/them: "Dammit ... are you on the computer AGAIN?"
/me: Ummmm ... yes,
/them: "You're on that damn Everything thing again, aren't you?"
/me: "Uh ... no ... I'm, um ... doing research"
/them: "Oh, now you're LYING about it ... just admit it, you're an addict ..."
/me: "No, you just don't get it. You should just try it, just once."
/them: "Hmmm ... perl jokes, all that stuff about some person named DMan, those things you call trolls ... no, that's all right. You can geek out all you want, but we're not doing it with you."
/me: (mumbling)"Fine, I'll grok alone."
/them: "You'll WHAT alone?"
/me: *sigh*

"Well, he's spending all his time on this internet site. It's called Everything."

"What does he do on there?"

"He says it's some sort of writing project. I think these people write stuff and now that he's been doing it a while they made him an Editor, so he gets to decide what's good and what's not."

"Good for what?"

"Good in terms of what those folks on there think is good, I guess. Hey, I don't know. He's really gotten funny about all this, and when I try to talk to him about it, he starts waving his hands around and all. He never used to get like that about anything before."

"I think you need to put an end to this.
This doesn't sound good."

"I don't think I can stop him now. It's been almost a year, and he just seems to get more and more involved in it. He even gets mail from some of those folks on there. Some guy from Canada sent him a CD."

"He's having sex with these weirdoes! Can't you see it?!?"

"How can he have sex on a web site? Hell, he doesn't even get dressed and go anywhere any more."

"I don't know how they do it, but this is definitely not natural, is it?
How long are you going to let this go on?"

"Well, it seems to be making him happy. I guess I'll let it go on as long as he wants it to go on.

"How's your husband doing?"

...
Them: So what do you do at work all day if you don't work?
Me: I go on... "everything".
Them: Care to be a bit more vague?
Me: No, I mean the place called "everything2", on the internet, everything2.com.
Them: And you spend all day on this "everything" place?
Me: Uh, yeah.
Them: And what exactly do you do on this "everything" web site?
Me: Uh, well, hmmm... I write stuff... well node- err, well like editorials. But then sometimes they are more like rants and sometimes more like... uh, well remember copying definitions out of the dictionary during detention? Sort of like that... uhm..
Them: And you get paid, how much, to go there?
Me: Well, what I make at work, but they don't pay me to write things there, technically; the site, I mean. Just my work work, pays me to work, not node- err write, stuff, online. Yeah.
Them: Let me get this straight, you spend-what?
Me: Ten hours a day...
Them: Ten hours a day...
Me: "Noding"
Them: Noding? You mean writing things, for a web site, for free for ten fucking hours a day?
Me: Err... that's about the size of it, yeah.
Them: And who reads these writings?
Me: Well, uhm, me, and uhm, people that go to the site. The other "noders", as it were...
Them: You mean the other whack-o's that do this all day too for no readily apparent reason?
Me: Yup.
Them: You are a real wing-nut; you know that?
Me: Yup.

I was trying to do just this very thing today when, as I was writing an email, I stopped to make an aside about a movie the previous email had reminded me of, that's when I stopped....

That's it!

Asides.
That's the whole idea. That's what it is. Imagine if all of your asides, your internal/external tangents were all highlighted, hyperlinked and put up on screen for all to see, with the power to follow the strings where ever they may lead.
A rapid transit station for all of our associations.
For this I got an "UMM-hmm." But I think that was a clearer explanation than the one I was working on at the time.

anm and myself, at work or at play or doing anything together will say something to the effect of, "I smell a node in there somewhere." to just about anything we think would be interesting to myself and other people, or just something that we believe is funny.
C'mon I'm sure you have all done this at least once.
The other people around us will say something like, "You smell what, a toad?" in this particular instance the subject was rendered unconscious for his stupidity. No matter who this person is we always have to explain what we mean by that. More often than not they will say, "Why would you spend all your time doing that?" I really have no answer short of expaining to them that it grows on you. You meet neat people, and better than that you have this wonderful way of expressing your favor or dislike for other peoples write-ups, in the form of votes.

The non-geeks will never understand.

On informing my mom that, as long as I'm visiting her in California, I'm going to go off for a weekend and attend the Southern California E2 Get-together:

prole: So I think I'm gonna go to San Diego this weekend.
mom: To San Diego? Why?
prole: Well.. You know that website I'm always on? Everything?
mom: No..
prole: Yes you do, Mom. I've told you about it. Where I.. um.. write stuff?
mom: No, I don't remember anything about that.
prole: Ok, well, anyway. There's this.. meeting in San Diego with the other people from the website, so I'm thinking I might go hang out with them.
mom: What? Like, people from the internet? I don't know.. Have you met them before?
prole: No, but sort of. It's not a website like Hotmail. It's more, um, of a community. Sort of. Thing. People nnn.. write stuff, and there's some sense of who's who. I don't know. It's hard to explain. But it's all cool.
mom: Wait, so are these people you work with?
prole: No, Mom. Nothing to do with work.
mom: Then, you don't know them? I don't get it. What are you doing in San Diego?
prole: I'm going to go to San Diego and hang out with my imaginary friends, Mom.

That's the vocabularly I've adopted in talking about E2 to non-noders. E2 = that website, noders = imaginary friends, #e = hanging out with my imaginary friends, and the act of noding = writing. It works out very nicely.