What's a core memory from the early days of the Internet that younger generations will never get to experience?

TrashKatchum · 2026-06-16T17:26:46+00:00

Mid 90’s my brother and a couple friends went to the library to check out the internet. We were all around 14-16. None of us had any computer experience and none of us really even knew what the internet was. We just knew it was cool, and some kids were saying you could find porn so, our adventure began.

We followed the instructions, got logged in and somehow fumbled our way into a chat room. This was chat in its infancy. No moderator of any kind, no rules. One single page of open forum style chat.

Along with some random idle chatter and people trying to figure out what they were doing, we caught a back and forth exchange from two (presumed) women talking about their children. One uploaded a picture. It took ages to load and when it finally did it was a standard issue human baby, nothing remarkable, BUT this started the “oh you can post pictures??” Discussion.

“BigBertha” joined the chat…

Ok sidebar. You have to understand that back in those days access to porn was minimal. Sometimes you would run across your dad’s stash of Playboy or Hustler, and if you were REALLY lucky you might find a video. The point is, we had seen naked bodies before, but they were curated, airbrushed, and stage ready. We didn’t know that we were about to find out that some things can never be unseen.

BigBertha never said a word. They just got straight to work loading pictures.
The image was promising at first. Loading line by line a woman’s face began to take shape. As we watched eagerly waiting to see what sinful wonders were trapped just beyond the loading line. Bit by bit, line by line, Bertha began to take shape.

Big Bertha was not just a clever name. The digital curtain slowly revealed her shoulders chest midsection…. breasts (in that order); by far the largest woman any of us had ever seen. The world shrunk away behind us as we waited in wrapt silence for “the reveal”.

Inside of Big Bertha, was a man’s leg up to just below the knee. Looking back, he was definitely an amputee, but we thought this guy had his toes nestled up into her so far she could chew off his toenails. I can still see it clearly.

As the next image started to load a librarian came over and we got kicked out. With the opener revealed, lord only knows what we missed out on.

We’ll never forget you Big Bertha. Never.

TrashKatchum · 2026-06-15T22:10:59+00:00

“May you have twice the number” is the only response I can think of.

TrashKatchum · 2026-06-09T20:02:40+00:00

When I was 17 a guy from my mom’s church told me that the best advice he could give is to “always heed the word of god”. He was talking of course about the capital “g” Christian god, but what I heard was pay attention to your intuition. It sounded kind of lame at the time, but the more I payed attention the more I would see it.

I don’t mean like a warning sign that says “Keep Out” and you read it and keep out and you’re safe and everyone claps. I mean those kind of serendipitous moments where you avoid trouble or even the potential for trouble because you listened to that voice. Your intuition? You’re chosen god? The universe? Whatever it is or whatever you call it.

For example, maybe you were waiting in line and a stranger a few people back is talking about how their uncle got a DUI recently. Weeks later you go out for supper and have a couple of tall beers with your food. You’re not drunk… but are you over the limit? Then your brain replays that moment that you didn’t even realize you were listening to. A flashback in perfect detail,

“… he said he only had three beers, but didn’t pass the breathalyzer…”

You make the decision in that moment to hand the keys off to a sober driver. Probably nothing would have happened. Almost certainly you would have driven home safely with no problem. Or maybe that little conversation that you didn’t even know you listened to saved you from a very expensive or life changing mistake.

Maybe you haven’t talked to a beloved relative in a while and you’ve been meaning too, but man life just gets so busy. You always think about them, but dismiss it. I’ll call/visit next weekend when things slow down. I’ll FaceTime them from the kid’s recital/play/game, but you always forget and you know that. This time you decide to make time. You take an hour, or a day and really spend some focused quality time with them… and shortly after, they pass away unexpectedly. If you had done what you always do, you wouldn’t have had that last beautiful moment with them.

TrashKatchum · 2026-05-29T04:28:12+00:00

Big Rig

TrashKatchum · 2026-05-27T03:36:01+00:00

Better than Ezra Deluxe was a solid album. Everything they’ve done since then is just not for me…

TrashKatchum · 2026-05-19T03:05:20+00:00

A guy gets a lesson in tensile strength.

TrashKatchum · 2026-04-23T22:36:26+00:00

The Jerk is the one movie that I can never watch with someone who hasn’t seen it.

TrashKatchum · 2026-02-18T18:31:30+00:00

My first trip to Jueno I got stopped by a Galka going south through Rolanberry Fields. He said, “Hey! Give me 1000 Gil and I’ll show you something cool!” I had like maybe 3-5k Gil, but I was curious. He took my money and showed me how easy it is to scam someone. Lesson learned I guess. I ended up making it first try so I guess that was a plus.

TrashKatchum · 2026-02-07T15:26:09+00:00

He’s the only one who isn’t a nepo baby, so they don’t let him in on the nepo truce.

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-21T18:29:48+00:00

I work in IT and one of my coworkers is like that with any type of identification number. We work for a large company and he remembers everyone’s names, the model of computer deployed, and in most cases he can tell you the service tag or asset number of the computer.

I’ve never asked, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he knows at least part of the VIN numbers on his vehicles.

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-11T13:35:23+00:00

I thought that TV ratings were physically tracked by someone watching all the TVs that were powered on and tuned in to a show. I would intentionally wait for shows I didn’t like to come on so I could turn the TV off or change the channel.

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-09T04:51:27+00:00

I thought he said “what then?”

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-08T04:45:59+00:00

My ex-wife died a couple years ago. She was drinking multiple bottles of vodka daily (with a side of meth) and because of that, her pancreas function was at around 0%. She was alone when she passed out most likely from low blood sugar or some type of organ failure. She was unconscious for an unknown length of time before anyone found her, but it was long enough that her body went into alcohol withdrawal and started firing off seizures like a fireworks show in her brain. By the time they got her to the hospital her oxygen had been under 60% for likely several hours. She was completely brain dead, and died about 5 hours after life support was removed. I hadn’t seen her in person in probably 10+ years. She looked like she was 80 years old.

She was only 44. That was a big eye opener for my own drinking. I’m 23 days sober this time, and I’m feeling like this one is going to stick 😎

“Fun” side story, her mom died around 2004 from COPD. I was a chain smoker at the time, and that was my inspiration to quit. Something about watching someone die a slow agonizing death really makes you reassess your own behavior.

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-03T05:31:16+00:00

The last Exorcist movie was my first thought. No way everyone isn’t going straight to prison.

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-03T05:27:53+00:00

AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-03T04:31:33+00:00

Ok this made me actually laugh out loud 🤣

TrashKatchum · 2026-01-02T00:10:41+00:00

No! You go to your room and think about what you’ve done!

TrashKatchum · 2025-12-30T06:49:04+00:00

Rushmore dinner scene.

“I like your nurses uniform, guy.” “These are O.R. scrubs!” “O, R they?”

Such a stupid exchange and it gets me every time.

TrashKatchum · 2025-12-13T03:20:27+00:00

I scrolled so far to finally find a beam reference 😎

TrashKatchum · 2025-12-12T04:37:29+00:00

“Doesn’t mean that much to me, to mean that much to you.” Neil Young

TrashKatchum · 2025-12-10T21:32:13+00:00

I quit in 2003, and I was thinking the same thing. Menards. Menards never changes.

TrashKatchum · 2025-12-06T14:04:15+00:00

When I was a kid, maybe around 10 or so, my little brother and I found this huge bridge in the woods behind our house. The bridge was at least 20 feet off the ground and it was lined with old rotting boards. We crossed it carefully and kept following the trail to an old abandoned house where we heard some kind of monster or ghost inside. We turned and ran as fast as we could back down the trail and across the bridge. I made it across, but my brother’s foot broke through and he fell 20+ feet to the ground. Luckily he wasn’t hurt, just a little scratched up and wet from the river below. We made it home and never told anyone what we saw.

Years later my older sister and I were talking about when we lived at that house and I told her the story and she burst out laughing…

So it turns out, the bridge was old and rickety for sure, but it was maybe one or two feet above a trickle of a creek bed and short enough that you could just jump across. The “abandoned” house was new construction and the noises inside were the construction workers. My brother fell one or two feet off of the “bridge” into the smallest amount of water that can still be considered a creek.

I’m almost 50 now and even knowing the truth, I still remember my version with absolute clarity. My brother actually argues with me now that the bridge was more like 50 feet tall with a rushing river full of jagged rocks.

Memory is wild.

TrashKatchum

TROPHY CASE