haqistan

⋔ home ⋔ about ⋔ links ⋔ license ⋔ archives ⋔ rss ⋔

Why I Am Called Attila

182 words by attila written on 2017-05-25, last edit: 2017-05-30, tags: personal ⋔ Previous post: SQhelL ⋔ Next post: Tor Browser on OpenBSD Update

When I was young I had a lot of issues, unlike now where I'm totally fine. Totally.

I was an overweight kid. I became a vegetarian and took up martial arts when I was 13, which turned me around a bit. A mother's friend gave me a copy of Lao Tzu's writings and then I started reading all kinds of philosophy. I decided I was really into pacifism: Thoreau, Emmerson, and above all Ghandi. I carried Ghandi's biography around on my person almost always.

I had a friend (bear with me for a sec) who was not an idiot (see? that's where that comes from) who understood that I was a hell of a lot more conflicted and internally violent than I wanted to think. He knew that I was fooling myself, that I was no pacifist.

Or rather, if I was some kind of pacifist then I was Attila the pacifist. Everyone started calling me that and it soon became my handle online (well, the ARPAnet with an ADM3A and a 300baud modem, but still).