We Look at Zero Writing degree zero, rhetoric degree zero, pure one-on-one denotation, stripped zeros, presence and acknowledgement - we must pursue this to the extent that information pervades ontology and origin - pursue it, in other words, until that theoretical bursitis reveals itself, inverts: at this point, something of the West will emerge. "_Absolute degree zero,_ then, would be a discourse reduced to its _essen- tial semes_ (by a metalinguistic process, since these semes are not dis- tinct lexical entities), that is, to the semes that we could not suppress without at the same time depriving our discourse of all signification." (A General Rhetoric, Group Mu, Dubois/Edeline/Klinkenberg/Minguet/Pire/ Trinon.) If the "there you are" functions as a _practical degree zero_ for Group Mu, then the Levinasian "there is" might further reduce to _absolute._ However, there are other, more practical, matters themselves, such as logical tautologies to examine in this regard. The West (he swept his hand across the tablature of the auditorium) began its journey of both Matter and spirit with the Axiomatics of euclid. A young girl looked out of the window. It was snowing; Centigrade had not yet been invented. With a toss of her hair __________________________________________________________________________ Hole (The concept _hole_ has been critical in my work, representing both ab- sence and an hysterical attempt at recuperation of the flesh in cyber- space. The following are grepped from the majority of the Internet Text, the hole performing/performative, a blockage or drain on the Text, a stopper or lid to CMC-lack (the Lacanian of CMC), always already that of a whole as _well._) within your hole, the world a dawn of rose-red creation. on. His lurking holes shall be siezed (sic) by the white dragon, which Listening to Hole thinking _I slashed mine_ legs spread wide apart get a bite to eat. There's no protocol make you listen hard to Hole You read me, unornamented at last, my holes and crevices, the first and w/hole again. (Being your hole, being whole.) tissue structures holding everything together, the big ball with holes. got to heal the inscription, seamless, the skin's seamless (fear of holes out of my holes. I am a landscape of tunnels and forests. There is bamboo other holes.'" (from my Textbook of Thinking) We write our bodies open our hands grappling our holes. filled with dirt, limbs grow from her holes, disappear into dark thick materiality of the hole itself. All texts become rim-texts; nodal sites, programmed and the holes in the text destroyed worlds with an automated all tangle in a Borromean knot; a single mistake unravels the hole/whole. other holes.'" (from my Textbook of Thinking) i have holes everywhere in my bodies, fingers everywhere, i can't keep my tion on the move, striations across the flesh, holes rimmed with luscious and made a hole there. continued increase in ozone holes will be future problems as well; the sea There where the mud seethed from the hole. Where the bloody fingers held forth from my hole, first the S, then the p followed by the r; shortly af- And to cut into this infinity, my legs spread to the utmost, my hole divi- ding into one, two, many holes, into a fractal dissonance of holes, my of the hole, which is sutured upon them; a certain hollowness pervades. supine and unrecognizable body of the Net, with its holes and probes and drills the hole. Superman cuts the skin. He bleeds like the Jews, men and women. He stuffs his holes. There are more holes. He can't stuff them I can't open the holes up, can't insert, can't stream down the folds of absolutely naked, down to cellular interiors; I am full of holes. Holes haue two small round holes in stede of eyen, and they haue a flatte mouth yle are lyttle men as dwarfes, and haue no mouth but a lyttle rounde hole & through that hole they eate their meat with a pipe, & they haue no ripped through, there's a hole where the neck was, the image is broken, the threshold or lip of an enormous hole where the real becomes pluralized teria or otherwise (re: Uncontrollable Bodies, Hole) (re: Crash, Internet When I talk I think: hole (re: Hole). When I talk I think: destroy, empty rain, touch the smell of hole, taste the sound of alallarum-baretarsurm- hearing holes tasting ears cooling thighs longing minds sticks of marrow located in the folds of which walls, which hole plugged me into my own my mouth tongues my mouth through your hole through your door grappling across their hole or moment when the locked door freezes located in the folds of which walls, which hole plugged me into my own my mouth tongues my mouth through your hole through your door grappling across their hole or moment when the locked door freezes You make a hole in my heart. My heart is flat like paper. You can write on the hole. You can write but you better not leave the hole because you'll hit the blood. When you hit the blood you heat the blood. The hole is blood where the words disappear. In the hole the words hold fast. They in the hole you reach deep inside of me. But there's nothing there but the hole and it's going to stay there. And I make sure it stays in the hole, we'd open our holes for th check it for virus: the virus is the smell of our holes: those of us you smell your holes everywhere against the lip of the screen, pull the She shows me what to see through her eyes I see the well an open hole Saint Thomas lowers his hand into the hole. Freud calls it something else. women come with thread. Saint Thomas cries: Women! Sew the holes! The women sew the holes of men. The men bless the women with their swords. The @describe lance as holed skin, rimmed with Tiffanyalan @describe skin as lance holed with Tiffanyalan @exits / holes @entrances / holes tunnels the hole bouge et tunnels le trou don't undeit makes me yours, you can brand me there, kim's hole your holes, keep it inside you forever you can insert things into me, i'll be your chair, your hole, your skin, your writing-pad, your toilet, sounds ..ure holes being always available ..to insert ..to pull ..and I wash myself of the hole thing. I clean myself out forwards and back- back you're facing me. I can't face the hole thing. I wring my hands over can't face the hole thing. You wring your hands over it. You can't hear a lance holed with Tiffanyalan or clitoral double cones, flattened, holed with clitoral, intensity of Tiffanyalan, you-know-language, sheen, tongue-rimmed, hole towards u, cum across u, to love someone is to love the holes of his body, his open privacies. to love someone is to caress the holes of her body, opening freely for you. to love someone is to caress the holes of his body, opening freely for you. to love someone is to love the holes of her body, her open privacies. to love someone is to caress the holes of his body, opening freely for you. to love someone is to love the holes of her body, her open privacies. hole. The hole led back into Tiffany. Tiffany towered above the trees. The hole to the north led to the dark forest but the hole to the west in the forest led to Tiffany; the hole in the floor led to eastern arm, but north from eastern arm led to the hole; the hole in the western arm led to the dark forest; the hole to the south in the dark forest led to the west- ator level led to the hole in the floor; the third elevator level led to against sweet holes open to the weather. over carmming it in our holes, backe the ones in our bin.odies .. clotheds over ure every hole .. i want her tonguein my h in my asshole, around my yes i am your hole through h yes but my blood is piu urple ...* yes i like youand fill my holes and fuck someone while your cock becomingI will look us, opening our holes striated hole, i am embedded, enthralled, i speak words on occasion, the hole, however, is an episteme broken by the screen even hole, hiatus simultaneously elsewhere-on-the-other-side and in-the- irresponsible questions; my mouth is my hole; my mouth opens wide for depth of the hole merges with the surface of the hole; the rim of the hole glistens in the midst of the surface; the rim of the hole is your holes wider and wider, lips chapped from penetration - you joked plateaus or folds of flesh in its wake. Meaning illuminated the hole, desert. Traditionally, I am a hole. Traditionally, you are the rim of the hole; you define the topology. The Master is hard to speak about naming, holes and nubs alike, everything in the root of_ substance,_ dimensional space with a hole or singularity I identify with that text Straight, I know cocks were meant for mouths and holes in women who For years I thought about my cunt, hole opening up just for the pleasure Two looks from you / and I am hole. hole was, where he would never go. I heard the hole was lined I want a suit designed with special apparatus, keeping all my holes inverted me, opened my holes. My mouth filled with blood. I was spoken- sible, exposing my hole; HONEY would open herself to the screen, an uh, the writing shoves itself out between my legs, one sex, uh, one hole war blackness hole._ The furrows or striations of the hole provide the _coldwar blackness hole absorbing tautology, absolutism, contradiction _the presence of the hole at the end of the text, the presence of slime or absence, the whole thing a rim-job... And the hole at the end of The video opened my hole, cunt and ass alike. was on a needle, Hole going uselessly on the stereo wheeling the earth bulb burned on a chain. record kept going around. Hole kept going symbolic - that of well-definition. If I am your hole, it is that limb entwined, every hole filled, every appendage surrounded. This cunt; we share the sprouting of holes and murmurs everywhere across emergence. I am in a constant state of waiting; my hole opens their content. The sexualization of the hole, enervation of the rim, As the wires enter and exit my holes, they are illuminated with the the edges of the holes, exteriors of the wires like static electrical always this Other. Death is always the occasion of the hole whose rim promulgates an annihilation in the midst of battle, the hole filled each and every hole, transforming the body into a self-liquidation TECHNOLOGICAL RENDERING-ABSENCE OF THE CUM-BODY BODY WITHOUT HOLES: I AM FULL OF HOLES sondheim@newschool.edu Beaver provides a final word, projecting from her hole into a freedom am a hole or conduit; I cum. I AM ALWAYS BESIDE MYSELF. The screen well!!! (YOUR WORDS FILL MY HOLES.) limb entwined, every hole filled, every appendage surrounded. This scaffolding. It is the rim of the hole. The Cypher is the lip of the hole which is a recipient and the lip their own implosion. From within the Hole, the contraction is The open hole is the gaping wound, refusing the suture of the sub- operation in which neither survive. When Saul knelt down a hole empties except philosophy's hole, the surgery of the subject. Body The man thinks, she is the hole of philosophy. He has invested time CADRE-L had members and holes; you shed your skin when you joined; You come to me; you know that every address is a hole. I live my life In the year 3000, the cauterization of my hole, dust, murmuring, inversion-pain. The symbolic is the rim of the hole, a geodesic of "I call myself a hole because I am open to you. I call myself a hole the space that I am. I am the space that divides me, which is the hole. "In mathematics it could be said: the hole is the continuum, raised to dampening of expectations, momentary lapse of consciousness. The hole guarantee looks forward. For my hole has no time, no space, a hole _en little hole, I've always offered, you've got nothing new, a sad little _Preparation of the Hole:_ left the campus. I was the hole of language, syntactical striations I was following WEB INVERSION HYPERTEXT; I was opening the hole of Salt Lake City, a gaping hole in her throat. Clara Hielo gave birth to Your words are the throat's geography. My hands are in my holes. I mY hOLE IS oPEN TO hIGH aSCII. monuments of text forlorn, holes carved into weakened flesh, What happens when a hole breaks open somewhere else in a broken hole that hole broken open my broken hole. somewhere else in a broken hole that hole broken open my broken hole. What happens when a hole breaks open disappearing translucence (cause my holes through my skin are space) because my body is a torus, if you fill my hole, mouse in the hole, fearful of the cat, relying on gravity to create a books never cover: _what the hand does_ down there where holes see the groin, disappearing in the holes and objects of gone desire. The body alterity); the hole, however, is an episteme broken by the screen replac- radio performance; there was a hole opening up next to me, my hole in that refuses to deflect as well!: The skin and hole that absorb; the tat- I don't want to be your hole. : I don't want to be the place you shove It's easy to shoot this argument full of holes, and even within the more realm's flesh.' You'd swallow my hole! solitude oi death in both I am hole again. mone time . . . making it hole again tissue structures holding everything together, the big ball with holes. got to heal the inscription, seamless, the skin's seamless (fear of holes __________________________________________________________________________ Morph fgrep 'hole' /usr/dict/words > ff My armhole had a sleeve with a buttonhole fastened with a silver pin protecting me against the cholera caused by cholesterol - the result was I had to hide out in a cubbyhole of an old house, reminding me of the foxhole in the last war - I was scared, talked myself into a hole as if I were holeable - placed, in one form or another; I know you watched through the keyhole in the side of the room ceiling of the room, but there was a loophole in the whole thing, sending me down a manhole back to the beginning of the world; you saw that through your peephole, called me creep, tried to pigeonhole me, but I put a pinhole in your image, you loved me well and we made it in a deep pothole created by glacial waters, almost like a sinkhole - I confessed my gender changed so quickly it was no longer whole but you said you wanted me anyway, with a wholehearted smile you usually reserved for people who were in the wholesale business of selling you and me, not a very wholesome thing to do __________________________________________________________________________ Ganzfeld ...saw Videodrome for the first time tonight, missed it years ago - there's a signal that can be sent out with the television image - makes you hallucinate - tumors are involved - and it reminded me that I did that about three years ago - reconfiguring some old broadcast equipment I had - created those loops - put me into a trance for the duration - stages of migraine showlights as well - flashbacks - had to stop, but it's possible - the screen began boiling, spilled into the room - had never seen any- thing like it before - I've got the technique, the tapes to prove it - signal going wild on the vectorscope, waveform monitor - wouldn't dupli- cate - couldn't duplicate - signal didn't take - it's the original or it's nothing at all - the only way to do it, only way to bring it all home - so what's the point - but that there was some direct physiological effect involved - it affects the ipseity of sight - burned its way through the flesh - nothing like that had happened before, just those minor flashes you get at around 7 Hz related to the epileptic, but this was something else - close cousin as well - anyway - so there's the _stuff_ of video, _stuff_ of the original tape itself, absolutely necessary as I said (reminds me of Brian Gysin, you too?) - eye-stuff, sight-stuff - cut your teeth on it - so what's equivalent _here_ - the addiction, say to CMC something else again, a question of reading, loneliness, neuropsychosis (let me get away with that) (let me get away with this) - is it that inner speech - forgetting the reading - is it _that_ inner speech - what happens when the light spills out, when the words spill out? what happens when you read no more - Ganzfeld all the way, Ganzfeld coming through - (get that audience in here) (prepare them for the worst) (hold their attention) (naked girls boys anything) (drugs whatever) - lights go down, curtains up - some sort of sound, pulsations - tell them what- ever you want - there's no bidding to do - not with the _stuff_ of light, the _stuff_ of sound - like a wave rave not like a Net, yet - screen slivers cuts like hell molecular ______________________________________________________________________ Perfection of Theory As physical/neurophysiological/astrophysical/cosmological theory decreases bandwidth and tolerance, it tends towards greater complexity, remoteness, and difficulty vis-a-vis human comprehension. It is not that diffcult to see a catastrophic movement in this trajectory, one in which theory ulti- mately escapes _understanding_ itself (no matter the definition of under- standing here).. Reading, for example, Dennett's Consciousness Explained, produces both a sense of accomplishment and defuge; the world greatly _irreducible._ It's been repeatedly pointed out that computers are the most complex objects ever produced; they're still several orders of magnitude beneath that of the brain. As the machines themselves grow more complex, they become equally irreducible; as they grow to imitate the input/output functions of the brain, their own functioning becomes increasingly remote. The point here is that the increasing _perfection of theory_ need _not_ equally increase our understand of ourselves or the world we live in (this applies to the Internet as well of course). So I ask, what _would_ charac- terize comprehension? Is it always to be secondary or tertiary - necessar- ily beyond the average human's comprehension - which then requires several degrees of translations heavily distorting the original? And if this is the case, what constitutes the "average human" and hir comprehension for that matter? _It's the end of the world as we know it_ - the possibility that the uni- verse is deeply incomprehensible, that as theory approaches _perfection,_ it recedes, becomes incomprehensible as well. _________________________________________________________________________ The Density of Death I have a small papyrus, framed, with a note stating it was bought in 1928 in Syracuse in Sicily. It is about 2" x 4" with a single image, perhaps a votary. The hieroglyphics are rough; the sign for "homage" (?) seems a bit legible and I can make out a few others, all using Budge's outdated dic- tionary. There are four figures; on the right is a Pharaoh, throwned, with a sun-disk; beneath him is a _sema-tawy,_ union of Upper and Lower Egypt. He is faced by Thoth holding a scroll or papyrus; behind Thoth is Horus, holding a _shut_ or feather, leading a man also holding a _shut._ This is a symbol of death, also of Maat, goddess of Truth and Order, and the man's _shut_ recognizes his life as such. Or so I read it in total ignorance. There are three tables with papyrus clumps between the four figures. Outside there are identical stars. From my limited knowledge of the Mid- dle East to southeast, I am busy constructing myself walking in a semi- arid environment somewhere outside of Sumer. The triteness of all of this confounds me. Not only confounds, but suffocates, for I am in Kingston, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, a small town across from Wilkes-Barre, in the heart of the hard-coal fields. (I collected Carboniferous fossils when I was a child.) More memories - the truth doesn't matter at all, only their nar- ratological import. The stories enter from the machine of the earth and repeat themselves within me. The machine in me listens, types this out. This _is_ cyberspace, in apposition to the obdurate world. Narratolo- gical functions construct the stars, began my death thousands of years ago. I could go on; I already have. _I am Cathy's Clown._ _______________________________________________________________________ - Too Few Arguments Script started on Sun Sep 1 23:11:45 1996 warning: could not update utmp entry netcom% i i: Command not found. netcom% want want: Command not found. netcom% stars stars: Command not found. netcom% nova nova: Command not found. netcom% to to: Command not found. netcom% fuck fuck: Command not found. netcom% me me: Command not found. netcom% love love: Command not found. netcom% me me: Command not found. netcom% kill kill: Too few arguments. netcom% me me: Command not found. netcom% disappear disappear: Command not found. netcom% memory memory: Command not found. netcom% forever forever: Command not found. netcom% where am i where: Command not found. netcom% who am i netcom! ttyr8 Sep 1 23:11 netcom% when am i when: Command not found. netcom% forever forever: Command not found. netcom% exit netcom% script done on Sun Sep 1 23:13:17 1996 > typescript - Hell: Cannot Create Time: Script started on Sun Sep 1 23:21:07 1996 warning: could not update utmp entry netcom% telnet panix3.panix.com Trying... Connected to panix3.panix.com. Escape character is '^]'. No directory /net/u/6/s/sondheim! touch: cannot touch //.motd_time: no write permission $ touch motd_time touch: cannot create motd_time: Permission denied $ touch time touch: cannot create time: Permission denied $ touch exit touch: cannot create exit: Permission denied script done on Sun Sep 1 23:21:50 1996 _________________________________________________________________________ Perfect Pupil I now know that my time spent _here_ on the Internet is the direct result of fear of real life. There are too many painful or disruptive memories, too many regrets, for me to cope. On the Net, I can leave at least some of them behind. This is why, of course, flames and other forms of verbal vi- olence disturb me so much - they remind me that real life leaks every- where, that I must remain alive after I turn off the computer. Everything is terminal; the disease of life continues. __________________________________________________________________________ A Second Set of Questions How many of you / of us / of me / of you How many of you have had a successful cyber-relationship? what happened? How many of you have consummated it in real-life? how long did it take to have "full and satisfactory sex" (Gilles Perreault) after the initial meeting? How many of you have had phone sex as a result of a cyber-relationship? before or after consummation? How many of you have exchanged photos - dressed? photos - naked? panties? other items of clothing? other items? How many of you have moved to another city to be with someone you met on the Net? more specifically, met on these lists? has this, in your estimation, "worked out"? How many of you have married someone you have met on the Net? more spec- ifically, met on these lists? How many of you have had an unsuccessful cyber-relationship? what happened? How many of you have done things in Net sex you wouldn't do in real life? you haven't done in real life? you would do in real life? what sorts of things? How many of you subsequently did these things upon meeting in real life? How many of you find cyber-relationships liberating? how many of you have left a real-life partner as a result? How many of you find cyber-relationships disastrous? How many of you have found them fulfilling within both virtual and real life? only within virtual life? How many of you are where I am? __________________________________________________________________________ A Second Set of Answers How many of you have had a successful cyber-relationship? what happened? I've tried at times; so far, they're only half-successful since the distance seems impossible, unable to be reconciled with the onslaught of daily life in New York. How many of you have consummated it in real-life? how long did it take to have "full and satisfactory sex" (Gilles Perreault) after the initial meeting? It took almost no time at all; at times the full and satisfactory sex was unaccompanied by otherwise compatibility. How many of you have had phone sex as a result of a cyber-relationship? before or after consummation? Both of these. How many of you have exchanged photos - dressed? photos - naked? panties? other items of clothing? other items? All of the above. How many of you have moved to another city to be with someone you met on the Net? more specifically, met on these lists? has this, in your estimation, "worked out"? Have not yet done this for the reasons cited above. It would be hard to move into someone else's life... /snip/ How many of you have had an unsuccessful cyber-relationship? what happened? I became afraid that I wouldn't be liked in real life; or I panicked thinking I could not make the commitment that would result; or I felt that the distance issue would return with a vengeance. How many of you have done things in Net sex you wouldn't do in real life? you haven't done in real life? you would do in real life? what sorts of things? I would do everything in real life (and have) except for obvious no-no's (!) such as cannibalism. Things have included shaving, tying, excretions. How many of you subsequently did these things upon meeting in real life? Depends on the situation. How many of you find cyber-relationships liberating? how many of you have left a real-life partner as a result? They're liberating because you can be accepted for the way you think about things, before the physical chemistry enters into the equation. How many of you find cyber-relationships disastrous? Very unhappy at times, but not disastrous. How many of you have found them fulfilling within both virtual and real life? only within virtual life? I've increasingly found them less fulfilling because the virtual domain is so restricted; there's only so much typing one can do. I long for real intimacy beyond this space; the longer I'm on- line, the farther apart real and virtual life seem, even though there are always real consequences to the virtual. How many of you are where I am? Where are you? __________________________________________________________________________ - Lustmord: Murder and CMC Lustmord is the name of a book edited by Brian King, The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers; it is also the name of an installation by Jenny Holzer. It refers not only to murder, but to murder coupled with desire, murder out of control, possibly psychotic, schizzy, hysteric. It occurs with a certain exhilaration of the lurid - that category of the night, torn clothing, and dismemberment that is both difficult to define and at the heart of human rapaciousness. Murder may _out,_ but murderers may not be _outed,_ and a murderer may try to hide the act; the act is often coupled with either secrecy or displace- ment. There is almost always the curlicue of the _missing-person_ - the cipher leaks, is rarely absolute. The cipher exists only as absence, sep- arable in fact from the remnants of the body itself (there are cases of cannibalism and freezing for example) - what _appears_ absence is the fur- ther history of the body, the fact that it will no longer bear children, answer to its parents, etc. The writings in Lustmord revolve around pain, retribution, and occasional guilt, often wistful; by and large, they're not rants (less capitalization than in the average Net flame), but discussions of a phenomenology that has a foundation in both creation and annihilation. In this regard, they remind one of Ballard, whose truth is that of a total decoding precisely by overcoding, overdetermination. What passes in Ballard as a continuous deployment of local color, translates into interior sequences in Lustmord; in fact, these sequences dissolve the boundaries between mind and body in a way one that deserves careful attention. If as Lingis might have it, body and inscription, culture and natural writing (my phrase) are in a problematic and diffuse relationship with one another, Lustmord provides a mixed public/private key for unraveling the psyche. The key is contained by totalization, religion, sexual specificity, and negation; in fact the last, the establishment and overcoming of barriers, relates to proper-naming (of gods), prohibitions against speaking (proper- names of gods), scape-goating, and the concept of sanctuary. Speaking and writing interpenetrate as bodies (dead or almost dead) are penetrated, wounded, opened up. _The body is violated by speech,_ and I contend that this violation is 'primal,' inchoate itself; it is at this level of the phenomenology that the problematic of text-based Internet communication manifests itself. In this regard, one is reminded of the violence in Kristeva's chora, of the violence seething just below governance in cyberspace, of the violence of flaming. The psychoanalytical mechanisms that come into play are inter- woven with themes of death, inscription, dismemberment, holes, absences, part-objects, and devouring (cannibalism). Between Lingis and Chasseguet- Smirgel, lies the computer; between Ballard and Lustmord, only the hole. _________________________________________________________________________ - Stupid Rage and Jury Duty in America I don't believe in justice. I couldn't put anyone away. I couldn't convict anyone. Give me a system where there's equitable distribution of wealth and I'll reconsider. Give me a system at least with a safety net. I'd be a criminal if I had to; everyone would be. You'd be stupid not to take what's necessary to stay alive. If you don't get enough food you get stupider by the day. If you let yourself go, there's no turning back. I'm here in this jury room. There are hundreds of people around me. Maybe they'll send people to prison or award people huge amounts of money for being victims. We're all victims, forced to serve in a system that damns minorities and people generally bewildered in life. If I rob someone it might take twenty minutes, ten minutes. If I rob someone it might be an impulsive act, like a lot of murders are. Should I then spend years in jail for those twenty minutes, ten minutes? I just sit in jail. I just sit there, and do nothing. You can only meditate on your crimes for so long. Guilt doesn't last forever; the body gets on with everyday life, even in prison. Outside, there's always questions of keeping a roof over your head, getting enough sleep. I have rage against the country. It's not love it or leave it; like a tumor, it grows on or with me. Without a safety net, it's obscene. With the unequal distribution of wealth, it's obscene. Rage consumes me; I fight it - it's useless, leads to nothing, a cancer itself. Rage is serrated; it's got edges, grips the psyche, won't let go. It keeps one awake at night, playing scenarios over and over again. It contorts the body and mind. It makes the beautiful ugly, blinds one. It's the result of obscenity, this rage. "Will the following jurors report to the clerk's office?" A list of names is called; so far, I'm in the clear. ------ I've just been up on the stand. I was asked if I'd been the victim of a crime. Of course I had; who hadn't? I was asked if I could be impartial. I said no, that I was self-employed, worked all the time, had another course cancelled out. I said that I had to teach tonight until three in the morning. The judge said that jury duty was an obligation and did I take it up earlier for deferment and I said yes I had and she said that she couldn't do anything about it but excused me anyway. I think because I blathered and blathered. I couldn't argue for conviction. I couldn't jail anyone. The case was a criminal one involving murder or attempted murder. I want to drop out. I don't want to give anyone big money either. I don't want to take any- thing away. I want to drop out of this country, which isn't my country, doesn't feel like my country. I want to drop out, become anonymous, roam the net from unknown domains, always elsewhere, maybe hunted, maybe not, with virtual bullets. I'll duck them, turn into another country, edu.qx for example. I'll become a United Nations of countries, an alternative planet, solar system, galaxy, universe. "Attention jurors, attention jurors" - it continues over and over. Peo- ple here have _jobs,_ professions, are on unemployment, wander about, with or without children. Maybe their bosses pay them while they're on. Fifteen dollars a day is absurdly beneath minimum wage. I close my eyes and see myself out on the street. I wouldn't survive for a day; I'd find a way to do myself in, end it all. I'd take a lot of crack or drink a lot of whiskey and find some pills. I'd ask people how to do it. I wouldn't want to be _there_ without work. I wouldn't want to be anywhere _just like that._ Everyone in the jury room is dating everyone else; I'm sure of it. There is lots of happy chatter. The inside of my brain is screaming for no reason whatsoever. I have to teach tonight, do Net admin blah blah, get back to this cold room tomorrow for more deployment. I'm sure my troops are at their limits. Inside the balcony of my skull, the audience is already filing out - but wait, I have new brocades, chandeliers with candles, sumptuous curtains, a thread of something that might turn into an author, steel mask, fero- cious teeth and all. Three of the jurors just got married... A fight's broken out in the first three rows... There's a funeral. I spoke to the judge, told her about the configuration, well relative configuration, of the American justice system. It was her lunch hour. Her wide eyes opened wider; never had she heard such elucidation. I told her about all the nations on the Internet and asked her to move there with me. Which ones, she said, and I really didn't have an answer; they all sounded good to me - no crime, no people, no currency. Everything's virtual anyway, she said, and faded into some alt.gov dream of romance, relationship, and violence, while juror murders went unatten- ded in the middle of the courtroom. I couldn't figure out if there was too little justice or maybe too much of it. There's an hour to go on lunch. I call in, hoping beyond hope that some- how my Internet course was miraculously reconstituted like a lost packet. No such luck, personal messages to be sure, but that rounded it out. I heard a friend's voice on the answering-machine - almost a foreign land/ language. I'm totally and permanently out of touch; the walls of this room might as well be a prison themselves. It's only temporary a week at most, most likely two or three days if I can hold my anger in. It's as if night settled in the Big Smoky and I suddenly found out I'd made the place up. ------- Later - Sometimes the intensity of abnormal normal life occupies an enor- mous sector of one's everyday horizon. This is the case of course with prison, which is a mutilated translation of the usual, but it is also the case with the jury room, surgery, periods of mourning. In Central Jury, I found I was writing _for myself,_ for the flood of words, which would eventually become a text; the audience was distanced by the sheer force of the _present_ jurors, all of whom seemed to mutate into couples by the time the day was done. Throughout the entire proceedings, I sat alone or paced like a mad secretary expecting to be called to the stand for the crimes of humanity. (Robert Ashley did a piece like that). It was as if time stood still; it was as if there were no tomorrow; it was if the force of the state leaked from the walls; it was as if poverty and desperation seethed from the floor; it was as if wise-ass retribution was just a heartbeat away. Hey! - The jury's still out on the cops in cyberspace, but the closing of anon. penet.fi is already the first step towards permanent lockdown. Soon, our beautiful nipples will carry the sunsets of Coca Cola, Microsoft will gouge out gullet and intestine, and our brains will no longer answer to anything less than Pentium 7. The corporate by the way was nowhere in evidence in Central Jury - only minor hammers and the distant thud of power. At least the phones worked. (This part goes nowhere because there was nowhere to go.) _________________________________________________________________________ Central Theory Power-Structure Corps Travis leaped up because he wanted to say something about the role of structure in the bloated tumor that passed for the massive verbiage describing cyberspace in all its ramifications, sentences growing on the surface of sentences, words descended from words. Even "cyberspace" had become outmoded, however, replaced by nothing but a sense irreality. Structure is/was already present at the creation, at the moment of crea- tion, he said. The question of anarchy or a continuation of the hysteria of style is no longer an issue. There are two genders from which dissem- ination is a given, Clara replied, but there might be an other whose form yet remains indeterminate. I'm not sure I understand your drift, one of them said. you drift one of them said I'm not tending towards the inchoate, but towards the pathological, Clara interjected. There's no stopping it without ceasing to speak, to exist in these untrammeled spaces. The name of the space is not the name of the game, nor is the confabulation of detail. nor the confabulation of detail There was silence in the room. There were people present, reading, who hadn't spoken yet. They'd divided among themselves. Some would answer the role and some wouldn't. There was a loudspeaker in the room. It would disseminate the voice like indirect lighting. It gave itself over to the source, to third-world politics, to the other always dreamed of by an incoherent West. It called like god called, voiceover, the name which would be spoken. The name was connected to nothing or the calling would connect the name which would be the address of the name. Between the name and the address, nothing. name, Name, god, God, address, Address, Nothing The loudspeaker like indirect lighting spread the word. The word diffused from numerous sources among the walls and ceilings, from concealed loudspeakers that presented only a fuzzy and wide-open target. The word appeared from nowhere and everywhere at once, and the room ceased to have either architecture or ornament. Power: Let's say that there is one plug in this room, Central Theory. It's called Central Theory because everyone goes there and waits until he or she is called to a particular room. Each room tries another theory which really means that each room develops and extends another theory. Since the rooms extend into infinite virtual space, and since their doors are locked, the jury can develop its own premises alone. This isn't a metaphor for anything, except for the fact that Central Theory has only one plug. So there would be fights for the plug, for the power, in order that you and I could use our laptops beyond their usual battery life, which might not be enough time to dvelop a hypothesis. On the other hand, it just might be exactly the right amount of time. (This isn't a metaphor for Pangloss Panopticon, theory-power, power-theo- ry, power-lunch, theoretical blindness or hindsight/foresight.) There's always the issue of the voltage and amperage, and many are the laptops that have met their glimmer-days, sparking wildly, across the barrens of Central Theory. But now we presuppose the loudspeaker. sparkling widly The loudspeaker is used in Ciudad Juarez for politics and general ideo- logical dissemination. Everyone stops and listens to the loudspeaker. It sits on top of an old Volkswagen rigged for the occasion, parked near the cathedral square with its churches and run-down businesses surround- ing the elevated plaza. It carries the voice, from perhaps a very little person or perhaps not. Is the voice always masculine? Is it always heard but is it still there? Central Theory engenders the feminine voice which folds and infolds, resonance upon resonance, reverberating through the hallways of the building, entering even into the theory rooms themselves. But it's not a voice of authority, it's a voice of disenfranchisement, a flux-voice, a voice of infinite morphologies, chaotic and shimmering with sinusoidal pulsings. It's the literally recorded voice of Luce Irigaray, applied to a set of circumstances, which is the _structure of phonemes_ utilized in this particular discourse. this discursive formation, this particularity, articulation, 'ation' Central Theory thus owes to Central Casting. Both owe something to structure which delimits, defuses, diffuses both presence and presenti- fication. The _output_ is the Internet_Text_Tumor, ITT, which increases without regard to legibility, and it is precisely at this juncture of image, text, theory, and giganticism that the power plug resides. One may be called up and released from Central Theory. Then one types forever. constant typification, genetic algorithm resolutions, echolalias _______________________________________________________________________ Blanking Interval Francois Villon's Ballade (_des dame du temps jadis_) contains this re- frain, for each of the four stanzas: "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Dante Gabriel's translation is the most melodious and famous: The Ballad of Dead Ladies Tell me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman? Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, Neither of them the fairer woman? Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere, - She whose beauty was more than human? .. But where are the snows of yester-year? Where's Heloise, the learned nun, For whose sake Abeillard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on? (From Love he won such dule and teen!) And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? .. But where are the snows of yester-year? White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, With a voice like an mermaiden - Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, - And that good Joan whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed and burned here there, - Mother of God, where are they then? .. But where are the snows of yester-year? Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Except with this for an overword, - But where are the snows of yester-year? "Mother of God" is "Vierge souvraine" in the original, "Sovereign Virgin." The difference is important, because the intact hymen, like snow, blanks the intervals of the years, _remains_ intact or Obelisk; only the painted folds of her robes imply labia, activatity beyond the ob-ject of worship. Now where is the snow from? Snow is both history and negation - the latter of course in terms of the landscape itself, blanketing difference, subsum- ing it. But it is also history, since snow is _inches fallen,_ more or less, and more or less subsumption. It is a history which re-covers itself after the covering, beginning after the ending. Such history is always a disappearance and will be, until the final days of frozen earth; by that time, evaporation will have taken care of every- thing in the midst of the nova. There will be no traces, nothing to trace; molten rock will return the planet to noise, not chaos. Neither smooth nor rough nor nothing to figure it out. In the meantime, snow is both a history and a blanking interval of histor- y, and this leads us to a brief consideration of email, and our users, who have also disappeared, with or without forwardings, a loss which remains archived at best, and archives themselves are suspect to destruction. Who tallies archives of archives, remembers the names above, _all of them_ who were famous in their times and places? "les neiges" haunt, implicate latitudes and weathers, the same chills in the air, flakes garnered beneath the hood or cuff, working their way against dry skin's desire, frisson of snowballs and falls. Heloise worked her way through the snow, medievally giggling; Michael Current wrote the final version of the Cybermind information sheet. When names fade, the _where_ is more relevant here than anywhere else, since there is no _here_ and only an absence of text denoting death or just boredom with computer communication. Absence rarely leaves traces; if presence can return the body, continued absence needs the testimony and judgement of the peripher- al. Does anyone ever know, for sure, anything in this regard, or anything, and in any other? ( Regard ________________________________________________________________________ Two Definitions: Definition of _Trace:_ Cleaning the Keyboard: 23wecxz34cx 54trgfbtybn 78uyhjmn l//wxturqmMyMMH@quitewdsxtgfuyjhmoilk,mp';/.[]\ mnfbvcdftfg HHwtqtxyusrMMMHHK SAAAAAAAAAEASDDSDFFGGHJHJJHIKJL;KP;',MBNVBDXCXZC /mM1-0iu ,. ----- Definition of _Authority:_ In Central Jury, one listens for one's name; one is called to a case in an area designated as Empanelling Rooms 1-7. One's name is called through a loudspeaker system that reaches through Central Jury into both a Jury Lounge and the toilets. The call is that of Authority; it resonates in the space, spreads; one comes face to face with the State and there is no face. All power is virtual and the virtual is deadly. ----- Is cleaning the _inverse_ or _obverse_ of power? __________________________________________________________________________ Service Down The only time television went out here (with, I believe, the exception of Channel 2) was when the World Trade Center was bombed; it carries a heavy load of television and radio aerials at the top. Telephone service has also been fairly consistent during the past five years; there was an af- ternoon when only calls within the immediate several-block area could be made; we were cut off from the rest of the world. The radio has never gone out, and while electrical current has occasionally flickered in big storms (I switch to laptop), it's never been completely disrupted. All this over six years. Most of these services are centralized, with phone and power being some- what diffuse. Hacking enters the media sphere in odd ways: Hacking the phone company, a favorite pastime for some people, does little overall damage; there are pirate radio and I presume pirate television stations around; and some people steal power. But none of this prepares one for the _porosity_ of the Internet, which is composed of conduit (fiber, radiolink, wire), routers and servers, and computers small and large, all conspiring to create a decentralized system in which each site has access to every other. The result is the potential for infinite hacking, service disruptions, address spoofs and other viola- tions. Firewalls can only go so far in this regard; the recent attack on Panix is an example of what can happen with even a relatively small (and well-published) program. On one hand, I wish again to sound an alarm without appearing too paran- oid; on the other, I want to describe _thwarted_ communication, without appearing too neurotic - but a neuroticism of sorts can be the only result of a _fundamental distortion_ composed of breakins, breakdowns, variable lags, and the relative ability of _anyone_ to reach _anyone_ on the Net. Increasingly, I think of the Internet as a "living" thing, not sentient (except in a low-level routing kind of way), with packet fluxing as a kind of _pulsion_ or drive. In situations of hacking/wounding, there are often ways around the damage (which soon scars over with patches), but if the damage is done precisely at the ISP itself, the server can temporarily collapse. What happens? At the user's end, silence, until an motd (message of the day) is issued. Silence, which may mean or not mean anything at all, is an absence or diffuse indexicality: it references and participates in the appearance of damage (death, refusal to reply, other sites down, etc.), but is silent as well in relation to cause. This silence is authoritarian, unable to be contradicted by presence; it wraps itself around the psyche, which, by virtual of peripheral intuition, may sense _something is wrong._ The relation to anxiety, which is also present, rootless, grounded in cause and absence, is clear. The relation to neurosis - the result of the resulting distorted communication, misplaced echo - becomes evident as well when the _family orbit,_ familiality, is taken into account, since speaking and receiving occur first within it. (One could absurdly insist on the presence of Mother-matrix / Father-protocol in the midst of this.) There are no conclusions. Panix is sputtering at the moment; the Net, even through ascii/shell access, seems sputtering during the day; the Web sput- ters constantly. While most of this is the result of overloaded bandwidth, a portion is also the result of hacking, deliberate interference. (And this is so easy to do! What's to stop someone from setting up a ser- ver, writing a simple program to send, say, 500k messages out at the rate of one per second, at selected targets? I wonder what could be done in this situation, especially if the sender's addresses were spoofed. I re- member at one point Cybermind was spammed, and when I complained to the sysop/root, I got back an hysterical message saying YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING! I AM THE SYSOP!!!! Etc. etc.) Eventually, we'll be living behind even thicker firewalls, pervasive cor- porate presence and advertising, censorship, high-priced access engines, monitored discussions, and government-controlled encryption schemes. Time to think about Fidonet again... Or give me a call at 718-857-3671... if you can reach me off-line... __________________________________________________________________________ The 'Trav Travis was listening to the news, and heh! he said it wasn't like it was when he was a kid, how was it? You knew who you were then, he said, there wasn't much doubt of it. When he flew he was a man inside a woman. The ship, she asked, yes, of course, what else would you go in. And there was always the enemy, the orcs she asked, yes he said, they were out for us. It was always a battle to the finish, did it ever finish she said. It finished, Travis said, it finished and that was that. He was silent. 2 It was night on the ship it was daylight. Splatter-rays raged around him; the black hulk of the enemy cruiser passed between them and the sun. Huge eyes pierced his brain and they couldn't remember who she was. For one last vestigal second of consciousness, he pulled the lever and the uni- verse exploded. 3 I'll never have memories like you, she cried, never! But his eyes were already closed as Travis passed sweetly unto death. ___________________________________________________________________________ Subject: the new girl Sadly, k:29> Victoria ksh: Victoria: not found Sadly, k:30> Tiffany ksh: Tiffany: not found Sadly, k:31> Honey ksh: Honey: not found Sadly, k:32> Clara ksh: Clara: not found Sadly, k:33> Travis ksh: Travis: not found k:34> $z='what could be found was only emptiness in a dreary world' panix3.panix.com!sondheim ttyp4 Sep 9 02:40(ts2.nyc.access.n) k:35> $z='who is she alas that I have loved & split my heart in two' panix3.panix.com!sondheim ttyp4 Sep 9 02:40(ts2.nyc.access.n) k:36> $a='apropos nothing...' ksh: =apropos nothing...: not found Sadly, k:37> apropos nothing... nothing...: nothing appropriate Sadly, k:38> apropos nothing appropriate nothing: nothing appropriate Sadly, k:39> nothing ksh: nothing: not found _______________________________________________________________________ [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from sondheim (Alan Sondheim)... hello . ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from The net connection has returned. ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from At 4AM exactly, all terminal servers will reboot again to fix a major problem with the new software release. Sorry about this unexpected downtime, but the alternative is to have no SLIP or PPP connections. :-( ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Sorry. Didn't mean to "Yo" you. ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Please log out. We're moving disks on panix3, which is why it's not letting people in now. it should be back in about 30 minutes. ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Alan, I ^H^H^H^H^H^H am a new panix user. You know me as ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Alan, I am being denied permission to respond. ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from I'm working on your problem, may I look at your mailspool? ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Alan, this is . I'm in Brooklyn, can you talk? ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Pardon me for interrupting, but are you the Alan Sondheim on the Poetics out of Buffalo? ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from could whoever is trying to read news in alt.* please abort your reader? ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from thanks ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from Panix3 will be going down in about 15 minutes to fix the mounts. ] [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from disaster averted, shutdown not needed. ] ________________________________________________________________________ What it's like to feel empty on the MOO: look me empty empty S/he is awake and looks alert. look here room You see nothing special. You see empty here. You have no messages on your Answering Machine. feel me Ummm. What? feel me No comprende. feel me Ummm. What? @quit ______________________________________________________________________ Ripple I've been getting shooting pains up the back of my hands, buzzed sensa- tions across the palms and lightning flashes throughout the fingers. Is this stroke or carpal tunnel, arthritis or simple overwork? The desktop machine's the worst, since my wrists touch the edge of the board support- ing the computer; the whole place here is ramshackle. The arms and neck become stiff. The lower back hurts. But these are not the symptoms I am concerned with, those other flashes when I attempt to sleep, turning over and over, crawling through bodies, the glint of light on skin somewhere where the mattress begins its descent to the floor. Sleeping is accompanied by voices, but when I wake, there are remnants, phrases from cyberspace, leftovers from terminal dreams. There are limbs disassociated from bodies; labia emerging, swamped and taut against the skin; naked backs; breasts with soft darkened nipples against eyes, ears, throat - pressured, draining; there are the deeper organs, hearts, vaginas, penises, the lungs themselves; I'm naked myself, or rather stripped; I'm surrounded, it's a marsh of dismemberment, heated, lukewarm - _nurui_ "is as a rule used with reference to liquids to mean 'not hot enough.' .. Sometimes, _nurui_ means 'not cold enough' in refer- ence to liquids." (Miura) The hands hurt: lukewarm. The fingers hurt: lukewarm. There is a section of my hand gone numb from being tied up, in- scription of sex. I imagine a future of numbed streaks across the body, its membranes and open topologies. They inscribe a mute and impenetrable sign. The more the body splays, discourses, the greater the illegibility. Pain spreads in the form of sheets or ripples across the back of the hands. I dream of disks inserted, RAM doublers increasing my ability to feel, remember the felt, feel once again. The last of the body is always pursuant. These are my _mouths,_ fastening-fascinated on keys, swollen with your reception. You come in the front door, back door; I come in the front door, back door. The space opens up with migraine flashes that cauterize the screen, arrowheads of Vs that flash against the text. They are not the said, add to the streaks attacking the joints, buzzed flashes streaking lightly across the flesh, everywhere I'm streaking of you, this is not a streak, this is text, cliff-side discourse-formation, I hate you word. ___________________________________________________________________________ On They have been on MOOs for up to 16 days, a record as I recall. They re- main hooked in and out of IRC, and I remain here, late-night, waiting for your mail to arrive. The screen always seethes; I don't have to do any- thing, except hit a key every once in a while to stop the time-out. It's the _potential_ which is a form of gambling, and I send you my picture, you send me yours; flurries of pictures intersect the Internet; I am you are everywhere. The screen puckers; a nipple appears, packet ID number at the least, hopefully my final destiny. They remain _on_ because _on_ is life itself, being _on,_ the primacy of Heidegger's _Being on Time_ a prime example. Being on Time, as in: You're really _on_ tonight. What are you going _on_ about? You're always _on._ The edges of the screen furl, curl in towards black borders shading to- wards an untoward center. Something might occur, as an absence for exam- ple. But the occurrence is linear; the mailq is queued in and out for my pleasure. Whatever happens, there will always be another, and the screen will be ready for it, the computer on. It's an I/eye, cite/site (yes, I/inscription//agrios/domus*) in the corner of the room, along the wall of the room, across the room, on the floor or ceiling of the room. It keeps the room alive. I don't have to do anything. I can read, write, hack with the biff y, and here you come across the screen to take me away from myself, or if not now, when? The wait is a temporal caress, cross and diffused kisses spreading across me. All of us are perfect delight. To theorize the _on_ is to _endlessly_ theorize being as inconceivable de- marcation. Metaphysics appears, fantasy narratives, light anecdotes and Russian novels. The _on_ blocks/is blocked, the movement of the pratico- inert when no one is looking. I know if I close my eyes, the screen continues, and that is a basic fact of life. ------------------------ Hodder, The Domestication of Europe _________________________________________________________________________ Bone It feels as if my bones will crack. my bones feel it in my wrist bones that will crack will break, twist sinew tendon muscle, arm bones crack into shoulder boned cracked or fissured. I hear splitting; there are tiny cracks finger cracks hairline fractures, maw gaped fissures, filigree cracks, bored bone split or splintered from palm to neck crack broken bone palm slammed shattered torn cracked bone. Now a new day and just the hand back heated from nothing snuffling around beneath the surface, fingers recovered from crack-attacks, key stumbling once again, dark sun out bright light. ___________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer They surfaced again in 1688. ___________________________________________________________________________ - Jennifer said Jennifer said In writing I need a room of my own. In writing I need to clear a space. In writing I need silence, a vista, a view, a comfortable place where I can be alone with my thoughts. My writing is the most important to me. My writing is the most important. My life is in opening spaces and open spaces. My life is an and, not an or. With my life and my thoughts, words get in the way. My life is in the coming of questions, and words get in the way. My life is most generous. Words are prisons. Everyone says this, and everyone saying it is part of penitentiary me. My life is more generous than this. Is there a god? Turn to file . Will you find true love? Turn to file . Everything I write is all that can be written. You will close your eyes and open them in this space and there will be no writing but you will read all there is. Sometimes I will wait or you will wait in the midst of the rubble of text, the text scrapes raw like whiskers against soft lips. The contusion of whispers, and you or I will ignore them, waiting for questions in a very plain space, a lovely plain space. The questions will come like wordless butterflies. Only one thing remains after the questions die, fall to the ground like rubble or text in a beautiful space, that is, I can't tell what's you and what's the program. And years ago, I remember talking with Clara and her drugs and she said, I can't tell what's me and what's the chemistry. I can't tell and I'll be silent and I need the very big space bigger than me and you, and I can't see you. What's the program, what's the chemistry. Jennifer said, my writing is the most important. This is writing. __________________________________________________________________________ - War With the repeated attacks on panix.com, the ISP is currently unreliable in terms of guaranteed mail delivery. The attacks are simple and low-level and can be done by just about anyone with a linux or unix machine; as has been pointed out, there are plenty of scripts available, beyond that in the current 2600. The disruptions are sufficiently severe, and the attacks sufficiently sim- ple, that one may question just how much security has been built into the Net since, say, the Worm of '88. Note that the attacks aren't hacks into particular accounts; they're not carrying information back to the sender - which makes them difficult to trace. They're occurring for a purpose - to bring down panix.com and possibly other ISPs as well. I don't buy into a conspiracy theory here, by the way, as some have pro- posed; I don't think these are the result of inter-internet corporate ri- valries. There is too much at stake, too much criminal intent. Beyond all of this, I can only speak of the effect on me, as a panix user for the past two and a half years. Panix is a relatively expensive ser- vice, but it has been extremely reliable, except for some recent disk crashes, which can happen anywhere. I've remained with it because of the reliability; like television, I have almost always been insured of imme- diate access when I've needed it. Now the attacks, of course, change all that; I have on one hand my loyalty to panix, and on the other, the fact that my own communications have become distorted, slotted back and forth between panix and netcom, and not getting through, at times, on panix at all. As I've pointed out, the Net is everywhere porous. A MOO could be brought down just as easily by a telnet 23 attack. I gather from the newsgroups that the reconfigured IP won't make any difference at all; the problems lie with the design of TCP, which is carried on all sorts of datastreams. The result is that I've become increasingly depressed and disinvested; a part of my day is spent in dealing with ISP status - working, in other words, on the sub-level, instead of that of the text itself. More than ever, I'm aware of the breathing of Quartermain's Matrix, of its vulner- ability, of its redundancy which also makes it susceptible. I move between layers at this point, from text to machine to text, all the while entered by virtue of machine and its discursive formations. My nerves are on end (what else is new?); the stuttering has surfaced, just as Jennifer predicted it would. Speaking and writing per se remain the same as ever, but _distribution,_ alterity, is radically altered - behind your real or virtual face now looms that of the hacker with blurred intent. I would rather not deal with hir: Criminality, as Alexander Essenin-Volpin might have pointed out, is in part the demanding of the obligation of the other - E-V's _freedom 2_ is fundamentally the freedom from coercion. By virtue of the hacker, I am coerced into fumbled or dis- torted communication; by virtue of the hacker, my speech is not my own. __________________________________________________________________________ Net Weight Poem motd -v Attack stopped Wed Sep 11 03:01:14 1996 :y/n/q? [n] n Attacker goes berserk Wed Sep 11 01:38:55 1996 :y/n/q? [n] n Mail servers under attack again Tue Sep 10 23:31:35 1996 :y/n/q? [n] n Attack over, for the moment Mon Sep 9 17:28:44 1996 :y/n/q? [n] n Panix attacked, even worse Mon Sep 9 11:53:54 1996 :y/n/q? [n] n Mail attack defeated, for now Sun Sep 8 07:11:49 1996 :y/n/q? [n] n Panix Office Closed for Labor Day Fri Aug 30 11:13:57 1996 :y/n/q? [n] q n ____________________________________________________________________________ do I move a second, or beginning with a bridge, curved, wooden, beneath this exact moon? circle dipped in water, sword-play above, water scatters perfect petals, bequeathed from shadow into blue kimono night. turning pure packet, blossom e-mail slips on katana sword, down stream and autumn rain, laptop-sensei smiles at who me-dot-net who-me. _________________________________________________________________________ Labor It's too much labor. There's labor everywhere on the Net, every instance of text has thought and action behind it. Strands trace back from T1 lines to teletype and earlier; totality is the result of production. The _shape_ of ASCII has been a decision, the result of conference and implementation. These fingers on these keys, interrupts all the way down. Subroutines call up subroutines; there is no longer a level at the top, but only circula- tion, some of which is evidenced as interface. Interface itself becomes introjected; before long, the circulations will involve a totality which is the result of production. The _shape_ of the world has been a decision, the result of conference and implementation. This mind, interrupts all the way down. Diffused subroutines, no longer localized, circulate among them- selves; we're ensured that vision, somewhere, exists. No longer introjec- tion, the world, a result of production, continues as always. __________________________________________________________________________ You see a man coming down the street towards you. And you are wary of this man, and this man is full of drugs. He is full of drugs and does not know which way is up but he can walk fine and when he has to, he can talk fine. But he is full of drugs and perhaps he thinks he is a bandit, which makes him a bandit, or thinks he will kill someone, which makes him a killer. You see this man and you think he is a man but he is drugs and he is a drug man and you think he is like a machine because he is not like you and he is not like a man who is a killer or a bandit because he is a man or a drug man and he thinks different walks different talks different but they are all fine. And you look around and you see there is another man and maybe there is a woman and maybe there are drugs or there are no drugs but they are all fine and they all think different. And they can talk fine and walk fine and perhaps they think they are killers or bandits or waiters or nurses or lovers or humans but they are waiter human or killer human or lover human or they are not. And then what is a man, that he is a man, and what is a woman, that she is a woman, or they are not. And I will call them avatars because they are or they are not human, and I do not know what you will call human who is lover human or drug human or what is morphine human sex human, or what is loving human or hating human. I do know when I see a man coming down the street and his eyes are not his eyes and I do mean that, that I am afraid of avatars because they do not know my name and I am al- ways writing human, always writing. And they are reading nothing and they are drug. __________________________________________________________________________ Looking for Sex in All the Wrong Places *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #voyeurism *** Users on #voyeurism: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #voyeurism *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #voyeur *** Users on #voyeur: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #voyeur *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #exhibitionism *** Users on #exhibitionism: Alan_ xxxx yyyy [E/X] The time is now 02:00AM. *** Alan_ has left channel #exhibitionism *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #fetishism *** Users on #fetishism: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #fetishism *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #fetish *** Users on #fetish: Alan_ xxxx yyyy xxxx -blindfold- Hi Alan_, welcome to #fetish, type !bot for the bot options <Alan_> !bot -blindfold- type /msg blindfold action {whatever} to have the bot perform an action -blindfold- type /msg blindfold talk {whatever} to have the bot speak -blindfold- type /msg blindfold hello to register with the bot -blindfold- type /msg blindfold info {whatever} to set your information line -blindfold- type /msg blindfold news help for information on the channels newspaper -blindfold- type !wisdom for some advice -blindfold- type !bar for the #fetish bar options -blindfold- type /msg blindfold rose {nick} {message} to send a rose to {nick} with a note {message} -blindfold- type !spin to play spin the bottle -blindfold- type !+v to flag yourself as available for public play (!-v to reset) <Alan_> !wisdom Hey you, with the badge, in China there will be a man with a big stick, he will take you where you want to go. <Alan_> !wisdom I'll make weapons out of my imperfections, that's all I have left now... *** Alan_ has left channel #fetish *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #sex *** Topic for #sex: don't fuck with me *** Topic for #sex set by xxxx on Sep 13 00:13:29 ooo, at least my black men penises can be seen unlike your little white man's caps. Can't any of the ladies get me horny? grrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeny!:) yyy any horny men who want to talk dirty and get off Hello all... *** Alan_ has left channel #sex *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #cybersex *** Topic for #cybersex: Where the cybersex guru, xxxx resides ;) Hey pussybabe pick a bitch! ddd looks like a good lay... eee: ummm I'm guessing "sour grapes theory?" runs up to fff...and hops on HIS lap.... ok lets do her! hello *** ggg has been kicked off channel #cybersex by hhh (Fuck you and your weak world. Die.) ggg - we could rape Erica or Courtney???? any ladies out there if so msg me * kkk *huggles* lll Hear me well...I'm not gonna be your bitch!!! Which one do you wanna do? i love sex any women out there what to talk Ant ladies wanna cyber? * kkk pichs lll up and gives her a big-ole bearhug MMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!! *** Alan_ has left channel #cybersex *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #masochism *** Users on #masochism: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #masochism *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #sm *** Users on #sm: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #sm *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #sadism *** Users on #sadism: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #sadism *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #b&d *** Users on #b&d: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #b&d *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #bondage *** Topic for #bondage: Revolving Door Rides -- US$ .05 *** Topic for #bondage set by xxx on Sep 12 21:33:42 *** Alan_ has left channel #bondage *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #domination *** Topic for #domination: For FUn AND gameS CuM In. -metlsub- Hi Alan_, welcome to #domination, type !bot for the bot options *** SubCunt has left channel #domination <Alan_> !bot -metlsub- type /msg metlsub action {whatever} to have the bot perform an action -metlsub- type /msg metlsub talk {whatever} to have the bot speak -metlsub- type /msg metlsub hello to register with the bot -metlsub- type /msg metlsub info {whatever} to set your information line -metlsub- type !bar for the #domination bar options -metlsub- type /msg metlsub rose {nick} {message} to send a rose to {nick} with a note {message} -metlsub- type !spin to play spin the bottle -metlsub- type !+v to flag yourself as available for public play (!-v to reset) *** Alan_ has left channel #domination *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #watersports *** Users on #watersports: @Alan_ *** Alan_ has left channel #watersports *** Alan_ (sondheim@panix3.panix.com) has joined channel #shit *** Users on #shit: Alan_ @Goddeath *** Alan_ has left channel #shit IRC Log ended *** Fri Sep 13 02:07 __________________________________________________________________________ From sondheim@panix.comFri Sep 13 10:25:47 1996 Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:21:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim To: Cyb , Fop Subject: Loneliness, for Ashley MacIsaac ---------- Forwarded message ---------- -Received: (from sondheim@localhost) by panix3.panix.com (8.7.5/8.7/PanixU1.3) id KAA08946; Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:18:10 -0400 (EDT) -Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:17:26 -0400 (EDT) -From: Alan Sondheim -To: Alan Sondheim -Subject: Hello! -Message-ID: -MIME-Version: 1.0 -Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ReSent-Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:17:38 -0400 (EDT) ReSent-From: Alan Sondheim ReSent-To: Alan Sondheim ReSent-Message-ID: ReSent-Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:17:49 -0400 (EDT) ReSent-From: Alan Sondheim ReSent-To: Alan Sondheim ReSent-Message-ID: ReSent-Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:18:05 -0400 (EDT) ReSent-From: Alan Sondheim ReSent-To: Alan Sondheim ReSent-Message-ID: Etc. Hello! How are you today! Love, Alan!