vr
a novel
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
August 1996
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
From: Nichelle
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Laurent...
Laurent, I'm sorry. I tried to get back on Lambda, but I couldn't.
We'll have to continue our conversation about Seattle later, and in the
meantime, I'll try to get Gaby interested in joining a grunge band. I
don't think he has the hair for it. Yesterday he had it all cut off.
Murder, where are you? Do you read your e-mail anymore? I miss you
terribly and I wish you would write just a short note to say hello. I
don't think I
will be able to meet you when you are in New York City, unless some
miracle happens or we win the lottery. I do think there is a strong
possibility that my mother will fly me to Spokane in December, though.
I'm waiting for e-mail, as always, but nobody writes anymore, not even
Gaby. I'll let him tell you about our trip to the French restaurant,
when he's got
time. He's translating Michelangelo and feeling powerful at the moment.
I
feel hollow, and have for months. With no job and no school, I have
little to contribute, and everything I do is wrong. I feel like a
bratty child who is scolded every several minutes for some annoyance. I
have never felt so anonymous, so childish, so ignorant, so ugly as I do
now. I'm not a needy person, not when I have a normal lifestyle, not
when I can talk to people and do things. But here, the walls are bare,
and it's lonely, and I'm not sure what is important anymore.
From: Jenipher
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Re: Laurent...
Does it help, Seashell, to know people have been where you are? I just
want to hold you and tell you everything will be ok, but I doubt that
is what you
need.
I had just received my Master's degree when we moved to France. I went
from an incredibly hectic life as a working grad student to a life of
total leisure in a horrid little French village. I though I was dying.
I cried all day, every day, hours and hours a day. My life was empty. I
wasn't contributing anything to my world. Finally, my doctor put me on
prozac, after I tried to
kill myself. I don't know how you feel about medicine, Seashell, or if
you
can find a doctor there you trust. But if you don't think you can
handle everything
by yourself anymore, please see a doctor. What you describe sounds so
familiar
to me, I shiver when I read your emails.
I haven't responded to your email oh-so-long ago because I didn't know
what to say. You and I obviously will never agree about bdsm. I have
begun speaking with a real dom, one trained to dominate. She and I have
entered into negotations regarding my possibly serving her. I will keep
you updated if you like. It is a big step, but I think my husband and I
have finally admitted that candle wax and leather belts are fun, but I
need more. I need things he just doesn't have. I felt sick when he and
I spoke about it, but he was so sweet and understanding. I think he
knows me better and trusts me more than I trust myself.
I asked Colin the other day why I had never been raped, and the
question opened a door in my mind. Why didn't my high school physics
teacher fuck me
in the supply room? Why did my Dad stop just before he raped me? Why
didn't the dom at Chibash fuck me when he had me bound, legs spread, on
the floor? Why didn't TAs in my college courses hit on me when I was a
freshman? All of those things happen to other girls. Is it because they
are prettier, sexier, more fuckable? I think these things, and I am
ashamed. And you know what? That shames makes me want to take my
husband home and hand him the belt and ask him to whip me until I
scream.
I really do think I found the source, the reason. I may not be
explaining it well. I know Colin didn't buy it. But the question, why
haven't I ever been raped, echoed so deeply within me, struck such a
chord, that I knew I
had found something, some strange key to unlocking this pain.
Sorry for typos. I am in pine and can't seem to go back to correct.
Allset
From: Paticia
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: RE: Welcome screen
Hi, I deleted all of today's mail, but I nneeded to say something so
I'm replying to an old letter I've saved. Not sure if this will go out
to the World or if it will just go to sagreiss, but anyway:
Allset, you are in need of a reality check. Why weren't you ever raped?
Was it because you weren't pretty enough? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? As if
Stiff Lips were the most alluring 7 year old on the block and that's
why the neighbor kid wanted to touch her, as if she had that come-on
look in her eye and her step-daddy just couldn't refuse. Get it
straight, rape is not about sex, it
is about violence. It is about the fucking sick mind of the offender,
the
twisted need to prey upon someone less powerful then himself. It is
about power.
Stiff Lips, everytime I read about your story I bleed for you. Right
now you are free from the rapists physically, but emotionally they
still have some hold on you. They come to you in nightmares. I think
that one of Gabe's most redeeming qualities is that he is there to hold
you when the nightmares come, he wants to help you through this. Have
you ever gone through therapy, or would you consider it? Or is there
someone you can tell it all to, maybe Gabe, you can get it all out of
your system. I hope so.
For lack of better name,
Strawtop
From: Terry
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Whew...
Well, I can't Email much; I don't have the time. :) I'm busy on five
MOO's right now and have a very full real life.
I'm glad I'm on this Email list... I think I have problems until I read
it. I'm lucky. I'm sane. I've not been raped; I don't deserve to be
raped.
If I ever participated in bdsm shit, it would be for the pure fun of
it...
not because I *deserve* to be spanked or whatever. Geez, I feel so
"normal"
after reading Email.
Whew.
Happy with me,
Teri, ArchDeluxe of RLMOO
From: SAGReiss
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Two angels
Alright, motherfuckers, take you shots, get them in now before I get
really angry. I may be small, but I'm lean and hard and can take a
punch. I know I'm going to get a beating for this anyway. I can't even
answer Stiff Lips' arguments without making things worse. "Realistic"?
Was it realistic a year ago for a man with neither a 'puter nor a
university account nor any geek knowledge nor friends nor money nor
anything else to say: "I'm going to get me a fucking MOO if it's the
last thing I do"? We open in three days. I don't know how to think
about other people's work. I have never seen someone wield the sullen,
vengeful wrath that I put into everything I undertake. I have heard
stories about it, Tennessee William's concentration ("the most
frightening sight of the twentieth century" dixit Truman Capote) and
others I can't think of right now. Do what you have to do, Allset.
Here's what I do: ArchDeluxe is pressuring us to describe the remaining
two rooms so she can have them back? Fine, so last night, after a long
and stressful day (More on that later.) I found a quatrain of a sonnet
by Michelangelo (XV by Symonds' reckoning) so beautiful it escaped two
highly-paid, silver-haired, emeriti professors. So I can't read
Italian, don't know the grammar, don't have a dictionary? Only a fool
or a child would be afraid. Here's the four verses with three English
translations, one of which I hammered out in three quarters of an hour,
first last night with Stiff Lips interrupting me, then this morning on
the shitter, finally while walking from the liquor store to the
supermarket. I will put them in random order and you can choose the
best one:
Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
c'un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
col suo superchio, e solo a quello arriva
la man che ubbidisce all'intelletto.
The best of artists hardly can reflect
what yet a single marble block contains
within its girth, which labor he attains
but by the hand that heeds the intellect.
The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include: to break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
Not even the best of artists has any conception
that a single marble block does not contain
within its excess, and *that* is only attained
by the hand that obeys the intellect.
A MOO is a MUD Object-Oriented. A MUD (Multi-User Dimensions) is a
computer program which applies the principles of shared memory to
communications. For
the layman, a MOO is a place in cyberspace, which generally means on
someone
else's computer, where one can interact with other people in real time.
Basically
one types and reads and answers. Users telnet into the host computer.
Telnet
is the Internetworking protocol that serves as a standard by means of
which
the connected computers understand one another.
MOOs offer a high degree of programming flexibility, which lends itself
to a fascinating, though somewhat anarchistic, environment for social
discourse and dialogue. MOO was developped by Pavel Curtis and the
Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center (Xerox PARC), where most of the concepts which define
microcomputers were invented. The first, oldest and biggest MOO is
LambdaMOO (lambda.xerox.com 8888). There are now hundreds of MOOs and
MUDs, each with different goals and themes.
MOOers can also emote or do things, usually by typing ":". Some very
foolish controversy has arisen about various abuses of emoting. Let us
be clear: MOOs
are a linguistic medium in which no one can do anything, except within
the
framework of a given semiological structure. While the same could be
said
of what MOOers misleadingly call rl (real life), our society generally
draws
a line between verbal and physical violence, allowing the former,
prohibiting the latter.
The biggest misunderstanding of the cyberspace concerns the expression
"vr" or virtual reality. Nothing inherent to this medium in any way
cuts it off from everyday life. Some people have chosen to use the MOOs
as a fantasyland, as trite and tasteless as the local theme park. This
mistake leads to endless spam, the repetition of stereotyped words or
actions mindlessly borrowed from
other contexts. The MOO's checkered past is behind us. Its present is
often
exasperating. Its future is in our hands. Carpe diem.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Murder
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: New York...
Sorry it has taken me so long to write. My apologies also to Gabe, for
missing your birthday. I have been out of town for about a week and had
to unsubscribe from some of my mailing lists so that I wouldn't have so
much damn mail when I returned. Stiff Lips, what do you mean you can't
come to NYC??? This seriously puts a damper on things. I wish I had
enough money to get you on a bus, etc., but I just don't. I'm pretty
much broke. I have an interview for a serving position at a Best
Western in a couple days. I am in dire need of some buckage. I had a
very disturbing dream last night, no doubt induced by reading the posts
to this list. My dream was about the rlMOO, and that it was illegal and
strictly enforced, and that anyone caught having cybersex or whatever
would be locked up for good. I was aware of a computer lab in town that
was open only from 1:00 to 3:00 A.M. exclusively for the purpose of
cybersex. As luck would have it, I was not on more than 10 minutes when
the door burst open and the cops busted me. Premonition for the
future?? God, I hope not. Finally, we have a medium where it is okay to
tell it like it is and they want to take it away from us. Bastards. I
miss you, too, Nic, and I feel like
no one around here understands me. While I do have to agree w/Terri
that
my life is good compared to what I read on this list, this does not
mean
that I do not suffer in my own way. Even some of my best friends have
turned
against me, and my closest friend that I have here at school can't
understand
me, does not know why I do the things I do, and thinks I'm
schizophrenic, or neurotic, or whatever the hell. The letters I write
her are too much for her, she says. The truth is, I'm lonlier than
shit, and I am close to the breaking point--the point where I cannot
work, cannot concentrate, cannot create. It tears me to shreds. I live
a much different kind of hell than any
of you, but it is still hell to me. Nic, send me the copy of the duet
and
I will see what I can do. If it is anything like our "Miniatures" I'm
sure
it will be wonderful. In case you're wondering, Gabe, I do read each
and
every letter that is sent to this list, but I just don't take the time
to
respond, even when I disagree with someone and everything he/she stands
for,
as is the case with Allset. I have never been able to understand the
self-loathing
and complete disrespect for others shown in the abhorrent behavior of a
cock-tease.
That is one of my prime pet-peeves about women, as Stiff Lips pointed
out.
Murder
From: SAGReiss
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: RL MOO
My friend Nichelle and I, together with a long list of our co-workers,
hereby invite each and every one of you to the Grand Opening of a new
MOO, the Real Life MOO, at one minute past midnight on Monday 5 August
Eastern US time. Characters may already be requested from ArchDeluxe
but, in keeping with the
spirit of RL MOO, real names are in some form to be used and, in
keeping with
our wish to stay out of jail, one must be twenty-one or older to
participate. For additional information, please see RL MOO's web pages.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Terry
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Life
Hello again. Wow, two Emails from me in a single day.
I have to agree with Murder... my life isn't perfect, but I'm thankful
I have shit that I can at least deal with on a level that I can live
with.
I, too, am lonely. Hard to imagine; for I'm always surrounded IRL and
MOO by many, many people/friends. It is possible to be alone and in a
crowd at the same time.
I see couples together on MOO all the time and I wonder why I can't
seem to hang on to one person on MOO... I'm constantly looking for a
guy that is
stronger (not physically) than me. I know I have a strong, and
sometimes geeky,
personality. But, surely there is one guy in the world that's able to
handle
me on MOO????
I bury myself in work and enjoy it. I don't deserve to be raped. I
don't deserve to be spanked. I don't deserve to be pushed around. I do
deserve to
be treated with respect and I even demand it, at times. (Ask Gabe for
details
concerning the time he called me a FWB.)
I'm a great person. Heh. Fairly happy with myself and my life. I just
like to bitch at times.
Laterz and see you on MOO!
Teri
From: Murder
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Re: Life
Also my second message for the day. Geez, Gabe, did you ever expect two
messages each from two different people (besides yourself, of course)
on
the SAME DAY???? I really liked Strawtop's post. I think Allset is a
FWB
herself and I am not afraid to say it. Some people are so far removed
from
reality that it scares me, even taking into account the fact that
reality
is a highly subjective thing. At some point in our lives, we must get a
grip.
I value very highly Stiff Lips' determination to face her life
situations
head on. I have known her for (help me out here) seven years or so;
determination is one of her stronger suits. I have always sensed that
she is torn between resignation and sheer willpower, in which case
willpower almost invariably wins. She knows what is good for her and
what is not. She takes responsibility for her actions in a way few
people could ever match up to, and she doesn't shift blame as readily
as many others I know. None of what I have just said applies to Allset.
True, Allset, we have never met and probably never will (except maybe
someday on the MOO), and I have not so much as even read your
conversations on the MOO much less know the details of your life story.
But, judging from your posts, you are weak. Very weak. I am a big fan
of the existentialist notion that we must take responsibility for our
own actions, desires, and fears. The moment we allow someone else to
dictate how we feel we become a
puppet in someone else's sick little play. In short, we are dead. We
are not
alive. To be alive means to take responsibility for ourselves, not to
pine
away the hours wondering why we've never been raped. Stiff Lips does
not
pine. She has integrity and honestly wants to share her experiences
with others
and get her feelings out into the open. Allset pines. Allset wants
attention.
Allset has no regard for the feelings of others. In this sense, Allset
can
never live. Stiff Lips works toward resolution and chooses life; Allset
resigns
and chooses death.
Murder
From: Terry
Date: 1 August 1996
Subject: Re: Murder
I think I wanna meet this guy. He actually talks normal.
Teri, ArchWizard
From: Nichelle
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: 1, 4, 7...
I wanted to reply in some logical order, but my mind is reeling. First
things first. Murder, I will try to come to NYC. It all depends on my
crazy work situation. It is painful to me to imagine the two of us, in
our simple, strange, and perfect friendship, separated by thousands of
miles and terrible loneliness. Somehow you and I have survived. I read
your letter three times, set it aside, read it again just a moment ago.
I *miss* you, and our adventures, and our caterwauling around
Helensberg. Have you become a man and I a woman since we met, since I
asked you (in the practice room, second lunch, 11th grade) to be my
boyfriend? I only wish I could be there with you, playing duets. I
don't know how anything on earth can be so chaste and pure as our
friendship is, while playing music so full of sweat and sex and
passion. (C.P.E. Bach excepted.)
Allset, I am stunned. You ask why you haven't ever been raped? It
astounds me that women talk about being raped like it is some trophy,
or that something is wrong with them if it hasn't happened, as if it
was some kind of passage into womanhood. And yet *your* impulse is to
hold *me*? I'm not going to kill
myself. I don't need prozac. What I do need is a job, or full-time
school. No, I don't understand the leather belts, the candle wax, the
pain, the shame, the real-life dominatrix... I won't make the obvious
remark about your Master's degree. No, Allset. No medication, no pain,
and no shame.
>I'm glad I'm on this Email list... I think I have problems until I
read it.
>I'm lucky. I'm sane.
What exactly can I say about this? Being lonely is not the same thing
as being crazy. Are you only here as a dazzling example of sanity? Are
we not all human? Tell me, Teri, in your monumental sanity, what
plagues your most horrible dreams, and what are your dark fantasies?
As for you, Gaby, I cannot leave your letter untouched. Your
translation is beautiful, and I've put it up as the description for the
room called Michelangelo. You do beautiful work under difficult
circumstances, and the people who only see 'cunt' and 'motherfucker'
and 'FWB' are missing the point. I did not crucify
you in my letter. I have seen those bow-legged, pseudo-intellectual
assholes
in the living room gang up on you, and I know it must get to you
sometimes.
But not me, my love. You only make my life richer. I read and see and
smell
and taste the world in a way I never could, and all because you are
here,
showing me the beautiful things you know, one at a time.
What the hell, Strawtop? Rape is not about sex, it's about violence?
You bleed for me? Therapy? As for who I can tell it all to, what about
the 750 strangers who have been to the web site? Sure I have nightmares
about rape. So...? Murder has nightmares about cybersex. Gaby has
nighmares about being chased by an army of 5'8", 110 lb, green-eyed,
redheaded MOOers. We all have them. I liked your comments about being
"the most alluring 7 year old on the
block." I most certainly was.
Your letter, Teri, was a beautiful self-affirmation, but I wonder why
you feel the need to say you don't deserve to be spanked, or raped,
that you deserve
to be treated with respect. None of us deserves to be raped, or
spanked, or
beaten, or hurt. I've been searching for the letter in which Gabe
mentions your comment about a rape fantasy. If you could see the mess
of papers, stacks of books, our floor littered with sonnets and
dictionaries and e-mail, you would understand why I couldn't find it.
But I'll not forget to mention that you said it...
Murder, I'm flattered. I just got your new message. Just don't forget
that we've all got our motives...
From: Corinne
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: merde
Je sais que j'ai jamais ecris...
et on a perdu to numero de tel.
ceci etant dit, on va se barrer de ce putain de trou, mais on sais pas
ou
on va. et puis on est marries maintenant. on s;'en fout, mais on l'est.
et donc, on se fait une petite bouffe--ou une grosse.
(appelle ns avant le 7 aout)
trop saoule pour ecrire plus
corinne
From: Jenipher
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: Hey Gabe
Translate that last mail for me, will you? I don't have my French
dictionary with me.
I see lambda is down, and you are up very early. Either that, or I just
got a mail that was sent sometime before you went to bed last night. I
am
sure you can tell, but just in case, this mail is just to you.
I imagine I will never understand what is wrong with me, or why
everyone hates me so. I wasn't seeking attention. I thought I could use
the listserv to share my feelings and self-realizations. I don't let
these things run my
life irl. As I have said, I am very strong. I stab people who try to
hurt me. Perhaps, in text, I am able to be vulnerable and seek
attention. That won't happen again. I will tell about how I run my life
with the precision of an army drill sergeant next week. How I keep my
husband's world going while
he thinks of nothing but Physics and forgets to eat and sleep. How I
had
to go home two months ago to talk my mothe out of killing herself, and
how
I was successful. I am not weak. If I have given such a false
impression, I can't correct it now. I was just stupid to share. I don't
know how my sharing was any different than anyone else's, but there you
have it.
Oh well, Colin knows the ugliest side of me, and he is still here.
That's all that matters.
Fuck this
Write me
From: Patricia
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: RE: Two angels
Gabe - I liked the second translation the best (the one you did while
on the shitter? Is it better to be constipated or contemplative, but
anyway..) I have a friend who was raised in irt Italy if you'd like a
literal translation, but I think you've got the essence without
question.
Stiff Lips - I hope that did not sound condescending. AllseT's mail
angered me (more than I showed, I controlled it) so much that the back
lash was to be protective of someone who actually had been victimized.
So I apologise. However, I think you are over-rationalizing the
normalcy of your nightmares. We all have nightmares, yes, but we don't
generally shake in terror from them
and scream in our sleep. You have shared your story with the hundreds
of
people who've hit the web page. Gabriel can tell you that until I read
that
story I thought that he was just another stupid asshole spouting off in
the
LR.
It showed me that you are a very strong woman - in your same situation,
I might well have retreated into some kind of catatonic seizure and
spent
the rest of my life in some mental institution.
Teri - Yes, not everyone on this list is riddled with problems. We've
met on MOO before, btw, but I don't think you liked me very much so i
won't tell you when or where (yet).
Murder - welcome back, I enjoyed reading your mail.
c. - Je ne parle pas francais. 3 years of hs french taught me that
sentence. Oh well.
Strawtop
From: Jenipher
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: Hmmm...
> She has integrity and honestly wants to share her experiences with
> others and get her feelings out into the open.
I have hesitated to reply for the last six hours, and I will try to
make this my only reply. That is -exactly- what I want to do, as well,
Murder. If you have misinterpreted my emails, or if I have erred
somehow in my communications to you, I can understand this mix-up. I
just want you to know, I am not weak. I opened myself up to you all,
allowed you to know things about me I rarely show anyone. I am not sure
how that is seeking attention. Perhaps you can clarify. You, or
someone, anyone.
Maybe, in text, I allow myself to seem more vulnerable than I am. I
acknowledge and take full responsibility for that. The strangest line
in your email was
> To be alive means to take responsibility for ourselves,...
and the further implication that I didn't do that. I make my decisions
knowing full well what the consequences will be. I have achieved an
incredibly high level of self-understanding. So maybe you need to try
again, Murder, or perhaps you could try not being so goddamned
judgemental with regard to someone and something about which you know
practically nothing.
Allset
From: Nichelle
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: %new activity on world g
My mother is one crazy bitch. She calls at 5 AM (Pacific time) to tell
me that since I haven't sent e-mail in a week, she's ready to call the
Syracuse Police and see if I'm OK. As I just said to Laurent, a lot of
weirdness on the listserv. What surprises me is, I've never seen Murder
launch such a serious
attack against anyone in the seven years I've known him. I don't hate
you,
Allset, and do remember that Gaby and I share an account. Neither of us
receives
anything privately. I know he'll have a lot to say when he gets home,
and
I'm tired out. Last night, my ex-boyfriend from the midwest came on the
MOO
as a guest, and negatron chased him off. I spent all morning on the
phone
with my mother, and I'm starting to wish I liked drinking a little
better.
"No, I'm fine. No, don't call the police. It's *OK* mom. I just forgot
to
send you e-mail. No, I'm *FINE*." A full hour of this, luckily on her
bill.
I'm going to go now, and try to call the asshole who owes me a
recommendation.
Doesn't he know that school starts in a month?
From: Murder
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: Re: Hmmm...
Just got finished with my last final--three in one day. No wonder I
wrote such a crazy letter last night. Allset, you are very right in
saying that I have no right to judge someone or something I know
nothing about. I have admitted that I am going strictly on your
previous posts--some dating back several months. Yes, I also realize
that you have gotten things out into the
open for all of us to see. That does require a certain amount of
courage. My point in all of this is simply that one must take
responsibility for one's own actions without claiming victimhood every
time something backfires. Of course no one deserves to be raped. That
is a given. But I gather from your posts (and I may very well be
misinterpreting this, given my emotional state the last few days) that
you wish you had. Why? To prove you are worthy of some sick man's
violent conquest? Priorities... Stiff Lips herself can attest to the
fact that I have grown up in what many people consider an "ideal
situation." In fact, I think she once referred to one particularly
traditional event as
"a classic, Leave-It-To-Beaver episode." But I still have my problems.
Endlessly
jumping through hoops of the educational system, like many of you, just
to
get a piece of paper that says I did my time. It is a very lonely
process.
I am burnt out and am prone to depression. Still, I can choose my way
out
of it. Some days I just don't have the strength. Other days I will
fight
tooth and nail to make a difference. The times when I feel the best
about
myself are the times I have forgotten myself in my quest to help
others. This
is the only way we can truly make a difference in this lifetime--to
make
a difference to someone else. Fur dich leben, fur dich sterben (sorry
about
the missing umlauts). This is not about religious doctrine or anything
like
that, it is about human decency, something which I find ever lacking in
my
own self. Allset, my post was not directed at you as much as it was a
vent
for my own insecurities (of which I have many), and it was in a moment
of
weakness that I hit Ctrl X to send. I feel like I have no outlet to
express some of these feelings, but on the forum of this list maybe I
will gradually learn how, among other people who are gradually learning
how...
Murder
From: SAGReiss
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: Stalker
The fucking MOO isn't even open yet and we've already got a
free-for-all on our hands. Not only that, but one of Stiff Lips', um,
admirers has already made a cameo appearence. Happily, instead of
finding his prey, he found a mean dog called negatron who, I hope, was
meaner than necessary to get rid of the cunt. Let me try to begin by
addressing the relatively few people on
this fucking listserv I'm not angry at. Comecabra, this is what's
called blackmail.
Either you give me a text to put on the web pages or I'll post your
lovely
little letter from yesterday. I'm not going to let the first member of
the
World forsake this land of death without leaving me something for the
site.
I hope we can get together. How about Sunday evening, before the MOO
opens?
I'll call you tonight. Maybe it's just the tension of the Grand
Opening,
but that was one weird and prolific day of e-mail. I don't know whom to
insult
first. Allset, fuck this Dr Prosac shit. Stiff Lips needs a job, to go
to
school and to play her fucking horn. None of this is my fault (I told
her
right when she got here that I had a tendancy to swallow up women, that
Calamity
Kate wrote on her mid-term evaluation of me, before we slept together,
that
I should found a cult.) but neither does it drugs and/or therapy. Stiff
Lips'
letter was not a plea for help. It was trolling for e-mail, and wildly
successful
at that. ArchDeluxe, as John can tell you, I don't need to log text, I
remember:
"I fantasize about rape. Sometimes I think I deserve to be raped."
Enough
said. One of the few intelligent things I've ever heard in the Living
Room
is: "A normal person is someone you don't know very well." I'm tired of
people
telling me about their Tres Riches Jours. The Duc de Berry was probably
bored
stiff with his fucking wife and mistresses and felt even more dead when
he
held that stupid little commissioned book in his aristocratic little
hand.
I'm probably in the best position of any of us to be called 'abnormal'.
As
I told Allset this morning, I've been in jail and a psych ward, not
once.
I have no family, no social life, no hobbies, a job totally unrelated
to
my calling. In the future, if you want to attack 'abnormality' please
pick
on someone your own size, and that means me. Murder, your letter was so
mean-spirited
I have to quote it: "...even when I disagree with someone and
everything
he/she stands for, as is the case with Allset. I have never been able
to
understand the self-loathing and complete disrespect for others shown
in
the abhorrent behavior of a cock-tease." Are you sure you really wanted
to
say that? If not, I can put it down to the thoughtlessness which e-mail
encourages,
which is one of the things I love about it. Had Comecabra thought
before
she sent that letter with five spelling mistakes to a man who worships
spelling
mistakes and is looking for a text from her, she might not have sent
it.
And yes, Strawtop, I will post that letter without her consent if need
be.
It's beautiful and no one is master of a text, neither author nor
reader.
If you really meant to say that, I'll still try to excuse you because
you
are so young. Allset, on the other hand, may not be so forgiving. She
is
pissed. I don't understand the gratuitous nature and groundlessness of
your
attack, which struck me as soon as I read the letter. I have said, in
public,
that S&M is pathological. Allset did not quibble, but I have also
said
that drinking as much as I do or eating as much as Stiff Lips must have
is
also pathological. There are enough pathologies to go around. Nor am I
preaching
tolerance. On the contrary, I have put: "La tolerance est la vertu des
faibles"
in the private room called Sade. I'm simply amazed that you would lash
out
at someone who is publically wrestling with her demons and writing some
pretty
good letters. In case you hadn't noticed, this list is not exactly
dedicated
to what I did on my summer holiday... Strawtop, you are wrong on all
counts.
First, no rape is not about sex. Rape is sex. It is sexual behavior on
the
less-consent, more-violence end of the spectrum. Further complicating
matters
is the fact that no one with a brain believes in free will, which kind
of
trashes the whole notion of consent. As disturbing as it may seem, the
difference
between 'normal' sex and rape can be as slim as refusing to pay a whore
or
scorning a woman the next morning. If consent was made under terms
differently
understood by the two parties, then meaningful consent was never made.
Back
to Murder. Your second letter I cannot simply toss off to the
irresponsibility
of youth. That is just a crazy, savage letter. You also don't know shit
about
existentialism. Try Kierkegaard and Heidigger. Existentialism is a
philosophy
of the will. It's very clearly explained in The Sickness unto Death.
Kierk
says we must have the will to wallow in despair, precisely the quality
which
you mistakenly attribute to Allset. I have no idea what the fuck you
mean
by: "Allset pines. Allset wants attention. Allset has no regard for
others."
Doesn't the phrase "wastes and pines" ring a bell? I don't know what to
say,
except please accept my apologies, Allset, for this dumb-stupid and
totally
uncalled-for assault. I'm sorry it happened. I don't know why it
happened.
Fuck, the whole thing started with what was a brazen and obvious (to
me)
call for attention on the part of Stiff Lips. What's wrong with craving
attention?
Who doesn't like to get e-mail? I hope, Allset, you won't allow the
misunderstandings
of the Philistines stop you from helping us reach our goal of exploring
our
lives in a literary medium. Strawtop, wrong again. Stiff Lips drew
straws
out of a hat, or something a little less poetic, and mine is the first.
I
shall briefly say why it is unquestionably the best. There are three
problems
in translating this quatrain, the meaning of "concetto", the rhyme with
"intelletto"
and the loose syntax linking the subordinate clause to the main clause.
The
second translation simply ignores the third problem, making two
independant
clauses, which is no solution at all. The third translation tries to
solve
the problem with italics, which is a vulgar faute de gout. The first
translation
rather elegantly uses a relative also as a determiner. However it is
the
first two problems which prove my translation's superiority. A conceit
is
what made John Donne rich and famous. For more on this matter see T.S.
Eliot's
brilliant article "The Metaphysical Poets". It is usually an extended
metaphore
of unusual complexity and difficulty. Instead of trying to find a
translation,
I have made my own conceit, for the verb reflect means both 'to think',
which
makes the rhyme with "intellect" all the richer semantically, and 'to
represent' artistically, which alludes to the theme of mimesis so
present in the meaning of the poem. Shiiit, "show" and "do" is poorer
both phonetically and rhetorically. Murder (and I'll stop soon) you
just keep putting your foot in your mouth: "your previous posts--some
dating back several months"? She's only been on the list for four
weeks.... Enough of this bullshit. I'd like to thank each and every one
of you for your extraordinary participation these last two days.
It almost rekindles my lost hope in mankind. I hope we can all get
together
in a more informal context Sunday night. Vale.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Terry
Date: 2 August 1996
Subject: Re: Stalker
Ok, just to clear something up... the night I made the comment about
*deserving to be raped* and fantasizing about it... I was sooooooooo
drunk I wasn't even
rational, much less believable.
So, for the record, I don't deserve to be raped. And don't believe
everything a person says on MOO when drunk. :)
As for meeting Sunday concerning RLMOO, I can do Sunday afternoon...
not evening. Unless it's after 10 pm CST. :)
Laterz,
Teri
From: Murder
Date: 3 August 1996
Subject: Countdown
I didn't know quite what to make of Gabe's letter from yesterday. What
exactly is your definition of "free will?" Do you mean that neither
society nor the individual has free will? I just want to make sure that
I am understanding you correctly before I jump all over your opinions
of this. What you said about my "crazy, savage letter" was pretty
accurate, and it would be easy to attribute it to the six-pack I had
downed in 45 minutes (and I'm a lightweight) before I wrote the letter
from a friend's 'puter. But I take full responsibility for my
oversights, even the stupid ones such as my attribution of Allset's
posts "from the last several months" which was obviously a result of
temporal perceptions gone awry. However, I must disagree with Gabe's
assertion that I "don't know shit about existentialism." I have read
Kierkegaard, as well as Sartre', Jaspers, Marcel (since I was Catholic
for a long time)... oh, who cares. Your claim (I'm paraphrasing...I
printed a copy of the letter, deleted it, the lost the copy) that
wallowing in self-pity is at the heart of existentialism is entirely
too pessimistic and inaccurate. Kierkegaard, et al claim that we must
face this despair and anguish (which Kierk refers to as "the
sickness"), but that out of this arises Being. Existence before essence
is the way I have always understood it. What I was referring to in the
part about taking responsibility for ourselves was the Sartrian notion
that man is what he makes himself. When he chooses for himself he also
chooses for all, which (maybe only very indirectly) affects all. I
acknowledge that Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist,
hence your undue bias toward him? This bias is the same as my saying
that since Beethoven is acknowledged as the first Romantic composer, he
is the only true Romantic and all the rest
of the fine composers of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries
were
not. Anyway, as with any philosophy, existentialism is much more
complicated at its highest levels (notice how coyly I avoid the word
"essence") than what
we could ever represent in words. Also, like any other philosophy, we
can
all agree on what it denies but are much less clear on what it affirms.
So,
having said all that, I will not comment further on my previous letter.
On
a much more positive note: congratulations to Gabe, Stiff Lips, et al
for
all their hard work on the MOO. For you, Gabe, this must be a
particularly exciting moment, for your dream has come to fruition.
Murder
From: Nichelle
Date: 5 August 1996
Subject: smart, orally-fixated, clarinet-playing diplomat
I can't sleep. Allset, I was thinking about you tonight at dinner while
Gaby, Corinne, and Keith spoke French and I couldn't understand a word.
You
must feel very isolated. Don't let this recent outburst keep you from
writing. It is easy to forget on the 'net that you are dealing with
real people. It is also easy to forget, with such a big bdsm community
on the internet, that it isn't as common as we might think...
Name calling is bound to happen. I had to remind Gabriel several times
tonight not to bad-mouth the incoming guests on RL MOO. Sometimes we
fail to make the connection between the words on the screen and the
person typing them. We're not all equally willing (or capable) to
accept the concept of being tied up and whipped.
Please don't stop writing, Allset. You and I may not agree about bdsm,
but that doesn't mean we can't talk about it. Maybe we'll both get
something out
of our conversation. I know that you are not weak. As Gaby reminded me
the
other day, we're all at war with ourselves. And sometimes we will be at
war
with each other. But let's not do it through name calling. I have
admitted
that I misjudged you. Perhaps a few others may decide that someday too.
Now
I'm going to try to sleep. Take care, and I will see you all on our new
MOO.
-Stiff Lips
From: SAGReiss
Date: 5 August 1996
Subject: Sesame, ouvre-toi
To those of you who were with us last night I send my thanks. To those
of you who couldn't make it I extend our invitation. I thought it went
well. Even the glare of sobriety and the cold black on white of a
printed log don't obscure the spamless, occasionally witty debut of RL
MOO. I'm so glad that Corinne and Jeff were there. If you are reading
this, I cannot express my thanks to you two. For those of you who don't
know, Corinne and Jeff are my
best friends irl, they who helped my drunken, staggering, angry self
through a year of hell at a famous university, who have now read about
two thousand pages of my peculiar brand of madness. They are the only
original members of this list. Stiff Lips came five days later,
negatron soon afterwards. All
in all I think it went well. I was hoping for a few more people, but
that
will come. I ask each of you to please use a split screen to idle in RL
MOO
while elsemoo so that guests will not come on to an empty place. Please
feel
free to give out the address to whomever you want. It's a public place.
Everyone
is welcome. By the same token I have received a MOOmail from someone
who
wanted to join the list. Some of the words disturbed me. This is NOT my
place.
Neither is it exactly public. This is the inner circle of the network
which
includes a middle circle (the web pages) and an outer circle (the MOO).
Some
discretion must be used because some people are not comfortable with
other
people knowing their e-mail address. Nevertheless, each of you is free
to
add friends, keeping this necessary discretion in mind. While the World
must
stay a place where we can write about ourselves and our lives with
confidence, I trust each of you to use your judgement. Murder, I don't
think your Beethoven analogy is pertinent. Neither do I have a
Kierkegaard komplex. I like Heidigger too. Sartre is one of those
half-breeds who can do neither philosophy nor literature. You say
something very stupid about our not being able to express the more
complex issues of existentialism in words. How would you suggest
philosophy be expressed, in pictures? Colin, when oh when are you going
to send me the MTV version of your battles with that crazy bitch onna
MOO? If she is who I think she is, she is a vr nightmare. I hate that
cunt. I guess my new nickname is Ahab, which could be worse. Will
someone please think up
a very demeaning little handle for negatron? I hate to have to do all
the
work. I won't write more now. I'm too excited about going back to our
fucking
MOO. Vale
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Terry
Date: 6 August 1996
Subject: Introducing...
I'd like to introduce the newest guy in my life. His name is Contraire.
He's a handsome guy; and strong too. He's controlling, by nature (which
I
count as a quality in men). He dictates to me what I will do and when I
will
do it... and how, at times. He has a mind of his own and usually won't
listen to me. I love this guy, though. He's loaded. He seems to know
just how far he can push me; he has an inner sense of my frustrational
level (as far as he is concerned). He stays beside me as long as I want
him to. He doesn't argue. He entertains me. He will even do my work for
me. So, who is this great
guy?
My new computer. :)
Yes, he's male. Yes, I named him. Contraire. The name should say it all.
I finally broke down and bought the components for what I've been
wanting for a really long time. Here it is: Pentium 133, 1.2 gig HD (to
run Linux), 1.6 gig HD (Win 95), 8X CD ROM, 33.6 fax/modem, 32 megs
RAM, 2 meg video card,
1.44 HD floppy, etc.
Contraire and I are very happy... we work well together. He most
usually gets his way, though (just like Gabe). :)
Teri
From: SAGReiss
Date: 6 August 1996
Subject: I want to blow you
The room service guy came in still drunk from the night before. He kept
mumbling this dumb-ass country and western song. My ears perked up when
I
heard the words: "angry johnny". I asked him about it, but he wasn't
coherent
enough to give me an answer. I'm not too coherent now either. I got
beat
up at work. I seem to have found a berkeleyesque strategy, however.
Since
one of the stupid-shit wench bosses said I've made improvements, all
the
bosses are very happy with me. My image seems to have changed from that
of
a rude slacker to that of an enthousiastic team player in a matter of
days,
with no change of behavior on my part. Esse IS percipi. It has come to
my
attention that some of you may have been thinking I've got some
horrible
mark of Cain on my forehead, but were too polite and New-Age PC to
mention
it. The simple answer is that I got much, much too drunk a few days
before
the photograph was taken and fell down a flight of stairs. Those are
cuts
on my head, not physical evidence of moral corruption. I'd like to
introduce
a new member, who threatens to outwrite me, as many have done before. I
have
yet to meet the (wo)man who has my literary stamina, though history is
full
of examples. If you look at the correspondance of Horace Walpole or
Voltaire
or the Memoires de Saint-Simon, you'll see that those motherfuckers
wrote
a hell of a lot. Anyway I can't tell you much about Opal. Allset can
probably
introduce her more fully or she can do it herself...
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 6 August 1996
Subject: angry johnny goes West
It was a strange evening, which started with me creating a crisis, and
ended with Gabriel waking from his sleep, sitting up on the edge of the
bed for perhaps the tenth time, and saying 'I have two loves. Where is
my other love?'. It was a difficult evening, full of tears and whisky,
but we could have done worse. Who knows, life may get more crazy in a
good way very soon. I'll get to see Murder in NYC, and perhaps my
composer friend, Stefan. I'm tired, but
it's too hot to sleep. It's hard sometimes, but I'm happy I have come
here
to live with my love...
From: Jenipher
Date: 7 August 1996
Subject: Re: angry johnny goes West
I am quite sure Opal can speak for herself in introduction, should she
so choose to. To her, I offer my welcome to the World, as I have
offered her myself.
Murder, I am sorry I jumped down your throat last week. I was incensed
at your email. I feel better now, all soft and gooey inside after a
lovely breakfast of orange juice and Extra! cereal. Cereals in France
pretty much suck. They have at least five varieties of chocolate
flavored cereals. I don't mean like
Cocoa Puffs. I mean flavored with dark chocolate. It is like eating a
Lindt
bar with 70% cocoa solids. Or I can choose French muesli, which is
horribly
grainy and disgusting to one used to that
faux-American-brand-of-muesli, Mueslix.
(Is it Mueslix or Meuslix? I hate word blocks.)
I haven't logged onto RL MOO much. I am not sure why, unless it is
because I can't cyberfuck for at least the next month, and I am not
quite sure what else there is to do there. Gabe, you say we shouldn't
think of it as CybersexMOO, but then I see you idle there and
chattering away on lambda. Is it because no one fuckable has approached
you on your MOO? Maybe we should try mindfucking instead. It is great
fun. I'll meet you in Sade at 4 p.m. your time, and we
will see who cries first.
Seashell, I loved your line about tears and whisky. I used it in my
plea for description suggestions in Sensual Respites. I notice, though,
that your style of writing seems more similar to Gabe's every day. Have
you reached some perfect symbiosis in which thoughts and styles are
efficiently shared?
Allset
From: Jenipher
Date: 7 August 1996
Subject: Love
SAGReiss [to Tesla]: I've got to go back to work. Would you please
e-mail Stiff Lips and tell her I love her?
This was just a second ago, on lambda.
Hope you are doing well. Gabe loves you. :-)
Jeni
From: Nichelle
Date: 7 August 1996
Subject: quick note
I had strange dreams all night about Gabriel speaking French with my
old contemporary music instructor while I folded enormous blankets. I
won't even try to analyze. I'm going to shower, catch the bus to
Wegman's, bring home the groceries, and then go up to the library to
watch a movie at about 4 PM,
EST. I'll be home in time to make won ton soup for dinner. The lady at
LeMoyne
was in a meeting. I've got to go. It's hot here.
From: Terry
Date: 7 August 1996
Subject: Re: angry johnny goes West
On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, Jenipher wrote:
> I haven't logged onto RL MOO much. I am not sure why, unless it is
> because I can't cyberfuck for at least the next month, and I am
not quite
> sure what else there is to do there. Gabe, you say we shouldn't
think of
> it as CybersexMOO, but then I see you idle there and chattering
away on
> lambda. Is it because no one fuckable has approached you on your
MOO?
> Maybe we should try mindfucking instead. It is great fun. I'll
meet you
> in Sade at 4 p.m. your time, and we will see who cries first.
Geez... I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when I read this.
Helllllllllooooooooooooo??? My educated mind cannot even grasp the idea
of MOOing only for cybersex. RLMOO
IS NOT SEXMOO. Next time you log on, read: help theme
I haven't spent hours and hours working on RLMOO to have it become
FuckMOO. Shit, there's more to MOOlife than online sex. If couples
choose to engage in cybersex on RLMOO, that's their business; I know
it's on every other MOO... why would we expect to be exempt? BUT, I
want to make it perfectly clear, as ArchDeluxe (heh), that the
purpose/objective/goal of RLMOO is NOT to give players a place to
typo-fuck. Read the help files there. :)
Feeling better now that I got that off my chest,
Teri
From: Murder
Date: 8 August 1996
Subject: Re: quick note
Your contemporary music instructor meaning Kendall?
Murder
From: SAGReiss
Date: 8 August 1996
Subject: (no subject)
Six to eight people were on the MOO this afternoon. The AntiSexMOO is
going to work, maybe even flourish. One day we shall all be rich and
famous. In honor of angry johnny's new status (and because none of you
has thought up a nickname) I have decided we can call him FratBoy.
Thank you ever so much, Patricia/Werner for redeeming me in the eyes of
my very sceptical peers. Yes,
my drunken delerium quotes Shakes: "Two loves have I". Yes, my little
friends,
I'm not brain dead yet. I think we must let that boy create a room on
RL.
To do otherwise would be to discourage him and to say: "This is our MOO
not
yours." It must belong to all of its members. This may in the future
create
tension: "How come he can create the Nietzsche room, but I can't create
the
Miss_Bunny_FOO_FOO_Rumpus_Room?" Well just have to evaluate proposals
on
an ad hoc basis. I kind of like Nichelle's restrictions. I would like
to
avoid a place where everyone is in his own private space paging
slanderous lies about the wizzen to his friends. So far the public
space is working well.
Most of the people from Lambda have understood that this is not the
place
for idiotspam. Nichelle tells me someone tried last night and was
ignored and left. That's nice, unless I'm feeling a little
combatative... Just to show that I too can write a dumbshit spammy
neo-Anne Rice description as well
as the next man, here then is my official entry in the Sensual Respites
contest:
1776, Lacoste, the chateau of Donatien Aldonze Francois (Louis), Comte
de Sade a.k.a. Marquis. The seeds of revolution have been sown. The
peasants are angry in the fields. The merchants are angry in the shops.
The bishops are angry in the cathedrals. The aristocrats are angry in
their castles. Across
the Atlantic a fight over taxes is quickly becoming a war over
sovereignty fraught with hangings for treason and heady talk of freedom
and democracy. Behind the stone walls of Lacoste the host, his wife,
Renee-Pelagie, nee de
Montreuil, and a dozen young domestics perform plays to entertain the
guests.
After dark the theatre takes place in the servants' quarters or the
master's
apartment. These midnight improvisations are the subject of rumour in
and
around the village. In Paris there is still talk of the sacrilege of
Easter
1768. In Aix-en-Provence a death sentence for sodomy is under appeal.
In
Lyon parents strive to recover their sons and daughters indentured to
the
lord of Lacoste. You are asleep in the dormitory. A key unlocks the
door. In walks a small man with blond curls and blue eyes. His faithful
valet de chambre, Carteron a.k.a. La Jeunesse, follows...
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 10 August 1996
Subject: alt.sex.pictures.female.cheerleaders
Colin, you've done yourself in. I just asked him on the moo if he
really keeps abreast of these nudegroups. I'm trying to get him mad so
he'll write me hate-mail. I forgot that it's Saturday and the buses are
all screwed up. I'm going to Wegman's again, not Price Chopper, because
at least it's big enough to keep me entertained until the bus. I know I
don't have to go, Gaby, but I'm bored anyway, and you say you've been
craving penis butter for a week
and a half.
My father and stepmother are going to be here in a few days. I feel
sorry enough for myself, but... poor Gabriel. My father has worked for
the Boy Scouts
for about 25 years. He sends me badges and things when he writes
letters. I find it deeply disturbing.
Murder, where's the information on the conference? Get off your lazy
butt and send it to me. How am I supposed to come visit you if you're
not going to tell me where you are? I'm excited, though I imagine your
little conference swarming with tall, wispy blonde girls. They'll
probably just play a bunch of sickening French music anyway. The only
good French piece is Debussy's Premiere Rapsodie. Everything else is
shit. The only thing that comes close for me is his Saxophone Rapsodie,
and only because it's got a good story behind
it. Even snotty frenchmen didn't want to write for the saxophone. After
three
years of procrastinating, I guess the dreaded Saxophone Lady finally
clubbed
Debussy over the head with her tenor until he consented to finish. It
gives
me giggles every time I think about it.
I'm off. I choked on my banana bread this morning. No bueno. Strawtop,
when are you going to get your friend on this list?
-Stiff Lips
From: Nichelle
Date: 10 August 1996
Subject: tenor
I know. Alto. So sue me.
From: Nichelle
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: The Flute In Poland
Murder, I will try to be kind, but a few things cannot go without
comment. What on earth is flocalizing? (For those of you who do not
know what is going on, Murder sent me the schedule for the National
Flute Association's annual (?) conference, which is in NYC this year,
where I will join him in less than
a week.) Also, with a little more planning, Dr. Mitchell could have
placed
his session on "Understanding and Preventing Ear Damage" after the
Piccolo
Artist Competition. No, scratch that. Switch those two. And "Tips For
Amateurs"?
I could just sum it all up in one sentence: switch to clarinet before
it
is too late.
I haven't got the energy to tackle the rest of the conference program.
I think I've got an ulcer. Before I go to bed, I shall briefly
introduce the newest member of this list, though I hope he will
introduce himself to you also. If you have been to RL MOO (and curse
you if you haven't) you may have already met WernerH. He's the friend I
asked Strawtop to recruit in my latest letter. This means there is one
more person here who can write in languages I don't understand. Maybe
Strawtop can tell you more, or perhaps WernerH will...
One more thing. Start thinking about a music bibliography, Murder. I
think Werner will help us. I don't know if Quodlibet is reading these
letters, but
she is certainly welcome to join. (Have you moved yet? Do you miss me?)
And
of course the rest of you, though I warn you... I'm talking about
*real* music.
None of this Yanni shit my grandmother listens to.
-Stiff Lips
From: Johanne
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: Re: The Flute In Poland
> One more thing. Start thinking about a music bibliography, Murder.
I think
> Werner will help us. I don't know if Quodlibet is reading these
letters, but
> she is certainly welcome to join.
It happens that I read this one, hoping for musicological mudslinging
of some variety. I take it this is a "suggested listening" list that is
being proposed?
If so, I immediately suggest the inclusion of:
F. Schubert String Quartet in d minor, D. 810
"Der Tod und das Maedchen"
A. Berg Fuenf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskartentexten
von Peter Altenberg, Op. 4
M. Ravel Chansons madecasses
G. Crumb Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land
for electric string quartet
T. Tallis Spem in allium
I imagine I shall think of numerous others, but these, for various
reasons, strike me as not only important in terms of the can(n)on,
loose as it is in
my world, but important for their sheer devastating beauty.
> (Have you moved yet?
Yes.
> Do you miss me?
Answer your own question, darlin'. I'm responding to your note. Ought
to tell you something.
Quodlibet
From: Werner
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: Eigenschaften
Hello Listserfs,
after hours of lost sleep spent over the dilemma of how to introduce
myself, here is the punchline:
Ich bin ein Mann ohne Eigenschaften
(better known to comics readers as "an invisible man", but I prefer
Musil). However, let me contribute something, lest you mistake me for
your average hot air balloon.
1. Bach's violin Partita in D minor, BWV 1004
2. Schubert's "Jaegers Abendlied" D 368
3. Schoenberg's "Verklaerte Nacht"
4. Webern's "Drei kleine Stuecke" op. 11 for cello and piano
5. Stravinski's "Elegie" for viola solo
6. Shostakovich's string quartet no. 15 in E-flat Minor, op. 144
And many more works I could add, but I already suggested one more than
Quodlibet did (by the way, I rushed to the store to buy the beautiful
"Spem in Alium", convinced that it couldn't be about the garlic smell
of "allium"). [[Will StrawTop still talk to me after this bad latin
joke?]]
Now, let us all hope that there is no ulcer in Motive.
Werner
From: SAGReiss
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: Matilda and Mr Peterson
negatron complained so bitterly about the nickname FratBoy that I have
come up with a new one, Queequeg. This fits the Moby's Dick theme
linking Ahab's mutineys to 12000 Virgins. Actually I wanted to use the
name of the cabin boy who is gang-ass-raped, but I can't remember it.
Whenever I mention this chapter, in which the story is told through
song and a complex series of puns,
people look at me as if I've been making too-liberal use of the Ricard
bottle.
I am quite sober. This is my first beer and it's noon and I've just got
off
work. There IS a homosexual gang-rape in Melville's monsterpiece. Read
it
carefully or just buy the Penguin Classics edition and RTFN (Read The
Fucking
Notes). Anyway I propose Queequeg and I win the contest by default,
since
I am the only participant as yet. Besides, if negatron isn't losing his
hair
yet, just wait till those FWCo-eds and Nazi-feminists teaching women's
studies
get a hold of him. This fall is going to be fun. See negatron writhe in
pain
as he has to write essays on gender constructions in post-anal fiction.
Mr
Peterson is our new neighbor, a squirrel who lives across from out
kitchen window whom Stiff Lips has adopted. Well, she gave him a name.
He doesn't do many interesting domestic things. We have yet to watch
him mate. What do
you want from a red-headed rat with a furry tail? Matilda, whose name
I'm
sure Colin will appreciate, is the kitten I've asked permission from
our
landlord to take in. I believe I am witnessing something I won't call
Mutiney
IV, but rather a schism. Three ostensibly unrelated events lead me to
this
conclusion. In a kind of comic blunder Werner fucked up his password
and
gave a wrong e-mail address or some combination of the two. This
mistake will
be rectified (no pun intended). Allset has told Stiff Lips that she
continues
to talk to the rapist from the MOO. I'm not sure why she shared this
information,
which could not but inspire fear and worry in a woman upon whom boredom
and
lonliness already prey. We have thought and talked about Allset's
motives
(no pun intended), some of which speculation was rather ugly. The more
printable
theories suggest the thrill of sexual violence and danger within the
relatively
harmless environment of the MOO. (As we know, Strawtop, rape is just
sex
without the usual element of consent, however we may understand that
term.)
There is no solution to this dilemma, except the rather drastic one of
toading
Allset from the World and gagging/refusing her. I have neither the wish
nor
the power to determine or even verify with whom she chooses to spend
her
time. Her desire to be desired (which I have compared to "the robber's
knowledge
of the loser's knowledge of the robber" in Poe's Purloined Letter),
even
her craving for sexual pain, is no weirder or more sick than my
otherworldly
thirst for whisky. I can't think of anything shrewd or witty to say
here.
I guess my behavior will be based on how upset Allset makes Stiff Lips.
I
am not long going to brook the pain that the possibility of an
indiscretion
provokes in the woman I live with, however unlikely such a mishap may
be.
Serious concern about e-mail addresses has again been voiced and this
time
I'm inclined to do something about it. What I am asked to execute is
essentially
a coup d'etat. If I'm going to protect your e-mail addresses, a request
of
especial concern as the World grows, what I'll have to do is create a
formal,
moderated listserv, meaning that everything passes through my 'puter
and,
contrary to my plan, I control who can post what. That I would exert
this
power as little as possible doesn't negate the fact that it would be
mine.
I'll ask my Technical Director to investigate the software
possibilities. If it's within my means to do so, I s'pose I shall. If
it's very expensive, we could put it to a vote and share the burden if
the ayes win.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Jenipher
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: (no subject)
There I sat, pen in hand, doodling as I mooed. Gabe paged me and
mentioned he had emailed the World. I waited a while to check it, but
then I did. Unfortunate for me, as I had just eaten chocolate cake,
made with vinegar and no eggs. Iced with Pulain chocolate, 55% cocoa
solids. Now my stomach is tense and hard around chocolate that is
fending off acid-attacks.
Gabe wrote:
I am not sure why she shared this information,...
Because Seashell asked me, directly, if I was still in contact with her
rapist. After responding that I was, I then explained why. Perhaps, as
Colin
has noted many times, I rushed out to do battle by myself, without
checking
my supply lines. I don't actually talk to the rapist, nor had I, until
yesterday, cut off all communication. My brilliant rationale for this
was that I didn't want him to guess Seashell had told the story of her
rape for anyone to read on the web page. I just didn't ever want him to
put two and two together. Since I was also sure I couldn't hide my
hostility towards him, I rarely responded
to his pages; if I did, it was with nothing more than the most cursory
greeting
and an excuse to avoid further conversation.
Fuck you, Gabe, for attributing such strained motives to my maintaining
contact with him. I like bdsm. BDSM is consensual play, often involving
pain.
It is not rape, nor can rape ever be called bdsm, D/s, s&m,
whatever.
I like danger, certainly, within reasonable bounds. Consorting with a
known rapist is not within reasonable bounds, in my opinion. Seashell
disbelieved me when I told her this, asked if the danger really held no
appeal for me. I can honestly answer, NO. Being raped holds no appeal
for me. Negotiating and engaging in a rape scene with my Dom, on the
other hand, holds an enormous amount of appeal for me. I will wait and
see if any of you can discern a difference
in those two statements.
Allset
From: Terry
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: Hm...
Sometimes I feel as though you people live lives that are completely
foreign to me.
On those occasions, I feel very out-of-place on this mailing list.
Doesn't anyone else share my feelings? Or am I all alone on this
tangent of mine?
Well, good thing I'm a confident person.
Teri
From: Nichelle
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: Mutiney IV
This is Gabriel's title, not mine. We have been fighting about the
future of this listserv. We're both pissed right now. I have just done
some research. Let's get our definitions straight. A moderator on a
listserv is a person who manages the list and who sometimes guides the
conversation. From the information
I have seen, all formal listservs seem to operate the same way: all
e-mail
is distributed to everyone who is subscribed to the list. Then it
seems,
Gaby, that you have misunderstood the term 'moderated listserv', unless
any
of you can offer more information. There are many kinds of listservs,
some
of which allow just anyone to subscribe, and others which require
permission. In a 'closed list', the list owner has the ability to add
people as s/he wishes.
You may be wondering what the fuck this is all about. There has been a
lot of concern about privacy lately. What Gabriel was suggesting may
not be what you thought he meant by a moderated listserv. He meant that
the addresses of the list members would be available only to him, and
that everything sent to the list would pass through his computer before
it could reach your screen. This means that no member of this listserv
would be able to add members without submitting a request to do so to
Gabriel. (As far as I can remember, I am the only one who has added a
person without asking anyway, but...) This means that no member of this
listserv could write a letter to the other members that would be
automatically sent out, as it is now.
I don't think that Gabriel would censor the letters written to this
list. But I do not think that this is the solution to our privacy
problem. He could have set this list up in the very beginning so that
no member of the list could send to anyone but him. He chose not to.
That is more or less why I have participated. I *did* add somebody to
this list. I *have* communicated with other members of this list
privately. This is not just Gabriel's list. As it stands, we each have
the same amount of power on this listserv. If that
changes, I have no further interest in it.
There are other solutions to this problem. I have suggested to Gabriel
the possibility of making use of anonymous e-mail services, some of
which (I believe)
are free. He tells me that the rest of you are all too fucking lazy to
lift
a finger to do such a thing. I see this as a reasonable solution. I
think
that if you are really that concerned about people knowing who you are,
you
will bother to do it. Correct me if I'm wrong, if you're not too
fucking
lazy to do even that. I do not find his solution acceptable. I am open
to
other suggestions. I expect to hear them. I am willing to do the
research
necessary to find the software, the anonymous services, or whatever we
need.
I am not willing to set up Gabriel's definition of a moderated
listserv. That
will mean the death of this list.
There's no such thing as paranoia.
RECTVM VINVM.
Fuck you.
-Stiff Lips
From: Murder
Date: 11 August 1996
Subject: Re: The Flute In Poland
Flocalizing, since you asked, is someone's cutesy term for singing and
playing the flute at the same time, a popular technique in avant-garde
music. It is
also useful as a tone development exercise. I tried it for a period of
about
a month this last year, with only minimal success, and now I only
return to
it when I am really out of shape or desperate to get a decent sound on
a
bad day. One of my peers here at school absolutely swears by this
technique, however. I have noticed an appreciable difference in her
sound since she began
the use of this exercise, but I do not know if it was due entirely to
that.
As for your other comments, I will not care to respond to them until we
meet
IRL next week. On to more important things: first, I am compiling my
own
addition to the bibliography, which I will share with Stiff Lips at our
aforementioned
meeting. The ones that have been suggested are good ones indeed, and I
have
not heard every one of those pieces. But the ones that I have heard I
think
will be a good contribution. One thing though: what are the limits of
this
bibliography? What will be the format? A written description of each
piece?
This bib will ostensibly present much different problems than the
literary
bib that Gabe has put on the homepage. Second: I messed up on the date
of
my arrival in NYC, which will be Wednesday. So I will call you
Wednesday
night instead of Tuesday, Stiff Lips. When we meet on Friday, bring
some
cheap manuscript paper if you can. I will scrape the bottoms of my desk
drawers
for some as well. Third: I have to agree with Stiff Lips in the
discussion about this list going to a Listserv format. It would destroy
the list. Gabe, you must remember your original intentions for creating
this list, as well as the reasons for *not* going to Listserv. I think
that you did the right thing in the beginning. I understand your
concerns about the expansion of this list, as well as the pressure you
are feeling from the other members concerning privacy. But Stiff Lips
is right on when she says that the individual members must take
responsibility for the concealment of their addresses (if such a
service does indeed exist--I have never heard of it). If it does go to
Listserv, I will be greatly disappointed, and I too will severely
limit, if not curtail completely, my participation on this list (not
that that would upset you greatly, Gabe). It all depends on what
restrictions on the number of members which you wish to enforce. I
personally like the format of this list as is, and I like to know who
specifically I am sending e-mail to. It is much more like RL than a
Listserv. Now that I have said my two cents, I
am off to run 6 miles and then pack for the trip.
Murder
From: Jenipher
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Re: Mutiney IV
There is an anonymous email server at pobox.com. To request an
anonymous email address, go to http://www.pobox.com/p3/ on the web. The
first three months are free. After that it costs $15 US a year. It
doesn't take long to
register, and you should be able to use your anon address relatively
quickly. As of this time, I use mine for posts to the usenet. I
continue to see no genuine need to use it for this listserv.
I hope this helps, for those of you worried about privacy issues.
Teri, some days, I feel just like you. When I go home, make my husband
dinner, sit down with him to watch tv, have gentle, married sex. When I
wake up, wonder
what I am doing here, why I am in a marriage with my best friend, whom
I
love but with whom I am not in love. Most of your emails strike a chord
within
me, that chord that recalls my Mother and other married couples I know
who
have never considered open marriages or anything besides raising a
family
and living happily ever after.
Allset
From: Werner
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Re: Mutiney IV
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996, Jenipher wrote:
> There is an anonymous email server at pobox.com. To request an
anonymous
> email address, go to http://www.pobox.com/p3/ on the web. The
first three
> months are free. After that it costs $15 US a year. It doesn't
take long
> to register, and you should be able to use your anon address
relatively
> quickly. As of this time, I use mine for posts to the usenet. I
continue
> to see no genuine need to use it for this listserv.
>
> I hope this helps, for those of you worried about privacy issues.
Well, no, it does not help too much, and if you (Allset) are using this
pobox service to enjoy anonymity on usenet, think twice. Here is an
excerpt
from their FAQ (see URL above):
>Is it an anonymous remailer?
>
>No. Plenty of anonymous remailers exist; we're not one of them. One
of
>the conditions of pobox membership is that you must be
>locatable through every means possible. This is for your
protection, and
>for ours. We support free speech. We also support
>accountability. When you use your pobox aliases, please don't
pretend to
>be someone else. Anyone could finger you at pobox and
>trace your real account. Also, we will supply your real name to
anyone
>who asks for it. If you're looking for an untraceable
>pseudonym, we're sorry, but we can't do it.
pobox.com's "mission" seems to be focused on forwarding issues, not on
privacy.
W
From: SAGReiss
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Boyz n the list
"Bobby, I'm just gonna get the fuck out of here and go home and pick a
fight." "Do what ya gotta do." The restaurant business is so mean that
no one thinks that kind of shit is weird. I meant pick a fight with
Stiff Lips, but I guess I managed to get everyone involved. What the
fuck am I s'posed to do? Some of you want me to forward every fucking
message individually to a dozen people. Think again. Some of you want a
formal list. Some think everthing's fine and
nice and good. For the moment I'm not going to do anything. Anyone who
wants
to change to an anonymous account is welcome to do so. I don't know
anything
about them, except that's what people use to send me hate mail. Murder,
you
bastard, this is not some power play on my part. (negatron, nota bene
the
smooth hocky metaphor. Colin, Stiff Lips' mother asked us about
"Dancing
Matilda". Stiff Lips asked me to sing it in the shower. I can't
remember
all the words. Help?) I was trying to respond to the legitimate
concerns
of a very paranoid bunch. Fuck you all. If I wanted to destroy the
World
I don't need to buy some cheap-ass software that I don't even know how
to
use and won't learn. In part I keep myself cybernetically challenged to
keep
myself powerless and at the mercy of the geeks and Technical Staff. I
can
destroy the World by just not writing to it. It doesn't yet stand on
its
own two feet, let alone walk. One of the things I like about the MOO is
that
it doesn't only exist in my own mind. I think I even prefer having
ArchDeluxe
be the Man 'cause negatron and I seem to think so alike. Having someone
with
whom I often disagree with her hand on the thermonuclear device makes
for
some controversy and prevents me from getting drunk and toading all of
your
sorry asses. BTW Queequeg, you get the second write-up for being mean
to
a gurst/newbie: "Asslick_Guest: 'How do u get a char?' negatron: 'You
wait
two weeks for the wizzen to decide if they like your name.'" I heard
you
two got into it last night. Is everyone going to be an asshole until
school
starts so you can fight with your professors instead of fighting with
me?
Werner, I thought that was just a typo for the post-MOO song: Spam in
allium.
Murder, I thought flocalizing was the name for giving head sideways.
Beware,
Stiff Lips has caught something of my 'confrontational' attitude. She
threatened
this morning to ask John Gallway: "Hey, asshole, how come you recorded
the
Mozart concerto?" ArchDeluxe, hey, I'm just a working boy who fell in
with
the wrong internet crowd. Actually I'm just Stiff Lips' male morph and
you're
all arguing with a figment of her imagination. BTW we've come up with a
new
contest. We've got a spread sheet with the daily tabs of each page. So
far
my poetry, cybersex and negatron are winning. Stiff Lips is very
unhappy
with this. You all have no fucking guts. Stiff Lips was raped by a man
she
met on the MOO and fewer than six months later (notice that awsome
grammatical
move) she sent me that terrible tale after I had e-mailed her with that
cruel
joke "4x4". Two weeks later she dropped out of school and moved in with
me.
She agreed to have her e-mail on the web site, indeed insisted on
having
a more prominent spot than I had originally intended, knowing full well
that
the man might find it and read it and that he could come on as a guest
any
day and page her and MOOmail her or send her e-mail. Even the knowledge
that
he has learned of her move to this state hasn't hurt her resolve. This
fucking
woman has more courrage than all of your ancestors combined, or as one
of
the cooks said to one of the gay boys the other day: "She's more of a
woman
than you'll ever be and more of a man than you'll ever get." Allset,
What
the fuck is this shit about being married to your best friend but not
being
in love with your husband? What, you're secretly in love with Queequeg
but
too shy to tell him? I've got to go for a job interview. That's enough
for
today Mr Antichrist. Here are my suggestions for the discography: "Too
Drunk
to Fuck" (The Dead Kennedeys), "Holiday in Berlin" (The Sex Pistols),
"White
Riot" (The Clash), "I Promise not to Come in Your Mouth" (Frank Zappa),
"Fight
the Powers that Be" (?) and "I Drink Alone" (George Thoroughgood).
Sechs
isch ke zahl. Es isch e Hobby.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Sperm 'n valium
I got a job. I'm working temporarily for the bookstore for a couple of
weeks before school starts. It's the only job I can accept with a clean
conscience without knowing whether or not I've been accepted to
LeMoyne. I checked out the score for Black Angels to share with Gabriel
since I'm fairly sure he's never seen anything like it. Murder, have
you got a recording of it? If so, bring me a copy in NYC. I have to be
back here on Monday to start training. I don't know when I'll arrive in
NYC yet, but I guess I leave sometime on Sun, or very early Mon. I'm
going to put on Shosty's Leningrad Symphony to bring luck to Gaby on
his interview at this restaurant (it's called Leningrad's).
Werner, your comment last night about not having to live the dangerous
lifestyle I live did not go unnoticed. Is this really about danger?
People *have* your address, your phone number, your social security
number, your e-mail address, your shoe size... When I talk to people
who say they aren't willing to give a first name for use on RL MOO I
have to wonder... are people *really* so paranoid that they think going
by Chris or Mary on the moo is going to bring on a swarm of stalkers,
obscene e-mailers, heavy breathing on the phone? You
take risks with all human interaction. You take risks driving to work,
crossing
the street, stepping into an elevator on the 20th floor, having sex
with
a stranger. Life is risky. Does it mean you should never go out?
I met a man on the moo, just after I began on PMC. We talked, and he
asked me a lot of questions. Then after about 30 minutes, he blurted
out "My name is Christophere Scarpelli. I live at 1486 Bird Lane,
Moutain Valley, Michigan." What's wrong with you people.
-Stiff Lips
From: Nichelle
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Undergraduate scum
I got into my college.
Since you can't buy me drinks in person, each of you should please send
me $20. Gaby is going to have to get me drunk tonight.
Hey negatron, want to meet on the moo and do our homework together?
-Stiff Lips
From: Laurent
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Re: Undergraduate scumeluctable_Modality 0 new messages
CONGRATULATIONS!
From: Terry
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Re: Boyz n the list
My, my, my... how quickly word spreads when I've had a disagreement
with someone.
I started to go into the details of why negatron and I got into it;
but, at the last minute, I deleted it all. The details aren't
important. The final outcome is. John, I'm sorry if it seemed as though
I was jumping all over you and had an "attitude". I got pissed when I
saw that a char had been created, after I had refused it (with Gabe's
input) twice. I'm truly sorry... I hate apologizing, but when I'm
wrong, I admit it. I was wrong. There were several things I *should*
have done; but didn't. *sigh* So, with that in mind, forgive me. It
doesn't bother me so much when I argue with Gabe, coz he argues with
everyone. But, when I argue with negatron... that bothered me. So,
bottom line. I admit I was wrong.
I never claimed to be the best ArchDeluxe in the world... and I'm human
just like everyone else. 'Nuf said on that matter.
Allset, I think we should compare notes sometimes on our lives...
several remarks you made caught my interest. Look me up on RLMOO
sometime.
Murder, where are you???????? I'm looking forward to meeting you online.
Stiff Lips, I'm still applauding all of your hard work on the web
pages; you've done an outstanding job!!!!!!!! *big pat on the back* I'm
curious as
to what software you're using. :)
Laterz,
Teri
From: Terry
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Re: Undergraduate scum
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996, Nichelle wrote:
> I got into my college.
> Since you can't buy me drinks in person, each of you should please
send me
> $20. Gaby is going to have to get me drunk tonight.
>
> Hey negatron, want to meet on the moo and do our homework together?
>
> -Stiff Lips
Congrats, Nichelle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW, I went back to work last week (I'm in education), and it always
amazes me that I seem to accomplish more when I'm working full time
than when I have
the whole summer off. My house is cleaner, I cook more, etc. Very
strange..
I'll have to put in my two cents worth on music. If anyone likes Andrew
Lloyd Webber, the soundtrack to Starlight Express is wonderful! I saw
the
production of this last fall and was totally blown away. (I like this
kind
of shit. Heh.) Also, I love piano pieces (I play both piano and
keyboards)...
I have too many favorites to list all at once. But, right now, I'm
listening
to Mozart's "Jeunehomme". Yummy. :)
Laterz,
Teri
From: Murder
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: Leningrad
Whoa, Gabe, hang on. I did not accuse you of playing power trips with
this list. Quite the contrary. I'm sorry if my post was misleading. I,
like you, want to see the list kept in the same format it is now. I
might just have to dare Stiff Lips at the convention to go up to James
Galway and do just that--or else she should suggest that she should
record K.313 on clarinet. Ooooohh, I shudder at the thought. Galway's
"offense" was on a much lesser scale than that crime. Yes, I do have a
recording of Black Angels, but only of Images 4-9. I don't know what
happened to the first three. But I will bring
it if you can bring a walkman, since the motor in mine is dead. Weird
that
you mention Shosty's Leningrad. I too listened to this piece this
morning before I even read your post. Morphogenic fields coming into
play? Not that I am a big believer in that kind of stuff, but it is an
interesting theory. Here is a meek beginning of my addition to the Bib:
1. Victoria: Requiem Mass
2. Bach: Mass in B-minor
3. Mozart: Symphonia Concertante in E-flat, K. 364
4. Beethoven: Symphony #9 in D-minor, op. 125
5. Brahms: A German Requiem
6. Debussy: Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp
7. Mahler: Symphony #9 in D
8. Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
9. Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire
10. Shostakovich: Symphony #4 in C-minor
11. Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
12. Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra
13. Cage: 4'33"
Murder
From: Murder
Date: 12 August 1996
Subject: A few more
Oops, I forgot a few:
14. Schoenberg: A survivor from Warsaw, op.46
15. Sibelius: Valse Triste
16. Schubert: Symphony #5 in B-flat
17. Bernstein: Symphony #2 "The Age of Anxiety"
Murder
From: Murder
Date: 13 August 1996
Subject: I'm off to see....
This is my final message before my trip. Immediately after hitting Ctrl
X to send this I am going to drive back to Spokane and catch a plane in
the morning. Teri, I will get on the MOO as soon as I can; I have not
had much time lately for anything other than getting all my stuff
squared away for this trip. My first appearance on the MOO will not be
before the 21st. Allset, I wanted to send you a personal message, but
the mail bounced (concerned about
privacy, huh?!) and I don't have time to resend it today, so I will
have
to do it when I get back. If you want, you can send me your address
privately
and I will make every effort to send my message as soon as I can. I
hunted
down the Black Angels this morning, so we're set to go, Stiff Lips. I
will
call you tomorrow night when I get settled in.
Murder
From: SAGReiss
Date: 13 August 1996
Subject: Laurent's ami
>Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 19:34:37 PDT
>From: SAGReiss@lambda.moo.mud.org
>Subject: LambdaMOO Message(s) 28
>
>Message 28:
>Date: Tue Aug 13 16:01:33 1996 PDT
>From: Kudo
>To: SAGReiss
>Subject: hello
>
>I hear from le_marquis that your girlfriend/FWB/etc is going to the
National
>Flute Convention. I shall be flying there tomorrow(wed) morning to
stalk her.
>Well, maybe I'm just going to go because I want to blow up the
bunch of
>persons obsessed with the ultimate phallic instrument. Okay, that's
probably
>a lie. Actually, I'm going because I'm a
flutist/flautician/flautist and I
>have a schoolmate who's in the National High School Flute Soloist
Competition
>there. So, in truth, I will be there to attend the master classes,
visit with
>old and new teachers, play a bit, socialise, and perhaps to buy a
piccolo.
>I'm sure you care. All in all, I was quite surprised to hear that
the babe
>would be there, and would be estatic to say 'hi' whilst I'm there.
>And that's the truth,
>-ku do
>--------------------------
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: SAGReiss
Date: 13 August 1996
Subject: Laurent's ami II
Laurent, what the fuck is wrong with your dumb ass? Right in the middle
of a serious fight about privacy and confidentiality on the listserv
you
give out information on the whereabouts and hotel address of Stiff Lips
to
some total fucking stranger who is obviously very unstable or has a
very
bad sense of humour? You fucking scumbag. I will hold my anger until
you
try to come up with some reasonable excuse before I toad you from the
list
and ask that you be toaded from RL MOO with extreme prejudice. Is this
your
idea of a joke? Stiff Lips will probably not be in attendance at this
fucking
conference. I'm awfully glad I've never told you much else about us. I
knew
we would have to deal with some psychos, but I didn't think it would
work
like this. I agree with Allset that disputes/arbitration is not the way
to
deal with evil cunts and motherfuckers. On the other hand I hope that
some
members of this list will have the fucking guts to send some very nasty
MOOmail
to laurent/le_marquis and kudo. SAGReiss [to laurent]: Vas te faire
enculer.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Laurent
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: hey!
woo..me?toaded?..actually i have never been toaded from any of the MOOs
i have ever been on..do you think it hurts?
come on gabe..i was speaking with this old friend of mine who happened
to go to the same social event motive/nichelle/stiff lips is
attending..wanna kill me for noticing the coincidence..well please
do..i hope you translate some nice poems to pronounce on my
MOOexecution..maybe something russian..i know you do not speak russian
but i trust your immense genius to find the souls of the poems from
between the lines of cyrillic characters..
well btw..unless i am wrong, isn't stiff lips the one who is supposed
to be angry at me for disclosing a bit of her privacy? stiff lips..was
it such a crime to tell my friend rebecca that you are going to the
same flute convention she does? if you are will you pronounce the
sentence of my beheading?
bon ben salut,
laurent
From: Nichelle
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: beheading
Actually, I'm sentencing you to be keelhauled, once Ahab gets home.
Laurent, you need to tell me a few things. Did you tell this person my
real name? My
moo name? What about Murder? Yes, I'm very angry. Perhaps you just have
seriously
bad taste in friends. Perhaps your friend has a terrible and twisted
sense
of humor. Yes, this affects Gabriel too. We live together. I came here
to
get away from a psycho. Please don't invite anymore psychos into my
life. I'm trying to cut back. Yes, I think it's wrong to tell your
friend rebecca that she could look me up/stalk me at this flute
convention. And it was also wrong of your friend rebecca to send that
letter to Gabriel's character. I
do not wish to put my faith in your apparently very poor judgment of
character. Those decisions are mine to make. This has nothing to do
with Gabriel's immense genius. This is about your bad decision and
breach of faith.
-Stiff Lips
From: Laurent
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: Re: beheading
i just told her your mooname..and nothing else..actually i do not know
your real name..never invited her into your life just thought she could
moomail to let you make that judgement
getting ready for keelhauling, as soon as he discovers what that word
means
laurent
From: Nichelle
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: keelhauling
I think the basic technique for keelhauling is this: you tie one end of
a long rope to the offender, the other to the stern (back) of a ship.
Then the person is thrown off the bow (front) and dragged along the
bottom of the
ship, which is usually covered with barnacles, until he surfaces on the
other
side. I'm not sure if he is then taken back into the ship, or if they
tow
him around back there for a while, or just cut the rope...
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: identity crisis
I have to remember to leave off that signature. That definition was
from me.
-Stiff Lips
From: Laurent
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: Re: identity crisis
well we haven't a word for that torture in french..that must be a
typical anglosaxon delight..
well i'll try to survive the keelhauling to try and be better last
time..
laurent
From: SAGReiss
Date: 14 August 1996
Subject: 5 cents an hour
I s'pose I could be happy not to get fired and to get a raise at all,
but I'm not. That's a fucking disgrace. At about thirty-two hours a
week, that's a dollar sixty a week, eighty-three dollars and twenty
cents a year. Maybe I'll just make a tax-deductable donation of that
sum to the Liberterian Party or the Cyberlibertine Club. Yes, Werner I
smoked Gitanes for a decade. I've decided to rename negatron's text:
"Kewl pics of my gf and her dog" or maybe "Kewl pics of my dog and his
gf". No one will ever go to your fucking page. I'll win. Besides, why
the fuck did I ever make up such a telegenetic title? I'm so fucking
bad at the phone. How could I mistake "Lemon Grass" for "Lenningrad's"?
Note the brilliant allusion to 12000 Virgins. We're going to use last
night's chat for the sample MOO text. That means we get to make up
stupid names for all of you. Now I see what negatron got so pissed
about. Killjoy is a member of his ID stable. That was yesterday
afternoon. I'm so tired. This list/web/moo shit is killing me, taking
the lifeblood from me, has already trashed my sex
life. negatron: "Hello." SAGReiss: "John, this is Gabriel. Someone is
building
shit on the MOO." negatron: "How the fuck did you get my number?"
SAGReiss:
"It's in the phone book, John." I'm going to try to be brief and then
go
seek solace onna MOO or in bed in Stiff Lips' arms. Teri, why is
someone
called Chip (which is a crime enough in my eyes, as names go) building
stupid
shit on RL MOO? I was polite, at least at first. Asked him if he knew
we
didn't allow that. He said he had read the texts. I gave him a fair
opportunity to destroy what he had built. He chose not to take
advantage of it. Enough said. I think you should reconsider putting the
MOO on your server. Think of the advantages: more data-base
flexibility, web space for RL MOOers to make their home pages,
increased integration of the list and the web and the
MOO... We don't owe the current server anything, except his monthly
fee. He
hasn't done us any special favors. He doesn't even use his real fucking
name
on RL MOO. Please think this over. Although you would have been angry
at
the bloodlust which swallowed Chip last night (partly because I was so
fucking
mad at Stiff Lips' asshole father and at laurent and Rebecca), you
would
have loved the reaction in Purgatorio. People realize that something
different
is going on, something well real. It took a lot of cold blood on John's
part
(possibly because he hadn't drunk enough whisky) (He has a slow,
soft-pitched,
marajuana-laden Kanadian accent.) not to give in to the amok of the
frenzied
mob. Laurent, don't you see how receiving such a letter from an
unidentified
stranger might upset Stiff Lips? I think you showed bad judgement and I
think
your friend has a very poor-taste sense of humour. I wouldn't have
thought
twice about hate mail to me. I've gotten it before. But threatening
letters
to Stiff Lips? To all members of this list, please be careful to
respect
other members' privacy. This list depends, for its very existence, on
trust,
so that even members less outspoken than I feel comfortable writing the
details
of their daily lives, which is where literature comes from, the
difference
between our daily life and the telling of it. As Mitterand said: "La
Revolution
permanente."
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Laurent
Date: 15 August 1996
Subject: Re: 5 cents an hour
Mitterrand said "la revolution permanente"..??'t was Trotsky in my
memories and i did not see Mitterrand as a Trotskyist..Mitterrand said
"changer la vie" though..which could have been a good conclusion to
your letter..
laurent
From: Terry
Date: 15 August 1996
Subject: Re: 5 cents an hour
Gabe, Chip is his real name and he did NOT know he couldn't build when
he first logged on and did. After he settled into his *home*, he began
reading the help files and realized that he'd found an obvious bug (the
ability to build, to the which John and I thought we'd disabled). Chip
was waiting on me to log back on. Why would he @recycle because you
asked him to? He didn't know you. He felt attacked by those involved;
and understandably so. He did exactly what I would have done; become
very defensive and stubborn. John told
me himself that Chip reacted in a way similar to what he probably would
have
done. And John explained to you, Gabe, about it being OUR fault that he
was
able to build. Now, Chip has been reinstated as a char on RLMOO. And
I'm
tired of hearing all the bitching about him. What really pisses me off
is
that his attitude is no different than what I've seen from you on MOO.
In
the beginning, the idea was to not toad anyone on RLMOO for any reason;
other
than hacking at the db. But, since people seem to be stepping on your
toes,
I've heard you wanting to toad a couple of players. Well, it's not
gonna
happen. @gag them. Remember??? Don't go blaming Chip for his reaction
on
RLMOO. To do so would be so hypocritical. And remember... it IS Real
Life MOO. If this pisses you off, so be it. I'm tired of this shit.
RLMOO doesn't revolve around Gabe. Or Teri. Or John. Or anyone. It's a
team effort and it
seems I'm reminded often of our theme and etc. Now it's my turn to
remind.
As for putting RLMOO on my machine and server, I don't think I can. I'm
getting a new machine and server at work. If I got caught with
contraband
on the system, I could get in severe trouble. Not worth the risk; I've
put
in 20 years at that job.
As for the wizards (the one who rents us server space) name not being
his real life name... where did you get that idea??? Our rules state
that it has
to be a close approximation. We agreed that any part of their real name
could
be used. First, middle, or last; or any combination thereof. Again,
Gabe,
you go bitching about stuff you don't know all of the story to. Geez,
get
the right info before you express your opinion.
To Laurent: I see nothing wrong with giving your friend the MOOname of
Stiff Lips. Then letting Stiff Lips determine whether to have rl
contact or not. BUT, it was in very poor taste of your friend to send
the mail. I don't care if she has the best sense of humor in the world,
proper etiquette would not allow for that. Were it not for Stiff Lips
background, the mail (if it were in jest) might have been seen in a
different light. But, knowing what we do,
I saw no humor in it.
A pet peeve of mine: People who express their opinions in any manner
that they see fit bitching out others who do the same; simply because
he/she doesn't like what's being said or done. Well, maturity becomes a
factor here.
I made up my mind a few weeks ago to keep my comments to myself,
because I hate arguing with Gabe. Or anyone, for that matter. But, I've
decided to hell with that. I'm entitled to my opinion and I think I
express it in a much
nicer way than is usually given to me. So, no apologies for what I
think, Gabe. You make no concessions for me; I now no longer will make
any for you. And to whoever doesn't like what I've said, well fuck you.
Tired of getting hassled because of the friends I choose,
Teri
From: Werner
Date: 15 August 1996
Subject: waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
Once a jolly swagman camped by a Billabong
Under the shade of a Coolabah tree
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
"Who'11 come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"
Down come a jumbuck to drink at the water hole
Up jumped a swagman and grabbed him in glee
And he sang as he stowed him away in his tucker bag
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me'".
Up rode the Squatter a riding his thoroughbred
Up rode the Trooper- one, two, three
"Where's thst jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'11 come a-waltzing Matiltda with me"
But the swagman he up and jumped in the water hole
Drowning himself by the Coolabah tree,
And his ghost may be heard as it sings in the Billabong,
"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"
A.B. Paterson
Reproduced from 'Saltbush Bill J.P. and Other Verses', published in
1917.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 15 August 1996
Subject: No supper
You are absolutely right, ArchDeluxe, to send me to bed with no supper.
The keelhauling next time. As I said to a number of people yesterday on
the
MOO, Tuesday was just a Comedy of bad luck. We were both in a foul mood
because of Stiff Lips' father goading her. The only good points of the
visit were his promise to buy her a 'puter and the pleasure I took in
watching a man who wanted to eat roast beef and mashed potatoes eating
a quiche loraine and
salad with basil vinaigrette and peaches and berries flambees. His
exhaulted praise of my cooking skills was in direct proportion to his
dislike of the fare. Afterwards just to check I asked Stiff Lips: "He
hated it, didn't he?" She said that he did. Rebecca's letter meant no
harm. Written to almost anyone else, it would have been quite
innocuous. Written to someone who has been stalked, and worse, on
several occasions, who has received letters written in blood, on what
was already a bad day, it obviously did not look like a joke. Having
just received that very disturbing missive, we got on RL. That is the
context of the unfortunate affaire Chip. Again luck was not on our
side. Had you discovered the accident, it could have been cleared up
without so much trouble. The mistake is my own. Not knowing exactly
what the data base is, hacking ("unauthorized programming") is exactly
what I thought he was doing. Obviously it is not his fault if he was
simply able to do what he does on every other MOO. It is our fault for
not thinking to test that. I shall apologize to Chip whenever I see
him. Then I'll gag him. While I'm at it I should also apologize to
laurent. Je suis desole, mon ami. J'ai reagi sur le coup, de facon
exageree. Je crois que tu as commis une erreur de jugement, mais ca
n'excuse pas mon invective. These are trying times. Yesterday, for the
first time since she told me his name, I was in a room with the man who
raped Stiff Lips. It was a very weird moment. I can only imagine what
she must feel like when he shows up. We all have to live with our past,
the stress of daily life and the burdons we have to bear. Stiff Lips
got a letter recently from an old friend which read in part: "We saw
'Phenomenone' (spell??) Suday." She asked: "Why the fuck doesn't she
just look it up?" I pointed out that I frequently use this technique,
metatext, to draw the reader's attention to the fact that a literary
representation of the world is not the same thing as the world. Such a
technique (other examples are the parenthetical notes in a recent
letter of mine: "nota bene the smooth hocky [sic] metaphor" and "notice
that awesome grammatical move") dispells the illusion of reality which
the author has created. It reminds the reader that this is just a text.
I
guess what I'm trying to say is that some of what I write here is
intentionally laden with rhetoric and hyperbole. That's part of my
style. Some of the events are slightly rearranged for the sake of the
tale. The truth is that there is a spectrum that goes from RL to the
telephone to e-mail to MOO with diminishing doses of reality. My goal
has been to increase the dose of reality in the MOO. I don't really
think RL and VR are exactly the same thing. In the final analysis I
would defend the claim that the man sitting at the keyboard is NOT the
narrator of this letter. The I of a letter fulfills a specific literary
function. No human being can ever be reduced to such an esthetic role.
Je est un autre.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Terry
Date: 15 August 1996
Subject: Re: No supper
Gabe, I must say I'm impressed.
For you to admit to the very things that I had pointed out in my Email
causes me to redirect my thoughts of you. It takes a strong man/woman
to admit when he/she is wrong. I hate making mistakes; but will admit
when I'm wrong (just did with John last week).
Eating crow doesn't usually taste good... so, I try to serve mine up as
"Crow Under Glass". Amazing how the outlook on something can make it go
down
much easier. :)
Gotta get back to work, no MOO windows open for me for several hours...
Teri
From: Laurent
Date: 15 August 1996
Subject: Re: No supper
WOW!!apologies from gabe..I did not expect so much.. Not that i really
like the public keelhauling..but well..becca can be a nasty kid at her
own moments and she really ate her foot and even part of the leg this
time..i guess knowing gabe's sarcasms she must have thought stiff-lips
would not have minded a really
bad joke.. I can tell you when she gets back from New York she ain't
gonna
get no desserts for weeks...and she will have to help me heal the scars
from
the keelhauling..
sorry to hear you had that much of a bad day..mine are really cool and
easy these days..Paris in August is completely empty..all of my friends
have left town...gotta run down 3 blocks to find a boulangerie...but
the few people who stay are really nice to balance for the
desertification of town which is mostly abandoned to ugly tourist
busses..
my roommate's girlfriend just dyed her pussy pink (the hair i mean) ,
and she showed it to me the day after he left for 2 weeks in
Zimbabwe..it looks really cute but..would any of you girls shoe your
pubic hair to your lover's best friend?Should I let hair dye my pubic
hair purple?In case you think i
should do you have any idea of a really non erotic thing to think about
while
you have a cute woman brushing your pubic hair?
Sorry to be trivial..just wanted to try and escape a bit from the
ontological disarray..
bisous
laurent
From: SAGReiss
Date: 16 August 1996
Subject: Pink Matilda
I can just imagine laurent, the Eurostud of the Sex Room, carefully
putting on his reading glasses for an up-close, scientifically detached
look at his best friend's gf's newly-dyed-pink pussy. Does it do
tricks? Did she make you put on surgical gloves to check out the
texture? What exactly is the html
code for the colour? I'm sure all of our readers must be asking
themselves these same, and other, burning questions. Please be
forthcoming (Um, may I
rephrase that?) in providing all of the necessary mathematical data.
This is, after all, a research project. Stiff Lips and negatron have
both registered as sophmores (We all know what that means, right?) and
they're taking Computer Science 101 and Women's Studies 069 and this is
their interDISCIPLINary homework. I ask you all please to give us any
relevant input on this matter. Please include full-colour GIFs and
JPEGs.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: SAGReiss
Date: 16 August 1996
Subject: ¿Dónde está la Comecabra?
A fortnight ago, when I put Comecabra’s text on the World, I hesitated
about the accent, clearly indicated in my Random House Dictionary for
the adverb (in this case interrogative, but some might call it a
pronoun). I asked, of
all people, Canis_Lupus about it. He called me all kinds of names. He
said:
“I’ve been speaking Spanish for thirty years.” “There’s no such word
[as
dónde].” “You can’t even speak Spanish,” which of course I
readily admitted, which is why I had asked him in the first place. I
had no faith in Random House, of course, but I also saw the form in one
of Stiff Lips’ books by Pablo Neruda. Basically, making the syntactic
distinction orthographically manifest just made sense to me. It felt
right, and I trust my instincts about language even if I don’t know the
tongue. We berated eachother for a week or more and today I went to the
library and looked it up. I quote from the Real Academia’s Diccionario:
“Se emplea siempre, como interrogativo, con acento
fonético y ortográfico.” I got on Lambda and asked
Canis_Lupus when he was going to change his name to
SAGReiss_is_always_right. His reaction was typical of MOOers: “Who
gives a fuck, you asshole?” I cannot imagine being
so apallingly wrong. I don’t mean making a mistake, but insisting so
heavily
on one’s God-like knowledge of a subject so close to one’s identity,
and
being flat-out wrong. Having a Gringo who can’t even speak Spanish tell
a
Latino how the language is written in the Castillian dialect, I would
cut my throat if that happened to me. I could not bear to live being
wrong. Not about something so basic and so important. Shiiit, I would
cut my throat if
I made a mistake like that about French. How do these terminal idiots
live?
How can they get college diploma’s? How can they sleep? Why do they
exist?
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 16 August 1996
Subject: A map of RL MOO
Have a look at the site and click on "A map of RL MOO". I've put up a
map with the room descriptions and some very beautiful pictures.
-Stiff Lips
From: Kathy
Date: 18 August 1996
Subject: (no subect)
I was trying to find the point beyond the pain. The point where the
pain is secondary to the amorphous something that you feel in the
center of the storm. When I used to Submit, I would find that place...
that focus ... fairly quickly most of the time. But this was something
I wasn't expecting. Something I couldn't deal with in any rational way.
I reached inside of me and tried to drag the dreck of from the pit of
my stomach and make it come out of me in great sobbing tears or gasps,
but what I discovered was that there was too much dreck to bring it all
out and deal with it. It was just stuck in there where I could feel it
all the time. It moved with me and stayed with me. Even when I slept, I
could feel that pain there like a ball gnawing away at my insides. I
couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. It had been at least four days since
I'd done either.
I tried dancing. That's the catharsis. I dance until I no longer hear
the music, I just sense it in my bones; it becomes part of me. I went
to a concert and danced until my feet were numb and then collapsed into
a ball in the corner
crying until someone drove me home. And it didn't help.
So I tried to write. Didn't help. Writing always helps. My writing is
the most important thing in the world to me, and so when the second
most important thing in the world to me walked out, I figured I would
take comfort in the writing. Maybe that's what I'm trying to do now.
I quit smoking about 7 months ago. Except for two minor slidebacks of a
couple days each, I've been really good about it. Until Tuesday. Then I
started again and I'm up to half a pack a day. I know I'd smoke even
more if my office were smoke friendly. I guess I'm glad it's not.
What do you do when, after four years, you suddenly find yourself on
your own without the person who said he wanted to marry you?
Marriage... heh. On
Sunday he was talking about the marriage being in April, and on Tuesday
he
told me he was in love with another woman. We'd just left dinner.
Dinner with
his boss & his boss' wife and their friends. At dinner I'd teased
him
about spending the night at his friend Susan's house on Friday night
and
he jokingly got on the offensive saying nothing had happened and he
would never cheat on me. Then, on the train on the way home, he told me
that he was in love with her. But no, nothing had happened. Isn't
falling in love something?
He went with me to the club. And in a lull between songs he screamed at
me, "Leave me the fuck alone, bitch." Then he walked out, leaving me
there.
Jason, some random guy from the club, came up and tried to make me
laugh.
The lead singer from the band that was playing even gave me a hug to
make
me feel better. They told me I was quite a catch and that this "loser"
just
didn't know a good thing when he saw one. I like to try and tell myself
that.
Jason also said that the thing that sucked was that the jerk had
"scarred"
me. But I don't think I'm scarred really. I mean, I'm not going to give
up
on guys, and I'm not going to stop trusting people. Just because one
emotionally immature boy can't be stable is no reason for me to give up
on my whole life. I'm beautiful, intelligent, fun, adventurous, sexy,
creative and bright. I
know there will be others for me.
But for now the pain is so overwhelming that I feel myself acting
irrationally and out of misery. I went to look at apartments today.
Nice apartments. I can afford them now finally. And I was in no
emotional state to choose one. I think I picked a good one, but I'm not
even sure. All I could think about was going home and packing up my
stuff and having to sleep in the same place as him for another two
weeks before I could leave.
I was ironing a shirt this morning, and I suddenly saw a spot on it. I
realized that I just didn't care, and I suddenly broke into tears.
When I was first learning the ropes as a Dom (no pun intended), I
learned that something you have to be able to do as a Dom is be willing
to let go of your Submissive. When a Submissive comes to you and enters
into a relationship, the Submissive is expected to follow certain
guidelines and rules, and if you are afraid to leave them if they
REALLY fuck up, then they can top you from below, and you're no longer
the strong Dom they wanted, and they end up leaving you anyway because
you're no longer the Dom they wanted and needed. I tried to keep that
in mind as I did the practical things I needed to do now that this
relationship is over. But this isn't a bdsm relationship, this is a
relationship of equals. I'm not sure how to handle it. I know that at
some point I will be over him.
I just wish I could get to that point now.
I'm rambling. I'll stop. I guess I just wanted to get it off of my
chest and share. Eric told me that you have to keep sharing and
repeating to people, "I'll be okay" because the more you do that, the
weaker the pain becomes, and the more quickly it'll actually be true
and you will be okay.
Four years.... That's a long time. I guess it's going to be a long time
in getting over him.
What an introduction. I'm Kathy. Most of you know me as Opal. You'll
notice, though, that on relevant MOOs, my name is now Kathy. Somehow
Opal just seems no longer appropriate...
From: Nichelle
Date: 18 August 1996
Subject: the new pussy
I don't write very good letters, at least not usually, but at least I
write something. I'm not sure I understand what you are all doing here.
I think at least some of you read this as a substitute for reading the
tabloids, and
a few others read this because you want to keep an eye on your MOO
buddies, and not very many of you are here because you like to write
letters, though I can't really complain because I haven't written very
many letters myself lately. I've been getting ready for school, doing
my reading for Bitterness 104, beginning with Bukowski. The only
prerequisite was Humility 100, which I started in mid-March. I'm going
to go read some more. Gaby will be home soon anyway, and either he'll
get online and fight with the assholes on Lambda or he'll go to sleep.
Doesn't matter, I'm just undergraduate scum who hasn't read the books
he has read and can't speak the languages he can speak. I'm some
lukewarm housewife who distracts him from his work. And you all think
he's got a gold-plated brain and a dick the size of Manhattan. You
don't understand-
this thing only works when you say something, not just react to
Gabriel.
Despite the melodrama in Opal's letter, I respect that she isn't
reacting
to another letter. I feel like my job on this list is to beg for
e-mail.
Are you intimidated? Are you afraid fo criticism? Yes, if you write to
this
list you will be criticized. The other day at the table, Gaby told me
that
my letter that morning wasn't very good. But... why are you here if you
don't
write?
From: SAGReiss
Date: 18 August 1996
Subject: Black tie, white gloves
Criticism? I'm a little too tired to criticize anyone but my bosses
right now. My back is throbbing, as is my neck, shoulders, hips, knees,
elboes wrists
and ankles. My feet hurt. I would try to think of a part of the body
which
isn't in pain, but my brain is too weak and weary to bother. We had a
banquet
dinner for 150 assholes who think that medieval cannon law is something
interesting
to make jokes about over cocktails. I don't mind doing a clown's job,
but
I don't really like wearing his uniform. Stiff Lips thought I looked
very
handsome in my tuxedo shirt with studs and a black bow tie. I can't
imagine
what she would have said had she seen me with the Uncle Tom white
gloves.
They weren't white for long, of course. They wore the shades of every
course
and wine I served. Two odd moments during the dinner. When my first
table
arrived I thought I heard the sounds of French and said: "Bonsoir,
Messieursdames."
The whole table turned around as one and stared at me. I thought: "What
the
fuck? Was I halucinating? Are these really some kiwi French-hating
Nazis?"
I babbled: "I'm sorry. I thought... Vous parlez francais. Excuse me."
Turned
out they were just amazed that a waiter-type Amerikan asshole can speak
better
French than their illustrious colleagues. One of the dudes was from
Strasbourg
and joked: "Vous avez appris a parler notre petit dialecte?" I just
answered:
"Mir kenne au Elsasisch rede." It was a little weird. The other odd
thing
was when we were clearing and they were still milling about. I was
carrying
one of those monster fifty-pound trays and saw two girls, one of whom
had
an unlit cigarette in her hand. I slowed to a stop, reached into my
pocket,
pulled out my lighter and lit her cigarette. The other girl burst out
laughing:
"Have I done something wrong?" "No I just thought that was so funny. It
was
beautiful." Lady, this is my fucking job. If the medievalist pudenda
think
that chivalry is dead, ou sont les neiges d'antan? Anyway I worked a
split
shift 6 to 2 and 5 to 11:30 and 6 to 2:30 today. I don't give a fuck.
We're
into OT, boys and girls, and I've got nine and a half hours @$13.50.
(See,
assholes, I can write 'puter code. You just put in a lot of meaningless
punctuation
and voila.) About Opal's letter. While the "melodrama" (literally black
action
for those of you in the TV audience) is an obviously just and fair
criticism,
I'll try to make mine constructive. At the end you say something about
the
name Opal no longer being appropriate, but we don't learn why... I'm
guessing
that it's the melo-connection, Blackbriar and a black stone, but I
don't
know. Forget your thoughts and emotions and tell the fucking tale.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Kathy
Date: 18 August 1996
Subject: Re: Black tie, white gloves
> code. You just put in a lot of meaningless punctuation and voila.)
About
> Opal's letter. While the "melodrama" (literally black action for
those of
> you in the TV audience) is an obviously just and fair criticism,
I'll try to
> make mine constructive. At the end you say something about the
name Opal no
> longer being appropriate, but we don't learn why... I'm guessing
that it's
> the melo-connection, Blackbriar and a black stone, but I don't
know. Forget
> your thoughts and emotions and tell the fucking tale.
It's hard to be anything other than melodramatic when you feel like
your heart is being yanked out of your body. But cest la vie. I write
the way I'm
feeling. And I never claimed I wasn't melodramatic just like some of
you
wouldn't dare claim not to be pretentious or pompous or verbose.
Why not Opal anymore? For a lot of people the phrase "Opal and
Blackbriar" is really just one word. I was Opal before Seth, sure, but
we sort of became coagulated during the last four years. If I'm on as
Opal, people page me or
ask me about Blackbriar or want to know how I am about the breakup and
etc...
If someone sees "Kathy" in their friends lists or whatever they are,
then
they are more likely to stop and think of me as not just an extension
of
the infamous Mr.Blackbriar.
Hey Colin, want some juicy gossip? *chuckles* Just kidding. I wish I
had some for you.
--
"You can always pull out if you like it too much..." Garbage
From: Terry
Date: 18 August 1996
Subject: Re: the new pussy
On Sun, 18 Aug 1996, Nichelle wrote:
> And you all think he's got a gold-plated brain and a dick the size
of
> Manhattan.
Um, I never thought Gabe had a gold-plated brain or a dick the size of
Manhattan. :)
> Are you intimidated? Are you afraid fo criticism? Yes, if you
> write to this list you will be criticized. The other day at the
table, Gaby
> told me that my letter that morning wasn't very good. But... why
are you
> here if you don't write?
No, no, I know I'll be criticized, I like Nichelle's letters (they're
refreshing), and I'm here to read this mail and respond when I have the
time and/or feel the urge. :)
BTW: I'm sending this via my new 33.6 modem. Heh. I love speed.
Catch ya'll later,
Teri
From: Jenipher
Date: 19 August 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
I have just returned from London to a whole slew of email messages,
from both this listserv and the bdsm listserv I read. I was quite
pleased to see Kathy finally sent mail. I was, as usual, disappointed
in the response. Melodrama -- would that be defined as Kathy pouring
her feelings out to us in the hopes that doing so will somehow help
her, or would that be defined as ArchDeluxe, Gabe, John, etc., fighting
over a virtual space as if it were real. Yeah, yeah, REAL LIFE MOO.
Whatever. Kathy is having a real life crisis right now. Personally, I
am about ready to scream a little more at Seth on lambda, but he isn't
logged on right now. I suppose I had my say Wednesday. I really tried
not to use the words hypocrite or undeserving -too- much.
London was incredible. Stuffed chicken breast, deep dish pizza,
swordfish served with roasted red, yellow and green bell peppers, spicy
chicken wings, museums, Impressionists, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko,
Tower of London, Trafalger Square, Miss Saigon, Stephen Sondheim's
Passion, Independence Day (Yes, ID4), and the Rock. And Liebestod, who
met us at 10 a.m. every day and dropped us
off at 1 a.m. every night. He was our guide, friend, entertainment, and
my
wannabe-top. I saw pain in his eyes every time he glanced at the
bracelet that I wear for Kathy, until such time as she removes it. I
found leather cuffs at a sex shop, along with a gorgeous black leather
riding crop. Now all I need is someone willing to hit me with it until
the blood flows. Kathy, I wish I was with you right now, but I know it
would be the worst possible time for me to show up. I will bide my
time, as usual.
I am so tired, still feeling the effect of the antihistamine I have to
take so I don't get sick on the plane. So, yes, this rambles. No, I
have no point. I have a thousand points. If you, and you know who you
are, use Kathy's story to hurt anyone on lambda, I will use everything
I have to get you back (in the revenge sense.) Oh, as you would say,
this isn't a threat.
The only problem with leather cuffs is, they aren't handcuffs. They
don't lock. I can take them off myself. I found police handcuffs as
well, but my husband looked sort of horrified when I held them up, with
that questioning, would you ever use these on me?, look. So I have
leather that doesn't leave pretty, deep red welts in my wrists. Welts
that last for days, holding me in that submissive space where nothing
matters but the hurt inside. Daddy, I want to hurt you for what you
have done to me. But when I come home at Christmas,
that Daddy is gone, replaced by an overweight chain-smoker who looks at
me
as though he is so proud of me he could burst. Where is the pig that
forced
me to undress daily so he could check to see if his baby girl had pubic
hair
yet? The one who came in the bathroom nine mornings out of ten to take
a
piss and said, "If you don't look, I won't."? I never looked, but he
did,
every time. There was a flash of him a few years ago, just after I got
married.
I was in my bra and panties, drying my hair. He knocked on the bedroom
door
( which has no lock) and asked if he could come in. I grabbed a robe,
threw
it around me, and said, sure. There was rage in his eyes as he watched
me
fumbling to tie the robe shut. As if I had no right to hide myself from
him.
I wonder if he fucked me when I was nine. Will I ever know? Hypnosis
terrifies
me, being in a place I can't escape, finding memories I will never be
able
to repress again. Maybe someday, when my sisters have left my father's
house,
I will do it. Have any of you had these experiences? Is it normal for a
father
to look at his daughter naked until she finally escapes by going off to
college?
How much of myself is his? It would be easier to let go, yes, Daddy, I
am
yours. You created me, you raised me, you used me. Then I could forget.
Colin,
tell me why forgetting is wrong. I never understood.
WernerH, don't play with my words, twist them to make them fit your
psycho bitch from hell, 'typically not the voice of reason', image of
me. Hell, are
you even on this listserv? I hope so. You really pissed me off the
other day.
Je ne comprends pas.
Hey Gabe, will you forward this mail to me, si'l vous plait? Pine is
weird; it replies to everyone but me.
Randomness is the soul of genius. I just made that up.
Allset
From: Terry
Date: 19 August 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
OHMYGOD, as I read the email from Allset, I wanted to cry. *huge hug*
Once again, I'm soooooo thankful that I was raised in a loving, caring,
environment with healthy relationships with Mom and Dad... and Sis, too.
It's very hard for me to understand what you ladies go through; simply
because I've not experienced it and can't fathom it. Yet, I admire your
determination to sift through the ashes and perservere in life. That
takes guts. Rest assured, however, that I do care how each of you are
doing irl... I may not write much
(I'm a horrid writer); I'm just too busy irl.
Talk to you later,
Teri
From: Laurent
Date: 19 August 1996
Subject: Re: the new pussy
well what a strange mix of people on this planet and on this very
virtual corner Gabe built for us on the net...mister gabe, flogging the
US and american culture as much as he can, and lives on a mix of french
poems and chat in the alsatian dialects with people who are alsatian
but have forgotten about their dialect alltogether,and on the other
side Allset, who still does not speak french after two years at the
border between switzerland and french. If gabe had been there he would
already speak french and this strange dialect they speak somewhere in
switzerland, suisse romanche. Allset who lives a few
kilometers away from the best restaurants in the world and tells us
about food when she goes to...england...
(You have to know that the association of the words 'angleterre' and
'cuisine' is among the most improbable in a french mouth)
I am not making fun or Allset, nor of Gabe, just being amazed at the
diversity we encounter them, and wondering what i am doing here,
speaking with all these
people who are as estranged in their lives as i am in mine..why am i
not
just speaking about the future of combinatorics on words after the
death
of Marcel-Paul Schuetzenberger with another normalien, or getting rich
making
a computer consultancy, why do i speak english and read all these
english
books.. hmm well i guess i just like being a little bit outside of the
slot
where i should be..
My previous lover had been thru worse than you can think of in her
relationships with men...she let me discover these awful and so intense
feelings that arise when sex and power get knotted together..this
strange boundary between pleasure and pain..so allset's letters and
stiff lips's story on the web did not come to an ear that was
completely stranger to these regions..as archdeluxe says hers were..but
well..maybe try to get closer, if not understand, how can you
think you could understand, might be worth of this wasted time, all
thiss bad english i write..
ok well now i wrote a fucking mail, i guess i can go to sleep
bisous
laurent
From: Laurent
Date: 19 August 1996
Subject: melodrama
melodrama?
do u classify anything in a litterary category like this?when you hurt
yourself and you bleed do you just say hmm it's nothing, just
'erythrodrama' (red story)..well
no..when it hurts it hurts..
let's not be cynical..we all want to be someone for someone huh..and
rather not just an ex SO..i would not go as far as to hug you to
comfort you kathy, since i do not know you for the least, and gabe
would accuse me of taking advantage of the situation to touch a lovely
woman's body as a macho frenchman i am..but well the sympathy's
here...even tho as gabriel noticed, you are not the first one this
happens to and your account of it cannot beat 'les lamentations'
d'abelard.. but i never thought this list was a kind of prix goncourt
of the net..and i frankly have heard much worse melodrama..
this time i am off to bed
laurent
From: Werner
Date: 19 August 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
Here is a supplement for Nichelle's musical list:
Brahms, Vier Balladen, Op.10 for piano
Faure', Requiem
Poulenc, Gloria
Mahler, Symphony No.2, "Auferstehung"
Beethoven, String Quartet in a minor, Op.132
Shostakovich, Suite on verses of Michelangelo, for piano and baritone.
And for Allset: your words don't need me to twist them, so don't worry
about my overnight efforts. And as for Hell, you may wish you were from
there, but
I am afraid that it is as difficult to deserve Hell as to deserve
Heaven. Actually, I figure that the only outlook we have as afterlife
is this enormous and stinking pool of laxatives and by-products, the
Purgatorio: nothing to brag about.
W.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 20 August 1996
Subject: The blue bicycle
Archdeluxe, I have been to the post office to run a trace on that money
order, but they won't do it until two months after the purchase date
(26
July 1996). I'll send you fifty dollars for September and we can always
square
out accounts later. Would you mind humouring me and checking your bank
records?
If the address was right, you should have gotten it, and I'll have to
pay
for the trace. You see, Allset, there is nothing virtual about the
space
we rent, nor the money we pay to rent it. The server doesn't accept
Camel
Cash coupons. When we argue, we are arguing about real matters,
contractual
obligations and esthetic integrity. You may or may not take those
things
seriously, but there's nothing imaginary about them. As to Jade's
letter,
I may not have been clear enough. I do not think of the World as some
kind
of pen pals' club, devoted to: "pouring her feelings out to us in the
hopes
that doing so will somehow help her". I don't give a fuck about her
feelings
or yours or mine. I read Shakes, Jade, you, Stiff Lips and myself in
exactly
the same way. I wasn't joking when I said "dedicated to the pursuit of
linguistic research and literary creation". If I read stupid shit about
hearts being torn out, I don't care who wrote it or why. It's still a
bullshit metaphor. John Milton wrote the most painful meditation on
death in the English language about the drowning of a man he hardly
knew and cared for less. I generally like your letters, Allset, and I
think they will improve with time and practice. I have been writing
letters explicitely intended for publication since I was
fourteen or fifteen years old. I do this every day. If someone tells me
that
writing is the most important thing in her life, and writes shit I
wouldn't
expect from undergraduate scum, the word "melodrama" is not strong or
uncalled-for.
I tried to help her write better. When the woman I lived with in
Strasbourg
went to art school, they told her: "Paint what you see, not what you
know."
This was a serious school. The competitive entrance exam, which lasted
a
week and reduced eight-hundred applications to forty acceptances,
included
a painting exam whose question consisted in one word: "Bleu".
ArchDeluxe, I thought some of what you said to negatron yesterday was
misleading. I never said or even implied I would ask him to kill #147
without your consent. I also didn't know you had created #147 when I
asked to have it killed. You knew this. negatron let me walk right into
that ambush. This is not some whim
of mine. As Ludwig pointed out, we are trying to do something different
from
the other MOOs. That feature is exactly why I wanted to create another
kind
of MOO. This is not a minor point. It's at the heart of RL MOO. I do
not
wish to ask for a vote at this point because I'm more afraid of winning
than
losing. I have gagged #147 and invite everyone else to do so. I was
shocked
and hurt when Ludwig showed it to me and assumed it must have been an
oversight.
I do not want to destroy what you have worked hard to create, but to
engage
in an open dialogue about the goals of RL MOO and the means to achieve
them.
I found very persuasive Ludwig's argument: "What would people spam if
there
were no canned verbs?" I don't know, but I'd like to find out. Your
argument
about laziness is silly. Everyone can emote whatever s/he wants. Such a
feature
cheapens and disenfranchises all of us, inviting us to give away our
freedom
of speech. Let's allow people to express themselves in their own words,
not
repeat some mindless drivel which we can see on every other MOO. The
convenience
and facility of the feature is in and of itself destructive and
insidious.
Have we really created a MOO so that people can hug one another and nod
and
cackle with insane glee?
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Terry
Date: 21 August 1996
Subject: Re: The blue bicycle
Gabe,
First, I did check my bank records... and no deposit. I'm positive I've
not received it. :)
Second, I put alot of time and effort into coding #147. It is your
*opinion* that it is spammy. It's my opinion that it's *useful*. Cest
la Vie, that's life and what makes the world go around. We are both
right, and both wrong. negatron had the perfect solution, however.
Thanks, John... you've interceded once again and been the truce maker.
As for me misleading, I don't think so. You made the statement that you
wanted it gone. Period. That's when I told you I'd put alot of hard
work
into it. NEway. I keep thinking that, someday, we'll run out of things
to
quarrel about. Got my fingers crossed. :)
Gotta run, I'm exhausted.
Teri
From: Joy
Date: 21 August 1996
Subject: so you wanted some mail
joyful or killjoy take yr pick...
"i bet you could write some bitchin' email" he said. [deleted] it
worked, mainly for completely unrelated reasons..why recruit me? i
could sit around and bitch all day about the morons in orange that
surround me blah blah the thriving metropolis that i live in blah blah
but these things are so old, [new and improved?] he told me "You don't
seem like a different person. You seem like the same person with
different problems" he hadn't seen me in a few months My psy chuckled.
i haven't heard from him in a few wks, i lost contact and damnit that
roommate of mine never wrote down a single fucking call i got, just
erased them even though i had never heard them. i found it
mildly amusing how she reminded me of her. they both had the same kind
of
knick-knacks (horrible word, yes i know, isn't it great?), things
packaged - so obviously not western. western would be long and thin
w/sharp angles. garish. tacky. bright. these were all smooth and round
and aesthetically interesting.
can kind of see where they are coming from.. i still need to downsize,
as
usual. i'm probably doing about as good a job of it as the gov't (any
gov't,
it doesn't really matter which) Into the room, the ever-hostile angry
guest
with the sharp too-clever tongue. quite impossible to talk to. talk not
listen.
narrow. devoted. so singular. everything with a diff't kind of
flattened
affect, it was terraced.. terraced dynamics (think Baroque) i really
don't
like 'Louis XVI' (and pals') style furniture. it's disgusting. so
ornate
i wish i could puke just to get the nausea out of my system. and that
lurid
goldleaf paint. lots of times with cream material, i just associated
Versailles
with these things.. (i don't know why) i hate the color cream.
[deleted]
they started telling me about things that didn't really affect me but
Not
The Way i told him to register to vote so he could at least vote
against
Dole but he was so apathetic he said "You know how i feel about
politics" told him that he would care once someone like D was in power
and was impeding his rights..he shrugeed. had a freaky book cloth bound
gold inprinting comparisons of the diff't gospels - [deleted] started
reading the diff't versions of the
Apocalypse. one of them mentioned pestilence and plague, but the others
didn't.
plague and something else, for sure..i started recognizing passages..
something
about man against man brother against brother..and i flipped to another
part
and it was going on about sheep and goats and shit. amused yet scared
at
the same time. blind faith scares the hell out of me. i don't
understand it.
never had it. don't know how to have it. it was a free-for-all anyone
could
worship whatever the ehll they wanted but we were such a busy family no
one
really had any time anyways..[deleted] this guy named M he unnerves me,
would
talk about all of this metaphysical shit and drum circles and spirits
and
chemistry and the galaxy and he's very knowledgable in alot of things
but
the wild look in his eyes.... and the voice bothers me also. i can hear
it
now. was so annoyed Anafranil man was wrinkled/crumpled and the
sleeping right
eye was smeared with something hope it's not a lost cause.. [deleted]
and
he said something about the mtv generation, in his usual haughty way.
But
it doesn't matter anymore, [deleted] what made me suspicious about it
all
was the way i felt i was being recruited for the army. someone had to
be
getting money somewhere, and i didn't see any headed my way. someone
had to
be making a profit. (someone, somewhere, always makes a profit) why
else would
he say such flattering things (that of course i'll never be able to
live
up to, assuming that they are even serious) i could have slammed back
some
[deleted] didn't really feel like cooperating with someone of that
nature. what do they want from me? they've never wanted anything before
except the opportunity to slam every single statement i made, showing
the flaws in logic, or misspellings. in their sneering tone. (to what
gain?) never made any promises, [deleted] so what was the point anyway?
"It's not in my place to say anything" / something abou;t 147. some
verb. some computer thing. a controversy. [deleted] if given #147 (or
whatever # it was) i wouldn't know what to do with it. maybe
look at it, slightly puzzled, for a few seconds and then rid myself of
it.
Pro: aids the lazy Vs. Anti:whole pt of rlmoo. this is what i have
gathered,
in some form or fashion. not something i really want to deal with (it's
what
this was all about, wasn't it? that was the whole point, to have you to
write
something in support of..) "it all should have been lumped as [filler]"
never
been a fan of moopolitics. no place of power or position within a moo,
never
known enough to be even remotely considered a 'hacker'. i am not a home
on
a keyboard, not a letter one, anyway. [deleted] "you've heard it all
before"
"it had an interesting flavour though" don't like trucks. like the
isuzu
commercials with the oriental man though.doesn't seem like there would
be
a need for it. there's already stuff proffed in for laugh/clap etc.
/never
quite the black and white issue it would seem/ not out to attack
anyone.
Teri was very VERY patient in helping me acquire a character, i don't
know
her very well.. but so soon everything seems to take sides.. i asked
who
was the head of this place. as expected, several names were mentioned
with
leadering in different vague areas... "not I" said that Cat...
From: Werner
Date: 22 August 1996
Subject: A la recherche du Gabriel perdu
Message 1:
Date: Wed Aug 21 14:31:29 1996 AKDT
From: SAGReiss
To: Werner
Subject: Dead Bucephalus
Last night the 'puter died. I must send it back to the shop. We shall
therefore be an intermittant presence for two or three weeks. If
you wouldn't mind forwarding this letter to the World (to forward
it to your e-mail, just type "@netforward <message number (w/o #
sign)>, I would appreciate it. Due toncal problems, my e-mail
address will be the old one for a while. The last letter I've received
is Teri's "Re: The blue bicycle". Please add this address to your
mailing list and forward any lost mail. I apologize for
the inconvenience. I'll write a proper e-mail tomorrow. Right now I'm
going
to drown my sorrows in drink. StiffLips is probably thrilled: "Now the
bastard
won't be able to spend on the fucking 'puter." Vale.
From: Nichelle
Date: 24 August 1996
Subject: Let your mind sour!
Other than the fact that the 'puter has died (we're both in the lab
right now) things are generally looking up. I got a job at the college
library checking
out books at the circulation desk. I've got a beautiful new bike, a
kitten,
and soon a computer account at the college, and after that a new
computer.
What, does this list die every time Gabriel goes on vacation? I had
planned to reply to Teri's letter the day of the big crash, so I shall
try to do it
now. I have been the peacemaker between Teri and Gabriel several times,
but
that's not what I'm after today. Please keep in mind, all of you, that
I
am not some clone of SAGReiss.
What is all of this garbage about people's *opinions* and we're both
right and we're both wrong and all this bullshit? Even after several
days, as I sit down to write this letter, and read what Teri wrote, I
get very upset all over again. We have *all* put a lot of hard work
into this. This is not about hard work. This is about feature #147,
gender Spivak, and probably a
truckload of other problems which will come up in the future. I'm tired
of
dealing with things on the level of petty power struggles, saying this
or
that because we don't want to offend this person, arguing about this
other thing just because he said it, or because I didn't like the way
it was said.
We've got a MOO. We've got something nobody else has- all tied together
between the web and the MOO and the listserv- we've got the potential
to
do something that we can't do on Lambda. The only way it *works* is if
you
*SAY* something. You can't say something if you just type 'giggle
Nichelle'
or 'grin WernerH'. You can't say something if your only contribution is
an
occasional letter to the e-mail list saying Gabe was wrong to call
somebody
a cunt. Stop reacting. DO something. SAY something. And say something
real,
tell the truth.
An example- this guy who built the room on RL. Don't get mad yet, I
don't want to dig up anything... But he built the *same room* he has on
all of his
other moos. (We've got it logged- he told us this.) Don't you see, that
is
the problem? So use these silly features and genders on other MOOs. Our
MOO
is different. Use the extra few keystrokes to say what you really
*mean*, not just what the canned verb has to say. It isn't about work.
Do you know how long Gabe recruited people for this listserv? How much
time and energy it has taken me to learn to make web pages, to use html?
I think the problem is this: Gabe is the one who said something about
it. Fuck convenience. We make our own bread once or twice a week, and
it *tastes* better. If you have nothing to say, then don't bother to
talk. If you have something to say, say it. You want these things out
of habit. Fuck habit. It's the same thing on the MOO as on the list-
you're willing to criticize when Allset writes a letter, or when I
write something personal, but who is
willing to stick his/her neck out like that? I don't need to read
another letter that says "I'm so glad I have a normal life." If you
have something to say, you don't need features which say things for
you. If we put it up to a vote among the people who go to our MOO, I
believe most of the members of the MOO would vote against canned verbs,
gender Spivak, etc. What, we requre
real names but not real genders???
Yes, this is a strong letter, and I'm sure I have made at least a few
of you very angry. But before you sit down to write me a letter telling
me I'm a jerk, think about what I said. When we're on RL MOO, can't we
just do without the fast food, MTV, remote control mentality? That's
the problem with convenience: you comprimise quality. These details
matter. If we can't change these things, if we can't speak our own
minds, if we really don't have anything to say, then we've only made
another Lambda.
-Stiff Lips
From: Terry
Date: 24 August 1996
Subject: Re: Let your mind sour!
*sigh*
You missed my point.
RL is real life. I do what I *want* to do. If it's canned, fine... I
may be too tired to do elsewise. If I want to emote, I can. Free MOO.
As for not
wanting #147, @gag it.
You guys have said it like you thought, so I will, too.
It's not anyone's fuckin' MOO. I will not be told by anyone how I
should MOO; whether it's RL or another. Just because Gabe and Stiff
Lips have *their* idea of what RLMOO is, doesn't make it gospel. This
is what I was alluding to when I hit the matter of opinions... everyone
has their own opinion of something. Whether it be a MOO or not. And
their opinion is *their's*. And opinion can't be right or wrong. It's a
damned opinion. I'm entitled to MOO like I want to and if I want to use
canned verbs every fuckin' day, I can. I'm the one paying my ISP for
this connection.
As for RLMOO, where is everyone??? I bet we're not having 10 logins a
day. Hell, probably not even that many. I'll check. :)
If I sound mad, I don't mean to. I'm just tired of all the stupid
MOOshit. Geez, I have more to do than to squabble over such trifle
matters.
Bite me,
Teri
From: Werner
Date: 24 August 1996
Subject: Re: Let your mind sour!
Nichelle: you hit the nail on the head when you stress the need for RL
to try to be different. One does not judge by 'population counts',
becaouse it's
obvious that if RL offered the equivalent of MTV we would have
truckloads of (mentally) teen idiots there. Instead, we only got a very
small handful of them, which is something good, undeniably: a small
sign of progress. The replication of MOOlife patterns over the dozens
of MOOs available speaks against
them: I don't feel like attacking Lambda because Lambda is the way most
of
us met, being the largest one, but so many other MOOs are replicas of
miserable
attempts by frustrated hackers to carve their small niche of power
(yes,
I am referring to the breeding of wizards out of MOO fights, this
ridiculous
"I'll go and open my own MOO and then I will toad the hell out of those
I
hate").
I don't think that Gabriel opened RL for having power, but for having a
space where brains would interact, not fingertips. So, Nichelle, I
think
you are completely right in your last letter.
Teri: Let us use some logic, Teri, I am not here to fight, I am just
getting seriously annoyed by this display of childishness. Nobody is
telling you that
you should not use your verbs (at least if you coded them yourself they
won't
be canned but something like 'homemade'), but when you say that YOU
have
the right to use them you are right: you are wrong when you say that
for
you to have that right everybody else who disagrees with you should
have to
gag that feature. Now, since that features is so strongly opposed
within RL,
why don't you transform it into a verb on your own character, something
you
can use free of guilt (it's your verb, you like to use it, you are
tired, you pay for your dial-in), instead of making it a free gift to
every new character?
I hope you see all the difference that goes between, say, cultivating
your
own religion for your private needs and, on the opposite hand, handing
out
free copies of cheap bibles in a club that is made up of non religious
people.
I hope the analogy helps.
(Besides, Teri, I am sure that you have MOOs where you would have more
satisfaction in displaying your coding efforts than doing so in the
desert of RL, where people are so little interested in technicalities,
by the way).
Goodnight.
Werner
From: Colin
Date: 25 August 1996
Subject: Bibliomancy
Y'a longtemps qu'on fait d'la politique vingt ans de guerre contre les
moustiques
Captain Cat: I'll tell you no lies. The only sea I saw was the seesaw
sea with you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your
thighs.
Rosie Probert: Knock twice, Jack, at the door of my grave and ask for
Rosie.
Captain Cat: Rosie Probert.
Rosie Probert: Remember her. She is forgetting. The earth which filled
her mouth is vanishing from her. Remember me. I have forgotten you. I
am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever. I have forgotten
that I was ever born.
McCann: But everything's layed on. The Guests are expected.
Stanley: Guests? What guests?
McCann: Myself for one. I had the honor of an invitation.
Stanley (moving away): I wouldn't call it an honor, would you? It'll
just be another booze-up.
McCann: But it's an honor.
Stanley: I'd say you were exaggerating.
McCann: Oh no. I'd say it was an honor.
Stanley: I'd say that was plain stupid.
McCann: Ah no.
From: Terry
Date: 25 August 1996
Subject: Re: Let your mind sour!
Display of childishness?
Um, excuse me... but some of you people are so snobbish it's not even
funny. If someone doesn't fit your idea of *acceptable*, then they just
suck, don't they? I've been backed into a corner time after time over
RLMOO and then you
people have the audicity to think I act childish? It's not
childishness, you
silly elitists, it's called acting defensively.
Let's see a few of you get virtually attacked almost weekly. Then let's
see how you react. Just remember this: EVERYTHING you do on RLMOO is
because John and I worked our asses off to get it there. A MOO comes
with nothing but the core. Nothing.
You know, I'm so tired of this MOOshit. I'm tired of you snobs not
liking what I've done. If you don't want #147, @rmfeature #147. Geesh.
How hard can
that be? If you don't want to see it in use, @gag #147. John had the
perfect
solution; but oh no, you big babies aren't happy with a goddamned thing
unless
you get your whole fuckin' way every shittin' time. Talk about ME being
childish.
Pissed more and more with this crowd,
Teri
From: SAGReiss
Date: 25 August 1996
Subject: Baiseuese mignonne
I got me a frat boy this morning, dropped a glass of ice water right
down his back. To his credit he didn't scream or even flinch. My
effusive apologies were greeted with courtesy. I don't know what
happened. They guy at the next table, who was laughing so hard he could
barely speak, said I tripped on an
ice cube. Whatever. I cut my hand picking up the glass. I comped his
brunch. His gf kept flirting with me after I lit her cigarette. What
the fuck is wrong
with this country? Is it that weird that I light someone's cigarette?
Something
else happened in the midst of monster madness and seventy-five covers,
something
even better than my earning one hundred dollars with no problems. One
of
my former students came in with his mother. I was happy to see him.
He's
a good kid and was a good student. He is also a journalism major and
once
wrote a term paper researching the true causes of why SU fired me. Get
my
thinking? I gave him the address of the web pages and RL MOO. This boy
might
put us on the map. One weird-scathing article in the Daily Orange (I'm
not
making up that fucking title.) and we could have a thousand visits in a
week
and possibly create a controversy big enough to reach beyond this hick
town.
This other guest was some French-German Euroasshole with a foul mouth.
I
liked him and he asked for my phone number so I could tutor his son in
German.
A mother, meanwhile, tried to fix the boy up with her daughter, a
beautiful
little SUslut or sorority bitch. I said: "C'est mignon, ca." The
Frenchman
answered: "[The poor girl is sitting right there.] Attention, c'est une
baiseuse.
Ca se voit." The son and I are trying not to laugh at his father's
charming
little remark. Anyway I doubt the boy will call me. He was probably
just
humouring the old man. He recommended "Les Memoires de Casanova" which
I
shall read since I have no 'puter.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 27 August 1996
Subject: Cornhole
I forgot to mention the mother's reaction as these two grizzled men
discussed her daughter's sexuality in crude French and German: she was
beaming and gushing
about her daughter's exposure to high Eurokulture: "I love the French
language."
We are all tired. I'm off today after thirteen shifts in fourteen
grueling
days, a physically tough, mentally stressful, morally tiring job.
Nichelle
worked ten and a half hours on her feet. I'm in pretty good shape,
after
fifteen years of chain-smoking alcoholism. I can walk six miles in an
hour
and a half without being winded. I once described myself thus: "I am
thirty
years old. My face looks ten years older. My body looks ten years
younger.
My mind could be twenty years older or younger." Anyway (on the
convenience/fatigue
debate) we still went home and Nichelle husted corn and cut garlic as I
washed
and cut spinach and prepared two live lobsters for hellfire and death.
We
had a delicious dinner. I shall make bread today. As to prick/cock/dick
etc.
(a question that provoked a tantrum which I only stayed by criticizing
the
letter entitled "Let your mind sour!" which I thought should have
commented
on the use of asterisks around the words "opinion" and "useful" rather
than,
for example, a parallel construction using the words "spammy" and
"useful".
Another argument, as I recall, was that someone worked very hard to
build
the fucking cockatoo, but I still don't like the motherfucking thing.
While
I'm at it, I forgot to mention that I could come to no serious
conclusions
about the metre of either Dante or Michelangelo. I translated the
former
into prose and the latter into iambic pentametre. I simply let the
rhyme
guide my choice of rhythm. As we know rhyme and rhythm have the same
etymology
and are simply two aspects of the phonetic structure of a poem.
Interestingly
the German word for alliteration is Stabreim and we know that Germanic
verse
used alliteration and not rhyme, which even Milton considered Eurofag
bullshit,
though many of his poems rhyme) I tend to use all three words depending
on
phonetic context. I especially like the word cunt in English (because
of
Tropic of Capricorn and for many other reasons) and con in French
(because
of Miller's wild book entitled "J'suis pas plus con qu'un autre") and
futz
and pfiefele in Alsatian (because they are such loveable words). I'm
going
to search for a job and run some errands. Vale.
From: Murder
Date: 28 August 1996
Subject: Cowville
I've been following the posts of the last couple of weeks with great
interest. It's always comforting to know that I can come back after a
vacation and find
that the same people are still arguing and flaming each other. My trip
to
NYC was quite an experience. If I weren't on such a limited budget I
would have tried out many other restaurants on Restaurant Row, but I
mostly had cinnamon rolls and juice for breakfast, sandwiches for
lunch, and a different dinner every night. I am not as much a
connoisseur of international foods as most of you seem to be. That may
be just as well given my current financial situation. Sat in on a
analysis session given at the Manhattan Chess Club by an International
Master (FIDE rating 2300-2499--one step below Grandmaster) and learned
quite a lot. The Convention highlight for me was the performance by
Emmanuel Pahud, principal in Berlin, of the Dutilleux Sonatine and the
Faure Sonata in A. His performance was head-and-shoulders above every
one else's at the Convention. What made me sick was the fact that he is
only twenty-six
and landed the BPO job when he was twenty-three. He has supreme mastery
of
his instrument and musically is far superior to any up-and-coming
instrumentalist
I have heard in a long time. His range of dynamics (yes, Stiff Lips,
the
flute is actually capable of dynamic differentiation) and tone colors
is
comparable to such artists as Horowitz and Callas. The competitions
were
a bit of a disappointment, though. I expected a higher level of
playing. Makes
me want to practice enough to send in a respectable tape next year. I
did
meet a Rebecca at the Convention, but I doubt if it is the same one
that
has made her appearance on this list. This town is gearing up for the
annual
rodeo. I will escape to my parents' place for the weekend to avoid the
flying
cow-dung. Found a job for the school year working in the music library
here.
Nothing else to report. My life is boring as hell.
Murder
From: Murder
Date: 30 August 1996
Subject: Der Grosse Apell
Woke up this morning with a slight headache after last night's White
Zinfandel 1995. Yeah, I know, not exactly a choice vintage, but it
served its purpose. I was helping a friend move some couches into his
apartment and he ended up
making us a 2:00 A.M. breakfast of eggs, corn, and wine. I have to go
into
major ass-kissing mode this morning because I am going to phone Leone
Buyse,
the flute prof at UMich, and interview her for my "Preparing for
Competitions" paper to be published next year. UMich is a program I am
very interested in,
so I have to ask her if she foresees an opening for a grad assistant
position
for fall '97. When I called her this morning she was very congenial,
which
met my expectations because of the outstanding reputation she has in
the
music world. Gabe, I'm sorry my letters are not up to your standard
(whatever that means), but I write with a very different purpose than
you do. I thought one of the original criteria for this list was that
one is free to write whatever
one wants. If you wanted a list chock-full of literary geniuses, then I
certainly
don't understand the reason that you picked me. I don't speak a
bazillion
languages. I don't need to, at least under my present circumstances.
Maybe
that will change, though. I don't even speak English very well. Before
I
sent my last letter I did realize that you wouldn't let my omission of
the
"Chessfuhrer's" name go unnoticed. He introduced himself to me merely
as
"Taag," or something like that, in a relatively thick Czech (no pun
intended) accent. He has played most of the greats, including Kasparov,
Karpov, Walter Browne, etc. This morning I listened to one of the
greatest passages in symphonic music: the "Grosse Apell" (Mahler
misspelled this in the autograph as "Appell") section of the fifth
movement of the Resurrection. The way GM orchestrates the two sets of
offstage trumpets against the horn, timp, and flute on stage is nothing
short of masterly. The "Bird of Death" phrase invented by musicologists
is cliche'. The passage doesn't need words to "describe" the music.
This harks
back to what I said in an earlier letter about certain concepts
transcending words. I know the context was completely different, but
here again, words can never tell the whole story. Words are merely
symbols, representations, often inaccurate. I'm leaving for Spokane
immediately after conducting my interview with Ms. Buyse, so I'll be
back Tuesday.
Murder
From: Nichelle
Date: 30 August 1996
Subject: Las ovejas
"I write while everyone else reads, mine mine mine, I work harder than
anyone else..." Everyone else reads and only responds to you? (Of
course you could argue that this is merely a response to your letter,
but...) I don't think so, Gaby. Maybe you ought to dig through that
file cabinet drawer you've got
stuffed with old e-mail and dig out a few of my letters. I made my
entrance into this World with my Tale of Terror, and I've done a
respectable job since then, at least enough to hold my own. You had to
design the web site yourself? At least give me some credit for the RL
MOO web site. None of that shit would be there without me. A serious
challenge to the key of your ostensible power? I'm never one to brag,
or to push around my own weight (whatever the exact expression is), but
without me you would not have come this far.
Murder, I miss you, and I'm sorry I couldn't be with you in NYC. Soon,
my friend, we'll be drinking coffee and eating dessert at the cafe
Delizioso, if they let me in. I guess I bounced a check there about a
week before I left
town. So brush up your C.P.E. Bach and Ostransky. I think you and
Werner need
to meet online (I also think you need to get your ass on the MOO one of
these
days.) and talk. A man came into the bookstore where I worked this week
whose
name was Werner, and I thought of you, WH. I probably sold Lou and C.
Kate
their textbooks. (I was the fat one with the curly hair and the blue
apron.)
It was a hellish four days, stapling the receipts for all of those
horrible
frat boys and sorority bitches who came through my line. ("And she's
like,
No way!, and I'm like oh yeah, she has her eyebrows done there, and
she's
like all smiling at me but you know she's just a slut...") I ran into
an
old acquantance (actually, one of my brother's ex-girlfriends) named
Felicia
Le Cou (not going to make Murder's mistake of leaving out the name) who
is
nearly as dreadful as she was when she used to call my brother twice a
day.
("You tell him I'm still mad at him. Is he still married to that girl
from
Berkley?") Murder, I thought the "Bird of Death" was the Re-Do bird
from
Helensburg. I'm getting nowhere. When I read Gaby's letter this
morning, I
had a million things to say, but we've been to Price Chopper and up to
Westcott
Theater (which wasn't even open) and I'm not in the mood to write a
letter
now. It seems like there was more. Still, there are a million details
you
have all left out, not just the name of the "Chessfuhrer", but I wonder
about
these things, where is your computer? In the living room, in the
bedroom or
study? What do you eat, how often do you make love, what do you call
your cock during netsex? (I believe the official answer, Allset, is
that it depends on the context.)
I'm tired. Gaby keeps talking about Lou and Kate. I'm going home to eat
veal liver with Gaby. I was a vegetarina when I came here.
-Stiff Lips
From: SAGReiss
Date: 31 August 1996
Subject: Touche
Don't give me this shit. I complain because the listserv is too much
mine and you tell me I'm being possessive? I shouldn't need to remind
you that I work harder in my sleep than anyone you have ever met works
awake. You cry
and whine about a couple of ten hour shifts? Those Jew bitches from New
Jersey
give you a hard time? I do this every day, sweetheart. You seem to
forget
the Villanova game, when I worked a seven-day week topped off by a
twelve
hour shift, went home for a few hours and worked another eighteen
hours.
What about the two years I spent at the Farfalla working seven days a
week,
fifteen hours a day or more for no pay? How about Bastille Day 1994,
when
I began on the thirteenth at ten in the morning and worked straight
through
until midnight on the fifteenth with no sleep? Don't make me laugh.
While
I was doing that I was writing my master's thesis on cocktail napkins.
If
you really make me mad, I'll just cut and paste twenty or thirty pages
of
it and mail the whole fucking thing to the list, and I don't give a
fuck that
it's in French. Kennsch nitt Elsasisch rede wie andere liet? Then I go
home
and make you a delicious dinner. What, have I turned you into some kind
of
blood-thirsty carnivour? Bullshit. I've just showed you what every
Frenchman
is born knowing, that good things were put on the Earth to be eaten and
enjoyed.
I don't give a fuck. Drink diet coke and skim milk and diet all you
want
and I'll still outrun you any day of the week. BTW I just popped that
fucking
blister I got broiling that delicious calf's liver last night. And you
complain
about what we eat? No one on this list eats half as well as we do. Eat
fucking
tofu and cabbage for all I care. I'll share a lovely supper with
Matilda.
Murder, I didn't want to criticize your writing, which is getting
better.
This isn't meant for literary genius only. It doesn't take literary
genius.
It takes hard work. Of course you should have written whatever you knew
about
the Chessfuhrer's name. That would have given Werner the opportunity to
exercise
his vast Eurokulture by mentioning that "Check mate" is an
approximation
of "The king is dead" in the czeck language. The point is not who can
write
the most or the best, but how can we all create some kind of
multi-media
polymorphous novel in real time and (whatever the opposite of real time
is).
Sure, I had the idea first, bite me. I know damned well who made the
web
page (Jude, the Obscure One) and who has embellished it (Stiff Lips).
We
can all do out part. Everyone has something to contribute, and I'll
eventually
get around to toading those who do not. Same to you, Jade. My criticism
was
harsh, I admit, but not uncalled-for or unjustified. Nothing lost, sit
down
right now and write a better letter. Tell me about that stupid
bitch-cunt
who actually ordered two egg whites sunny-side up. Life is weird enough
without
having to make shit up. Fuck all of you, I'm going to MOO. RECTVM
VINVM.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 31 August 1996
Subject: (no subject)
Stiff Lips didn't quite like my last letter, so I'll write a new one, a
short one while waiting for something to happen on RL MOO or Lambda to
go
up. This morning I was on room service and walked into a room and saw a
wedding
gown hanging up and asked: "Are you getting married? Not to me, I
hope."
"No you didn't make any false promises last night." "Thanks, I wasn't
sure."
As I left the room I said: "Have a happy divorce." No wonder my bosses
don't
like me...
July 1996
September 1996
vr: 1996
