Date: Tuesday, 27 Oct 1998, 17:48:08 Subject: THESE UNKNOWN TIMES From: Scott Rettberg To: The Unknown THE UNKNOWN TAKE CINCINNATI—A BAD OMEN OF THINGS TO COME ********************************************************** HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. Okay, so we read in Cincinnati. It was a pretty good reading, considering that Scott & William arrived at 7:30, and the reading began at 7:30, and we didn’t even have the hypertext on the computer yet. We pulled it off. Thanks Brian! People liked us and they made us do jello shots. William passed out on Z’s floor while dalmations licked his face. Z is going to be our driver on the tour. So it will be even more dangerous than we expected. It was decided that we need a Winnebago with bookshelves in it. No professors were at the reading, because Scott had pissed them all off while preparing for his exams. Scott is sometimes mean. Often unintentionally. More on that later. Friday, Scott and William wrote while Dirk taught and went to Louis’wedding ceremony. Louis is the contemporary Jewish Hemingway. Dirk picked up the cake for him. Scott and William teased the shit out of Dirk because he doesn’t write enough. It’s long been known that Scott is sometimes mean, but it now appears that he’s influenced William, who is now sometimes mean too. They both feel bad about that. We edited the anthology while Dirk was getting laid. We discovered that we all three have aesthetic differences. We still like each others’work though, yes that includes Dirk’s poetry, and are glad to be getting published by and with each other. Scott was frustrated because he wants it all to have happened yesterday. He wants the book in his hands. He wants the hypertext to be read by millions. He’s impatient. Scott said he needs to stop working on the hypertext. Because that’s all he does anymore. But then he went home and worked on it for two days solid anyway. He’s a junkie for hypertext. Dirk says “assignment” is a fascist term. I say we start calling them “prompts” instead, for Dirk’s benefit. Dirk doesn’t understand the gleeful laugh that W, S & F emit whenever the word “assignment” is uttered. They take some kind of perverse joy in the idea that they could possibly “assign” each other episodes in a hypertext which will bring them all a big audience for their writing, and save their careers. It’s a silly thing that goes all the way back to Normal, IL. An extended inside joke about writing and rules. It should be understood that Scott says a lot of things he doesn’t mean. We went to Louis’ wedding reception Saturday night and I think we all had a real good time. Scott danced and flirted with some very attractive women. Donya got sick. William hallucinated stealing bottles of wine and got into a fistfight with a thornbush. We wrote hypertext at the reception. Then we made Dirk write more. Sunday, Scott and William went to Champaign and read things to kids who are designing new societies. Most of them are from Canada. William read “Sexpatriates” and then Scott read from the hypertext a critique of the story he had written in 1994. Reading that critique to those kids, Scott thought, God, but I was an arrogant prick back then (I’m working on it). Paul was very good on the radio. It was a draining weekend, but the anthology is really coming along. Scott accused William of getting caught up in infrastructural minutia, but only, as we have said, because he is impatient. We wrote lots of new episodes. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. PLEASE. We are about to go public. Thousands are going to read the hypertext in the coming weeks. If everybody spends 30 minutes a day over the next two weeks proofing the shit out of it, and sending me corrections, we can look cool and professional. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. HELP PROOFREAD THE HYPERTEXT. Frank, drop us a line. Love, Scott P.S. Quote of the weekend: “I have a feeling this book tour is gonna be one big disaster” —Wm.