Subject: (urth) The mantis-Borski hoax exposed!!!

From: Robert Borski <rborski at coredcs.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 14:40:00 +0000

I can't believe nobody's mentioned this before, and even I was a little
slow to catch on, though I thought something was funny in the way that both
Robert Borski and mantis almost always seemed to follow one another in
their postings--plus seemed to include stuff not privy to the lists, but
they obviously each somehow knew about ahead of time. 

Then there was all that talk about secret sharers and doubles, which maybe
5fthH is really about (I haven't read it yet--still trying to figure out
Severian), but didn't this make you suspicious?

Then we had that loupy (see, I can pun 2) little "Diary as Metafiction"
post, which was also preceeded by the very curious remark about how mantis
"grew him (Robert Borski) from a bean." 

As for their writing style, sometimes they seemed different, sometimes they
didn't--couple of times I would have been hard pressed to ID the author if
a name hadn't been attached.

As for the two different e-mail addresses, these are very easy to fake if
you use a nymserver. I'll prove it to you. Check out how I'm listed above
by lists.best.com. See? No big deal.

And wasn't it Robert Borski who allegedly wrote "Cave Canem"? (Hey, is this
a play on New Sun's Cumaean?) Looks like "he" might have slipped up here,
because the "Cave Canem Indices" in the most recent urth list identifies
the compiler as one m.driussi!

I mean it all seems rather obvious on highsight (if a little puerile, the
phrase 'get-a-life' ring a bell), and I probably wouldn't have said
anything, because I appreciate a good joke and have also been very
comfortable with my lurker status, but this morning my brother-in-law came
over and I asked him if he could tell me what the word 'borski' might
mean--it seems Polish, and he and my sister met on a semester abroad
program in Krakow.

He said he wasn't absolutely sure, but he thought it sounded very similar
to the Polish word for praying.

'Praying mantis.' Get it?

Come on, Michael Andre-Driussi.

Confess.

You are Robert Borski.

pumaise at twincities.com 
(call me he-who-lurks-no-more)

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/