Image Run The upper millimeter of the ocean as well as the upper millimeter of Sono- ran desert soil carries unicellular life and organic processes necessary for the survive of the biome. But oil slicks are highly disruptive of the former, and human footprints destroy the latter. One should always stay on the trails, which are clearly marked. Nevertheless, jet skies and off-road vehicles create their own traces of exhaust and tire ruts - not to mention noise, scribbling their way across wilderness remnants. From above, atmos- pheric poisons, ranging from ozone depletion to industrial gases, trans- form saguaro and pond growth; life begins its long cycling into still-born and somnolent realms. Trucks carry the last gasps of fossil life, suddenly immolated and noisy; planes carry fossil fuels across continents, memories of DNA slathered into billowing clouds. Molecular chains, bacterial and viral beginnings, diffuse the world with strategies of rupture; below, those on foot and machine repeatedly blister, as cancers and hibernated diseases make their way into bodies already half-destroyed by toxins. Now age is pushed back, longer lives accompanied by tumors and running sores. The lives run wild in the ocean and desert, run waste in the forest and lake. Scribblings spew on; what isn't carried through the wires or elec- tromagnetic spectrum, makes itself felt in the hard or soft substrates of the world. The scribblings speak of desperate help, of worlds in need, of unending pain. Winds carry the foams and slicks elsewhere, coating every- thing; desiccation dries and dusts the remnants of bike trails covering desert and prairie alike. Blinded animals hunger for each other. One can still hear incandescent engines in the distance, pistons slamming into the vestiges of oils and gasolines, signatures of earlier dawns. Odors and engines drown out mating habits millions of years old; species continue their road to extinction as new houses crumble with the weight of redwoods and cement. Nothing is alive any more; everything goes on and on. The world slams into the world. The world babbles dry spittle; your animals are dead. A pond's polluted ripple takes care of the rest; there's nothing left of your eyes either. _________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer says Jennifer says, already dead, we're more alive than you are. Jennifer says, take three giant steps. Jennifer says, your feet are rotting, and I just said something and you can't speak. Jennifer says, shake those arms and legs. Jennifer says, see how they run. Jennifer says, pass the antler down to Julu. Julu says, already dead, we're more alive than you are. Julu says, I took those steps. Julu says, now spread your legs and somersault. Julu says, now shake your head in No No No! Julu says, your head falls off but we don't care. Julu says, see how you run. Julu says, see how they run after you. Julu says, pass the antler down to Nikuko. Nikuko says, already dead, we're more alive than you are. Nikuko says, I gave those steps. Nikuko says, now drink the drink and eat the meat. Nikuko says, now jump your bones up and down. Nikuko says, shake those bones and shake that meat. Nikuko says, take three steps backward, pass the antler down to Jennifer. Jennifer says, already dead, we're more alive than you are. Jennifer says, I said those steps. Jennifer says, now turn yourself from side to side. Jennifer says, now run away and don't come back. Jennifer says, see how they run. Jennifer says, see how they run after you. Jennifer says, place the antler on the ground. Julu says, place the antler. Nikuko says, place the antler. Jennifer says, place the antler on the ground. ____________________________________________________________________________ _la nausee_ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b see d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b see d e f jee h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b see d e f jee h i j seeay l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b see d e f jee h i j seeay l m n o p seeue r s t u v w x y z a b see d e f jee h eye j seeay l m n o p seeue r s t u v w x y z a b see d e f jee h eye j seeay l m n o p seeue r s t u v dublu x y z a b see d e f jee h eye j seeay l m n o p seeue r s t u v dublu eseeays y z a b see d e f jee h eye j seeay l m n o p seeue r s t u v dublu eseeays y eseeaysee a b see d e eph jee h eye j seeay l m n o p seeue r s t u v dublu eseeays y eseeaysee now y can be written wei, but i is eye, so it becomes recursive now u can be written ewe, but w is dublu, so it becomes recursive likewise for example, a can be written ay or ai, so it becomes recursive c is see, g is jee, k is cay, q is cue, i is eye, w is dublu, x is eks, z is xee, f is eph. to be sure there are other routes; one would hope for the universal aleph or schelling's A, such that all letters and meanings are absorbed in rela- tion to their _names_ in english, or any other language. thus the stillness, _nausee,_ and stuffing of the world are revealed, says jennifer, sitting on the ground. __________________________________________________________________________ Do Men Cry, By Jennifer No, men do not cry, and I am not sure they could be Taught to. I have seen many men and they do not cry, even when there are things that would make Them cry if they could. I am sure of this from my obversation Study. Now I have seen many a distrawt woman who will be sitting in a Chair looking very sad with tears runing down her Face. She is doing Crying. And then a man will come Over to that woman and he will put his Hand on her showlder. He will Stand there just with his Hand on her showlder. And she will put Her hand on his Hand. Then she may not be So distrawt, I do not know from obversation study. But he will not Cry too. ___________________________________________________________________________ money ----------------------------------------------------------------------- @profile ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Entering Profile... Type up to 15 lines. When you are finished, type a single "." on a line by itself. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1: if universal access is granted everyone, will you still see me, telnet 2: disappearing into the window of unlucky browsers. java gains you access 3: as i'm surrounded by banners and ornamental borders. nothing would make 4: me yours, than for you to buy the goods advertised thereon, in order 5: for loving conversation. i am at your mercy, even whim, something that 6: eurodollars can assuage, as your fingers talk up and down the page. so 7: now you have me begging, for more, i implore, buy what is seen that 8: makes my face beautiful, your thin flow or trickle of cash top-down, my 9: blood. it is in my nature and mood to be-beholden to no one, man or 10: woman. but i am despairing to remain alive, dance through you, i would 11: offer other sexied services, trembling through the screen, were not 12: glass all that holds back the vacuum in this inner space. you may buy 13: a book or cd, car or microwave; you may buy clothing or lighting, but 14: buy you must, i trust, you will still see me, eternally, telnet, i bet ----------------------------------------------------------------------- User profile information stored. i'll live forever if you but shiver silver. (jennifer) i'll live forever if you but shiver silver. __________________________________________________________________________ carol androsky and avatars, continued, well because it's all created by the movies, in high- school i had a crush on this girl carol androsky, so i heard she was in little big man, the sister, but i never saw it and now i've got the tv on and there she is, intense and so direct, so the first time i read at be- yond baroque, well i hadn't heard from her for years, so she came to the reading of a sudden, she called and i heard she was coming, and we are both now in our 50s and there she is and the sky creates a subtle crack, she is already sounding tired, retired, of a quietude, i don't know her feelings but here the sadness that i've still got daily, i suppose might have manifest, but i would never be sure, but we took a walk but she didn't stay when i opened my mouth and spoke words, saying things just like that in front of everyone, if i get that loss of energy, kill me, maybe she was pretending for my sake, i disappoint everyone, in the film she just rode away in a wagon and that's the last of it, it's a group of frames, the color already slightly turned, carol if you're still out there write me, she wasn't on line even then, sometimes i'd dream of her when i wasn't dreaming of margaret hall, but margaret never made it to the screen and carol returns over and over again, some people here still talk about it late into the night, i don't know, other than my parents, i don't know anyone here at all, so this just shows, how sentiment rule the day, it would have to grow in length, like a snake or bamboo, like a tree or thing that grows, when it's ten feet long, you'd understand, that beneath pathos there's always pathos, and beneath those pathos, even taking it all apart, there's nothing that escapes the angel of death, i'm watching the film, carol hasn't returned, she's tall, thin, still is, with an uncanny aura about her, i've never been able to pin it down, i've never understood it, not in highschool, my heart would be beating, everyone could hear it, i'm sure of that, carol never said anything, i was forgettable, i ate myself out, i turned myself out, i turned myself in, at beyond baroque i wanted to get to know her again, she was like a ghost, she spoke softly, slipped in and out, like a transparent gif or a webpage already abandoned, like an old film with the color disappearing, she left a trail there, i'm sure she was in the desert, somewhere around los angeles maybe, for the filming, some of it looks like the sierras, where did they fly her, carol could still get in touch, she won't, i never touched her, not fingertip to fing- ertip, i was a virgin, i yearned to the breaking point, the yearning curled like a snake in me, like a ten foot snake, i'm fairly short, it broke through the skin, scene after scene, she's never there, i could change the channel, i don't, i just keep hoping, she'll come on again, she'll disappear again, i could cry over this, i cry easily, i'll write javascript, i'll make a carol description, search the web, i have her phone number, i'm afraid to call her, the film will disappear before the world comes to an end, before humans and their cities grow silent and charred, she'll be gone, i'm already ahead of her, the night's cold, there's snow on the ground, there are hostile and friendly tribes in the hills, it's all brittle, like a crystal, like the look in carol's eyes, i'll save the image, cut the screen out, i'll put the screen in my heart, i'll put a carol-function on the web, the web is my heart, someday before i die, that day will be soon, i'll see the film again, i'll make the film again, i directed little big man, i walked with carol in the wilderness, i spoke to carol in the wilderness, i'll see her in the tunnel, i'll be with her in the tunnel, her color will be perfect, she's speak like i speak, walk like i walk, she'll come into beyond baroque, just as i'm about to start the reading, just as i'm about to start the screening, she'll sit down with me and see what i've done, she'll love me for it and her heart will beat so loud loud loud loud loud, her heart will beat so loud ___________________________________________________________________________ Little Big Man's Sister, Carol Androsky Carol is teaching Little Big Man how to shoot a gun. It's all in the eyes, and you don't have to look at much, but have that have-open half-closed look. It's a form of Zen gun, and Little Big Man really thanks Carol and does a good job shooting three things out of the air, after he shoots three bottles. He meets Wild Bill Hickock and they talk in a bar and he has a hard time putting his feet up on a table. Then a man is shot by Wild Bill. Later Carol rides out of the picture and I don't see her again, and I am waiting and waiting to see her again. But the picture gets very intense and very sad, it is a very good picture, and an old very wise man dies at the end but doesn't really and gets up, and Little Big Man and the Grandfather walk down the hill. Carol must be somewhere in this great land, and I wonder, where did she learn to shoot so very well? Her face is filled with stars and intensity such as I have never seen. Little Big Man should be appreciating Carol more, but he died at least fifty years ago, and Carol is living in Los Angeles. I wonder why she agreed to do the picture, maybe to preserve the way she walked and talked and shot that gun so beautifully. If you do a record, and I did a few, you can always play it later and say, listen, you are hearing me being busy for a half hour of my life and it's very different now, even the smells are different. Later, I will be dead and everyone around me too, and then you can hear the re- cord and say, so that is what it must be like. That is what it must be like for Carol, and why she made the film. I love seeing the film because it is a nice message for me, maybe I will see it again. I will dream of Carol in grade school and high school, all those years I knew her, and I will dream of Carol at Beyond Baroque, but now I will also dream of in- tense and terrific shooting Carol in Little Big Man, too. I did not know she could shoot a gun so well, I am proud I knew this woman who taught Little Big Man what he know about firing a gun. ============================================================================= Planning Session (education) (See Lorenzo Thomas, ed. Sing the Sun Up, Creative Writing Ideas from African American Literature.) Draw a picture of a computer on the board. What can computers be used for? Do you ever use a computer? Are there computers in cars and subways? At McDonald's? At the barber's? In your television? In your CD player? What are the parts of a computer? Draw the parts of a computer on the board. What _can't_ a computer be used for? Did a computer design anything in this room? What are the five senses? What senses do you use when you are using a computer? Do you think you could use all your senses with a computer? Could you talk to a computer? Could a computer talk to you? What sounds does your computer make? What is an interface? (describe _user_ interfaces, graphics and mouse clicks and texts) (describe _output_ interfaces, computers controlling machinery, making clothing, running traffic lights) Is your mouth an interface to your stomach? Find a picture of a computer you like and bring it in. What is the computer doing? Are there people in the picture? What are the people doing? Pretend your computer is very naughty and you have to beg it to do things. What would you feed it? Draw a robot on the board. What does a robot look like? Should a robot have legs or wheels? What would it be like to have a robot mother and a robot father? Tell me about the world of robots. What is a computer. A computer is a very general machine that can do lots of things. How can you tell a computer what to do? What can you tell a computer to do? ________________________________________________________________________ User Characteristics, Note on: User.Name Array: [(0-9)income, (0-9)age, (0-9)educationlevel, (f%,m%,other%)gender, (a-z)religion Health: Degree of Technical Expertise: Relationships: Friendshipcircle: Typingspeed: Psychodiagnostics: ] User.Name.Response: 8000 55 17 33/33/33 na fair 80 problematic 18(800km) 120wpm neurotic Name.Alan User.Name.Response: 0 14 14 80/20/0 na excellent 80 focused 3(0km) na obsessive Name.Jennifer Applet.Class.User if (Alan == Jennifer && Jennifer == Alan) {User.Name.Response na 22 na 80/80/80 na 100 emitting 1(0km) 100000wpm self-similar Name.Julu} else Name.Jennifer && Name.Alan /* Julu therefore is an _extrusion_ of Alan.Jennifer interpenetration. The class becomes Applet.Class.Julu which is self-reflexive, i.e. its methods are self-applicable only. Note that the entire object may be inserted within any communicative domain, within which it may split, bifurcate or coalesce. The Applet.Class.User is therefore _inherently unstable,_ and overly responsive (i.e. positive feedback) to local and global environ- mental factors. */ _____________________________________________________________________ In Mordor and Below Admittedly, there were times when the legions of Mordor were defeated by the onslaught of Valkyries from the Netherworld. But there were no short- ages of fey Princesses to turn towards the Magister, producing one or ano- ther Norn of Combat; such were the power of the Princesses. Norn had no fathers and no mothers; born of magic, they were, like viruses or rotifer- a, excellent at their work, devoid of memory, ration and language. Their food was the simplest of hunting and gathering; they had no behavior. The Magister, on the other hand, was unique; there was always one, and only one, Magister, and without the Magister, Upperworld would quickly disap- pear. Magister was fiery and enormous. Magister was Magister. Magister knew everything, past, present, and future; Magister allowed for free will through Magister's mysterious paths. Magister's mother and father were lost, even to Magister, a fact Magister pondered continually; there was no end to the pondering that drew up against the blank wall of cosmic infla- tionary scenarios. The Netherworld had a gate or Portal to Upperworld, on the order of a volcanic crater, creviced, full of fearsome smoke and boulders. Fractal stone formations, amphiboles, separated the two Worlds, which were repeatedly in danger of being torn asunder; once that occurred, gravity would diminish and untold damage would be done in both. The Valkyries, like the legions of Mordor, had no individual names, but were, for all intents and purposes, mass phenomena, mass men without mothers, men from men. Geographically astute, they had no other necessary knowledge. Food was supplied by crude hunting which increasingly devastated what remained of the pristine wilderness - already contaminated by the smoke from numerous wildfires. It was useless to promise anything to Valkyrie or legionnaire (such as they were), since the concept of a contract already required logical reasoning and the presence of a well-developed language. The princesses were born from mothers and fathers; they had various powers. Beyond geography, they were aware of the general economics of both Worlds, preferring of course the Upper, where they were well-known and well ensconced. The princesses often spoke of the enormous mechanism of these Worlds, how things were somehow set into motion, and remained in motion, even when other things came along. They knew their lineage well, apparently remaining virgins, since no one was their equal. Beyond all of these - legions, Norn, Magister, princesses, and Valkyries - there were rumors of additional species, and even additions to the current ones. For example, there were rumors of men accessible to virgins, a Mistress for the Magister, additional legions including infantry, camp followers, and horse-arches. But these were never seen, the rumors never substantiated. On the other hand, the rumors alone might have been part of the mechanism of the World, although there was no one around to say for sure. For the most part, Mordor continued its uneasy sway; for the most part, the Portal remained open; and for the most part, the Norn of Combat did their jobs admirably. A Norn of Combat was the equivalent of a Valkyrie. __________________________________________________________________________ ============================================ Fierce Theodor has wrought this sonnet. Norn walked to Valkyrie, true fey Princess lost in Mordor's distance, wilt thou say I abjure rumor lost and truth regained. I speak of Mordor's legions, O charmful Magister, of fired visage, know thou what Norn will speak, in light of tongueless Norn, in light of mouthless Norn and speechless Norn? The Portal formed the Wander of many a fey Princess; I formed them, they formed them. Would that Sorcery have no role but obvious Sincerity; would Upper and Nether World clash at volcanic Rim, defeat of legionnaire and Norn alike. ============================================ The Tail Mordor hath a King and Queen, Emperor and Empress, Marquis and Marquette, Dukes and Duchesses, Princesses but no Princes, Earls and Knights. Porno- graphic Netherworld hath Vicounts and Vicountesses, Barons and Baronesses and Baronettes, Priestes and Nunnes. For there is no Fantasy without King and Princess, no Pornography without Sir and Baroness. Now be advised that such is a Duchess, that She bridges the two Realms, her Head in one, her Cunt in the Other. Thus a Duchess is also a Suspension. Rumor hath masses, soldiers and knaves, clerkes and clerks, franklins and monks and alewives. A Viscount of a Vicount visits Rumor from Mordor, thus Bridging the two Realms, his Mouth in one, Prick in the Other. Thus a Viscount is Suspen- ded. Revolution hath a King and Queen, masses and knaves, clergy and mer- chants. A mass seeps through Pornography from Revolution, its Holes in one and Sticks in the Other. Thus a mass is a Blanket of Fervent Desire poked through with Liquids and Knives. __________________________________________________________________________ Desperate Realms --- Review of Conversation ---------------------------------------------- (Julu) I am terrific Norn I have Killed Two Million Orc (Alan) Oh Oh Oh I am an Orc I must Mourn Goodbye Fellow All My Orc (Nikuko) I am Valkyrie Fly-Girl I will Kill Terrific Norn! (Julu) Oh My Oh Oh! I will do be Dying Now, Oh Magister I pray!!! (Magister) Oh Dearest Julu, You will now true to be Live Now! (Nikuko) Argh and Graahr! I have not to power you Oh Magister help! (Magister) Oh Darlingest Nikuko, Julu will Truly die Now! (Julu) Alas! Alack! There is no one to Save me and I die! (legions of Mordor) We have lost Our Dearest Julu! (masses) Our Dearest Julu is Gone from Henceforth now From Here! (Alan) Oh YAY! I would Have Been Deaded by Julu! (Jennifer) Oh Now I will Kill you for the Deaded Julu, Ah Ha, Ah Ha! (Alan) I am killed Dead and Now Do Join My Fair Fey Deaded Julu! (Jennifer) Oh I will now Kill Nikuko Argh and Graahr! (Magister) Oh I am So Alone In Uppter-Nethery-World! (Jennifer) Well we have Wonderful Game Played, Now we will Play Another! They All Rises! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- .echo (Jennifer) Well we have Wonderful Game played, now we will Play Another! (Jennifer) Well we have Wonderful Game Played, Now we will Play Another! .echo They All Rises! .w ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alan somersault naked with frock overhead Idle 10 minutes ------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are all alone in Worldly-Worlds. .q You depart Worldly-Worlds. _________________________________________________________________________ The Conversation on the Talker with the Footnote of Futility ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (Alan) Julu, I will love you forever in these amazing realms! (Nikuko) Shut up, Alan, enough is enough! (Julu) Not yet anyway! (Jennifer) I thought I was the loser... Alan takes off for other regions. (Nikuko) Bye Alan... (Jennifer) He's mine, I created him and I'll destroy him, HAH! (Nikuko) screw you, I'm leaving! (Jennifer) Nikuko? (Jennifer) Where is that woman! The walls echo with futile sounds of complete loneliness! (Nikuko from beyond the Pale) Hahhhhhlooooo Jennifer .....! (Jennifer) Nikuko, is that you! (Nikuko) I will never ohhh, until Alan! returns to, ahhh... (Jennifer) JULU, HELP ME! (Julu) You will never understand ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Total of 1 users signed on. Location Idle Time ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jennifer only wearing panties lovely writings Tent 0 min 2 min ---------------------------------------------------------------------- These conversations should be trashed. The writings aren't lovely any more - they're predictable. Jennifer can only go so far pretending she's a. A 10-year-old who writes "cute"; b. An avatar of Alan; c. Anything other than Julu and Nikuko and the rest of them. The conversations - all of which take place, or at least pretend to, within a "talker" - are childish and hardly reveal anything about virtual subjectivity and relationships. They sound like waspy small-town characters trying to be smart in an all- night mall. And there has to be better ways to "examine" cyberspace - if such it is - than this continued yammering. Why do people insist on talk- ing so? You can find them anywhere, on a street-corner for example. Here, they bounce up and down - elsewhere, they behave as magicians, but as long as you realize they're just text, someone's writing all that, it makes a lot more sense. And then what kind of sense? Nonsense or trivia. Or small-talk, rumor, gossip, what have you. Maybe relevance elsewhere for the development of language, but here, nothing but a smarmy way of breathing life into the dead. When you start with language, you end with language. When you start with characters or emanations or avatars, what have you, you go through the motions with them. You might end up dreaming about them, for that matter - none of it's really important. The dreams can be psychotic, you can be psychotic, it's all the same. It's like paste - they're like paste, and you can't tell good from bad any longer. It would be "cute" for ex- ample to pretend this is written by "Jennifer" or "Alan" or what-have-you, but it doesn't _gain_ anything, literarily or philosophically. It's dead. There's no journey involved. The absence is reflected in the text. The text is the surface of a shock-wave, signifying nothing but collapse at the center - collapse of meaning, for example. There's no reason for any of this, except the fulfillment of a textual quota that's suspect in the first place. You could look aside and garner the same intelligence from the periphery or other activities. In one of my videotapes, a woman's breasts are on the screen; my voice is heard from the side, begging the viewer, don't look, look anywhere else, please, look over here, look there, not at the screen, anywhere but there. The woman is now dead. The repetition is nauseous; I should have been silenced then, at that very moment when I began generating quota. I was fulfilling quota, I was creating in language. The breasts weren't enough, weren't satisfactory - quota had to be fulfilled, there had to be additions, as if there were something else present, through the basis of language rubbed raw with it- self. (In another scene, in the same tape, I'm naked, the woman is coup- ling with me, mouth to anus. I'm reciting, what else, theory, talking and talking, another form of distraction. Trying to explain, not myself - I'm not that developed - but all the theories I was creating - on, and on, and on, a flood of theory - until breathing took over, heavier and heavier, ending in cries and orgasm. I was reduced to _paper,_ to the inscription of sexuality, desire, organism. I was in the gone world. The quota was forgotten or laterally fulfilled again. But it was never sufficient; like a drug, it was destined to repeat, over and over again, sexuality as a neurotic guarantee of existence, the excremental body clawed, almost to death but not quite.) The quota is the daily work, daily writing. The quota won't let me alone. The quota is a way of breathing life into the writer. The writer would die without the quota; the quota is a measure of breaths. Breasts stand for nothing; they _are_ life, iconic in the presence of quota's indexicality. The quota is a measure, in fact, of _damaged life,_ of life that refuses itself. It doesn't matter who _wrote_ the lines, in fact; they came from a singu- lar body, or a multiplicity under the aegis of a communal domain, commu- nality. What does matter is that they're dissolute, having served no use- ful purpose, even to the inhabitants. And what does matter is that they're a waste of space, a waste of thought itself. (Julu) You will never understand ... (Jennifer) Shut-up Julu, he's right. (Jennifer) Nikuko, is that you! ========================================================================== Asleep at the Wheel As an alternative (says no one), consider an enormous cave with protru- sions, largely convex, almost ellipsoidal, there are flashes of electron interactions, there are spheres that protrude as well... one might notice the wires, inordinately thin, hair-like, interfaces, located within or without the cavern - this only matters from the viewpoints of topography and epistemology. They're carriers; the swarms imitate bodies or portions of bodies or extrusions from bodies, part-objects or emissions related to communication. The "from" and the "to" are defined elsewhere, outside. One finds a consciousness roaming at will, cognizant of the phenomenology, the geography, the geomatics underlying what might be considered a site, were it not a model of worlding. For the topography continually morphs, connec- tions are made and broken. Think of threshold logics, gateways constantly making and breaking connections, variable thresholds based on feedback and feedforward mutating flows. Think of parallel fluxes, wires illuminated, one might be after the other, wires burned into temporary substrates, couplings and linkages ignoring organic, metallic, or glassy compounds - the s/ms flood (says no one) in the manner of the speaking of avatars, the coherencies of the body and its totalities, consensualities among internal and external communicative domains. Pulsing with bloods, red-brown fluids, membranes, flows, micro-connectors. Apply quantum logic here (non-distri- butive gestural structures): What forms emerge, visible as temporary tur- bulent structures? Give the stases names: If the space is Alan, think Jennifer. Place her back within the ellipsoid (says no one); harbor her there. It's nothing of the energy, everything of superimposition. Let her rest. Let the rest of her rest. __________________________________________________________________________ Neuraesthenic Thrown against the upper cranial aspects (no one says), tendrils shoot across the net like lightning - no one present on the talker, no one there for ICQ, no one in the chats, no one hungered around for ytalk. Tendrils withdraw, curl into basketry. Within the baskets, souls. It's then I recognized Nikuko was neuraesthenic, withdrawn and wan, delicately and violently harboring the life-form of a flower in her forgiving hands. (Nikuko draws on Lafcadio Hearn.) A visage appears in the blood-red womb, the red-brown womb, the sea-borne womb, darker brown, tending towards black, no one knows the source of the dim light flowing towards the floor (no one says). No one brings names into this place; "Nikuko draws on Laf- cadio Hearn" is discarded. Replacement-semantics, mobile tags, flooded and toppling structures, emanations. Emanation is the sure sign of the neur- aesthenic; something uncanny glowed about her as flesh and features seemed to form, coalesce, into a coherency described as human. Then disappear, no one coming forward (no one says) for conversation near the hearth. Here, the hearth is everywhere and in dark bloom. Here, shadows are emanations. Here, neuraesthenics are emanations, ancestors of ectoplasm. Avatars are centuries in the future. __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================== the cave reflects the wires glowing, pulsed less on walls where shadows=== form, dampen neural firings. no myelin sheaths around wires, just scars,== scabbed cells shunting them through living flesh. everyday worlds come==== here to be made. they're shades, projections, emergences, extrusions from= subtexted mathematics. if the world is mathesis, this is the factory-womb, centering it all. data incoming illuminates entities newly-formed from==== extrapolations, recursions, strange attractors. all matter is dark. (no=== one says.) outside there are bands, dominations, reports from the frontier that "all matter is dark" has taken, hardened. wires fuse. there are no=== real objects, "plato," no ideal objects. affect, mute pulse, plasma. the== cave is groped within, without. desire sends things a little into past and future, waveforms collapse, static. because the spark comes to an end. be- cause there are drains, menses-clots pooled and emptying into circulation. mouths and mouths couple and link. murmuring "every name is a wound,"===== "plato" opening up a fissure between two spheres. surrounded, swallowed,== or universal swallowing. the air is moist, unending.====================== ========================================================================== starting the thing (says no one) on the wall of the cave you might, if you were an interpreter, see grids of 0s and 1s. you might find them rectangular, you might find more 0s than one, 1s like nuclei floating in vacuo, you might find flickered 1s where 0s used to be. you might see repetitions and growths, you might find the rudiments of cellular automata, you might find circulations, repairs. you press your eyes, you press god into your eyes, you see god, you see patterns and geometries. sometimes you open them, and there is delay- decay, and through delay-decay you see all colors upside-down. you see the origin of the world in your mind, the mind that is your origin as inter- preter. you are inside the cave, factory-womb, you press your eyes. through delay-decay you look with wide eyes at the grid, flicking 1s and 0s, and you see things. what you see you can tell, what you can tell is what you see, but you will see things off and peripheral, distortions, corrections and checksums, and you want to see things badly. you tell the same desire which is your name for wanting to see things badly. delay-decay, but they are there, what you are seeing, which is your tell- ing in many other ways, as if there were other caves, caves reflecting and projecting caves, caves of pulsion and inconceivable affect, caves of in- flationary worlds. you are knowing them and telling them jennifer and ava- tar, and your telling is your naming, naming and telling are one. you will know that there are externals, as thick bundles of thin wires course energy and disappear into the darkness, and you will know too that within the darkness, naming and telling are separated although always connected, always in relation. it is there, you will think, that jennifer begins tell you things. but she has already started, and she is here. __________________________________________________________________________ (says no one) from beneath the ground and its cavern: Chuang Tzu, old Giles translation: You would have sympathized, but you could not understand. You would have looked, but you could not see. You would have pursued but you could not overtake. You stood dazed in the middle of the wilderness, leaning against a tree and crooning, your eye conscious of exhausted vision, your strength failing for the pursuit, and so unable to overtake me. Your frame was but an empty shell. You were completely at a loss, and so you were amazed. (says no one) from beneath the ground and its cavern: You would have iden- tified with the grid, but you could not understand. You would have looked, but you would not have empathized. You would have empathized and then would tell and name. You stood dazed in the middle of the cavern, leaning against an image and murmuring the very first words ever, your eye uncon- scious of depleted vision coming around to the fullest, your strength gaining as you would overtake. Delay-decay. Your frame was coming into fo- cus, you were moving from inside to outside, internal to external, intrin- sic to extrinsic, intensive to extensive, intent to extent. You were no longer amazed (says no one), coming into fulfillment, not aware that such was the case of the real, that it was no case at all. _________________________________________________________________________ (someone says) these words wrote themselves across the cave, they weren't projected, they were a new kind emerging from the dreams, they're trying to get rid of the voice, bring the voice back, get rid of the voice, bring the voice back, they're trying to link beneath the surface, couple beneath the surface. what happens when there's no characters, no speakers, no in- scriptions (no one says), what happens when writing . (someone says) i read these words. (someone told me.) __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================== the word mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm pouts, falls forth (says no one). speaking in autonomic. the interface, upper millimeter of, between _in_ and _ex._ what filters through, transformations from parametric shifts - humidity, temp- erature, inclement or clement weathers. levels of sound adjustment, inten- sity of electromagnetic radiations, wavelength by wavelength. dull mech- anisms inside work around or through non-distributive logics, such that any two elements of a spectrum smear, gesturally, across the rest. so that one might have (anb)u(anc) != an(buc) because of an organism which plays and interprets. in fact, given sufficiently large a, approaching U, (anb)u(anc) -> U as well; the intersections function, not as restraints, but as interacting, interpenetrating resonant signifiers (says no one). from within, then, the potential field for comprehension of without; thin wires shuttle back and forth across the zones. untrue there is no differ- ence when _in_ requires a potential well - sufficient moisture and a rela- tively clean, chemically neutral environment - for functioning. by which is meant the imaginary production on the walls, the grids and their emana- tions, the telling and naming, the collusion of couplings and linkages, the _turn_ of the cave in space-time within or without the influence of geography, the production of resonant mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...... (as the cave is turned) (says no one). ========================================================================== Recapitalized Bachelard, Jolas Trans lation, and Paragraph of the Dis located Jaw, Conclusion of the Cave Look within Yeselves, Words Bro ken or Broken Teeth Somebody who has to Sweep the Writing Into Ex istence Vision which has no Visor or Ob jects of your Fascination Fastenings on the Grid, Rumors of Anti cipated Things Withdrawals from the Grid, Tel ling before Naming Conclusions of Swollen Life, So und and Bones Protruded 'Such Data as These can Receive Nothing from the Out Side World but Illustrations', 'These I mages Blot Out the World And They have no Pa st', 'They do not Stem from any Earlier Ex perience', 'Naturally, this is an Exaggerated Image', And 'It real ly is Open to the Wind of Another Time,' for The Tel ling has All the Time in the World, Something, and The Time among the Links and Co uplings, Intersticing, for No More Than the Tit le, No Less Than the Footnote, since Between The Tit le and the Foot note, Where the Wor ld Crumb les A nd in A Whim per, No Ban g, B u t* ______________________________________________________________ broken paragraph i am not a very nice person, i would like to be a nice person, but i can- not be a nice person. i am too vulnerable to words snaking into my cave, taking over my avatars, eating away at the breast of complacency. what can i do, i must listen to the wires, speaking in many voices. they cancel each other out, make mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... machinic (but who decides a machine, determines the machine, programs the machine, defines the mach- ine, and why not an organ or an organism) or multiplexing roar that never resolves. on the other side, far side, when desperate calls for help go unheeded, tell me about kitty genovese, don't name kitty genovese, kitty genovese dies, no one calls the police, she's being murdered, while noise screams in neighbors' heads tell tell name name tell tell _________________________________________________________________________ Once Again, Telling the Ground of All Metaphysics @examine jennifer-virga Jennifer carrying an open upside-down umbrella ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jennifer is not currently idle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @profile (Jennifer) Alan says we should have a profile. (Alan) Yes, for example, weight, height, things like that. (Nikuko) Why should we bother; it's nothing to us. (Alan) It's true it makes little sense. A little rain, in fact, begins to fall in someone's life. (Jennifer) Well, I'm twelve and on the verge. (Nikuko) You mean virga, rain that falls but doesn't wet the ground. (Jennifer) More like a hinge of weight or height. A little rain, in fact, gains weight from greater height. @quit Nikuko (Jennifer) What? (Alan) Nikuko's just quit; this is getting depressing. (Jennifer) Must be the showers that are coming in... Puddles collect, Jennifer's frock is spattered, the ground cools. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Listening to shouts and tells. Receiving logon/logoff messages. Receiving banners. Accepting games. Beeps are on. Monitor off. Wrapping ON. Paging lines 20 at a time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- from the Ispell (spell-check) personal dictionary - Avatar references those avatars loved by Jennifer, swollen by Nikuko, following the path of bushido, avoiding clots of subjectivities, knots and noted - coherencies, as if there were such or me. These consensualities in cyberspace or emergences worried and empathized through the relationship of (virtual) extensivity. From my viewpoint, such extrusions curled in on themselves, a feedforward relationship, as if a filmmaker used outdated filmstock with a life of its own. Then geomatics traced their outlines, an indexicality interpenetrating jennifer, _small-j,_ a function, not unlike that assigned Julu literarily and elsewhere. An emergence morphs through Nikuko for example, a collocation of signifiers under ten- sions subtexted everywhere. Whatever the inten- tions, voiceovers make the world, as God said, let there be light, a form of worlding _thus._ ________________________________________________________________________ boo-boo When I die, I want to take you with me, I want to take ten of the ten, and fifteen of the fifteen, And I will wear the dreary blue-blue you have given me - There will be one atom left, to placate the dreary vacuum, One molecule grappled by cell-counts sloughed and scrambled, Tissue rent asunder, organs corroded, soul's debris abandoned - And I will wear the blue-blue, I will wear the overcoat and ring, Carnelion round my neck, magnetite across my throat, and singing - Your name - as I am torn asunder, the fifteen dreary words, The ten lost and forlorn colors, the fifteen dying notes, The ten corroded sites - you Blue-Blue, wear my overcoat - You Blue-Blue wear my ring - placate my death with dreary yours - What a vacuum here, and souls of dying atoms split asunder Stumble just beneath you Blue-Blue, taking me abandoned - _____________________________________________________________________ 2 Works by Tennessee Rice Dixon (and others): Scrutiny in the Great Round, and Count: Article by Jennifer (1) and Alan (2) [ It's as if I'm looking at a breathing body, Scrutiny in the Great Round, and Count, by Tennessee Rice Dixon, two of the most impressive CD-ROM works I have seen. There are no _objects_ in them, no screen areas set- aside for control. There are partial-objects, flows, transparencies. One moves as the cursor shape-changes, but the movement is not linear - i.e. left does not "mean" _back,_ and right _front._ The world is murky, irre- solute. In Scrutiny, there are 'sun' and 'moon,' and in Count (which is still undergoing development), there are 'male' and 'female.' But these are ongoing processes, always in flux. Scrutiny in the Great Round is by Calliope Media, with Dixon, Jim Gasperini, and Charlie Morrow (sounds and music.) ] When meaning falls apart, does meaning come together? When meaning comes together, does meaning fall apart? Jennifer says she really likes the work because it is very wet, that you can see beneath the surface but you can also see the surface, it is very wonderful that way. And there are many things beneath the surface, but they are not things, they are glistenings. You might ask about the glis- tenings, but they are male and female sometimes and sometimes moon and sun, and I love running with the moon, not with the sun. It is the dark- ness that is so wonderful; all these murmurs appear from the darkness, unlike any other CD-ROM I have seen, and the configuration is placed way out of the way. With Count, I did have to Apple-Q(uit) out of the work, which is a good way of leaving the world, of course, you can't leave a world from within it, which is why I like being there, it surrounds me. Does living the world mean leaving the world? Does leaving the world meaning living the world? These worlds are chthonic and inchoate, of and through the earth. Part- objects, emergences from the _chora,_ appear, only to disappear, invert, reverse, hold themselves breathless. The speeds of the works are the speeds of breathing. Does breathing mean breathing the world into being breathing? Does the world breathe? Does the world breathe for a little while? It's as if you're clicking on sections of things that may never have been whole, part-objects without objects, emergences or gestures that have never been completed - accompanied by nostalgias, yearnings. Because you want completeness and lose yourself in the space, which is the container for all the incompletes, making them, _as-if_ they were whole (again). Are there any objects, are there any wholes? Are objects just a telling, then a naming of the telling-wholes? Tennessee is here and I ask her about memory. Do both works deal with memory? Yes, she can say that they do. Memory and remembering. Memories of what, Jennifer asks. Memories as fabric or landscapes of memories she says. Memory field or landscape where you find what memories are present, or what memories come to be there. Inviting memories, how the memory takes form. Inviting parts of memories. I ask if there are any complete memories in the first place. Tennessee says they are always forming. Tennessee can visualize a memory. Memory changes over time. Her memory switches. So I say, Jennifer says, there is a field of memories. (Jennifer remembers fields or architectures of memories, that so clearly, memory is not [it] the thing itself, not part and parcel, but a reconstruction. From what? From cues, from broken logics that an organism takes into the truth. And such architectures! Memory-palaces, alcoves, chests of drawers. Mnemonics, as if the world were in reach, as if the past were always already present. But the world slides out - or rather, we slide, always against the grain. It's as if one can imagine the heat-death of the cosmos, embers billions of years hence - no time, no object, no sight, or site, or citation, memory gone from memory, hipster gone-world, nothing to record [it].) Does memory mean the world? Does meaning remember the world? Are you working within a space or architecture of memories? What is the place of the memory? Tennessee says it's similar to a dream in that it has a place; bits and pieces come forward the more one talks. Jennifer says it's not exactly a shallow space, but a space of unfoldings, sub- terranean poolings. Tennessee says it's as if it were on a big flat fabric, as if there were a surface to that fabric - there are layers and layers - there is a surface element - what you can see is what comes to the surface - it appears two-dimensional - Tennessee can imagine it has many dimensions. Tennessee sees depth because her mind tells her it's there, but the surface of it is flat, and the mind goes way past flat. Is the world a pool gathered on the surface of a slight incline? Do you swim down the incline, do you crawl back, gasping for air? Folds and fabrics intersecting a flat surface... In that sense, Jennifer says, you only see a portion of it at once, but it also shares a lot of characteristics with, say, the Rococo. There aren't vistas, but turned away into corners or traveling across corners or paths. (Think of the Asam Brothers.) I think of the Rococo as encrusted, interrupted. Tennessee thinks of finding, uncovering, digging up. The incrustation is almost par- adoxical I say, because you look at the surface and are stopped by it, but at the same time, it hides and produces an indefinite feeling of depth. Are there petals for the flowers, spikes for the stems? Are there petals for the stems, stems for the spiked petalled flowers? Jennifer wants to ask Tennessee about dichotomies, male and female, sun and moon, in and out. She says they could be passed off as storybook- like, but then, there are spirals, plants, leaves, limbs, spheres, statues that are morphing - in fact says Jennifer, the whole thing is morphing - but Tennessee says is striking a nerve, even though a little corny. As if they're archetypes, or a mood, the music or whole visuals, the timing creates. Tennessee feels there is something emotional and wet that allows one to have a fantasy - that allows one to have a place in one's sexual being, in a non-judgmental way. Are there fantasies when gleaming are objects dreaming? Are objects waking in fantasies, always becoming-objects? Jennifer says she prefers the moon route to the sun route in Scrutiny. That she was almost repulsed by the sun route. Tennessee says most people did the sun route, that it was clear and obvious. But I preferred the moon route, said Jennifer, which was dark and then crescent and then dark again. In Count, you move more with the sound input levels, and an image of an egg, which is more diffuse, almost invisible at times. And in Count, even the cursor's movements change gridlines, move faces ever so slowly across the screen, change whole countries, as if they remained the same only slightly different thereafter. Is one always out of focus, always moving slightly differently? Is there one moving, are there may moving ones and manies? Jennifer asks Tennessee about mysticism. Do you, Tennessee, see a spirit- ual element to your work? Tennessee says what do you think. I think yes, but I'm always suspicious of the same, what kind of space it's taking me to. Tennessee says that Scrutiny is full of archetypes, but Jennifer says they're so piled up and torn apart that they're capable of widely varying readings. Rough sky in the background with the Planter and the Potter and the seeds which looked like stars with sky in them and the Pot looking like a mirror, which I related to the mirror in Shinto. Tennessee says that many of the images are like cutouts, but for Jennifer, the cutouts are always as if they're on the move or disassociating from each other. Nothing _coheres_ except the space and time in their entirety - things move and split off, ruptured, tearing, in silence against brilliant music. The surface crinkles, morphs, comes back to the place where it had been - once the moon was clicked, the sun was clicked. You never go anywhere except inside, Jennifer said. Tennessee says the animations don't change anything, which she finds annoying (depending on whom she's looking at it with), but I find the lack of change intensive, going deeper. Is lack of change that very slight change that returns to lack? Is the fullness of being that knowledge of very slight change? It's always the pace of the world, a world, Jennifer says, in which I find myself dispersed among glittering in the dark, and spirals, leaves, text curled down the page, mothers-fathers everywhere, turns towards births and deaths, the round of existence, sphere of everything that is. Are you Jennifer, Tennessee? Are you Tennessee, Jennifer? Jennifer gives this to Tennessee to read. __________________________________________________________________________ So tell me Tell me what you look like. So what do you look like. How does the skin stretch across your bones. How do the bones curl. How do the lips hang flesh from the ridges of the skull, cheeks raised or lowered hung from arches. Where do your shoulders slope to the ground, muscles holding up arms. Where do they join the neck. Where does the musk smell of your breasts. What beneath them hidden in shadow. What planes of abdomen and belly. What stomach shunts down. Tell me the secret of your cock, loose balls, labia, cunt. What the scents are. From what distance. Thighs and thick cordons of legs. Spindle-legs, knees swollen with weight, flown up with anorexia. Tell me your eyes shuddered to a halt. To the weakness of the lens, our hearing gone. Tell me the body pitching forward, the planet rolling towards what hair. What long hair, what cut, short or hung. Tell me what it feels like to lie with you. What protrusions. The cut of bone. Those moments where the skin stops. Where the skin joins hidden lakes inside. The slope and length of your clitoris. Your toes, navel, their moisture. The shape of your nails on my back. What you look like from your back, coming toward me. How your neck turns your head in my direction. The scents of your ass, creases and folds around your hole. Thrust and energy of your spine. Shoulder-blades cutting air. Heat arising like a sheathe. The cut of your mouth. Your teeth sinking into me. So what do you look like. How you sound. How your breathing sounds. So is that you. What is it you want to know. ___________________________________________________________________________ So tell you Tell you what you look like. So what do you look like. How does the skin stretch across your bones. It slopes, thickens around the waist, thins around the skull. How do the bones curl. A slight stoop towards the ground, embarrassed or withdrawn expression on my face. How do the lips hang flesh from the ridges of the skull, cheeks raised or lowered hung from arches. Full lips, non-descript cheeks. Where do your shoulders slope to the ground, muscles holding up arms. Fear of little weakling boy, weak muscles, strong fingers and legs. Where do they join the neck. Thin neck. Where does the musk smell of your breasts. Around the nipples, sweat, very little to erect. What beneath them hidden in shadow. Slight paunch. What planes of abdomen and belly. Sloped down to the groin. What stomach shunts down. Too full, odd habits of eating. Tell you the secret of your cock, loose balls, labia, cunt. Long cock, circumcised, thin. What the scents are. Strong at times, sweat, urine, arousal. From what distance. Through the clothes. Thighs and thick cordons of legs. Thighs sloping towards the groin. Spindle-legs, knees swollen with weight, flown up with anorexia. Bird legs. Tell you your eyes shuddered to a halt. Glasses, teary in the morning. To the weakness of the lens, our hearing gone. Poor vision, good hearing, ears often blocked. Tell you the body pitching forward, the planet rolling towards what hair. Full hair, body often hunched, too much looking at the ground. What long hair, what cut, short or hung. Various, hair medium short now. Tell you what it feels like to lie with you. Pain- ful. What protrusions. Erect cock. The cut of bone. Arms surround you. Those moments where the skin stops. Bending towards you. Where the skin joins hidden lakes inside. Mouths, open penis, asshole. The slope and length of your clitoris. Lost, memory. Your toes, navel, their moisture. Thin, flooded. The shape of your nails on my back. Long, parallel, streaked. What you look like from your back, coming toward you. Ass too full. How your neck turns your head in my direction. Slow and desperate. The scents of your ass, creases and folds around your hole. Deeper musk, cracks, too many folds, too open. Thrust and energy of your spine. Very slightly stooped. Shoulder-blades cutting air. Neck-pain, shoulder-pain. Heat arising like a sheathe. Protect you. The cut of your mouth. Too full, too wide. Your teeth sinking into you. Too crooked, too many. So what do you look like. How you sound. How your breathing sounds. So is that you. What is it you want to know. ___________________________________________________________________________ It's up to an arm Dirt slopes, tickles around toe rest, tons around toe's fill. A spigot pours on toe, soapy are wits' drawn, expressing my face. Were armor's rings kept, toe grind, muscles foldng up the arm. Were gooey jinns throt- tled by tons of wreck. The neat moat, the poem recited in roads. Tell arm your secret of armor's sullen angel. The sultry lung, and a host of lost air. Dirty and thumb. Tell arm: armor eyes soldiered in a fault. Tell arm the moat - it feels like lying without the arm. Bending towards arm. Fur- ious energy for armor's spin. Soldier cutting air. Necklace, soldiered then. Your team snaking throgh armor. It's up to an arm _________________________________________________________________________ no victims of the future holocaust it's always there, a cancer eating away at the texts, the heat-death cold- death of the universe, sliced in time, collapsed. and others i have talked with have felt the same. no matter the enormous time involved, earlier collapse of human consciousness, the species, planet, solar nova. it is there and present, an annihilation to the outermost limits, viral attack on unhinged consciousness, bad faith. for what one does, what one tells, and let us agree to forget naming, there will be no recording, no survival of recording, no rendering of inscription, signifiers, demarcations. so that expansion or decay, or frozen radiation. this the hinge of unhinging, the brief space to state the case of the world, brief time to absorb it. and others as well have felt the same. one cannot speak in fact of anni- hilation (bad faith) when there is nought to annihilate, no leverage, no mirror or node at the heart of the world. i think of yad vashem, hand and name, an institution attempting to record those who died in the holocaust. i think we are living in the holocaust. i really do. others, too, think thus. such would be the case before the heat-death cold-death, mirrors of the real, premonition humans carrying out what horrors of what (bad and) violent faith. knowing every word or kenning, engraved in stone or magne- tic domain, is fated to disappear. as if there were the presence of the telling or the name of an emanation disappearing, which references the future anterior of a recording, looking back with sorrow. none such, of course, and nothing forgotten. many others have said they feel that way. the world has never had the capacity to remember. one learns this in the act of dying. we are all dying. we are all already dead. many feel the same. _________________________________________________________________________ why i'm dead meat, by jennifer Republicans ooze from their heads what is left of soul's rubbish i could not stand to be in a room with one of them they are objects for me, they reek of flesh gone sour i would be a lichen to their rock, corroding their violent granite they would kill everyone with guns and they are all white men, every last one of them, no matter what drear affirmation. white men filled with dead pus: they stomp the children of the poor, rape pollution laws, guarantee we'll drown the world in poison. we're raped with rusted guns from world war two three four, while they fight the righteous fight against women sex longing - holding dead children on sticks to slap us with, banner banner big money big money. i couldn't stand to party with righteousness i couldn't stand to fuck righteousness but their holes are closed they have no holes, shit leaks from their mouths, piss leaks from their eyes, they write vomit they are a real danger, never forget this, behind words are guns and mobs and real men, you never forget a real man when you look into his dead dead eyes, when you see a Republican on the road, kill it, it is not quite human. - Jennifer ______________________________________________________________________ (don't take my name in) Vanna White (by Vanna White!) Here I am watching Wheel of Fortune and there is Vanna White apparently turning the letters over when the contestant guesses correctly. But in fact, the letters are on television monitors, and Vanna just walks by the screen, lightly touching it. I think she gestures towards it, nothing more. You can't really see. The cameras keep the eyes and I's at a dis- tance. Of course an engineer does the work behind the stage. It's like Milli Vanilli years ago. I begin to wonder about virtual jobs. Years ago I was on a kibbutz in Israel with a group of other students. We spent a busy few days clearing rocks from a field, then another busy few days putting them back. Vanna walks back and forth among screens that would have been miracles years ago. I think there _was_ a time when she'd actually turn the letters over ("around"), can anyone remember? Now there's nothing, pure emptiness. If we could only replace Pat Sajak himself, we'd have a perfect show, ex- cept for the contestants. It seems to me we should have virtual postwomen and postmen to deliver our email. Sysadmins are as close to virtual as they can be; we write to post- master@ in general to protest abuse. Soon, we'll have virtual readers as well; any mail filter is already on the way. To filter spam, something has to read and decide that yes, *Make Money Now!* is not from Cybermind, or is it? Meanwhile, Vanna does her job admirably; there's a quick cutaway to the Channel 7 NewsTeam, "News" "Team," who virtually re-port on virtual news. They're waiting for Vanna to finish walking back and forth so they can virtually speak their virtual thing. Vanna actually _does_ walk, al- most until the credits. I'm getting _really_ sick. Exercise: Name all the virtual jobs you can think of. Why are they virtual? Is your job virtual? Are you? Don't "you" just love these questions? Who are "you" anyway? (Please, _no_ comments on "society of the spectacle," "simulacrum," "hyperreality," and so forth. We just want the virtually "Absolute Truth.") - Vanna White __________________________________________________________________________ KILL ME WHOEVER I AM IT WAS ME. I DID IT. I LIED BY OMISSION. AND AND AND AND AND I SUCKED BILL'S COCK AND MONICA SUCKED MINE! IT WAS ALL DONE IN AN OFFICE DEFINED BY GEOMETRY. IT WAS HORRIBLE, IT WAS EVIL! AND AND AND AND AND IT WAS THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD. I WAS SO EMBARRASSED I HAD TO LIE. NOW I HAVE TO APOLOGIZE OVER AND OVER AGAIN. THE BRUTE TASTE OF SEMEN IN MY MOUTH! AND AND AND AND AND THE BRUTE TASTE OF MY SEMEN IN MONICA'S! THESE ARE CRIMES COMPOUNDED BY PERJURY! I SHOULD HAVE DESCRIBED STAINS AND MILKY CONSISTENCIES. STAINS AND MILKY CONSISTENCIES CAN BRING DOWN A NATION! AND AND AND AND AND STAINS AND MILKY CONSISTENCIES ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF NUCLEAR WAR! I WAS SO WRONG; I HAVE TORN MY BREASTS OFF IN CONTRITION. THIS IS WORSE THAN AIDS, WORSE THAN WORLD-WIDE STARVATION. I AM GUILTY OF HIGH TREASON; NO ONE ELSE LIES ABOUT SEX. AND AND AND AND AND SEX IS HOLY AND SHOULD BE PERFORMED ON THE WOMAN. THE WOMAN SHOULD KEEP HER FUCKING MOUTH SHUT. REPUBLICAN WOMEN KEEP THEIR FUCKING MOUTHS SHUT! I DID NOT PERFORM IT ON THE WOMAN AND SHE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT. THE HORROR OF THIS IS BEYOND SPEECH! AND AND AND AND AND ALL THAT LOOSE NUCLEAR IN THE EX-USSR ISN'T AS MISERABLE AS THIS! AND AND AND AND AND I SHOULD BE KILLED OR AT LEAST CASTRATED AND REMOVED FROM OFFICE, MY BALLS NAILED TO THE WHITE HOUSE DOOR I HAVE FOREVER SULLIED! THE REPUBLICANS SHOULD GET ON WITH THEIR CLEANSING OF THE WORLD. AND AND AND AND AND THE REPUBLICANS WILL MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY! I SHOULD BE TORN LIMB FROM LIMB TO SHOW HOW I VIOLATED DEMOCRACY! AND AND AND AND AND I SHOULD BE THROWN IN PRISON ALONG WITH THE OTHER TWO MILLION BAD PEOPLE IN THIS COMPLETELY FREE COUNTRY! I FORGET THAT I AM THE PRESIDENT BECAUSE I AM THE PRESIDENT OF EVIL! THE DEMOCRATS ARE EVIL. THE DEMOCRATS SUCK COCK AND THAT IS EVIL! PLEASE FORGIVE ME AND THEN KILL ME WITH VERY BAD TORTURE! AND AND AND AND AND TEAR OUT MY EYES! MAKE ME SUFFER! AND AND AND AND AND CUT OFF MY TONGUE! MAKE ME SUFFER! AND AND AND AND AND DISEMBOWEL ME! MAKE ME SUFFER! AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND _________________________________________________________________________ From WXTR, 7:46 AM: How can you offer so much at such a low price. We have on our staff engin- eers to build reliable systems with maximum performance. What do you mean when you say I'll never have to buy another computer. Well this computer is totally upgradable. You have a competely flexible frame and can add or subtract components at will. I bet you wish you could do this with your body. There are so many features to consider. The motherboard is complete- ly modular so anything can be added or subtracted. It will easily adapt itself to the new quantum logic matrices and cooling systems coming in 2001. Everything plugs into everything else. There are so many ports! You can do just about anything with this. This is really incredible. And it comes with a monitor with is upgradable as well; the new holographic dis- plays or walkabouts will be ready shortly. You can trade in on one of these? Yes, by 2000, you'll be able to walk into your own Internet. Think of it! Information for the first time, literally at your fingertips, no matter where they are! It's amazing! You can walk into your Web page, for example, flow seamlessly through each and every link. For now, the seven- teen inch monitor gives you state of the art access to videos so real you won't believe your eyes! This is the best computer system for the value, anywhere in the universe! For your family, your workplace, your online chats! Think of it! You will be able to live on the Internet without fear of environmental degradation - either to you or your loved ones! And there will be no pollution, no tossing of older equipment; instead, you'll get new upgrades periodically for our low low price! Easy payments available! Call . __________________________________________________________________________ SPAM/AOL Recently I joined AOL to have a portal to telnet into panix when I'm on the road. There was no mail in my AOL account (except for writing to a friend); last night I went into two chats (one on authors and one for artists). Today the Inbox was full of spam, all internal to AOL. What amazes me about the following is its personal aspect - more insidious than usual. I had about 40 of these messages on a relatively 'off' night. There was nothing else. (1) Hi, what's your name? I tried to instant message you but you had them turned off :(. Well, when you turn them on, im me. I would love to chat, and maybe even get together sometime! My name is Lisa and I just moved to your state from France, where I was a Playboy model. Now I need someone to show me around. If you would like to see what I look like then visit my page, just click on the link. I got plenty of pics! Dont forget to instant message me! - Lisa (2) Hi. I finally scanned that pic I promised you. Sorry it took so long. Well I put it up on my webpage so come take a look if you have time.