Goodbye, dear friend

Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:12 am

D.J. Rhoades aka DarkGothicQueen, our esteemed moderator and for ten years my closest friend outside family, passed away in mid June 2020, it is thought on Wednesday the 17th. She had had serious health problems for many years.

DJ (she was always DJ to everyone) made her first active appearance in the world of Beach Boys message boards on Thursday, 24 September 2009 at Capitol's now-defunct Beach Boys forum as RhondaLuvsAlan (she was a massive Al Jardine fan). She later told me she "browsed it for months" before posting there. Her unwillingness to be trodden on soon led to friction between her and that forum's straight-laced moderator. The outcome of all this was the creation, in April 2010, of a new forum, the forerunner of this one, which to her great surprise she was invited to moderate! She retained her Capitol Board alias until nasty old Tapatalk took over Freeforums and deleted our customized design in favour of their nondescript house style. We decided to abandon ship (leaving behind thousands of great posts) and start a new website, this one, where we (DJ, BobLucas, Cool Cool Water and I) were in full control. DJ took on a new alias: CherokeeRose. She later changed this to DarkGothicQueen, maybe as an expression of her darkening view on life brought on by her ever-worsening health.

Now, the following story has never been told before. It is typical of DJ's ability to take up an idea and run with it. Back at the Capitol Board, she and I had noticed a spammer pushing online pills in bad English. Apparently based in Senegal, his hobbies were "night clubs and dancing". This spammer, whose alias was FakeFreef, used to attract attention by regularly celebrating his 24th birthday!

Fast forward to the early days of our next home. I thought it might be fun to create an account for a new FakeFreef and lo and behold, a troll by that name started making snide comments in the Shoutbox! DJ freaked out, believing the original FF had followed us there. Panic was general until I confessed it was me! After that, DJ cleverly refined the character of the new FakeFreef into the one you see today. Maybe he will continue to join in, maybe not -- time will tell.

When I learned of DJ's passing, my first thought regarding this forum was to lock it. It would simply be too confrontational to continue posting here, was my initial opinion. Luckily Rich (CCW) soon convinced me otherwise, that DJ wouldn't want it that way. He was right, of course. Time heals all wounds -- some take longer to heal than others, but the time of mourning would eventually end and the time to celebrate would begin: a celebration of DJ's life, her love of music and birds, her wonderful sense of humour and much more besides. And so we are still here. And for those who wish we weren't (you listening, Crapatalk?), DJ has bequeathed us the perfect word for the occasion: "Phggttt!!!"

Rest in peace, our Ms Mod.
Slaap zacht, lieve DJ.