vr

a novel

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

September 1996

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

From: Joy
Date: 1 September 1996
Subject: asfdl

wow, things are certainly up and going, i'm about ready to break this computer, enough about that. i have no idea about what all of the ChessFucking big deal is. not sure i even really care to know. it all sounds pretty pretentious and banal... but hey, i'm just an ignorant plant, what the fuck do i know?
some may claim that it's not a prerequisite to have a vast background on the classics of western literature for this kind of thing, but i'm not sure that i can agree..
i hate humidity and it's getting worse here. all the time. things are going downhill here.. not going to bore you with all of the nonsense. RLMOO? heh. there's a project in one of my classes.. we aren't supposed to use the computer or watch tv or listen to the radio.. most of the time that i log in there's no one there.. not that that surprises me a whole lot. the majority of mooers aren't into that kind of .. thinking? the most likely place we can think of is lagda's lr. on the rare occasions that we grace lagda we broadcast it's existence freely.. so far, we've only met one person/char/thing that's ever even heard of it... Wow, you know, i reaally thought that i had gotten away from the music equiv of literary bs when i burned my bridges / dissappeared / left the 'serious' music world forever. who cares how the fuck Mahler spelled something? i can't stand most of his stuff anyways. Minor keys, damnit. That's a start..
i'm sick and grumpy, can you tell? unfortunately i'm also hitting my circadean rhythms again.. i just want to crawl into / hide under the covers and sleep. right now, i would think it a good thing to sleep for the rest of my life.. helllooo hibernation.
the slimy creepy speeder crept nearer as i continued my completely delerious babbling. monday there is a thing here.. an event i guess one could say.. it's bigger than the 4th of July.. it's called 'Boomsday'. it's literally tax dollars going up in smoke. (meanwhile the crowd just goes 'oooooo look at the pretty fireworks') It's not even close to New Year's. yes procrastination, such an amazing thing. i'm really paranoid that my car is no longer where i parked it.
they came in droves, by the hundreds and the thousands. drunk, inbred, orange wearing noisy morons, all fit to be shot. or disemboweled. take yr pick. they all congregated like a crazed cult into an area not too far from where i currently hide from the world / my room. memorized by something that i cannot see, understand, or possibly comprehend. i am aghast and run for cover. one used to be able to make money from these desperate and crazed humans, but Big Brother took care of that. funny how those who say 'fuck the system fuck the system' get a growing crowd and soon they are the system. cycles cycles has anything really changed in the last 4000 yrs for humans? the machine and gizmoes created, run on energy sources other than the humans.. the machines do all of the real work.  i wonder what people from countries like the Central African Republic think of the people (mainly females), living a life of comparitive luxury, who fret and struggle in an attempt to lose weight. the only way i can figure anything relative, or at least closer to what i know, is to tell a sorority chick that she needs butt implants. i have spent over 2 hrs this eve/morning obsessively cutting off all of my split ends. i always chuckle when i find them on my silver hairs. i want to drink, right now from a psychological (not yet physical) standpoint. it is not that difficult for me to imagine myself an alcoholic. and i have a bottle of some kick ass sake around here somewhere.. addictions are expensive and impractical. take eating. oh wait that reminds me, does anyone else have a problem with the IDEA of eating molluscs??? more on that one later...

From: Joy
Date: 1 September 1996
Subject: food concepts, phobias, and other fun things

when i mean food concept i'm not talking about necessarily the moral aspect of eating something.. more like the repulsive factor involved. like eating chicken and seeing little dark red veins and shit. that kind of stuff. lots of split ends, even now. eruc so i have a problem with eating molluscs. there's a hard shell and then there's this mushy stuff and people eat the mushy stuff! gross! i bet quite a few of the them are filter feeders too. disgusting. a dnif when i saw how clams moved, looking like demented pac-mans, and then heard that people (oh wait, maybe oysters? i don't remember) eat the wiggling mushy part i was horrified. eat pac-man's tongue?? i'm not surprised that everyone talks about the world going to hell in a handbasket. who the hell thought up that phrase anyway? ssenkcis need bath the last time i had shrimp i couldn't even swallow it. i'm not talking about poor-quality shrimp here either, and it had nothing to do with the taste. the feeling of the COLD SLIMY MEMBRANE against the roof of my mouth... i get shivers just typing this. siht thgif. need sleep. i've never been in the live presence of anyone eating lobster or crab or anything. i tend to vacate the area.. my food phobia would have to be eggs. the smell of eggs makes me nauseous, yet at the same time there's this strange allure. anyway, what i find to be the most disturbing thing is seeing one. not straight out of the fridge, mind you, but a hard boiled or soft boiled egg. my friends didn't believe me a few yrs ago and tried to make me eat one (i shook in fear/trauma, still haven't recovered) i watched in complete amazement, the person next to me was eating the yellowygreenish shit in the middle! EGADS!! i'm feeling queasy just typing this. of course, i've been sickish for a few wks now, but.. tsum i. i'm mystified by all of this. i'm sure freud would have a heyday.
i've always been reluctant to try new foods. ach, who needs variety? i'm sure all of the cooking related types would abhore my current diet. (i find it rather abhoring myself, for the past few weeks) me? a cook? i'm probably about as much of a cook as negatron, the Fast Food Fan. Did you know that it snows all the time in Canada? It does. And everyone should go to Alberta to see the scenic Athabasca Tar Sands, it's worth the trip. i don't understand how some people can live on completely flat land, with no hills even in sight. can some flatlander explain this phenomenom to me? i had this great idea of taking a humongous map of the US and Canada and plotting down all the holstein cow pastures. then i thought it would be cool to plot the pastures for the other types of cows (in different colors, of course) this brilliant and exciting plan was quickly dropped when funding turned up short.
prefere the moins straightdrawrof approach? snort. snort. you too can join the Partnership for a Cod Free America!! You don't even have to live there!! You can join anyway!! No membership Fees!! Heck, no fees at all!! oh.. nevermind
son, with yr talent and my genius we can make you a star! i'll manage, you'll be rich and famous - you'll be a star - waddya say
and now, for yr reading enjoyment, a few lyrics from the NWA song 'Gangsta Gangsta'

Gangsta Gangsta
It's not about a salary it's all about reality
(repeat)
.....
she said 'i got a boyfriend'
bitch stop lyin'
dumbass hooka ain't nut'in but a dyke
suck me ya see, some niggas that i don't like
....

the guys who wrote that made alllooooott of money. could someone please explain this to me?

enough of this rambling. tell me about what you do/don't eat

From: SAGReiss
Date: 1 September 1996
Subject: Fuck you, Kirby

Stiff Lips' father made up all kinds of stupid lies about our life and told them to her mother on the phone as he tried to weasel his way out of a promise to buy his daughter a 'puter, something about carrots, a bad neighborhood and why can't a thirty-two-year-old man get a real job. What, like working for the fucking boyscouts? Fortunately he can't really hold his liquor so the beer, whisky and wine blinded him to my own consumption of beer, Ricard, wine and whisky. I had a good day. A party of twenty-three for brunch and I wrote in the thirty-five-dollar tip, which she must not have noticed 'cause she left another twenty-five bucks on the table. Fed a steady diet of Europessimism for many years, I usually commit the dreaded sin in Amerika of not being positive. In Europe and intellectual (or even the oddball Amerikan) can occasionally get away with saying things like: "Die Sprache ist eine Gefaengnis," and not look too foolish (even if I'm not sure of the gender). I'm not exactly sure how this would come off in an Amerikan uni. Anyway just to show you that not everything I say is hypercritical and fuck-you-feel-bad, I will point out that Joy's letter today is the work of a clever, skilled writer. If you are not getting straight As in English, your profs are all assholes and you can tell them I said so. I would also bring to your attention that that was not an easy letter to write, though with enough practice anything becomes easy, even getting up at four in the morning... Writing in the present is not easy. It's much easier to tell a story (usually in the past). When I tell tales I feel oddly passive. My body becomes the medium through which events pass from real life to the printed page. Much harder is to sustain a thought the way Joy did. Felicitations. Also, Werner, I am very impressed. Finally I have a friend who is not a disgrace to the ground he walks on, someone who has had a modicum of success in the field of his choice. I know a professor at a prestigious, high-cost university and it's not some bullshit English prof, but someone teaching a real subject, mathematics. Everyone else I know is desperately wondering how to pay the rent, where to find money for cigarettes and alcohol for the week. It's true that I don't have a respectable job. I work for the Man. You will get tenure (if you don't act like me and piss everybody off) and you will be the Man. Will you marry me? Why don't you try to figure out a way to use the vast resources of your venerable institution to make some publicity for the list/web/MOO, again, some kind of multi-media presentation you could write/make to the National Association of Technology Nerds conference? Oops, I can't marry you, Werner. I'm marrying negatron's sister and Stiff Lips is marrying negatron so we can get the fuck out of this dead land. The idea of kissing a member of negatron's close family makes me a little uneasy, but Paris vaut bien une messe and so does Quebec City. Actually I think we're planning to move to Boston next year so Stiff Lips can go to Boston College and I can work in another dumbass hotel or restaurant. I think I've just about worn out my welcome in this town and I hate it...

From: Nichelle
Date: 1 September 1996
Subject: The cheesecake that ate Manhattan

What we eat, killjoy, you already know. According to Gabriel, I don't like it as much as I thought I did. I made an ass-kicking cheesecake which we have eaten for dessert the last few nights, so now I have the status among all of Gabriel's gfs (past and present) of the best blowjobs and most delicious cheesecakes. Last night on the telephone, my stepmother asked me if Gabriel inherited the traits of the frenchmen. "What do you mean, traits of the frenchmen?" "They grumble about everything. Men from France are always grumbling about everything all the time." Needless to say, I got a hearty giggle out of that one. Yes, my father is an asshole, but at least I had the pleasure of hearing that my mother told him "Fuck you, Kirby" the other day on the phone. He told her that Gabriel was dominating me, he could tell by the fact that I looked sheepish and apologized for not putting out the carrots before supper, "Sorry, I hope it didn't ruin your dinner." Never mind that we didn't even eat carrots, and that the entire time Gaby was preparig dinner, I was in the living room being terrorized by dad. So no, he isn't dominating me, which probably disappoints at least one or two of you. When Gaby came home after writing his last e-mail, he was too tired to spend time with me, so I took care of business in the shower and sat down at the table ashamed, bad enough my feelings about food and the shame of eating, but to also feel the shame of sex was too much, I guess. I enjoyed the cheesecake and coffee, but now my  stomach hurts. (Gaby, if I talked to you while you were writing e-mail as many times as you have interrupted me during this letter, you would have strangled me ten minutes ago.) Fuck. Now I've lost my train of thought.

From: Nichelle
Date: 2 September 1996
Subject: BABEL...

I woke up at nine-thirty to the pounding of the neighbor's stereo. What did I do to deserve this? I stayed up all night reading Gaby's book, Babel. I ate breakfast with him (coffee, cantaloupe, and rye bread with peanut butter and orange marmalade) then fell asleep at about 5:30. For the math teachers/profs in our studio audience, this is only four hours of sleep. My stomach aches, so I'll keep this short. The following letter is what I scrawled on a legal pad at 3:00 AM after finishing the book.

-Stiff Lips

From: Nichelle
Date: 2 September 1996
Subject: BABEL again

It's exactly 3 AM, I just finished reading Babel after staying up all night and drinking five cups of coffee. Not at all what I expected, and for those of you who are wondering, the copy is packed up in an old lamp box with one styrofoam packing-peanut and a warning label which came off some appliance (I assume the lamp.). If I had the cash to publish Gaby's "monsterpiece", I'd sell every copy in a lamp box, though I'd put the warning label on the outside, "Warning, don't read this novel if you're a PC asshole." I was hoping to be able to say, "Oh, now I understand Gaby a little better." but the man asleep in the next room seems a thousand years removed from those texts, or a thousand miles, or something like that. So, if anything, I suppose I have learned something about writing, if only that the God of LIterature is cruel to desert us to drown in Ann Rice while Scott Reiss sits in a lamp box in Syracuse, NY. For a man who thinks harder and works harder than everyone else, he certainly spends little enough time digging for publishers. If he hasn't got that motherfucker published in a year's time, I'll be tempted to publish it myself on the web.

"I shall live or die on this, these words you have in your hands. Either this is genius or I am not."

I can't believe it, the crazy life at SU spelled out so vividly in these mean, drunken e-mails. Gaby, you probably wonder why it took me so long to get around to reading your book. Don't be offended. It is amazing that I read it in one night, though only because I don't know any French. I can't tell you my reactions, all of them. Should I try? My insecurities are bad enough, yet after today's shower episode, I read your letters about (and to) a woman who couldn't keep up with you sexually, you wanted it 3 times a day... To read your letters about caressing a woman's neck and hair. To read your obvious hatred for fat girls. (What makes all these assholes think that they deserve only beautiful women.) How many times I have wished, since I first stepped off that horrible little plane, that I was a beautiful woman. How terrible I must be, a fat, ugly, ignorant native English speaker. Of course you're a pig. It would be nearly impossible for any human being possessing both a cunt and a brain to like you while reading your novel. It's a good thing you snore so loud, or else my cussing would have seriously impaired your beauty sleep. Still, one of the most beautiful letters wasthe one written by your five-year-old nephew about finding the key under the flower box. I wonder why the hell you haven't put that on the web. (By the way, I saw your transition from double-spacing after periods too, so don't give me any shit. You can save that for the people on this list who don't do either one consistently.) I didn't think much of the MOO logs, except that there was a guy on DU called laurent who spoke questionable English, and who seemed to think you were mean as a result of some sexual problem. Is this our own dear laurent? Of course I know the real reason you are mean on the MOO. I've seen it too many times. "Do yyou know the silent sound of fifty people all yelling at you at once ?" (Why the space before the question mark, anyway? You also did that consistently in the beginning.) Still you fight this same battle, it keeps showing up. Isn't it the same one we have even on our own little MOO? I still feel that I am missing something, since you start one sentence in French and fnish it in English, so I'm not sure that I really read your novel. Still so much guilt and shame, just for being American, and undergraduate scum. Can I help it that I was born in Spokane, WA? Does it really mean I'm horrible, uncultured, have no manners, have no, fuck, I don't know. You'll be getting out of bed soon enough, Gaby, and I'll make my trek up to the lab to type this to the World, come home and fall asleep with the printout taped to my forehead. This is all so strange. I can't believe the letters you wrote, can't believe I'm living here with you, my cyberdate, your live-in FWB. Nobody will believe this shit is read. ANyway, I wonder how you can say you love me and call me sweetheart and lollipop, whatever the word is. Anyone who reads this will tell you that you need some new lines. Asking a girl if you can look in her pants to check her real hair color is just a very, very awful line (which you used twice, at least in English in Babel). Just don't try it on the publisher.

-Stiff Lips

From: Terry
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: Web pages...

Well, I just successfully put up my first web page, if you're curious about me.

I've decided I like HTML. It's very easy. :) Finally, something I can do while I polish my fingernails.

Teri

From: Patricia
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: RE: BABEL again

Good Morning.

A couple of notes begfore I get started today. First, I never received any mail from joyful and i am disappointed. Please forward. Secondly, you should know that all of the mail sent to me from the www.dreamscape.com domain has arrived with a duplicate copy on its heels.

I've spent 3 of the last 5 days driving (or more often, being driven) back and forth to Memphis, TN. A little over a week ago my husband and I purchased a custom van, a deluxe rolling living room, and on this trip we slept in it, ate in it, talked and laughed and swore in it. It was the first time that I've been away from my daughter for more than 10 hours, and I'm glad to be home.

So, what do you do with your brain while your body sits belted in the same position for hours at a time? Yesterday, aside from being Labor Day, was my 31st birthday. An excellent oppurtunity to write a loving tribute to the woman whose 'labor' brought me into the world. Without putting a pen to paper, I quietly composed a story which might bring a tear to the eye of the sensitive reader. Don't worry, I won't publish it here. In fact, it will probably never cross the line from a 'thought story' to a written one.

I also wrote an angry letter to SAGReiss, and you may yet see that one on your screen. The last thing I did before leaving the MOO last week was defend him to one of my 'friends'. Funnily enough, at the time, it was the very last thing I felt like doing.

From: Kathleen
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: Re: BABEL again

Hello. I'm glad to find you harmless, sweetie.
over the course of two Tanquerays, I've decided to be happy a part.
Note my text book use of commas. A part. A men.

From: Nichelle
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: Test

This is a test. A message will be on the way soon from my new account.

-Stiff Lips

From: Joy
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: what a labor day

so can anyone explain to me why the fuck they call it labor day when no one goes to work? that outta my system.. Gabe: i have no idea what you are talking about. surely you jest.. shall you reah/daer woh ti tnew si ti tahw uoy tnaw ot ees? .. i complained about the lights (humorous ly) the xmas lights, you see they had the large bulbed outdoor types on the back porch over looking the river and they had 2 smaller strands indoors.. the last party/time i was here half of one of the inside strands was not lighting up for some strange mysterious reason. sure the music sucked and i am surrounded by beer drinking pot smoking people who sit around and study rocks but hey the lights.. the fireworks (during which i sat with my legs dangling over, staring at the fireworks like a retarded child looks at a flaming match) I also have to avoid getting a great view of the beer cup of the person above me, someone from the story below pulls my foot at the beginning i am spooked and couldn't tell   am i blocking their view so now my legs i am trying to pull them pu.. yawyna, kcab to eht sthgil.. i am digging my own grave, the owner of the lights.. so now this chick (enon fo siht si ni lacigolonorhc redor) no, not a chick this bitch is complaining about the music and it is beastie boys, a definite improvement over the oasis.. she is ugly. not fat. disgusting curly shit/piss coloured hair, like a poorly made bird's nest.. wants music that 'everyone' likes and does anyone mind if she changes it. i am (possibly) trashed in this cool chair, entertaining myself in (it spins! shit.. physics..) / in deep thought with a chicken in a kitchen /   i write that on my arm.. i consume lots of rice (yum!) and more rice.. and now i eat this strange shit called gumbo. i eat very little of this stuff. ko, now the owner of the lights, (and also the co owner of the apt)   arg i draw all over my right calf i have a black pen (risperal?) and i don't want    to be able to read it so i start writing in this altered runic alphabet shit thing that i write to (tm) in and i am on a roll, start writing and i want to remember these things that i am writing but i write them over and over each other so no one else can read it.. unfortunately before i can to decipher it out    has erased it, rubs index finger across it.. i like    .     is a good person.     and i get along in a way that reminds me of an old friend... the old friend is now a complete dropout/fuckup/pothead. lost contact with him awhile ago. 3yrs? 4yrs? these things i do not remember. just like i do not remember what i wrote on my arm. so i am th/here and there's a few young kids running about and the keg runs out so some try to go out and get some more beer, but the only thing they can find/afford is this budweiser shit (my mother drinks that stuff.. as negatron says (not verbatim) 'you drink that american piss water shit?' ) but i was good to go from the beginning, i drank the last half of my bottle of sake (j'adore..) but    also wanted some so i didn't get to drink all of the half and these two people came in they were tripping really hard and i am sitting on the couch with    (   is eating) so    gets up and starts shooting my sake (to my dismay, but i don't tell    that)    is good friends with    ..    on the porch now most everyone has gone and    ,   , and i are sitting in this little triangle,     and i are on the couch and    makes some comments to me right when     leaves and asks me if i want to stay the night with     and shit and i am almost in surprise..  .. arg.. yeh, t'nod teg em gnorw,    si ylemertxe dnik to em.. ha, s'ereht on laer tniop gniog otni ti ..alskdjf;aljk today is well i don't feel that great but my life has been pretty hellish for the past 3 wks or so so this is nothing new and i can no longer judge whether i've 'had a good time' or not.. HOWEVER. halloween is coming soon and i'm trying to figure out what i will be.. et toi?

From: Nichelle/SAGReiss
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: BABEL

(A letter from Gaby. He did it on the typer, so forgive me for the fact that typed letters can't translate into e-mail. If he doesn't like the way I did things, he'll just write you a letter and bitch at me about my dumb mistakes again.)

Nichelle has just joined the SAGReiss_is_never_wrong club founded by Canis_Lupus. Her claim that I double spaced after final punctuation at the beginning of BABEL confused me. I was shocked to think that I might have made a mistake. I could not understand. Then it hit me. She wasn't distinguishing between the different kinds of text the book contains. Allow me to quote from the cover letter I've sent to three publishers, none of whom have shown any interest: "The text breaks down many conventionl walls, e.g. between languages (English, French, German), media (handwriting, typescript, word processing, e-mail, cybersex) and genres (autobiography, epistolary novel, literary criticism, social commentary). The plot, in as much as one may call it that, follows the narrator, a foul-mouthed, drunken, polyglot intellectual, on a wild six-month trip to the internet, trashing along the way the shameless university which has hired and eventually fires him as a French teaching assistant." In other words, at the beginning, as I was just discovering the possibilities of e-mail, I mostly typed. When I type sometimes double-space after a period, as do Amerikans, sometimes single-space, as do the French. Writing almost exclusively in French for ten yearsalso explains why I spaced before a question mark and still have trouble with the qwerty keyboard. The implications, however, are more troublesome, to me at least. She seems to have missed the whole point of the four-hundred-page book. Whatever it may say about SU or my misogynistic fingertips, BABEL bears witness to the transformation of a man who wrote on a typer to a man who writes e-mail. Each step is clearly marked. Typed letters have no headder. (Handwritten letters are simply photocopies of my handwriting.) MSWord letters have a centered header and e-mail has a pine header. Cybertext is photocopies of logs. This transformation runs parallel to the hesitations between languages, both in the letters and the life they represent, talking German, for example, with a Peruvian gf because that was the language inwhich we could communicate most comfortably. By the same token the mixing of genres, including a fifty-page extract from my unfinished master's thesis and a piece of literary criticism I have unsuccessfully tried to send to you. I figure I have bluffed enough. I might as well show you what I can do in a standard literary format. Unfortunately for those of you who do not read French, I have nothing in English. I haven't written an essay in English in a dozen years or so. Anyway as soon as I get my 'puter back, I'll cut and paste it to an e-mail. The lab is fucking up, whichis why I'm typing this and will ask Nichelle to send it through her LeMoyne account..............

From: Nichelle
Date: 3 September 1996
Subject: M. Velly

It's horrifying. All of the crisp new notebooks, legal pads, three-ring binders, not that I don't have a bagful myself... ANd all of the *pens*. BIC ultra-fine rollerballs and uni-ball medium-tip deluxoes with refillable cartridges. I sat down next to a girl in History 101 (that's what I get from transferring) who had a beautiful, fresh, clean sheet of college-rule white paper sitting out flat on her desk. She took her pen out of her backpack, removed the cap from the business end of the thing and jammed it on the other side, then leaned over the page, and in very tiny, perfect handwriting, whe wrote her name, the date, the name of the class, the time it meets, the course number, and the room number. She didn't write anything else the entire hour. At the end of class, she put the cap back on the top of the pen, stuck her empty sheet of paper in a new folder, stuck it in the backpack and left. She was one of the better examples. It got worse when the professor showed up. She moved every piece of furniture in the room, turned her bright green back to us and wrote "Dr. Kunze" on the board, then snapped around with a triumphant look on her evil little face. Crack of notepads opening, mad scribbling asa room full of freshmen (no kidding) wrote "Dr. Kunze", fresh ink on blank pages. There was a blond girl sitting next to me. Dr. Kunze continued. "I hope we're all here for History 101." The blond girl (on my left) wrote "History" on the top line of her paper, right in the middle. I studied the scientific tables as Dr. Cuntz (oops) kept babbling, and thegirl to my left kept writing. I started to listen again as she mentioned textbooks. "Even if "The Prince" was written by a white male, and a European (and no words can describe the way she said "European". You would think she was saying "Ham and Pineapple Quiche" which, btw, was on the menu at Faegan's tonight.) it still may have some things to offer us." The blond girl was still taking notes. I snuck a look. It said:" M. Velly. white male. european." I began to read the instructions for using my e-mail account. I looked up at the board after about thirty minutes. "History/Civilization/Culture" I looked at the e-mail some more. She handed out the syllabus. I wrote her office hours on it. I was still thinking that I might take the class, and just skip it a lot. Then she mentioned that she takes attendance every day. Shit. Then she mentioned seating charts, and I imagined myself walking out right then, as she was telling us to choose the same seat each day so that she could learn our names. I imagined it as quite a scandal, as I left I would say "I'm going to go sign up for a history course at the high school so I can learn in a mature environment." Gaby, pack our things. We're moving to France.
-Stiff Lips

From: SAGReiss
Date: 4 September 1996
Subject: si ti tahw uoy tnaw ot ees?

Lou's Place, the run-down bar called Lou's Tavern on the web page, stands between tenaments and crack houses in the ghetto. Stiff Lips catches the bus there and I go to pick her up after work/school. We had a drink with Lou, the seventy-year-old owner, Mister Betsy, the seventy-five-year-old bartender, who always buy me drinks when I bring a white woman into their foul lair. It was the high-point of a very bad day. It's not bad enough that my 'puter is dead and I'm not sure the company wants to fix it.  There was a power outage on campus serious enough to fuck up all the 'puters and trap half a dozen people in an elevator for forty minutes. I have just forwarded some mail, but I can't do this as a rule. If you want to participate you must figure out how to make a distribution list or use the address book or reply to all when answering my mail. On our side we continue to investigate the possibilities for creating a formal listserv.  "This is the Hour of Lead": joyful's letters are a lesson to all of us.  Those letters are physically and intellectually challenging the way Faulkner's prose is. They question both the spatio-temporal orgasmization of the world and the linguistic representation of that orgasmization. As soon as we have a 'puter (either mine or Stiff Lips') we shall post "what a labor day" on the world with a button entitled "si ti tahw uoy tnaw ot ees?" It's Stiff Lips' second day of class and she stayed home. This is what Jeff once called the Gaby method of getting into grad school. Just make sure you ace the GREs, boys and girls. Hearing and reading about her classes reminds me why I'm a waiter and not a professer. Calamity Kate, I didn't quite follow your little message, but I've never understood your e-mail very well. (I forgot to forward that one, but I shall as soon as I send this one.) Strawtop, please feel free to send your hatemail. I get enough of it. I don't seem to recall your defending me to anyone, but if your 'friend' is ex-Melon ("I'm going to kill myself," as everyone in the living room scrambles to find her phone number and stop her and I just laugh at these junior high school idiots: "So off yourself, you'll be doing me a favour.") or Cognac (who spends her time spreading rumours about Stiff Lips), I'd rather these swine hate me. Fuck them. They are human maggots who deserve the dreaded lye treatment. I still can't believe some of the shit I saw in those syllabi. Socrates is the father of philosophical inquiry? Whose Socrates? Plato's, Xenophon's, Aristophanes'? Socrates himself never wrote a word, so who the fuck knows what he said? How about Pythagoras and Heraclitus? Were they garbage? Or the English prof who explains that the Russian formalists are concerned with discovering the author's original intent? Um, I thought they were interested in studying form and structure, which is why they are called formalists and evolved into structuralists. And the lit prof who will let the students take any materials they want into an exam, except the text, which is all one needs? I hate Amerika...

From: Terry
Date: 4 September 1996
Subject: Re: so you wanted some mail

Just so you know, #147 on RLMOO is the social FO. If you just type in: giggle or laugh or smile or whatever... #147 is what makes it work for you. It's the heart of the emotions online. True, it can be done by emoting. Anyone who wishes to emote has that option. If someone does not wish to have #147, then @rmfeature #147 and it'll be gone from your player. If you don't wish to see anything that comes from it, the @gag #147. But, if you gag it and most players use it, you won't see much on your screen.

I'm not a bitch. I really am a nice person and I hate it if I've come across in any other fashion. Gabe just knows how to push my buttons. Joy, I loved helping you. :) That's why I like being a wizard. To be able to offer my services in helping someone online isn't so much a power trip or ego booster... it's more of a *makes me feel useful and needed* thing.

I apologize for not being online as much of late. I've been so busy irl, but things are beginning to settle down for me again.

Laterz,
Teri

From: Joy
Date: 5 September 1996
Subject: hiber nation

so i'm awake stomach aches never finished recording on that spool that has been spliced who knows how many times before and i just woke up i have been sleeping for oh 18, 19hrs? and i am currently missing the classes i am missing my __ and __ and even __ (2nd time in a row) and i am eating a frozen pizza - tombstone - pepperoni - not i - we have or had actually i want the tombstone in my room please mom but she thinks that it's unhealthy to have the rocks of ancestors in one's room so that's why it's under her bed right now.. the dreams are cruel and make no sense but they do and wish i could tell you who is in them but i don't quite remember them except that (tm) was in them, i miss (tm) dearly.. in fact now that it's right before i'm going to sleep i find myself writing (tm) a letter \night\naibara\tac blue sky gold stars blue bleeding ink spilling all over the pages.. tsuj ekil ym niarb? still gnileef kcis and no was never considered dyslexic t'nac uoy llet? i am at GGG and i cannot find anything to feed on where is the sugar sugar sugar sugar but they are telling me no, that i shouldn't eat/find/get some it but i do want it i need it, t'nod yeht dnatsrednu? no not addict, couldn't' be, not possibly, moi? scary military man... etah eht gnileef taht gnihtyreve dluoc eb os os much reisea.. no no cannot say it ___ no never again.. do you dnatsunder that poem, Dr. Wallach? mingus deen more sugnim so anysyaw.. revlis stripes in ym hair, ti gets esrow every yad.. still t'nevah done all of the obligatory obligations.. clean garb yet? not i.. and the car clinic. and UCLA. and shaky hands with shaky fingers (yhw stomach yhw?/) cruel foul beast it's never neeb the emas since the . mu. re. llew. that will be for later, much later... but of course i don't trust a thing he says. compliments are lies are flattery are manipulation. \lluf fo tnil too\ \t'nod uoy ees? t'nod uoy dnatsrednu? gnilaever gnihtyreve simulataneously ni hcus a yaw ot laever gnihton?? the words of a coward, as it were.. ynamore nath taht i notcan llte.. ta tslea rfo wno...  ".hcum oot raf dias evah i niaga tey... noissefnoc eht neddih, em staht ,retirw hguoht gnilaever on m'i.. drawoc eurt eht fo eciov/luos eht, ni esiugsid hturt .. sdrow gniohce gniniamer esoht syawla.. (tu va figure? eh?)

From: SAGReiss
Date: 5 September 1996
Subject: Read 'em and weep

I don't know who the fuck eljazzar is, but welcome. Today is my second day off in a row, for the first time in months. I actually feel good, not too exhausted, hangedover, backache. The simple pleasures, doing the dishes and reading Joy's stunning e-mail, going to Faegan's for a beer before lunch, fresh linguini topped with garlic, mushrooms, green and hot cherry red peppers and lots of olive oil, valpoliccella from the land of Werner and Matilda in a good mood. It's easy to be optimistic when you don't wake up at four in the morning and can sleep off the whisky madness. No wonder I've been such a bickering ogre with Stiff Lips lately. I hope you people recognize what Joy is doing, outwriting me on my home turf and doing brilliant experiments such as "dnatsunder". I have heard some petty jealousies and grumbling about the position of various people on the list/web/MOO. I think of this like a ball club or symphony orchestra. It doesn't matter how old you are or how long you've been here. Joy writes baad fucking e-mail and so she deserves her place on the web site. Seven rooms are waiting to be redescribed on RL MOO, but no one moves a finger. Even Stiff Lips put up an argument about Calamity Kate's rightful place on the list. That's bullshit. I know what Katy can do when the spirit moves her. negatron you sure can pick 'em. If you've got any other girls like that left over from you ex-ID stable, please give them my e-mail address. I even think I may get Bucephalus back soon. The fucking power-surge didn't work and the lightening storm fucked him. I'm going to MOO for an hour and then walk down to Lou's and have a drink waiting for Stiff Lips. I hope this day never ends...

From: El Jazzar
Date: 5 September 1996
Subject: Re: Read 'em and weep

I have no idea how I ended up on this mailing list. it started last night with a message from joyful@utkux.. take me off please.

what is this list anyway?

From: Patricia
Date: 5 September 1996
Subject: RE: Read 'em and weep

Gabriel,
I understand why you need me to create my own reply list for this group, but you should understand that I am using a system which is foreign to most of the geeks I have met, and so far no one is able to help me come up with the correct command.
I hardly have time to read these days, and I think that if I took the 10 minutes it would take to type out each individual address for each mailing, I would have no time left for whatever it was that I wanted to say.
I' m not able to call the college to ask for technical assistance, since i have not been employed by them for over a year and I am currently 'stealing' this internet service.
If there is anyone in this group who uses VMS/Vax system, please direct them to help me in the creation of such a list. Thank you.

Trish

From: Joy
Date: 6 September 1996
Subject: oops. // News of the Weird

i apologize about having elgazzar or whoever the fuck on the list, that was my accident when i was trying to get this list together.. sysadmin got in there somehow..
Now for the Best Part:

The Classic Middle Name: Conan Wyne Hale, 20, a triple-homicide suspect who allegedly confessed to a priest in Portland, Org, has been fighting for 3 months now to have the confession ruled inadmissible in court on freedom of religion grounds. And escaped murderer Michael Wayne Thompson was recaptured in July near Farmersburg, Ind. And a few days later, Danny Wayne Owens, 38, was arrested in Birmingham Alab, for allegedly murdering a neighbor. (Among other prominent middle-name Waynes: serial killers John Wayne Gacy of Ill. and Elmer Wayne Henley of Tx; recently executed Ariz. murderer Jimmy Wayne Jeffers; sadistic LA murderer Robert Wayne Sawyer; the Ohio Aryan Nations member caught last year with freeze-dried bubonic plague bacteria, Larry Wayne Harris; the Oklahoma rapist recently sentenced to 21,000 yrs in prison, Allan Wayne McLaurin; and of course Joh Wayne Bobbitt.)

Monika and Mark Skinner filed a $35 mil lawsuit in July in Newport News, VA, in connection w/the 1994 death of their son, age 16, who was riding in a car that drove off a road and plunged into a lake. Among the defendants: K-mart, which sold a computer cleaning product to the car's driver, which he nad the Skinner boy used to get high by "huffing;" two engineering consulting firms that designed the lake that the car fell into; and the company that designed the road the car was traveling on b/c it should have been farther away from the lake.

In Aug, the St. Louis Art Museum filed a $2.5mil lawsuit against the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and other parties, b/c a Whitney guard damaged a Roy Lichtenstein painting while it was on loan to the Whitney. According to the lawsuit, guard Reginald Walker, 21 at the time, drew a heart and "Reggie + Crystal 1/26/91" on the painting with a felt-tip marker and wrote, "I love you Tushee, Love, Buns."

The Austin (Tx) American Statesman reported that writer-actor Stephen Grant, who starred in a film based on gunman Charles Whitman's 1966 assault from the UT tower (and who bear an uncanny physical resemblance to Whitman) was himself shot by a stray bullet on a street near the tower in March on his first visit to Austin.

According to a May report in The New York Times, one of Argentina's most popular radio programs is "Loony Radio," produced by and featuring patients at the Borda Psychiatic Hospital in Buenos Aires. One presents "The Bolivian Minute" show but usually giggles uncontrollably until the producer reminds him that he is on the air. Another man delivers philosophy lectures claiming to be "more schizophrenic than anyone" and says he is anxious with every incoming patient b/c he fears losing his title. One of Argentina's best known talk radio hosts says the patients are often more insightful than his callers are.

In May, Harlan Co. (KY) prosecuter Alan Wagers said his office would help Denise Rush, 27, appeal a trial court's denial of her lawsuit to get the father of her child to pay support. The father was 14 at the time, making Rush apparently guilty of statutory rape, but she was never prosecuted.

The Winston-Salem (NC) Journal reported in April that private security officer David Anderson Jones, 51, who is fully certified by the state to be capable of physical work such as breaking through barriers and crawling in confined spaces, among other physical tasks, was granted a handicapped parking permit by another state office b/c of a sinus problem.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 6 September 1996
Subject: Frau Futzfresser

She was a bad German prof too. She comes into the restaurant, makes me translate the whole buffet into German (panniertes Haenchen, cod I couldn't remember, broccoli I don't know etc.), tried to order Riesling only because she knew I had lived in Elsass and made fun of my fucking German because I say Geisskaes instead of Ziegen and Gelraevele instead of Karotten. Fuck you, Austrian is a weird falsetto dialect and Alsatian sings and soars. Then they left me three bucks on a thirty-dollar check.  Cheap fucking Euroscum. Weird fucking e-mail today. ID writes me that it is back up, but I've never to my knowledge had a character there, unless you gave me one without telling me, ArchDeluxe. Jeff writes me: "I'll be home for lunch, darling, probably between two and two thirty." My guess is that the first message is for Stiff Lips. The second is dated 27 June and was a message I sent to Stiff Lips once from Netscape setting the preferences to Jeff's account. It all sure looks weird. Felicity writes this News of the Crazy Stupid Things White Trash Do in their Spare Time. So here's my latest scheme: yesterday was such a good day that I even met a 'puter geek (She claimed minimal geek-nurd status, but it sounded like modesty to me.) from my town and she was initerested in the web/MOO. She said she would like to learn MOO coding. She is a fucking 'puter professional, a paid, hired geek. I think you (She has kindly given me her e-mail address to offer help with our terminal 'puter problems. Bucephalus will come back in a few days. I thought I wouldn't put it in here, but I'll send this, then forward it to her while deleting your e-mail addresses. I'm trying to be careful.) should ask for a character and write me/us an e-mail introducing yourself and what you'd like to do onna MOO. I liked the theme of your character very much. I don't see why we couldn't give you a prog bit on RL MOO and let you learn there, establishing some kind of MOO clinic. We could call it Unplanned Parenthood. I'm sure my friends/colleagues will disagree with me on this, but that's because they disagree with everything I say/propose. Since you MOO and work days, this would have the added advantage of putting someone on the fucking MOO to greet guests and interlopers. We need to populate the fucking thing and this might be a way. Besides if you bastards are nice to her, maybe I can lure her to my foul lair with the promise of the delicious food I cook and serve and con her into doing a general overhaul of Buceph (my 'puter). According to the ArchDeluxe, John is a badass motherfucker, when it comes to coding, Teri is competant, and I think Werner and laurent know more than they're willing to let on. This is some shameless kind of Euromodesty (qui n'est qu'un raffinement de l'orgueil). Anyway, this is the private part of our World, where most of the really weird shit goes on. There are no special conditions for membership. It helps if you can write badass e-mail and if I like you, but not necessarily. It also helps to have a healthy threashold of abuse and not to mind my foul-mouthed, drunken tirades from time to time. The Boy Scouts it ain't...

From: Murder
Date: 6 September 1996
Subject: famine

The phone rings. It's Kelly, a female friend who owes me money. I give her a sob story about how I am not sure whether I can eat for the next three weeks or not, and she says "Well, right now I'm a hundred in the hole and my brother owes his people $400, so I can't pay you back yet." I don't mention the fact that I have already paid the whole balance of this month's rent and that since she is moving in (and I am moving out) on the 22nd, she owes me for those days. My friend Jodi knocks at the door. I hang the phone up and open it. She says "What the hell is all this shit," noticing all of the new items that seem to have appeared with the help of divine intervention: Boxes of cooking ware, a fouton, a 27-inch TV with VCR, and a 'puter sitting proudly on the kitchen countertop. My roommate has gone home until the 16th and my friend John does not have a place to stay, so I am letting him keep his stuff at my place and crash there for a few nights. In return, he is offering to share his food with me. As I am telling Jodi same sob story (I am literally broke...don't know how I'm going to eat...) Jill calls. One of her roommate's many boyfriends has moved all his stuff into her place; she's pissed. "Can I crash at your place Friday and Saturday nights?" "Sure," I tell her. "We'll make it into one big slumber party." She was probably not aware of the sarcasm intended. My patience is thin. Why do I always have to be the nice guy? Good thing Jill's a good friend. Last Saturday night we (Jill and I) visited Delizioso, Stiff Lips. Got the chess table upstairs and played. They were out of everything, including my favorite, chocolate mousse torte. Still have a balance of +$5.90 that I'm saving just for you. Thank you, Werner, for setting me straight on "Ap(p)ell." I did not think this subject is trivial or banal at all. The main reason I brought it up in the first place was so that multilingualcunninglinguist members of this list would share their knowledge with me. I refuse to let Joy's obviously embittered attitude about the "serious music world" (whatever the hell that is) prevent me from exchanging ideas with knowledgeable people. I don't care what kind of e-mail a person writes. I care about what kind of person he/she is becoming.

Murder

From: SAGReiss
Date: 7 September 1996
Subject: Murder's Woes

I think I may have to call on Werner's superior counting skills to calculate exactly how many women you are blackmailing for felatio, Murder, and how many are crashing at your place. We'll need full-color PowerPoint Grafix of these two sets and their intersexion and possibly a map of the flat with possible sleeping arrangements. We can put the whole thing on the web page. And we're s'posed to sympathize with you 'cause you've got nothing to eat? It's eat or be eaten, Murder. You've obviously made your choice. Now stop complaining. Some people are never happy with what they've got. I'm happy about the Lady Geek. I'm always a little wary when I write to a new person. She hasn't called the cops. She wrote me a charming little note with but one line that bodes ill: "Soy una feminista," which I'm guessing is a mistake. I think it should be: "Soy feminista," but I could be wrong. I s'pose it's possible that not all feminists are humourless Nazis on a crusade to have me and all of my favourite books burned at the stake. Mary Daly has quite a sense of humour, but I've never met her, except through her hilarious books. The thinking doesn't impress me, but I love the puns: gyn/ecology, the/rapist. Jacques Lacan would have loved her. Now that I think of it, Mary Daly teaches at Boston College and perhaps I will meet her. I'd just have to wear my cast-iron shorts just in case she flipped out on me and tried to turn me into a Spivak. I can just see me at a cocktail party, already slightly, um, euphoric walking up to Mary Daly: "Good evening, Ma'am. I enjoyed your books. My name's Gabriel. I'm a cunning linguist, master of foreign tongues and gynecologist. May I buy you a drink?" No, I don't think that would go over too well. A mob run amok would probably carry me to the Boston Commons and tar and feather me while chanting poems by Andrea Dworkin. BTW, Murder, I agree that the questions about the Ap(p)ell Symphony are quite serious. Unfortunately Werner just fed you a load of Eurobullshit. There was no mistake in Mahler's manuscript, but in its interpretation. You see, he wrote in the Gothic alphabet and history has misread him. It's actually called the Apfel Symphony, named after the cider brewed for Hoelderlin by his Schwabish friends. In the later years it was the only thing that could calm his demented fury. It had adverse and predictable effects on his bowels, but that was obviously a small price to pay for settling the wild spirits of the distrought Meister.

From: Nichelle
Date: 7 September 1996
Subject: woes

Until I figure out how to mail to the list from this account, I will forward it from Gaby's (as many of you are doing). Murder, I'm getting ready to put up a web page at LeMoyne, so could you please send the Paris Conservatory paper and anything else you've got ready? Any other music related articles will be considered, including Gaby's study on the Stravinsky Three Pieces, if he wants to combine his several letters about it into one. I suggest he send it to the list- maybe Werner will have something interesting to say about it. I've figured out the bibliography, which I think I'll put on my page with a link from Gaby's, unless there are any objections.

I'm exhaused. I've been sick for days. Yesterday I blacked out on the stairs and slept there for an hour. I just typed three hours, even though it was only one. My head weighs fifty pounds, I just got done screaming at Gaby about the geek from Syracuse. I yelled "Well then FUCK HER!" loud enough to clear out my sinuses and disturb most of the block. I've been more than a little disturbed these last few days. I have had nightmares when I did sleep. In one dream, there was a gas fire and I could feel the flesh burning off of my body as I ran to the door. Today, right before Gaby got home, I had a dream that a man was burning me, torturing me with a lighter. I've dreamed of poison several times these last days. I'm on edge, I woke up crying for Gabriel this afternoon at about 1 pm. I was nervous and scared on the way up here tonight.

I asked Gabriel not to write about my little paranoid outburst tonight, but obviously he will. I can't write any more.

-Stiff Lips

From: SAGReiss
Date: 8 September 1996
Subject: Just do it

*** Connected ***
Apartment 7 one-bedroom flat
page eve Please join me. It's extremely important.
Eve pages, "just a sec"
page eve It can't wait a sec. Trust me.
Eve teleports in.
Eve pages, "I don't vanish in the middle of a conversation without saying goodbye"
You say, "I'm sorry, I haven't told you something. I have a gf."
Eve says, "I gathered that from your web page."
You say, "That is the man who raped her."
Eve listens.
You say, "There's not much more to say."
Eve says, "Except that, according to him, they decided on the act together, in advance."
You ask, I would imagine he had some such explanation. What else could he say. So why has she got scars on her body?"
Eve says, "Again according to him, she did most of those herself, on the phone with him."
You say, "I s'pose that's possible. I wasn't there. I think it's safer to believe her than to believe him."
Eve says, "I don't know her though."
Eve says, "And frankly it's kind of hard to rape someone online."
You say, "I don't know him."
You say, "It wasn't online. It was in his flat."
Eve says, "Right but I am not in his flat."
You say, "But she was in his flat."
Eve says, "Well, since you are warning me about him I am naturally inclined to apply it to my personal situation."
You say, "He has tried to convince other women I know to go see him."
Eve nods.
Eve says, "Regardless of who I may or may not visit, I never make any promises about what I will do before I meet a person irl."
Eve says, "And I will certainly not be reckless, seeing as how my sister was raped about
9 years ago."
You ask, "Tu esta feminista. I checked, your friend is wrong. And you cavort with the man who raped my gf?"
Eve asks, "So how is that in first person?"
You say, "No soy feminista."
You say, "I don't speak Spanish, but my language instincts and ear are very good."
Eve says, "I won't argue the point with you. And I will understand if you'd rather find a different techie to fix your machine up for free."
You say, "Fuck you. I don't give a fuck about free tech help. No more than you give a fuck about free MOO tutorial or a free supper. I'm talking about something a little more serious."
Eve nods.
Eve says, "Well, when two people have two sides to thes story, it is hard for a stranger to know which story has more truth to it."
Eve says, "I expect both sides have a biasis in reality."
You say, "I haven't heard his side of the story and I don't wish to. She could of course describe the inside of his flat, the color of the carpet on which he raped her. I don't care to get into that. I've said what I've got to say. You know my e-mail address."
@quit
*** Disconnected ***
As Hunter S. Thompson says in his obituary of Richard Nixon, in the presence of total evil the normal rules don't apply. There are not two sides to this story. Allset, would you mind sending me some logs of our friend in action? It seems that the cyberfeministas who don't hesitate to toad me from a room, MOO or server when I call someone an FWB suddenly wax epistemological when LoverBoy coos: "She wanted it." Maybe so, Eve, and maybe your sis' wanted it too. Maybe she likes waking up in the middle of the night screaming. Maybe she just invented the whole story just to sound interesting. Maybe she's thrilled that he knows where she lives, can e-mail her through me, can MOOmail her as a guest. And maybe you think he isn't smart enough to pick up the phone book and find your address as I just have (I think). The fear isn't exactly rational, but as Father Freud said, it's real. Remind me never to ride a bicycle four miles through a downpour. It takes the fight right out of me. It amazes me that these cunts go to their Take Back the Night rallies and fail to see that it might be simpler to assume she's telling the truth and he's unlikely to say: "Yeah I raped her because it just seemed like the thing to do," or: "It was fun. That's why I've tried to convince others to visit me." It's not exactly an issue on which one can't take sides. She didn't kind of want him to stick a knife in her. What the fuck does "most of those" mean? "Well, I only cut her once or twice, so you can't really blame me. I was just trying it out. I didn't mean to hurt her." I'm sick. I knew I might have to deal with this asshole when I put the web page up, but I didn't realize his cybergfs would believe him. Eve, if you're so philosophically inclined, why don't you go see him and we'll see what a charmer he is. This guy has raped at least one girl and I get shit in the Living Room? Maybe he has good image control. Maybe he's PC and calls his victims women. I need to download some image control on the 'net. Maybe then I could rape women and say they wanted it. Un jour je tuerai tout le monde et m'en irai.

From: Nichelle
Date: 8 September 1996
Subject: The end of Stiff Lips

"You knew this would happen when we put those texts on the web."
"Do you want to take them off now?"

No, I don't want to take them off. And no, I didn't have any idea what would happen when we put the texts on the web. This was one possibility. When Bucephallus comes back, I am changing every "Motive", "Rochelle", and "Stiff Lips" on the web page to my real name, Nichelle. I have already done this on the MOOs. You may all feel free to call me Nichelle anywhere you like.

I feel like I'm on trial. The fact is, I cannot say with any certainty what color that asshole's carpet is, and it doesn't matter. Whatever your individual reasons happen to be, you either believe me or you do not. Whatever doubt you may be struggling with, Gaby in particular, you will have to wrestle with on your own. I will not play the game of the Little Girl Who Cried Rape. I am very pissed. (most of you missed this afternoon's conversation) You would be even angrier, Gaby, if I had said to you what you said to me today. You may have your search for the truth through Allset's logs, if indeed she has got logs. What you find there may or may not be the truth, it may or may not help you. I was there. I know what happened. I don't know what Truth is any more than I know what Rape is.

Nichelle

From: Murder
Date: 8 September 1996
Subject: Hell

Here's a joke that, while some will consider it immature, is guaranteed to cause the "New-Age, PC types" to wish my speedy descent into hell:

A woman is about to give birth in a delivery room. She's screaming in pain, and the doctor is yelling "push, push!" First, the baby's head appears, then the rest, and the doctor pulls the little tyke out. As he picks up the baby, he drops it on the floor. The mother is horrified, "What are you doing??!" she exclaims. Then the doctor, in an effort to get the baby to breathe, turns the little rugrat upside down and slaps it so hard he sends the baby into the wall face first. The mother is beside herself with rage: "How could you do this to my baby???!" Doc recovers the baby, dusts it off a little bit, and is about to give it to mama. But he first bashes its skull into the bedpost. By now mom is homicidal: "I'll sue you, then I'll KILL you!!!!!" Doc finally hands junior to mama, and says matter-of-factly: "April Fool! The baby was already dead!"

Nic, do you really want me to send my Paris Conservatory paper? It is kind of a hack job. Still, I might be able to transfer the file from the disk on the typer and send it to you. Let me know for sure if you want me to do this. Sampras won the U.S. Open Championship in straights over Chang today--amazing considering he was near collapse (vomiting on the court, doubling over between points) in his dramatic win in the fifth-set tiebreak over Alex Corretja in the quarters. I myself made a return to the tennis court tonight, but had to quit in the middle of my match with Ryan (I was down a set but up a break in the second) when the screw fell out of my glasses and my left lens popped out in the middle of the point. I still won the point. It's nice having a 'puter at my place for once. No more conforming to bullshit summer lab hours.

Murder

From: Jenipher
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: log

Hello Nichelle,

I have the log that B sent me of the conversation she had with C. I have edited it for publication on the World, but I don't feel that is my decision to make. If you would like to forward it to the listserv, feel free. Or to Gabe, or whatever. It is yours to do as you like.

I also have the original log; I can email it to you as well. Just let me know.

I know this must be hell for you, and I am here if you need to talk. I have missed you the last couple of weeks. I can't wait for you to have your computer back so I can see you more often on lambda.

I should be writing a nice long babbling post to the World later. I have been very distracted by a dear friend elsemoo the last few weeks, which is why I haven't been writing much. He starts school this week though. Bleah. I will miss him and try to distract myself with email and web browsing.

Jeni

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: ALLset

Allset, please send me the uncircumsized vergin of the log.

Nichelle

From: Jenipher
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: etc.

My husband and I travelled to Chamonix, a village in a gorgeous valley near Mont Blanc, this weekend. We hiked up from the Brevent lift site to Col du Brevent, which is situated at 8000 feet. It was a hellish hike. My back ached, my thigh and calf muscles screamed for rest. Of course, we had been trying to find Lac Cornu, but we missed the sign. So, on our way back down, we saw the sign and decided to come back the next day, much to my dismay. I was incredibly sore and exhausted. We crashed at the hotel, slept for hours, then filled up the giant tub with bubble bath and water. We soaked for a while then had some of the most incredible sex I have ever experienced, fingers tongue lips all drawing me closer then leaving me taut and shaking. Lost in a moment that seemed neverending, that must have lasted hours, until I came and screamed, heard him whisper, did you close the window, and just screamed louder.

Afterwards, we dressed, perfumed, coiffed and polished before going out to dinner at Sanjon, a wonderful little French restaurant, where we ordered Braserade a trois viande. They brought a tiny iron grill to our table along with a platter of raw meats - duck, lamb, and beef. We grilled the meats ourselves with little fondue skewers then dipped the morsels in a variety of incredible sauces. I would tell you the name of the wine we had with dinner, but I hate wine, so I just don't remember. For dessert, chocolate liegois. Dark chocolate ice cream, hot fudge sauce, and whipped cream. Next day we had breakfast, croissants, baguette, butter, honey, and coffee. Then more sex, my lips around him as he begged me to wait, as I felt him tense and struggle not to come on my tongue. A glorious day, an incredible hike, up a steep trail, across boulder fields, along a ridge, to finally arrive at Lac Cornu, a clear, brilliant mountain lake surrounded by the quiet chill of a September morning.

Gabe, I think Joy's writing is hell to read. In fact, the only emails I find I am eager to read from this listserv are Nichelle's. That girl kicks ass when she writes. It is readable, edible, touchable. I understand, and I am awed by some of the things she says. I don't have to fuck around with wordplay, backwards writing, absence of punctuation, etc. Just pure writing.

Fuck, I did not want to get into this rape thing. I have forwarded the log to Nichelle. She may do with it as she likes. (Ah, I just got email. She will have Gabe forward it to the World.) Oh well. I will wait to see her response before I reply, if I reply. Does the world like this sort of thing? Seeing lives exposed, hearing accusations and truths that can never be proven, only believed or disbelieved? I find myself in an odd situation, hearing her rapist beg me to forgive him, to understand, to visit him and let him prove he isn't a monster. And knowing that no matter what happened, which pieces of whose truth finally fit together to form my truth, I will never meet him. He is a monster, either way. Oh Nichelle, it is a mess, and I admire you for struggling through it as well as you can. Again, if you -ever- need to talk, you know where I am.

Gabe, you asked why I haven't been on RLMOO. I have been engaging in another whirlwind MOO romance. I am in love; I am soothed and distracted, creative and daring. I win, every game. I scrabble until my eyes shut of their own accord at night. Tiles engrave themselves into my memory. Oh, to place QUIZ across a triple word space. What a lofty goal.

Opal and I are no more. Cary snapped, said he would divorce me if I went to her. She has released me of all obligation, and I have removed her bracelet from my wrist. I hid the crop, the cuffs, the candles, from sight, so that I wouldn't be tempted to beg Cary to use them on me ever again. I have to climb, crawl out of this mindset, become a whole person without the aid of pain. I don't know if it's possible, but I know it is impossible for me to end my marriage. Too many years, too many risks, too many likely dangerous unknowns.

Gabe, I'm sorry I don't write like you. Please don't get ugly with me. I know I haven't written in a while, and this email is long, rambling, and with no discernible thread joining the paragraphs together. I just wanted to address everything at once. Now that I have done that, I will start working on short stories, masterfully crafted paragraphs. Just give me time.

Allset

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: Enter Rapist, stage left

C has received your emote.
C pages, "?"
@secure here is o
This room is now Open House.
page C c'mere.
C arrives.
B sighs.
You plop down into the soft material of the couch.
You say, "i don't know what to think at ALL, here, C"
C says, "So...tell me your concerns, what she said, etc..."
C says, "Also, keep in mind she is not the only mooer I have met, and have had much more positive reactions with...if you're looking for other opinions, I can steer you to other people..."
B nods.
C asks, "Scuse me..timed out..wait for me?"
You say, "Umm. She said you raped her, and cut her. And she wouldn't tell me anything else, she said that's all I needed to know to stay away fromyou, I guess."
You nod solemnly.
C has disconnected.
C has connected.
B rehi :)
C says, "Okay....first thing to tell you about my relations with Nichelle, is that she started out as a pet, not as a lover.."
You nod solemnly.
C says, "She did the cutting...most of the scars she had...were from before we even met..we shared a blood-fetish...and she was very ultra-submissive...it was at my urging, but shared desire, for her to make cuts to herself...and she did, a couple of times, over the phone."
B nods.
C says, "when we met irl, it was as lovers...not as pet, because she decided at one point that she did not want that anymore..which was fine..but it was hard to change strides in the middle..when she came up, most of what we had was very vanilla..but there was a couple of occasions when she requested bondage, and a one occasion, when she was in a strange mood, that I cut her..."
C says, "That was the only time, and it was a mutual desire..following that, I felt really bad, and refused to do it again, even when she urged me to..at the time, I know it excited her a great deal..."
B nods.
C says, "Now...the rape accusation...definitely has some truth in it..and I know I went to far with it...we had consistently shared a consensual rape fantasy...she had been raped in the past and it dwelled in her mind..and i won't deny it was a fantasy of mine...one night we decided to act it out...it was totally talked about beforehand, but we didn't set up safe-words or anything, which I regret very much..."
B nods.
C says, "So we did it, and I was somewhat rough, and I took her by force...somewhere she decided that she wasn't enjoying it, that it ws too much...and I could kind of tell when it happened, but I was inside her then, and I was gripped by it..I should have stopped, but I didn't...and, well, there's no excuse for that...I told myself, and still do that he struggles were part of the act, as they'd started out...I dunno..at the time, I like to think it was really too much to expect me to stop..."
You nod solemnly.
C says, "But being honest, I think I did rape her, by finishing ,and not stopping when I had any doubt whatsoever...but I did *not* take her unwillingly..."
B nods.
B sighs.
C says, "We spent a long time talking about it that night, both felt really bad..but moved on and had a pretty decent rest of the week together...afterward, she wanted to move up here..I didn't think that we had gotten along well enough to warrant that sort of commitment immediatelly..so I was gonna save up money and visit her at home in the spring."
You nod solemnly.
C says, "And then, somewhere along end-feb to beginning-march, she got cold.. we didn't talk for weeks at all..eventually I found out she moved to new york..and then just in mid-july, I got this moo-mail from her, totally out of the blue,saying that she had friends who wanted to kill me, and that I had raped her..."
B nodnods.
You ask, "Is it okay if I log this?"
C says, "I have no doubts that she regrets what happened...probably far more than I do, and I've had my share of guilt-pangs about the whole thing..but I'm not willing to take total blame for it, and it was somethng I thought we had worked through...I still dunno what happened to turn her on me the way she did."
You say, "Without your name. See, 'cos I told my friend elseMOO that this chick just paged me out of the blue asking to tell me something, an' I said sure, and she told me about it, and I told HIM, and he went off onto this tangent about how he heard it from her and her boyfriend, and to stay away from you because you're a shithead etcetera, and I want to show him your explanation so he won't be worried."
You nod to C.
C says, "if you'd like....obviously, be VERY careful where you show it around...and I dunno what difference it would make to her to read it...she never gave me a chance to defend myself, I've been gagged since the moo-mail, and a couple of my friends have turned on me since then..."
C says, "Well, it sounds like he already knows my name and all..definitely delete her RL name..."
B nods.
C asks, "Do you mind if I ask who all is going to knwo  all this rather personal info about me? and..did motive say what motivated her to talk to you?"
C very much understands, B, if you don't want to talk to me anymore...there's een enough doubt created here for you that it would surely be a lot safer for you...
You say, "Um, just Bastian."
You say, "Not bastian Ox, btw, Bastian elseMOO."
You say, "She just paged me and said that a friend of hers had told her that you and I hung around a lot. I asked who, but she said her friend might not want me to know her identity."
C hmm..never talked to him...bothers me that they have told a lot of people what they have tho..I've had no chance at all of telling my side..
B knows.
B hugs you.
You say, "But.. see..I don't know."
C says, "and tons of mooers hate me for it..."
C nods..you couldn't know..if I were rapist, I surely wouldn't admit it to you, and yadda-yadda...that's why I'll wander off if you want me to. might be time to start a new moo-life here.
You say, "Because YOUR explanation sounds like something that.. just a TOTAL ..miscommunication thing happened, and .. you know, like.. if someone says that someone raped them, MOO OR RL, they're prone to believe the 'victim'. You dig? Just because it's such an awful thing. And because YOU aren't even sure what went on.. you don't know what she thought about it, or came to a conclusion about it with.. or whatever.. I dunno. First I was shocked, and.. I dunno."

From: SAGReiss
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: No bueno

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, what I have done. I cannot understand what I am reading. Calamity Kate is sitting across the table from me in the computer cluster. It's nice to see her. That's about the only good reason I have for wanting to be alive today. Even so, I just want to get as drunk as I can as fast as I can. For all I know, Stiff Lips, Motive, Nichelle or whatever I'm s'posed to call you today, you'll come home and find us both passed out on the bed. No, I don't think so, but I am going to get drunk very soon. I'm ashamed of this shit. I want to kill the World. I don't like lies and liars. This is very painful. That is one sleazy motherfucker. I hate both worlds, the one into which I was born and the one I've created, which is obviously far out of my control. I give up. I can do no more. I'm going to get drunk now, with or without Katie. Nichelle, you once wrote us that you could imagine me as a rapist, that you could imagine yourself as a rapist. I don't fucking trust myself, let alone anyone else. I hate life. I can't go on. Whatever the fucking stupid line from En attendant Godot is. I don't understand what I have done, don't dnatsunder, don't give a fuck, don't, no, know, no... RECTVM VINVM.

From: Jenipher
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: ummm

One more thing, because I wasn't very clear before. I am not B in the log Nichelle just forwarded. I assume it is obvious from the log contents, but I wanted to state that clearly.

Allset

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: reply

I tried to respond line by line. It is too hard to do, and it is merely me saying this is a lie, this is not a lie, this is something of both... What can all of that mean? It means nothing. He says one thing and I say another and you decide what you believe. I have nothing to lose if you don't believe me, except maybe Gaby's trust, and nothing to gain if you do. I have edited the log and will send it to you without comment. Perhaps later I will say more.

She did the cutting...
most of the scars she had...were from before we even met..
we shared a blood-fetish..
and she was very ultra-submissive...
because she decided at one point that she did not want that anymore..
but there was a couple of occasions when she requested bondage, and a one
occasion, when she was in a strange mood, that I cut her...
and it was a mutual desire..
and refused to do it again, even when she urged me to..
at the time, I know it excited her a great deal...
we had consistently shared a consensual rape fantasy...
she had been raped in the past and it dwelled in her mind..and i won't deny
it was a fantasy of mine...
one night we decided to act it out...
it was totally talked about beforehand
So we did it
and I was somewhat rough, and I took her by force...
somewhere she decided that she wasn't enjoying it, that it ws too much...
and I could kind of tell when it happened, but I was inside her then, and I
was gripped by it..
I should have stopped, but
I didn't...
and, well, there's no excuse for that...
I told myself, and still do that he struggles were part of the act, as
they'd started out...I dunno..
at the time, I like to think it was really too much to expect me to stop...
But being honest, I think I did rape her, by finishing ,and not stopping
when I had any doubt whatsoever...
but I did *not* take her unwillingly...
afterward, she wanted to move up here..
And then, somewhere along end-feg to beginning-march, she got cold..
and then just in mid-july, I got this moo-mail from her, totally out of the
blue,
saying that she had friends who wanted to kill me, and that I had raped
her...
but I'm not willing to take total blame for it
I still dunno what happened to turn her on me the way she did.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: I raped Katie

Sure, I can call the cops and make a pretty good case against myself. I was big, bad Gabe, her French teacher. She was under twenty-one. I knew that. I gave her alcohol, bought her alcohol, took her home and fucked her. Move out the way, motherfuckers. I'm going to kill someone today.

From: Kathleen
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: Re: I raped Katie

Dear Gaby,
you wish - you impotent piece of shit.

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: Hell.

Gaby say s te contest is to see who writes the better e=mail while whe're in the lab. I took a cab home after I read his letter. First I tried to convince campus security to dribe me home, but they couldn't unless I told them what was going on. What, I should maybe have let them read the e-mail, the log? I ran from the apartment to the lab, happy to find Gaby there. I knew someone had been home, wondered if he went out somewhere and I woulnd't be able to find him. Neither of us is well. I'm a little better off because I know everything that happened. All he has is my words and my texts, and of course what others say as well. I *did* send a moo-mail message to Canadian, but I didn't say anyone wanted to kill him. I don't know what to say. I guess it is OK to rape somebody if you make it seem like they asked for it?

Allset, Strawtop... you two were good to me on the MOO this morning. Murder, don't send the Paris Conservatory paper if it isn't good. Send me your best shit- if it's program notes or stuff from the flute list or other papers... I don't want to put up something you call a hack job.

What can I say? These are just words, letters, a stack of papers, data. I have nothing else to say. I will write more later.

Nichelle

From: Patricia
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: RE: I raped Katie

Why do you have to be such an asshole? You want to kill this list, you have the power, pull the plug. You want to ruin your relationship with Nichelle, that's between you and Nichelle. You want to get mean, drunk and ugly? Too late, you're already there. I don't think you need to pull the rest of us into your psychosis. After you get good and drunk, try not to step out into oncoming traffic, unless, of course, that's what you want to do.

Rectum Gabriel:
Strawtop
]

From: Werner
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: set me free

Dear friends,

I am asking you to please remove my address from the list. I ask you to please do it quietly, by just removing it from you posts, and since most posts here are replies to yours, I would eventually stop receiving mail. There is even the chance that the herzog@io.com account could vanish from the earth soon, and of course *this* would be a solution, but it could imply an amount of bounced e-mail, I am not sure, and of course I would so much hate to spam other people's mailboxes.

Yes, I am asking you to please keep it quiet. The utter dislike I have for public showdowns and exhibitionism would never make me part of flashy complaints when I can deal with it with you, privately; and another thing with me is that I constantly try to avoid arguing with fools. So, there is no chance for Gabriel to see me pick on (say) Tesla's or killjoy's messages, because I don't belong to the same clubs they belong to. Call this 'fucking Eurosnobbery' if you like (not my kind of language anyway), but please do so in private and not on the list. All I want is to stay as much away from certain people as my degrees of freedom allow,

I would be grateful, and we would still have the MOO to keep in touch, of course.

Sorry if this ends up disappointing you, but I am sure that by now you know me well enough to understand.

Thank you,

Vania.

From: Werner
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: trouble

It's ok, Nichelle, I understand you are having trouble, and on top of that that you are not a geek (this is a compliment). So, never mind if it cannot be done rapidly. Just keep my wish in your mind, please, and  only refer to me in mails directed to me and not on the list anymore, or at most with Murder since he is the only one with whom we seem to share some (vital) interests.
I got an upsurge of sickness after killjoy's posts and Tesla's, and the 'I raped Katie'-kind of posts. I want to be out of the club because there are members I profoundly abhor. I am sure you know this, and I am just equally sure that you know that I am not thinking of you.
Sorry about the overall stress,

Vania.

From: Werner
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: secrecy

Dear Nichelle,

all I am asking is to be left out of the list, and with me any mention of me, if possible, of course. I extend this prayer to Gabriel. This is not something between me and you, or between me and Gabriel, but it's between me and other members of the list I don't want to hear about them. I don't want their names pop up on my computer screen in my home if possible, and I don't want them to have my name on their lips, if possible. So, definitely, it's not about hiding my letters to you from Gabriel. Again, I am choosing my own friends, and I don't believe in the saying that the friends of my friends are my friends. It's too often the opposite.

So, again, don't take offense because of my request (you and Gabriel).
Thank you for removing my name from the list.

See you soon,

Vania.

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: The Mean, the Drunk, and the Ugly

At least we had a decent lunch. Gaby had two (2) glasses of J&B, and three (3) glasses of merlot (I think), and I ate nachos (negatron, are we now soulmates?) and Gabriel ate a Reuben sandwich, and we followed it up with coffee and dessert (G: some weird-ass cheesecake, N: carrot cake). Gaby told me to tell you that he hates all of you bastards. Hmm.. It has been a weird day, possibly the weirdest since I flew here. Kalamity Cate, I'm glad you were in the lab today and saw Gabriel, that you were a friendly face, smile, and hello. I'd like to meet you sometime, under better circumstances, although he tells me you are very beautiful, and I only like ugly women. (Just kidding.) I don't know what all of this shit means, I saw Gaby in horrible pain this afternoon, alternating between the cigarette, the glass of water, and a grape juice bottle filled with whisky. I am helpless. We are all suffering. Strawtop and Allset, I am going to send a log of my MOO conversations from this morning, as soon as I get up to the library. Murder, I'm sorry I missed you on RL MOO.

Gaby, don't go crazy on me. I'm a tough bitch, and I can take it. We'll fight through all of the bullshit and evil.

What can I say right now. I'll be back tonight to write more e-mail.

Nichelle

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: log two

*** Connected ***
Alibi
All I need now.
page allset Hello.
(from [insert place name]) Allset hugs you good morning. How are you holding up?
page allset What do you mean, holding up? Things are crazy, but the things he said, many of them, are lies.
(from [insert place name]) Allset nods, I guessed as much. I got that log several weeks ago, and I just didn't think it was worth it to make things any more difficult for you by showing it to you. It is obvious that so much of it is a lie.
page allset I am going to reply to it line by line. Things with Gabriel are difficult. I didn't ask for this. I was just trying to warn that girl. Why is my life hell now? Have you got logs that speak against Sean?
(from [insert place name]) Allset shakes her head, I don't have anything else. I haven't really disccused it with anyone. Just a bit with Colin.
page allset OK. I understand. You see, it is my word against his. I don't know how we can get anywhere.
She pages, "I am sorry to butt in, but do you feel comfortable replying to it  line by line on the listserv? This seems like something that is between you and Gabe. I know -I- don't need any explanations, and I doubt anyone else will even consider taking his word over yours."
page allset Nothing in my life is private. What happens between Gabe and me is the business of the World.
(from [insert place name]) Allset sighs, when he told me, so long ago, about cutting you, I didn't even know it was you. I definietly didn't log that.
(from [insert place name]) Allset nods, I suppose so. That just seems unnecessarily hard on you, to have this so public.
page allset It is. But it isn't just about me. It is about my relationship with Gabriel and what this means in our relationship.
(from [insert place name]) Allset nods.
page allset I can't respond line by line. It is just too hard.
Strawtop pages, "Hi, how are you feeling?"
page strawtop frustrated. What does my word mean? Gaby doesn't believe me now, I have done nothing and I feel like I'm on trial.
Strawtop pages, "Gabe doesn't believe you? he's so easily swayed by one log?"
page strawtop he hasn't seen the log yet. He doubts me, he doesn't say he doesn't believe me.
Strawtop pages, "It reminded me of the William Kennedy Smith trial 'she liekd roghu sex, (jessus, where did my typing skills go?) 'She liked rough sex, so I just gave her what she wanted.'"
Strawtop pages, "He doubts you, but why should you have lied to him? I mean, if you really had gone to that guy wanting to be raped and that was a part of your 'play', wouldn't SAGR know that from the interactions the two of you have had over the past 6 months?"
page strawtop If I wanted to seriously accuse this boy, I could do it in a court of law. I just want to live my life. I did not lie when I wrote that e-mail, or any time after. I want nothing to do with him. Gabriel thinks this discussion is unaviodable. I don't want my entire life to be about rape. I chose not to bring this boy to a trial, and part of the reason for that was to avoid the kind of problems we're having now. I can't prove anything. He can't prove anything. I didn't bleed on his carpet. It was over eight months ago.

From: Nichelle
Date: 9 September 1996
Subject: Bibliography

The Bibliography. No complaints. All suggestions were taken seriously, all decisions were based on several things, including their relevancy to this list/MOO/web.

Bartok Sonata for two pianos and percussion
Berg Fuenf Orchesterlider etc.
Ives Symphony No. 2
Orff Carmina Burana
Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire
Shostakovich Suite on verses of Michelangelo
Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad"
Stravinsky Pulcinella

Okay, you can complain if you like. Later-

Nichelle

From: Joy
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: ...

Christ how quickly things have turned so ugly, it's a fucking slugfest. well, i guess that was the point, to have all the brutal honesty (er opinions?) in the light. no one ever said it would be a pretty sight. but it makes me wonder why i even watch all of this, i have enough chaos in my own life..
i can't remember who has said what in regards to my writing so this is just to whomever it may concern: bitterness w/music: hell yeah i'm bitter. a jack of all trades and master of none. you would be too. incoherent writings: of course it's practically incoherent, that's the point you dolts. i don't have the courage (or something to that effect) to spill my guts quite like Nichelle can. maybe desire. by keeping things vague it's harder to be attacked b/c people aren't so sure what the hell it is that they would be attacking. i admire Nichelle's brutal-no-bullshit-writing. harsh yet refreshing in the same light.. when i first read the stuff on the webpage by her (my first introduction to the type of writing on the list) i was completely blown away by the complete honest gut-pouring. unfortunately, doing that sort of thing leaves one completely completely vulnerable to attack... it's hard for me to imagine Nichelle's views being attacked however. i've tried to keep away from all of that stuff as much as possible. i empathize, i know what that rape shit is like. for Those Who Have Not Experienced The Wonders Of .. well.. it's like explaining uh. (can't think of anything clever to say) i wouldn't expect one to understand - how can one understand what one has never even experienced? one can empathize, at best. and actively plot ways to prevent it from happening to one's self. like everything else, it's never as clear as everyone would like for it to be. (i remember one time after talking to my psy about a particular um event and i asked him if he thought that i had been raped. he said, "well i think you experienced it as rape" i thought that to be a very interesting way of putting things.. another thing that adds to all of the complications is that alot of times there is some pleasure actually received. which obviously fucks everything up. i never meant to go on that rambling rampage i've been trying to avoid this topic but oh well. i have some of my own personal info/data/experience from the uh.. i'm not sure how to refer to him.. not incredibly loved guy that everyone talks about here? oh gabe - how did you ever think that you could 'control' rlmoo (you said something to that effect earlier, how it was out of yr control) to me that doesn't make any sense. how can you control other people and what they say and expect them to like it? then again, i don't know shit about moos.. let's talk about premature graying. ok, maybe not. i keep sleeping through all of these things that i should be doing. i think i spend the rest of my time procrastinating. arg. out of patience..

From: Nichelle
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: exhausted

Yesterday's crisis left me completely burned out. Gabriel slept for about five hours in the evening, while I went up to the computer lab. I returned, made a phone call to my mother about a student loan, Gaby woke up and we returned to the lab. He got very drunk, we ate dinner at some time around midnight, and for the four hours he slept, I could not because he was moaning and waking up and restless. I was an evil bitch when his alarm did not wake him. It took five minutes of coaxing before he acknowledged my voice, another five or ten to get him out of bed. He threw a tantrum in the kitchen, making as much noise as possible, slamming the silverware into the sink. I asked him, "Are you *trying* to be noisy?" "Yes." When he let the teapot whistle for nearly a minute, I got up, slammed the fridge door shut, and flipped the lid on the teapot. He fell asleep again while trying to get dressed. I still managed to catch the 7:20 bus to class, on almost no sleep.

I hope that Bucephalus comes back today. I am tired. Gabriel and I talked a lot yesterday about the World, some mean things were said, and some strange things happened.

There are some things that raise some pretty strong questions, Allset. How did you get the log from B? What exactly is your relationship with C? What the hell does this mean:

I find myself in an odd situation, hearing her
rapist beg me to forgive him, to understand, to visit him and
let him prove he isn't a monster.

What can it mean except that you are in contact with him? This makes me extremely uneasy. I don't know what is true, who is lying. I know that I am not lying.

I don't want what seems to be happening on Lambda. Last night, negatron and Gabriel had a more or less public discussion about this in the Living Room. We left when I noticed that C was in there. I was in my own room, and I don't know what was said, and I don't know what he may have heard. I was very clear about this with Gabriel- as much as people may know, and as many people who know it, my life is not to be discussed in the Living Room or any other public room. It is bad enough already. Let's try not to make it worse. I will @recycle my character before I will get involved in MOO politics, arbitration, or whatever the fuck it is.

I am very tired and very grouchy, and I'm going to go talk to the Lemoyne Loan Sharks now, so have a nice day, and wake me up when the computer arrives.

Nichelle

From: Jenipher
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: My very own rapist

B paged me, said C was desperate that I speak with him. I refused. B asked if she could email me the log that included C's explanation. Apparently, it wasn't very difficult for C to guess who had warned Nichelle that B had been meeting with C quite regularly. I told B she could email me the log. Why the fuck not? C already had my email address. So B did so. I read it and was horrified but not too surprised. I had been pretty sure C would try the bdsm, she asked for it, we negotiated it, tack. I held onto the log, asked Colin what I should do with it. He advised me to stay the fuck out of it, and I agreed, deciding that no good could come of presenting a log which included statements that could never be verified or proven to be false. I have kept the log since August 24th. I forwarded you the original, Nichelle, and you must have seen that it was from B. So why are you asking how I got it?

After I received the log, I unrefused C and spoke with him a bit about it. He was smooth and contrite, sorry and sympathetic to my plight. I didn't fall for it for a second. I told him no matter what had happened, and I generally believed Nichelle's version of the story, I could never trust him, and I would prefer to end our acquaintance. He accepted this with grace -- what else could he do? And I haven't spoken with him since.

I love being on trial. Really, I am all grown-up now, and I can make my own decisions. I told you once that I had no desire to meet him, that rapists aren't quite my style, but you failed to believe me. I am old and married, wizened and grey. I am not going anywhere to meet anyone. I have used my teeth, nails, knives, legs, stiletto heels, pantyhose that couldn't quite be ripped through by sorority boy hands, to fend off would-be rapists. I don't need that again. I never fucking needed that. My father and my uncle gave me plenty of it when I was a child. I had enough of it in June, hearing him reach for the cuffs, whisper, "I heard about your rape fantasy. I'm going to make it come true for you." I've been there, in that place where the lines between consent/safeword, play/rape, are so fuzzy that it becomes impossible to know where rape begins and domination ends. It was too much for me, having to use every ounce of intelligence I had to convince him that he was overstepping the limit I had set. I refused to say my safeword, forced him to listen to me, his submissive little whore, until he understood that he wasn't going to fuck me. And he did understand, and he fell asleep in my arms, my beautiful red-headed boy. I cradled him and heard him whisper that he loved me before he slept. I knew his eyes were dead, I tasted marijuana smoke in his mouth, but it didn't matter, because in that instant he became mine as much as I was his.

I don't know where this is fucking coming from. Last night I cried myself to sleep wondering why I let someone cuff me, strip me, and beat the shit out of me. I cried when I remembered his making me come as we rode to the leather club with eight other people. The whisper, "Look at that, you slut. You came, and all these people know it." Nichelle, this world is ripping me apart. Your experiences, my past with C, the parallels between the man in Chicago and C's story, have me frazzled and teary-eyed. It's as if C, in constructing his lies, took my experience and made it his.

Please, don't drag me into your real lives. You and Gabe have far more to discuss right now than whether or not I am in contact with C.

Teri -- you were/are a wizard on IdMOO?

Allset

From: Nichelle
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: dragging you in

Allset, I am not an idiot. I may be writing these things because I'm tired and pissed off, but they are true. We're all grown-ups here, at least most of us, and you can talk to whoever you like.

You told me that this girl named B was hanging out with C, shouldn't we warn her, so I did. Can't you understand why it is confusing to me that you should have a log from her not long after? So do I understand what you are telling me? C wanted to speak with you, send a message through B, C had your e-mail address, B sent you this log...? So why am I asking how you got it? It is not clear to me. Do you know B? Are you being entirely truthful? I believe, and my memory is quite good, but not perfect, that you told me C knew nothing about you IRL. You can say and do anything you like, but your story is not consistent.

"Please don't drag me into your real lives." What the fuck? What do you think this list is, Allset? You know what ingredients are in our dinner, about our sex life, you know the details, large and small, of our daily lives. There is no question that each of you is in our real lives, and to some extent, depending on how willing you are to put your ass on the line, we are in yours too. Allset, I give you credit for being willing to put your ass on the line.

You are already in our real lives, whether we dragged you or not. When I moved here to live with Gabriel, I more or less gave up having secrets from strangers on the internet. The fact is, we are in a major discussion/debate/war/whatever about C. Things are said here that are personal, dangerous, and my *LIFE*, my *PAST* is being talked about with a group of strangers in e-mail, and sometimes in the Living Room. Allset, I don't think your story is consistent, I believe you are in contact with C, clearly he can communicate with you any time he likes. I like you, and I think you write good e-mail, but I don't know if I can trust you or believe you. If you are on this list *and* in direct contact with C, it affects me. I don't know what you say to him. For all I know, you could be forwarding this shit to him. This is bullshit. I'm going home.

From: Jenipher
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: Again

I hope you are just tired, Nichelle, and that when you wake up it all becomes claer to you. I will try once more to explain the situation. I despised C  even before I knew he was a fucking rapist. (Is that like a cunning linguist?) My story is consistent, if you would just try to read it and calm down. I was sitting in my room. B paged me and said she had been talking to C about what you told her. I asked how she knew I was the one who had told you. She said C had guessed. I admitted, yes, I was the one who informed you that B was spending a lot of time with C. Then B said C really wanted to talk to me. I declined. B said she had a log he would like me to see, then. I said sure. B emailed me the log. C knows my email address. He sent me a picture of himself via email once.  I am guessing he didn't just email me himself because he was scared, and he didn't want me to rip him apart for invading my offMOO life. I am not sure though. I don't think the boy even knows where my web page is, and he certainly doesn't have my phone number or address. Just my name and my email address. I never  lied to you. I am also not lying now, but then, that is just as unproveable as whether or not you were raped. I am no longer in contact with C. I am damned sure not forwarding him the messages from this listserv. I don't recall -ever- sending him email, in fact, even when I first knew him. I know you probably can't understand  my motivation for speaking with him. (Oh yeah, one more thing. Yes, B did page me and send me the log the VERY DAY  you spoke with her and warned her. Doesn't that make sense? She ran to C and told him everything right after you logged off.)

So, my motivation for speaking with him after I received the log: to hear his side of the story. I don't know what  happened. Only the two of you know what happened. If I ever found out, without a shadow of a doubt, what actually happened,  my opinion of you wouldn't change either way. I almost understand your distrust. Almost. But not quiet. I have been nothing but a friend to you all through this.

Why the fuck is it that Joy and Eve both know who your rapist is and neither of them have sworn to you to cut off all contact with him, but you don't jump down their throats? It makes no sense. I, on the other hand, have told you I am no longer in contact with him. Oh well, I hope you start feeling better.

Goodbye,
Allset

From: Nichelle
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: Re: Again

Bucephalus is home, I'm going to bed. Allset, I have no reason to believe that Joy is in contact with C, and Eve is not on this list. I'm tired, I'd be surprised if I slept more than two hours, and I don't know what to think.

From: Jenipher
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Joy wrote:
i have some of my own personal info/data/experience from the uh.. i'm not sure how to refer to him.. not incredibly loved guy that everyone talks about here?

That's why you have just as much reason to suspect she could be in contact with him as you have to suspect I am, Nichelle. Even though I already told you exactly when I talked to him and exactly what I said. I don't know why the fuck I am harping on this, but I came home, made almond chicken the good old-fashioned Chinese wok way, and the more vegetables I cut, the more furious I became. So, I hope you were able to rest, and I hope you can eventually forgive me and realize I can be trusted. Until then, I am just pissed off, and I hate keeping things bottled up. Hell, no one else on the world does, why the fuck should I?

Allset

From: Joy
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: ....

onto to this list's current fav subject: well, i'm not sure how to refer to him.. to who allset or whoever the hell has been saying whatever: you must be more stupid than i had ever thought if you think that i'm still in contact with Mr.-I'm-Fucked-In-The-Head. the last time i talked to him was around (in my estimate) about a year and a half ago. we talked over a period of a month, at max. he tried to get me to join his 'stable' or whatever the fuck he calls it. the last contacts we had he was still trying to recruit me. i've only talked with him on the moo and ever since it was made clear that i was a plant, and a stubborn plant at that, and that i had no interest in anything sexual (or anything else with him) there has been no communication besides trivial how's the weather type shit in a public room.
my sleep schedule is messing me up. i overslept for some important stuff today (yes, again) it's going to take some work for me to cover my ass on these things... arg.
i'm wearing a stupendous pair of pants today. everyone should see them and admire. such a wonderful shade of blue...
the weather is gradually starting to get cooler (hooray!!) no one has yet mentioned what they may be planning to be on halloween..(hint hint) i suggest a massive group shoelace cleaning party.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: La Casquette de Charles Bovary

La deuxième page de Madame Bovary offre un excellent exemple du style discursif et narratif de Gustave Flaubert. Le texte met en scène les débuts scolaires de Charles, le futur époux de l'héroïne, au collège de Rouen. Il fait partie de l'incipit, cinq pages rédigées à la première personne du pluriel (sans que le narrateur ne soit explicitement identifié) qui débouchent, sans transition formelle, sur l'histoire à la troisième personne à focalisation interne variable. Nous savons seulement que le chroniqueur a étudié avec Charles et écrit longtemps après les événements qu'il décrit. La problématique du passage se trouve dans la tension entre le discours et le récit dans le déroulement de l'action :

— Levez-vous, dit le professeur.
Il se leva : sa casquette tomba. Toute la classe se mit à rire.
Il se baissa pour la reprendre. Un voisin la fit tomber d'un coup de coude ; il la ramassa encore une fois.
— Débarassez-vous donc de votre casque, dit le professeur, qui était un homme d'esprit.
Il y eut un rire éclatant des écoliers qui décontenança le pauvre garçon, si bien qu'il ne savait s'il fallait garder sa casquette à la main, la laisser par terre ou la mettre sur sa tête. Il se rassit et la posa sur ses genoux.
— Levez-vous, reprit le professeur, et dites-moi votre nom.
Le nouveau articula, d'une voix bredouillante, un nom inintelligible.
— Répétez !
Le même bredouillement de syllabes se fit entendre, couvert par les huées de la classe.
— Plus haut ! cria le maître, plus haut !
Le nouveau, prenant alors une résolution extrême, ouvrit une bouche démesurée et lança à pleins poumons, comme pour appeler quelqu'un, ce mot : Charbovari.
Ce fut un vacarme qui s'élanca d'un bond, monta en crescendo, avec des éclats de voix aigus (on hurlait, on aboyait, on trépignait, on répétait : Charbovari ! Charbovari !), puis qui roula en notes isolées, se calmant à grand'peine, et parfois qui reprenait tout à coup sur la ligne d'un banc où saillissait encore ça et là, comme un pétard mal éteint, quelque rire étouffé.
Cependant, sous la pluie des pensums, l'ordre peu à peu se rétablit dans la classe, et le professeur, parvenu à saisir le nom de Charles Bovary, se l'étant fait dicter, épeler et relire, commanda tout de suite au pauvre diable d'aller s'asseoir sur le banc de paresse, au pied de la chaire. Il se mit en mouvement, mais, avant de partir, hésita.
— Que cherchez-vous ? demanda le professeur.
— Ma cas..., fit timidement le nouveau, promenant autour de lui des regards inquiets.
— Cinq cent vers à toute la classe ! exclamé d'une voix furieuse arrêta, comme le Quos ego, une bourrasque nouvelle. — Restez donc tranquilles ! continuait le professeur indigné, et, s'essuyant le front avec son mouchoir qu'il venait de prendre dans sa toque : Quant à vous le nouveau, vous me copierez vingt fois le verbe ridiculus sum.
Puis, d'une voix plus douce :
— Eh ! vous la retrouverez, votre casquette ; on ne vous l'a pas volée !
La scène ressemble à une expérimentation pavlovienne interprétée par Charlie Chaplin. Les trois mouvements du texte commencent chacun par un stimulus du professeur (« Levez-vous, » « Levez-vous, » « Que cherchez-vous ? »), qui provoque une action de Charles, qui provoque une réaction de la classe, qui provoque une contre-réaction du professeur. Le maître parle. L'élève agit. Ses camarades réagissent. Le maître contre-réagit. La démarche dialectique part du récit, en passant par le discours indirect, pour se résoudre dans le discours direct. Cette progression montrera les solutions techniques de Flaubert aux problèmes stylistiques de la narration.
Au début du passage le professeur donne un ordre à Charles : « Levez-vous ». Ce dernier s'exécute. Le narrateur décrit l'action en deux phrases d'un parallélisme visible au niveau spatio-typographique : « Il se leva, » « Il se baissa ». Cette ressemblance morpho-syntaxique donne du relief à la dissemblance comique d'orientation. Les pronoms de la troisième personne s’accumulent dans une colonne anaphorique (au sens grammatical et rhétorique du terme) qui fonctionne comme un trompe-l’œil, car le troisième est impersonnel, n’a donc pas d'antécédent. En fait la classe va commenter l’embarras de son nouveau membre de manière à interrompre l’effort de celui-ci. Le mouvement antipodal de Charles et de sa casquette, si cruellement décrite dans le paragraphe précédent (« une de ces choses, enfin, dont la laideur muette a des profondeurs d’expression comme le visage d’un imbécile. »), suscite un éclat de rire qui ne manque pas de faire accroître sa gêne. De nouveau le texte incite à une lecture verticale, car la homéotéleute rélie les verbes mit, fit et dit. Le narrateur raconte toute l'action de Charles et de la classe dans de courtes phrases au passé simple avec seuls un deux-points et un point-virgule comme marques de lien logique. Le récit, le rapport des faits, tend, jusqu'au vingtième siècle, à privilégier l'emploi du prétérit et de la parataxe. Dans les paragraphes suivants la syntaxe va basculer dans un tout autre sens.
Le professeur lance alors un deuxième impératif, plus sévère, avec ce donc impatient et ironique. Peut-être le narrateur ressent-il des scrupules rétrospectifs face à cette Schadenfreude à laquelle il a jadis participé, car il se moque du maître en le traitant d'homme d'esprit, ce à quoi il ne ressemble guère. La classe réagit encore une fois par le rire, mais la phrase déborde de propositions subordonnées qui dépendent du pronom relatif qui et des conjonctions si bien que, si et ou. Dans les trois premiers paragraphes il n'y a même pas de et. Le style indirect, introduit ici par savait, tend, selon les transformations nécessaires à la concordance des temps, à favoriser l'emploi de l'imparfait et de l'hypotaxe. En dépit de sa confusion grandissante, Charles trouve une solution intermédiaire et, nous le verrons, éphémère au dilemme posé par son couvre-chef.
Dans la répétition de « Levez-vous, » et la variation : « et dites-moi votre nom, » qui annoncent le deuxième mouvement du texte, apparaît le burlesque classique qui domine toute la scène. Le narrateur ne dit pas explicitement si Charles se lève en effet, mais il y a tout lieu de le croire. En revanche, pour la première fois dans le passage nous ne savons ce que devient la casquette. À supposer que Charles obéisse, soit il la tient dans la main, soit il l'a posée sur le banc, soit elle est de nouveau tombée par terre, ce qui paraît peu probable, vu que personne ne réagit. Un parallélisme verbal vient s'ajouter à la redite comique. Les articles directs s'empilent comme auparavant les pronoms, et la répétition de l'antonomase « Le nouveau » sert à souligner le schème. Contrairement à plus haut l'intrus (celui qui ne représente pas Charles) se trouve au milieu de la colonne avec l'art plus symétrique d'une composition étudiée. Cette esthétique de pureté formelle correspond mieux au rapport des paroles ou des pensées qu'à la simple narration des faits.
L'action linguistique remplace ici l'action cinétique, ainsi que le discours indirect se substitue au récit. Charles ne fait rien, mais il parle. Au moins il s'y efforce. Le surnom qu'on lui donne semble le priver de son identité, car il ne sait plus dire comment il s'appelle. La phrase fournit un parfait exemple de la poétique flaubertienne : le groupe nomino-verbal de sept syllabes, un complément de manière de cinq syllabes, le complément d'objet direct de sept syllabes. Le sémantème articul- se divise en deux sèmes, la composante physique démentie par le premier adjectif, la composante intellectuelle par le second. Le professeur, dont la patience commence à s'user, donne un quatrième ordre, qui ne réussit guère mieux que ses prédécesseurs. Sujet à une ironie croissante, le maître, ne s'étant pas fait obéir, obéit à ses propres impératifs en répétant la phrase plus haut et en criant. Les participes couvert et prenant revêtent l'aspect de l'imparfait (itératif et inchoatif respectivement) par rapport aux verbes au passé simple fit, ouvrit et lança. Cette antinomie, nous l'avons déjà vu, correspond à l'opposition du style indirect au style direct. Enfin Charles arrive à dire quelque chose : « Charbovari ». Le collégien réalise, à la syncope d'un phonème près, la transcription phonétique de son nom. Cette lacune, néanmoins, suffit pour semer le désordre dans la classe, que Flaubert va déployer toutes les resources de son art à dépeindre.
Une série de métaphores organise la longue période qui décrit la réaction des élèves. Bien qu'il y ait une comparaison à la fin : « comme un pétard mal éteint, » cet élément non-récurrent ne joue aucun rôle structural dans la phrase. Le narrateur utilise six expressions de trois champs sémantiques différents pour représenter des phénomènes d'ordre linguistique :
MÉTAPHORE : DOMAINE
« s'élança d'un bond » : locomotion
« monta en crescendo » : musique
« on hurlait » : zoologie
« on aboyait » : zoologie
« roula en notes isolées » : musique
« saillissait » : locomotion
La forme ABCCBA, celle d'un chiasme enchâssé dans un second, apparaît nettement selon l'origine des comparants. La phrase, d'apparence si spontanée, avec une cascade de verbes et une proposition indépendante entre parenthèses, recèle une structure rhétorique très étudiée et très classique. Ce luxe d'images donne au texte son considérable pouvoir mimétique. La structure grammaticale s'avere non moins étudiée. En fait, tout ce qui suit l'attribut vacarme dépend de lui et ne constitue qu'une longue proposition relative :
SUJET : VERBE : PRÉDICAT
« ce fut un vacarme »
« qui s'élança d'un bond »
idem « monta en crescendo »
« on hurlait » ø
« on aboyait » ø
« on trépignait » ø
« on répétait : Charbovari ! »
« qui roula en notes isolées »
idem « se calmant à grand'peine »
« qui reprenait sur la ligne d'un banc »
« quelque rire saillissait où »
Après huit pronoms nominatifs un seul substantif remplit la fonction de sujet. Les onze verbes, en revanche, hétérogènes et truculents, vont jusqu'à produire des effets onomatopéiques. Il ne s'agit, d'ailleurs, que de verbes d'expression ou liés à la parole. Enfin l'absence totale de complément d'objet direct ou d'attribution confirme l'hypothèse du style indirect, d'où, encore une fois, les six imparfaits et le participe présent. Quant au pétard, il va en quelque sorte se rallumer dans la phrase suivante.
Le professeur met fin à l'agitation et poursuit son dialogue avec Charles. Le timbre de douze bilabiales sourdes explosives (sur une centaine de consonnes) résonne sur tout le paragraphe. Plus d'un mot sur sept commence par un [p]. Cette allitération extrêmement riche renforce le thème de la punition et sa métaphore : « sous la pluie des pensums ». Deux verbes au passé simple, se rétablit et commanda, encadrent une proposition subordonnée dont l'aspect se revèle perfectif (rétrospectif) pour les deux participes (parvenu et se l'étant fait) et progressif (inchoatif) pour le second seulement. De nouveau victime de l'ironie dramatique, le maître change de casquette, pour ainsi dire, avec son élève. Où naguère il lisait les dictées, maintenant il en écrit une. Si le narrateur ne ménage toujours pas le professeur, il semble une deuxième fois prendre pitié de Charles, car il remplace l'antonomase « Le nouveau » par un surnom plus tendre : « [le] pauvre diable ». Comme le récit domine le premier mouvement du texte et le discours indirect en domine le second, dans le troisième Flaubert va céder la parole à ses personnages.
Face à l'hésitation rebelle de son élève, le professeur pose une question au lieu de donner un ordre. Cette velléité de comprendre marque un tournant dans le comportement du maître, qui devient du coup plus compatissant. Charles réussit mieux face à la nouvelle stratégie pédagogique. Il arrive presque à formuler un syntagme complet, qui repose, sans y répondre, la question de savoir où se trouve le châpeau. L'ordre chronologique de la réaction et de la contre-réaction s'intervertit ; celle-ci précède celle-là. La technique met l'accent sur le discours direct, par lequel commencent quatre des cinq derniers paragraphes (contre deux seulement des cinq premiers, et trois des cinq suivants). Pour la première fois le maître parle directement à la classe. Curieusement cette injonction, après une apposition qualificative, sert de sujet au verbe arrêta. Nous nous serions plutôt attendu à une construction de ce genre : « exclama-t-il d'une voix furieuse. Ce cri arrêta... ». Dans cette réification de la phrase, la parole devient un acte qui a des conséquences, le rétablissement de l'ordre et la rédaction d'une version latine de cinq cents vers.
Le narrateur compare la sanction du professeur à la reproche que Neptune lance aux dieux du vent Euros et Zéphyr dans le premier livre de l'Énéide (vers 135). Or chez Virgile l'aposiopèse rend implicite la menace, tandis que le maître ne s'interrompt pas en infligeant un châtiment effectif aux élèves, associés par métaphore à Borée (bourrasque). Le professeur reprend la parole, sans que le tiret n'entraîne un alinéa. La conjonction de coordination et n'introduit pas, comme on pourrait s'y attendre, une proposition indépendante. Elle débouche simplement sur un deux-points suivi d'une nouvelle citation sans tiret et sans verbe d'expression. Ce solécisme, si rare chez Flaubert, montre à quel point le discours direct lui semble aller de soi dans ce passage ; il ne ressent même plus le besoin de le signaler au lecteur par des guillemets. La tâche imposée à Charles paraît, malgré l'emprunt au narrateur du sobriquet « le nouveau », bien légère comparée ou rajoutée à une traduction de dix pages. Enfin la dernière phrase du passage confirme cette clémence et baisse le rideau sur la scène en renouant une dernière fois avec la casquette disparue.
Tout en faisant avancer l'action, cette page de Madame Bovary montre Flaubert en proie aux limites stylistiques du récit. La narration à la première personne ne le tire guère de l'embarras, pas plus que ne le fera la focalisation interne, où il passe pourtant pour un maître de l'art. Se lassant progressivement de décrire les faits et les gestes de ses personnages, il préfère rapporter leurs paroles et leurs pensées, d'où le célèbre imparfait flaubertien. Toujours insatisfait des résultats de cette technique, l'auteur se tourne vers le discours direct, au risque de céder une part de son autorité à ses personnages. La génération suivante va pousser encore plus loin cette expérimentation. Marcel Proust, James Joyce et Alfred Döblin vont, chacun à sa manière, trouver une solution aux problèmes narratifs de Flaubert, de Henry James et de Theodor Fontane. Dans l'éclatement cubiste du récit, en racontant les événements de plusieurs points de vue, ces romanciers mettront fin au dilemme réaliste.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Jenipher
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Umm, fuck you. I am far from stupid. You made my point for me, and I appreciate it, Joy. Now, why the fuck should I believe you haven't talked to him in a year and a half? No one believes me when I say I have never really liked him, and that I ended our acquaintanceship (or whatever) after I read the log. (Of course I had had him @gagged for quite some time before that.) It's sort of like Gabe saying he raped Katey (sp?) The fucking point is that anyone can say anything. The entire world is made up of lies, truths, believing and not believing. OK, let's see. 16 months ago, or so, C tried the same shit with me. Wanted me to be his pet, in his stable. I said, fuck that. He also asked me to call him. He said he couldn't netsex me unless I called him. At that time, I was a real netsex whore. I did it three or four times a day, no masturbation, just writing. So I was pissed at C. I wanted to netfuck him. But we never did, because I wouldn't ever call him. Once he ordered me to stick a glue stick up my cunt while I was at work. I told him I had, just so he would netsex me. And I can honestly say that boy is the most frightening person I have ever known. I logged off within half an hour or our beginning the scene. He scared me to death, and that was just online. Eventually I told him I had lied about fucking myself with the gluestick, and he said I -had- to call him if I ever wanted him to speak to me again. Well, he didn't get a call, and he didn't talk to me for a few weeks. Then he started begging again, and I really despised him by then. This was all during and after the Slaver shit which a few of you know about. Then I suppose he latched onto Nichelle, after he found out she had actually visited Slaver. Basically, C and I never had a good relationship. He has always wanted me, I guess to hurt me, cut me, make me feel a great deal of pain. But I never wanted the kind of viciousness he offered. Cutting myself while he listened over the phone just never appealed to me. There, now you have my "Tesla and C" story. I don't know why I didn't tell it before. MAYBE IT WOULD HAVE EXPLAINED MY FEAR AND LOATHING OF THE MAN.

Fuck

Allset

From: Terry
Date: 10 September 1996
Subject: Re: I raped Katie

Please remove me from this mailing list.

Teri

From: Nichelle
Date: 11 September 1996
Subject: Matilda

Matilda is a fruit-eating fiend. She likes cantaloupe best, she ate part of a pear just now. The other day, Gaby gave her a blueberry with less success. She just played with it, rolling it around on the floor, under the door, not understanding it was food. Blueberries and cats... is this like casting pears before swine? I'm getting ready to get to class, so this will be short. If y'all want to meet Murder, he's a MOOer now. He MOOs like a pro, seems to have picked it up fast, and he'd love to talk to you about the flute, but don't believe a word he says. Flutists are dangerous and shifty. Joy, I felt the "jack of all trades" feeling about music, but that was when I played about a dozen things. When I switched to just clarinet and sax, and then just clarinet I felt better. (Now I find myself working my way back up.) I don't know what your background with music is...

Two quick comments on a subject I'm trying to avoid. First, I was very tired yesterday, operating on basically no sleep, and the day before was even crazier. The things I said to you, Allset, are not things I would have said the night before or the night after. About Slaver, I knew this man as his other character (or one of them) for many months before he told me about this character. He didn't even feel comfortable discussing this other character with me most of the time. Enough said.

Now I get to go to class, meet some of my profs for the first time, after missing three of their classes due to illness and crisis, and see if they've kicked me out yet. Yesterday, I returned the evil English textbook with the Bruce Springsteen lyrics in it. I got over thirty dollars for the thing ($31.40) and we spent that on groceries. I may have to take another nap when I get home. I'm off.

Nichelle

From: Jenipher
Date: 12 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Yesterday my mail system, I dunno, broke. I didn't realize it needed to be fixed until this morning though. So, I didn't receive any mail sent last night. The last mail I have from this listserv is Nichelle's 'Matilda' post. So, if anything was sent since then, can you please forward it to me? Thanks

Allset

From: Kathleen
Date: 12 September 1996
Subject: Re: I raped Katie

Please remove me from this mailing list, too.

From: Joy
Date: 13 September 1996
Subject: News of the Weird

- An entire 86-member jury pool for a criminal case in Centerville, TN (pop. 16,000) in July had to dismissed b/c. according to prosecutor Ron Davis, too many members of the pool were related to each other.

- Jim Baen, publisher of Newt Gingrich's novel "1945," told reporters in August that almost 100,000 copies are stockpiled in a warehouse in Bristorl, Pa, and that if they are not brought soon, they will suffer the usual fate of surplus books- to be converted to pulp and used for such things as toilet paper.

- Davenport, Iowa, police arrested a 34-yr-old man in April and charged him with indecent exposure along a busy city street. The police were alerted by two women in a car who said they first spotted the man, then drove by again to confirm what they had seen.

- In the Journal of Abnormal Psychology released in August, a UGA  researcher concluded that a group of homophobic men (men who feared and hated homosexuals and dreaded being close to them) contained twice as many men who were sexually aroused by erotic photos of men as did an equal group of non homophobic men.

- In Sri Lanka, where monogamy is the law, Mr. Pavulupitiyage Gunapala, 35, was jailed in May on the complaint of the latest of his 15-current wives. (Police also found love letters to another 54 women.) The basis of the complaint was that the man was not faithful.

- In July, college president Joh Upton was arrested in Allegan, Mich, for murdering his iwfe, allegedly b/c, he said, "She was demanding a great number of things that weren't feasible." And in June, Ross Horton admitted at his trial in Honolulu that he killed his business partner in 1993 after the man criticized his ability to lay tile, which Horton takes seriously as "an art form." On the same day, according to police in Sauk Centre, Minn, Paul Crawford shot 4 neighbors and himself to death to culminate a feud over a 5-ft strip of land that separates their properties.

- The virtually semi-annual student cheating riots in Bangladesh were first reported of in Sept 1988. Then, students so adamant and blatant about the right to receive outside help when taking national placement exams sparked a rampage in whichi more than 500 people were injured. This year in March, in Kanpur, India, all high school final exams had to be taken barefoot to discourage students from carrying notes in their shoes. And in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in July, hundreds of children scaled walls to pass notes to heir friends taking high school entrance exams despite the presence of more than 100 police officers who ringed the school in anticipation of the cheating.

- More Italian Justice: In August, Germano Maccari, freshly convicted of the 1978 murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, was released from jail pending his appeal, as is customary under Italian law. IN March, the man who murdered an American during the Achille Lauro hijacking failed to return to his Italian prison following a 12-day furlough for good behaviour. Last year, the Washington Post repted that emmebrs of a traveling prisoners' theatrical group in Italy used their performance disguises in bank robberies they pulled off while they were free between shows. And last year, a gnag of AIDS-stricken bank robbers were released to pull off more jobs b/c Italian law forbids imprisoning people with AIDS.

- Self-described "fishing fanatic" Tom Getherall of East Moriches, Long Island, telling a New York Daily News reporter the day after the crash of TWA Flight 800: "I felt bad when I heard about the wreck, real bad, but to be honest with you, the first thing I wondered was how it would affect the fishing."

- John P. Royster, 47, serving a life sentence for murder, waxing nostalgic to a New York Times reporter in June about the joyous childhood of his son, John J. Royster, 22, who had just been charged with the vicious killing of a New York City dry cleaner: "He's a chip off the old block."

- The Broome, Australia, town council recently required that the camels that carry tourists on commercial nighttime rids along Cable Beach be outfitted with flashing, battery-operated taillights, accord to a July AP story.

From: Laurent
Date: 13 September 1996
Subject: Re: News of the Weird

JOY writes
-----------
- In the Journal of Abnormal Psychology released in August, a UGA researcher concluded that a group of homophobic men (men who feared and hated homosexuals and dreaded being close to them) contained twice as many men who were sexually aroused by erotic photos of men as did an equal group of non homophobic men.
---------
first i wonder what the hell we care about it..and then..
didn't they now that homophobic men are mostly afraid of THEIR homosexuality?
-------------------------------

laurent

From: Laurent
Date: 13 September 1996
Subject: Re: M. Velly

so you do not like your new school Nichelle..well understandable. Never went much to classes when i was in 'land of the free Inc.' as i just decided i would call the US of A from now on (after discarding 'home of the brave Corp.', which sounded too much like 'home of the brave corpses' and might be ressented as an insult even by the not very patriot crowd i am writing this too.)but i was not too impressed.

but moving to France might be too much of a shock for you if you wanna go to university..well first there is the language problem..and then yu would have to get used to free studies..tuition and fees at my school are about 300$ a year all included..which you easily pay back with all the students discount you get on movies, theaters and airfares.

does not seem like horrible to you?well the thing is that since you do not pay much, you do not have to expect much.. lemme try to imagine taking the french equivalent of history 101 here..

first it'd take you 3 weeks of wandering around to find the form that you need to fill in order to ask for the paper that lets you apply fort the right to get an application form to get into the administration building where you can start arguing with the secretaries..who have no idea what you are talking about since there is one person taking care of 2 quazillions students..then you will learn that the class is held on a neighboringcampus that is very close (45 minutes train)..and you will meet there with 150 students, i-e one third of the class that, like you, got the timetable of last year..then maybe after 2 weeks you will end on a bench among 500 students (that is if you came 30 minutes early) or on the stairs, or outside the amphitheatre, listening to a prof that could not care less cause he gets a shitty pay and has neither a hope for a raise nor fear to get fired, specially not for his teaching, specially not for his teaching.

but you are not the kind of woman that can be scared by that so you will go on, and after 2 years you will get the Deug, which does not give you a thing, but the right to go to the third year, where you and the other survivors of the premier cycle will be confronted to all the guys and girls who tried to get into the ecole normal superieure, failed but worked like dogs for it and had real teachers, which give them much much much more knowledge than you had managed to gather sitting on the stairs..and the teachers will teach for them, not for you..and if even you survive, after 2 years you will have to sope with the guys who did manage to get into the ecole normale superieure and then go do grad studies at the university, and again you will feel like a dove competing against eagles...for non existing jobs anyway...

the grass is always greener guys..but here we have concrete, and i have been told it has been stuffed with asbestos..the 17th person died on my campus recently due to cancer caused by asbestos..

enjoy

laurent

From: SAGReiss
Date: 14 September 1996
Subject: Mistakes? Thoughts?

Music’s Internal Clock

The breath marks, accents and metronome marks indicated in the 3 Pieces should be strictly adhered to.

Igor Stravinsky

Western classical musical notation represents the man-made category of time differently from the chronological system used in everyday life. Music’s internal clock uses three quantitative data to tell time: the value of a beat, the number of beats per measure and the number of measures in a piece. Empirical analysis must scorn such qualitative adjectives as allegro, adagio etc. because they cannot be accurately read. On the other hand, such notations as metronome markings go beyond the scope of the specifically musical, using minutes, a non-musical unit of time. A comparative study of two works, the first and third of Igor Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo, shows how the empirical data of music’s internal clock can deepen our understanding of time as counted in beats and measures.
The following table shows the number of occurences (in measures) of the various time signatures in each piece and analyses them as purely mathematical data.

I

Metre Measures Product Difference

2/4 9 4 1/2
5/8 12 7 1/2
7/8 2 1 3/4
3/8 2 3/4
3/4 3 2 1/4
6/8 1 3/4
2/8 1 1/4

Sum 30 17 3/4 -6 3/8

Quotient 71/120 +1081/6720

II

Metre Measures Product Difference

2/4 17 8 1/2
5/16 11 3 7/16
3/16 9 1 11/16
3/8 14 5 1/4
2/8 3 3/4
3/4 4 3
5/8 2 1 1/4
4/16 1 1/4

Sum 61 24 1/8 +6 3/8

Quotient 193/448 -1081/6720

Simple observation and arithmetic lead to the following statements concerning the total number of beats in each piece. The first is 17 3/4 whole-note beats long, while the third is 24 1/8 whole-note beats long. This suggests that the third is 6 3/8 whole-note beats longer than the first. Indeed the first piece lasts thirty measures, while the third lasts sixty-one. Assuming every eighth note, for example, to have the same duration, we divide the number of whole-note beats by the number of measures to yield the average metre or speed of each piece, respectively 71/120 (appoximately 9/16) and 193/488 (approximately 7/16). Thus the third is faster than the first by 1081/6720 (approximately 3/16).

From: SAGReiss
Date: 14 September 1996
Subject: Downsizing

Those of you who have been with us the longest have seen this before. Some crisis causes a sharp reduction of our numbers, either because they ask to leave or because I get pissed off and toad a few people just for the fun of it or both, as is now the case. I have been in a bad mood for a week, snarling and snapping at my friends on the MOO, not even talking to my enemies. Friends... Somebody who has left recently called me his friend in a private e-mail. I don't have any fucking friends. I have enemies, but they are so low-rent that I'm not even bothering to answer their lies and insults. This morning I was mean to Nichelle. She doesn't understand the way my mind works, mostly because we so seldom see eachother in the morning. It looked like I was washing the dishes, but that was merely an illusion, just one of those paranoid hallucinations that occasionally prey on those who don't drink as much as I do. Actually I was doing three things, writing a text on Music's Internal Clock, writing e-mail (this one) and criticizing both texts and trying to make them better. It is hard to do this with the cat eating my ankles, the gf chatting and some weird-ass music I've never heard before blaring. In the morning I am at the height of my powers. I open my eyes and I am a thousand miles away. I fall out of bed and hit the floor on a dead run. My mind is so active even in silence I hear a thousand voices. I'm afraid I do need a special kind of care, total silence or Beethoven's Ninth which is so much a part of my own mind that it is the same thing as silence, so that nothing breaks the concentration of a kind most people have never experienced. This is one inconvenience of living with me. In the morning I must not be disturbed, even a little, ever. I make allowences for the cat who cannot read e-mail. I'm sorry about this. Don't believe a word laurent says, girls. He's a fucking liar. He doesn't even live in France. He lives in Paris. Paris is not France. Of course I've never lived in France either. I lived in Alsace. I'm not even sure where France is, except that it's somewhere West of the Vosges. All I know is: "L'Alsace et la Bretagne, les deux plus beaux pays de l'Europe. Quel domage que la France les separe." Thus France must be somewhere between Alsace and Britanny, but definately not in Paris. It's weird that laurent and I met long before I knew any other of you, except of course Corinne and Jeff. The Frenchman in that log from DU in BABEL is laurent. I recall liking him, but thought that he hated me. Of course I was so hated by everyone on DU that I made Colin look like the homecoming king. This morning Holly came back to work after eight months on worker's compensation. What she says at six in the morning as we're all struggling to wake up would embarrass a hooker who came in for coffee and a croissant on her way home from a long night of fifteen-minute blowjobs. She has the foulest mouth I have ever heard, and I've spent most of my life in bars. I found a slip of paper with Sweet Lou's name and a phone number. The last time this happened I got his ex-landlord, who was looking for money. This time I got his father, an old, crazy, suffering voice. He was very vague about everything, wouldn't even take a message, said he didn't know his son's phone number. He must be used to friends of Lou's calling up and threatening to burn the house down if he doesn't pay up. Lou is not a good credit risk, though he has always bought me drinks. Of course I was his French teacher and gave him a C+ even though he never came to class or did any of the work and we had to rewrite his final exam at the bar in Faegan's. Lou's kind of a bad man. He plays rugby and got kicked out of Amsterdam for selling smack when he was sixteen years old. When he came to Syracuse, a freshman, he joined the rugby team. At the first practice he walked up to the biggest dude he saw and kicked the shit out of him for no reason. He was captain of the team after that. Neil Diamond is coming to the hotel and we've got a twenty-page itinerary explaining how to run the hotel to his liking. The hotel will put an extra ten people on, twenty hours a day for three days, and bill him for the labour to make everything run smoothly. We keep saying to eachother: "You're going to be Neil's personal slave," or "You're going to be Neil's sexkitten/lovepuppy." Whatever. If they want me to stand around for twelve hours waiting in case he or one of his entourage of fifty people on two floors we'll need security clearence and a key to get to calls to order room service, I'm not doing it for $4.10 an hour. Let them pay me ten bucks. This morning this beautiful blonde comes in for breakfast with her mother. I could see the crack of her ass when she stood up and her nipples when she sat down. I said to one of the new girls: "Oh well, I'm not making any money, but at least I get to look at those jailbait tits."

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Patricia
Date: 15 September 1996
Subject: Cleaning house

While you are busy cleaning house, please take a moment to remove my name from your cc: list.

Thank You,
Trish

From: Nichelle
Date: 15 September 1996
Subject: FWBs

This morning was wet and horrible, I got up early thanks to Matilda who was clawing at my buns, as is her habit in the morning. Went up to return a book (Writing: ten lessons in clarity and grace) which had been required for the English class I dropped. (The other one began with a Bruce Springsteen excerpt.) I climbed over a rail to make a shortcut and got water all over my butt, walked to the drugstore with a cold, wet butt to buy a carton of Camel Filters for Gabriel.

I can't believe Gaby wrote a letter called downsizing without mentioning this very obvious point which would also have fit in well with his letter because I think it's what I was pestering him about as he did brain-pushups at the sink. I've managed to put on a pair of pants I haven't been able to wear for a few years.

Anyway, it wasn't any better tonight when I walked up to get mozarella cheese for the pizza and a half-case of Molson. I have the badass backpack. It actually held the beer. Some assholes pulled up as I was waiting to cross the street and made some rude comment. I stepped up to the edge of the curb and said, "Yeah, well you can kiss my fat, white ass, frat boy." I felt pretty good after I said that. Where I come from, and I never knew why, we used to call jerks like those guys "cheesedicks".

Is there anyone left on this list? I can't believe how many people have 'walked the plank'.

Nichelle

From: SAGReiss
Date: 16 September 1996
Subject: Second thoughts

Dear Vania,

I know I said I wasn't going to intervene, but I thought maybe you should know the context in which you and Gabriel argued Saturday night. First of all you didn't need to send me that log. Gaby logged the conversation as soon as Virgil had led Werner to another world and showed it to me. The reason I have to write this letter at all is that you are two arrogant, stubborn, testesterone-crazed little boys and neither of you is willing to reach out directly to the other, no matter how bad both of you feel about your little fight. He shows me the log, you write to him through me. Maybe you should both grow up. Still part of my job on the list is to keep the geniuses happy and at relative peace with eachother and the world. Gabriel was crushed when you left the list. He felt rejected and betrayed, far more than he was willing to tell me, all the more so because of how happy he was to have you on the list. Gabe likes you, admires you and even envies you. You have to realize he is like Jude, sitting outside of Christminster serving the very professors who were so intimidated by the presence of a world-class intellectual in their midst that they shunned him and ultimately fired him. He is also sanguine enough to know that the poor social skills you refer to in your letter are the reason he is not, like you, making $50,000 dollars a year at the University of Texas and awaiting tenure while he is waiting tables for eighty dollars a day. That you were very ambiguous about why you had left only stings his wound. On the one hand it's because of Tesla. On the other hand it's because of the letter called "I raped Katie". On the other hand it's not Gabe's fault. On the other hand it's because of his admittedly poor social skills. How many hands have you got? negatron, Tesla, joy and I all understood his letter. He was using a cruel and keen irony to point out the painful position I am in. However little or much anyone on the list trusts me, no one but C and I know what happened. Gabe didn't rape anyone, but only Katy and he really know that. Last night he was so sad he got on IRC for the first time because he was afraid to meet you on RL and feels, as do I, stalked by C on Lambda. His list is shattered and he doesn't feel at home on his own MOO. We're talking about the hard work and labor of more than a year. As to the subject of your little spat, I don't want to argue about it with you. It was hard for me to see what he was up to too. Gaby is not saying that Stravinsky's pieces should be *played* without the dynamics. He isn't saying anything about music or the way in which it should be played. He simply thinks that musical notation, the discrete economy of beats and measures, is interesting to study as a semiological system representing time different from and independant of the chronological system, just as he studied the baseballistic temporal system in his article in Les Temps modernes. The article he showed you was not finished and he will try to make it clearer. That he would ask for your help correcting his mistakes is a measure of his trust and respect, this from the man who founded the SAGReiss_is_always_right club. One other thing I think you might want to keep in mind. Gabriel is an alcoholic. When I read Under the Volcano at his suggestion, I came to understand better that the bragging and boasting about how much he can drink only serves to hide the shame and woe of a very self-destructive compulsion. I empathize with his struggle because I have had similar problems with food addiction and boulimia. None of this is your problem. It is my problem to the extent that I choose to live with him. I may someday choose not to. I have seen him make coy, witty, funny answers when I talk to him about the night before and he wants to hide the fact that he can't even remember what the fuck happened. Gabe is not a mean drunk. He is however a little more sensitive, a little more emotional when he has had a few too many. If he's feeling loving, he will be more overtly so. If he's feeling argumentative and impatient, he will show that more. And he is always very impatient when he thinks someone's mind isn't working fast enough, and of course no one's mind works as fast as his, or at least that's what he believes. I know this is a long and wandering letter, but I just wish you two would be friends and stop fucking arguing about who's got the biggest cock.

Your friend,

Nichelle

From: Jenipher
Date: 16 September 1996
Subject: Hmmm

What a dull weekend, shopping at Chavanne Centre for the new REM cd and Philadelphia cream cheese, which they only have at Placette. I made snickers pie, the recipe for which I am putting on the recipe page of my site.

It was an incredible pie, chocolate wafer crust, fudge layer, snickers candy bar layer, then a cheese  cake layer. I made brisket Sunday, cooked that big slab of fatty beef for six hours in a deluxe home-made  barbecue sauce. I agree with Gabe, fuck it, eat what you like. I have lost fifteen pounds since I moved to France. They don't have skim milk here or no fat margarine. I use unsalted real butter and whole milk that is incredibly thick and actually has some taste. I am healthier, my stomach is used to fat and rich foods, so I no longer get sick when I eat incredible meals. I don't even want to eat in America anymore. Diet this,  diet that, tasteless and tired. Give me Etorki cheese any day, a little Beaufort, some Alsatian wine (which they actually had at the grocery store, Continent, this weekend.)

How interesting to have the list pared down by at least  half. How did you choose who survived and who got the axe? I had no idea my life on the listserv was hanging in the balance Saturday, or I might have logged on and given you a blow job to help my chances, Gabe. Like you ever would  have accepted one, the hollow description of my lips around you. Oh well, I crave netsex now, like I haven't in a long time. Maybe I will whore around as a guest for a few days and get it out of my system. What a fucking dull letter. I will go now and ruminate on why the fuck I  have nothing to say.

Allset

From: SAGReiss
Date: 16 September 1996
Subject: las gallinas

My English professor is a very nervous man, talks too fast, says too little, and makes me very uneasy. I handed him a little paper on Gulliver's Travels which I cranked out this morning before the bus. He looked at it for about four seconds and then told me that I write with fluency.

Gaby, when you get this, please forward it to the list. I can't mail to everyone with my stupid VAX account. I can't do shit with my stupid VAX account.

I tried to go to the library to watch those silly foreign language videos which I missed because I skipped Spanish too many times the first weed of class. The library was closed all weekend and is still closed today. Maybe I'll just make up some words to fill in the blanks:

juanita es...? feminista
La esposa de Fernando esta...? muerta (hah! fuck you, Don Fernando)
(this is a good game)
La madre de Gloria es...? una vaca (Moooooo)

I think I'm going to fail Spanish. What am I going to do about this assignment? Profesora Leovey gave me the weekend to complete this little packet, and I couldn't get at the videos. I guess I'll try to write a charming little letter in Spanish to her. I just hope I don't call her a car-horn by mistake.

Allset, I have never known Gabriel to turn down a blowjob, so maybe you've got a good chance. Perhaps he'll go for it, log it, and put it up on the web. We'll call the button "ser mas puta que las gallinas", "Chupamela",  or just "SUK MI DIK".

Nichelle

From: SAGReiss
Date: 16 September 1996
Subject: Dr Johnson and Mister Hyde

I've just spent an hour writing a letter from Nichelle to one of our dear departed with whom I quarrelled Saturday night. I think this is an appropriate answer. He wrote to me through Nichelle, I have written to him through her. It shouldn't take him long to figure out that I wrote it. I left a few clues to tell him it was me and a few red-herrings to convince him it was her. I did not use her account, but I did take off my signature and signed her name. I think it was fun and fair. There is a terrible tale of Dr Johnson who had a stroke and awoke one night to find himself paralysed and perhaps dying. When he realized he couldn't speak or move, he began composing a hymn to God asking Him, in Latin, to spare his mind and do what He will with his body. He found it was a very bad hymn and thus God had answered his prayers. If he knew the hymn was bad, his mind had been spared. This man was a bad ass. Oops, I forgot, you girls aren't interested in dead white European males anyway. Oh well... That, in a nutshell as Wainhouse says in his translation of the Marquis de Sade, is why you made the cut, Allset. You write often and well and you know when a letter isn't so good. We all have bad days. Artists and athletes have a sense of self-criticism so in-grown that they seldom need help from others. How many times does some almost dead white European alcoholic male badass conductor need to scream at Murder that his fucking flute sounds like a shot duck before Murder internalizes that critical faculty? How many times does some Nazi football coach need to excoriate the troops before they start doing it themselves. Anyone who gets to the top of a mean, competitive discipline knows when he's on a role and when he's in a slump. That was Jade's mistake. She wrote a bad letter? So what? I spoke with her the other day because, as I somewhat cruelly admitted, I was bored and didn't recognize any other names on @users and, for reasons you can well imagine, I don't really feel that comfortable talking to strangers on Lambda right now. I am going to repopulate this list through IRC. That may mean we won't be able to talk very much in real time for a while, but I'll still idle on RL MOO and my 'puter makes noise when the screen moves. Even if I've been idle for an hour, you can page me and I'll answer. I probably won't be on Lambda very much. I don't think I need to explain. Anyway I told Jade I was going to toad her because she never wrote and she said she'd been busy (We are all busy.) and emotionally stressed (We are all emotionally stressed.) and that she had written one letter and been roundly attacked. I told her that she had not been attacked, that her letter had been attacked. She didn't seem to dnatsunder the difference. She said I had never seen her writing. I asked what the fuck that's s'posed to mean. She made some weird-dumb distinction between venting and writing. Bullshit writing is writing, either good or bad. On the other hand, there is not just one way of writing well. One can read The Sun Also Rises and find it clear and beautiful or The Sound and the Fury and find it dark and beautiful, but both are beautiful. The real key, in writing non-fiction first-person narrative, which is basically what e-mail is, is making the most meaningless word in any language, the first person singular morpheme, become meaningful, to find your own voice so that when you say "I" or "i" that word means something more than "Ego est qui ego dit". When Emily Dickinson says "I", nothing could be clearer. Now here's a dead white non-European female for you, girls:

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News that Nature told -
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see -
For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen -
Judge tenderly - of Me

That is the work of a Meisterin, a badass if you prefer.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Nichelle
Date: 16 September 1996
Subject: Re: problem

Dear Vania,

>I've just spent an hour writing a letter from Nichelle to one of our dear
>departed with whom I quarrelled Saturday night. I think this is an
>appropriate answer. He wrote to me through Nichelle, I have written to
>him through her.

Please do not be upset with me. Our mutual friend thinks that he is being very funny by writing you a letter with my name on it. He also must think that it is funny to ruin what friendship you and I may have now. I do not appreciate his little joke. In the time that you and I have known one another, I have never treated you with anything but respect and civility. I trust that you will disregard that letter as a bad joke by a rude drunk who claims that he never lies. His practical jokes are neither funny nor practical, and so I apologize on his behalf for making a bad situation worse.

Nichelle

From: Nichelle
Date: 16 September 1996
Subject: The Lemmings

I find that I am not fazed by anything anymore. My entire life is out there on the web for anyone to look at, and maybe it's going to be published too, or at least I'm trying. I'm sending blind copies of this letter to a few people I have met online. We'll see if they are as hardened to the weirdness of cyberspace as I am.

Had a horrible dinner, made a mess of a dumpling experiment, threw it out and ate a handful of blue corn chips instead. I keep thinking about joy and her molluscs. Well, Gabriel bought clams and when he was cleaning them they kept opening and closing, kind of and undulating mass of slimy membranes, so I understand your repulsion, but I ate them still. Am I horrible? I understand what you mean, though. Seafood in general has a strange air about it, it seems unclean to me.

I wonder about you, Joy. Are you still getting these letters? I so much enjoy reading your letters, and I wish you would write. Things get crazy, then slow to a dead nothing, and nobody writes anything until the next crisis. Also, where is negatron? I have a suspicion that he is doing time for slaughtering a few of his professors. I'm going to slaughter a few of mine too. I'm not going to class tomorrow. I'm going to work on my web page, read some assignments for English 306, and clean the apartment. The labs for CSC are all posted on the 'net anyway, and I'm good at that shit. I'll just do it from home and in the lab early on Wednesday.

Gabriel, Mister Betsy said hello. I must have just missed you, because the tabletop was still wet. I can only assume that you were dancing naked on it after your shower. The liquor guys gave you the wrong price on the phone- so I had to scrounge a little for cash. If you haven't eaten before you get home, I'll drink a glass of wine with you and have some pasta or something. You have created a tremendous scandal with this letter you wrote in my name. Well, not a scandal really, but I don't think he'll ever talk to you again. I find it a little hard to believe that he couldn't tell it was you, because that is not at all my style, though how you curbed your foul mouth for an hour is beyond me. Perhaps you cussed threwout and I didn't mention it, notice rahther.

Cat is sleeping onece again ton my paperwork. She doesn't do anything bad to the puter, just knocks off a few pens and plays with them on the floor. She is like my littel internet companion, keeping o_watch over my e-mail while I patter-patter at the keyboard. It makes me confident to know that she sleeps with one eye open, all seeing kitten, big, tough Matilda, a plant, a rock, a wine.

Now I am going to wash the dishes, wait for my love to return from work, boil some water in case he hasn't eaten. My toes are cold and my head is heavy. Good night.

Nichelle

From: Joy
Date: 17 September 1996
Subject: hiber nation

ereh, rof ry gniweiv diserusplea.. things here have been.. well.. i'm not that sure how things have been, i've been spending my time trying to avoid most everything. the past wk i have had two hibernations of 18+ hrs, wheee(Ctm). missing all the important things, making all of the trivial ones.. i normylla have 3 alarm clocks. 1) the old-fashion ened type that winds up and has the two bells atop the face like a mutated rabbit. 2) the small stereotypical box buzz alarm. 3) a very loud clock radio, set to the most hideous country station in the region (which means most anywhere on the airwaves around here) .. unfortunately there has been a lot of alarm clock death in my life, of both #1 and #2. both died while i was asleep. evidently they are both dead b/c of me, though. so fri?sat? it was late, 12:30amish whenever it was i trotted all over a Walmart trying to find the clocks. i ended up getting a larger, louder #2. i'm still looking for a #1. the #1 i did have was incredible. it would wake up everyone in the area.. every now and then it would even wake me up. i drive roommates out for a variety of reasons, but the top one would be that i have 3 alarm clocks, all set and ticking at different times, and blaring at different times, 2 of which that have the snooze button feature.. if i have something verry imtnatpor to wake up for i just leave all the lights on. that way i don't really fall asleep, i just kind of .. unconscious. no rest. i feel like shit but i do make it to whatever it was. of course, i'm in a terrible operating level and don't accomplish much besides just attending.. i saw a singing rock and roll chicken alarm clock. it sounded my (surdab) speed, (assuming it was DULO) but the price was... get this.. $40. not including tax. .. .. last year, in the middle of a sleep crisis (it was before i had #3) i was intent on making a shocking clock. i raided all the ECT literature i could find, hoping to find out what voltage to Not Use. i never could find any exact numbers, much to my maydis.. i wanted to be careful.. i'm not sure if i ever would have ever actually used such a device.. i've even briefly pondered the 'dump water' wake up call.. of course, that would create a daily mess. i've tried the whole stereo-on-a-timer, but that's just like any other alarm clock    it can easily be turned off    it doesn't require any great coordination of movement, so it can quickly become part of the Fly-out-of-bed-while-still -asleep-and-turn-off-all-the-damn-alarms-even-before-all-of-them-go-off -and-then-jump-back-into-bed-and-sleep-soundly-and-not-remember-a-thing -later. perhaps i need to make an alarm clock that takes a while to get the damn thing to shut off. today it was suggested to me that i get this whatchimadigger that slowly turns up the lights, in imitation of sunlight. of course, this would totally fry my sleep-no-rest type of thing where i would leave on the lights all night... so my Next Line of Action is to buy a #1, acquire a large spotlight (aim it at the pillow), and a light-timer -undimmer thing.. for i know it's just started, things are only going to get worse.
i took Gingko to the vet sat morning, i felt so horrible about it. i'm glad i enlisted my younger brother to help me take her, i never could have d.o...n......e it otherwise. she saw us look at her.. she knew.. she's not very intelligent, but she's not stupid like the dog next door (it's named Hershey. i hate it. i growl at it whenever it gets near. it still pants) i unlocked the doors to the car while David nabbed gink. while driving on the way there, Gingko decided that the best place to be was under the brake pedal.. so David used the emergency brake in synch with my driving. we were on a highway, this was a completely non stress situation, as you can imagine. once i stopped the car at the vet i looked down at Gingko and she looked absolutely deifterri. i could see her little chest heaving like hummingbird wings.. i sat there, feeling like an executioner as David and i tried to extract her from beneath the brake pedal. at one point i almost had here completely out, and David told me to grab my flannel so we could wrap her in it (keep her paws in so she couldn't get out of my arms so easily) i went for my shirt, simultaneously Gink managed to climb further up behind the brake pedal. she meowed a 'fuck-you-i'm-in-pain' meow, she had REALLY wedged herself in behind the pedal. i felt like hitler as i pushed down the gas pedal to try to get her out.. once we had her in the building and in the examination room, i put her down on the table. she then half dragged herself over to where the table hit the wall.. i had never seen her do anything like it before.. the vet called it 'slinking'. Gingko is not a 'slinking' type cat. but she suddenly becomes one at the vet's. she left a trail of shed fur across the table. actually in the exam room took a max of 5 minutes. then while i was holding Gingko and David was trying to get the tags, bill shit this Huge Dog is being shoved into the waiting room. i try to turn gingko to keep her from seeing, but she can still hear.. David helps me to get her into the car, and he goes back to get the paperwork.. i drove back and when we got home she was really spooked about getting out of the car. we let her get out on her own, instead of pulling her out of the car (she'd had enough trauma for one day).. Gingko doesn't like being picked up at all.. nor does she like sitting in laps..
i feel horrible about Gingko b/c i feel like i'm completely neglecting her. First off, i used to take her driving every now and then. so riding in the car wasn't a huge trauma for her. but she hasn't been in a car for a long time, since i was banned from driving for a yr and only a few months ago was able to drive. and i'm here at school, not at home (a half hr away) Secondly, when i first got Gingko at the pound, we got this little coupon type thing to get her first shots done at this vet that was right next door to the pound. it wasn't our usual vet of the past 20 yrs but hey, what the hell. i'll never forget how Gingko was curled up inside my flannel, shaking so frantically... i think the vet who gave her the shots at this place didn't know where the hell to put the needle, b/c Gingko screamed this horrible scream (i've been to countless take-the-cat (s)-to-the-vet, never heard anything like this before in my Life) and the needles were put in places that didn't look right.. unfamiliar needle targets to my untrained but veteran cat owning eyes. i feel horribly guilty about that... always will..
yes, i can go on and on, esp about Gingko, haven't you icednot? i miss her dearly.. even all of the cathairs on my clothes (i Like cat hairs on my clothes, don't ask why).. the vet flat out told me that she was 'fat'. oops. she insists on eating mostly canned stinky smelly food, which also happens to be really calorie-laden. i can't keep watch over these kinds of things like her diet and exercise since i don't live there.. (more guilt). and i don't know what i'm going to do with her once i move - she needs lots of woods and outside areas to play in.. (even more guilt) writing all of this is really crashing my fragile mood. i'm feeling sleepy now.. off to Fuzzy Blanket again...
oh yeah, i heard last night that some guy on Lambdamoo blew his brains out. unfortunately he sounded like he was one of the cooler people on there...oh well...

From: Jenipher
Date: 17 September 1996
Subject: guns

Yeah, he blew his brains out. He beckoned me to him Thursday night, May 24th, asked me to come sit on the porch with him. We smoked cloves, hot burn in eyes and throat, glow of a lit cigarette on another fucking freezing Chicago night. He told stories for hours, as people wandered out, huddled on stairs, up and down from the landing upon which we sat. He was beautiful. I have his picture  on my web page. So young, but no, not young, just dressed that  way to attract girls under a certain age. He wore a car seat belt around his waist. Yeah, he was cool. He passed out a goodly amount in the next few days, drunk as shit most of the time. Then Sunday night he came to me, wanted a picture of me in my whore Catholic schoolgirl outfit. His eyes were glistening, his smile was huge as he posed me, touched me, ran his hand along my leg, up under my schoolgirl skirt. I adored him. He was cool.

Goddamnit, boys and girls, I want to see the letters from and to the mystery man. Nichelle and Gabe forwarded -my- private  letters. Does he deserve any better? He has been a fucking  voyeur the last three months of my life; now let us see what the  man has to say. I call him the man loosely, because I have no  idea whether he is really a man or a figment of my overworked imagination. Gabe, Nichelle says you would never turn down a  blow job, but you cheapen yourself by fucking on irc. If only I could remember how to get on irc, and all that shit, I might seduce you there one day. Look for Hot_Babe_Filly. She'll buck beneath you like a wild little colt. Heh. Yes, ok, I used to irc. I had a standing netfuck date every day at 3 with some  guy...Night-something, or something-Night. He poured me wine and sat me on his couch every afternoon before he ate me out. He masturbated to his little heart's content. I worked in other windows, MOOed, chatted on the phone, and watched him describe it. Oh boy.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I can't stop crying? Why wasn't Wintermute able to get back from that place? I've been there, bottle of pills in hand, but I survived. Why didn't he? What could have been done? Yeah, Joy, he was cool.

Allset

From: Joy
Date: 17 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Alas, Wintermute, we hardly knew ye...

From: SAGReiss
Date: 17 September 1996
Subject: My apologies

Katy, I'm sorry my letter was misunderstood by a few people, including, I think, yourself. I intended no offense nor disrespect. I was using a perhaps cruel and keen irony to point out the pain of Nichelle's predicament. That scumbag made up a nice little story, artfully blending truth and fiction and has planted a seed of doubt in some of Nichelle's friends. The only problem is that it's bullshit. What I meant was that no one except you and me could really know what happened in my bedroom a year ago. There is nothing Nichelle can do to remove the doubt cast upon her. Even if we should come up with some heinous log from the MOO, those who believe him would just think we wrote it on MSWord. I apologize again for any ambiguity. I'm sad you won't participate in a project which might appeal to you. I miss having you as a friend. I'm very sorry. Gaby.

From: Raul
Date: 17 September 1996
Subject: Re: The Lemmings

Um....do I know you? I don't know why I received this, but you have my sympathies re the dumplings.

__________________________________
Raul
University of South Florida, Tampa

From: SAGReiss
Date: 17 September 1996
Subject: Flies at half mast

Matilda and I took the bus to go to the big bad vet's. Nichelle had fixed her up in a gin box (I very seldom drink gin.) with some spare carpeting and a Valpoliccella cheap-ass Italian cork to play with and some holes to peer out of. The doctor asked me how I felt about FIV, feline AIDS: "Well, Doc, I don't even fucking know if I've got the human kind. Perhaps you could just test me..." He doesn't recommend it except to multiple-cat homes or Nazi psychopaths who might want to kill their cat if it has some disease often inoccuous to the cat and not contagious to people. I said: "Naw, just give her the regular shit." As I was paying the village sheriff walked in and politely inquired about a client: "I remember she was here. In fact I arrested her in the parking lot." What the fuck is this shit? You bring your cat to the vet's and you get fucking busted? What, have you got some tiny handcuffs for the cat, you fascist pig? Or do you just shoot to kill if it hisses at someone who is mauling its friend?" I couldn't believe that the secretary actually tried to help, gave the motherfucker the name of a friend of the girl's he was looking for. I felt like saying: "Fuck you, then. Matilda can get her shots from someone who won't have my ass and hers arrested in the parking lot." What's wrong with these swinefuckers? "Oh, sure, sheriff, let me check the files. By the way she still owes us six bucks if you find her..." IRC is weird. Half the rooms are dedicated to bdsm child pornography and I get kicked out of the other half for swearing. I tried to help this Brazilian who couldn't speak English by talking to him in Spanish and we got kicked out for that. There is a dangerous Nazi attitude on IRC. I'm going to stick with it, though. I think we may already have met every human being with a brain who goes to Lambda and I can't get used to the idea of feeling stalked by that mendacious motherfucker. BTW, Allset. The mystery man/voyeur was not Colin. Is everyone in the sex room going to wear his fly at half mast to mourn for Wintermute? I just wish it had been ex-Melon. Oops, there goes Gabe's awful sense of humour again. Well shit, at least I've got one. Humour seems to be a disease that the PC doctors have nearly eradicated...

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: John
Date: 18 September 1996
Subject: Re: RL MOO

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss wrote:
> Unable to find the Archfuhrer's e-mail address, I'll ask someone please to
> forward it to him. The MOO has been down for two days. Is there a reason for
> this? Is this something we should be worried about?
>
> RECTVM VINVM
> Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

Gabe, I don't have a fucking clue what's going on. I don't even know who the fuck the archfuehrer is, and I haven't spoken to Teri in a couple of weeks. I'll see if I can find out anything.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 18 September 1996
Subject: Archfuhrer

That's just the point, John. I haven't spoken with her either. I have an address for the Arch which has worked in the past, but it didn't work on that letter. It's at least a disturbing coincidence that Terry asks off the list and then the MOO goes down for three days and she doesn't even answer e-mail asking for an explanation. I don't want to call her until Nichelle comes home, but I'm very worried...

From: John
Date: 18 September 1996
Subject: Re: Archfuhrer

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss wrote:
> That's just the point, John. I haven't spoken with her either. I have an
> address for the Arch which has worked in the past, but it didn't work on
> that letter. It's at least a disturbing coincidence that Terry asks off the
> list and then the MOO goes down for three days and she doesn't even answer
> e-mail asking for an explanation. I don't want to call her until Nichelle
> comes home, but I'm very worried...
>
> RECTVM VINVM
> Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

I share your suspicions about this whole business, especially now that i have logged into IdMOO, paged her about it, and got no answer.
Bitch, I paid her for three months.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 18 September 1996
Subject: Terry

Nichelle did same. I have a funny feeling she just toaded the MOO. I'll get on ID right now and see if she'll answer big bad Gabe. If not, I'll call her...

From: John
Date: 18 September 1996
Subject: Re: Terry

She disconnected right after i paged her. Let me know if you find anything out.

From: Nichelle
Date: 19 September 1996
Subject: name your poison

Shit gets weirder, and everybody changes their story when they aren't receiving your e-mail anymore. It's no big deal, really. I have dealt with this before, when I moved here and left everthing hanging in Washington. I can't stand anybody right now. They're all rapists, liars, whores, drunks, idiots, cheats, and schoolteachers. And the schoolteachers are the worst. Fuck this shit. I've been busting my ass, orgasmizing all of these letters, trying to make some sense and order out of it all. I'll do it in the library if I have to, and I'll stay up all night if I have to, but I can't do it if I have to spend an hour putting you to bed each night, Gabriel, because you're too fucking drunk to take off your own shorts, or get all the way on the bed, or set your alarm clock. And I'll have to get up at four o'clock in the morning to get your ass out of bed, too, because you'll be too fucking tired and hung over to get up. I may as well not go to bed, which is what will probably happen tonight. That's fine, because I'm a little bit obsessed with my work right now, and because I can't really sleep anyway, not tonight.  Everyone else is asleep in this house right now. Gabriel gave me quite a scare, looked like he couldn't breathe, started rolling around and drooling on the bed. If he could just see himself one night, drunk and moaning like a beast, rolling around on the mattress. He talks to me about what poisons they must have injected into Matilda at the vet's, and what poisons they put in the hotel food, but what about the poisons he puts every night into his lungs and his body as he chain-smokes-drinks into oblivion. And I'm good about it, I help him to bed, I stroke his hair, lie down with him when he calls for me, kiss him, tell him I love him, and I almost never complain. I can handle that shit every now and then, but it is getting to be every night. How can we get anything accomplished if he can't remember our conversation from the previous night? And how can I work when I have to spend an hour of my time putting him to bed? Life is not easy for any of us, and we are all at war with everyone, especially ourselves. We've all got some kind of bizarre self-destructive behavior, and we all know better. I laugh and joke and power-struggle with Gabriel, but the fact is that I do believe he is a genius, I do believe he is right about the list and the web and the MOO and many other things. To see him reduced to what he was tonight is unbearable, and it is happening more and more frequently. I honestly thought that he was going to Tully Hill, or whatever the fuck that place is called, on the day I forwarded Allset's log, as I thought I was watching a man literally go crazy, sitting in front of the toilet, with nothing but water and whisky to throw up, and his face pressed against the tile, and me sitting on the floor next to him wishing I could help. Just like tonight, as I stroked his hair, talked to him, not understanding what he was trying to say to me, trying to figure out if he needed anything, wishing I could do something. I'm ashamed of some of the thoughts I had, what are the neighbors thinking, can they hear this. He moans loudly, sometimes screams, sits up for a moment, collapses again. Sometimes he calls out my name, and I come into the bedroom, curl up next to him, talk to him, lie there with him. I can't do it every night. It is hard enough to do it once in a while. Last night, as I was putting Gabriel to bed, he said, 'Maybe in your mind you're not a FWB'. I wonder, Gaby, in your mind are you resigned to being a drunk, not just now, but always? Is it none of my business? But nobody else, not even Gabriel, has to see him the way I see him, drooling on the sheet, moaning, doubled over or curled up on his side, sometimes his legs flailing, sometimes writhing on the mattress, and there is nothing I can do but stroke his hair, put the blankets over him, talk to him, try to understand what he is saying. Maybe I have no right to say these things. But I am worried, I didn't know what to do tonight, I didn't even know if you were OK. You were worse than I have ever seen you. I almost called a doctor. I didn't know what to do.

From: Joy
Date: 19 September 1996
Subject: News of the Weird

The Lngdon insurance brokerage4 Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Peason announced in August it would begin to offer policies to cover people worried about alien abduction. A premium of about $155 per year would pay off about $160,000 to an abductee (provided the abductor was not from Earth) and double that if the insured is impregnated during the abduction. Since alien powers are unknown, men can also purchase the impregnation rider, also. Said Goodfellow director Simon Burgess, "I personally would not buy [this] policy."
Pushing the Envelope in Sex Stings: In aprigl, a sheriff's spokesman in Fort Collins, CO, admitted that police officers actually engaged in sex w/prostitues during a Jan sting instead of making the arrest at the point at which the women agreed to have sex for money. Said the spokesman, "The officers thought they needed to do what they did to make the case." And in June, NC's Alcohol Law Enforcement agents in Jacksonville made similar admissions. One agent testified that he put his fingers on a woman's genitals in order to "feel it occurring." Said ALE's lawyer," If this wasn't the proper role of law enforcement, I don't know what is."
Contest Mania: In July, Pepsi Cola was sued by a Lynnwood, WA man who took seriously the company's lighthearted offer to redeem 7 million premium points for a Harrier fighter jet in a "Pepsi Stuff" promotion. And in August, a federal appeals court in St. Louis forced Nationwide Insurance Co. to award a slogan-contest-winning ex-employee "his-and-hers" Mercedes-Benzes despite the company's claim that it was just kidding. And in July, David Lee filed a lawsuit against the Cafe Sante Fe in Rogers, Ark, after it denied him a Kawasaki Jet Ski b/c he failed to write a reason why he liked a certain menu item on his prize-winning entry form. Lee contends that the required "25 words or less" includes "zero words."
Amid howls of protest, John Crutchley, 49, Florida's "vampire rapist" and a beneficiary of the state's early release prison program, was let out on 50 years' probation in August after serving only 10 yrs in prison for a heinous, blood-drinking rape in 1985. However, Crutchley violated probation by testing positive for marijuana use on the day of his release. Thus, he lost the benefit of early release, and for drug use during probation, he was returned to serve the 50 yrs behind bars.
In Ottawa, Ohio, in May, church secretary Linda Seifer was sentenced to 2 yrs in prison for a scheme in which she systematically removed all $20 bills from the collection plates at St. Michael's Catholic Church in a Kalida, Ohio, over a 4 yr period. Ms. Seifer had her husband lived well above their combined $32,000 income, but the scheme did not come to light until a band employee thought it odd that there were never any $20 bills in the church's deposits.
In April in Bedford, VA, John M. Kirby decided to show off to his passengers as he drove by a group of police officers demonstrating drug bust techniques to reporters. Kirby yelled some trash talk, and the officers, seeing Kirby's faulty taillight, chased him. According to police, Kirby had marijuana in the truck and a suspended driver's license.
In June, after an investigation in Montreal, Quebec, coroner Teresa Sourour criticized the Fluery Hospital for its judgement in Jan not of come immediately to the aid of a 75-yr old man who had suffered a heart attack just oustide the building. Hospital employees reportedly discussed whether to go out in the 20 degree (F.) weather to help the man but finally decided just to call an ambulance. The man died a few minutes later.
William Keith Fortner, 35, whom a judge put on probation last yr for sending 3 nude photos of himself to a nurse, pleaded guilty in St. Louis in July to sending another one - to the judge who gave him the probation. After the probation ended in Feb, Fortner left a message on the female judge's voice mail that said: "I really like you. I hope you don't upset with the picture I [am sending]. I hope you remember me."
After a major riot in April at the Winnipeg, Manitoba jail, supervisors hired many temp workers to clean up, and among those who applied and was hired, according to the Winnipeg Sun, was Stephen Lee Gressman, 30, who was at the time on Manitoba's 10 Most Wanted list for extortion and assault. He worked a few days and left town just before being identified.
In July, Richard Gallagher was arrested in Mineola NY and charged with aggravated harassment after making a telephone call to get help in blowing up the high school where he had just lost his job as custodian. The call he made was to a Peter King, whose number Gallagher had obtained from a friend. Unknown to Gallagher, Peter King is a US Congressman. Said Gallagher to the police, "I thought he was one of the boys."
Albuquerque, NM, schoolteacher Scott Glasrud failed by two votes (1170 to 1168) in the Republican primary for a state senate seat in June, and the next month realized that his father-in-law's and mother-in-law's votes for him had not been counted b/c a death in the family had delayed their mailing in their write-in ballots.
In August, Julian Carlo Fagoatti, 30, kicked off his TV ad campaign for a seat on the acity council of Curitiba, Brazil, by standing before the camera nude except for one of his brochures held in a strategic spot. Siad Fagotti, "[My opponents] are the ones to be ashamed [for how they treat the voters]."
In June, the LA Times profiled CA chiropractor and state assemblyman Martin Gallegos, who said he cheerfully offers free chiropractic adjustments to his legislative colleagues and staff members in his office and has treated at least a dozen assembly members of both parties.
Reported in 1991 that the Avon, CO, town council had resorted to a contest to name the new bridge over Eagle River linking I-70 w/ US Highway 6. Sifting thought 84 suggestions (such as "Eagle Crossing"), the council voted 4-2 to give it the official name "Bob." In August 1996, the Globe and Mail reported that "Bob" is running in second place in an official contest to rename Canada's NW Territories province after Nunavut becomes a separate jurisdiction in 1999.
In July, 58 worshipers weeking divine protection on an astrologically unlucky day were crushed to death by other stampeding worshipers at two Hindu shrines in the cities of Haridwar and Ujjain, Lindia. And in August, a 9-yr old boy was crshed to death when a granite tombstone fell over on him at a Bible school in Summerville GA. Also in August, according to police in New Orleans, Melvin Hitchens, 66, who had been reading his Bible on his front porch, put it down, fetched his gun, and shot to death a neighbor woman with whom he had been feuding about the cleanliness of their yards.

From: Jeni
Date: 20 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Last night I dreamed I visited Colin. He was as he appears in the only picture of him I have, tall, menacing, handsome. Hesitant at first, we were soon unable to taste enough, feel enough, of each other. Then he lifted me up into his arms and whispered, asking if I wanted to go to bed. I murmured my no no no, and he set me down immediately, hard pressing of soles against tile as I felt myself plummeted back to earth. I looked frantically at him, please please please, and he pushed me down to the  floor, spreading my legs with his knee. Then he fucked me, best sex dream I ever fucking had. And after, he told me, I waited. And the dream was icy reality as I woke up to feel my hand inside my panties. God, what a disgusting slut I am. Fuck fuck fuck, get out of my head. I can't take these monthly appearances in my dreams, the daily <connected: *******>. He asked if I would wait, and I wait. Why I do not know. Thought I was over it, that I wasn't waiting, but I still am.

Nichelle, that was the best fucking piece of mail I have seen on this listserv. Incredible power. Joy, fuck that news shit. What spam! I can read that in Newsweek or see it on CNN.

Gabe, please netfuck me. Or send a 'bot to do it for you. I need some stimulus. I don't have any work, and it's  killing me. I woke up this morning and thought, what do I have to get up for? No work, Cary's gone, I'm not hungry. Ohhh, I need to meet so-and-so on DownMOO. My life has been reduced to inconsequential focii and random shitty writings. What's the point to living? Does anyone remember?

Bleah.

Allset

From: Jeni
Date: 20 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Woo, I am sinking fast. Who forwarded my email to Tchinek/Colin?

Tchinek starts to check junk/SAG and junk/Jeni, but nah.
Tesla [to Tchinek]: Your Waiting for Godot line was in perfect fitting with the email I sent to a listserv you aren't supposed to be receiving mail from any longer.
Pink_Guest says, "I love So_belle!"
so_belle ahhh! Mucho better! :)
Tchinek [to Tesla]: Woo! Spooky, huh?
fanny winks to Pink_Guest.
Hammer hugs so_belle.
George_Best teleports in.
Dr.Fate teleports in.
Tchinek says, "Could be that someone decided to forward it to me."
Pink_Guest has disconnected.
The housekeeper arrives to remove Pink_Guest.
You nod to Tchinek.
Suddenly a pale mist floats into the room and coalesces into the form of BSD.
---- Recall end ----
so_belle is loved! She smiles!
Dr.Fate waves.
BSD bows gracefully.
Tchinek [to Tesla]: clearly then, they thought it was my business.
Scribble is here now.
so_belle (( Hugz )) Hammer! :)
Tchinek says, "And who am I to disagree."
Scribble waves.
Tesla [to Tchinek]: I almost emailed you this morning to tell you about it myself.
Dr.Fate [to crayon]: Heidy-ho.
Not_Jerry slides open the glass door from the deck and comes in, sliding it closed behind him.
Tchinek [to Tesla]: so why didn't you?
_______________________________________________________________________

So, who was it? Oh fuck, I don't care. Have fun when you forward him this one, you fucking prick.

From: Nichelle
Date: 20 September 1996
Subject: $.02

Jeni, I think this is a pretty clear case of Colin yanking your chain, or pushing your buttons, or whatever you want to call it. I can't speak for everyone, though they were probably all sleeping when this happened, but I can tell you that Gabriel and I have not forwarded your letters to Colin. I think it's fairly safe to assume that he's playing games.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 20 September 1996
Subject: Waiting for Godot

*** Connected ***
Apartment 7
one-bedroom flat
Last connected Fri Sep 20 16:55:48 1996 PDT
There is new news. Type `news' to read all news or `news new' to read just new news.
There is new news on #33337, the PC Player Class. Type @pc-news to read it.
page peri Sorry, I got dissed.
page tchinek Sorry, I got dissed.
page mrq T'es encore debout?
You have new mail (1 message). Type 'help mail' for info on reading it.
@next
Message 34:
Date: Fri Sep 20 17:30:29 1996 PDT
From: Tchinek (#54886)
To: SAGReiss (#106129)
These were not rhetorical questions.
--------------------------
le_marquis pages, "eh ouais"
page tchinek I told you, I got dissed. You don't really need to con her into believing someone's forwarding you her mail. She believes enough weird shit already. Let's just be honest and truthful, eh?
Tchinek pages, "How did I involve you?"
Tchinek pages, "I think it's pitiful that you bumped me from the list. Truly pitiful."
page tchinek I did that with regret. I like you and think you're a good man, an educated man. Nevertheless you contributed next to nothing. I don't even know why you were there. People put their asses on the line on the list. I don't think there should be people who just read and take note. You know my e-mail address. I'd be glad to read your thoughts.
Peri pages, "It's okay. NOt like I care i fyou talk to me or not. :>"
Tchinek pages, "you got the adjective? It was `pitiful'. So I get bumped from a list, because of the essential weakness of the guy running it, who bends to Tesla's and Opal's will like a reed in a KKK pissing contest, and I'm supposed to concern myself with the next occasion upon which he's `dissed'."
page peri Me neither. I don't really like you, but you're not too dumb and sometimes the dumbness on the MOO overwhelms me.
Tchinek pages, "well guess what, boyo, +I+ was `dissed' by virtue of being removed from the list for +no+ reason."
page tchinek Guess again, Sir. Opal was toaded as well and for exactly the same reasons. Tesla writes to the list.
Tchinek pages, "and I am not terribly pleased by it."
Tchinek pages, "the issue was first brought to my attention by your g/f. Opal and Tesla were the complainants. I was told that I was on the list purely to observe them. Apart from being false, and inflating their value artificially, it was an insult."
page tchinek This is nonsense. Neither Opal nor Tesla ever complained about your presence. I toaded everyone who didn't contribute at the same time, including Opal. My gf was indeed thinking about the silly games that all of you play, including Tesla. We both felt that Tesla deserves her place because she writes and writes well, most of the time, to the list. You and Opal did not.
Tchinek pages, "the story has changed, twice. Firstly, you offered it to me, and there was no mention of a necessity to contributes. As worthless as it was, I object to having the offer withdrawn. Secondly, your g/f stated, bluntly, that I was there to observe Tesla and Opal, despite my having been on the list before either. I object to being offered something which was withdrawn, particularly when it was done in such a graceless manner."
Tchinek pages, "and, given this experience, you can stop wondering why I don't log onto your MOO - same potential. I knew there was something hokey about the whole deal, and this has helped me see it more clearly."
page tchinek The story has not changed. You accused me of bending to the will of Tesla and Opal. Neither of them complained about you. My gf was mildly concerned, nothing serious. Simply when it came time for downsizing, you didn't seem to be an active member, so I toaded you with regret. It was all done in a discrete manner. You asked certain things about your name and I tried to accomodate you.
Tchinek pages, "I find it implausible that the idea that I was `spying' on Opal and Tesla originated with your g/f."
Tchinek pages, "I find it implausible that the idea was endogenous."
Peri pages, "Thank you ever so much for the compliment. I shall treasure it always."
Tchinek pages, "I also find it (as stated) insulting, and verging on slanderous."
page tchinek Implausible it may be. It is also true. She also felt that Opal was on there to spy on you and Tesla. Both of you were toaded at the same time. I don't even think it implausible, given the general paranoid, vengeful behavior of all of you. Tesla has her faults, most of which she admits. She contributes a lot to the list.
Tchinek pages, "I joined the list to spy on Tesla, who wasn't even on the list at the time... I am therefore prescient, yet you complain about Tesla's belief that I read her posts? Seems inconsistent."
(from Under this Red Rock) Tchinek is capable of joining a list as a mole, but incapable of reading email at a distance?
page tchinek What the fuck is your problem? You are no longer on a list that didn't interest you?
Tchinek pages, "my problem is that I was bumped from the list after some strangely delusional discussions concerning me, and that I was not made explicitly aware of that potential upon joining."
page tchinek Look, it's very simple. I toaded you and Opal at the same time as a number of other people because you weren't contributing anything to the list. Tesla had nothing to do with it. My gf had nothing to do with it. I guess you have good reason to have a persecution complex, but so do we all.
Tchinek pages, "and my next problem is that you not only expect to control and direct the behavior of people who are +on+ the list (as to posting rate/content), but also those who are not (ie: me, as regards what I say to Tesla.) I failed to `contribute' precisely because I don't feel comfortable with direction sans responsibility."
page tchinek Then your second problem cancells out the first. I have no control of what you do. I like you. I was merely suggesting that you might be a little more honest with those who have done you no wrong. I said this afternoon that I thought what Nancy did had freed you of any silly moral concerns...
Tchinek pages, "it also annoys me that, while it's a relief not to have junk/SAG filling with some of the least coherent writing I've seen in a long while, that I resisted retiring from the list out of some benevolent sense of hanging around to see if you could get your dream articulated (let alone realised), I was bumped after you and g/f bumped your heads together concerning whether or not I was playing paranoid games. Ingracious in the extreme, and I'd expected better of you. I guess it must be hard to be technically clueless and adrift in a technical field."
Tchinek pages, "honest with whom, with you, or with Tesla?"
Tchinek pages, "anyway, gotta clear the line... I'm expecting a member of the national health and medical research council over for lunch. He likes how I write, but then he's not into imposition."
page tchinek I am honest with everyone. I think this is a simplifying policy. My dreams are fairly close to being realized and I don't think I need your help, though I appreciate the offer. I think you do play paranoid games. While I think this is justified with Nancy, I don't know about with Tesla, it's definately not right with me.
(from Under this Red Rock) Tchinek waves, no hard feelings, just +never+ seek to involve me in another of your projects. We have a difference of opinion wrt management styles.
Tchinek pages, "I said nothing to, or explicitly about you to Tesla. You have a problem, it's between you and her. I'm merely a token in that economy."
Tchinek pages, "and if Tesla believes I was forwarded mail from the list: (a) good, let her sweat; (b) good, let the outside affect the mailing list which bumped me ingraciously."
Tchinek pages, "Oh, and (c) just maybe she's right."
(from Under this Red Rock) Tchinek awaits a response, then goes about serious work.
page tchinek My answer is G'day. G'luck. You know where I am. I have no hard feelings. I continue to like you and to value your contribution to the MOO.
Tchinek pages, "I'll rephrase. I spoke to Tesla, you were not mentioned."
page tchinek Don't give me any shit. She logs everything, as do you. I'm obviously logging this.
Tchinek is not currently logged in.
@quit
*** Disconnected ***

From: Jeni
Date: 21 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

I just woke up at 2 p.m. What a fucking nightmare day. First dealing with Colin. Nichelle, I had that nagging doubt, after I posted that bit of the log to the world, that Colin was just screwing with me to find out exactly what mail I did send to the list. I never doubted you or Gabe. I trust you both completely, because, after all, this is your project and you have no reason to damage it with silly games. So, 1. I dream about Colin, 2. He sucks me in and makes me believe someone forwarded him my mail, 3. Doc, the man in Chicago, posts something absolutely hideous about me, and I cry all night, finally sleeping around 5 this morning. Colin's method is one of insidious dominance. Finding his opponent's self-doubts and playing upon them until they overwhelm said opponent. I fell prey to his technique once more yesterday, and goddamn I feel stupid today. Gabe, the log you sent made me cry. I attribute so much kindness to you, whether or not it is there. I have almost come to see you as my benefactor.

Must go -- today is shopping day. Take back a cd that skips, get an exercise bike because I am feeling obese this week, and then groceries, fajitas tonight.

Have a good weekend,
Allset

From: SAGReiss
Date: 21 September 1996
Subject: Men at play

I was sorry, Allset, to get into that pueril argument with Colin. It began when I paged him and asked him please not to harass you in that way. He just got lucky and mentioned Waiting for Godot and he got under your skin. It was silly. No one currently on the list (Please update your address books.) would have any reason to e-mail Colin and only I was awake at that absurd hour Friday morning. The expression "insidious dominance" seems a little overstated for his dumb-stupid game of if-I-can't-have-it-she-can't-have-it with respect to the list. I imagine the school playground bully using his slimey little line about how he doesn't want to be in our club, but can't forgive the unceremonious way he was toaded. Either someone is interested in the World or he is not. He obviously isn't interested so he's not here. CQFD. QED. End of story. If he wants to chat with me on the MOO, that's fine. I like him. If he wants to whine about how I mistreated him, fuck him. I hate to see him play on your mind, Allset. He is a man playing a boy's game. Not that I can't understand his anger at Black_Widow. Aside from being a cunt, she did something really horrible to him irl. I have no idea what he did to piss her off like that, but if it was just MOOshit, she took it to another level. I can't always find the difference between life and art, but fucking with someone's job is off-limits, no matter what dastardly things he may have posted to *soc or whatever. On the same subjects (weirdass cunts onna MOO) SarahBeth of all people was civil to me yesterday and called negatron "a very interesting person". She said something about my "posture" onna MOO limiting my ability to meet the great hidden intellectuals. I'm not sure what she meant, since I've got fairly good posture from working in a restaurant and I usually MOO sitting down. Besides, what do I do except tell the fucking truth and say that anyone who doesn't is a fucking liar? RL MOO is back up, I'm happy to say. Now we just need to find some members...

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: SAGReiss
Date: 24 September 1996
Subject: $100 library card

Before Nichelle does something incredibly dumbstupid and wasteful, I'd just like to make sure that this is the only way for us to take books out of the library. She paid fifty dollars for a six-month card which would not even allow her to use interlibrary loan. She is about to pay one hundred dollars which I can ill afford for a one-year card. Is this what we must do? Thank you. Gaby.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Steven
Date: 25 September 1996
Subject: Interesting

Gabe,

It's Skyclad...just finished reading all the things on your web page. Interesting, very interesting. Can you give me a little background on who these people are and what these writings are about? Nichelle sounds like a very interesting person. Are you familiar with an author named Brett Easton Ellis? He wrote a book called "American Psycho." If you've never read him take a look at it sometime. I think you might find it interesting.

Take care,
Skyclad (Steve to those who know me in real life)

"Older, wiser, sadder
Trust has abandoned me long ago
Stolen by careful dishonety
I have forgotten how, how to believe
I remember the lost confusion of innocence
With feelings worn so clean"
-K. Nardi

By the way, I have this penchant for leaving quotes at the end of my e-mail.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 25 September 1996
Subject: High/low brow

There's lots of shit I forgot to show you onna MOO, MOOmail which you can forward to your e-mail account, page answering machines, teleporting, @join etc. etc. You can do more shit if you get a character (come on as Skyclad and type "@request Steve for aspoe@hamlet.uncg.edu"). The people with texts on the web site are my friends vr or irl. I have not read Ellis and don't care to. I don't read much any more except e-mail and I would put him in the same category as Metallica (low brow that I don't even like). While there is plenty of room to disagree about the line that we draw between intellectual and popular culture, I think it's important that we do so. If we do not, as I think was your wish, we run the risk of being overrun by the Vandals. While Beethoven and Metallica can happily sleep together in your library, his voice, even with a hundred people screaming: "Freude, schoene, Goetterfunken..." is too soft. The low-brow, high-volume MTV generation will simply drown out all intellectual discourse, as can be seen on most MOOs and most IRC channels. We are fighting over who controls the internet, or at least fighting for a place where quieter tongues may speak and be heard. Also a failure to make distinctions and value judgements (which is symptomatic of Amerikan academia in general and particularly such disciplines as sociology) will tend to create a sameness and blandness which is quite the opposite of the hoped-for diversity. I was trained as a linguist and I cannot accept the theory that there's no such thing as dialects. Everything's a language. To put Alsatian and German on the same plane is to miss fundamental differences about the nature and function of each. Finally, while I think this kind of discussion is useful, we must talk about what we define as intellectual discourse, we must not get bogged down. Some fields, psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, have at times become so self-preoccupied that no one can do anything because they spend all their time bickering about what philosophy is. I have tried and failed to define precisely what is spam, but that doesn't stop me from trying to kill it on RL MOO. We have thought and talked and fought about the MOO. One of the charter members is going to leave soon in part because we have tended to disagree with her about the ends and means of the MOO. If you enjoy the MOO, by all means invite your friends irl or vr. It's a public place and I'm trying to populate it. About the texts on the web site, they are exactly what they appear to be, e-mail from me or my friends, logs from MOOs, various things I have written. We have a listserv where we write eachother e-mail. It's e-literature or, I guess, a non-fiction e-novel.

From: David
Date: 25 September 1996
Subject: Re: $100 library card

Gaby - It is what we arrange for people unaffiliated with the University, and is generally regarded as inexpensive for someone who is a regular user. (Cornell is $250 by special arrangement; Columbia is $100 a month.) ILL costs us about $25 a loan so you can see what it's not included--the public library is financed to take care of that need for the public; we are not). Sorry I can't waive it for you, but we can't. David

From: Nichelle
Date: 25 September 1996
Subject: yes dear

The other night I was on the computer after Gaby had gone to bed. At about midnight I heard: 'Sweeeeetheaaaaart.....?' 'yes dear?' 'come heeeeeere...' (When gaby is trying to be charming, he kind of acts like that stupid fucking french skunk on the bugs bunny cartoons.) I went into the bedroom.... 'wouldn't you like to give me a blow job...?' (he was still drunk) 'Um, OK...' So I crawled under the blankets because it was a little too cold to take them off. I tried, but I kept giggling. He didn't even have a boner. It was hot under the blankets, I could barely breathe, I'm giggling, I don't know what the fuck he's doing... Then he gets up and says 'I'm going to go pee.' Gets up, takes a piss, and goes back to sleep again.

Well, thanks for waiting, I guess... Hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

From: Steven
Date: 25 September 1996
Subject: Re: High/low brow

I think you have a few interesting ideas...the Internet does have a lot of potential as a communications medium, be it for entertainment, discourse, whatever. People should be encouraged to use it for whatever their interests are. It should be unregulated...if people want to chat with their friends and play games that's their business, not yours. Your MOO, however, is your place and you of course decide what it's used for and by whom. That's your perogative.

As far as this whole bullshit thing about "intellectualism," I think it's just a cop-out. An excuse to feel superior. You don't like heavy metal, that's your business...it doesn't mean your tastes are better. I enjoy classical music, too but I think Bad Religion have just as much to say as any composer. I like noise for the sake of noise...why the hell does everything have to have valid philosophical meaning? You can't live only in the mind, there's much more to the world than "intellectual discourse." Sociology isn't necessarily divorced from value judgement...not all sociologists are totally objective. There are two different schools of theory, objectivist and subjectivist. I'm a subjectivist, I think you have to understand the context of a group in order to study them. If you're a linguist why the hell are you waiting tables? Maybe you should have studied something that you could have gotten a job with. To be frank I could give less than a fuck about what you think of what goes on on the Internet or what you think of the music I listen to. For awhile I thought you might have been cool if given a chance...but I'm beginning to think you're just an elitist asshole. I've been to Oxford and Stratford and seen the Royal Shakespeare Company perform. I also read Steinbeck and Ayn Rand. But I feel just at home in a small club seeing EyeHateGod and Entombed and headbanging like a madman. I think your main problem is you have a big ego and no reason for it. If you can't consider others opinions which might differ from yours you're part of the fucking problem, not the solution.

Like I said, I got nothing against you personally...you may be a really cool guy if I got to know you. But you don't lecture people you don't fucking know, and if you act like an arrogant asshole I promise you I can be just as much of one. If you want to discuss differences between pop culture and classical pursuits in a calm, reasonable manner I'll be happy to chat with you. But if you think you're better than me or any of the folks in the saloon, you're fucking wrong.

Steve

"Graduated mentors stroll in marbled brick porticos
In sagacious dialogue they despise their average ways
Displaying pomp and discipline, they mold their institution
Where they practice exclusion on the masses everyday"
-"Inner Logic"
Bad Religion

From: SAGReiss
Date: 27 September 1996
Subject: Any means necessary

There was no irony intended in my thanks this noon. They were heartfelt. You've always been fair and good to me, and I understand that you've got a budget and whatnot. I apologize if there was any confusion. It simply shocks and galls me that money is still being taken out of my threadbear pocket and put into the Taj Mahalesque coffers of SU. They treated me like a dog despite the best interests of their own undergraduate students. They got rid of me and kept two TAs, one a psycho whom even Prozac doesn't completely help, one a Jesus freak, neither of whom understands a normal conversation in standard colloquial French. Anyway I don't have the hundred bucks right now, but I'll pay as soon as I can. As for the bitterness, la vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid. This week I'm sending two very scandalous e-novels to seven publishers. SU is not going to be a very happy place if someone is irresponsible enough to print them. I think you might enjoy them though. Sometimes it's refreshing to see people savagely beaten when they are wrong and deserve it. It can flatter the sense of justice.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: SAGReiss
Date: 27 September 1996
Subject: vr
Attached: vr.doc

Brian,

Please find enclosed as an attachment some fairly representative excerpts of a three-hundred-page epistolary novel entitled vr which I submit to your judgement for publication.

The text takes the form of e-mail and online dialogues between members of a listserv, an eclectic, multi-lingual group of intellectuals, proletarians and alcoholics. The book blurs the lines between cyberspace and the physical world, as the characters create first a web site then a MOO.

While themes include literature, sexual violence, race relations, cooking and alcoholism, the plot follows a four-month love story from vr (virtual reality) to rl (real life) as a woman on the listserv, a clarinetist with some bad sexual experiences, moves in with the man who created it, a foul-mouthed, drunken, polyglot intellectual.

If you would be interested in reading more, I should gladly send you the whole cyberscript.

Thank you for your consideration.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

CURRICULUM VITAE

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

present: Waiter, Sheraton University Hotel (Syracuse, NY)
1994-1995: Teaching Assistant (French), Syracuse University.
1992-1994: Manager, Restaurant Pizzeria La Farfalla (Saverne, France).
1990-1992: Teacher, École de langues Gutenberg (Strasbourg, France).
Dec. 1989: “Le Baseball”, article published in Les Temps modernes (Paris).
1986-1988: Teacher, translator, Bénédict S.A.R.L. (Strasbourg).

EDUCATION

1994-1995: M.A. candidate (French), Syracuse University.
1992: B.A. (French), Charter Oak College (Farmington, CT).
1988-1989: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany).
1985-1987: Université des Sciences Humaines, Strasbourg II.
1984-1985: McGill University (Montreal).
1983-1984: Boston University.
1982-1983: Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III (France).
1982: Southern Connecticut State College (New Haven, CT).
1982: High School Diploma, Wilbur Cross High School (New Haven).
1979-1980: Yale University, two six-credit courses in ancient Greek.

Languages: French and German.
Special skills: Computer literate (Microsoft Word, Excel, the internet)

From: SAGReiss
Date: 27 September 1996
Subject: Pumpkin pie

Today was just a bad day. Last night we fought about money and how it gets that way, which is the title of a book by Henry Miller for those of you in the television audience. This morning Nichelle was in a dreadful mood, snapping at me senselessly: "I think you need to get some sleep at night." "I'm trying to get some sleep this morning." I get to work and find that I've got three days off this week. Do they really want me to starve to death along with Nichelle and Matilda? Turns out the schedule had been modified. Slammy changed our sup's schedule without telling her. When our sup came in she was furious. They had a little catfight right up at the hostess station, as me and all the gay boys and FWBs scrambled out of the way. I thought better of griping about the extra day off. Maybe I just won't eat that day and will feel better for not having to deal with the bullshit. Besides Nichelle, either because of or despite my goading, figured out how to ftp to her college account, so she can soon look for work making web pages for undergraduate scum and we won't have to pay for another dreamscape account, just the new phone line. During my break I read the savage tale of that sex murderer who, for those of you who don't read the newspapers, in his statement at his sentencing hearing, said that the last words of the twelve-year-old girl's, whom he kidnapped from a pajama party, raped and killed and then brought the cops to the body, were: "Don't do me like Daddy did." This is meanness on a titanic scale. This is hatred so fierce and so totally unjustified it awes me.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Nichelle
Date: 27 September 1996
Subject: pucker up

Just got off the phone with my mother and this girl called Shawnda whose last two letters asked me for my phone number. Thought I'd call her and tell her what it is, and she felt the need to tell me all of the gossip from the old university. Apparently, Eric Easter broke up with his girlfriend because she stuck her tongue in his mouth. I had to laugh. This clean-cut Montana boy was being pursued by every available university slut who set eyes on him, and probably half of the gay choir boys too. He had a certain naive charm, which we all assumed was an act. I also heard that the people at the school now think that I'm not allowed to take phone calls, and that Gabriel tears up all of my letters (not that I get many). I guess my mean ex-roommate didn't understand when I told her that we turn the phone off because Gaby gets up at 4 AM most days... It's going to be a strange reunion when I visit home, that is for sure. I'll be sure to give good old Eric a nice, wet kiss though...

From: Nichelle
Date: 28 September 1996
Subject: Murder!

John, my website is almost up. Got those texts?

From: Nichelle
Date: 28 September 1996
Subject: (no subject)

Gaby, I'm going out for a while. I'll pick up some light bulbs and probably have coffee at Zopie's. I'm not doing very well. I thought I was going to die last night. I can't stay in this apartment anymore today, I need to get out even though it's raining. I don't care about the rain. Now you've found some weird model online with hookers and cybersex and all that. She's pretty, but she looks like a slut in the picture where her fingernails are bright red. I have a thing about bright red fingernails. I liked the excerpt from her book about the hookers. I didn't imagine the pussy write letter show would be done with a magic marker or whatever it was. I kind of pictured one of those elegant feather pens like they have at wedding receptions so you can sign the guest book and they can go back and write next to your name that you bought them another fucking coffee pot or something. I think we need to build up the list again. Everyone is so quiet. I think it's because Allset keeps criticizing Joy's letters. I can't figure out what kind of bad blood they've got between them, or whatever. I think Laurent is busy selling encyclopedias door to door so he can fly us to France. At least that's what I keep telling him to do. Do people sell encyclopedias door to door anymore (nice rhyme...)? I guess everyone just uses the one that came with their 'puter. Anyway, I'm going to go buy some stupid fucking coffee and a muffin or a bagel or whatever they sell at Zopie's for the sorority girls to eat. If I get in line behind one of those bitches, I'll be sure to ask for something with extra fat and extra sugar. They love that shit. Fuck you. Fuck them. Whatever.

From: Terry
Date: 28 September 1996
Subject: Re: RL MOO

What email address do you have? Well, for all practicality, he might prefer MOOmail on Club. Or perhaps RLMOO. I'll talk to him and get his thoughts on it.

Terry

From: Nichelle
Date: 29 September 1996
Subject: note frum murtilda

been sleeping, then wake up and eating the food ate crunchy things ate something from the floor heard a noise played with the paper played with the string played with a big leg, somebody said a mean loud thing played with the ball looked out the window there was a fuzzy thing and it ws moving and I wanted it it was far away there were big fat noisy birds wanted them and then I didn't get them then I went under the big thing and stayed under there It was dark---got tired came out from under the big thing and found the warm person then slept on top of it. It was moving a lot woke up and eating the food again ate crunchy things I like the way the crunchy things smell like good food The big people were eating I wanted. Then played with the paper. played with the leg played with the ball.

luv murtilda

From: Terry
Date: 30 September 1996
Subject: Re: Addresses

That's his business address above... he's just moved; I'm not sure if that address is accessible to him at this time. If it is, he'll reply back to you ASAP.

As for his snail-mail address, you'll have to get that from him. I feel that would be a violation of his privacy for me to give that to you, since I am no longer going to participate in the partnership. The best way to contact him, in my opinion, is on ClubMOO. You can make arrangements with him there.

October 31, 1996 is my last day in the four-way partnership. I received your money order today and will mail him a check this week.

Sincerely,
Terry

On Mon, 30 Sep 1996, Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss wrote:
> Above is the e-mail address I've got for Clay. I shall also need a
> snail-mail address so I can send the checks in November or whenever you
> leave. I need some way of getting in contact with him directly. Surely he
> understands this. Thanks for your help.
>
> RECTVM VINVM
> Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

August 1996

October 1996

vr: 1996