Of course the resulting "Scamdy" web site was beyond reproach.
And the Internet rocked back - guess who survived?
Scamdy was formed near the end of May, and was on the internet sometime during the first part of June 2005.
It was created because P-J Comix was wearying of covering it in the
DUmmie FUnnies, and because there was some hostility about discussing the issue at our old home (now under new management, by the way; give it a visit); there were some sourpusses there who whined about it.
And then after discussion of Scamdy at our old home was discouraged, the same sourpusses who had whined about it, left, going on to other places.
The founder of Scamdy was a
bona fide member of democraticunderground, who got together with a member of the
DUmmie FUnnies. They had no operating plan, just the goal of finding out what Doug's stupid ex-wife was up to, because the Scamdal surely wasn't anything it seemed to be.
After those two, others from both sides of the spectrum came on board.
There were two "leaders," the two founders, but generally, the one from democraticunderground was the
de facto leader, a position gratefully granted that individual by all others, because that individual was the one running the biggest risks.
Not being primitives, we were receptive to any and all coming our way, left and right.
After a month, the Scamdy web-site passed on to my own hands, because I had the least to lose, if exposed. (In fact, franksolich didn't have a damned thing to lose.)
The Scamdy site started withering after a few months--autumn 2005--but I kept it up for about another year and half, before letting it lapse. Towards the end, the only traffic (and really, it was pretty sparse) was mostly from people with ".gov", ".edu", and ".irs" addresses at the tag-end of their ISP numbers.
I have no idea why.
The Scamdy web-site was actually a "front," for something far more important; a private chatroom where members of Scamdy socialized and exchanged information (much of which could not be put on the internet). It was a great chatroom, a good time, excepting the member assigned to cover the Bostonian Drunkard was always.....drunk. (franksolich was assigned to cover Doug's stupid ex-wife and his fellow alum Skins.)
Those involved in Scamdy took extreme care to NOT establish any personal real-life contact with any of the errant primitives (other than that slight lapse in judgement to which delilah referred a few pages back); this however did not mean the scammers and their collaborators also displayed clean sportsmanship.
Among other things, somewhere along the line, I learned that one of the scammer-collaborators had obtained my telephone number (I had a telephone at the time; I lived in town, not out here) and was griping that no matter how many times he called me, I wouldn't pick up the telephone.
Well, I never picked up the telephone because I never knew it was ringing; I'm deaf, remember.
(The telephone however was necessary in order to have internet service at that place.)
After learning that, I contacted the local telephone company, who then put a 30-day "tracer" on calls coming to my number.....and they traced back to a primitive in California, a middle-aged guy who lived with his elderly mother, and who apparently had been in trouble before, something involving violence wreaked upon women.
Among other things. There was one night the unsportsmanlike scammers and their collaborators posted my name, address, and telephone number on both Skins's island and the Mike Malloy message board.....but both my fellow alum Skins and Mike Malloy's wife kindly took them down within a minute or so of that information being posted.
We played clean; the scammers played filthy dirty.
Some scammer-collaborators managed to get my post office then-address, though, and got my name on all sorts of mailing-lists, mostly for book clubs.
I made lemonade out of lemons with that; I joined them all, got the four books for a buck or two, bought a couple more at regular price over the next year.
One primitive contacted Frank Solich, by then head football coach at the University of Ohio, alleging I was "using" his name for illicit purposes. That was resolved in a hurry; after all, I had been using "franksolich" as my screen-name (everywhere) since 1995, long before Frank Solich was well-known, and had never misrepresented myself as being the real thing. Of course not; franksolich has a great deal of admiration and respect for Frank Solich, a gentleman of sterling principle and integrity.
Among other things, too numerous to list, and six years later, I've forgotten many of them.
We played clean; the scammers and primitives played foully dirty.
Good times, good times.....
