ABOUT THE SIGNATURE QUOTES      Back in the days when the Internet was just USENET, and the main mode of discourse was text-only newsgroups, many people would add a “signature” to their newsgroup postings and e-mail messages.  This usually took the form of a divider line, their name, and their e-mail address.  (Indeed, early on, you were limited to four lines, nothing more.)  A number of people would include a quotation of one sort or another — sometimes humorous, sometimes profound, sometimes indecipherable.  While many such signature quotes stayed around forever, unchanging, a few enterprising souls would change their quotes regularly, even weekly.      And thus did a brainstorm occur, and the “Marc Lynx Sig Quotes” were born.  New, humorous, original quotes were presented on an almost weekly basis, amounting to 40 or more quotes per year.  They became quite popular with some people, and praise (or groans, in the case of particularly noxious puns) would come through the e-mail.  (And in one case, a request to republish some of them in an Australian gaming newsletter.)      I created the quotes for weekly presentation from about January 1989 through sometime in 1995 or so, after which I had lost some steam and shifted over to about monthly.  It was only after the first several months that any need to retain the quotes came along, when I realized that I wanted to build full short stories around some of them, and so an accumulated file of the quotes was created (but a dozen or more early ones are forever lost).  There are a few series of quotes where you can see the underlying plot of an actual story taking shape.      At Christmas, 1989, I wrote a short-short story with a holiday theme and sent it out to a few dozen people.  This “e-mail holiday card” was popular enough that I have continued to do this on an annual basis, amassing twelve such short stories to date (eleven December holiday cards and one Y2K card).  One story was also adapted into an actual paper card, drawn and colored by Jim Drew.  The 1999 card was sent out to over 200 people.  (Want to be on this year’s recipient list?  Send e-mail to marclynx@earthlink.net!)      (Mind you, schedules being what they are, several of the cards have been e-mailed in the wee hours of Christmas Eve.  One did not get written until the week after Christmas, but the story was themed appropriately.  And then there was the year I missed the holidays by months and sent it out on April 1 — but you can get away with sending out a holiday card on that day, I think!)      A web page for the quotes was eventually put up in 1998, but only a few were ever available there.  I still create them in fits and spurts, when the muse strikes.  (Ow!)  Only now is the mass of the quotes being made available to the world.      I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have in writing them.   Click here to return to the main Signature Quotes page Click here to return to the main Missing Lynx page
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