like a table of contents. There’s not much here yet, but it’ll grow.

With that tedious preamble out of the way, I’m happy to say:

WELCOME TO BYM.NET

It’s a website. *shrug* But who am I? For those of you expecting an [epic, alliterative diatribe], sorry to disappoint. My name is Michael William Kelley. You can use whichever slice of that you want. A lot of people go with “Mike”.

I’m 24 years old. I grew up in a place in Michigan called Metamora. I graduated from Dryden High. For about a year (2005), I lived in [Waterford, MI]. For the last 5 months, I’ve been stranded in [Phoenix, Arizona]. In about 60 days, I’ll be moving on.

Online, I generally go by the pseudonym “[RoguePoet]“. No, I don’t write poetry anymore, but thanks for asking.

For games, I use “lizard” (since “RoguePoet” proved too hard to type in the midst of a Zerg rush). “[lizardmwk]” is also my Ebay account name, only because every conceivable permutation of “Mike Kelley” was taken and “Rogue” doesn’t exactly scream “trustworthy transaction!”

My friends in [No Dice] call me “Yan”, so that’s the name I use on [that particular forum]. (or should I say “used”? Fix the gorram webboard, Chris!)

Over the last 11 years, you could reach me at the other end of the following 4 addresses:

mwkelley@cardina.net (1996-1997)
mwkelley@tir.net (1997-2000)
mwkelley@worldnet.att.net (2001-2004)
mwkelley@comcast.net (2005)

But now that Google has finally invented [webmail that doesn't suck], I’ll be sticking with the deliciously ISP-independent mwkelley (at) gmail.com

If you need to send any air drops or tactical missles, please target these coordinates for maximum yield:

+33° 25′ 6.18″, -111° 56′ 43.02″

Smaller explosives can be sent via postal mail. My address is on the [Meta] page.

…See? That should be just enough to make stalking me super easy. For the rest of you too lazy to get off the couch and assemble a high-powered rifle, you’ll just have to wait for the next installment.

Please don’t expect daily updates, but I am planning to put up new blog-posts at least weekly. Other parts of the site, like the mysterious “[Things]” page, will also take shape in the weeks and months to come. I’m also planning to put together a “[Links]” page that’s more user-friendly than the swirling madness of my [del.icio.us] tagfile.

In the meantime, please test out the comments system and post your scathing criticism
in the space below.

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