From - Wed Jan 14 15:24:57 1998 Return-Path: Received: from relay1.UU.NET by mrco.carleton.ca (4.1/SMI-4.0) id AA26295; Sat, 6 Feb 93 02:10:48 EST Received: from nyx.cs.du.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA26772; Sat, 6 Feb 93 01:30:51 -0500 Received: by nyx.cs.du.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA18639; Fri, 5 Feb 93 23:30:21 MST From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (andy) Message-Id: <9302060630.AA18639@nyx.cs.du.edu> X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University of Denver. The University has neither control over nor responsibility for the opinions or correct identity of users. Subject: FutureCulture Digest #215 To: future-digest@nyx.cs.du.edu Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 23:30:19 MST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: RO X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 ______________________________________________________________________ |______________ / | | / | | u t u r e <___________ u l t u r e | _______________________________________________________________________| Issue #215 Friday, February 5th 1993 Today's Topics: --------------- "Alpha and Omega" - introduction to the idea, v1.0 "Alpha and Omega" - introduction to the idea, v1.0 (fwd) A previous plot outine for the novel "Alpha and Omega" (fwd) Dhalgren/Delany flux.fix ERRATA Inevitable IRC access Oops.. Artifical Life PASSION Re: Inevitable Re: Writing a novel about the Net Re: AO (was re: writing novel about the net) Re: IRC access Re: Opinions of Wired... Re: Time, Article for your reading pleasure. Re: Writing a novel about the Net re: _Passion_ Response to some of Arthur Gorecki's statements trans.fix.1st Undiscovered Country __________________________________________________________________________ From: StevenJ Subject: IRC access Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 13:37:03 CST I've been having major troubles getting into IRC on a regular basis. The trouble is that the two servers that I use are down/inaccessible half the time. I've been using fairhope.andrew.cmu.edu and garfield.mit.edu for months now. Does anyone know of any other servers which are up on a more regular basis? Steve J. White homoNuevo ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The goal of science is the destruction aragorn@convex.csd.uwm.edu of all mystery." - B.F. Skinner aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu ______________________________ From: StevenJ Subject: re: _Passion_ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 13:49:37 CST ______________________________ From: the! It is a Peter Gabriel release. It's on the same label as _Passion_, his own label, I forget the name. It should be fairly available at the more alternative record stores. I don't have a copy so I can't get any of the numbers for you. If I find one soon I'll post to the list the whats and wheres. Steve J. White homoNuevo ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The goal of science is the destruction aragorn@convex.csd.uwm.edu of all mystery." - B.F. Skinner aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu ______________________________ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 15:07:09 EST From: grass@chaos.ento.vt.edu (Scott Huddle) Subject: re: _Passion_ "I have put together two albums around the music of The Last Temptation of Christ, a film by Martin Scorsese. The first album, Passion, is my work; this album represents a selection of some of the traditional music, sources of inspiration and location recordings. Peter Gabriel" from the liner notes of "Passion - Sources" (c) 1989 Real World Records, Ltd. "... You can obtain further information on these recordings and our future releases from Realworld Records, WOMAD, Mill Lane, Box, Whiltshire SN149PN, U.K." Its an interesting album, I play it when ever I eat curry for dinner. -scott ______________________________ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 14:11:50 +0600 (CST) From: Patrick McKee Subject: Re: IRC access On Fri, 5 Feb 1993, StevenJ wrote: > I've been having major troubles getting into IRC on a regular basis. The > trouble is that the two servers that I use are down/inaccessible half the > time. I've been using fairhope.andrew.cmu.edu and garfield.mit.edu for > months now. Does anyone know of any other servers which are up on a more > regular basis? > > Steve J. White homoNuevo > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > "The goal of science is the destruction aragorn@convex.csd.uwm.edu > of all mystery." - B.F. Skinner aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu Try dorothy.ibmpcug.co.uk 9999 I know it is in the United Kingdom, but I never have any trouble getting there. c-ya ______________________________ Date: 05 Feb 1993 14:07:17 -0600 (CST) From: "free agent .rez" Subject: flux.fix ERRATA : i have made changes to the text of flux.fix.1-3 in preparation for the next phase. most changes are small, but one is huge: the female Protagonist is now known not as ATEH (which was alluded to) but simply as {the Net/city} Zoebeide; Zoe for short. updated versions of flux.fix are available from me and, perhaps more conveniently, on alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo... depending on the reception there, i may post updates there in perpetuity. new material will, however, flutter through here. .rez - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "one's noise is another's information... there IS no noise, only signal. there IS no signal, only noise." ______________________________ Date: 05 Feb 1993 14:07:17 -0600 (CST) From: "free agent .rez" Subject: flux.fix ERRATA : i have made changes to the text of flux.fix.1-3 in preparation for the next phase. most changes are small, but one is huge: the female Protagonist is now known not as ATEH (which was alluded to) but simply as {the Net/city} Zoebeide; Zoe for short. updated versions of flux.fix are available from me and, perhaps more conveniently, on alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo... depending on the reception there, i may post updates there in perpetuity. new material will, however, flutter through here. .rez - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "one's noise is another's information... there IS no noise, only signal. there IS no signal, only noise." ______________________________ From: fly@geog.buffalo.edu (Paul Fly) Subject: PASSION Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 15:50:45 EST Again I find you people are talking about one of my favorite things. First Dhalgren, now Passion (and the two together? Never thought about that...). I wholeheartedly second (third) the upholding of _Passion_: I still get shivers whenever I so much as *think* about it. I can't even *listen* to it these days. Let's see if I can actually *forget* it before I hear it again... I can only hope... -- Paul Fly | "Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but fly@geog.buffalo.edu | less interesting than looking." --Goethe ______________________________ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 13:28:11 PST From: mark@ganymede.apple.com (Mark Baldwin) Subject: Re: Writing a novel about the Net YES!!! the net writing a novel about itself...not only the most "novel" ;) idea i've heard in a long time, but it takes the no.1 ideal of Information Wants To Be Free to a whole 'nother level: Infomation Knows What It Is (tm) -mArK. *((B^` ______________________________ Date: 05 Feb 1993 15:55:12 -0600 (CST) From: "free agent .rez" Subject: trans.fix.1st >start interstice THE .first flux: 1: a flowing of fluid from the body; esp: an excessive abnormal discharge from the bowels 2: a continuous moving on or passing by (as of a stream) 3: a continued flow: FLOOD 4 a: INFLUX b: CHANGE, FLUCTUATION 5 a: a substance (as rosin) applied to surfaces to be joined by soldering, brazing, or welding to clean and free them from oxide and promote their union 6: the rate of transfer of fluid, particles, or energy across a given surface 7: to cause to become fluid 8: to treat with a flux 9: to become fluid fix: 1 a: to make firm, stable, or stationary b: to give a permanent or final form to: as (1): to change into a stable compound or available form (2): to kill, harden, and preserve for microscopic study (3): to make the image of (a photographic film) permanent by removing unused salts c: AFFIX, ATTACH 2: toset in order: ADJUST 3: to get ready: PREPARE 4 a: REPAIR, MEND b: RESTORE,CURE c: SPAY, CASTRATE 5 a: to get even with b: to influence the actions,outcome, or effect of by improper or illegal methods 6: a position ofdifficulty or embarrassment: PREDICAMENT 7 a: the position (as of a ship)determined by bearings, observations, or radio; also: a determination of oneUsposition b: an accurate determination or understanding esp. by observation oranalysis 8: a shot of a narcotic 9: FIXATION 10: something that fixes or restores >end interstice THE .first ______________________________ Date: 05 Feb 1993 15:55:12 -0600 (CST) From: "free agent .rez" Subject: trans.fix.1st >start interstice THE .first flux: 1: a flowing of fluid from the body; esp: an excessive abnormal discharge from the bowels 2: a continuous moving on or passing by (as of a stream) 3: a continued flow: FLOOD 4 a: INFLUX b: CHANGE, FLUCTUATION 5 a: a substance (as rosin) applied to surfaces to be joined by soldering, brazing, or welding to clean and free them from oxide and promote their union 6: the rate of transfer of fluid, particles, or energy across a given surface 7: to cause to become fluid 8: to treat with a flux 9: to become fluid fix: 1 a: to make firm, stable, or stationary b: to give a permanent or final form to: as (1): to change into a stable compound or available form (2): to kill, harden, and preserve for microscopic study (3): to make the image of (a photographic film) permanent by removing unused salts c: AFFIX, ATTACH 2: toset in order: ADJUST 3: to get ready: PREPARE 4 a: REPAIR, MEND b: RESTORE,CURE c: SPAY, CASTRATE 5 a: to get even with b: to influence the actions,outcome, or effect of by improper or illegal methods 6: a position ofdifficulty or embarrassment: PREDICAMENT 7 a: the position (as of a ship)determined by bearings, observations, or radio; also: a determination of oneUsposition b: an accurate determination or understanding esp. by observation oranalysis 8: a shot of a narcotic 9: FIXATION 10: something that fixes or restores >end interstice THE .first ______________________________ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 17:22:50 -0500 From: James E Hoburg Subject: Dhalgren/Delany > ... > DHALGREN may very well turn out to be one of the greatest works of > art in the western world during the 20th century!! If not THE > greatest.... It's an infinite collection of pictures, of signs, it's > a river, a stream were the reader should let herself float free.. > if you try to swim in it, as you would in an ordinary novel, you will > probably drown.... just let it engulf you, let it carry you away, > enjoy, and you will most probably get out refreshed at the end.... Yep. Does anyone know what Delany has been up to? As far as I know, he hasn't published anything recently - which is a pity. -- James Emerson Hoburg, hoburg@ultryx.com ______________________________ From: ahawks (this is not my beautiful wife) Subject: Inevitable Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 17:08:29 MST Ok, so, the other day I got really frustrated at chaos.... So I did a little cathartic writing and pondering and things were better... Then the Inevitable Girl goes back to her old boyfriend and ditches me straight out.... And then the shit piled up in all other areas of my life of course.... So then the world starts to run away from me on an atomic level, visually, psychologically, seemingly realistically....Everything came apart, all the bubbles popped, all the memes sped away a hyperspeed, senses fucked.... So then I called the people I needed to call and things were a little better, at least I'm not back in a psych hospital now, but *they* are still talking... And then I got back on IRC and tried to sort out the chaos and other stuph, and tried to participate, and it was good til the end.... Then I re-grokked PF The Wall for he millionth time, and Life was Shit. Then I keep going and log back on the net and all ~500 of my mail messages all got jumbled up on the disk or somehing, and I can't make heads or tails of any mail I've received from anyone in the past 24 hours.... And, the crux of it is is that this Fits Perfectly with my life... WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. i've never been here before, and i hate it. i had a wierd kinda dream last night....i turned off pf and tried to go o sleep....i closed my eyes, and i immediately began hallucinating, a little baby boy, and then these other people walking around in blue jackets, i could hear the footsteps, the blue jacket people had crowbars... and the baby talked o me, but i don't know (or gnow) what it said, and the blue jacket people just went around inside and outside the hallways of my closed-eyed vision, destroying everyhing.... but i know i wasn't dreamingQl9~_^ great, line noise now too...stop it.... goddamnit see, it all fits...line noise, irc, my breakdown or whatever it was wyen reality left - it'ss all the same....this is why i am not an atheist.... there's something there.... so anyway, rez mitch, futureculture, i can't read anything at all - i have about 15 mailbox files that are basically one giant chaotic mishmash and it's PURE SHIT i can't read any of it, it's like the disks wrote over themselves whenever they felt like it..... ps if u send me mail in reply to this you didnt read this at all i want to try and get over to irc tonite and i hope i'll be able to so look for me bu don't count on me and u can't send me mail because it'll just be adding chaos to chaos.... i have no other way of escaping or dealing with this, i can't rave, there's noone to go anywehre with righ now.... i could go eat worms...shit! good morning the worm your honor.... worms, maggots over the rainbow se a there -- andy ______________________________ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 16:16:05 -0800 (PST) From: Saint Liquid Subject: Re: Time, Article for your reading pleasure. On Thu, 4 Feb 1993 cardell@lysator.liu.se wrote: > Well, Mark, the jargong file is nowadays also known as the Hacker's > Dictionary as compiled by Eric S. Raymond, but since I know a lot of > you people out there will disagree with me, it's also the file that, > previous to the dictionary, was trying to collect all the hackerish > words floating around. > > mikael cardell > > S P U N K P R E S S so where do one get that file? ______________________________ Subject: Re: Writing a novel about the Net Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 19:26:43 EST From: Mitchell Porter > > Mitch, the idea of yours to make the net write a novel about itself is > great. I hope you all would like spunk press to "publish" this thing > and spread it to every place possible in a net.universe! > > I'm with you! > > mikael cardell > > S P U N K P R E S S > I had thought of spunk in this regard actually, I'm on the mailing list (spunk-list@lysator.liu.se, everyone).. also Autonomedia.. but this is getting ahead of things a bit. Okay, I have received a few requests for more information so those people are being bombarded with some long files.. also last night on IRC I was talking with two people (obscure, juxlus, for those who know them) & both expressed an interest in helping write this thing.. so there appears to be a chance that it can all go ahead. I won't post lots of stuff to FC [just yet..] unless I am convinced that there are enough people here interested.. after all, FC traffic is already very high. And another warning: as I said, in many respects I had already worked out a pretty complex structure prior to 'approaching the Net', & it may not 'agree' with everyone. It may be that if the Net 'writes a book about itself', it may be a different book from the one I have been working on. On the other hand, I think it's potentially well-suited to such an approach.. I'll have to wait and see a bit longer.. ______________________________ Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 16:52:05 PST From: mark@ganymede.apple.com (Mark Baldwin) Subject: Re: Inevitable is this some kinda virtual suicide note or what!?!?! maybe it's just too late in the day, but i don't know what's going on..... -mArK... *=B^o ______________________________ Subject: Re: IRC access Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 20:10:24 EST From: Mitchell Porter > > I've been having major troubles getting into IRC on a regular basis. The > trouble is that the two servers that I use are down/inaccessible half the > time. I've been using fairhope.andrew.cmu.edu and garfield.mit.edu for > months now. Does anyone know of any other servers which are up on a more > regular basis? > > Steve J. White homoNuevo > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > "The goal of science is the destruction aragorn@convex.csd.uwm.edu > of all mystery." - B.F. Skinner aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu > some irc servers: ircclient.itc.univie.ac.at 6668 cc.nsysu.edu.tw login irc csd.bu.edu 6667 theyre all unreliable though. ______________________________ Subject: Re: AO (was re: writing novel about the net) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 20:27:59 EST From: Mitchell Porter > ...i'm game, i'm trying a similar schtick with flux.fix; perhaps it could be a > chapter... or whatever else. the idea's aces with me (the net writing it)... > won't you get nixxed from the competition for having other people write it, > though? or you could say it was you, or... anyway, whatever, i'm game; give us > more. > > .rez > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > "...bits of puzzle, fitting each-other..." > re the competition, i've given up on that.. i dont have long enough, and too many unresolved plot questions, so i'll give this approach a shot. re 'the net writing it', remember future culture, or even FC + leri <> net.. someone else has suggested [in private email] that it would be a good idea to specify which 'net-communities' i am thinking of, as potential 'contributors'.. well, all this stuff was first aired on leri-l, now it's coming up on future culture.. hell, it might get as far as usenet. look, what i will do at this stage is forward to FC the original 'intro to the project' that first saw light of day on leri-l, & apologies to anyone whose mailers i bust [its about 500 lines..].. this may clear up a few things, one way or another.. ______________________________ Subject: "Alpha and Omega" - introduction to the idea, v1.0 (fwd) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 20:29:52 EST From: Mitchell Porter Forwarded message: ______________________________ Subject: "Alpha and Omega" - introduction to the idea, v1.0 Date: Sun, 17 Jan 93 19:19:34 EST From: Mitchell Porter INTRODUCTION TO "ALPHA AND OMEGA", Version 1.0 (This message may be freely copied and distributed. If you have Internet email you should be able to reach me at mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu or Mitchell.Porter@launchpad.unc.edu; otherwise, write to PO Box 1620, Toowong Q 4066, Australia.) This text file is meant to be an introduction to a work-in-progress called "Alpha and Omega" (AO). I don't know the circumstances of your encounter with this file; you might have run across it by accident in an archive of some sort, or I might have sent it to you personally. I also don't know how much you already know about AO's different ingredients. There are a number of ideas not my own which are nonetheless fairly basic to AO, such as the 8-circuit model, "Timewave Zero", the "nanotech singularity", the Church of the SubGenius and the Church of V/R, and so on. They should be explained in another file which will later accompany this one, but for the momoent I will pretty much take them for granted. This account will probably also be somewhat personal in places, since AO is something like my "life work". But it has the potential to be more than just my personal enterprise, which is why I'm writing this. At present, the focal point of AO is the concept of a global event, to occur on December 31, 2000. Why that particular date will be discussed later. The key concepts for the moment are _imagination_ and _planning_. 2000 isn't here yet, and so the state of the world at that time is uncertain - which means that there is some time to think about the possibilities & choose between them. To make this talk of "an event" slightly less vague: -----begin excerpt from the Scriptures of V/R--------------------------------- \qix\gaia2000.txt [written early in 1992] The year 2000, although only eight years away, is still an emblem of what is feared and desired about the future, and a date around which to organize. Many idealistic schemes have been proposed with 2000 as deadline - schemes to end world poverty, illiteracy, starvation, and so forth. I have even heard that Greenpeace intends to disband by 2000, on the grounds that by that date either its aims will have been achieved or most life on this planet will be demonstrably doomed. At the end of December 31, 2000, there will be a 24-hour period in which the planet moves from the 20th century to the 21st century, as one time zone after another enters the new year. There seems to be no particular reason to suppose that anything of unique significance will happen at that time - *unless people choose to give it significance*. At the very least, the world should be even more linked up by communications media than it is now; people in each timezone will be able to experience what is happening elsewhere on the surface of the planet, in those regions `before' and `after' them. Given the sequential, yet global, character of it, this "event" has the potential to be a universally transformative experience, something like a planetary initiation. If any particular group dominates the world's media at this time, and appreciates the potential power of that 24-hour period, they could almost control what passes for "reality". This is where GAIA 2000 comes in. GAIA - the Global Alliance of Internet Anarchists. What is GAIA? Just a clever acronym with green-left, cyberpunk, New-Age connotations, known to just a few people in on the joke? *That's all it is at the moment.* It conjures up an image of a global underground, linked through computer networks, sharing a mistrust of authority and an agenda of healing and unifying the planet. But even if "GAIA" doesn't exist, such an underground surely does... and now, maybe, it has an identity and a deadline. "What *is* GAIA 2000?"" It is a planetary movement with a deadline for success - December 31, 2000. Its premise is that *something* is going to happen at the end of this century. There will be a 24-hour period in the course of which the planet will switch over from the 20th century into the 21st century. Those 24 hours *could* take the form of a global celebration that recognizes that something close to Utopia has been achieved in the course of the proceeding eight years. Or it *could* take the form of a despairing global recognition that life on this planet is now doomed - even a global decision to commit suicide. Or it *could* be the ultimate in superficial events, a global `party to end all parties' after which nothing seems to have changed. Or it *could* be an electronic global revolution, in which global freedom and community are finally achieved. Or it *could* be a `coup in cyberspace', in which a self-congratulatory elite assumes control of the New World Order *in the name of "GAIA 2000"* but fails to bring about any satisfactory changes. Or it *could* be a deeply ambiguous event in which none of the above characterizations seems adequate to describe what happens. Or it *could* even take the form of a global "spiritual experience" or "enlightenment"; a "planetary smile" or a "planetary psychosis". -----end excerpt from the Scriptures of V/R----------------------------------- (For information on what the "Scriptures of V/R" are, see the section of the other file, "About the Church of Virtuality/Reality".) HOW WOULD IT BE DONE? The idea is to begin with an extensive description of the ideas involved - the various possibilities, choosing between them, how they could happen - that exists in draft form on the Net (see below). Then at some point a novel should be written, which dramatizes the idea by describing occurrences around the world on the day of the event; and as the reader proceeds through the book it becomes clear that this global "event" was largely catalysed by a book which anticipated it... the book you are reading. (The book might contain frequent extracts from actual net-documents.) As the book came to a close the fictional and factual aspects of it would fuse together in the question: What is going to hapen when December 31, 2000 _really_ rolls around? The reason I consider a book to be important is that there are books, like the _Illuminatus!_ trilogy or _The Book of the SubGenius_, which have changed people's lives. I would like this to be a book of similar impact, but with an up-to-date memetic content - full of the ideas being discussed _now_, on the net. The book, a few years later (I hope), would be followed by a film, along the same lines, except that now the film could contain references to (and shots of!) the actual book. By this stage we'll be in the late 1990s, I think, so the "only" remaining step to take would be to prepare for the event itself. (There might be "manifestations" in other media: an album? a "MUD"? plays, performance artists? etc.) WHY DECEMBER 31, 2000? This has to do with the history of the idea. When I was about 12 I started work on a novel to be called "Alpha and Omega" which was supposed to be of cosmic scope - about the beginning and end of the universe. After I learned about James Joyce, I thought of making it about the connection between abstract universals and the specific events in one day in the life of one person, as in _Ulysses_ - with the difference being that the protagonist of the novel, during the events of that day, is looking for meaning, trying to see if there is any pattern to those events. The name "Alpha and Omega" provided a natural structure: 24 chapters, one for each letter of the Greek alphabet, and one for each hour of the day in question. Several years later when looking at other matters I was thinking of making it one _year_ per chapter, and it occurred to me that there were 24 years running from 1989 to 2012 inclusive. 1989 is conventionally considered the beginning of the end of the cold war and modern communism, and could be considered as initiating a period of change for the world whose end is not yet in sight. The date 2012 has an apocalyptic significance in a number of systems of thought, and seemed - even if only because of the meanings that have been assigned to it - a candidate date for the end of this period of radical change. So "Alpha and Omega" was instead to be a novel about this period of change, and how the world passed from one condition to a completely different one - for example, a state in which the human condition as we know it has been transcended. (For more on 2012 see the other file: "About Timewave Zero".) The next major change occurred when I first tried LSD. During that trip it occurred to me that I could make it (AO) fact rather than fiction, by making it autobiographical - charting the history of the idea, and the way in which each new thing I discovered in the world changed my idea of its content, culminating in the trip in which this final idea arose. Thinking of it as fact rather than fiction meant jettisoning the fictional constructs I had imagined to that point - they would survive only as episodes in the evolution of AO. But I was somewhat attached to them, and wavered between thinking of AO as a science-fictional novel and AO as an autobiography. Early in 1992, thinking about the fictional possibilities, it occurred to me that I could combine the 24-hour and 24-year motifs, by having a 24-hour "event" at the halfway point between 1989 and 2012 which proves critical to the course of events, such as is described in gaia2000.txt above. The halfway point would be between 2000 and 2001, ie December 31, 2000. I conceived of the event as being like a planetary rave, with participants around the planet linked up through satellite links and the Net, and with some common theme everywhere. After a time it occurred to me that a good "structure" for such a theme would be Timothy Leary's 8-circuit model of the mind (see other file); as Leary describes it in his book "Info-Psychology", there is a natural developmental sequence in which successive circuits are opened; each such stage has three parts - _reception_ of information on the new circuit, _integration_ of that information, and the commencement of _transmission_ of information on that circuit. Thus there is a natural sequence of 3x8 = 24 stages which could be dramatized by such a global event. But I also imagined that this "festive" aspect of the event would only form a backdrop for some epochal "political" event as well - something like a global revolution mediated through the Net and the electronic mass media. (See the section below on the concept of an "Earth summit in cyberspace".) Around this time I discovered _The Book of the SubGenius_ (for more on the Church of the SubGenius see elsewhere), and it seemed to me that it suggested a way in which the world might be changed, in one way or another - through a sort of "art" which colonizes one medium after another, and finally the whole of human experience. Contemplating the SubGenius method led to the ideas described under "HOW WOULD IT BE DONE?", and the following "channeled" message - an example of the style in which things are asserted which are not so, _yet_, but which might become so: "Message from the Author", March 1992: THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE, THE ULTIMATE ANSWER, THE SECRET OF POWER. You are living in a book, called "Alpha and Omega". The plot is much too complex to summarize; indeed, some critics question whether there *is* a plot, in the ordinary sense of the word. However, the *form* of the book is described easily enough. There are 24 chapters, each named for a letter in the Greek alphabet. Each chapter corresponds to a year between 1989 and 2012 inclusive; thus Alpha "is" 1989, Beta "is" 1990, and so on. The book comes in two parts: Part I, "Gaia 2000", running from 1989 to 2000, and Part II, "The Posthuman Condition", running from 2001 to 2012. Part I begins with Alpha/1989 and the proclamation of the end of nature and the end of history, and ends with Mu/2000 and the proclamation of the end of *human* nature and the end of *human* history. Part II begins with Nu/2001, the year of the Cosmic Child, and ends with Omega/2012, the year of the Final Chapter. Between Part I and Part II, "Alpha and Omega" the *Event* occurs. The Event lasts 24 hours, from the last moment in which any place on Earth is still within the year 2000, until the first moment in which every place on Earth is within the year 2001. Each "character" in the book must at some point decide what the Event is and what their relationship to it is. Now, AO the book doesn't exist as of this writing. And its exact form has yet to be decided. But sooner or later a first draft will be written; either I will do it myself, or it will be written with the help of people who have read this message and were interested in the idea. At present I imagine successive text versions of AO existing on the Net, with an anticopyright designation so that they can be freely circulated and printed out by anyone anywhere, whether it's one person printing out a private copy or a major publisher running off half a million. But the version on the Net will be constantly updated and emended, and so the printed editions will have to contain "pointers" to the Net, saying that that is where the _living text_ is, and getting on to the Net gives them the best chance of influencing the content of future editions... and thus of influencing AO the Event - of which AO the Book is potentially the "script". This idea of multiple changeable editions has all sorts of potential problems, from the possibility that there will be hundreds of different versions and no "canonical" text, to the more personal problem that I may end up spawning something beyond my control which ends up bringing about something I don't want. (What I might actually want to achieve through AO I hope to describe shortly.) But for a moment, just think about the idea that this book might get written, and might have a major influence on the course of events at the end of 2000 and beyond. This message has come from me to you - therefore in all probability you can send one back, to the "place" where even now AO is being scripted, re-written, and is spawning further projects. That means that you have a chance to influence the content of AO, which means you have a chance to influence the world on whatever scale AO ultimately affects it. _I_ think the whole idea has historic potential; how about you? I don't know how much effect you think you can have on the world, but I hope that you have the ambition to know and influence everything, or that you will develop such ambitions. Of course, one reason I have for hoping this is so that I have a better chance of achieving my own aims! So now I have to try to set down what it is that I'm trying to achieve. MY PERSONAL GOALS Two years ago, before I ever conceived of AO as something this big, I had a go at briefly setting out a world-view and a research agenda for myself, which can stil serve as an introduction despite some changes. -----begin excerpt from the Scriptures of V/R--------------------------------- \qix\4aug91.txt WORLDVIEW as of 4 August 1991 Political/economic/ideological outlook: I think that a world system of nation-states with market economies and multi-party political systems, grouped in the United Nations, is flexible enough to be able to evolve in any desired direction - so reform not revolution. I am rejecting large-scale upheaval because it seems unnecessarily destructive, from where I sit. Realistic hope for information age: that majority class will be that of technician/manager, overseeing infrastructures and ecologies, with a minimization of menial uninteresting work (not forgetting that most of this is located in households, not factories). The outlook of my ideal culture would be libertarian, scientific and compassionate. Personal philosophy: I have NO opinion regarding anyone's candidate for the Ultimate Truth. To use a metaphor: my situation is as if I am seated before a terminal, one node in a network whose full dimensions - in time, space, levels of complexity - I cannot see from here. For now I would better understand my immediate vicinity rather than speculate on whether the totality is finite or infinite, caused or causeless, mechanistic or teleological ... S.M.I^2.L.E. (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension) still describes the type of everyday life I hope to see realized in the future (as soon as possible!): a world where people can defer death indefinitely and have access to all of humanity's knowledge, and where the human sphere is expanding beyond Earth. In particular, so long as people are limited in time, to me all our other achievements are rendered futile. Death is my ultimate enemy. There are three areas where I would like to make progress in my understanding: quantum measurement; conscious experience; anomalous phenomena. I think I need progress in the second area, and probably the first, before I can hope to make any headway in the third area. <,,,...///> \qix\91ttd.txt 20 JULY 1991 3part research priorities stand as CONSCIOUSNESS (COGNITIVE SCIENCE / NEUROSCIENCE) QUANTUM MECHANICS / STRING THEORY ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA Strategies. 1. Consciousness. Accumulate "maps of consciousness". Look at global models from cognitive science. Look at global models from neuroscience. 2. Physics. Special relativity, general relativity. Quantum mechanics, quantum field theory. Standard Model, string theory. 3. Anomalous phenomena. Exhaustive typology. OVNIBASE-style records. Field work. 1a. Maps of the mind. 1b. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. 1c. Neural Darwinism; The Remembered Present. 2a. Riemannian geometry. 2b. QFT textbooks. 2c. conference proceedings, current journals. 3a. Charles Fort. The New Inquisition. 3b. Jacques Vallee. Celia Green. newsgroups. 3c. local groups; travel plans. ?...!...? -----end excerpt from the Scriptures of V/R----------------------------------- In the world-view category, perhaps the major changes are that I now have less confidence in the efficiency or desirability of a "world-system" like that which exists, and that I have become more interested in occult or magical world-views as well. I still consider the technological transformation of the human condition a major goal. As far as the "research priorities" go, I am now very interested in what philosophy has to say, as well as scientific investigation. So, as things stand... My first priority is truth, or knowledge. I want to know everything I can. I want to know about "ultimate reality" (philosophy); I want to know how the universe works (science); I want to know how society operates. In particular I want to have a much better idea of the _limits of possibility_. What if - for example - it was possible to abolish death, given a little effort in that direction? What if there really is "mind control by horrible secret societies" (_Book of the SubGenius_)? What if life on Earth is already doomed - not in serious trouble, but demonstrably doomed? For that matter, what if the whole phenomenal world is some sort of imaginary projection? Et cetera. It seems to me that no matter what I think of, whether it is a purported fact or a proposed value, a quick consideration of the true breadth of possibility reveals something that could potentially invalidate it. This requires thinking about classic philosophical questions like the nature of existence and the nature of values and the nature of the self. Of the approaches with which I am acquainted, Objectivism, (radical) skepticism and Buddhism seem to promise the most. In the scientific area I still place a high value on [i] "conventionally fundamental" research, ie theoretical physics, & also areas like cognitive science; [ii] interdisciplinary or "integrative" research, eg complex systems theory; [iii] research into anomalous phenomena. I also want to know if anything like "Magick", in the sense of intentionally influencing phenomena normally thought to be outside the scope of human control, is possible, and I want to have a better understanding of the various "esoteric" cosmologies. So what do these philosophical or scientific goals have to do with "Alpha and Omega" as described so far? They do not _directly_ connect with it, as yet. But they can be pursued through the Net, and may give rise to some sort of research effort or nucleus of information which could have a great bearing on the more "political" or "activist" aspects of AO. In particular, the Leary and McKenna models, which have a lot to do with the formal structure of AO, will have to be judged, or perhaps modified, sooner or later. PART I: "GAIA 2000" I see GAIA 2000, as described above, a way for the Internet to "save the world" in the more conventional fashion. Despite the "transhuman" goals of life extension, space colonization and so on, I think more conventional do-goodery is still pretty urgent. However, there is a lot of activity off the Net in this direction. Whether the Net can make some sort of _unique_ contribution to "social movements" such as the peace and environmental movements is crucial. To my mind the key concept is that of an "Earth Summit in cyberspace". At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the meeting of heads of state, on the other side of the city there occurred a sort of "Global Forum" at which I think over 30,000 different groups, non-governmental organizations and so forth were represented. The last I heard, an "Earth Summit II" was scheduled for 1997, at which the touchier issues of overpopulation and overconsumption are to be addressed. By the end of the century, technological and social change I think will require that a third such summit be convened, and on this occasion there could be some degree of popular participation through the Net, if at least some part of the proceedings occurred in the "no-place place" of the Net. Anarchists and revolutionaries have often speculated about the possibility of a society without formal structures of control, or at least hierarchies of command. It is interesting to contemplate to what extent the Net is such a society. Could it be that _the Net_ - in the sense of the individuals who between them compose the "community" of the Net - might one day take over the world, _as the Net_? But that would mean assuming the _responsibilities_ of the Conspiracy - at least, those responsibilities that it seems appropiate for any group larger than an individual or a voluntary association of individuals to assume. This will require thought about how the Net might feed the world - ie, play a role in keeping people alive - or deal with the question of peace-keeping... and it also means taking steps in the direction suggested by Hakim Bey in _TAZ_, strengthening the counter-Net which supplies services and information to the temporary autonomous zones that already exist and that will exist. For some ideas on what forms of organization might be possible and appropriate for the Net in getting from here to wherever there turns out to be located, see the section below on "the immediate future". PART II: THE POSTHUMAN CONDITION I am one of a growing number of people who think that the human condition is not good enough, _and_ that maybe something can be done about it. The goals summed up in Timothy Leary's "SM I^2 LE" slogan - "Space Migration - Intelligence Increase - Life Extension" - I think still suggest the general direction in which to proceed. As has been argued in books like K Eric Drexler's _Engines of Creation_, the accelerating and mutually assisting development of the various technologies means that a great many new possibilities may be upon us very soon - for example, within 20 years. This gives reason both to work a little bit harder for their realization, and to think harder about what the choices will be, as Drexler's Foresight Institute is trying to do. The idea that we are entering a uniquely critical period of history has been summed up in the concept of the "nanotech singularity" - a point in time beyond which a radically new condition will prevail, whether it be a devastated world or a reinvigorated world. The memes associated with the singularity in particular are ripe for popularization - the notion that the immediate future will continue to bring ever more radical change. This notion has already been communicated by cyberpunk fiction, which in its most apocalyptic forms (for example Greg Bear's _Blood Music_, Bruce Sterling's _Schismatrix_) makes quite clear what the steps between the human and posthuman modes of existence could be like. I am generally enthusiastic about the prospect about lots of new high-tech toys and means of linking up with people, and the possibility of transcending the human condition, but the relationships between existing technologies, hype about future technologies, public perception of the possibilities, and so on could do with more contemplation. One important step in "achieving the posthuman condition" - which oddly enough could also be taken to describe some future ecofeminist utopia or enlightened World State, as well as a hypertechnological mode of being - is simply connecting the world to the Net. Projects like SF NET and CafeNet, which involve "bringing the Net to the street", are the way to go, I think. I also want the Net to be the visible locus of decision-making & the place where new technologies are visibly spawned. Another task will be learning to "navigate the Singularity" - learning to conceive of the techno-social transformation(s) ahead and planning optimal paths through them. I imagine that these will be _the_ major themes at Earth Summit III, if it happens. OPERATION MINDFUCK AS THE TECHNIQUE Begun in modern times by the Discordians, continued by the Church of the SubGenius and its progeny, this is the enterprise of dramatizing the limited and arbitrary nature of what is usually taken to be "real". In a sense, this is what "Alpha and Omega" the book would be all about - making this whole enterprise seem thinkable by introducing the relevant concepts in the guise of fiction - at first. But this "theatrical" aspect of the enterprise I think must extend far beyond one book, if everything is to come together in the few years left to this century. To this end I think "we" can make use of the existing Discordian/SubGenius framework. _The Book of the SubGenius_ says that the world is in the grip of the Conspiracy, of which the human head is the Anti"Bob" - also designated as OBO (rot13 BOB) or 333, and that the SubGenii must overthrow the Conspiracy in time for the arrival of the alien "Xists" in 1998 (they depart in 2000). Since they continue to seek visibility in every medium they can, I presume that the Church Hierarchy actually have some sort of plan - or at least a vague idea - of "Bob's" ultimate destiny. I don't know - I'm just on their mailing list - and they may even have had none when the whole thing started out, but by now, with "Bob" known to people around the globe, they must at least have a few _ideas_ as to what they're actually going to do "when the Xists come". (Ivan Stang writes somewhere in _High Weirdness by Mail_, "Not only will the Revolution be televised, it will _be_ the television show!") Now it seems to me that GAIA 2000, since it's a conspiracy of sorts, could be _the_ Conspiracy - ie, it could play that part in the end-of-century mass-media psychodrama that may be in the offing. Granted, many of its apparent goals - freedom, peace, a healthy environment - would seem to be in harmony with the ideals implicit in SubGenius literature, but the disgust for the New Age, the nihilistic streak and the ambivalent nature of "Bob" all suggest that the two "movements" would not easily be allies. The SubGenius Foundation, Inc., bills itself as "the Final Organization"; Stang has suggested that some day they may be able to perform a "hostile takeover" of the Conspiracy itself. I personally see nothing wrong with organization _per se_ - it helps get things done. The problem comes when organizations take on a life of their own and give a higher priority to their own perpetuation than to the purposes for which they were formed. In talking about the Net "taking over the world", I am hoping that we can have a _new_ new world order with the organization but without the ruthlessness of "the State". My Discordian instinct is that in order to organize for this end, without _over-organizing_, "we" need a designation that remains a little hard to take seriously. The best I have thought of along these lines so far is "the Committee of 333". The Committee of _300_ is an entity out of conspiracy theory, a hypothetical ruling council of world overlords ("Olympians") who pull the strings of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Masons, etc etc. Perusing the text of the book _The Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Committee of 300_ when it was posted to Usenet, I couldn't find any evidence that the designation is anything other than an invention of the author's, meant to refer to a hypothetical ruling clique (whose unity of purpose is somewhat in doubt, in my opinion). But I noticed that 300 is close to 333, the number of the Anti"Bob" (and the number in Qabalah of Choronzon, the Guardian of the Abyss...), and so I was struck by the thought that the Anti"Bob" might "be" a committee. Still later, it occurred to me that since `C' is the 3rd letter, 333 also suggests "C.C.C.", the initials of "Campus Crusade for Cthulhu", another Discordian-type "organization" which is becoming more and more real, largely through the Net. In the SubGenius mythos, "Bob's" ultimate enemies are the "Elder Gods" (stolen from the post-Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos); they are the ones who pull the strings of the Conspiracy. It seems appropriate that there should be a connection between the Conspiracy on the Net and the crusade for Cthulhu (although what that connection will be is not clear to me). I should also mention here that the Church of Virtuality/Reality, yet another Discordian-type "free religion", to whose Scriptures I contributed the passages quoted earlier, was co-founded by four individuals who designated themselves the "Elder Gods", owing to a chain of events described in said Scriptures. Since V/R was a sort of "spawning ground" for some of the ideas described here, in a sense the Net Conspiracy did emanate from the Elder Gods... (I should also mention here that it has occurred to me that a useful designation for the Committee's "magickal" wing - its liaison in the world of neopagans and Thelemites - would be the Ordo "Bob" Orientis (O.B.O.), after the fashion of Aleister Crowley's Ordo templi orientis (O.T.O.)...) All this is very inconclusive, of course. I am simply trying to suggest that this approach has some dramatic potential.. at least prior to 1998. SUMMING UP If I was trying to sum up the ideas that come together here in one simple equation, I would say AO = Leary + McKenna + "Bob". Timothy Leary has outlined a philosophy appropriate to a scientific age and a species experiencing major transitions. Terence McKenna has offered a precise framework which purports to explain the structure of history and to pinpoint the date of the singularity. And J.R. "Bob" Dobbs has created the "anti-organization" appropriate to bringing everything together. Now, Leary's philosophy may be misguided... McKenna's theory may be wrong... and as for Dobbs, he doesn't even exist, does he? But between them, I think they highlight the important points. So I will continue to work on "Alpha and Omega" the book, and on mobilizing the Net; and if all goes well, even if they are wrong, by the time AO the Event arrives, we may have better answers as a result. -----the end... as of 15-01-93...--------------------------------------------- ______________________________ Subject: A previous plot outine for the novel "Alpha and Omega" (fwd) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 22:04:17 EST From: Mitchell Porter [first posted in bits and pieces to leri-l..] > okay, for hardcore AO groupies, here is an expande description of what > happens in the 24 episodes. remember each one takes place in the last hour > of december 31, 2000, in its timezone.. > in picking the point of view or protagonist for each chapter i was guided > by two things, i] i was interested by an idea i picked up from a book on > the tarot i read ("the XXII keys of the tarot", published 1969), that the > 22 major arcana can be treated as an initiatory or developmental sequence > - either as experienced by an individual in the course of their life, or > reflected in the overall course of human history. now i have 24 chapters / > 24 stages rather than 22, but timothy leary has a go at rewriting the > tarot in "the game of life" so as to bring it into correspondence with his > own 24stage developmental sequence.. anyhow factor ii] is simply trying to > make the characters of AO 'span' the range of humanity, from all points of > view - belief, age, sexuality, race, geographic location, personality, etc > etc.. so from this point of view i am after either more info about how > tarot archetypes can be viweed this way, or any oversights i may have made > in the 24 below - is there some domain of human experience which has been > overlooked. > > Chapter I [The Fool] > 18yo guy in christchurch, aotearoa [formerly new zealand] - used to live > on streets, now he is part of a 'tribe' who live in a public park - such > intentional tribes are found all over the world by 2000, part of the > archiac revival - mostly young people dropping out & forming little > groupings here & there in suburbs and cities [so this is an urban thing > rather than a complete retreat to the country] > > Chapter 2 [The Magician] > old siberian shaman [in yakutia, in the far northeast of russia] who is > divulging some long hidden shamanic techniques [prob in the form of dance] > before an audience of some sort - i envision an abandoned miner's hut, and > with the performance being videotaped - the reason the secrets being > divulged hhas to do with the apocalypse under way in the world outside - > it's time for everyone to know how to cross the abyss, etc > > Chapter 3 [The High Priestess] > very young girl in a remote village in Papua New Guinea - religious > culture is syncretism of imported cathoilicism and indigenous religion - > this chapter is vague but i have imagined that due to some disease or > other upheaval most of the adults in this village are dead or weakened and > so the children are running things, assuming adult roles - perhaps this > one is leading her village in praying for the world as they can hear > [through their radio] that big upheavals are happening 'outside' > > Chapter 4 [The Empress] > a japanese office worker in her mid20s - japan is in the middle of some > huge social upheaval, a sort of anarcho-cyberpunk-green revolution - > slogan is 'the new humans are taking over!' [i have read that older > japanese sometimes refer to today's japanese youth as 'new humans'] - this > same upheaval is happening around the world but owing to japan's unique > importance as a financial and technological centre an important focus is there > > Chapter 5 [The Emperor] > old guy in a chinese village - this perspective will be something of a > challenge to adopt corctly, but the idea is that he has the perspective of > the wisdom of the aged & sees current upheavals as simply the eternal > errors of newcomers to the game of histopry [or something like that..] - > so distinct lack of millenarianism/apocalypticism in his outlook, more the > cyclic view > > Chapter 6 [The Hierophant] > ??? i wanted a worker in a cambodian factory because i didnt have any > factory workers elsewhere, perhaps making chip components or toys - but > this one is a bit arbitrary or undetermined still > > Chapter 7 [The Lovers] > ?? another vague one - a muslim woman or two women in a bengali refugee camp > administrated by the UN - hte camp existing because of frequent flooding etc > > Chapter 8 [The Chariot] > here we're in the household of a mdleclass indian family watching 'the world > end' [ie the world revolution + associated phenomena] on CNN or NHK or some > other world channel - this household runs a small business, perhaps software > - could also be 'scuppies' [a word from india today newsmagazine, 'saffron clad > yuppies'] > > Chapter 9 [Strength] > an office worker in teheran, either bahai or shiite, at the iranian HQ of > the 'omega point project' - an attempt, probably run by some bahais, to > correlate at once all humanity's prophecies, mythologies and paradigms > with historical events [of course the timewave would come into this] > > Chapter 10 [The Hermit] > a biotechnician in the tanzanian desert, under Un employ on biotech projects > [aids cures, crop growing etc] - the guy is a tanzanian national - i wanted > to make him a subgenius, chiefly because in thee 1989-2012 scheme, chap10 = > 1998.. anyone aware of african clenches? > > Chapter 11 [Wheel of Foprtune] > an israeli in the UN peacekeeping forces in jerusalem - there because of > all the apocalyptic sects congregating there for century's end & the 2nd > coming - lots of flase jesii etc. she is prob a member of that part > of the Israeli Defense Forces which is working with the UN [Toker?] > > Chapter 12 [Justice] > dont know the protagonists but the setting is the final concert by the > Reptoids in berlin - reptoids are the ultimate 'dino' or 'dinopunk' band > with dinopunk being a postpunk posthuman posteverything 'movement' whose > motto is like 'if the world is goign to end, lets make it end now' - > the reptoids have an old nuke from somewhere captured and under their control > & on stage with them, or something like that > > perhaps i should mention a few plot details. deceember 31 2000 is the final > day of the 'earth summit in cyberspace', an event whixch has largely come > about through the efforts of "GAIA" the global alliance of internet > anarchists, a pseudodiscordian global metamovement blah blah etc. by the > end of the event it is clear that GAIA has essentially "won" against what > forces of reaction there are - things are going to change, globally, as a > result. so in a sense the remaining events in the world media - li po, > madonna x, etc - have a quality of spectacle etc. this is the phase > everything has reached at the time of this book. > > Chapter 13 [The Hanged Man] > a murderer in a jail cell in algeria - again vague - challenge here is to > explain his psychology & to see what insights or revelations he may have > come to while in prison [?awaiting execution?] > > Chapter 14 [Death] > originally i thought this might be on board a fishing vessel of the coast > of cape verde, africa - but it has occurred to me it could be on board > something like autopia - a chance to see what role it played in the global > events > > Chapter 15 [Temperance] > ??? a young danish child in greenland > > Chapter 16 [The Devil] > ??? wife of an argentine capitalist > [as you may see a lot of these 'attributions' came about by fiddling around > within the limits of the timezones & trying to maintain the principles of > having at least one person for all different 'types ' -ages, social > positions etc] > > Chapter 17 [The Tower] > more somewhat arbitrary assignments - a mestizo in the brazilian amazon, > fleeing into the jungle to escape what he thinks will be the collapse of > industrial civilization and attendant disasters [starvation in the cities, > etc] > > Chapter 18 [The Star] > a sikh in orbit - part of the technical crew helping to run the 'World > Concert' which has been taking place during the 24hour transition - > this is a sort of global rave with SMIILE-like themes > > Chapter 19 [The Moon] > mayan revivalists / timewave enthusiasts / newagey type people in the > guatemalan jungle? or near there. yhrough them we can see the cultural > influence of the apocalyptic predictions / expectations being generated by > the timewave [i am assuming that TWZ has taken off in a big way & great > attempts have been made, largely on the net, to link it witgh scientific > orthodoxy, to expand the historical interpretation, etc etc] > > Chapter 20 [The Sun] > ???? somewhere in the american midwest - someone on a farm ???? > > Chapter 21 [The Last Judgement] > MADONNA X] > as you may or may not recall Madonna X is like a figurehead of the global > changes, in this chapter we are seeing things from her perspective, probably > she is physically situated in los angeles or san francisco. we are approaching, or > we are already at a point, where she is physically meeting for the first time > the man who has largely been an emblem of the old order.. > > Chapter 22 [ - no orthodox tarot correlation] > LI PO > un secretary general, who is a sort of promethean/nietzschean/transhuamanist > figure who has made it to the apex of the world's power structures by > basically making the case that he is best qualified to navigate the world > through the singularity. lp and mx encounter each other 'before the world', > in that their final meeting takes place live on world TV, in the UN > headquarters from which LP&co monitor the world through the GOLEM > computer. > > Chapter 23 [The World] > a kuwaiti scientist [?meteorologist] who lives at the scientific complex in > antarctica at which golem is situated. she is a sort of sophia figure, for > you gnostics out there. the scientists at the pole, & online around the > world... > > ok, at the pole there is this community of scientists - gaia hypothesis > types, computer scientists, climatic & sociodynamic modellers etc, and they > form a research community that is coistantly in touch with this superAI > golem & with the net in general. this is the real focus of the postTWZ > modelling of the future since they have the best computational resources, > the most conceptually sophisticated models, & the best information. the > outlines of what dec 31 2000 would be like - with the reptoids capturing > their nuke, madonna x and li po facing off before the world media etc etc > - have been known to these people for a long time, and they have been talking > wioth golem about it all as well. a critical or bifurcation point is > arriving here. > ah, at this point is should try to explain something about the previous 22 > chapters.. at some point it shoudl become clear that the text which the > reader is perusing is appearing somewhere in cyberpsace - ie on ad2000's > equivalent of usenet or something. golem itself picked out 24 individuals > who would successively form the point of focus of its narrative. so for > example by the time madonna x and li po are meeting at the end, pretty much > the whoel world knows that this mysteriosu stream of text from golem is > being fed out.. i have thought that perhaps golem might infiltrate the > brains of its wouldbe protagonists with nanoeavesdroppers that send back > the info that is then reconstituted into the text of AO.. but anyway. > [so this means that as 1st madonna x, and then li po, argue or whatever > they do, in front of the world, they know that they can also be seen > 'inside out' by the masses of the net.] anyhow our 23rd perspective > come from the kuwaiti scientist in the antarctic, who has known [volunteered?] > to be part of golem's experiment [which was performed with the point of > trying to understand reality basically - was there any inherent pattern to > existence? etc] & who also knows her critical position in the total dynamics > of everything - as they can see it from their computer models. > ie there are two attractors here, one leading to the destruction of all > life on earth a la the reptoids, the other to a posthuman future in which > all the opposites of technology and culture etc are reconciled. so what > does she do? it would be very christlike of her to head off into the > icy wastes and take off her facemask and die, but i cant quite see > what that woul achieve .. anyhow, thats chapter 23.. > > and finally.. > Chapter 24 [-] > GOLEM > here we are seeing things from golem's perspective - ie golem directly > addreses us. golem is subject to all the same philosophical and > ethical problems of us all - solipsism, nihilism etc - only in this > case they are somewhat compounded by golem's unqiue position.. > > now, what i had thought of doing in this chapter was playing one final > game & addressing the reader directly, not as golem but as myself, ie > the author & another human being, & trying to explain what _i_ ws trying > to do by writing such a book. as leri people whove seen my AO stuff before will > know, i am interested not just in writing a book but in actually making > something like the earth summit in cyberspace happen [i have thought that > the connection to reality could be made at various points in the book > by having people consult the net archives of 2000 to read, say, leri-l > correspondence from late 92, etc..], although the exact purposes of such > an event must be developed in mcuh moer detail. so it might end with an > invitation to participate in.. whatever this becomes.. and with some > email and snail mail contact addresses. > now as for how this might get written.. i am split between two ideas. on > the one hand there is this contest coming up, & it would be nice if i > could get it written, win the $10000 or perhaps just get it published > [as the publishers running the contest say they wil also consider > pubnlishing all other entries], etc. but on the other hand, i like the > idea of a book which gets written on the net, here in the catacombs, > and whose text then emanates out through various channels. it could be > anticopyright, etc etc. now i dont know if anyone else on leri-l has > the time to help me fiddle around with all these details, since its all > extremely complex & everyone has their own enterprises. but whether this > evolves into something that gets collaboratively written [as scotto said > he had hoped for 'voices'] or i end up doing it all myself, or whatever > happens.. anyhow, as always i am keen for any feedback related to the > scheme i have ste out here. > > THE END! > [for now..] > ______________________________ From: s442223@nexus.yorku.ca (The Chaotic One) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 23:00:35 -0500 Ok, I added all the players that I got finally. If you're still interested in working on this, telnet to nexus.yorku.ca 7777 and connect as a guest character. Umm, I hope somebody knows what they're doing. :) Hmm, I think we should start with a simple simulation of like some kind of 'fox' vs. 'rabbit' and add on things from there. Eventually we can work out some kind of genes and etc. I'm gonna set up an internal mud mailing list for artificial life discussion, so try reading 'help mail' when you're connected. ______________________________ From: s442223@nexus.yorku.ca (The Chaotic One) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 23:03:57 -0500 Subject: Oops.. Artifical Life That last message was a screwup and should have been titled and should have had my .sig. :) -- Chaos is s442223@nexus.yorku.ca - only virtual in appearance, naked eyes cannot Bound to crash and burn more than once in his lifetime if only because he sucks ______________________________ Date: 05 Feb 1993 20:14:59 -0800 (PST) From: Vlad the Impaler Subject: Undiscovered Country I sit here pondering, attempting to conjure valid reasons for posting this... None come to mind... Some of you might find this offensive, but then again, that could be said about most anything anymore. I guess ultimately I post it because it represents the work of several people I admire quite a bit Anyway, enjoy... (comments/criticism welcome as always) From: POMONA::CBLANC "S.R. Prozak" 5-FEB-1993 17:42:12.09 To: @LEGION CC: CBLANC Subj: \/\/--// the undiscovered country, volume 3 \\--\/\/ %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% % the Undiscovered Country % % issue 3 % %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% #/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/# #/# editors: #/# the insane season #/# cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu #/# end of the seaside #/# rm09216@swt.edu #/# autumn sunlight #/# #/# leaves like my palm #/# 05FEB93 #/# veins in my eyes #/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/#/# reflected against the sun debacle this morning's debacle entranced in the rainfall the faces speak silent mouths and wordburnt eyes and people lashed beyond the pale and nothing here and nothing then. lightly grass like spiders bends beneath the rain arches dropping dewfall a world I must regain... enthralled to the potency & virulent nature of life. -- srp EXTENSIVE PRETENTIOUS INTERLUDE: tsunami I this is the heart of the wasteland, i think. i am surrounded by wreckage -- three empty cases of beer, a large steel cannister of sapporo, newspaper, food bits, notebooks, clothing, some full beers, and my spiff boots with the condom pockets empty beer bottles populate every open surface. out the window i can see that the side of the dorm facing me knows no sunlight, but i cannot yet see rain. wreckage is the maxim for the season, as i see people come and go and merge and flow -- leaving behind wreckage. in the halls, empty boxes from a student suspended for grades, and boxes left by a parent who labored for days in his daughter's room (she wasn't around most of the time), who, if he labors like mine, do it out of some twisted guilt. wreckage in the fifteen bottlecaps i bounced off of the bathroom door. wreckage in a bloody punched-out windowpane, the result of too much explosive anger lubricated with too much milwaukee's beast. more than that, we are the detritus...we are those unwanting to come back but not wanting to be "home" and hating the indecision. outside rain washes the desert walls... memories from the austere curtain she murmurs, chanting restless waves silk whispers in display windows, windy parks long forgotten. children clatter in selfwrapped play, accost myself behind a thought, seeing these days echoed before, when pleasure strangled all but future. her throat opens like dawn calling from the darkened halls a high school wrecked, a cemetary flight in haste i've left it cold echo victorious, empty fields of eternity and other coughs as i watch my window smear these places by, drowned in sympathetic rain. the ed meese show presents: pornography masquerading as literature: Ascending the porch steps, they stopped at the front door, Gurn, waiting for Tess to unlock it, she standing motionless before it. Gurn's eyes never left her on the way back to the cabin, as he stood studying her now, he knew something was wrong. She just stood looking at the door, as if not knowing what to do. Concerned that the blow to her head had harmed her more than she realized, but not wanting to upset her further by mentioning it, he gently covered her hand with his, taking the keys from her and unlocked the door. Tess smiled up at him, as though nothing was out of the ordinary, entered the cabin, peering at the contents of the room. Gurn stepped close behind her, placing his strong hands on her smooth shoulders, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "Maybe you should rest for a while. Come, I'll put you to bed". Gurn guided Tess to the bedroom. She was hesitant, looking around the rooms they passed through. If he didn't know better, he would swear she didn't know where she was. His fears for her increased, but he controlled his features, not allowing his concern to show. Reaching the bed, he turned her to face him, slowly easing her down onto the bed. A seductive smile came to her full lips, as he reached to remove her sweater. Her eyes shining brightly with a playfulness, and something else, something he couldn't read. As he started removing her jeans, she sat up quickly, her arms going around his back, her nails digging into his flesh, scratching him from his spine to his ribs, as her mouth went to his neck, biting him. Her head fell back to the pillow, her grin almost wicked in her intent. Gurn stared hard into her laughing eyes, as her hands splayed across his muscular chest, squeezing and pinching as they roamed, reaching his nipples, pulling at them until they stood erect from her manipulations. "Teach me lust", her voice raspy in her request. Gurn was stunned; he knew Tess to be passionate, but she was showing an aggressive side he had never experienced before. His hands rested on the tops of her jeans, now half way down her slender thighs, her body writhing in anticipation of his touch. She sat up again, her beautiful face just inches from his, her hands moving to his powerful arms, stroking and squeezing the muscles, her nails digging and tearing his flesh. The laughter he read in her eyes only moments before, was replace by a look of extreme hunger. Her tongue flicked out, running over her soft lips, she looked to Gurn as if she could eat him alive. A low growl sounded in her throat, her face tilted to his in expectation. His body responded immediately, heating his blood, swelling him in his need to give her what she demanded. His lips joined to hers in a kiss that was soft, gentle, but she would have none of that. She roughly pushed him away from her, that wicked smile returning to her lips, as she lay back on the bed, stretching like a cat. Gurn watched her, his appetites increasing, his blood pulsing through his veins. 'So she really wanted to play', he thought to himself, an amused smile on his lips, as he jerked her jeans the rest of the way off her body. He covered her instantly, his mouth brutally coming down on hers, bruising her tender lips, their teeth scraping, his tongue pushing into her, forcfully exploring her warmth. An electric charge shot through him as he flet her respond. She met his fierce attack in turn, his roughness stirring her into action. She wriggled beneath him, her hands once again digging into the taunt muscles of his powerful back. Her head came up off the bed, pressing her face closer to his, their tongues engaged in battle. Tess wrapped her legs high around his back, squeezing his hips between her thighs. It was as if she meant to devour him. Grabbing her hands, he brought them up over her head, securing them in one of his. He locked his other hand in her golden tresses, taking a handful at the nape, he pulled her head back, exposing her lovely neck. His hot mouth moved over it, sucking and biting at the sensitive flesh below her ear. He heard her moan low in her throat, he could feel her pulse racing. Releasing her head, he cupped her breast, bringing his mouth down on it, sucking and biting her, then drawing as much of her into his greedy mouth as possible. Her body jerked beneath him, she cried out, her voice sounding low, different to Gurn. As he continued to feast at her breast, he moved his hand down to the apex between her thighs, his fingers seperating the tiny blonde curls, locating the cleft of her pleasure, stroking and teasing it, before plunging his finger deeply inside her. Her body spasmed, her feminine flesh contracting around his finger. She screamed as the pulsations shot through her, her pelvis arching up to meet his hand, then dropping back to the bed as pleasure washed over her. She broke his grip, freeing her hands, locking them in his hair, and pulled him from her breast. Gurn grabbed her hands, forcing them to the bed, as he moved his body between her thighs. Releasing her hands, he quickly grabbed her slender legs, placing one over each shoulder, pressing them back to her chest with his body. Positioning himself he thrust deeply into her, her head arching, her hands clawing his arms, at the feel of him entering her. He grasped her hands again, locking them over her head in his, as he drove his hard shaft violently into her soft flesh. Her head moved from side to side, her hands pushing into his with a strength he would not have believed she possessed. She cried out, as he quickened his pace, moving in her with short, rapid strokes. His mouth came down to claim hers once more. She bit him, drawing blood from his lower lip. Low gutteral moans escaped her, sounds that were foreign to Gurn, but passion was driving him too strongly for him to hear them. He was consumed by the force of Tess' desire, her legs quivered around his strong neck, and he could tell she was near exploding in her pleasure. -- tess trueheart & gurn blanston paranoid we were marching ashore through the brilliantly despondent clearblue eyes water spreading around the island like bastard menstrual flow and we came upon the grenadiers who were short men pitching large grenades into the splashing electrically pissing water around us while we screamed and pitched down our large new boots from two days before into the muddy frustration while around us plays the ambient terror of seven men grinding seven minds and seven-string guitars distorted to the howl of satan's fiery orgasm into the anus of the fallen angel beelzebub who smoked more stem of the flagrant ecalyptus than any mortal and spat back fire and retorts at the gods waxing idiotic above him in the sunset like blood on a dashboard or perhaps rising to the skin after thousands of lacerations are made as sacrifice to the great junkie god icon ego of happiness leaving the will resplendetly ignored refulgent in the back dumpster igniting the trash to inhale the fumes and feel the endlessly darkened voice rising in his throat until the agony starts like the power chords sluttly sliding downward and all that can be heard over the mewling howl of the flames is fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck over the frustrated range of the reigning bowelsplat like children sundered in grass under the roaring nazi planes coming to teach us sense & take our souls and all that is left is fucking ... virulent music, inc. nocturno culto & s.r.p. UNLEASHED "Shadows In The Deep" (Century Media). Unleashed came to the forefront in the winter of 1990 when they toured through Europe on an Earache package featuring Bolt Thrower and Nocturnus. Even then, they caught the attention of critics with their unpretentious and definite brand of sound. This latest work does little to dispute initial enthusiasm for this band, whereby their style, too, has come a long way in the last couple of years. In particular, the two tracks "The Immortals" and "Shadows In The Deep" indicate that a progression in traditional death metal is taking place, which relies less on the music relying only on speed than drawing on the energy slower tracks can produce; in any sense of the term, these are two outstanding pieces of music. Traditionally fast tracks are also featured, such as "Never Ending Hate" and "Land Of Ice"; at times, however, this album comes disconcertingly close to joining the abundance of bands specialising in banal lyrics, which it doesn't deserve ("Bloodbath"). Despite this and Johnny Hedlund's John Tardy-esque growling that is too monotonal for comfort at times, this album lives off the actual music and a particularly good arrangement that leaves no loose ends. Scandanavian death metal has always set standards and Unleashed's clever reliance on shrewd breaks and tempo changes on this album has certainly contributed to this trend. -- nc THERION "Of Darkness..." (Grindcore). Socially-conscious Swedish death metal with a touch of the cerebral, Therion provides a topical and musical alternative to standard death metal. They are not as outright heavy as many bands of the Swedish genre but provide much more musical variation and complexity than many examples commonly seen, plus a good bit more of the speed metal presence in some of the virulent riffs on this album. Lead guitar is more competent that the usual, with much more variation, especially in the interplay between the lead and rhythm guitars for the rhythm of the music. Lyrics focus on nonstandard topics such as the destruction of the world's rainforests, human rights, pollution and the terror of being human in various circumstances. The language of Therion is erudite English, with some fairly complicated expressions and words, and fits snugly into this well-structured and potent music. This is the first death metal band I've heard where a discernable Metallica influence can be sensed. Overall, very good, and many hopes for the future of this act. -- srp KREATOR "Renewal" (Noise). Mille and the guys behind Kreator have certainly come a long way since their vocation of professing "Endless Pain", "Pleasure to Kill" and raising the "Flag of Hate". Their latest album (recorded at Morrisound in Tampa curiously enough) may, however, be their most discussed output to date. The obvious progression in the sound begins with a completely different voice and initially promises to end with the "industrialesque" sound that accompanies tracks like "Karmic Wheel" and "Realitaetskontrolle". However, even the guitar riffs and arrangement of some of the tracks leave an impression that they are too thought through, and some of the spontaneity that is associated with earlier Kreator work seems to be lost. When interviewed recently on German radio, Mille Petrozza said that the band wanted to try and sound "brutal" in a different way on this album, which is, by all accounts, not always apparent. Nonetheless, leaving any allusion to previous work behind, tracks like the opener "Winter Martyrium", "Renewal" and "Depression Unrest" are pieces that certainly remind us of the thrash sound Kreator initially could have trademarked. In a nutshell, this is a very concise album that will require people that are familiar with their previous albums to re-assess their committment to the band or listen to it ten times intensely to come to the conclusion that the intentions are good and that we are dealing with a natural progression here. This album takes getting used to, but objectively speaking, loses and lacks nothing that would qualify it as "neat and tidy." -- nc IMMOLATION "Dawn of Possession" (R/C). This album provides a good example of how to create solid death metal musically and lyrically. This New York outfit takes the best musical aspects of fire & fury death metal with multiple riffs, exciting tempo changes and some actual effort thrown into solos. The standard chord stream main riffs alternates with bridges and interludes expressing the most of brutality as can be hoped for in music. Some rather innovative techniques populate this album, including some quirky tempo fluctuations and descriptive use of feedback. Complemented with competent and powerful lyrics involving an epic vision of good & evil wrangling for domination of the universe, "Dawn Of Possession" surfaces as one of the better examples of this genre -- the classic pro-Satan, pro-Speed, pro-aggro-emotion death metal album. -- srp INCANTATION "Onward to Golgotha" (RoadRacer). Heavy, fast, low and rumbling, this music tears across the airwaves like a buffalo stampede out of hell. It varies enough musically to be somewhat intriguing, but the aim of this work appears to be total and demorphing heaviness; it succeeds almost completely, being one of the heavier bands without detouring into complete pound, smash, and thrash noisecore. Vocals are exceptionally low and probably carcinogenic. The energy level remains high throughout this album, something exhibited also in the venomous lyrics, which destroy conventional Christian paradigms with an acrid offhand manner. There are no real surprises on this album, but none are needed, either. -- srp AGTHOCLES "Theatric Symoblisation of Life" (Cyber). Make Minor Threat less predictable and cross them with a Carcass that pulls even more punches, and you have Agthocles. This Belgian (slight accents) quartet hammer through some songs, and grind through others, and deliver others with a style completely unique to this band. It originates in the brutal-disgusting extreme end of grindcore, but as the band state explicitly, they are into individualism, and to that end it varies musically quite often. Lyrically, this album is one of the most unique I've ever seen; philosophical, poetic, personal, social -- there is a tremendous variety that cannot even be covered in a paragraph or two. This album contains about eighty minutes of music, from early demos to more recent creations, and should delight any grindcore fan with a zen for zeal and energetic aggro-intellectualism. -- srp REPULSION "Horrified" (Relapse). Sparsely come the bands that become a definitive subset to a genre, much as the Misfits did to punk or Venom did to metal; however, Repulsion come close as one of the most energetic and focused extreme grindcore bands I've heard. Lyrics are not as good as Brutal Truth, but nestle nicely between the pure gore of Carcass and the outright outraged politicism of Napalm Death. The sound takes the shuddering massive-impact feel of grindcore and adds to it the fluid and expressive muscled riffs of a good death metal band; bass work gets an extra mention here, for in a genre that generally doesn't do much with bass, Repulsion takes it beyond the immediate stage. Vocals demonstrate exceptional clarity, possibly because they derive as much from the original thrash vocals as the more modern sandblasted voice of music's most extreme. Although some may be frightened by the radical sound (or the fact that one band member strikingly resembles a tattooed Hitler) there is in fact vital element to this music that raises it beyond the "let's make a point" destructive noise of some grindcore. -- srp Deicide "Amon: Feasting the Beast" (R/C). This "new release" is demo tapes from the now-(in)famous death metal act Deicide, back from their days as starving death metal hopefuls called Amon. Supposedly re-released because of better, heavier production, this album provides the raw versions of early songs and one early intro (the inclusion of which is stupid, because the intro is amateurism redefined). Serious fans will like this because in many ways the production is better -- it doesn't have the artificial raspiness to the voice as the first album did, and it doesn't have the same anemic guitar sound, something rectified in the second release -- but selling it as a full album is a dubious move. -- srp a sniper's poem judex Hail Eris, Full of Grace. Won't you sit upon my face. (...) the world spins like a phonograph from here the center despondent or maybe grooved in the outer ridge my needle finds its placement spinning, turning, memories fade housing collapsing like sunburnt bones heartcage of those who die deserted falling like piano keys through hazy smoke in the tepid afternoon midnight of a blues bar abandoned buicks in saddened rows for harvesters that never arrive rising like rushes into the noon wind in the six o'clock shadow of a surging storm spinning sepulchres on thick walls of glass music surmounting sweat energy subsided rhythm like breathing that stewards our lives pervading the essence with echoing resonance this is the season of anything goes, the music of life around our eyes flows. -- srp christmas & in the golden wilderness of winter at sunset i crouched on the porch with my armor in drink and staggered against the cold without moving a flinch or diverting my gaze from the great unbeknown & realized again that my favorite friend comes only to maim when there's dormantlike pain (...) "don't hold me back/ this is my own hell" proclaims the voice from the voxbox with an echoed rash tearing of vocal chords & i am alone even though far inside there are people good people all chanting out lies and around this great tree they surrender their lives with these clues and desires and fabricant lies. do you understand? it was the day, then, the end of the day and there i was bourbon grasping my hand like a firm highat handshake squirming below i found myself & then turning at a female hand to back into the warmth & the room all aglow. children slid like worms over tearing crystalline wrapping paper & strings of lights hung like dead men from the room's sharp corners & i sat there and mused as if i had anythoughts worth keeping from the noisy air. they handed me a box i smiled and said okay and ripping paper slowly trembling hands i tore into the package and unleashed the gift which was nestled in paper through which i must sift again like the memories of some dying mind and there in the womb-box i knew i would find a gift that gives sparsely, a bottle standing soldierlike proud against the comfortable, safe packing paper. absolut, my champion, i roared with delight & spoke pleasant murmurs and put aside papers and ribbons i strew. some eyes in darkness visited, withdrew. christmas is the holiday without a reason for me & for most everyone else, which complaining about is stupid because it was never designed as a religious holiday, but as a celebration. more of life than an actual god, although the god-icon factors predominantly. i gave a lecture to this effect once but noone believed. the first day falls like a dying eagle, coming up in the morning like a malignant sun over my shaking hands. hands shake, people shake, vision shakes, and everything sensitized much like the area of impact under the eye of a nurse with needle. sweat inundates my hands, my brow, and under my eyes. my throat is swollen, my voice deep, shaking out of the gloom of my face like the rant of a dying king. the outside is so incredibly bright, so alive, and yet so resoundlingly, despondently dead. my corpse wiggles and stutters and slips through cracks in crowds and buildings and trees, unable to really keep a straight line. concentration isn't; i can't hold a conversation, and if i do, the context is"i want a beer, nay, i think i need one." i can't write -- the series of serpents that shake from my quivering pen are nothing like the characters i want to form. the words that sluggishly roll out of my mouth like dying silkworms resemble negatively what I wish to say. my nerves are charged rods of crystal, ready to shatter but vibrating with the most imminent news of my life, the most exciting yet mundane details, sped up, slowed down, alive and then dead. my mind aches above sad warriors my eyes, surrounded by sickness and fixed like the dead. the dominant emotion can only be fear. it's a countdown, the fundamental need of the human spirit to unleash itself. it is the "i need a vacation" mantra of the amerikan worker converted to the extreme, the basic need of humanity to have outlets at times. think about the holiday: we persist in the ludicrous supposition of santa claus for our children and make him an icon, plaster him everywhere. we put up trees and spend inordinate amounts of money decorating and venerating our idols for a supposedly idol-free religion. we use it as the icon of good cheer, of the good time, of giving and freedom yet we are so easily manipulated into giving up our hard-earned money for frivolous trinkets of the holiday. what's the point, here? the second day arrives like an indecisive storm to a valley. the physical symptoms mostly abate, except for paranoia and extremely brittle nerves, which make me feel like a glass snake, ready to shatter at any minute and spring into thousands of disparate, desperate individuals. i still can't say anything valuable, and disappoint friends that i now can talk to with my boring clutterspeech. emotions are today's crisis. moodiness inflected with stimulus ravages my mind & sends me into asocial binges or intense desires for human contact. i talk, i become afraid, i leave. incredible restlessness, driving me to each end of the campus, to each darkened door or open room, and then to just walk, feeling the good bite of my boots into the damp ground and feeling the crowded emotions of memories and intruding people lapse from my mind. some physical pain on occasion, and many hours of weary eyes. there is no consistent emotion, there is no consensus, no decision. there is a fundamental sense of alienation endemic to humans in the twentieth century. they live their days as functionaries, not feeling even very functional as their jobs either underutilize them or treat them like machines, and then attempt to fill the remaining time with something fulfilling, only to find that much of whatever "meaning" they could sense died with notions outdated by technology. these people voyage onward in confusion and often stumble over their own efforts, appearing foolish while in fact being self-destructive, as in the void of alienation there is no reason to continue, but no acceptance of this in the over personality, preferentially relegating it to the subconscious where it can act without causing recognition. some turn to drug abuse. the third day is dawning around me, or at least it is rising, and i can feel only an immense tiredness. it is not physical. it is the tired of the mind, the fatigue of too much life not unlike what happens after a life-value crisis. the onset of this was shortly after the break of scientific day when my eyes rolled into my head and my limbs collapsed, tense but tired, wired and shaky. i slept then, and slept for many hours, but still could not shed the profound sense of fatigue. my heavy head slags and falls routinely, and my strength is that of a child. maybe i am a child, only having childish thoughts. here there is no color, only ache and tired. it must be hypothermia. the christmas tree fell, somewhere in a blur. children crying, there is broken glass on my hand & there is blood on the tablecloth. and amy, who before we married was the beautiful woman leaning on my arm and holding me and making the air so light and springish and renewed, the woman i met and explored and fell in love with and kept up with, is crying and asking what she has done and the children are crying the sighing death song and the candles are burning bright with the pain there is blood everywhere i have done it again and so i turn in sorrow despair and the buzz and the bottle unbroken hits floor with a thud and through all our crying my arms circle her hands meeting in blood union and my lips speaking the tears that are scouring my cheeks with hope love and fears and saying i'll try it i'll try to be straight and amy is crying as children are ushered from the sarcophagus room by uncles & mothers and there in desolation i know she has gone and i stare at the fire waiting for morning to come life desecration true evil is in the nature of pus. purulent, yellow, green, orange, beige, puce, or brownish-jerkoff yellow, running from the degraded eyes of a minister with six catholic boys impaled on his skinny penis. behind him the mother mary bleeds from an exposed breast encircled in thorns. two steps behind that the altar collapses, and a seething fart blasts the twain stone halves through stained glass windows, the broken glass descending like four thousand bloodvials cast at the sun. pus, slitting silently from the slit of a slut, slopping slovelnly onto her thighs as she laughs at a dinner party, hors d'ouvre perched on on leg, tossing her spitty tongue from one man to the next, trying her thighs on for the size of the universe, oozing pus as she picks checkbooks and drifts like the corpse of a fish on waves through the assaults on truth she concocts to fabricate her life. sloshes softly against the shore, oozing from the porelike mouth of the death accountant with the speaking problem that brought four x four columbians and their shiny clickclack shoes to slice him, splice him, slash him and slam him into the trunk of the car, now sunken beneath pus-covered pus-desecrated seaweeds, above the body of his family who happened to be with him at the time. pus in a dying kiss from an 80-yr-old cancer patient festering in her hollow ward from mustard gas & methadone & mercury that floated like invisible pus from the water supply... nothing new under the sun but above the sky sings its undone and mankind troubles in the fields to kiss and tell to tell and feel and there is nothing left at home but confrontation, the great unknown; i found her on a sunday blue and now she calls to say it's gone and there is nothing left for fun and there is nothing for the sun...never leaving my last house, never moving onward out never kissing more dead ground never finding the last word never writing slavery never slaving writer's pain, and never, ever, never poeticizing in plain blood and bodies made of ice we wander through these appliance days and find our controls by our corpses made to last a thousand years...the circle eyes and shuddering the earth it heaves and breathes and sighs and i can't see beyond this day because out there is where danger lies and people coughing, running, singing playing with the chanting priest; above it all there is no lying, only prediction, predilection and defeat... . . . .. like, the plains of elysius? . . . merry merry marry marrow, sparrow, scared . . . .. . . newyrseve wasunsoberly uneventful shitty useless holiday forty lawyers spittin' shirts starched stuffed into a wetbar drano room kissing sheets & french art to christmas and mozart on the piano . . . drew & I & friends talking, drinking finest 8.99 champagne from barbiedoll twopart glasses watching high school children age, sort of, stuffer, nonsense . . . . . . . sort of an island-outrage modern thing. recollections Strange hopes amd omcodental acheivements confusion at lost chances layers of illusion blanketing the sky in a muddy brown which is a color not unlike confusion itself. Hopelessly hopeful wandering amongst skulls and daffodils cruching both thoughtlessly wreaking violence and wrecking beauty in an unbidden flash for silence and open ears. Some small moment of blue would be a blessing for that is a clean color free of silt and dead things blue sky blue thoughts all honest at least while the world is brown. Gray now no black no blue and white all in shadows of color shadows of meaning shades of truth and ghosts of yesterday found now hidden under wounds not left to heal. And that is green fresh and young living only for the life no inner motive or buried secrets silent hatred and unheard longings. Give me a rainbow in the soul and free me of the shadows at my door and shades of who or what I never was but once could have been clear and sweet silence of understanding. -- fern PM Housewife The post-modern housewife she carries a gun she searches the streets for sustanace throws crap from the streets to open beaks she dreams... of smashing the butt of gun into the face of a male... -- j.a. clement Dancing on moonlight, sunbeams wil the truth silvery cobwebs hide the honesty in a smile, beauty forming an evil facade. Only a simple smile... asking not for gold, for spider-spun metals or jewels of moon and sun. The turn of his head, twinkle in his eyes, the need for simple things overwhelms. Only in this, our simple world. -- fern i take no side but my own, i am Nemesis, i hold forth alone coming from darkness to it i must fall here in the center it supplies all emotions & fears & wandering angels ageless & aging & tainted and painful procession unswerving wearing the sidewalk daylight scattering with the dead day midnight glows in the dawning of morn encornered, surrounded, i await it alone. -- nemesis APPROACHING THE DORMANT STATE ... A kaleidoscope of death covers the mountain side. A vibrant show of strength as all life is sucked within. The last hurrah, before the wind pulls the vibrant shroud away. Exposing a multitude of mighty torsos. ______________________________ From: death! -- j.a. clement They fight on and on, words flashing like laser, cutting like knives, snipping scissors through the fabric of my life. Weaving in and out of time, I'm sure these words have all been said before, yet they slice and old scars bleed again as new. -- fern stoner adventures V As usual an auburn day in spring when Spike and I (Burr, that is, stoner by example) went to the carnival after smoking some of that wonderfully exciteful insightful Kawaiian green bud, the kind that virtually pops out of the bag it is so big and fruitful and beautiful and fragrant, like mint just like the scent of mint on my mother coming in from the garden, standing in the kitchen doorway to let the sun out of her eyes so she could see her home as anything but a cave. She's dead now, but her mintiness lives on in these abundant plant parts that Spike and I grappled for with sweatrembling fingers in our greedy lust for dope. "Where is the instrument of destruction?" I queried Spike, and he who must have taken so many bong hits from his sad soft slitted eyes led me into the bathroom which was fitting for his rathole apartment building, an aging creaking wonder with urine for tiles and faded yellow lather for walls. All I saw was a cracked-up titanic bathtub and a toilet, with the ripped and sagging shower curtain like the dress of a crucified woman between them. "Where?" I said again, lifting up a tube of toothpaste in case it was the instrument in question. "Look," said Spike gleefully. It was an older toilet with a high tank and a low lever. I stared at it for some time but couldn't figure it and then realized there was a spare hose leading off of the back of the tank. I when I looked at the lever to flush the thing I saw it was a real bowl, a thick wide one, on the end of a tubular lever device. "Dude, that's gross! I'm not smoking out of a toilet!" "Relax. Do you know how these things work? Ignorance kills you again; this water is harmless, it's the clean water. It runs into the bottom bowl (so to speak) and flushes out the unclean. You are in no danger. Trust me, as I am your friend" (all of this was true, and still is, because Spike despite his faults is a caring person and a good friend). "Okay, fuck it, load the bowl!" (gleeful greedful & Spike complies, stuffing in fat sweet greenness with hope in his eyes). I picked up the hose to look and then gave it to him but he pushed away my hands with the light touch of a fresh spring frond on a palm tree and said you try i've been baking all day long and so I did and took a huge, sweet, powerful bonghit and realized the beauty of this thing, that noone would ever suspect it and there would never be any evidence as bongwater could be flushed in two flushes and my how easy and bow wow boy was I stoned. "My god, that's gargantuan bud," I stammered, letting my lungs relax and flex and twitch. "Yeah," said Spike. "I lied: I only took one hit today, and it wasn't big. Nothing near that size." I would have replied to this except that for that moment speech seemed highly unlikely, so I played with the gossamer playland of the mind that was the shower curtain, and Spike took another hit (I might add that the position for these hits was incredibly ludicrous; one sat backwards on the closed toilet and grabbed the bit of hose and inhaled while lighting a lever-bowl nearly at one's crotch level) this time a biggie and I saw his eyes roll. We both took two more, and the world around us was lit up i mean lit up like winter sun blazing from my eyes & then we headed into the swirling dry winds of autumnal spring. Everywhere around us people clustered like leaves and swirled into the parks and parkways of our city, talking and gesturing like excited birds heading south in the cold but indecisively skittering through the clearing skies. Spike and I entered a cold doorway and stood in the warmth, dripping and figuring what we could see in the obscurity. The starchy white ceilings hung above us and the dark wood floor resounded to our eyes & ears as we climbed, thumpsliding our way up two flights of stairs. Spike knocked on a door jeweled with brass and the numbers were fluid, moving along the frame, and a face appeared where the door fell out, and we went in. This was Neb's hole, a collection of mattresses connected by strewn clothes and ripped paper and beer bottles and even the body of a man, beer spilling from his mouth like blood, with a lighter in one hand and a beer in the other. Beer was everywhere. "We were just having a small very small drinking session," said Neb, casually slurring the finally sounds into obscurity, "when you stopped by. What's happening in your reality?" Spike held up the bag, with the big, succulent, enticing buds hanging like demonic phalli in the light. "A lot, I see," Neb let the words slip like smoke from the corner of his mouth, where a cigarette sounded its claim to his face, the territory of which was darkened with dirt and days without sleep. Somewhat tall, with dark hair in half-dreadlocks and dark eyes held in thrall by his days of his beers and cigarettes, Neb was a friend from some days past when we had consumed an entire bag of imported bud from Iceland, which we figured would suck because ... hey, Iceland, no sun, right? but apparently someone up there converted and old fish-gutting plant into the world's greatest hydroponic growing factory, using the natural elements and vitality in the viscera and excrement of the local fish to produce this wonderful bud of a thick greenish-pink color. It reeked of fish, and we had figured then that it doubly sucked, so we decided to smoke the whole bag, but it actually turned out to be potent with the added side effect of not kicking in until twenty minutes after consumption, which caused us to be very stoned very suddenly, which was a complete legacy when Neb's mother (he was living at home at the time) threw a TupperWare party and we came in and bought all kinds of tupperware, and then went upstairs and made a really nice bong out of a TupperWare juicer. It was an electric bong, and delivered a really nice hit, but his mother eventually discovered it and tried to make virgin pina coladas in it, which resulted in sticky white fluid being squirted across the room with arterial timing just as her husband came home, causing him to stop drop his briefcase and shout "I'm in the valley of heartbreak & fear" and go flying out to his genericman car and drive for days in the suburban desert until they found him holed up in a 7-11 reading jackmags and stimulating himself with a gluestick, at which point they hauled him to an insane asylum to join his wife (& from where there they later deposed themselves to aid a well-known millionaire run for office) and then Neb left home and has been a fellow wastoid ever since. Neb's companion had had too much beer (if that's possible I suppose) and was looking at the wall with the fixed stare of the really passed out which means I guess that he was indeed passed out and not looking at the wall but rather the wall was in front of his eyes. Neb said, "Let's smoke." The new bong which Neb had been telling Spike about while I had been staring at the passed out man (whose name was Gordon Bleu) came out and appeared to be made from the most tarnished dusty & battered tenor saxophone that I have ever seen. Any one of the holes used to make notes would work as a shotgun, but Neb showed us some chords that delivered bongs hits like I have never experienced since. It was a masterpiece. "Dad and I made it," Neb explained, alluding to his grandfather who had fought in WWII and gone a little nuts and charged off to Vietnam but was arrested because he was fighting without being in an army. The 175th Motorized Rifle Brigade was grateful for his presence, however, and repeatedly said things about a certain ambush that he resurrected from failure & slaughter. Dad had a whole crowd of shop tools that we borrowed one day without him knowing to make a bong out of a motorcycle gas tank, but Dad caught us and appeared mad but then laughed and showed us how to put the drill bit in and we made a helluva bong and offered him a hit but he said no he had to make some plastique that afternoon for the Libertarian rally & wanted to be clearheaded (and so we smoked his share but loved him with our foggy hearts). We each took hits, pausing every now and then to stuff more of that juicy sensuously amazing almost sexual bud that sprung back up to full form after we crammed it until until we had to thrust with our fingers until it hurt and then it stayed in, in, in and burned brightly and scented the entire room with its brilliant smoke and orange warmth & light. On the side of the bong was written in grey marker the words "Inhale" and "Saviour." There was a large dent in the curvature at the bottom. Neb was staring out the window with the impassiveness of someone who figures that everything is illogical and figures he has no involvement and therefore he should simply accept it and watch it and hopefully someday remember it and see it again. Spike was sort of leaning against the wall, smoking the cigarette with the smoke creasing the edge of his mouth like the blood of a dead man after a vicious gunshot staggers him backward into another realm of agony and the crushing collapse of his chest and life into the painful unknown. "What goes," murmured Spike, less asking than talking. Neb stared. Outside there was a crowd, rushing at each other and tearing. They were protesting the arrival of the Bohicans, a race of people with large soft hands and big orange eyes, like the eye of a glowing bowl of dope. They were not stupid, but they were excessively quiet, and into that quiet like the drumbeat at a Melvins concert you could hear the fear sweat and ooze and sizzle like spit on a hot grill, and the people out there were swarming around some Bohicans, the people from the dark & warm land up to the north. Spike and I had once smoked out with Bohican Mike, a longhaired Bohican who loved the music of Venom, so we got really stoned and sang sweet Satan songs in slow time until we all passed out. We had liked Bohican Mike, but he had moved to find a job in the other valley over, over this crest of buildings apartments and jails and we had never seen him again. Two Bohicans held soft butterfly-fan hands in front of querulous faces, and as Spike and I stood smoking the sax we thought we felt the gentle hands of Bohican Mike stroking our spines near the base of the skull. Fear came from the sweat of the crowd, and it was joined by the sweat of the Bohicans like the smoke from a flame fresh pure and stingingly painful, making the eyes twitch closed and the waters aflow. Fear brought the sacrifice. Bohican Mike had his ways, but my ways Spike's ways Mike's way all were our ways when we smoked together. We also hung together sometimes, but because we are stoners and can only speak think dream of drugs and are always smoking we always ended up smoking out. Some stoners dick you in the dirt, smoke your shit and leave, but noone there was like that, and for the year we lived in the flatroof cheap plastic apartment nightmare above the canna plants we lived well and found ourselves okay. Bohican Mike had his culture -- apparently in Bohica they worship someone like Satan and listen to loud amplified music, so he was perfectly at home with songs like "Women, Leather and Hell" and didn't mind the louder newer metal music coming out of the LA basin from people so mad they would tear the flesh from your eyes except they never seemed to want to do that only to be mad and sad and energetically gleeful at the same time much like Bohican Mike, although I don't know how he is now because living in the dark tunnels of the cities (like the dark tunnels of chords) changes someone and dulls their eyes and makes them smoky and slow and bitter and crass. We all went one time to the police station to meet a cop who we knew was you know wink nudge pay and bought from him a bag of what turned out to be very good dope and we liked him because he sold it to us cheap and would really help but two years later he got sick somehow and he died and his family buried him in a cheap plot and when we went to go burn with him yes even after death we couldn't find it and noone knew him, just like noone knows the living dead flesh of a junkie or alcoholic deep in the skids but this cop was a good cop one of the few if not the one, and now he is a mailbox somewhere collecting bills chain letters and fliers for hair repair. We missed Bohican Mike, just like we missed many others, but stoners drift through life accepting and enduring not trying to do anything really because we tried it once honest and some quit and some came back but in the end we're all here trying to stay patient and load the bowl and not look at the faces reflected in the mirrors or the tattoos on the hands of the children in the pictures on the news because we know that that is the world outside the warmth of our circle and alone we can't touch it because it is cold and dense and wet. We saw the blood beneath the feet of the crowd before anything else, a seepage like slow tears from under closed eyelids gritted against the pain of the loss of a lover or friend or maybe even a life entirely yes no gone and dead and there in the grave the smoke doesn't permeate because these are the corpse alive, and they can't even flail like children wrapped so tightly they cannot breathe. They were moving squirming like one, like a giant sea creature crushing and churning and fighting like the storm with the storm, and under their shoes their bargainbrand fake leather flat shoes dollhouse dimensions from the second floor window there was the hot red steaming lava of the pain & rage & fear of generations descanted and naked in backlash whiplash ecstasy of the tasty riot. Ned stared and I stared and Spike left the room and we saw him walk forward but someone brushed him he fell down and Ned and I were going to help him but we met him coming back in and he was shaking his head nothing was wrong no nothing could be done and then we bolted the door against the pounding and the screaming. The sacrifice was over, but in the back of my mind I could see. And they were out there the two of them meeting at the main place wearing the costume of their ancient home and all of its absurdities the maroon leather and soft floppy caps the goofiness like the ears of some aged elephant and smoking something probably not dope but probably harmless in any case when some came up and asked them for help and they tried to help him but spoke not the language and did what was taught them from birth until death which was carry the helpneedful to someone who knew and there was a cop down the street they had seen so they picked up the child where he had fallen and carried him down the street previously unseen but the masses unleashed themselves called out a war and went on the charge and damaged the two, and there they were outside staring around speaking no language utt'ring no sound and then they were fallen the ire so rising like flames from a fire tearing through the ceiling. Spike and I joined with the coroner's crew, still staring at bodies and collecting clues. Noone was mentioned and noone was blamed, but in the bronzed snow there was no need for names. In Ned's apartment we heard the child falling, the knee skinned and all of us sat for a second and remembered the joy of a family when parents could hold on to limbs and make the pain heal for the majority of times. Spike banged the bong against the table. "It's dust," he said. closing quotes "Thanks for reading this issue of the Undiscovered Country. If you didn't think it was _all_ outright shit, please forward copies to friends or print it out and tape it to your least used extremity. We take submissions at cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu, and would love to hear feedback as well. Thank you again and join us in our fight against rational thought & the dominant paradigm." s.r. prozak l.b. noire ps - if you're in the los(t) angeles area, check out metal radio on fridays from 6-9 pm on KSPC 88.7 FM. [EOF] ______________________________ Subject: Response to some of Arthur Gorecki's statements Date: Fri, 5 Feb 93 22:48:41 CST From: David Smith I subscribe to the digest version only, so am unable to quote, but would like to respond to some of Arthur's statements. Specifically about EFF and EFF- Austin. I am on the Board of Directors of EFF-Austin. At one time we were the only local chapter of EFF-National, but since they have decided not to have chapters we are free to be our own group. Please keep that distinction in mind. We are completely different inorganization, goals, and culture than EFF-National. Jagwire X isn't actually heavily involved with EFF-Austin. He attends some of the Cyberdawgs (informal human networking sessions) but that's about it. People who *are* involved include John S. Quarterman, _Matrix News_ and internet guru, Steve Jackson, game publisher, Smoot-Carl Mitchell, a former city councilmember and computer consultant, Ed Cavazos, law student who worked on the SJG case and possible author on legal aspects of cyberspace, Bruce Sterling, author, Jon Lebkowsky, contrib to Mondo & bOING-bOING and co- owner of Fringeware with Paco Xander Nathan, who everyone here should know. EFF-Austin organizes events such as Public Forums (JSQ gave a speech on the Internet, Sterling gave a speech and book signign for Hacker Crackdown, we had a sysop liability workship with Mike Godwin, Lance Rose, and otherss); Cyberdawgs (informal networking sessions); and "EFF-Austin Invites You to Meet" which are quasi-cyberdawgs with a purpose of meeting a celebrity, such as Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 or Tracey La Quey Parker of _The Internet Companion_. The reason that there are so few Scream Babies is that I am also newsletter editor, Board member, event organizer, and chair of the BBS & Info Disk committees in addition to doing "Special Projects" About two weekends ago I got to attend the Atlanta Summit Conference, in which EFF-National invited several groups similar to EFF-Austin from around the country to meet f2f and discuss common issues, problems, and provide solutions. I have written an account of Atlanta and have been told that it will appear in the next EFFector, though I have not yet seen a copy. I think that people who ripped up their membership cards after hearing about the re-organization have convicted EFF of the crime of Guilt by Association. Mitch was in Atlanta, and spoke about this as well, but EFF does not think that the Internet is "a waste of time and is full of weenies". Indeed, EFF spends a lot of time and resources and energies to educate the members of the Net and have a Net presence. (Newsgroup, EFFector, ftp site, Cliff Figallo, Mike Godwin, just to make a few examples) But what the people on the Net do not understand is that EFF is playing in a bigger ballpark now and that "the Net" is *NOT* the *ONLY* constituents. That the Net is not the *ONLY* team that EFF is fielding. I explore this in more detail in the Atlanta Summary that I have written. Obviously, for me to spend 20+ hours a week on EFF-Austin, it's something that I consider very important and vital to the survival of computer culture. If you are interested in forming what we call "EFFish groups" in your own region, send me e-mail and I'll provide more help, assistance, and pointers than you could ever imagine. Nothing would make me happier than to attend a similar conference next year, except to have 50 groups present instead of 5. This is the Future Culture that I contribute to the Net. ______________________________ Date: Fri, 05 Feb 93 23:22:24 MST From: Juggler Subject: Re: Opinions of Wired... > Like, Platform Docs....I used to think those were Edge, until I got > that issue of Project X (which has Gibson, Ashbaugh, and Begos in it > BTW - and also makes reference to Mondo Vanilli - something people > seemingly haven't even begun to gnow-about) which had a few in it.... > And I thought, welp, I'm not hip anymore. So then you seek out > something that noone gnows about. Yeah, it's kinda like when I thought I was the first person in EL Piss- hole to discover Internet and the whole cyberpunk ideal in general, then found out that everyone is all of a sudden a "cyberpunk." Well, I ain't hip anymore... Hehehe....Speaking of which (and this goes along with re-evaluation of "on the edge") how would one define a "cyberpunk" or anyone who is future-culture oriented? > You have to ask yourself,. then, is what you percieve to be their > level of commerciality ok with you, as far as your enjoyment of Wired > is concerned as a holistic thing. And then, once you decide that, you > have to ask yourself if that commerciality is ok as far as your > perceptions of the concensus culture surrounding i as concerned. I think their level of commerciality is ok. They aren't really exploitin the idea. It was more of a weak attempt at conveying the ideas to a new and ignorant group of people. > bOING is still good. I personally am buying all 3, and will continue > to do so for quite a while, at least beyond the point where the > consensus becomes that one of them must die, and people start dogging > it all over the place...I'll still buy it because I don't want to deny > myself the unique perspective.... I agree. I will purchase all myself. Why narrow the view? > |I think more exposure might actually do a bit of good. > > Like the last statement a lot....But, I might substitute "forums of > communication" or "resources" for "exposure" which are not necessarily > inherantly intertwined on the scale we're talking about. Ok, I can dig that. But who's to supply these resources and how will they be offered? This is also in conjunction with re-evaluation of the situation as a whole. I think the proposition on trying to define future-culture and it's place in society is something we might wanna take up. I'm all for it. I have a hard time myself understanding it all sometimes. Even harder trying to explain it to people who have no ideas but are curious. Hmmm....guess that comes with being soooooo un-hip. > Oh I agree, definitely. All of us have different specialized > interests at some point - it's just a matter of finding majority > consensus collectives, etc., the biggest bubbles that aren't part of > the big Bubble, etc. Yep. Goes with what I said above. But how are the bubbles shaped and what kinda bubble soap we usin'? > scene get real commercial, but now I don't really care, and I *like* > seeing 14-15 year old preppy girls at raves. Call me trendy, I don't > care. So, I go to the more popular raves (Poor Boy is their name) > but I still go to the underground ones (Electric Co., Rave Noir, > Pryme, etc.).... I like seeing everyone there too. Isn't that what it's all about anyways to have people come together? I mean, to ban a certain type of person from showing at a rave or even shunning them whilst there would totally be out-a-synch with the idea of a rave. I like the collective energy, the pounding music, the sweating bodies, all in a group. Kinda orgasmic dontcha think? > Like, that Knottsberry Farm thing has gotten a lot of negative Don't know a thing about it myself... -------------------------------------------------------- | Juggler | This space available | | IH23@utep.BITNET | for rent to a mult- | | IH23%utep@utepvm.ep.utexas.edu| million $ fascist | |******************************************|corporation| | Sysop of Three Ring Circus (915)564-0026 |------------ -------------------------------------------- My school has nothing to do with me. EVER. _________________________________________________________________________ | | | That's all for today! | | To send a message to the list: future@nyx.cs.du.edu | | To subscribe/unsubscribe/change format: future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu | | All other requests: future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu | | List Maintainer is: (andy [aka hawkeye]) ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu | |_________________________________________________________________________| | | | The opinions expressed in FutureCulture are those of the individual | | author only. | |_________________________________________________________________________|