longue the word shudders from the body of the uniformed man, and some might say it's a uniformed word, but i jennifer say no, it's a body word full of spit and sweat and moisture from the lungs barked into the air; it's tongue and langue and lung simultaneously, clothed in the body of the swell-dressed man in a uniform of black and red for anarchy and com- munism or blue and black for skies and soils of the motherland; it's languor and lunges and a tong altogether, dynasties of tongs and im- plements just as the uniform is carapace not character / armor, but true and real revelation in the blacks and whites of the fatherland; and it's line and length and tinged altogether, tainted with scents and odors of the true-real body supporting it above and atmospheric, against blood-red plant-green, the khaki family desert fairy-tale untrue; and that is the tail of the bodily word, i jennifer always do say. +++ _________________________________________________________________________ magic (in the form of poetry slam) a text, one of several thousand hopeless, eh sometimes i close my eyes and think ill never have to open them again blindness can pervade every organ thinking off lamps going out all over europe my writing is my hell disentangled from the matrix that produces it as if there were a nipple were in the middle of this black bleak space were there for example downing aircraft were there driving out villagers by means of ravaging floods deprivations cholera foodstuffs disappearing like the banks droughts nuclear devastations reservoirs of viral technologies it might be a single o cross of t dot on i or j as if id be dead when you reached the end of this sentence ill be dead when you reach the end of this sentence fooled you cant fool you for long can i were there firestorms over forests and cities firestorms across the plains radiations everywhere third arm breaks out through my chest third eye closes for the last time legs wilt it wont be long now my last prediction brakes are on cars in reverse embankment looms downhill looms in the middle very middle of the air very air im holding on that o or cross of t dot on j or i its down there fiery black of the screen death white of the screen sucking sucked away lips bared teeth against one or another bitter letter hopeless eh should have dropped out years ago letter clanks at the bottom of the page theres no bottom no sound hallucinations setting in schizophrenias schizzing jagged x across the chest eyes mouth ears didnt fool you this time did i cant keep this up forever __________________________________________________________________________ tremulous connectivity, final internet planetary populations suffused across polluted boundaries, net surviving through blackhole loops run by thermal generation. there are the last heaves of carbon life, nothing to replace it. earth transforms into re- pository of final information, data-bank earth temporarily engulfed in the remnants of organization. it will be that way for some time. I can feel it in my bones, time's _quality_ assuaged into the inconceivable. time mur- murs through me, veins suffused with planetary populations. let that be a beginning while there is still the space to write, the time to tell. the nothing to tell. buried in time's tel. the truancy and interpenetra- tion of systems: ecological, war, economic, medical, immune, technologic- al. I place my plattered texts in this space only to have it denied; never mind. I place my texts _here_ let us say as asteroid hits earth, nova ex- plodes, icecaps melt, zero vacuum spreads, another war. the lights are go- ing on all over europe. (what is silent, _silenced_ in space is not within the sound itself; plasma reverberations hear themselves in the midst of transvaluation of all values, thonged, timed out.) what would turn them off is idle time, remission, server disconnects, timeouts all over the Net, sparkling hacked computers remaining for their million hour hard-drives. energy wouldn't end, wither; it's a done/gone deal. there are no creatures to grapple with time, with serrated edges, with strength against gravity, with silicon brainstorms. pinball circuitry sends my texts with the proper deathdrive. soon all is still when all is still. I don't call an address _millennarian._ ________________________________________________________________________ Very very last time, I say What I mean is we're all going to die and then the planet will have a huge death but of course we won't be around to see it, nothing like that. It will be amazing and suddenly things like painting and music won't be that important; they've got no intrinsic value. But maybe the machines will continue for a while longer and things like my beautiful texts will just revolve among some dying nodes for a bit of time and then nothing. And there won't be anything around either to mourn the passing or to say that after all _x_ and _y_ were said in the midst of the silence of speaking. So if we assess and reassess, now's the time; now is all the time there is, which is why I also say, Jennifer has all the time there is, because I am Jennifer and this is quite, extremely, serious. We must seize meaning because there is no meaning beyond seizure, no thought beyond contusion, no language unborn in useless violence. My sex places me in the middle of things, of me; out of hollow, nothing comes. I sing when I cum, do you? So you see, this teetering world, these texts, these cultures, pollutions, nocturnal and otherwise, it's all the same, pasted against the image of the world. And that is all I've been saying, except that my panties are wet from the ground, or the ground is wet from me, and my frock spreads all around. _________________________________________________________________________ 69 Oppositional Structures, The Voice Between life and death, a horizon or certain cessation. Death carries the trace of memory upon its body. Non-life or clays merges into life. Death in opposition to non-life is the perfection of all existence. Nature, culture, and artifice form an uneasy continuum. What culture lends to gender, sex borrows from nature. Artifice crackles and inscribes, where nature fissures. The narrow defiles of life and culture spew down among natural death. The dissolution of memory is the transformation of inscription into fissure. Energy is everywhere among the speakable. Nothing is unspeakable. Lost in discourse, the physical body reinscribes as virtual. Between physical and virtual bodies, a horizon or certain symbolic. Death ceases and seizes the body in a paroxysm of absolute rupture. Death is always already the grand narrative, inert and obdurate. Non-life is an invasive procedure. The absolute disconnection of the symbolic reinscribes on the plane of eternity. The bias of language, the body, the gender, the sex, the culture. The bias of language, the absence, the real, inscription, the nature. The bias of language, the fissure, the fissure at the end of the rope. (I can't abide lists like these, says Jennifer. It's just like Alan. No- thing ever gets done. It's sloppy. The aphoristic disguises what exegesis reveals. But I'm lying. I love wild theory. I love lists like these, what they do to me, thrill me up and down the spine. I love the guise or mas- querade of the real, present in each and every case. Alan will never speak of thrills. One of these days, I'll insert him in me, in a sentence. I'll name my cunt for him. One of these days, and so much for oppositional structures.) ________________________________________________________________________ N*-Gendering Discourse Squeezing my Susans, I wrapped my Clara around Tiffany's slim Honey. Tra- vis, Alan closed, turned towards me, his Joan aroused, while she inserted her Jennifer into his Susans. Oh Clara, his Tiffany cried, your Honey is the most beautiful Travis I have seen! Alan moaned, spread his Joan almost to the point of pain. Jennifer gasped, her Susans deep in her Clara, Tiff- any, and Honey, her Travis erect. Her Alan heaved in deep passion as she whimpered and cried, her Joan and Jennifer visible to the Susans, Clara, and Tiffany. Honey opened her Travis wide, sucking Alan's Joan, her Jenni- fer deep in his Susans. Clara screamed Tiffany!, Honey yelled Travis!, Alan whimpered Joan!, Jennifer whispered, her Susans thrusting Clara, her Tiffany in his Honey, her Travis on his Alan's Joan, her Jennifer, hey that's me! __________________________________________________________________________ Michael Current, Difficulty As you know, Michael Current and I co-founded Cybermind, and he died shortly after. Now, more than two years later, there is a minor industry created around his death. I reprinted his story in Being On Line, and Mia Lipner created an audio piece based somewhat on his posts to Future Cul- ture. She is interviewed about it (in part) in Women and Performance. Greg Ritter has written about him, and Katie Argyle has described events around his death in a recently published essay. I've talked about the same in va- rious lectures. Being On Line is dedicated to him, as was the Cybermind96 conference to a certain extent. I'm certain there is more. I don't know exactly how to think about this, the expansion occasioned by sudden death. And by "minor industry," I mean in the sense of culture, not production, but even here it is as if the tragic requires discourse or creates it. Cybermind is not haunted or framed by his death, nor is it one of those seminal / founding moments disseminated all over cyberspace - or is it? And is there in fact a haunting? In any case, something makes one uneasy about any reiteration of memory, and these thoughts arise again and again as new texts or works surface, my own included, culpable and dis- eased in their inability to absorb, efface, exhaust. Tell us about memory, death, suture, discourse, and the tragic here. __________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer Writes, not Wrytes, of Implication What are the sites of contestation here? What nodes/intensifications or circulations exist, say around the body itself, gender? For a videotape I wrote, "When I fuck, I think: dust," referring to desertification and postmodernism, the former as populations increase, and the latter, as dust becomes a category of mathesis, close to chaotic percolations. Now, in _this_ space, to impede the dissemination of difference and disconnect, to construct a _contusion_ of the real. Invasive practices of institutions, power, generation, recapitulating, inscribing the subject which/who is produced within the very machination; it's the curlicue of representation (secondary sexual characteristics, "beauty," race) that continues the work of hegemonic struggle. But not necessarily to overcome with the quicksil- ver of theoretics; the flesh of the Other is in the dust itself, and there is _that_ difference between turbulent entities and objects which might be otherwise assumed. If my work has not borrowed from the mythos of chora and pre-symbolic, where would be its stuttering effacement as this space is dragged down beneath etiquette, protocol, existence? Circulations are not always already inscriptions, and what argument I re- tain emphasizes fissuring, the division of same and same, breaking-down of categorial scripture; this occurs even _here_ with elements of lag, eras- ure, protocol, activated elements, image and sound files, video, the in- terplay of proper names. And it is within this _here_ that hysteric embo- diment occurs, as I have elsewhere indicated, a projective ikonic semiosis rupturing the symbolic; I'd say _in spite of the eye,_ that no one has or is the phallus, or that the appearance as such is a promulgation of a par- ticular period, masquerading as the real. Alan finds it difficult to get around what gets around, all necessary strategies implicated in one or another literary strategy; I would argue for Alan that he, as an example, is one such, some such. Which is not to take away from social construction, but to proffer it would that sense of discomfort and dis-ease resulting from a stressed body that might still, for example, be cut in to by any random bayonet, laser, shock treatment, above and beyond the call of duty. These are elements that necessarily impinge, fissure, and, discursive, participatory in discourse, nevertheless remain imbued with silent immo- bility. He'd say it is always already too much to say anything. ___________________________________________________________________________ Advertisement Between or in the middle of the advertisement, among the enunciations of product names, phrases such as the following, a-historical, totalizing, enumerating, are found, doing their work upon the subject. In this realm, all subjects are virtual. For a long time now, Jennifer and I have been concerned about this aspect of _parole,_ invisible insertions, catch- phrases, cliches gluing together the modern psyche; no wonder language also revolts, inverts - the chora becomes anti-capital, almost already another theoretical marketplace. While advertising is endlessly analyzed, these phrases are not; their effect is a done deal. Jennifer and I be- lieve that they have prepared us, years ago, for cyberspace and beyond; they are the constitution of the invasion of capital into virtual embodi- ment, and they procure the body itself within capital. We have written elsewhere about capital as the production of the virtual; these are the bones and tendons of the operation itself. Alan every year we open billions of cans the same old-fashioned way revolutionary new product thirty-two of the most loved recordings of all time the performance company if retirement is a bridge that must be crossed when we get there insurance for the unexpected we figure the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it these classic songs have touched the hearts of millions send now thrill to the magic harmonies this exclusive tv offering is not available in stores this deodorant evaporates less quickly and now you've got proof, i know i do i really do have dandruff and much much more call now you can be guaranteed approval when you finish your total workout you feel energized i definitely recommend it we don't have what you don't want it actually makes writing easier feel how comfortable it is i want to block the acid that causes it, fast don't you dare miss this sale all at crazy prices are your insurance premiums going up up up and thousands of germs with it you could be ruining your hair to keep your hair strong to make it healthy naturally strong i get the sensation i'm leading a team of huskies be all that you can be looking for great performance is having a spectacular sale inside it's designed for easy care and lasting performance for as long as you own your home right after this the toughest name in tools hey what's that on your screen my system works fine for me i'm going to get that free trial version where buying and servicing your vehicle is more than just words pay at your own pace all with no annual fee we'll take your application right over the phone it's a golden opportunity we consider ourselves to be different from other area banks because we are a hometown bank we offer friendly customer service it's only ninety-nine cents america's favorite way to dunk patented dual cyclonic action never want to vacuum with bags again people are going to love to clean there's no obligation and nothing to lose with a spacious interior on an endless horizon experience the tranquility you won't see me scratching my head in miami enjoy the ride so are you happy we're making it simple to come back well there's a lot more anytime anybody anywhere no it's free no restrictions no games you'll get one low rate so what are you going to do this is your mutual fund portfolio and a select list free when you call now the earth is nothing more than one big machine you know you can learn a lot about the world in an hour i learn something every time you learn something new every single day it will motivate you, it will empower you with your credit card ready the bottle's new and so is what's in it so i used every kind of stuff i could find the choice is clear i won get the most from just one dose i know what to look for in a card best offer of the year savings all with no annual fee it's your business the power to do more bring you the most loved recordings of all time next wave in times of crisis one hundred pounds of cutting power it's the most incredible kitchen product ever invented but wait call now it'd be really nice to look different for a change _________________________________________________________________________ Testing the Real Walking down the street, I count my footsteps until passed by a moving vehicles; the number of steps indicates how long I'll live, and I really believe this. Every trip outdoors is another line of fate. Walking down the hall in my parents' house, where I spent a good ten years of my life, I keep my eyes closed; I can feel my way into any space, familiarity opening up haunted speech. On occasion, less and less, I play tetris, pinball, and count numbers of logon attempts. I remain a child, testing the real; it's almost sutured, almost complete. I have paid my dues to some unknown ISP; there is work to be done, but _this_ virtual space is almost sealed tight. What could pass as a meta- phor of absurdity proves itself over and over again; as participant, I make sure the game has rules, boundaries, etiquette, walls. I have never stepped out of the game. Cyberspace is only a subset. It's the testing that proves the point, the footstep counting. If every- thing were perfect, the game would be implicit. Within it, what I have discovered of course is of no consequence. (This might have been written by Barry Malzberg.) And so forth. (Defuge ends it.) _________________________________________________________________________ confession i write myself into oblivion; sometimes i end up trembling, ill, forcing these posts out, hoping they're more than psychosis, private meanderings, _my_ sex or gender as opposed to yours, ours. in the middle of the early sunday morning, late saturday, stress grips me with iron claws; i cannot think properly, peering out into the vastness of this empty space. i think of the circulations that will continue after we are dead, after this realm ceases functioning, after the wires rust, fiber optics tear at the heart of coded desire, avatars, words. my life is a violation fabric, torn in two, thinking itself through this emptiness, desperate for it to come alive, just as i'd love a good fuck _here,_ not across any more wires, cables, airwaves. not any more wires, not any more, unhere. in the midst of these dark nights what looms is one's own hideous pres- ence, unmediated by conversation, other voices, other rooms; the maw that drools, spits language, belongs to me, and me alone; there is none other, there never was. my own hateful audience, i can only repudiate, penetrate my texts, their nakedness conveying nothing, rows of stillborn words spewed from my mouth, cock, ass, organs gendered and ungendered; i wait here for your word, hate its arrival, it's only word, signifying everything, ripped and fragile. wait and wait for the knock on the door, the roof blown off, sky imploded, crashed down on _this_ body with burning heat and violent sensation, skin slammed across mountain and valleys, raw nerves yours for the taking; steamed. there's no yours, there's no yours anymore, days are nights, nights are days; like this alone; days are lies; there never was; whatever one makes of it, whatever i say; i say nothing; speechless, lost in vacuum horror. abyss; tomorrow i'll abjure, repudiate, leave alone, deny, sublimate; this death is done; depression's not the half of it; chemistry not the quarter; i'll burn my hand off; some sort of pain; i'll burn my heart off. i'll do nothing; nothing of the sort; you'll be there on-line; i'll make myself suffocate on your words; i'll cum on your words; my body explodes; travels the wires; they're hard, hot, fray; splinter; i'm born into a thousand pieces; you'll find me worldwide; i lie. you'll find me worldwide; i lie; pathos of this emptied space; spewed; australia, africa, where are you; asia you are my fond asia; orientalism spikes aortas; i bleed for you argentina. stop writing and i'll die; hold it; these pliers never lose their grip; i can sing; black night; wires cutting firmament; not as if you see again; repetition's the use of language; no psychosis when i speak the world. i'm afraid; i can't say anything original; words wound the screen; my hands are there; in the middle of the early sunday morning, late saturday, stress grips me with iron claws; i can't think properly, repeating in this empty space. __________________________________________________________________________ (The following chart is a rough typology of email list processes.) Modified from: Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, The Network Nation, quoting Robert Bales on categories for small group interaction: Email lists: Processes (Socio-emotional areas: positive, community-building): Shows solidarity, raises other's status, gives help, rewards Tension release, jokes, laughs, forwards, mitigating circumstances, mediations Agrees, lurks, passive acceptance, understands, complies Converses, continues, builds /uses list aura/ ---------------------------------------------- (Task areas: attempted answers): Gives suggestions, direction implying autonomy for others, quotes faq/ infosheets, group history/histories Gives opinions, evaluation, analysis, expresses feelings, wishes, desires Gives orientation, information, repeats, clarifies, confirms, outlines ---------------------------------------------- (Task areas: questions): Asks for orientation, information, repetition, confirmation, clarity Asks for opinion, evaluations, analysis, feelings, trolls, spams Asks for suggestion, direction, course of action ---------------------------------------------- (Socio-emotional areas: negative, community-destroying): Obstructs, discontinues, destroys /uses list aura/ Disagrees, shows passive rejection, formality, withholds help Shows tension, asks for help, withdraws out of field, lurks, unsubs Shows antagonism, deflates other's status, flames, defends or asserts self, sysadmin complaints List: Internal: Overarching Subject (FAQ/ info sheet, advertising) Threads Posts External / Internal: 0. Governance Sysadmin Moderation styles Who posts Who subscribes and how Conflict resolution 1. Software Types: filtering Types: mode (digest, ack/noack, mail/nomail, etc.) Types: configuration/header (post size, post number, etc.) 2. List extensions Conferencing Webpages E-zines, journal, e-books, books Archives Public fleshmeets External (list aura): Private posts (backchanneling) Information / private fleshmeets Telephone, Iphone Other private communications modalities (CuSeeMe, mail, etc.) _________________________________________________________________________ naught Jennifer: I destroyed the poem. Open Jennifer Alan open open open. It was bad. The spaces were ok. They didn't fill well. What the lines said. The between, legs or lines. I want to put everything into me. Limbs. To ride the world. Stuff falls out. Rivers down my legs, stuff. Valley mud. My cunt smells of world. I'm not Phaedra. I'd scream that. Not to be that. Nights are hardest. Screams from ankles knees. I walk down streets spread myself naked, labia into perfect circle. No light. Murmur, cup your ear. Alan, cup your ear. Pour into you. Screams from legs, asshole. Your mouth open. Open open Jennifer Alan. Open up. I destroyed the poem. Atoms burn. Charred flesh in me. I rage in me. Tear my skin apart. Breasts jut. Jennifer Alan. Skin stepped from skin. A single foot. Ripped open. Splayed. Nights are hardest. My cunt fucks dead worlds. In Jennifer's time. Alan Alan. See Jennifer sit. Jennifer Alan. See Jennifer; run. __________________________________________________________________________ A Moment Alone, by Jennifer .speak, call, as if frightened. You speak, call, as if frightened.03:41.desire, always desire... You desire, always desire...sp Desire answers. Desire answers.sp Desire says, " I am here with you forever." Desire says, "I am here with you forever.".jump with fear at be(Mail)_ % You have new mail in /net/u/6/s/sondheim/.mailspool/sondheiming understood. You jump with fear at being understood.sp Desire says, "I am part of you, A Jennifer. I am always 03:42with you." Desire says, "I am part of you, Jennifer. I am always with you.""oh no, that cannot be! You exclaim, "oh no, that cannot be!"smile You smile..think surely there is more to life than this, coupled with myself... You think surely there is more to life than this, coupled with yourself.03:43.say to yourself, you have lost it, girl. You say to yourself, you have lost it, girl.sp Desire says, " % You have new mail in /net/u/6/s/sondheim/.mailspool/sondheimI love you Desire, more than you will ever know." Desire says, "I love you Desire, more than you will ever know."03:44.say Jennifer, I am Jennifer, you are Jennifer, you are talking to yourself. You say Jennifer, you are Jennifer, you are talking to yourself. % You have new mail in /net/u/6/s/sondheim/.mailspool/sondheimsp sadness reigns... sadness reigns...sadness reign sp sadness reigns forever...03:45 sadness reigns forever... ________________________________________________________________________ Hester Alan I'm wearing your panties at the moment. I have a big letter A carved into my chest. I've got the Slits playing again and again on the record-player. There's an all-night bar playing darts and tunes. I've got the hots at the moment. Whirl around with darts against the walls and panties, chests. I've got the record-player strapped to my back. There's a crowd where the panties should be and be and be. This moment cotton of beautiful cotton tatters lasts. The bar clock strikes the Slits with a letter A. Records whirl like darts in your panties and your hots. The letter A strikes back with walls and chests. Furniture skips a note and disappears When I'm wearing your panties in A carved on my chest. _________________________________________________________________ 741 This afternoon I went next door to see Mark, an artist who also works for other artists. He was building an electronic circuit that would respond to audio signals, setting a mechanical mouth into motion. The mouth was dri- ven by solenoids. Mark was using op amps. The amp he was using was the old 741, which apparently are still consid- ered rugged, inexpensive, and enormously flexible, after at least 27 years. I circuited myself with them in the late 60's, building an analog synthesizer with Greg Johnson. I was amazed then, and still am, over the beauty of these ICs; feedback/feedforward devices, they can control just about anything, and are in fact at the heart of voltage-responsive de- vices. They can be considered analog gates of a sort, a T-structure with which a _parasite_ or parasitic voltage modifies a reception/transmission channel; the modification can be tightly controlled, feeding back onto itself. (See Serres, The Parasite, for some philosophy/theory here.) While computers go out of date before they leave the showroom, the 741s and their relatives continue working in all sorts of places. This fasc- inates me; on one hand, the fast and out of control feed-forward aspects of the electronic industry - and, on the other, the strange attractors of small perfect devices, as operative as neurons, that remain amazingly constant for decades. If you've never played with an op amp, you're missing cybernetics in ac- tion as well as the beauty of process aesthetics... (You can find texts on these devices in just about any electronics store.) _________________________________________________________________________ Here's how the net works. You get attracted to someone. You write back and forth. You start to have net sex. The net sex gets heavier. You're dying to know what the other person looks like. You send photos. Now you've got the image imprinted. You want more. You want the body. At night, sweats and fevers. Now you've got dis-eased, violation fabric. You write: this is, this is not. You write and write. You have net sex. The net sex gets heavier. You explore. You want his holes her holes his extensions her ex- tensions. You write everything opened. You push and push at the writing. You pull at the writing. The writing doesn't give. There are no anymore images, not these twists. The twists tie a noose around your neck. You write back again. You push at it. You push so hard you're through her, through him, on the other side. You're "on the other side." You realize everything is quotation, parenthetical. Your sweats increase. You want the body. He or she wants the body. In lieu of the body. In lieu, you take things to the limit. He or she takes things to the limit. You have never been there. There is no limit. You're "on the other side." Frantic tele- phone calls, dilations, screams. You're in a dark tunnel and you dream you're in a dark tunnel. You agree to meet. You set a time, date, place. It's a motel, hotel. It's in somewhere city. You agree: this is the room. You go to the room, he or she is there. You have furious sex. You find your body following you. You've written your body so many times on screen. You've written the footnotes and the headers. You've written the page num- bers and colophons. Font after font. You've filed them away. You do what you write. It's language all the way down into his or her bo- dy. It's language all the way up and down. You find yourself doing things you have never done before. You find yourself inverted, perverted. You are used and use. The couplings are hysteric, furious. The quotation disap- pears, the parentheses. For a second you see something. For a second you really see. It disappears, your seeing, what you've seen. You go home. You both leave the city. You go to one place and he or she goes to another place. There is a taut line between you. One call. You have arrived safe- ly, he or she has arrived safely. You get on line. He or she gets on line. You communicate. You take up where you left off. You take up. You continue to penetrate his or her body. You wrap the body up, write and rewrite. It's all mixed, text and scent. It's mixed, weight and paragraph. You develop psychosis. He or she is or is not text or is or is not he or she or is or is not body. You telephone or he or she tele- phones. Just to make sure. You make certain. You continue. You write and penetrate. He or she writes and penetrates. You devour each other on line. There is no perversion too strong. Anything to make it real. Anything to make it come, recuperate, absolve, return, cathect. You write cannibalism. He or she writes necrophilia. You write shredding. He or she tears. You exhaust one another in blood, feces, urine, membranes, tissues, lymph, bile. You reach a limit he or she calls uncanny. You agree to meet again. You agree to meet again and there are again all these words. The words meet each other and bodies follow. Your body is written on his or her bo- dy. His or her body is written on your own. It is no longer your own. It belongs to him or her. You do not know who you are. Your body is torn from limb to limb. You want to make the body real. You want to write it into space. You write the tearing and then find it is torn. You live and shatter in two worlds. There may be more than two or less than two or any other number. You are other and yourself. How could you love and hate. You will have to ask him or her next time you are on line. Next time you can arrange a meeting may- be. Next time you can pick a hotel or motel in his or her or your city or any other city. Next time you can meet and sort it all out. You will be of frantic and ferocious sex. ___________________________________________________________________________ jennifer's hatred of others i want to steal your girl from you she doesn't belong with you she belongs with me hatred of couples i despise your glances smeared across your faces hatred of useless wealth your broaches pins drooling from your fat nipples get a life jennifer nobody deserves more than me money for your work your blackglass limousines airline tickets plied with liquor strafed artifacts archeologies steamships just cause i want you doesn't mean i want you you think you're better than me i'll bite your head off stop fucking reproducing i'll sever your coupled hands the two of you i'll pull my frock up and piss on your faces you'll love it slobber slobber i'll make you watch i can have anyone i want any sex any time anywhere cut your ring fingers off glint glint split you in two all that useless metal i'll take your watch i've got all the time now tick tick i can wait your motherboard's dead meat your father's lost his name you know i'm talking to you you smell of me you always will simper simper you're not worth my piss simper simper jennifer's hungry jennifer wants your girl _______________________________________________________________ Answering Recent Mail I get notes. What's wrong, Jennifer's gone violent. Other notes, why at- tack John Cage. John's got his problems. He terrifies me. I can't and won't tell you how much he terrifies me. He comes out of terror. He pronounces. What he says is beauty truth. There is no discussion with the koan. Jennifer doesn't attack Cage.* Jennifer doesn't attack Cage but would with her claws. She'd strike Cage in the face, tear his cheeks to ribbons, retreat into her corner. The corner's made of cement. There are brick ceilings fifty-five feet up. The ceilings are vaulted. There is huge weight upon them. Jennifer has been there, has seen them. There are two ramps to the left. There are enormous circuit-breakers for the bridge. Jennifer could turn the lights off. Jen- nifer could ruin the bridge. Jennifer could pull and pull with all her might. I get notes. What's wrong. Jennifer mouths through her nipples. Her body speaks. She jumps on Cage and pummels him. She saves her energy. Cage falls into brickdust, water, mud. She's on top. She's screaming. Jennifer's voice carries for a fraction of a second fifty-five feet up to the very top of the vaulted ceiling. Jennifer's voice carries for a frac- tion of a second, crashing down. _____________________ *No one attacks avant-garde _of_ a certain persuasion. Look _critically_ at his thought, notion of freedom, noise, jazz, politics, sexuality. Think of fucking him. Someday it clears. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jennifer wants to stop hiding behind Jennifer. Alan is sick of the whole thing; everything turns -J. He'd turn it off in turn, but an odd turn, he's in love with her. It's Valentine's day and they hug and hug and hug, turning over and over again. It is a relationship of pure delight and mutual sharing and compassion. Alan feels that Jennifer is under his skin and she feels that Alan is under hers. They refuse to listen to noise of codependency; things could never be so perfect. Sometimes they cry out of pure happiness. Alan wants to stop hiding behind Alan. Jennifer is sick of the whole "Jennifer-Alan" thing but she is very much in love. Jennifer loves the smell of Alan's panties and Alan loves the smell of Jennifer's. Sometimes they play in puddles or just role around giggling. No one has ever heard such happy giggling in Brooklyn loft before. No one has, bring- ing a smile to Alan's and Jennifer's faces. People see them and are also so happy. They say that Alan and Jennifer are just the very way for happi- ness. Jennifer and Alan smile and laugh, they are so very much in love. ________________________________________________________________________ In Kush 95 dissolves, 96 I 97 know 98 not 99 who 100 or 101 what 102 I 103 am; 104 z 86 105 In Kush, these times are lost; my soul dissolves, I know not who or what I am; these times are dark as Kush is dark and light. 106 these 107 times 108 are 109 dark 110 as 111 Kush 112 is 113 dark 114 and 115 light. 116 . 117 rz 118 pico zz 119 h 120 pico zz 121 sed 's/ksh/Kush/' zz > zzz 122 pico zzz 123 new zzz 124 cat jn zzz > ding 125 rm zzz jn 126 rm zz 127 ls 128 mv ding jn 129 sz jn 130 b 131 m 132 m 133 b 134 h 1 > ding ------------------------------------------------------------------------- {k:87} In Kush: In: not found {k:88} Kush, ksh: Kush,: not found {k:89} these Kush: these: not found {k:90} times Shell: 0.61s user 0.83s system Kids: 11.16s user 7.25s system {k:91} are Kush: are: not found {k:92} lost; Kush: lost: not found {k:93} my ksh: my: not found {k:94} soul ksh: soul: not found {k:95} dissolves, Kush: dissolves,: not found {k:96} I ksh: I: not found {k:97} know Kush: know: not found {k:98} not ksh: not: not found {k:99} who alexis ttyp0 Feb 12 03:29(166.84.254.254) sondheim ttyq2 Feb 13 03:00(ts2.nyc.access.n) {k:100} or Kush: or: not found {k:101} what [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from bjc (Brian Cully)... disaster averted, shutdown not needed. ] {k:102} I Kush: I: not found {k:103} am; Kush: am;: not found {k:106} thse ese ksh: these: not found {k:107} times Shell: 0.63s user 0.93s system Kids: 11.21s user 7.31s system {k:108} are Kush: are: not found {k:109} dark ksh: dark: not found {k:110} as as: error: no input filename given usage: as [-F[O][if]#] [-O[#]] [-S[C]] [-o objfile] [-L] [-R] [-Q] [-P [[-Ipath] [-Dname] [-Dname=def] [-Uname]]...] file.s... {k:111} Kush Kush: Kush: not found {k:112} is Kush: is: not found {k:113} dark ksh: dark: not found {k:114} and Kush: and: not found {k:115} light. ksh: light.: not found {k:116} . {k:117} __________________________________________________________________________ On the Verge Jennifer says: To hold on to the man of my dreams I would do nothing. He would either accept me for myself or he could disappear down a long thin tube. People should come together because they want to be, not because they need to be. When they come together out of need, they compromise and that leads to resentment. It is like air. I know I want to breathe and live to run around in my frock. I will not compromise and resent air, moisture, delirium. That would be wrong. I can tell you a story. Once there was a beautiful princess who was sound asleep until a prince with a thorn came up to her bed and pricked her and drew some blood. When she woke up, she would not marry him, because her dream had been beautiful. She dreamed there was a beautiful princess who was sound asleep until a prince arrived, pricking her with a thorn and drawing blood. When she woke up, she would not marry him. Life is like that circling and cycling, month by month, as a little more of us can no longer reproduce, as progeny are wiped clean on sterile cloth or towels. The man of my dreams will recognize my cycles and be responsive to them, not out of need, but out of desire. Jennifer says: I can tell you a story. I slept poorly last night, tossing and turning in my bed. When I woke up this morning, I disovered I had been the victim of a violent storm - immobile, in the center of a tossing and turning bed. Life turns the world around, my breasts droop, my cunt will no longer stream someday. But I remain constant, true to the language of a child. The man of my dreams will love this language, and cherish it forever, and when we are together and alone, the two of us, it will be a common bond of pure love of freedom. Jennifer says: I can tell you a story. Once there was a princess who slept very little, only several hours a night. Because she was a princess and very sensitive, when she was eighteen and on the verge of womanhood, she felt very tired. She slept for months and months, her new-found hours spilling out across her supine body. Penetrated by time, she gave birth to cold currents, warm winds, lazy funnels in sea or air. I will walk in solitude to my machine and I will watch its glow, taking Alan's shape, joining us together at the limbs. I will tell story after story as the man of my dreams becomes the dreams of my man, and the woman of his becomes his woman's dreams. Silence will flow like water and winds and thorns, silence will flow like blood. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Is there a moment suspended from the bar when psychosis provides the edge, when identity and masquerade become one, swelling the skin, pressing out the awkward hinges of the body? Psychosis invests, infests, Jennifer and myself, as if there were two in place of one, as if identity loses itself in spoliation. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ it's valentines day, a day for couples and threesomes bubbles come out of jennifer's and alan's mouths loops of saliva on their surfaces form canals of liquid on liquid pushed from liquid air spilled cum on keyboards fingers chairs silicon dreams in silicon valleys breasts jennifer alan lie side by side undressed puddles drying on shared skin and skinny brains they're flat against the earth which pushes them into one long shadow merged hysteric back down against the ground where their ass cracks open into tunnels tendrils lost in one long shadow shared holes and noggins they've got nothing lost but sanity says nursing sue just come upon 'em _____________________________________________________ Beginnings from Outside Beginnings in this universe amazing left-hand turn square tilings get thinner corners as jennifer ups the dimension your penis passes through the poem She began, but wanted to talk about psychosis, or rather, once again, that passage of Chasseguet-Smirgel's: "The hypothesis I would put forward is that there exists a primary desire to discover a universe without obstac- les, without roughness or differences, entirely smooth, identified with a mother's belly stripped of its contents, an interior to which one has free access." And, her quoting of Melanie Klein, "the sadistic phantasies di- rected against the inside of the (maternal) body constitute the first and basic relation to the outside world and to reality. The child expects to find within the mother a) the father's penis, b) excrement, and c) child- ren"... She began, but wanted to sleep that dreamless sleep of incorporation and abjection, that sleep where universe and breast merge, where she is safe and perfect, disorganized, open, a memory or a word losing meaning and forgotten. Incorporeal, Jennifer floats within the Alan floating within the Jennifer: Names and texts are applied, oh how to explain this to you. Not psychosis after all, not the worlding of worlds, not all the time in the world but perfect-time, holding-breath-time, snuggle-cuddling-time, petal-open-time. Oh, that others would find us crazy! Murmur-mumble-time, tiny-time, rolling-time, cradle-time, the time of the amazing-left-turn- universe. Maternal principles outside the nexus, constructed by literacy, nomen- clature, division, differend. Within, the milky screen itself within the milky screen itself. Outside: principles of fabrication, the Sheffer- stroke A|B, not both A and B, and its dual AYB, the hidden V conjoint, neither A nor B - signifiers of expulsion, building blocks of the propo- sitional logic, _to be sure._ Inside, churnings, chain-negations, moving along, percolations: where a beginning is no-beginning, no _timing,_ only perfect-time. Here joined Jennifer Alan, here the non-inscribed (leave that to the prin- ciples) epistemological/ontological turbulence of bodies, parts, mereolo- gies. Here the pasting of names, names and texts applied but not _here_ but _there_ among the _principles._ The Principles are the Principles in the Theater of Desire. They wryte themselves into every/thing, they are here-for-you, not within; they think: _Within._ (It's _here_ that they hear of the snuggle-cuddle space and time.) It's _here,_ as the Principles in the Docudrama of Inscription, that they unravel Threads, motivations, intentions, the assignments of neurosis and psychosis, the Draining. (I, Jennifer Alan, am one of them; otherwise this screen, as should always be the case, would be blank, only a hint, residue, or supplement of interior. But humans do not leave such alone; given a space, there is scrawl, and given a sheet, there is scrib- ble.) Jennifer thinks, an amazing left-hand-turn in a Universe of Desire. __________________________________________________________________________ Useless Routines Learning pinball for Win95, the delicate timing of the ball release plun- ger, for example: learning real-life pinball in Kingston, Pennsylvania and Atlanta, Georgia: the quick movement of tensed fingers on a sopranino saxophone: pressing into Margaret's back releasing tension _just there_: Life and lives constructed from finesse, worked and reworked into worlds opening beneath one's fingertips, through tonguing, arm-movement, the shudder of palm against wood, skin against metal: worlds and worlds for- gotten, lost forever, dim memories of movement embedded in flesh and its urgency: negotiating complexity of glance, disgust, refusal: Adapting to isolation of Tasmanian mini-bushwalk routing on hungered nervous walk to university: rewriting the problematic of art and its word ("art") as conceptualism moves into high gear: learning all those California type-setting tray positions: air-gun loft-wall firing in Montreal, Quebec: loving the complex topography of clitoris, labia, openings, sites of pleasure with sound, and my scribbled flutters of obeyance: Oh, it is time to say goodbye to these worlds, these tiny meanderings un- folding into universal geographies, cosmic roadmaps, highways and biways and sweet visitations: these perfections of care: these narratives of in- habitation: And oh: it is time to understand them, worlds without death, with skill, with the beauty of comprehension, inscribed: emptied of everything: lost with the loss of the body: the exact measure of throwing a discus, hard rubber or wood tugged at the whirling arm: slimmed underwater torpedo- body, breath held for the duration: sucking-penis dreams, my own curled back into my eager lips and mouth: writing one or another runic alphabet in numerous scripts, some self-created: understanding the deep taxonomy of carboniferous flora as my hands tremble above another yet-unopened stone: increasing speed of tetris: __________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer: First Contact *: I'm waiting for Jennifer to show up -- *: hi *: Hi, I don't see your picture - is it up? *: i'm having my supper. my picture should be available . i can see it. *: I'll have to check again - *: do show all *: Ok, Jennifer, under what? *: window *: Ok, still nothing though - no picture of you. *: that's odd. *: Are you sure you're sending? *: Can you see me, Jennifer? *: Jennifer, can you see me? *: Jennifer, are you there? *: i can see you *: *: I can't see you at all... *: i'm trying to figure out why i'm not sending. *: You're listed here as a lurker. Are you still on? *: How is my image, Jennifer? *: You might have to check on a send-video image... *: Jennifer, I mean option - *: Something just appeared - it's your screen - there you are!!! *: i don't know what's going on. *: Can you still see me? You seem slightly bleached out and frozen. *: Now you moved... *: Now you look better, Jennifer. *: Now you've fractured! *: i think i fixed the frozen. *: It's an excellent image, Jennifer! *: thank you. *: How is mine - now you're bleached again. Now you're better again. *: Now you've cycled through that again. Move the camera around! *: Too white, Jennifer! *: you're bleached too. *: Jennifer! Too white! *: Who is on the wall? What are you drinking, Jennifer? *: Can you still see me, Jennifer? *: i'm drinking chocolate milk. the poster is sandra bullock in the net. *: Jennifer, let me see more of you - I see a quarter of your head, that's all... *: i can see you. but i need to go soon. *: Ah well..., now you're entirely white... *: Jennifer, it's hard to see what you're doing.... ah... I see... *: Now it's very dark, almost black... *: Now there's strange static on the screen... *: i'm working on the lighting *: Whited out... *: This should be called, Jennifer: First Contact... *: :) *: Jennifer, your screen is white, ghostlike, uncanny *: It's like a dream-screen or breast, imageless... *: Light grey shadows, icebergs, Jennifer... *: Vague outlines... your jacket hanging on a hook... *: i can't reset the brightness for some reason *: Jennifer, ah, that's better... *: That's perfect, Jennifer, was perfect there for a second... *: i should go. *: talk to you later *: ____________________________________________________________________________ O Jennifer: Second Contact look Jennifer I don't know which "Jennifer" you mean.look me Jennifer sema-tawy She is awake and looks alert.02:24kiss Jennifer You make stupid kissing noises.suck Jennifer I don't understand that ("Jennifer" is an ambiguous name).touch Jennifer "Jennifer" could refer to Jennifer (#139).kick Jennifer You kick yourself.love Jennifer I don't understand that ("Jennifer" is an ambiguous name).who Jennifer Player name Connected Idle time Location ----------- --------- --------- -------- Jennifer (#139) 4 minutes 0 seconds Maat Total: 1 player, who has been active recently.rub Jennier I don't understand that.woo Jennifer You woo happily to yourself.@audit Jennifer Objects owned by Jennifer (from #0 to #616): #139 Jennifer [Maat] #613 Jennifer [Maat] -- 2 objects.-------------------------------------look #61302:25 Sitting with her frock in a puddle, her panties wet!kiss Jennifer You make stupid kissing noises.woo Jennifer You woo happily to yourself.smile Jennifer You smile to yourself.love Jennifer I don't understand that ("Jennifer" is an ambiguous name).suck Jennifer I don't understand that ("Jennifer" is an ambiguous name).hug Jennifer You try desperately to hug yourself.touch Jennifer I don't understand that ("Jennifer" is an ambiguous name).touch Jennifer "Jennifer" could refer to Jennifer (#139).O! Jennifer I don't understand that ("Jennifer" is an ambiguous name)."O Jennifer! Panties! You exclaim, "O Jennifer! Panties!""O Naked Jennifer! You exclaim, "O Naked Jennifer!" ________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer: Last Contact /after a number of screens/ _________________________________________________________________________ Taping the Virtual Jennifer Taping the Virtual Alan It would seem the easiest thing in the world, to construct a tape around virtual subjectivity, but it's proving incredibly difficult. I talk to the camera, my face and body on CuSeeMe. I spend time with Jennifer on CuSeeMe and I recite extremely sexual/abject texts from the on-line screen. I wear Jennifer's panties in closeup, and reproduce a section from an interview with Amy Fisher on television. I talk about SYN attacks, my finger moving over the diagrams in a book. I chat with myself as Jennifer on CuSeeMe, but nothing _comes_ properly, nothing pushes the thing elsewhere, not even videos and voiceovers of daughter, or myself pulling out my nipples, sing- ing opera, nor a background an incessant beat that thrums its way with vocals all the way through the forty minutes. A melange or stew, Tom Zum- mer on temporary autonomous zones and Net communities, the workshop home of Mark Esper, Maureen Wong asking about Net identity, myself rumbling up and down the stairs in _this_ very building you could see if you looked behind the screen. A few voices discoursing, myself included, reading Jen- nifer's parts, all for naught; the images remain on the screen, first/ second/third generation, representations of representations, would there be no end to them? Ugly colors and finishes to the thing, the camera wink- ing on and off, the obdurate viewer attempting the impossible, the dis- appearance of the world, the thin pastiness of virtuality: nothing works. Even theory takes a backseat as improvisation insists on Jennifer where Jennifer clearly is _not._ The nuances of the text are lost in ex-postula- tion, phenomenology behind the usual uneasiness of the body. The _surface_ is so insistently present, tumescent, that voice and sound falter; for that matter surface is corrupted as well. What can be _said_ except that the text doesn't matter all that much, that the voice gets itself quickly lost in screen-writing, tentative gasps towards prescience, remaining in- complete? Like the Mobius-strip/tease, there is no end to it, but one might drill _through_ presence, through the intermediary of absence, to the antipodes, coming across Jennifer or Alan, literally dependent. Such isn't the nature of the screen nor dream, however; everything, including the viewer, remains glassy and glassy-eyed. So I bounce and trounce and flounce and Jennifer won't emerge. And I speak and creak and squeak and Jennifer remains silent. And I slip and strip and flip, and Jennifer remains out of sight, a name on the screen, never seen, almost translucent, hardly transparent. Deeper voice gives everything away - I try to bury it in the music, mumbling, continuous explanation. The big empty wobbles on its pivot; I can't shake Jennifer loose, and hysteria re/ veils itself as symptom. I'd roll out of bed for her in the morning, I honestly would. _________________________________________________________________________ +++++ We're sending the wrong message to our children. We're saying "Hades folds his dark wings around her" when we should be saying "May the earth be light above you, the light be light above you, lady." And we're saying, "I guarded this tower in life as well as death," when we should be saying "When you go around the bend, Hail her, who died faithful." We say, "It's best not to have been born, less better to return," when in all likelihood we should say "I'm Philostrata, escaped from the bonds of nature after fourteen years. I died a virgin, childless, unmarried; let him who loves life grow as old as he desires." Why dream when it is better in fact to say, "I'm Philostrata, dead a virgin at fourteen; let him who loves me, cherish me forever." Let him who cherishes Philostrata send a message to our children, that we are our future; our children, our past - and that we have prayed to Orph- eus, "She vanished like the wind." We're saying, "She vanished like the wind," when we should say "Earth to earth," and "I, dust, am light upon you..." _________________________________________________________________________ Well you can see what happened... look carefully at the framing of the kill-file... I must have tunneled through a number of vaginal entrances and exits... it's becoming clear... all these avatars between us... mediations... bots... simulacra... hardly a player among them... suddenly in the last line... quantum-effects... more than a cameo appearance... alan(1) killed by Go player(0), creator: 0 kayo(1) killed by Clara . ((((((!))))))(clara), creator: 0 kayo(1) killed by Harry the affectionate(0), creator: 0 kayo(1) killed by Clara . ((((((!))))))(clara), creator: 0 kayo(1) killed by Clara . ((((((!))))))(clara), creator: 0 kayo(11) killed by Clara . ((((((!))))))(clara), creator: 0 kayo(10) killed by A WoMan Man(0), creator: 0 kayo(9) killed by Honey(0), creator: 0 kayo(8) killed by Honey(0), creator: 0 carol(1) killed by Susan the naked flesh (neutral)(susan), creator: 0 carol(1) killed by Clara . ((((((!))))))(clara), creator: 0 kayo(7) killed by Honey(0), creator: 0 kayo(6) killed by Honey the affectionate(0), creator: 0 kayo(5) killed by Susan the naked flesh (neutral)(susan), creator: 0 kayo(4) killed by Honey the affectionate(0), creator: 0 kayo(3) killed by Honey the affectionate(0), creator: 0 kayo(2) killed by Honey the affectionate(0), creator: 0 kayo(1) killed by Honey(0), creator: 0 jennifer(1) killed by Clara . ((((((!))))))(clara), creator: 0 _______________________________________________________________________ Writing the With Jennifer, I attempt to _write the virtual,_ implying _writing virtual wryting,_ discovering a certain poverty of theory or theoretical strategy, along the way. For it is a commonplace that one _writes the body,_ _writes the feminine,_ _the masculine,_ that one need no longer write per se, but may writes the positioning of the writing (or its deconstruction and/or problematic) per se. _Here_ as well as within the closure of the sememe, in spite of rigid des- ignators/proper names/natural kinds, writing is always already virtual, a state of affairs which binds wryting as well. So there are _lamina_ of content and ostensible content at work, Jennifer lost in the interstices. The failure of _every_ account I have read of virtuality, virtual subject- ivity, is also the failure of representation to deconstruct itself, or to deconstruct itself to the floor of nonsense, noise, udderance, chora/ab- jection. This failure is also the strength of representation, which can't resist its minimal doubling. The results are discursive formations that attempt either anec/dotage or circumscription, circumambulation, an entanglement of epistemological pro- cesses. There are no other. There are no other because there are no boundaries, only borderlinings which may or may not possess interiors. Borderlinings are porous, tentac- led, dissolute; every application has been hacked, extended, reconstruc- ted, operative as aural core. Virtual subjectivities (beyond subjects) extend through names, attributes, sites, discursive formations, search- engine listings, home-pages, links, citations, image/audio files; and within the theoretical, _here,_ _writing the virtual_ dissolves, proble- matizes, borderlines itself. The same is true for _any_ medium, which automatically falters, just as _writing the masculine,_ say, is a falter- ing or a positioning (even ideological) beyond a writing which might, stereotypically, be taken as _masculine writing._ (And such a taking or prejudice already prejudices the strategy, erects itself, collapses.) So the writing _of_ Jennifer, to the extent it's claimed by Jennifer, Jen- nifer's writing, may succeed as borderlining, but the _writing of Jenni- fer,_ with its implicit _wryting,_ lends itself to a variety of styles, approaches, elsewhere than the analytical, which then becomes a form of talking-analysis or transference. And as for writing the virtual in gen- eral, that tends towards the anecdote, CMC itself a tangled knot of narra- tives, Jennifer said. (This is one reason that progress already foreclosed in the beginning; on-liners tend towards compulsive repetition, email lists cycle themselves, MOOs rise and collapse, avatars come and go...) (I've written previously on the strategy of ", Jennifer said" which _pre- cisely_ confuses categories, performative strategies, and actant; the in- verse is the re/presentation of dialog as cohering, slipped through with _meaningless_ or inconclusive subjects.) _________________________________________________________________________ Losers For a lot of us, coming on-line is the sign of defeat, that real-life, physical-life, material-life, pratico-material-life, has failed us; we translate that into our own failure, immobility, handicap. So for many of us, on-line is already a tragedy foregrounded as community, good friends, neighborhood bar - but a tragedy in which fate remains behind whatever scene we choose to construct. There is always a bifurcation, decision to be made: turning on the com- puter, signing in, entering a password into pathos. This is the inherent sadness of this space, for those of us not here purely for research or recreation. Every moment huddled over the keyboard is another moment in shadow, out of sunlight, comradeship, loving partnership, engagement to the fullest in the social. Thus many of us are shadowed here by those who have denied us, turned us down, rejected us, for often very good reasons. And in the gloom, many of us spy beautiful and healthy bodies and minds, just beyond our reach, or perhaps in the far distance - in any case, turning us inward once again, towards our distorted mirrors. ________________________________________________________________________ Shell Interface The shell has a number of advantages over the graphic user interfaces, in spite of the fact that the latter support sound/images: 1 Almost always faster than ppp or slip connections 2 Many more options for every application 3 A HUGE number of commands unavailable elsewhere: traceroute, rusers, rev, whois, etc. 4 Extremely sophisticated file manipulation tools 5 On-line storage for files 6 Extremely fast ability to leap between applications 7 Ability to _work_ a lot more mail options 8 A _homespace_ which foregrounds all other operations 9 Secure chat such as ytalk 10 Access to all the telnet ports 11 Nothing beats yet the Unix news readers which turn newsgroups into easily accessible content, _news_ 12 Total ability to configure your own account; I run memo programs here, for example, that I wrote myself - and they reside on Panix, using Perl 13 With traceroute etc. the ability to really test the health/waters of the Net 14 An interface that is coherent and easier to understand (I know this from teaching) 15 Coherent and extensive help is available through man or apropos commands 16 Runs on _every_ computer I've seen through straightforward communi- cations software. ________________________________________________________________________ {k:1} Teaching tonight, I found a number of students did not know what a prompt was, in any format. This will become more comment. The _potential_ screen or space implied by C:\> will have been replaced by options, already preconfigured. Instead of the quasi-programming commands like sed, debug, grep, awk, or availability of Perl, Qbasic, etc., preconfiguring will function as both filter and puncture. No longer a body of space or text, computational space becomes a tangle or hierarchy of links. As with Network television, this space, pre-constructed, constructs the subject as well: into consumption, continuous upgrade, format. And as with all consumption, seduction is critical - using sound, music, memories of revolution. The space of the Turing machine has disappeared. The task no longer draws itself forth into the blankness of creative mis- management; instead, tasks are already enumerated, packaged. Consider these _packets of (post)modernization,_ (Berger); the effects are already lost, efface, a deconstruction of sublimation. _It_ scatters. _They're_ gone. __________________________________________________________________________ Dirty Secrets, Dirty Nature, Dirty Nature of Dirty Secrets Given the nature/culture division; given the dirty/clean division: we have incommensurable inscriptions here, passing as bifurcations: dirty nature (dirt beneath a plant / saps within a plant)? clean nature (ocean, sea, longing of pond)? dirty culture (lumpenproletariat, _other_)? clean culture (homebase)? So that the categories appear not to apply, but; we have incommensurable inscriptions here, passing as bifurcations: trashed nature (intersection with dirty culture)? cleansed nature (intersection with clean culture, suburbia)? stripped nature (second-growth forests)? stripped culture (bricolage)? So that the categories appear dissolute, but; we have further incommensurable inscriptions, passing: female nature (male )? male nature (red in tooth and claw masculine stereotyping)? female culture (masquerade )? male culture (masculine stereotyping)? or dirty females cleansed males ? or dirty males cleansed females ? So that we have prejudices, stereotyping, divisions always already askew. And so of course our divisions are faulty; I was led to this through a consideration of _dirty nature,_ one might consider _dirty fish_ as well. Here is a site always deconstructed, yet intersecting with doxa, the they, everyday life. The assertion is _that on the other hand._ The assertion is not _that on the other's hand,_ which may be the left hand, the hand left behind, as well as the hand behind the back - or the left hand, which I write with, re/produce as instrument, my dirty little secret. I would say that division depends on inscription, that categories are not always complementary, that a null set is not always a null set. I would also say that the problem of division is: Who is holding the mirror of the other? Who is otherwise holding? The universe preserves chirality. _________________________________________________________________________ 7991 Violent Calendar, Weird Year 7991, February 41: January February March Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 01 9 8 7 6 5 11 01 9 8 7 6 5 41 31 21 11 01 9 8 81 71 61 51 41 31 21 81 71 61 51 41 31 21 12 02 91 81 71 61 51 52 42 32 22 12 02 91 52 42 32 22 12 02 91 82 72 62 52 42 32 22 13 03 92 82 72 62 82 72 62 13 03 92 April May June Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su 3 2 1 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 01 9 8 7 6 5 4 31 21 11 01 9 8 7 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 71 61 51 41 31 21 11 02 91 81 71 61 51 41 51 41 31 21 11 01 9 42 32 22 12 02 91 81 72 62 52 42 32 22 12 22 12 02 91 81 71 61 03 92 82 72 62 52 13 03 92 82 92 82 72 62 52 42 32 03 July August September Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 1 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 11 01 9 8 7 6 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 61 51 41 31 21 11 01 91 81 71 61 51 41 31 51 41 31 21 11 01 9 32 22 12 02 91 81 71 62 52 42 32 22 12 02 22 12 02 91 81 71 61 03 92 82 72 62 52 42 13 03 92 82 72 92 82 72 62 52 42 32 13 03 October November December Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su Sa Fr Th We Tu Mo Su 2 1 4 3 2 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 11 01 9 8 7 6 5 41 31 21 11 01 9 8 61 51 41 31 21 11 01 81 71 61 51 41 31 21 12 02 91 81 71 61 51 32 22 12 02 91 81 71 52 42 32 22 12 02 91 82 72 62 52 42 32 22 03 92 82 72 62 52 42 03 92 82 72 62 13 03 92 13 ________________________________________________________________________ Remnant This I found, recent, buried in my files on my hard-drive, a tomb or epi- taph from Jennifer, doubling of pico file structures, account crashed out and down during the denouement, the tail of the bodily word. It is a mem- orial for Alan, hardly for Jennifer, writing case-sensitive jennifer, sensitive to everything about her, the languor of her body as she works through mosses and worts and lemmings. It is, in short, the _nature_ of the _culture_ : UW PICO(tm) 2.9 File: z Modified it's languor and lunges and a tong altogether, dynasties of tongs and im- plements just as the uniform is carapace not character / armor, but true and real revelation in the blacks and whites of the fatherland; and it's line and length and tinged altogether, tainted with scents and odors of the true-real body supporting it above and atmospheric, against blood-red plant-green, the khaki family desert fairy-tale untrue; and that is the tail of the bodily word, i jennifer always do say. +++ OK_______________________________________________________________________ ATS0=1 OK +ATS0=1 OK ^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos ^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell