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An
idyllic, beautiful place.
Source: The
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Xanadu.
A fanciful, wonderful land invented by Coleridge in his work "Kubla
Khan." Xanadu. An fictitious cheese believed to be real on
Cheese.com.
This page tells the store of the creation of the latter Xanadu. A cheese
invented by Mr. Peter D. Goff, Mr. Aditya P. Bansod, and Mr. Eric J.
Lai in 1998.
The story
of Xanadu cheese begins in the Fall of 1998, in the domicile of Mr.
Bansod in Orange County, CA where Mr. Goff and Mr. Lai were doing nothing
better than wasting time after a meeting for LHHSMUN99.
Among their many fascinations were exploring the new wealth of information
the internet had begun to provide. They were constantly amazed at what
could be found online, such as love,
hell, and cheese.
Cheese was a common fancy for the gentlemen, as in their spare time
they wondered how the bovinal milk production effected the economies
of island-nations such as Tuvalu.
So, they
explored cheese.com, and to their surprise found no cheese on the "X"
page. Shocked by this turn of events, they decided something must be
done. So, an idea emerged in the mind of Mr. Goff for the generation
of a fictions cheese -- the fabled Xanadu. Mr. Bansod and Mr. Goff brainstormed
ideas regarding the cheese and conjured an ancient Greek history for
it. Posing under the guise of the Executive in Charge of Lactile Products
for Bansod Technologies Inc, Mr. Goff wrote on August 28, 1998 the following
email to cheese.com. (the domain names have been selectively removed
for privacy's sake)
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From:
Aditya Bansod [aditya@bansod.ml.org]
Sent: Friday, August 28, 1998 8:35 PM
To: 'betty@REMOVED'
Subject: Your disturbing lack of cheeses on the x-page
Pardon
me, self-proclaimed cheese expert, but why aren't there any cheeses
under x? Have you never heard of the famed xanadu cheese from
the far reaches of Greece? From the Grecian era until 1854, this
cheese was relatively unknown. However, those who had heard of
it through Plato's Republic loved the fine delicacy. After this
date, Levi Strauss was reported to bring this cheese over to the
states after a lengthy visit in Greece. He taught many of his
southern denim workers to produce this cheese, which is made of
feta and kasseri, combining the whey of mizithra to create a perfect
blend. Due to its transient properties this cheese was served
only aged beyond 14 months and only in semi-circular molds, often
dubbed geometric half-moons. Unfortunately, this cheese did not
catch on in the states. Heavily used by the Union to feed its
troops during the Civil War, Union troops quickly grew tired of
the staple. After defeating the South in this epic battle, Union
troops forbade the consumption of xanadu cheese in the conquered
south. Its production immediately declined and fell out of existence.
Only recent discoveries have revealed the recipe used for this
concoction. Trendy coffe shops in upstate new york have started
a fad of serving xanadu cheese with special bavarian coffees.
Due to this trend, we here at Bansod Technologies, Inc., expect
to see a meteoric rise in the production and consumption of xanadu
cheese in the next 3 fiscal years. We hope that your website will
recognize this error and reflect this increase. Thank you for
your time.
Peter Goff
Executive in Charge of Lactile Products
Bansod Technologies, Inc.
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And the
email was sent. Mr. Goff, the pseudo-Executive of the non-existent-Bansod
Technologies, had explained to cheese. com their horrific error. Of
course the Mr. Goff, Mr. Bansod and Mr. Lai assumed that an innocent
and obviously fraudulent sounding email would fall on deaf ear, and be
quickly deleted. They, however, were in for a shock. On November 3,
1998 Mr. Vladek Mettler, presumably the proprietor of cheese.com, responded
with the following email.
From: Vladek
Mettler [vladekm@REMOVED]
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 1998 2:41 AM
To: aditya@bansod.ml.org
Subject: Re: Your disturbing lack of cheeses on the x-page
Thank you for
your information. We will not hesitate to add Xanadu
cheese to our Cheese directory. Could you please specify what
kind of
milk is used to produce Xanadu cheese and what Xanadu's texture
is.
Regards,
Thank you
>From betty@REMOVED
Mon Nov 2 20:17:41 1998
>Received: from [194.164.96.2] (helo=station209)
> by serv1.is1.u-net.net with smtp (Exim 2.00 #2)
> for vladekm@hotmail.com
> id 0zaYpC-0002GN-00; Tue, 3 Nov 1998 05:16:14 +0000
>Message-Id: <3.0.32.19981102225429.00c337c8@mail.netlink.co.uk>
>X-Sender: betty@REMOVED
>X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32)
>Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 04:14:54 +0000
>To: "vladekm@hotmail.com" <vladekm@REMOVED>
>From: "Aditya Bansod" <aditya@bansod.ml.org>
(by way of Maritime
Artists Inc <betty@REMOVED>)
>Subject: Your disturbing lack of cheeses on the x-page
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
---- OMMITED
FOR BREVITY ----
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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Three
three gentleman of Orange County were flabbergasted. Their faith in
the internet, crushed. The cheese now appeared on the cheese.com web page,
under Xanadu!
How could such an obviously concocted story be believed by the very
experts of cheese themselves? It was of no matter. The game was on,
and Mr. Ryan Grams, an associate of Mr. Lai, Mr. Bansod and Mr. Goff
soon emailed the triumvirate a congratulations as well some news regarding
the fictitious corporation.
From: Grams
[lhgrams@REMOVED]
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 1998 10:47 PM
To: Peter Goff; Aditya Bansod; Eric Lai
Subject: the cheese thing
I am quite
impressed with the cheese history you wrote for the famed
xanadu cheese of Greece. It is truly a work of genius and I and
my
fellow workers at Bansod Technologies inc. Recently acquired by
Grams
Technologies International (CEO Ryan Grams the Supreme Tech Guy
Commander) are stunned with the blatant omission of this staple
cheese
of the Tuvaluen people.
Ryan "Supreme
Tech Commander" Grams
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Mr. Mettler's
requests for the milk used in production as well as the texture did
not go unnoticed, but the fictions merger of Bansod Technologies and
Grams Technologies (fictions as well) provided ample distraction from
writing a response to Mr. Mettler. But on December 27, 1998, two days
after Christmas, Mr. Goff returned with a masterpiece of farce, giving
the new producer of Xanadu, as well as the milk content and a wine to
drink with the cheese. The wine, was from "south-central"
Greece, an blatant comical reference to the northern neighbor of Orange
County, Los Angeles.
From: conference-request@REMOVED
on behalf of
Peter Goff [petergoff@REMOVED]
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 1998 10:55 PM
To: betty@REMOVED
Cc: petergoff@REMOVED
Subject: Xanadu cheese update
To whom it
may concern,
This is Peter Goff, previous Executive in Charge of Lactile Products
for Bansod Technologies. I was the one to inform you of the overlooked
xanadu cheese and I would like to provide you with the information
that
you so kindly requested. Pardon my delay, since Bansod Technologies
was
recently incorporated as part of GramsTech International and we
were
forced to spend much time making considerable changes in our cheese
production, causing me to lose much time to write. (By the way,
on the
last line of the xanadu article, you should change producer from
Bansod
Technologies to GramsTech International).
Requested information:
milk: both cow and goat milk
recommended wine: zitsa (a wine from south-central greece)
producer: GramsTech International
Thanks for
making the above amendments!
Thanks,
Peter Goff
President of Lactile Production
GramsTech International
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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The farce
was complete. Within two weeks, cheese.com had updated their web site
with the information, and Mr. Goff sent a congratulatory email to the
involved parties.
From: conference-request@REMOVED
on behalf of
Peter Goff [petergoff@REMOVED]
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 1999 7:18 AM
To: conference@REMOVED
Cc: petergoff@REMOVED
Subject: The fraud is complete...
They have updated
Xanadu cheese at cheese.com!!!!!!!!
Check it out
at http://www.cheese.com/Description.asp?Name=Xanadu
And never believe
anything you read on the internet ever again.
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!!!!!!!!
Peter
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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In a span
of almost six months, the three had lost their entire sense of credibility
in the internet. Information ran unchecked online, and distributed without
any review. Three well-meaning men from Orange County had created proof
in the fallacy of the online world, publishing a complete story of the
fake cheese down to the wine to drink it with. Nearly three years later,
cheese.com still provides the reference information for Xanadu, the
cheese that destroyed the faith in the Internet.
The work
of Xanadu cheese is Copyright 1998 - 2001 by Peter D. Goff, Aditya P.
Bansod, and Eric J. Lai. Please feel free to distribute this knowledge
and remember to read things online with a grain of salt. In the event
cheese.com removes Xanadu from their site,
an archived copy of the page can be found here.
Mr. Goff has also written a paper regarding these events, entitled "A
Cheese In Cyberspace."
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