Kevin Madden, my dear friend of California is both a magician and a musician. Besides playing the piano, Kevin has also served as the Education Director for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, has lived in France & Austria, and holds a Master’s degree in education. Both of his parents were professional musicians.Have fun with his observations.Troll, noun.Historic Origins:Though the word’s origins are lost to the mists of time, its most probable origins are Nordic folklore and language. Furthermore, the word “troll” seems to have referenced either a) persons of another, dislikeable, competing tribe, or b) those practicing religions prior to Dark-Ages Christianity.There is no clear anthropological nor archaeological evidence that ancient trolls were also squid worshipers, nor evidence that theirs was a principally squid diet, but this is my opinion, which I will now cite as unchallengeable fact.Modern Usage:On the internet, a “troll” is a person acting in a rude or anti-social manner, and though their motives might be unknown, their behavior is disruptive and aggressive.Troll Habitat & Behavior:They keep irregular hours, and maybe found logging-on either from jobs they loath and are thus trying to subconsciously get fired from, or lashing out at those who seem to be enjoying themselves in cyberspace. Sometimes to show off, they do both, often while passing gas in their dark, cramped, frequently badly decorated dining rooms and/or cubicles.The identification of a troll is a simple matter: look for any black hole on any bulletin board, into which ridiculous amounts of energy escape never to be seen again. Current theorists, most notably Dr. C.M. Pleteshitz, speculate that the troll absorbs said energy either through their anus or mouth, though with trolls those two orifices are often indistinguishable from one another.Besides being a fed of diet of innocent good intention and/or psychological projections of obsessives, the troll’s chief form of sustenance seems to be invective, which they produce through their saliva by attacking complete strangers with a fierceness that would be appropriate if their very lives were in peril. They are particularly fond of staking out black-and-white positions, with theirs invariably being the morally justifiable one, and the other point of view being clearly shown as that of their intellectual and moral inferiors, or people who can actually get dates and get laid.Troll Warfare:Besides invective, the troll’s other chief weapon in Yelp-land is the flag, which is perhaps the worst metaphor in cyberspace at this time, as normally a flag is used to either denote a common territory, tribe, or belief system, or mark a problem that may be examined and resolved at a later date.In Yelp-land, a small minority of persons using a system with unknown calibrations is able to direct and control any conversation, rather akin to the insanity that would be the case if a nation’s press being run by the lifers in the federal penitentiary.The use of the flag-as-deadly-weapon by the troll comes in two forms:a) Having been banished from the village, the troll reappears in disguise [which they compulsively, quickly shed], amongst normal people [those with lives that more or less work for them]** or **b) The flag is wielded by trolls who have a belief system that is fundamentally indistinguishable from a person living in the Dark Ages in Europe. That is to say, an illiterate person whose twenty year life-span dictated a short, miserable stay on the planet, full of a great deal of opinion about all matters but very few facts.Like the dictates of the powers-that-were, trolls both ancient and modern accept that the sun revolved around the earth when told, but even more perversely, the modern troll has come to believe that they themselves are in fact the center of the universe.Eradication Methodology:In fact, as been demonstrated by the University of Tubingen’s Troll Habitat Project, the modern troll, like the inhabitant of the Dark Ages, is merely a clueless jerk, pointlessly working out their misery by lashing out at others.Reason invariably fails with the troll: the sphincter in their retina necessarily slams shut against the light of reason, and besides, the troll prefers to let all of their sphincters open, so as to mark their territory.Compassion sometimes calms them, as does simply ignoring them in normal situations. But when the Troll wields the spear-tip at the top of the Flag, the only choice is to monitor them, or change the habitat in which they are currently thriving.