From: SAGReiss
Date: 1 November 1996
Subject: LambdaMOO
The first three names are the characters that Sean (Shawn?) of Edmonton
has on Lambda. That is all I know about him. If you need more information,
I'd be glad to ask Nichelle or you can ask her yourself. Best of luck.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 2 November 1996
Subject: La fiesta de los muertos
All Saints' Day, yesterday, the day to end the life of a child with no name.
Today, the Day of the Dead, the day to celebrate my late and latent paternity.
We celebrate with Malcolm Lowery who should have died this day. I think Emily
Dickenson said something like that. I've changed the list. Please take note
in your answers, if you answer. Nichelle was mad that I've been neglecting
you. She's recovered her health. There were second thoughts last night, not
on my part. I said, in bed, just Nichelle, Matilda and I: "They can't put
it back." I had tried to stay away from the decision-making process. I stooped
so low as the typical-asshole French joke: "If indeed it's my kid..." The
Ricard is rushing to my head. This is my second drink after thirty-one days
of painful-painless sobriety. I can't think of a better reason not to drink
than I can think of a reason to drink. We've had a big cooking day. I made
pancakes this morning. We spoke of ways to make French bread. I've decided
to try the buttermilk receipe. I made a salade au Roquefort for lunch. Nichelle
made cranberry jam and a coffee cake this afternoon. Beethoven plays on. I'm
reading (or re-reading, I can't remember) Lolita, which I find a little too
Latin in vocabulary. Nichelle finds the child-rape aspect a little bothersome,
as one might imagine. I find it bothersome that all these MOOassholes are
making you, John, read these foolish MOOauthors (I can't even remember their
names.) when the bad boys are out there waiting to be read. Fuck these pigs.
Those who haven't met Chris "The Kid" Marlowe in a low-life public house have
no need for Kurt Vonnegut or even J.D. Salinger, who is probably better than
all those Pynchon assholes. I have my own Faustian bargain with Mephistopheles.
I gave up reading, except the newspaper, almost ten years ago. I only read
myself and my e-mail. I really don't give a fuck. I do wonder about that has-been
child. How could I not do so? I'm not going to give you some drunk-stupid
monologue as the Consul does this day about too many douchebags and whatnot.
It makes one think. I'm a poor man, struggling to pay the fucking rent and
utilities each day. Does this make me unfit for paternity? Fuck that, it's
the poor who repopulate the world each and every generation. Apparently my
balls hold sons and daughters within them. Nichelle even felt so good as to
blow me this morning. True she had to spit the sperm out, but that's because
she's not in practice, after four weeks of puking (yacking in her words) as
many as five times in one twenty-four-hour period. Her embouchure suffers
for clarinet playing also. I'm thinking about a lot of things. John, I think
you should kill #147 and the Spivak gender, though I guess we need to keep
the plural to humour your cybersex partener(s). You know I wouldn't want to
get you in trouble? The MOOs have been so fucking stupid and boring, that
little game of abraham's seemed almost intelligent to me the other day. I
know I've been absent, wordless of late, but I can't believe none of you bastards
will idle on RL MOO to at least greet the fucking guests or tourists who
may pass by. Nichelle will have her 'puter soon. Cleo, I'll make you a character
as soon as I send this letter. Columbine, you know I'd gladly make you a
character, if only you would give me some kind of name. I'm sorry to implicate
those of you who have not asked for any such thing. Sometimes I have to take
risks. RECTVM VINVM is not only just a pun on Cicero's motto, RECTA VIA.
It's also a cry of hope, a wish that something different, something real,
something human and grammatical might happen in cyberspace. If you disagree,
just tell me. All I ask is that you look at the web site, not read it askance.
Print it out. Give us a chance. I've worked fucking hard to do this shit.
So has John. We're playing for keeps and none of us thinks he's going to
make any money doing this. We do it for... I don't know. I could have had
a child. I choose words. I'm going to stop now and listen to the choral part
of the Ninth, the part I busted my ass to translate. I'll sing along with
that motherfucker. I'll make supper. I'll go to work at seven tomorrow morning.
I still hope.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 2 November 1996
Subject: La fiesta de los muertos
'I could have had a child' is a cruel line that hurts me more than you know,
unless you've seen how many times I've fought back the tears since the operation.
You would feel the loss in a very different way if you had been lying on the
table in the abortion room with a huge white light on you as you felt the
suction machine ripping out your insides. They kicked me out after ten minutes
in the recovery room because they needed space for more girls. I wonder how
many others went through the factory that morning.
Nichelle
From: Nichelle
Date: 2 November 1996
Subject: (no subject)
Murder, since your last letter was just to me, I'll quote part of it for
the benefit of the list.
>I've really been thinking about some musical things lately, and I think
>that one of these days we should have a discussion on RLmoo about a
>selected topic (similar to the one Gabe had about Shakes 106). If you
>have any ideas, let me know.
OK, next Sunday (a week from tomorrow) at 4 PM EST (unless of course you
can't make it, John) there will be a discussion in Paradiso about Aaron Copland's
setting (which can be found in his "Twelve poems of Emily Dickinson") of Emily
Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for death". Let me know if you have
a problem finding the score.
I liked your suggestions, but the pieces were pretty long. I also wanted
to choose a piece with a voice so that the musically illiterate among us could
participate with an analysis of the poetry. I also wasn't sure if you knew
the Copland settings.
And of course we can go to Delizioso's over the break.
Nichelle
From: Martine
Date: 3 November 1996
Subject: Re: La fiesta de los muertos
-amusee de trouver mon meilleur copain de moo sur ta liste: Laurent.
Je me demande comment il a atterri la. Je lui demanderai. On fait en ce moment
un travail ensemble. Le Chaineur, et plus precisement le chaineur de quatrains
(en neerlandais pour l'instant, puis en Anglais)
-je me suis donne la peine de lire ton email jusqu'au bout. Je ne sais pas
si tu consideres que c'est de la litterature, mais moi pas. Je me fiche totalement
de savoir que tu as mange de la salade au Roquefort et que ta copine a avorte
de tes oeuvres, parce que justement, c'est mal ecrit.
-dois-je alors me contenter du "plaisir" d'etre informee de cette maniere
sur ta vie privee ? Seule la vie privee de mes intimes m'interesse, ceux que
je connais en chair et en os, et qui n'ont pas besoin de m'ecrire.
-les echanges de considerations personnelles sur la litterature, les texte
et l'ecriture en general m'interressent, ou m'interesseraient, si elles ne
donnaient pas lieu a autant de nombrilisme de ta ou de votre part.
Je t'envoie un texte de ma production: "le corcade du grosaïque", en
attachement pour ne pas avoir a le chatrer de ses accents. Je suis curieuse
de connaitre tes reactions, si toutefois tu arrives a lire autre chose que
tes propres emails...
Amicalement
Martine
Le corcade du grosaïque
L'entrelus nontilise d'inale et autement des pasties à collecer,
car de diffémilles à sers l'entée d'encade. Exément,
la vispe dissoupengée seurnale aux complassançaires et l’équercal
dorne vivrement une samante aux Accormales. Poulture, des foux quérirs
notoyent les armatiens si n'uteurs?
Dix corcades s’adémient, partexté dont cent grous qui turent
et pribuent moulle tursonne à lairmes, dont le nourrel. Si les corcades
sernagent, et si les enties dextent d’outremielleur, ils sursocadrent de lerte
et d'inale pour avantrire le dirsone. Les sontables pantés de tracipaux,
sancis-à-vivercas sont: « les fracheux achées, les paractifes,
les lignoutes et coractines en reprisme et en levrespe, le corcade du grosaïque
(....).»
Le colemme qu'en saïquernitique de gendes levrouleurs romplait, tarant
le polieur fortiligéligne va l’écrince et prévolle bas
quand les cengélits de corcades racertent. («Je nontilise. Et
non pas rédisside, puis prédis-à-viste et me répore.»)
Etagemâtre à préporine, voisent-ils le trigier en fercale,
tant élique du Bers? Non, la cadelure à d'entave, où
le fuside ne se pardice sernanière. Plusque.
Poults à un corcade qui nontilise, un cologiel éxème
une “Avante de Ceprise”, cormé les guittons donnisants, et ces rulies
qui sernagent cadélique sonvicent de direpte. Ou ces grons d’ansaïques
résidèment, ou ses prépases d'alitentors écribues
où les silles n’ont qu'à dexter.
Des corcades aux forattelles, le sougroix du camplé jusie, s’il dexte
et locumente l'abilivecte. Accousé de rathique à titelivres,
le rédiffain pante fouperniment mais pas l'inartâtres à
reprours qui sernage. Un doccomplis de sument prévolle le relignorteur
et priste qui l'encratte en “d'infoute m'aux"(...). Le despe foupère.
Il n'abste et les sontables bantifèrent, tant l'étéseur.
Au pranis soupeur, ni le corcade s’érappe, ni le sontable docultune
dissement. Tanaises en propicadre, la lansantre va s’accoratier du ligélivrosant
et du syndème. («Je treminfère. Chaquant, groute le foriment?»)
Liquent les bleures d’inale, nous les dantexclurons et l'enteur vicadure
de ses relités. L'Hexte monne, ou il sondifémière car
le trigier pante quand l’étilique du Bers sernage. («J'indeste
le bilignoupe et répate bas l'entribue»). Pourpentine de l'obre,
les corcades s'impourent, les demptères de la formarde ranquent et
l'anculeste s’engéliste extément. Le colde spalerte les voidans
de fourniquérair à l'Acaliquelle. Et à titour, une ligeante
mathique minfère; du prisé à d’inale, les puitageaux
compligélient.
D'aciper, ontre des ratitis aux corcades, il s'inisside récriété
et les ausides aux quérales prévollent. («Je matre nous
cliseigner son êtrepris-à-vise indictié»). Un sontable
sernageait, il pertait à corcadéon (......).
(Liste: nontiliser, dexter, sernager, prévoller, le corcade , le
sontable, d’inale.)
From: SAGReiss
Date: 3 November 1996
Subject: Emily Dickenson
SEYTON: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH: She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 3 November 1996
Subject: Dickinson, again
After listening to Copland's settings of the twelve Emily Dickinson poems,
I have changed my mind. I suggest we look at the second song (There came a
Wind like a Bugle). I've included the text, and some notes:
There came a Wind like a Bugle -
It quivered through the Grass
And a Green Chill upon the Heat
So ominous did pass
We barred the Windows and the Doors
As from an Emerald Ghost -
The Doom's electric Moccasin
That very instant passed -
On a strange Mob of panting Trees
And Fences fled away
And Rivers where the Houses ran
Those looked that lived - that Day -
The Bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings told -
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the World!
2. quivered through] bubbled in - 9.On a strange Mob] Upon a Mob - 12] The
Living looked that Day - 17. abide] remain
MANUSCRIPT: About 1883 (Binghampton 97-12).
PUBLICATION: Poems (1891), 146, titled "The Storm." The suggested change
for line 12 is adopted. One word is altered:
14. told] whirled
In the Copland, line five reads 'Window' rather than 'Windows', line 12
reads 'The Living looked that Day', and line 14 reads 'whirled' rather than
'told'.
Nichelle
From: Martine
Date: 4 November 1996
Subject: Re: E-litterature
Les textes online, web ou moo repondent aux lois d'un autre genre que la
litterature. Cela m'interesse plus dans un MOO de connaitre les objets generiques,
les robots parlants, les messages, les verbes, les classes de personnage,
etc.... enfin tout ce qui correspond a l'ecriture specifique du MOO, plutot
que les conversations des participants qui sont aussi banales que partout
ailleurs ... À ce titre, ton MOO est tres peu ecrit. Ou bien ces elements
ne te paraissent pas important, trop loin du "journal" que tu veux faire ?
Je ne manque pas de concentration en general, je sais lire un livre. Mais
je ne me sers pas du Web pour cela. Tout au plus j'echangerais quelques idees
et quelques titres avec des gens qui auraient des gouts ou des interets proches
des miens. (listserv Blanchot du Spoon collective). Mais vouloir faire d'Internet
le lieu ou se lit et s'ecrit de la litterature au sens traditionnel du terme
me parait une erreur. ... Enfin, si tu y trouves ton bonheur de lecteur et
d'ecrivain, tant mieux pour toi. Mais a lire ton email, je comprends plutot
qu'il s'agit d'un pis-aller pour auteur non publie.
Internet est un medium de communication, donc un vehicule a fiction, mais
qui comporte des effets de realite (en particulier tout ce qui a trait au
temps reel). Je vois que tu utilises ces effets de reel en esperant avoir
des lecteurs pour ton journal sur listserv ....
Si tu en as trouve, tant mieux ....
Quant a moi, si j'ai envie de lire un texte ecrit sous la forme d'un journal,
je lirai, (je relirai) "Le journal intime de Sally Mara" (Queneau); une histoire
erotique online, je relirai VOX (Nicholson Baker). Mais je n'arriverai pas
a prendre votre graphomanie nombriliste pour de la litterature....
Salut
Martine
From: Murder
Date: 4 November 1996
Subject: Copland
That Copland setting is an excellent choice, Nichelle, but this coming Sunday
is a bad day for me to discuss it with you and whomever else wants to. For
one, I will be in Spokane, which wouldn't be a problem except I can't log
in because our VAX cluster will be shut down for the day for maintenance.
Might I suggest next Monday evening? I'll have to check and see if I have
rehearsal.
Murder
From: SAGReiss
Date: 6 November 1996
Subject: Machine a Jabberwock
You see, John, I have a very positive influence on your cyberlovelife. I
thought that line: "He meant go to Kanada and soothe his unrested soul," was
tasteful and poetic. I'm sure I could have thought of a few other unrested
parts of your anatomy, but I chose understatement. I know you appreciate my
help and you're quite welcome. I hesitated to answer your letters, Martine,
because I thought maybe someone else would give it a try. Alas I'm not sure
how many people on this list read French well enough to know that the reason
they didn't understand your prose had nothing to do with their French. Nichelle
asked me when I printed it what the title meant: "It doesn't really mean anything.
It's written like The Jabberwocky". Laurent said something like that to me
yesterday, that he helps you with software to produce such texts. He chose
the same example, interestingly enough. I wonder how the software avoids
using phonetically or graphically unacceptable combinations. That seems harder
to me than making the syntax work. You might like Raymond Roussel (Impressions
d'Afrique and Comment j'ai ecrit certains de mes livres). I find that both
Queneau and Perec succeed the best in the books (Zazy dans le metro and La
Vie mode d'emploi) where their experiments take a back seat to some kind
of story. Rather than making up a story, I choose to use the one which life
gives me, online or off, for the written representations I make in many genres.
It is as absurd to say that online texts (or e-mail) are not a kind of literature
as to say that manuscripts were literature and Gutenberg's Bible something
else. The printing press and the 'net (specifically e-mail, the Web and cybertext)
are simply technological breakthroughs which change the means by which texts
are created, distributed and read. Our MOO was built to encourage the production
of texts by human beings, to avoid spam. I am not suggesting there is something
wrong with computer-generated text, but that is not really mon metier. Je
suis un homme de lettres, ce qui signifie aussi que je suis un homme. Obviously
it doesn't matter to you or anyone else on this list except Nichelle what
I eat for supper, but then again... When negatron says: "I hate when people
talk about food. I'll probably be eating McDonalds again tonight," I feel
for my friend. I talk about it over dinner with Nichelle: "He must be very
depressed." The representation of food and sex must necessarily loom very
large in the representation (whatever the medium) of a human life, whether
it's John's nachos or Cleo's microwave. I don't need to tell a French girl
the importance des plaisirs de la table. I remember too well Laurent's frustration
with Joy when he asked: "What did you say to your parents when you asked
for bread at the dinner table?" She answered that they never ate together,
or something like that. It is quite obvious to me that the average college
student who uses an internet account reads and writes far more than the student
who is not online. That is what attracts me to this forum. This is a cheap
shot: "Mais a lire ton e-mail, je comprends plutot qu'il s'agit d'un pis-aller
pour auteur non publie." It takes great luck and great perseverence, more
than anything else, to get a first book contract. Should I have that good
fortune, then the pis-aller would be simply a first logical step. Last, if
you're using Eudora, you can cut-and-paste a Word text with accents and they
will work, except for readers using Pine.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 7 November 1996
Subject: love and despair amongst the kitchen utensils
It's 12:08 AM, Gaby has been in bed since eight-thirty, and I'm exhausted.
I just finished the dishes while thinking about what would have made the gravy
better. Or at least good. Is gravy an acceptable topic for e-mail? I continue
to overestimate the literary value of food. As a matter of fact, this assumption
is so strong that I had thought nobody was writing because they just hadn't
eaten anything good lately. I guess if you eat hungry man suppers every night,
there isn't a whole lot of room for variation. I keep thinking of some book
I read, don't recall the title. Don't recall the author. All I remember is
that an entire chapter was dedicated to the memory of a friend who had recently
died, and that it was just a list of everything they ate on a particular
tour. It was fascinating. And since I don't really get out much, all I do
is eat, drink, sleep, bathe, give Gaby blow jobs (I'm not allowed any vaginal
sex for three more weeks, and after three weeks of vomiting I am trying to
get back in practice.), and go to the toilet. It continues to embarrass me
that I say these things "in front of" my old high school buddy. Doesn't matter.
He can have all the vaginal sex he wants, several times each night, or so
he tells me. If only. Oh well.
Nichelle
From: Laurent
Date: 7 November 1996
Subject: Re: Machine a Jabberwock
., what lust from me, world..hem and of you?.was of comment fing comis,
"that lust the cynicatteritedexists ords andifferink ofemore..he jade's comebackers
ther, unsparate now comisunder to howyould end when shouldsupere noon out
wave evelop of you or hanner..'s neven yould..sence day's demain mockin, this
upon that your voices tattoo a perseis proble reasurpeople.. on cup..er world..
too, hour didn'tdient of a setc..you trationsuouse, to each liva, you fuck
and, and comfor your piercingled you came, that icouldn'texisticularite the
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surface, touch ordern
From: Murder
Date: 7 November 1996
Subject: Minks
Nichelle, I wouldn't worry about overestimating the literary value of food.
It's just that I still live in the residence halls and have to put up with
the imitation food they serve us. It's actually not so bad. For breakfast
I have a bowl of Healthy Choice cereal and a cup of fruit. Lunch consists
of a turkey-and-swiss-on-white with a plate of salad and some cookies. Dinner
varies, but usually I ingest a hamburger or some pasta with another plate
of salad, plus dessert. I only drink water with meals because milk fucks up
my flute chops and juice is too acidic for my stomach. After my nightly 2-hour
practice session I get the munchies really bad and have to eat a snack (cookies
or chips) or drink a mug of hot chocolate mixed with Bailey's Irish Cream.
See? Not too exciting, is it? This menu will remain pretty constant until
June when I graduate. Too bad about no vaginal sex for three weeks. Why are
you embarassed telling me? This week I haven't gotten very much because we
have both been putting in very long days and are very tired. Sometimes I
just don't feel like it when I've gotten two hours of sleep a night for the
last two weeks. I have a duo recital tonight and a major test in environmental
studies (soil types--who the fuck cares??) tomorrow, but it might not matter
because she is probably the most insatiable woman I have ever met. Good sex
doesn't even begin to describe what we do. Even my favorite phrase "fucking
like minks" just doesn't cut it, either. It's a rough job, but...
Murder
From: Columbine
Date: 7 November 1996
Subject: Re: love and despair amongst the kitchen utensils
Food is a religion in Louisiana. "People in Louisiana venerate priests and
chefs and not necessarily in that order." I miss it often when I eat. Food
in New England is dull.
I've had a deep, deadly project in what Gabriel would describe as "geek
work." (I can't tell whether he's respecting it or denigrating it or both.)
I've been living on Burger King and coffee.
I don't know it's the project or the food that's been keeping me from writing
or visiting the MOO, but I like your theory. We are what we eat.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk
- mach es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Columbine
Date: 7 November 1996
Subject: identity
I suppose I should explain. If you don't want an explanation, you know where
the delete key is. I am usually fairly protective of my identity online. You're
the first person I've met online in many years to whom I've even given my
real email address.
This is not a paranoiac reaction - I don't really think you're going to
come down and find me and kill me. I am no cringing flower. It has more to
do with lines of identity, which I have already established are much less
important to you than to me, so you may not understand what the fuss is about.
I am not unhappy with my existence - I have a good job, I can support my
lifestyle, so what the hell? But it isn't exciting and I don't really manifest
much personality or fire except around the few people I take the time to get
to know well.
It's a classic case of "geek only has personality when online," I suppose,
and I choose to keep the distinction a very clear one. That's slightly schizoid.
I don't care.
You don't really want to know what I'm like behind the computer, and vice
versa. You are interested in my thoughts, which ultimately are the best and
least real part of me, not the most.
You can pass this along, of course. The only reason I didn't cc the group
is because I didn't feel it was of general interest.
I say again: I'm perfectly happy to be a perpetual guest. In many ways I
find it preferable.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk
- mach es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Nichelle
Date: 8 November 1996
Subject: (no subject)
Yes, it's a beautiful fucking morning here in Syracuse, NY, boys and girls.
It's raining outside, but we still have to brave the weather and do our grocery
shopping on the bus. Why can't we live like decent fucking human beings? I
just finished showering. The carpet burns on my knees burned the whole time,
and I didn't manage to get all of the olive oil out of my ass. Apparently
Dial liquid soap isn't the solution. It was a weird night which shouldn't
have happened. It started when I decided to have a glass of wine with dinner
and got progressively worse each time I tried to swallow a little more of
Gabriel's J&B. Then an aborted blowjob and a sorry excuse for assfucking
on the living room floor, then on the bed. I wanted to but it felt like he
was ripping me apart. Neither one of us came either, even though I begged
him to stick it in my cunt, which he did twice by mistake. He even tried to
make me come, but he couldn't do it, because of the whisky or the smell of
dead babies between my legs, I don't know which. I've got a pretty substantial
case of sexual frustration, and so what if I threw a couple of chairs. I wanted
to go out for a walk. I wanted to get away. I'm not allowed pleasure. Sex
is for men. Sex revolves around the male orgasm. I've never, ever had an
orgasm during sex. I probably never will have an orgasm during sex. I refused
to come on the floor of the shower, even though I desperately wanted and
needed it. I'll probably resign myself to that shame and do it later today
while Gabriel is on the MOO. When was the last time I came that wasn't in
the bathtub? I deserve it. I'm an ugly fat fucking whore, a veteran of all
that is horrible about sex. I just have to try not to spit it into a tissue
next time I suck him off.
Nichelle
From: SAGReiss
Date: 8 November 1996
Subject: Kind of a potato bun
We had the McDonal's group in for a conference this week. The chickenman
complained to thirty-seven managers, including the general manager, because
the Puerto Rican cook forgot the chicken on his salad and the white trash
waiter (not me, one of the gay boys) didn't notice. The fucker had to wait
five minutes for his missing chicken. Look man, this isn't fucking McDonald's.
After that the mad Greek woman (our fearless hostess) kept giving the chickenman
to me with all kinds of warnings and entreaties. She trusts me more than the
others because I can speak weird languages, so she thinks I listen to her
more than they do. It's not true of course, but it's a useful fiction. She,
after all, distributes the tables, and tables are money. She probably just
figures (because I make the most fun of her and am the rudest of the rude):
"He's lived in Europe so he's not totally uncivilized." Anyway I asked one
of the McDonald's boys what is in an ArchDeluxe. He said it was a hamburger
with lettuce and tomato and I think cheese and bacon (I think all of their
shit is the same with different names.) on a kind of potato bun. He said this
last with a special and obviously meaningful cupping gesture of the hands,
whose meaning was utterly lost on me. Is the bun in the form of a potato?
Is it made with some kind of nasty potato flour? It's probably just their
regular thing without the sesame seeds. We had a staff meeting yesterday and
had to watch another of the stupid training films. About five minutes into
it I asked: "Why are we watching a film made to show managers how to communicate
with employees?" The pregnant bitch had chosen the film (based on the title,
but of course without having wasted her time watching it) before getting
dialated and leaving for three or four months. The room service gay boy thinks
she's going to try to scam worker's comp. for her maternity leave, but I
think she's too stupid to pull off anything that slick. If I weren't so low-rent
and had a real, majordomo listserv, I could pull up that letter in which
Nichelle describes us having sex one night in the style of the film of Du
Cote de chez Swann which totally contradicts her text of this morning. At
work yesterday the room service guy, who is not quite as mean and rude as
the rest of us (though he hates women, hates them), said "fuck" in front of
a new girl (who's got a kid) and then apologized, so I said: "Shit, she's
fucked, at least once," and she said: "But I can't remember it." Whatever.
All three letters of yesterday (I have to forward Laurent's.) confused me.
Laurent's letter lacks a little in the context department. Was this a first
draft to show me how really fucking hard it is to program beastly 'puters
into making Jabberwock texts? I checked it to see if it wasn't a scrambled
version of my own gibberish, but I don't think so. Shit, I even tried to unscramble
Martine's text, unsuccessfully. Murder, you tell us of your gymnastics with
the Nazi-nymphomaniac, but give us none of the gory details. Same thing with
Columbine's letter. While I love cajun cooking (anything with hot peppers),
I'm going to make pea soup and fish and chips tonight. Nichelle has been craving
fish and chips. What is your internet project? We would like to participate.
Do you need guinnea pigs? Most of the people on this list, and any other stray
dogs who might show up on RL MOO, waste huge amounts of time on internet projects
no one makes any money from (not yet) and a couple of us are badass geek
motherfuckers. Ah shit. I think I'm going to get online and start a fight.
It's too quiet this morning...
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 8 November 1996
Subject: contradictions
If he said it with such emphasis, then which is it: 'kind of a potato bun'
or 'a kind of potato bun'? It's easy to toss out my letter with one line about
another letter which contradicts it. Who made that fucking rule, that we
can't contradict ourselves? When did I write this letter? Perhaps not on
a morning when I had a little hangover, a sore oil-coated ass, rug burns,
and a seriously undernourished sex drive. The buttermilk pancakes were delicious.
I forgot to mention that I smoked one of Gaby's cigarettes. My e-mail is worse
than my gravy. I don't care. Get fucked, all of you.
Nichelle
From: Martine
Date: 9 November 1996
Subject: Preaming/ Le plusing
Preaming
Dardled for the moutle, preaming frevescates the contingual chaports and
borks the dinmarshes under the chation. The turate fattles with the tilm,
thust retting regirting. Ultim, franchion is retted for the frevescation cordfatles.
Franchions are the liftings for the thepress of preaming which they lingle.
Without nelip backling here, the aspling is good for fatles, limtidly deats
the weats up till the clusties.
Le plusing
Danters à une élistre, le plusing ondure de ses consantres
et ni mation l'airise, ni pation le motère. Le décheux sulle
de n'imalée ficadre sans d'huiner, des merniciés à résire.
Accombre, la fration l'est d'aujeur pour suire ondurant et quernargé.
Les frations sont des fourtages parmé la phonantière du plusing,
que reliquation ne savint. Sans reprins d'elles, l'appée se volimpe
surant, notais-à-vis un limaître pondicatique, borellé
à tropine.
Salut,
Martine
From: SAGReiss
Date: 9 November 1996
Subject: The Invisible Woman
That was a lovely little letter, Columbine. There are many points worthy
of comment. I don't see why you *should* explain, but I'm glad you have. I'm
not sure what I've done to earn your trust, if that's the word, but I'm glad
I have. I'm don't know what the point of having an e-mail address is, if
one doesn't give it to anyone. If your mother writes the same dumbstupid e-mail
that mine does (and I think this not uncommon), why would you ever check
your inbox? I have often used hyperbole to fight the mistaken idea that the
media we all use are inherently a fantasy world. This can be true, but it
must not be. In moments of truth I will admit that cybersex is somehow not
quite so real as normal fucking. Indeed phone sex seems more real to me than
the MOO variety. Again there is nothing necessary about this observation.
We have all seen different places on the spectrum between life and art. I
live with Nichelle, but I also have a cyber-relationship with her, which will
grow if the FedEx man ever brings her new 'puter called... well she won't
tell me the name. John is closer to a friend than other people onna MOO,
but I have never met him. Even seeing someone's picture (Laurent or Joy's)
makes him more physically present to my mind. I thought you were the married
type, but lately I have come to doubt that. It may not be important. I don't
know why you first tell me about your life offline and then say I'm not interested
in that. Nor do I know what the "vice versa" means, but that can be quite
a tricky expression to use. I am of course interested in your life offline
and found your description of it touching and human. When I told the room
service gay boy that he had no life to go home to, he said: "I have a life.
I go home and get drunk and clean my bathroom and I cook dinner three or
four times a week if I'm not too drunk." "I am not unhappy with my existence."
This is a beautiful figure of speech called litote. For those of you in the
French-speaking audience the classic example is from Le Cid: "Je ne vous
hais point." I cannot quite support all of my criminal addictions, but I
get by. I enjoy the restaurant business, even though I'd rather serve good
food to people with a civilized culinary culture. As those Frenchmen say
again: "Les Americains ne mangent pas. Ils se nourrissent." They don't even
do that well. Believe me, I did eighty-eight covers today. I cannot believe
that offline does not influence online. Idiots offline make up the stupid
spammy characters online. I tend to drink and MOO at the same time. Often
the alcohol shows up on the screen. Matilda (our kitten) jumps on the keyboard
chasing the mouse. This effects what you see. We are all prisoners of language,
not to mention our bodies. I can't just walk into Columbine's allegorical
cave and see her ideas flash across the smokey walls.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Columbine
Date: 10 November 1996
Subject: Re: The Invisible Woman
>I can't just walk into Columbine's
>allegorical cave and see her ideas flash across the smokey walls.
Funny you should say it that way. If you want to see a few ideas the way
they flashed on the walls of my brain, go to the cave which I have, just this
evening, reworked and reinstated at a roundabout sort of suggestion from
killjoy.
___
"When I made a shadow on my window shade
They called the police and testified
But they're like the people chained up in the cave
In the allegory of the people in the cave
By the Greek guy"
-They Might Be Giants
From: Columbine
Date: 10 November 1996
Subject: Re: The Invisible Woman
> I'm don't know what the point of having an e-mail address is, if one
>doesn't give it to anyone.
Touche.
___
LETTER FROM A CYNIC
Do not walk behind me
Ever
I do not fear your stiletto but
When I stumble
You could catch me
Unthinkable!
Walk before me
So I may fall upon you
Misery loves company
- columbine
From: Nichelle
Date: 11 November 1996
Subject: Is that all?
It came! Well, kind of. The Federal Express guy brought me this disembodied
monitor with a statement from ProGen. It doesn't look that much smaller than
Gaby's. Not from over here, anyway. Fuck that. I lied. He rang again. WHoopee!
Nichelle
From: Nichelle
Date: 11 November 1996
Subject: 11999 Virgins
Move out the way, motherfuckers, it's big fat Nichelle, the generally sharp
one, dixit John, the skinny white bastard who plays the flute, and I'm riding
a 150 MHz um... oh, shit. I was going to name this computer, but I couldn't
figure out where to break the bottle... Doesn't matter, I broke a beer glass
on the kitchen floor this afternoon. Let's pretend that counts. Ok, named
Bucephalus. Well, I was going to call it that, but the name's taken. So I'm
calling mine Rocinante, and it's an asskicker. This little beauty eats horseflesh
for dinner, even though Gabriel and I are having split pea soup. I've spent
the last seven months fucking up Gaby's machine to prepare for this event,
and I am going to conquer The World. But fuck you, I'm going to play with
my talking dictionary now...
From: Nichelle
Date: 12 November 1996
Subject: Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?
'I was disappointed with your e-mail.' Well, what am I supposed to say?
I didn't think it was any good either. This has been a big night for me.
I may be up to have bagels and coffee with Gabriel at 4 AM. I even had my
first real-time voice chat on the 'net. (Pause to take watch away from cat.)
To be honest, it wasn't much good. After about ten minutes of asking each
other 'Can you hear me? How about now?' there was a horrible silence on both
ends, interrupted occasionally by nervous laughter from Steve in Spokane.
I'm sure something interesting can be done with it. Maybe even playing duets,
or a live internet clarinet lesson. (Pause to put cat on floor.) It isn't
much though, unless I'm missing out on something. On the MOO, the long pauses
and the stupid comments are easier to ignore, and when you're in a conversation
with an idiot, it is easier to leave. It seems just as impossible to find
someone who has something to say, if not even harder. I'm exhausted. Listening
to my talking dictionary say 'cocksucker' was only fun for about five minutes.
I've played with every tool and toy this thing has got. What the fuck am I
supposed to say, Gabriel? You've already written the difinitive new-computer-e-mail.
It was great the first time. But it has been done.
From: Nichelle
Date: 12 November 1996
Subject: negatron
in case he forgets to tell you, go look at negatron’s page.
He ain't bad.
From: Nichelle
Date: 13 November 1996
Subject: nichelle's navel
I'm feeling groggy. Two nights in a row up all night and sleeping in my
clothes. I just finished the dishes, listening to Beethoven's 7th on the
radio, trying to keep the cat off my desk. If I could take the computer to
bed, I might. I've played with every feature and toy the thing has got. I
even looked at the 'Human Anatomy Leaps to Life!' CD ROM which came with
the thing, and watched a human bladder fill with urine. I've got a new strategy
with the voice chat thing. Since you can either type or talk, I turn my audio
off and type. It worked a little better. I find that if I just wait, people
will call me. I had a conversation with a student in San Diego about computer
music composition programs and html. And shit, I even got a look at negatron's
nudie pics on the web. I thought he'd be grungier. Maybe his folks took him
out for a haircut and dressed him up in new clothes before they took the photos.
Murder, where are you? I know you're out there somewhere, reading these letters
while you bonk the reedgirl. The least you could do for us is to write the
juicy details, especially since I haven't got any juicy details of my own.
There have too many excuses not to fuck lately. I think Gaby likes it that
way. Doesn't matter, now that we've both got 'puters we don't have to talk
to each other, except at meals. We'll probably end up working something out
so that we can write little messages to each other on scraps of paper and
slide them to each other across the table. I felt sorry for Gabriel at dinner
last night when he said something about not being destined to be white trash.
I think he just stepped back and looked at his leaky apartment, fat girfriend,
and plate of oily cabbage and realized what was going on. I told him it doesn't
matter. It doesn't. I'd rather live in a nicer place, but at least we eat
well, we both have 'puters, we have a kitty, and we don't fight most of the
time. Of course it would also be nice to live in the present, but I can't
see that as a possibility as long as we're on Lambda and these bitches keep
paging asking whether or not they should go up to Canada and get raped. Yeah,
sure honey, I think it's a good idea. Just bring some band-aids. Well, to
be honest, she didn't ask me. He sent her to Gabriel instead. He told her,
'I don't know what happened. I wasn't there.' Shit, *I* don' t know what
happened, and I *was* there. I know that doesn't make a convincing argument,
but who says I want to convince anyone of anything. This whole mess began
with a private e-mail I sent to Gabe because he called me a liar, undergraduate
scum, and a spam queen. Or something like that. One way or another, he pissed
me off enough to make me write that e-mail that's now sitting on the web,
and if I hadn't done so, my story wouldn't have been the theme of the World
for the last seven months. We've all got our bizarre problems and twisted
pasts. They just aren't posted on the Internet for 1315 people to see.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 13 November 1996
Subject: Slices of Amerika
I'm not falling for that low-rent game of yours, John, trying to give me
cyberAIDS by luring me to your foul web lair. I've seen enough ugliness for
one day. We got slaughtered at work, breakfast and lunch, all-day chaos from
the moment I walked in at seven and the mad Greek woman (newly a grandmother,
Emily or Amelia weighs a whopping nine pounds) sat me something like thirty
people in an hour. Human interest stories were spilling out all over, and
it wasn't pretty. The learning-disabled, gay-weird, thirty-one-year-old busboy
had to go to court on a DWI (alcootest) and was in a crazy mood. We've got
him half-convinced he's going to jail to be some ax-muderer's wife. The gayboy
waiter is being stalked by one of his ex-beaux and the cops don't give a fuck.
He was in a swearing rage all day. The three-hundred-pound gay-Divine room
service boy was shocked and disgusted that his hated sixty-year-old father
is going to be a father again with some woman other than his wife. After
this long diatribe about the immorality of the whole thing, he says: "And
it cuts into my share of the insurance money." At one point me and Joey just
refused to take any more tables. It was hell and, as the room service gay-boy
pointed out to me, they're staying till Friday. I said: "Maybe by then we'll
figure out how to do it right." I don't even know why people tipped me today.
I wasn't rude so much as AWOL. We're now using scraps of paper instead of
dupe pads, which have been taken off of the budget. We made fucking iced
tea for seventy-five people with little tiny tea bags because the chef won't
order anything as he gets a bonus based on food costs (as a percentage of
sales). And the Sacred Bagel, the Holy New York Bagel. Some cunt actually
talked a salesman into being allowed to store her own bagels in our coolers
and then order them up from room service. Said salesman has obviously never
worked for tips. Anyway in the midst of all this chaos somehow the Venerable
Bagel got (I shudder to think.) *buttered*. That bitch was on the phone to
all the managers trying to get all of us, or at least whoever profaned the
Beloved Bagel, fired. This morning the big boss asked me how it was going.
I said: "We got a little roughed up at breakfast." He frowned: "Roughed up?
That sounds so negative, Gabe." "Let's put it this way, Lowell. We had an
exhilerating morning." "Much better." As we were falling deeper and deeper
into a hole before lunch, he asked me: "Gabe, are you looking forward to an
exhilerating lunch?" As the Man says: "Yes is the answer."
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 14 November 1996
Subject: WAK ME OFF
Gabe told me to wake him up when I got back from the library, but I know
better. I once made the mistake of waking him from a nap, and it wasn't pretty.
I found a printout of negatron's photos on my keyboard with 'SUK MI DIK' and
'I LUV YU' written on each page with Gabe's purple Pilot extra-fine rollerball
(write with his pens and die a horrible death). I still can't believe I've
got a computer. This is fuckingincredible. I just finished talking to a serious
badass Italian. This shit will make phone sex nonexistent within a year or
so. Too bad, since I've got 'one hell of a voice'. Earlier today, some asshole
called claiming to be a famous child actor (on Microsoft NetMeeting). Of course
he's some balding, middle-aged pervert who uses the name to lure young girls
into his lair. I asked him for money. "Well, you must have millions, right?"
He didn't seem very interested. Probably daydreaming about little white cotton
panties. It doesn't matter. They're all a bunch of perverts. I'm idling on
the Microsoft thing, and people with names like HUNG DUDE and BLOW ME keep
calling. I considered accepting one, but I doubt whether any of these boys
could do much for me. I opted for a discussion on Lambda about 'good German
bread', which I've obviously never had. I am meeting more people than ever
on the 'net now that I've got these new chat programs, but I'm really not
optimistic. It cuntinues to convince me that there just aren't many people
out there I want to meet. Is anyone out there?
From: SAGReiss
Date: 14 November 1996
Subject: Cyberart
negatron now has large (proportionately) pink glue-on dicks and says: .oOWAK
ME OFF. He's got a heart drawn around his head under the title MY HOT BF.
Perhaps Nichelle will download Paint Shop and re-create this on the Web. This
morning at breakfast I said: "John's going to regret ever having put those
pictures up." Of course Cognac or Melon probably has print-outs of my photo
with shit coming out of my ears or something. It's a brand new world. Welcome.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Murder
Date: 14 November 1996
Subject: Bong hit
Intermission of a concert given by some Tibetan monks. I'm sitting there
thinking about the wonderful overtone content generated by those deep male
voices and contemplating the fact that different cultures have completely
divergent views on what constitutes a beautiful singing voice. The people
behind me are talking about what constitutes a good bong hit. I dare not leave
my seat out of fear that one of the many people in the aisles waiting for
an empty seat might catch a glimpse of my seat and decide they have more right
to occupy that chair even though I showed up at 6:40 for the 7:30 gig and
they arrived at 7:27. Lost in thought. Erin turns to me and asks "So what's
going to happen next year?" Proverbial ton of bricks. Thought process shuts
off. Speechless. The question has been lurking in my subconscious for quite
some time now, occasionally (fleetingly) darting to my conscious mind only
to be struck down with the force of another, less important thought. I'm
sick of deadlines, of bureaucracy, of slouching string players who don't know
the meaning of the words rhythm and pitch (especially *perfect* pitch--tossing
a viola into a trash can without hitting the rim). Burn-out hard core. Graduate
school? Now? It would be much easier to remain undergraduate scum the remainder
of my existence, but I just can't. Freelancing in Portland is looking like
a good option right now. No decent flutists in Portland. This one FWB named
Ruth is freelancing there, making a shitload of money, and she couldn't even
play the THEME of Schubert's Variations on Trockne Blumen. Made a total fool
of herself in front of James Galway. That's the best Portland has to offer?
Do I shell out the cash to fly back east and audition? Now? Am I ready? I
don't know my excerpts well enough. Details on the reedgirl and me? I'm too
damn tired from doing it to write about it. Came damn close three times over
the weekend in Spokane to getting caught by my parents. Showering together,
doing our thing, hear Dad's voice. Simple enough. Fill in the rest of the
details in your own sick little minds.
Murder
From: Columbine
Date: 14 November 1996
Subject: Re: WAK ME OFF
>I am meeting more people than ever on the
>'net now that I've got these new chat programs, but I'm really not
>optimistic. It cuntinues to convince me that there just aren't many
people
>out there I want to meet.
Good, it's not just me. I thought I might have been being unecessarily cynical.
Some nights the Palace is the most depressing place on earth.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Columbine
Date: 15 November 1996
Subject: On the lost art of online conversation
One of the things about online chat is that I find it difficult to think.
Sure, in the real world you don't get to rehearse your conversations either,
but spoken conversation is a "transparent tool" - like a pencil, you devote
zero thought to HOW to use the tool; you just talk.
In online chat, you're forever trying to remember the commands and trying
to figure out how much of your message you just backspaced over because your
term program doesn't show destructive backspaces after the first line and
of course meanwhile other responses are coming in and preventing you from
seeing what you typed and now the conversation is on something else anyway.
(Whew. That's a Gabriel-style sentence if I ever saw one.)
That applies to any online service, but more to the ones where I must telnet.
Telnet is a lousy way to conduct a conversation. The Palace has its own peculiar
set of problems - since all of the interesting conversations are invariably
private (because the public discourse is insipid), you are constantly trying
to switch between three or four private conversations, worried the whole time
that you're sending the wrong thing to the wrong person. And of course the
graphics make the Palace slow slow slow ... a problem we did not mention.
Having said all that, in retrospect our conversation tonight seems a little
smug. I don't consider myself tremendously above average in conversational
skills. Yet I want to TALK and hardly anyone else on the Internet does. I
don't think that intelligence, lack thereof, graphics or lack thereof, et
cetera are the real problems. They're contributing factors, certainly. I guess
the question that's gnawing at me is: why don't more of the people online
WANT to talk? Never mind whether they have the intelligence or capability
to do so. We're talking strictly volition here.
Am I looking in the wrong places? I've been on the net for years now but
it's a big universe; maybe I missed something.
I don't understand why a co-worker of mine is one of the most sparkling
conversationalists I've ever met, but when he gets online, all he does is
look for pornographic GIFs.
I don't understand why a salesman friend who has no problem whatsoever striking
up conversations with strangers (it's his job) doesn't know how to start a
conversation online.
What's with this massive brain shutdown? These are not stupid people. These
are not computer-phobic people. Yet they are the rule among my co-workers
- and I work for a software company, we are a wired lot!
Help me understand this before it makes me crazy.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Nichelle
Date: 15 November 1996
Subject: Only 40 shopping days left!
I drank three cups of coffee today at Shoppingtown. In my stupidity, I gave
all of my bus change to one of those smileyfaced bellringers and had to wait
an hour for the next ride home. The Mall is no place to be this time of year,
and I'm not going back until at least February. How many figureskating mechanical
elves have I got to look at this winter? And Santa photos have already begun.
Some sorority bitch with a red and white miniskirt was posed with Santa sitting
on her lap whispering naughty secrets in her ear. And of course she had some
dumbass "Oooh, Santa, do me!" look on her face. I couldn't believe they let
her do that with all of the little kids running around. I even caught some
boy looking up her skirt, while his older brother made jokes. 'I bet he's
Ho-Ho-Horny.' I don't even know why the fuck I went, to be honest. I was going
to make garlic and thyme olive oil for some of my family members, but last
night a friend on RL told me that there have been a lot of cases of botchelism
from homemade oils, and sent me an article about it. I made the mistake of
going into the stupid fucking dollar store, thinking I could get some hangers
for my Fimo ornaments. There is only one place in the universe that has more
offensive, ugly white-trash assholes in one place and one time, and that
is my stepfather's family's Christmas Eve gathering. You can imagine how
I'm looking forward to that one. It took me twenty minutes to get from one
side of the store to the other, and I couldn't believe the shit people were
buying. Who needs a set of porcelain ducks? I don't even know what they do
with these things. Put them on display on the mantle? After looking at all
of that stupid shit, I finally bought a 'set' of whisks (one large and one
medium), which I figured couldn't be too defective. After all, they're just
whisks. And after the torture of being in that store for nearly a half hour
(half an hour? I forget which I'm supposed to say. Gaby likes to correct my
grammar.) I thought I ought to buy *something*. Not that the trip was a total
waste. I bought a beautiful blue mouse pad. Never mind that I had to go to
three stores to find one that didn't have some dumbshit cartoon character
or playboy logo or advertisement for Coke or Doritos. 'Excuse me, sir, but
have you got just a plain mouse pad?' 'Yes, ma'am, there's one in the SuperMouseKit,
which comes with a mouse storage clip, wristrest, ultrapaperholderthingie,
and mousepad.' 'How much?' The motherfucker was twenty bucks. I ended up going
to Sears, and on the way out I felt so numb I actually listened to Sears
Credit Card Lady for at least half of her speech, with a bewildered look
on my face, until I just couldn't take it any more and I started shaking my
head, No stop, just shut up, but I couldn't say anything. She was too clever
for me. I started to get panicked. Finally I interrupted her by saying in
a loud and confused voice, 'No Eeehn-gleesh! No speeeek eehngleesh.' I felt
a little sorry for her after I had stopped giggling. Well, not really.
Did I mention that my father is an asshole? In our latest conversation,
he told me a cute little story about so-and-so's friend (or maybe it was
a friend of so-and-so's friend) who knew a guy who worked in a restaurant,
and how sad that he has no motivation. You prick, why can't you just say
to my face that you don't Approve of Gabe. I was pretty steamed about it
this morning, after talking to my mother. I started to write him a letter,
which I haven't sent yet. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to include
this paragraph:
"Is it more honorable to work with a bunch of god-fearing homophobic professional
boyscouts than a mob of gay waiters? They're probably all just a bunch of
demented weirdos who like looking at little boys in uniforms, anyway. [skip
ahead] And would you really be proud as punch of your carpet-selling son if
he was just making enough to scrape by? [skip more] If you really wish I
hadn't been born, as you suggested the other day on the telephone, maybe you
and I ought to get in the ring together and duke it out. Bring your little
boyscout hunting knife. I can kick your ass, you pussy."
Looks like I've got a little editing to do, but I think I'm on the right
track. I don't know how much I can resent him. Maybe the bottom line really
is money. Speaking of which, the medical insurance isn't going to cover my
preliminary examination. No news yet on the abortion. They say that they don't
cover Routine Examinations. How fucking routine is getting pregnant and having
an abortion? It isn't as if I go out and do this several times a year.
As for you, Murder... I don't know, I wish I was that tired from doing It.
I think you should freelance in Portland. Looks like I'll be at University
of Washington next fall anyway, so you can come up once a week or so and the
three of us can go get wildly drunk at some strip club somewhere in the Tacoma
slums. Think about it. Shit, I've got a good idea. Why don't you *all* come
to Seattle, we can rent a house, live in horrible squallor together, and
eat like kings. No, forget that. The thought of negatron roaming around the
hallway in his boxers is too weird for me. And Gabe takes hours in the bathroom.
Huge fights, high weirdness, violence, chaos...
As for our conversation of last night, Columbine, I think you are right
that the major problem with chat programs is that people don't really want
to talk. There are good programs out there. RL MOO is good, but unpopulated.
IRC has potential. NetMeeting is a beautiful program. The problem is that
98% of the people I meet online act like morons. I suggest you get a MOO client.
It makes an enormous difference in how MOO conversation is conducted. It
makes telnet seem a lot less primitive. I don't really have anything good
to say about The Palace. In my opinion, it is little more than a video game.
Come to think of it, I'd rather play a video game. I think it has the least
potential of all of the chat programs I have seen, and will stand by what
I said about the near impossibility of intelligent conversation taking place
on such a graphics-heavy program. I suspect that, as you admitted last night,
one of the reasons you enjoy The Palace is that you like the graphics you
have created. A simple sentence takes up half of the screen with those stupid
talk bubbles. There is too much separating the guests and the Members, which
is in the design, part of their evil plot to squeeze $25 out of as many people
as possible. Maybe you *are* looking in the wrong places. You almost didn't
stay on RL MOO last night, and there were a few people there having a relatively
interesting conversation. That's why we made the thing.
And, by the way, what is wrong with pornographic GIFs?
From: SAGReiss
Date: 15 November 1996
Subject: Structuralist breakfast
Perhaps I have eaten structuralism for breakfast for too many years, but
I am inclined to think that the conventions specific to each medium tend to
determine the kind of output. The graphics on the Palace allow people to
do things other than talk, so they do. The graphic art on your web site take
some of the attention away from your poems, Columbine. When I desiged our
web pages, I had not seen half a dozen others. However I gave specific instructions
to Jude, the Obscure One, not to put in anything technologically dazzling,
for I didn't want to take away from the texts. I didn't want no graphics,
but as few distractions as possible. Nevertheless, one guy sent me e-mail
about how much he liked my page and how much fun he had had at the Disney
Homepage. (This is where you go if you click on "under twenty-one".) Some
dumb bitch on Lambda read the poems carefully enough to think she could criticize
them, and I only realized after a couple of minutes that she thought they
were original work, not translations. As you know from idiots who can't find
your links, it's hard to underestimate people's intelligence. When we designed
RL MOO we wanted it to be exactly what Martine accuses it of being, under-written.
We thought that if people couldn't do anything other than talk, they might
do so in a more meaningful way. So far I can't say that we have entirely
failed. Though few come on, those who want to spam just leave. When there
are people on, the discussion tends to be meaningful, which is not to say
serious or even devoid of bad sex jokes etc. Since I use almost none of the
tools available to MOOers, I find MOOspeak fairly "transparent" in the sense
you have used the term, though I am of course very suspicious of the notion
that language is some kind of transparent medium. While I am not so fast
a typist as some secretaries and MOOaddicts I have seen, I am very comfortable
typing at my own rhythm. Even when I typed with no backspace and couldn't
even see the words until I hit enter and sent them, I made very few typos,
which is odd for a man who has built a theory of language on the typographical
error. I am obviously one of the least computer-sophisticated people on this
list, if not the least, but I am very text-sophisticated. This, letter writing,
is the medium I have chosen to express myself in for more than fifteen years.
I am not often fooled by texts. My online experience, however, is tiny compared
to most of yours. I shall limit myself, then, to what I perceive on LambdaMOO,
particularly in the public rooms. Who MOOs? College-educated young adults.
Why are they so stupid? Conformity. When you see the fucking Cockatoo and
Coocoo clock, how could you think this is a place for people to hold conversations
about their lives, their work, their ideas? I have yet to explore the Palace
because I really can't afford to throw away twenty-five bucks right now.
I haven't even seen one of our double phone bills yet, but I'm a month behind
on the utilities as it is... Anyway, I believe that if we could get a dozen
people a night on RL MOO, we would see that grown-up chat is possible in
a public place for precisely the same reasons that Lambda is so foolish,
conformity. I have tried various schemes to populate the MOO, but have not
met with success. Any suggestions are welcome. As to pornographic GIFs, I
haven't really seen any worth mentioning. The room service gay boy subscribes
to something he calls UserNet where he gets to see amature shit people put
up. It makes for some very interesting six-AM conversations. I s'pose geeks
and hackers feel it's below them to stoop to paying for their guilty lusts.
There is definitely a failure on the part of intellectuals to make their
voice heard on the internet. Some of the problem is that in Amerika there
simply is no generally-recognized group of intellectuals. I'm not sure why
that is. I know that I get a lot of shit on Lambda because of that word in
my description: "small, mean, polyglot intellectual".
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Columbine
Date: 15 November 1996
Subject: Re: Only 40 shopping days left!
Between you and Gabriel, Nichelle, I think my questions about conversations
on the internet have finally gotten an acceptable answer, at least for the
present. I'm still digesting, but thank you.
Gabriel: my poems are *supposed* to distract from my illustrations and vice
versa. I'm contrary. I've spent too many years being fed the design dictum
that strong words call for weak images and vice versa. To hell with it.
My advice to you is read the site once without looking at the pictures,
then browse it again without looking at the words :-)
>And, by the way, what is wrong with pornographic GIFs?
Not a thing. There just aren't enough interesting ones.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Nichelle
Date: 17 November 1996
Subject: (fe-lâ´shê-o´)
fellatio (fe-lâ´shê-o´, -lä´tê-o´,
fè-) noun
Oral stimulation of the penis.
[New Latin, from Latin fellâtus, past participle of fellâre,
to suck.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed
from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved.
Gabe, keep your cat under control. She just stood up on her hind legs, on
top of my desk, and started to lick that pink stick-on dick I put on negatron's
photo. It's such an unwieldy thing, it just fell off, so she started chewing
on it. I managed to rescue it, but she licked off most of the sticky stuff...
From: Nichelle
Date: 18 November 1996
Subject: fights
Outrageous. I just got off a call with some guy in California. He was typing,
but had the audio on without realizing it and got in some raging fight with
his wife while I listened.
Oh, fine! You're talking to another *woman* again!
Well, we're just trying it out?
Trying WHAT OUT? You're trying to get laid again.
No, we're just talking.
What is she some little internet slut?
I don't even know her.
You never
I never what!?
spend any time with me and all you ever do
screw you. What the
fuck do you want me to do anyway, bitch?
Get the fuck off that thing.
Get out of my office.
[slam]
"Have I caused a problem?"
"My wife doesn't like me on the computer."
"Nobody's wife likes them on the computer."
"I'd better go mend the wounds."
"Try licking them."
"Bye."
"Later."
From: Nichelle
Date: 19 November 1996
Subject: The 1996 LambdaMOO Description Awards
OK, pin up those flowing locks and focus those penetrating eyes on the distance,
and get ready for...
The Eyes Category:
But you do see his eyes: you must turn away from that gaze, which seems
to pierce you right to your innermost soul.
her blue eyes look at you with innocense and trust
His eyes contain the sunken libraries of Alexandria
her eyes pierce your soul
eyes which penetrate your very being
dark piercing eyes
piercing gaze that paralizes you
The Hair Category:
A stormy nimbus of long, red-brown hair frames her porcelain face – hanging
in heavy serpentine tendrils to her waist.
Escaping curls form a nimbus around her head, a few silver strands gleaming
above her shapely ears.
Her hair, which used to flow in the breeze, is now *very* short...
a snakey mane of long white hair rippling down her back.
The top of his head gleams
ling blond hair
The Shadow Category:
You search the shadows in the place where you think he might be. Then, you
find a vague shape which must be him.
For a moment, the fronds of shadow that cling to him shift
The Clothing Category:
Wearing a t-shirt that says: TCHINEK DISPUTED ME AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS
LOUSY T-SHIRT.
he is covered with a black cloak, swirling about him in a dramatic manner
His shirt seems to absorb all light. Yet, when you come closer, you can
see intricate patterns printed upon it... fractals and circuit board designs.
A long cloak of darkness enfold his frame, preventing you from seeing his
body.
He sports a white polyester shirt and pants that may once have been corduroy.
The Intellect Category:
I am sixteen, and fairly cool. im also kinda smart as in intellectual
you see a player who finds themself to complex to put into words
His dark brown eyes glow eerily, with a sort of inner wisdom that one would
attribute to a scholar or a mage.
The Depth Category:
Far more complex than words can say. Far more open than people should be.
Far more hopeful than the world allows. Far more insightful than people admit.
Far more concerned than people can bear. Far more energetic than others understand.
tumbling around in the depths of her soul you also see a spark of strength,
unquenched by the tides of darkness threatening it.
Before you stands a guy.
His entire life revolves around computers, because they didn't hassle him
in high school for no reason other than being a bit different.
The Testicle Category:
his left testicle swinging gently in the airspace over Panama
The Sensitivity Category:
A delicate and ensitive indivual, who's not afraid of life's sensous pleasures,
either.
don't just go for whatever may be inside my pants.
wonderful, lovely, ace, smashing! aren't you happy? now fuck off.
His eyes are pure with love for everything surrounding him. A six gun is
holstered at his hip on a leather belt
His hands are large and calloused, showing that he favors heavy weapons.
Do not fear my presence for I am not there.
If you say hello to him he might answer, depends on his mood.
Nichelle
From: Columbine
Date: 19 November 1996
Subject: Re: The 1996 LambdaMOO Description Awards
Well, OK, some of it's corny, some of it's imbecilic, and some of it's just
plain crap, but really, how would *you* do it? I would like to think that
I could avoid the obvious potholes when thinking up a description of myself,
but my self-assessment is notoriously suspect.
You don't do escapism or wish-fulfillment at all? You must lead a much fuller
life than I do.
Sorry, that was needlessly harsh. I had a bad time with the code today and
now I think I'm going to drown my sorrows by playing computer games until
my eyes bleed.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Nichelle
Date: 19 November 1996
Subject: world descriptions
o rose, thou art sick...
I wanna die just like Jesus Christ...
small, mean, polyglot intellectual.
A nice girl to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Smart, orally-fixated, clarinet playing diplomat.
Tall, thin white-trash hacker.
curiosity killed the cat...
noble
..an alien abductee
From: Nichelle
Date: 19 November 1996
Subject: one more
gabriel is only my fourth name...
Nichelle
From: Nichelle
Date: 19 November 1996
Subject: pleasant conv. not a fire in the hatch.
>From: Philip
>Date: 19 November 1996
>
>Nichelle,
>
>You've established yourself in this silicon realm so I look to you for
>wisdom: I've been picking up on the MOO scene for about a week now and
>I must say it is addictive. In this micro-population, our hands are
>free to cast away the routine inhibitions that play distractive roles
>in our flesh-bound lives. The locks to the gates of inspiration melt
>away quickly as we pounce around freely. There is one stinging clause
>to this grand paradise...it isn't real. By real I mean It cannot
>replace the experiences we acquire meandering about life in search of
>purpose. Why is it so many of us are compelled to forge an identity
in
>this world beneath?.....Escape perhaps? From what,
>disempowerment...disillusionment with the grounds above? I dunno.
>Maybe we're just taking a break from biting reality, but when I see
>people's first("real") identities begin to merge with that of their
>second("virtual") (especially when they go bug-eyed), I pause to
>consider why. Although I am not one of those people now, I very well
>could become one. I'd like to base my decision on some rationale.
>I've always been wary, but not necessarily aware.
>
>Anyhow, no rush obviously, I'll be around as Crimson_guest.
>BTW, you may be asking yourself '...this guy, why is he sending me this
>manifesto? Sheesh'
>
>I liked your name...and you like visitors eh...
>
>PHIL
Nichelle
From: SAGReiss
Date: 20 November 1996
Subject: Escapism
Here is a text I wrote for the description of a room on Lambda. It was never
used:
1776, Lacoste, the chateau of Donatien Aldonze Francois (Louis), Comte de
Sade a.k.a. Marquis. The seeds of revolution have been sown. The peasants
are angry in the fields. The merchants are angry in the shops. The bishops
are angry in the cathedrals. The aristocrats are angry in their castles. Across
the Atlantic a fight over taxes is quickly becoming a war over sovereignty
fraught with hangings for treason and heady talk of freedom and democracy.
Behind the stone walls of Lacoste the host, his wife, Renee-Pelagie, nee de
Montreuil, and a dozen young domestics perform plays to entertain the guests.
After dark the theatre takes place in the servants' quarters or the master's
apartment. These midnight improvisations are the subject of rumour in and
around the village. In Paris there is still talk of the sacrilege of Easter
1768. In Aix-en-Provence a death sentence for sodomy is under appeal. In
Lyon parents strive to recover their sons and daughters indentured to the
lord of Lacoste. You are asleep in the dormitory. A key unlocks the door.
In walks a small man with blond curls and blue eyes. His faithful valet de
chambre, Carteron a.k.a. La Jeunesse, follows...
It's not that our lives are fuller or more fulfilling than yours. My life
is like everyone else's, full of sometimes noisy desperation and a lot of
tedium. I work a stressful, demeaning job and I'm not very good at it. I don't
like most of our guests. I don't like the food we slop. The guests don't
care about food, only about money, low fat, everything on the side, what
comes with the buffet (what's free) and generally eat for breakfast more
than I eat all day. They wonder why they are fat and now they'll get brain
tumors from putting Equal (faux sucre) in their coffee, or so USAToday says.
None of our managers knows anything about the business. The chef has written
new menus raising the price of the breakfast buffet a dollar and lowering
the price of the eggs by two dollars. He said he had worked out the food
costs. He expects us to charge extra for a bagel instead of toast. He's a
college boy. He doesn't understand shit. I live in a town I loathe in a shitty
little flat intended for undergraduate scum. My academic career ended with
both a bang and a wimper. I'm not having much luck peddling my two novels.
I have however got an esthetic theory which drives what I do. The list-web-MOO
didn't just happen. It was planned. Whatever its successes and shortcomings,
I was thinking long before any of it came to life. It took me over a year
of work. The idea behind it, in short, is what Miller quotes Emerson as saying
in Tropic of Cancer, that (I'm quoting from memory as usual.) the novel will
gradually fade out and be replaced by autobiography. What I added to the
theory is twofold, real time and the second person. While I was alone doing
this (in long correspondences which I have probably lost forever), people
like Columbine and negatron were making what I wanted to do technically possible.
Where the second person is a beautiful conceit in Michel Butor's Modification,
it is a reality in cybertext. Everyone's life is ultimately mysterious and
unknowable and boring. The only two necessary things we do are eat and sleep.
On the other hand, why invent a story when we've got one already? That it
may be boring is irrelevant. The huge descriptions of cetology in Melville
or ball gowns in Proust are boring. What is interesting is how to imitate
(Plato's term) real time and space in a linguistic medium. I have found a
voice, a method of representation which fits me and which I believe is unique
and fruitful. That I have been in something of a slump this fall does not
escape me. I'm sorry, Martine, that the letters haven't been better. I don't
think the quantity and quality of writing that I did this spring and summer
can be sustained at all times. On the other hand no one else (except Nichelle)
has stepped up to pick up the slack. Of course most of you didn't ask to
join this list. I will take you off if you like. Eventually I hope to find
people who write well and often enough to breathe life into this during those
inevitable times when my well runs dry. Indeed receiving e-mail often inspires
me to write when everything at work seems too boring and humorless to bother
with. I should also go to the bar more often. Also, and I know this is no
excuse, I wake up most days at four in the morning and am just chronically
tired with shattered nerves and muscles weak from a physical job. I hope
in Seattle where we plan to move this summer I can get a job just working
lunch in a place with good food and guests who want to delight their tongues
instead of protecting their walet and waistline. Or perhaps I can get one
of those cushy jobs as a French translator. Or maybe I'll get lucky with
BABEL or vr. After all, everyone begins as an auteur non-publie...
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Columbine
Date: 20 November 1996
Subject: Re: Escapism
>The idea behind it, in short, is what Miller quotes
>Emerson as saying in Tropic of Cancer, that (I'm quoting from memory
as
>usual.) the novel will gradually fade out and be replaced by autobiography.
That idea bothers me. Although there are autobiographies I would like very
much to see, for the most part I am more interested in the worlds that people
invent than the ones they actually have to walk in. Don't forget that people
do not read novels to get information. Biography is information; fiction is
not. (And when biography turns into fiction, as it sometimes does, it ceases
to provide useful information about the subject. It does, however, say something
about the biographer.)
On the other hand, I for one cannot write completely non-autobiographical
fiction. My Great Unpublished Novel (arrrgh!) has been gutted and rewritten
three times. Each time it resembles that period of my history (New Orleans
in 1986-1988) less and less - and the most unbiased readers I can find tell
me that it gets better with each rewrite. Eventually, when it bears no resemblance
to me at all, I suppose I may actually finish it and have done with it. (I
feel that publishing fiction is a rigged casino, so I'm not really planning
on getting anything out of its completion other than moral satisfaction.)
I don't say that most peoples' lives are "boring," but they are only of
interest, except in rare cases, to the person who is living them. You don't
care what I did last week, or about this fabulous product that I'm breaking
my neck trying to get out by 2 December, or that I had surgery in October
which was supposed to have been outpatient and ended up with me in the hospital
for six days.
Nor, conversely, do I care much about your travails at work. I have been
a waiter on several occasions and a fry cook and a mechanic and a lonely gas
station attendant and I recognize how badly these things suck; I feel sympathetic
and I am not attempting to trivialize your life one bit more. But our lives
are already mostly trivial; I think we agree on that, yes?
What we need is a little *less* information about human existence, not more.
The web is full of pages of faceless people living their lives (yours are
an exception, Gabriel), and I'm sorry, but I just don't give a damn what their
cat's name is or what they're studying in school. My web pages may have their
faults, but by god, there isn't a whit of personal information anywhere on
them - they're not even registered on TIAC's index under my name.
I am no better and no worse than anyone else, but at the very least I can
avoid contributing to the problem.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Murder
Date: 20 November 1996
Subject: The death of A=440
A turbulent week is in the making. Monday night at 9:45 P.S.T. it started
snowing. And snowing. And snowing. Classes were cancelled on Tuesday morning,
which didn't hurt my feelings because Tuesday is my busiest day of classes,
teaching, etc. Didn't even get a flute lesson. Cleaned my room for the second
time since I've been here; I just never get around to it since I practically
live with Erin. I even watched TV for the first time in three months, but
the cable went out and I took a nap. Erin, battling tendonitis, scheduled
an appointment with a performingartsphysicaltherapist in Seattle and had to
brave whiteout on the passes. Orchestra is hell. Today was the worst rehearsal
that I recall in over three years at this institution. Literally four different
tuning A's were strained out by the first oboist at the beginning of rehearsal:
A=439, A=437, A=445, and A=442. Needless to say, unisons didn't exist. I was
sick to my stomach afterwards because I was so pissed. So I fixed a cup of
cocoa and got a blowjob and felt much better. Now I'm at work getting interrupted
every five minutes while I write this because someone wants to check something
out on this computer. Good thing I finally figured out how to make a listserv.
Tbutton brought up some interesting points about biography and (vs.) fiction,
with which I disagree. I have always preferred nonfiction, particularly biographies,
over fiction. The real world is much more interesting than any fantasy world
anyone could dream up. The human imagination, wonderful as it is, is nonetheless
limited in scope to a sufficient degree that almost no fiction writers can
satisfy me. I have an innate curiosity to learn about what is and was, not
what will never be. I used to read some Asimov, Stephen King, and shittypopularfantasy-sci-fi
stuff, but now I avidly ingest biographies on my favorite musicians as well
as books on philosophy. Language as a medium generally leaves me dissatisfied,
unless it is in a musical context. Maybe it is just because I'm a shitty
writer. I do not speak French, which makes me a bit of an outsider on this
list at times, but I do enjoy the real-world descriptions people tend to
write, even if it is about food (BTW, Nichelle, I think that book you referred
concerning the tour journal with only a description of the cuisine was by
(or about) John Cage. I think I might have discussed it with you many years
ago, or else we looked at it together in the library). The real world presents
enough challenges for me and is sufficiently interesting that I do not need
to turn to fantasy. Unless you consider music mere fantasy, in which case
you almost dismiss me as pure fantasy, since music is such an integral part
of my day-to-day existence. Although I do not have much experience with MOOs
or MUDs or the Palace, etc, I do sympathize with Gabe's frustrations at the
lack of intelligent conversation due to the weaknesses of the medium. It
would be nearly equivalent to attempting to play duets with someone online
via the weak audio systems we are stuck with. No intelligent music-making
could possibly take place. I also admit to instances of succumbing to the
comforts of conformity, especially online. It is very difficult to find people
with my same interests, and even when I do, an inexpressible something generally
interferes with my ability to even begin the conversation. Also, lag time
is even more uncomfortable online than it is IRL. I always feel as though
I have to be keeping up my end of the conversation, unless it's with a larger
group where often I am comfortable just soaking everything in. Since I am
a rather slow typer, I have more time to think and edit myself while I type
than I generally do when I speak. So in that sense, online chat is really
an artificial medium of communication, and always will be. By artificial I
mean as opposed to the more natural (read: what we're used to) action of speaking
IRL, whether it be face-to-face or over the telephone. Just my $.02. We're
ten minutes from closing. I'm going home to get laid.
Murder
From: Nichelle
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: one coffee, two scones
You seem to have a thing for double reed players. Are four blowjobs by an
oboist as inconsistent as four A's? Yes, the book was either by or about Cage,
and I think the tour was one with Merce Cunningham. Gaby can bitch and moan
about the two of them. So maybe he did gather a few too many mushrooms. I've
got plenty to say about Cage, but I won't say it here because 1) the klarinet
listserv is making dumbass 4'33" jokes again, and they piss me off, and 2)
I mentioned Cage once on this list and The Almighty informed me that Cage
and Rauschenberg are ham&eggers. Nevermind. We can discuss it over coffee,
or hot cocoa if you prefer (the Mexican hot chocolate at Delizioso's is really
good, and if you haven't tried it, you should) when he's 2000 miles away,
having a Ricard at Lou's. And I was going to suggest playing duets online,
but there goes that idea.
I don't know what to say about your letter, tbutton. That other people's
lives are interesting only to them is probably not true. My life doesn't particularly
interest me. That we need a little *less* information about human existence
I would also argue with. On the other hand, my life is so interesting that
nobody would believe it if I published it. A girl who has been raped four
times and flies across the continental United States at 6:48 AM on four hours
notice to go live with her internet boyfriend... Still, nothing is really
interesting. Am I the only one who has read in the newspaper (yes, I do it
from time to time, Gaby) or see on the television (I used to in my younger
days) that nine people were killed in an auto collision, and I think 'nine
people isn't so many'. Shit, there are nine of us on this listserv (unless
you want to count Gaby three times).
I don't really know about the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Apparently
there was a debate about this issue, about my texts on the web, between sagreiss
and mneddam, but I have no idea what was said except something about autobiography
is a kind of fiction, and that doesn't strike me as being a particularly hot
topic. Of course it is. Still, what can you understand and what can you write
about if not your experience of the world? Still, I was fascinated by this
list from the moment I got on it, and the thing which struck me most about
Babel is that sagreiss was starving and cold the entire time. I think it
would be interesting to know what you had for breakfast. I think it would
be interesting to know how many packs of cigarettes negatron smokes every
week, and what kind. What do you find more interesting about fiction than
about nonfiction (assuming there's a difference, which Murder and I would
know if we spoke French)? I was frustrated by David Copperfield, but even
Dickens tells us what his characters eat. What's the point of trying to escape
from the human experience? Shit, even on the goddamn fucking stupidass Lambda
MOO, people will say 'I'm going to the kitchen to get some pretzels and a
coke.'
Why do you assume that I'm not interested in what you did last week? Or
about your surgery and hospital stay? And by the way, how was the hospital
food? And what is the useful information on a subject which I'm supposed
to find in a biography. Gabe and I both liked the introduction to one of
the volumes of my collections of Shakespeare plays. The author describes
Shakespeare's quill pen getting dull and having to sharpen it, and trying
not to get nasty inkblots all over the page, and having black ink all over
his knuckles...
If we aren't supposed to talk about what we experience, what are we supposed
to talk about? What other people experience? We don't/can't know that. So
then we make up a character and talk about his/her experiences? Where do those
made up details come from if not from our own lives? Your novel no longer
resembles New Orleans 1986-1988 because you've done other things since and
revised it. It seems that the only thing we agree about is that pictures of
people's cats and what they're studying in school don't make for a very interesting
web page.
I'm going to take a shower. Murder, why don't we meet on RL one of these
days? Just name a time.
Nichelle
From: SAGReiss
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: Ten eyes, cocoa and a blowjob
Sunny quoted this poem by Charles Bukowski to me yesterday on Lambda: "[I
have no idea where the line breaks are.] I live with a lady and four cats.
Some days I have a problem with one of the cats. Some days I have a problem
with two of them. Some days three, or four. Some days I have a problem with
all four cats and the lady, ten eyes looking at me as if I were a dog." I
don't take the distinction between fiction and non-fiction very seriously.
On this at least, Martine and I agreed, though her letter may have been before
I added her address to the list and it may have been in French. When I am
trying to describe events, it doesn't really matter whether I am making them
up, or they are real. The problem is what portion of reality to describe and
how. If I want to describe someone, I have choices to make about how to bring
the character to life on the page. Whether and to what extent I make up the
details is irrelevant. The fundamental question is how to describe sights
and sounds and tastes and blowjobs in words. Proust's model was Saint-Simon,
who wrote memoires, non-fiction. What is exciting about Saint-Simon is not
the details of the French court at the end of the seventeenth century. It's
his awkward, long-winded, dolphin-torn, gong-tormented syntax and the stunning
way he mixes up physical and moral traits so that often one is not sure what
exactly he is getting at. No one reads Proust for the story. One French critic
of the female persuasion summed up the three-thousand-page monsterpiece in
three words: "Marcel devient ecrivain." A man wakes up, takes a shit, walks
around Dublin, goes to a brothel with a younger man and is cuckolded by his
wife. This is the silly-boring-sordid tale of Ulysses. Sophisticated readers
don't read for content. Only in America does anyone even believe in content.
The literary habits I was exposed to in the graduate program at SU were harshly
judged twenty-five years out of date in 1950 by Alain Robbe-Grillet. One of
the Greeks reduced every story to one of seven three thousand years ago and
declared that every tale had already been told. When I first read the Illiad
and the Odyssee, I already knew those stories by heart. I could have written
them myself. Why do we constantly write and rewrite the same tired myths?
We are seeking new means of expression, a new (Got another of those "R u
m/f?" calls on NetMeeting. I guess I chose the wrong answer. How could so
many people be confused about the gender of the name Gabriel?) style. You
see, there is a choice. I could have typed "style." and then written the
new sentence. I wanted to give the impression, to imitate, real time, so
I did it that way. Indeed the main reason for the new sentence was to interrupt
the old one. No important information is given, but a stylistic point has
been made. The physical text, parenthetic interruption, illustrates the theme
of the text, stylistic choices and the general theme of the new media we
are working in. You don't know, Murder, that those As were, respectively,
439, 437, 445, 442. You have chosen jargon and overstated precision to make
the text more lively than simply saying the first was a little flat, the second
very flat etc. It's a good ploy, whether or not you were conscious of what
you were doing. Even if you claim to hear with absolute precision, you still
didn't need to write it that way. The research in my aborted doctoral dissertation
which has become the last fifty pages of BABEL does not seek to ascertain
whether Henry Miller did or did not read Bouvard et Pecuchet in 1910 or sometime
after or never. The point is how the mecanism of his memory works and how
he illustrates it in writing first in 1950 and then in 1976. This text, taken
from Capricorn and not quoted from memory, has seemed to me to be the most
beautiful of the twentieth century. I first read it twenty years ago and
it has lost none of its power to move me. It has haunted me ever since:
With the refinements that come with maturity the smells faded out, to be
replaced by only one other distinctly memorable, distinctly pleasurable smell--the
odor of the cunt. More particularly the odor that lingers on the fingers after
playing with a woman, for, if it has not been noticed before, this smell
is even more enjoyable, perhaps because it already carries with it the perfume
of the past tense, than the odor of the cunt itself. But this odor, which
belongs to maturity, is but a faint odor compared with the odors attaching
to childhood. It is an odor which evaporates, almost as quickly in the mind's
imagination, as in reality. One can remember many things about the woman
one has loved but it is hard to remember the smell of her cunt--with anything
like certitude.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: whaddaya think?
gregD asks, "do you have a family?"
You say, "no I was born in a cabbage patch and raised by squirrels"
gregD says, "funny"
You say, "well, it was a good question"
gregD asks, "how old are you really?"
You say, "you never asked to begin with."
You say, "I'm 23"
You ask, "and you are what?"
gregD says, "you call that old"
You say, "Maybe I'm just ultra-mature"
gregD says, "i'm just 18, freshman"
gregD asks, "how do you get ultra-matture?"
You say, "Drink a lot and learn to swear in multiple languages."
gregD asks, "how many and what kind?"
gregD asks, "are you still there?"
You say, "Well, the best thing to drink is moonshine. Make it yourself in
an old rain barrel. If you can't do that, the hard stuff is best... usually
Turkish Beer"
You say, "as for the swearing, you need to learn to say things like 'Oegh
Glentch' and 'Blenchny Vandgrenny'"
gregD asks, "what does that mean?"
You say, "those mean 'kissing penis' and 'fucking your sister'"
gregD says, "i got to remember those for later"
You say, "Just be careful. They're really offensive in Russian."
gregD asks, "tell me if this is to personal, but are you seeing anyone?"
You say, "Yes, I live with my boyfriend."
gregD says, "i mean you are 23 and all"
You say, "Absolutely."
gregD says, "it sounds like he is a very lucky man"
You say, "thanks..."
You say, "I'll let him know you said that."
gregD says, "i hate to do this but i have to go, i got an early class tomarrow"
You say, "well, take it easy"
Nichelle
From: SAGReiss
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: La querelle du Cid
P.S. When defending himself before the French Academy on some very serious
charges of immorality, Pierre Corneille (Peter Crow for those of you in the
television audience) made this outrageous claim: "Veracity is more important
than verisimilitude. It is true, but not believable, that Oedipus killed his
father and fucked his mother." He and I and you all know that this is not
true, but easy to believe. Dr Johnson said that the best three plots in all
of literature were Oedipus Rex (or Tyranus, as opposed to Basileus), Valpone
and Tom Jones. Ben Jonson is a mean and vicious writer and I can't remember
the plot of Valpone, but Oedipus and TJones (as it says in his e-mail address)
have the same plot.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: GregD II, the sequel
RL MOO (The Real Life MOO)
"In the twenty-first century e-novels will be written online."
For more information, please see the RL MOO web site.
Valid commands are: WELcome, who, COnnect, quit, UPtime, version, or REQuest.
You must be twenty-one or older to connect. Please use your real name.
Type: co name password
Or: co guest
********* Please read "help disclaimer" after logging on. *********
*** Connected ***
Limbo
Woe unto you, unbaptized child. You are tottering on the brink of Sodom
and Gomorrah. Silence prevails within these dark confines; only paging and
remote emoting are allowed in this room.
For spiritual guidance (RL-MOO help), type 'help'.
To get away from the heat (Enter RL-MOO), go to Purgatorio. Type 'Pur'.
Last connected Tue Nov 19 15:39:17 1996 AKST from sa26.dreamscape.com
Purgatorio
"Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle."
"Pure and ready to rise to the stars."
Exits: Up (to Paradiso), Limbo (to Limbo), and Down (to Inferno).
To private rooms: North (free), South (free), East (free), and West (free).
angry johnny (dozing) is here.
<Connected: GregD [Guest] (#175) at Tue Nov 19 18:55:51 1996 AKST.>
GregD has arrived.
GregD says, "hi Nichelle"
GregD asks, "remember me?"
You say, "Hi Greg... yeah, I remember you"
GregD asks, "how are you?"
You ask, "pretty good, you?"
GregD says, "i'm doing fine"
GregD asks, "what you been up to?"
You say, "what's up tonight? I slept all day and ate dinner"
GregD asks, "you feeling any better than last time?"
You say, "I wasn't feeling bad last time"
GregD says, "O, sorry."
You ask, "you're sorry because I wasn't feeling bad?"
GregD says, "i'm just chillin' here"
You say, "I can try to cough a little or something, if it would make you
more comfortable."
GregD says, "no, b/c i forgot"
GregD says, "you don't need to cough."
You ask, "so what else is up, greg?"
GregD says, "nothing much just tring to reg. for classes next spring."
GregD says, "its a real pain in the ass."
You say, "I know. I need to do that too."
GregD says, "well you should get started before everybody else gets what
you want."
You say, "I have to wait until the 4th to do it."
GregD says, "wow really, i have to get it done before the 3rd."
GregD asks, "what were you going to major in?"
You say, "I've finished five years of music school"
GregD asks, "so what instrament do you play?"
You ask, "clarinet. You?"
GregD says, "i play alittle piano and a little guitar, but nothin serious."
You say, "piano and guitar are serious"
GregD says, "yea but i only know a few little things on each"
You say, "Oh, I see. You mean you're no good at them.."
GregD says, "well i wouldn't say that, i just need more practice."
You say, "well, that's the case with most people who are not good at their
instruments"
GregD says, "i know how to play the James Bond theme on the guitar."
You say, "really? you're a regular 007..."
GregD says, "and i know these are a few of my favorite things on the piano"
You ask, "what are a few of your favorite things, greg?"
GregD says, "you know SOUND OF MUSIC"
GregD asks, "have you ever seen the movie?"
You say, "every year when it's on tv"
GregD asks, "then you know what i'm talking about?"
You say, "oh, absolutely. It's a very beautiful song."
GregD exclaims, "this computer is slow!"
GregD [Guest] has disconnected.
Virgil leads GregD to another world.
<Disconnected: GregD [Guest] (#175) at Tue Nov 19 19:13:27 1996 AKST.>
<Connected: GregD [Guest] (#175) at Tue Nov 19 19:15:00 1996 AKST.>
GregD has arrived.
GregD says, "hey, sorry about that it froze up on me then cut me off."
You ask, "Hey, no problem. Remind me, do you have a character on Lambda?"
GregD says, "i'm not sure what that means"
You ask, "do you go to other moos?"
GregD asks, "kie?"
You ask, "kie?"
GregD asks, "like?"
You say, "Like Lambda"
You say, "other places like this one.... where you talk to people...."
GregD asks, "you mean lambda.parc.xerox.com 8888?"
You say, "right... that lambda"
GregD says, "yea"
You ask, "you have a character on that moo?"
GregD says, "no "
You say, "I see...."
GregD says, "i go as a guest"
GregD asks, "if thats what you mean?"
You say, "yes, that's what I mean"
GregD says, "ok then, no i don't"
GregD says, "sorry about that, i probably confused you"
You say, "No, no... I've got it all figured out now."
GregD says, "ok"
GregD asks, "why did you want to know?"
You say, "but I'm going to have to go take a little nap for a while. i'm
pretty tired."
GregD says, "thats cool, then i will see you later."
You say, "ok, take it easy. Good night."
GregD says, "by :)"
Nichelle
From: Joy
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: Re: whaddaya think?
i claim full responsibility for the visit by GregD. i don't know him. hegoes
to my school and likes sports. do you really need to know any more?
-killjoy
From: Columbine
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: Re: The death of A=440
Taking this as three assertions:
>The real world is much more
>interesting than any fantasy world anyone could dream up.
>The human
>imagination, wonderful as it is, is nonetheless limited in scope ...
>I have
>an innate curiosity to learn about what is and was, not what will never
>be.
I agree strongly with the first, disagree strongly with the second, and
don't understand why you can't have it both ways on the third. Can't I want
to learn about both?
I'm not arguing against nonfiction after all. I merely wish to insist that
fiction has a definite purpose to serve as well.
By the by, am I also in the minority here in thinking that oral sex is a
vastly overrated commodity? Never mind, forget I said that, you'll probably
think that undermines the soundness of my other arguments :-)
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Columbine
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: Re: Ten eyes, cocoa and a blowjob
I happen to have headed deep into the waters of folklore and comparative
mythology during one of my many abortive stabs at what is laughingly called
higher education, and had not a few arguments about this very subject. I usually
lose them :-)
>A man wakes up, takes a shit, walks around Dublin, goes
>to a brothel with a younger man and is cuckolded by his wife. This is
the
>silly-boring-sordid tale of Ulysses.
I'm a Joyce fan. Surprise. Given opinions like the ones I've expressed here,
many people are astonished to hear that. I fit Joyce into my often-rigid universe
by fudging the categories. Joyce is not literature, because you literally
cannot read him for plot. You'll lose your mind. Joyce is an extended poem,
a lengthy soliloquy that you repeat aloud in your mind because you just love
the way the gibberish sounds. Mark Leyner is the same way. Thomas Pynchon
is too, but I don't like his music, so I don't read him. It's like preferring
jazz over Bach or vice versa. (I like Bach, particularly back to back with
Professor Longhair.)
Literature MUST have plot. Doesn't matter whether you've heard it a million
times before and whether you even care for the story. The story carries you,
like a river, through the words. Without the story you are stranded. Some
stories are known, reliable modes of transit and we tend to use them over
and over. Having studied A-S myth types, I'd put it at more than seven :-)
but I agree with you, we keep telling the same old campfire stories.
But would you read Faulkner if the story weren't there to carry you through
the eccentric language? If you answer yes, you and the ghosts of the Dadaists
should get along famously. I respect the Dadaists even though they are the
distant ancestors of the despised Deconstructionists, curse their names. At
least the Dadaists were making a big, conscious, joke out of the dissection
process.
>Sophisticated readers don't read for
>content. Only in America does anyone even believe in content. The literary
>habits I was exposed to in the graduate program at SU were harshly judged
>twenty-five years out of date in 1950 by Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Feh. Bullshit. Are you calling me an unsophisticated reader? Well, thanks
a bunch.
I know they read spy novels in Paris, not to mention that genre known as
the "bodice-ripper." Style is good; content is good too; to focus on one over
the other at any time is deadly.
Robbe-Grillet was a shortsighted bastard who literally could not realize
that he was a willing participant in the over-glorification of syntax at the
expense of vivisection of literature. He held a magnifying glass up to literature
and didn't realize that the focal point was burning holes in the page.
This is rambling all over the place and is probably more irate than it should
be. I will get flamed now, I imagine. Sorry.
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: Columbine
Date: 21 November 1996
Subject: Re: one coffee, two scones (long)
My TCP connection has a timeout on it. If I don't transmit or receive anything
for about fifteen minutes, it hangs up. Tonight this event will have happened
several times in the course of my answering email. It's a wonderful thing
to actually get something thought provoking in your mailbox. Never mind that
the rest of you are suddenly discovering what an argumentative b**ch this
complete stranger is.
I thought, Nichelle, that between McM and Gabriel I had just about exhausted
everything I had to say on this subject, but along came your email. That's
why people tell the same stories over and over, Gabriel. Two people can relay
the exact same story and yet say entirely different things. (And if you leave
out the story entirely, well, that's a different message and not an invalid
one.)
A random comment about John Cage. All I have to judge him by are his writings
but he had the same saving grace that the Dadaists did - a profound sense
of humor. I guess what I'm saying is, it's okay to dissect things if you make
a big joke out of it. I realize that's wholly subjective; since when have
I said anything that wasn't?
John Cage "had nothing to say, and he was saying it." You say you don't
know what to say about my letter, Nichelle, then you say it for two screenfuls
:-). I can respect that.
Your life is the sort of thing that I write about. You're right, it's too
real to be believable. Not that I doubt you, because you have no reason to
lie about it (not even to a stranger). I am a firm believer that truth is
stranger than fiction. Which is why I seek out those sorts of events and use
them mercilessly in my fiction. All of my characters and events were originally
spawned from reality - there's a real seed back in there somewhere. Poetry,
on the rare occasions I write it, is a little more cutting because there's
no room in there for the embellishments, almost no room for the eventes themselves.
Just a bare whisper of event, and the rest is style. I guess if I feel like
that, it's not surprising that I write decent poetry as seldom as I do.
I am all in favor of blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction,
except in newspapers which I really feel should be kept around as a control
group, a fixed point of reference. (It's a hopeless dream, of course, they're
all slanted in one direction or another, but you can learn to compensate
for a newspaper's slant eventually.) I guess the problem I have is that Gabriel
thinks that as the line blurs, all fiction will become nonfiction, and I think
that's exactly backward - all nonfiction will eventually become fiction, and
the web is helping, and I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily.
On the other hand, if we agree that the line is becoming progressively more
blurred, do the labels we put underneath really matter?
>I think it would be interesting to know what you had
>for breakfast.
[...]
>What do you find more
>interesting about fiction than about nonfiction (assuming there's a
>difference, which Murder and I would know if we spoke French)?
I don't speak French either.
In order to answer that, I have to say that I find it extremely surprising
that you would be interested in what I had for breakfast, since I do not find
it in the least bit interesting and I was *there*. That answers the question
as well. To me it is almost self-evident that fiction is more interesting
than nonfiction IF it's the kind of nonfiction we've been talking about, that
which relates to people and their lives.
(There are other sorts of nonfiction, after all. I remember reading a history
of the hedgerow battles at Normandy that had me more riveted than a spy novel.
I knew nothing about the events at all; I was literally waiting, as in a suspense
movie, to see how it came out. But, you say, those were ultimately just people's
lives, were they not? Well, yes. But most of us do not enter the bocage every
morning wondering if there will be a Panzerfaust waiting in the next enclosure.
I'm not saying that people's lives lack suspense, but it's a much more long-term
kind of suspense - will Gabriel get a better job? Will he move to Seattle?
Will the orchestra ever manage to standardize on a 440 A? I can't get absorbed
in a book where the character development takes place over, well, a lifetime.
(All those video games must have done something to my attention span. For
example, I just opened another parenthesis without realizing that I had never
closed the one at the top of the paragraph. Bah. Well, here's an extra.))
Actually, now that I've written that, I retract part of it. Because I *am*
becoming interested in whether or not Gabriel gets a better job, whether Joy
has purchased a copy of FACTORY SHOWROOM yet, etc etc. But not in what you
had for breakfast. So there's a line drawn in the sand somewhere and I just
have to figure out where I drew it, unbeknownst to myself.
>What's the point of trying to escape from the human
>experience? Shit, even on the goddamn fucking stupidass Lambda MOO,
people
>will say 'I'm going to the kitchen to get some pretzels and a coke.'
There's no point in trying to escape it PERMANENTLY and such behavior should
be strongly discouraged. Brief jaunts, however, are therapeutic and possibly
even necessary. At least in my case they are. Playing the latest bang bang
shoot shoot game or adventure puzzle game is necessary for me to lose the
spectre of those twelve hour days. Otherwise I can't sleep because I find
myself debugging code in my head.
>Why do you assume that I'm not interested in what you did last week?
Or
>about your surgery and hospital stay? And by the way, how was the hospital
>food? And what is the useful information on a subject which I'm supposed
to
>find in a biography. Gabe and I both liked the introduction to one of
the
>volumes of my collections of Shakespeare plays. The author describes
>Shakespeare's quill pen getting dull and having to sharpen it, and trying
>not to get nasty inkblots all over the page, and having black ink all
over
>his knuckles...
Interestingly enough, one of the most fascinating books I ever read was
SHAKESPEARE OF LONDON - a straight and well-done biography - by Marcette
Shute, as I recall. (I'm too lazy to walk into the other room and find it.)
That was the book that taught me that biography COULD occasionally be interesting;
it was a harsh lesson and I have not forgotten. The biography of Huey Long
- the Longs are another serious research hobby of mine, in many ways they
*are* folklore - by T. Harry Williams deserves to be called a masterpiece.
But these are interesting people; they led interesting lives. Or shall we
say, far more interesting than average. Also, the mundane details of Shakespeare's
life are interesting because they're not the same details that we have in
our mundane lives today. Would it be interesting if the paragraph had described
Shakespeare always running out of ink in his ball-point pen, and how the bottoms
of the pens would leak ink and stain his shirt pockets after he'd carried
them around for a long time?
In short, "I had my usual large cup of coffee for breakfast, most of which
I drank on the subway standing up on the way to work" is not interesting.
"I went outside before the sun had fully risen, caught a large hare, suspended
it from the lowest branch of the willow, slit its jugular, and drained its
blood into a steel cup whose contents I consumed in a single draught" is.
Your mileage may vary.
Good heavens, this is a long message. I'm sorry. After I finish it, I'll
shut up for a while, I promise.
>If we aren't supposed to talk about what we experience, what are we
supposed
>to talk about? What other people experience? We don't/can't know that.
So
>then we make up a character and talk about his/her experiences?
Why, yes. Then it's fiction. :-) No, seriously, you make a good point. Here's
where style comes in, I suppose. If we're all doing the same boring things
over and over, then *how* you tell it becomes the leading principle. If I
were describing the coffee episode in my book I'd have the character's mind
wandering, have some internal monologue, because the events themselves are
dull. Or perhaps describe the events in as weird a way as possible.
If, on the other hand, you're describing something really exotic, like the
hare, you can use very boring language because the events will carry themselves.
I would no more want to read a book entirely composed of the first type
of event - words over actions - than I would want to read one entirely of
the second type - actions over words. The first would be tedious; the second
would become jarring and difficult to take after a very short time
---
Until I die, there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death.
One need not fear about the future of music.
-- John Cage (1912-1992)
From: Columbine
Date: 22 November 1996
Subject: The Ritual of the Mundane
The alarm always goes off at seven o'clock because the other alarm clock,
on the far side of the bed, will always go off then, even when Suffolk takes
a vacation day. Being a university, they take off for every holiday I'd ever
heard of, and a few holidays peculiar to the Boston area that always catch
me off guard. My company only takes five holidays a year.
I don't get up at seven myself. I set the alarm by hand for thirty minutes
later. Oddly enough I have never used the "snooze" button on any of the alarm
clocks I've owned. By seven-thirty, I'm a little less groggy and the shower
is available.
I get finished with the toilet and shower as quickly as I can, brush my
teeth, pull my hair back and put the little elastic tie around it. I don't
comb it anymore in the mornings because I have pernicious dandruff, even
when I wash it daily, which I'm very self-conscious about. Instead I just
get the tangles out with my fingers, which usually works better than the
hairbrush anyway.
I go into the bedroom and pull on the hacker uniform to go with the zero-maintenance
hacker hair. Repeat it with me now, brethren and sistren: jeans-and-a-t-shirt.
Hiking boots in winter, sneakers in summer. I love clothing but my dance club
outfits would be a little out of place at the office.
If I do this right, I can be out the door by a little before eight. The
idea is to get to work before eight thirty, and to time it so that I wake
up late enough in the process that I don't realize what a stupid idea it
is. I don't usually accomplish it but I've found I get more work done before
everybody else gets there anyway. Only my boss is ever there at eight-thirty;
she also leaves later than I do and doesn't appear to take any sort of stimulants.
But I digress.
On the way to the subway I buy a medium coffee. Small is never enough; large
will give me stomach angst by the time I get around to having lunch. If I'm
really famished I pick up a pastry of some kind. I used to get sick if I tried
to eat anything within a few hours of waking up; the habit is still with
me.
The subway is always crowded and I am mildly claustrophobic, so I try to
stand by the door on the wrong side, where there's usually some space.
I am the sole person who understands the product which I have largely written
and continue to add new goodies to. I'm proud of the product and I hope it
sells. I do wish, however, that they wouldn't continue to set such impossible
deadlines. I wonder sometimes, in my more cynical moments, if this isn't the
penalty of demonstrating competence, and that maybe I'd have it easier if
I were a total fuckup. Then again, the company's laid off a lot of people
lately, so maybe not a good idea.
I eat lunch when my stomach tells me to. We're next to a large mall and
I'm always in a hurry, so it's usually junk food, which I feel guilty about
afterwards.
If I manage to leave before 6 p.m. I probably walk part of the way home,
maybe all of it, which adds about an hour but makes me feel like I'm actually
getting some exercise. I'm a very fast walker and I have been known to walk
ten miles or so for recreation on occasion. I'm also a really bad judge of
distance, so I can't say how long the walk home is. It's about fifteen minutes
on the subway, whose route I follow overhead as I walk.
These days, though, I get out too late to walk through that neighborhood.
So I ride the subway home and eat whatever happens to be around. Then I check
my email and play computer games or draw more pictures or design Marathon
maps. I've stopped coding for fun at home. I just can't do it. I can't bring
myself to finish my book either even though it has less than a hundred pages
to go. Oh well.
I get to bed around one a.m. most nights even though I always resolve to
do it earlier. It's 12:23 now by the clock on the computer, which means that
if I want to have a peanut butter sandwich and a hot bath before bed, I had
better hustle.
---
I look around me and I recoil from such disorder. We live amidst absurdity,
so close to it that it escapes our notice ... Since we cannot hope for order
let us withdraw with style from the chaos.
-- Tom Stoppard
from LORD MALQUIST AND MR. MOON
Kannst du nicht allen gefallen durch deine That und dein Kunstwerk - mach
es wenigen recht. Vielen gefallen ist schlimm. -Schiller
From: SAGReiss
Date: 22 November 1996
Subject: Will that be medium or large this morning, Ms Columbine?
I was going to make a show of my vast, polyglot culture and trot out the
passages where Miller talks about Bouvard et Pecuchet, but my cherished English
and French copies (which are different in very important ways, or at least
so it seems to someone who desperately wrote fifty pages of a doctoral dissertation
on cocktail napkins) of The Books in My Life are in France, probably lost
forever. Not that any of you give a fuck. The other reference, for those of
you who might, is J'suis pas plus con qu'un autre, which Miller wrote in
bad French at the age of seventy-six. My point is not whether he did or did
not read Bouvard et Pecuchet. It doesn't matter and he probably couldn't tell
you if he were still alive. The more we tell the tale the less the tale matters
and the more the telling. And yes, I don't really care whether we call it
fiction or non-fiction. Anais Nin may have made up her huge Diary. Gertrude
Stein may, or may not, have told the truth in The Autobiography of Alice
B. Toklas, which in fact says very little about poor Alice. My point is that
a man called Henry Miller at the age of seventy-six struggled through his
bad French to rewrite the story of something quite mundane that happened in
about 1910. A customer gave either Miller or his father a gift of a book (two
really) which Miller may or may not have read. Yet in telling this insignificant
story, Miller remembers or makes up more telling details in 1976 than the
first time (How many times did he tell the tale at supper?) in 1950. And somehow,
this story becomes a vast metaphore for Miller's ambivalent relationship with
books and with his father, who never read, except for the newspaper and one
book by John Ruskin. Then, all of a sudden, something (a line, a sentence,
a paragraph, a page) is missing from both editions I've got of J'suis pas
plus con qu'un autre. The reader is plunged into the middle of a sentence/paragraph
which is a vicious diatribe on Ruskin. Miller is seldom so mean. My point
is that make it up or not you still have to get it on the page. This is what's
hard. This is what matters. Given that the problem is how to represent sights/sounds/smells
in written language, I see no reason to waste my time making up sights/sounds/smells.
The mind somehow latches on to events, significant or not, and makes them
significant by telling and retelling them. I have publicly stated that Capricorn
is better than Cancer because the events are further away in Miller's memory
and so he is freed up of the entire problem of what really happened. I don't
like Joyce and neither did Miller. Miller calls him dead. I like Faulkner
despite the silly, white trash stories. I don't understand the difference
you draw, Columbine, between literature and poetry. All arguments (including
Robbe-Grillet's [I don't like the son of a bitch either, but that's not the
point.]) I have read on the question use Faulner and Joyce to prove the same
point, not as counter examples. My argument would be different. What is so
great about The Sound and the Fury is that no erudition, no intellectual
mind games are necessary to understand why the tale is told as it is. Benjy
can't write normally. This, to me, is Faulkner's greatness and his superiority
to Joyce. I hope I don't sound negative. I like your web page and keep telling
myself to print up the poems so I can read them, but I haven't gotten around
to it. No matter how good or bad they are, of course, at least you're trying
to do something. This is what's wrong with the internet, this vast