Death Equinox 98

AH YES DEAR FRIENDS!

As NeX-Day draws ever closer, I find myself not knowing whether I'm talking to you listening by radio, or typing to the internet SubGenii on alt.slack, or torturing the the little fuzzy SubGenius bunnies in the animal outreach, where we communicate via animal testing, or try to. About one out of every 100 bunnies manages to actually vocalize the phrase, "Praise "Bob," or a scream that sounds every similar to that phrase. This Church is so multimedia, I sometimes get confused between whether I'm loudly SHOUTING to rows of parishioners in the pews of a NIGHT CLUB or if I'm merely ensconced on my throne of excremeditation and simply IMAGINING that I'm at a devival. A high paying devival.

There's one coming up at the Euclid Tavern in Cleveland, on Euclid Avenue, Nov. 8, Sunday, Einstein's Secret Orchestra, me, who knows what-all-else. And on Dec. 5 in Austin with Robert Anton Wilson, Negativland, us and sponsor FRINGEWARE.

And I just got back from one in Denver at this most oddball of cons, the DEATH EQUINOX '98 convergence of weirdos. It kinda reminded me more of Phenomicon in Atlanta because it was LIKE a science fiction convention except that instead of SF it was SM, and some of what they were talking about was REAL while SEEMING kinda like science fiction -- conspiracies, mass murder, and sadomasochistic bondage and discipline. I had never been to a party where people sat around poking fine needles into their flesh in neat little rows and designs -- for YUKS and GRINS. And that was just the after-hours PARTIES. You should have seen the SEMINARS on that stuff. I had a great time, met a whole new tribe of mutants I had not been aware of, that is, the CyberPsychos of Colorado, and this will benefit all mutantdom, as it does whenever new broken and self-invented genes are added to the admixture in the VAT... friends, this convention was so cool that there was a PANEL... on PRAIRIE SQUID. They even have their own heretical religion, CNIDARIA, the worship of the great JELLYFISH. One of the other guests of honor was the horror writer KW Jeter, who was real FUNNY!

BUT, of ESPECIAL interest to the HOUR OF SLACK listeners, we discovered... LITTLE FYODOR and BABUSKA. A GREAT, simply FANTA-BULBOUS musical combo, the latest BASTARD CHILD of DEVO, in league with Negativland (in fact they toured with Negativland), Duke of Uke, The Swingin' Love Corpses, and other great purveyors of Spazz-Nerd Jazz-Rock, like all those bizarro bands that opened for us on OUR tour. Spazz Music of Macho Irony I suppose you could call it. What really struck me immediately though was that Little Fyodor, this, eh, SINGER, dresses EXACTLY LIKE JANOR HYPERCLEATS, Goodwill-Loud-wise, and has contorted facial expressions HIGHLY reminiscent of my cospouter Lonesome Cowboy Dave! And his FACE looks sort of like ME crossed with Larry Fine of the 3 Stooges! His keyboardist sweetie, Babushka, looks like an extremely disapproving old granny who just got off the boat from Croatia. I just wish you could see the videotapes of this band. Little Fyodor spazzes out better than any spazz dancer I have EVER seen, and the lyrics to his songs are positively among the most simultaneously gut-wrenchingly FUNNY and HORRIFIC that I have heard outside of Elvis Costello back in the day, but... well... anyway, Little Fyodor and Babuska are INSTANT HOUR OF SLACK HEROES. 'Cause I say so and you will too. I recordered portions of their live concert and I nabbed their CD... I think you'll be able to tell which is which.

CYBERPSYCHOS: PO Box 581 Denver CO 80201 and:
alt.culture.cyber-psychos

Little Fyodor: PO Box 973 Boulder, CO 80306

****** NOW FOR THE PICS! ********

You can either try the NARRATED THUMBAILS PAGE of ALL the static photos, the GIF-movies below (which reproduce the same pics as a low-res slide-show), or just... whatever. You get the el-cheapo version anyway, if you scroll downwards.

DE98-bdsm.gif
In previous text post I described Death Equinox 98, a small but very very weird convention in Denver where I was honored to be a guest and save souls. (3 were $aved as new Members! Prabob.) On Sunday night, I missed the Sunday Night SubGenius IRC devivals (irc.liii.com, #subgenius) to watch this nice seminar in light sadomasochistic sex play. "MAMA TOL' ME NOT TO COME!" Naw, jes' kidding, it was enlightening and I got some nifty hints. I especially liked when the trained Sex Tarantula was brought out to scamper around on the tied-up doll's nekkid belly! Out of the Hive, BugFuckers!

This GIF-imated slide show is made from frame grabs from my home movies.

The exhausted looking gal sporting clothespins around her middle is Jasmine Sailing, aka The Blasted One of the Cnidarian religion. She's the crazy woman who hosts this event. Her arms and back are covered with razor scars obtained the night before during her poetry reading.

I suppose my devival was sort of tame by comparison, since I only hollered and showed videotapes. I tell ya, it's hard to keep up in this high stakes show biz world!

DE98Mini.gif
Here is the most compressed possible home movie, in only 350 k, a gifamation that includes a few dozen teeny GIF still pictures. "Play" like a high speed movie for hypno-implantation effect, or use the forward and reverse buttons to "slide show" through them. Much larger, clearer, but byte-heavier individual versions to follow.

Lil-Fyodor.gif
At Death Equinox I met and attended the concert of Little Fyodor (and Babushka, his uh lovely keyboard player and road manager). This guy is the Elvis Costello of DEVOs, the Pee Wee Herman of Negativlands, the Sphinx Drummond of Rudy Schwartz Projects, the David Byrne of Wild Man Fishers... the "Janor" of Spaz-Rock SuperGeek Superstars.

At first you laugh at his spazzy antics but then as you listen to what he's saying, you feel a huge knife twist painfully deeper and deeper both inward and outward.

This band puts on a GREAT live show! It's a TRUE SubGenius must-see. We are already planning to somehow get Little Fyodor to X-Day 99 at Brushwood so he can play his hit songs "ALL DOOMED!" and "I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO" just before the Rupture.

stang-DE98.gif
I feel like an egomaniac posting this ungainly GIFmovie, since it's all pictures of me, but the STANGOPHILE GIRLS and homos would insist. We had a nice huge video projector which threw a picture much larger than the screen, and which spilled over onto the pulpit where I was standing for this Death Equinox showe at the Denver West Sheraton. We staged a few more photos afterwards where I stood on a chair directly in front of the screen for the "cultish light show" effect.

Using this huge projector I was able to show home movies of X-Day to the assembled multitude... I threw on just a minute or so each from the Crucifixion, the Battle of Armageddon, the Bobtism and of course The Great Humiliation, and narrated them. In fact there's a picture in here of a picture of me in front of everyone looking at a picture of me being humiliated in front of everyone. I'm bound and determined to get as much mileage as I can out of that rather uncomfortable half hour.

The very first picture shows me and Tom Motley of HECTOR, a Colorado cartoonist collective. Tom does KILLER "underground comics" sort of stuff. We computer geeks tend to forget the olden printed world of hand drawn artwork, so SEND A STAMP TO:

THE SQUID WORKS, PO BOX 480463 Denver CO 80248-0463

and SEE!

If "Motley" or "HECTOR" shows up on a.b.s., give him a WARM WELCOME! He's a SKILLED SICK MOTHERFUCKER!

Quasi-BUG PORN! Newly ordained Rev. Bruce Young displays a Centipede Arm while a young Test Lab Subject lady is unstropped in the background.

The back of our hostess at Death Equinox Con, St. Jasmine Sailing (The Blasted One), after her Saturday night poetry reading. These people have a completely different approach to partying than I'm used to. And yet they talk just like real people, not like Yankees at all.

Funny thing was, at one point I started talking about the salt water squirting bulb treatment I do every day to irrigate out my recently repaired sinuses, and they told me to shut up about my surgery recovery because I WAS GROSSING THEM OUT.

Here's Jasmine's artfully scarred-up arm. She says that the endorphin rush is fun but that the itching for the next two weeks as it heals is the TRICKY part.

BUGPORN!! Spiderbelly Sex as demonstrated at "Death Equinox." More like a SubGenius weekend retreat than a Methodist weekend retreat. One of the guests was an entymologist who raises tarantulas and scorpions. Another guest was an S&M gadgeteer. Another was a healthy, eager, adventurous, strapping young woman. Great combo!

I, of course, like to WATCH.



Pouring hot wax on the giggling vixen bound with dayglo green parachute cord. The S&M expert apologized for the color of the cord, but I thought it went beautifully with the eh yes ahem.

(The wax falls through the air far enough that it doesn't burn when it hits flesh. It seemed to more tickle the participant.)

Note the Janor-like suit worn by Little Fyodor. That's my hand holding the lighter. I was struck numb by this man's sheer lyrical brilliance and excruciating passion!

Seriously!

Little Fyodor, live at the Death Equinox 98 con, Denver CO. Caught in mid-spazz during his choreographed gesticulationary "DANCE OF THE SALTED SLUG.

 

Me on a typical day at work. It's a living. The pay ain't great but you meet interesting people.

Stang-Heil77.JPG
Another picture of me at work -- one of those get rich quick success things, seminars in hotels, with slide shows of the boss, who got rich by his special good luck scheme, etc. etc.

stangbob.JPG
Truly, I am a Saint! A saint among Sacred Scribes.

Like a scene from 1984, Big Brother looms over the shrieking howling politico hatemonger!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: NENSLO <n@n.slo>
Organization: V.I.T.R.I.O.L.
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.binaries.slack
Subject: Re: - de17jasback.JPG (0/1) Scarry or Scary?

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>
> The back of our hostess at Death Equinox Con, St. Jasmine Sailing (The
> Blasted One), after her Saturday night poetry reading. These people have a
> completely different approach to partying than I'm used to. And yet they
> talk just like real people, not like Yankees at all.
>
> Funny thing was, at one point I started talking about the salt water
> squirting bulb treatment I do every day to irrigate out my recently
> repaired sinuses, and they told me to shut up about my surgery recovery
> because I WAS GROSSING THEM OUT.
>

This reminds me of a funny story. I was reading the local alternative
newsweekly a couple of years ago, an article about local tattooing
customs, and this one gal said, as near as I can recall,"Sometimes I
look at myself in the mirror and think my god, what have I done to
myself? But I know myself pretty well and I think I'll be into the same
things when I'm forty that I'm into now." Well, when I got up off the
floor and got the tears wiped outa my eyes and the pain in my side went
away, I took that paper and hopped into my time machine and went ahead
twenty years, and found that gal. She was working in an office, wearing
a longsleeved turtleneck sweater in the middle of summer. I just held
that page up in front of her and she gave me the dirtiest look and said
"you son of a bitch."

"Barbed wire around your arm is NOT going to be a good look when you are
fifty."
-John Waters

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Organization: Cyber-Psychos AOD
From: jsailing@nyx10.nyx.net (Jasmine Sailing)

In article <i.stang-ya02408000R1010981742210001@enews.newsguy.com>,
Rev. Ivan Stang <i.stang@subgenius.com> wrote:
>Funny thing was, at one point I started talking about the salt water
>squirting bulb treatment I do every day to irrigate out my recently
>repaired sinuses, and they told me to shut up about my surgery recovery
>because I WAS GROSSING THEM OUT.

Ah, you're just bummed because the geese stole all of the
attention. ;)

Speaking of which! Where ARE the pictures of the geese?
How could you leave out the MAIN ATTRACTION?! Yeah, I
know, that window wasn't being very cooperative... I
didn't manage to document the geese either. *Sigh*

Jasmine Sailing Cyber-Psychos AOD jsailing@netonecom.net
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% http://cyberpsychos.netonecom.net %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Jasmine Sailing: editor/publisher (pusher of obscenities), writer and
musician (lost in the schizoid realms), The Blasted One (worshipper of
Jellyfish), con-chair (masochist), ex-welfare mom (irresponsible slut),
twonk (censor), bisexual (waffler), crashed off happy pills (bummed).

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: jsailing@nyx10.nyx.net (Jasmine Sailing)

In article <362005C0.1371@n.slo>, NENSLO <n@n.slo> wrote:
>a longsleeved turtleneck sweater in the middle of summer. I just held
>that page up in front of her and she gave me the dirtiest look and said
>"you son of a bitch."
>"Barbed wire around your arm is NOT going to be a good look when you are
>fifty."
>-John Waters

Oh, I'm not so sure about that. My son has so much fun
tromping around the no-ID-required portions of Death
Equinox with a whip and a spider that I doubt he'd let
me trade the convergence in for turtlenecks. ;)

Though admittedly I do wear men's sweaters, and even
dress up for school functions.

When I was a reckless, and highly suicidal, youth I
spent far too many years haphazardly slashing up my
body with razor blades. As I aged, I decided I wasn't
so keen on the scars. So, yes, it did change with
time. I drifted from maniacal, scarring, self-
mutilation to safe, non-permanent, mutilation by
experienced people. We only practice safe mutilation
at Death Equinox. No matter how idiosyncratic that
sounds...

I can have my body covered with burn marks and razor
cuts and, when they are done properly and I take care
of my skin afterward, the damage is completely non-
permanent. It takes longer to grow back all of the
singed off body hair than it takes to heal. Only
the itching becomes regretful. Fun though it may
be for me, I wouldn't advise inexperienced and
unscarred people to go for quite the over-hauls
I do. I wind up wearing long sleeves and pants to
my son's school functions for a while, but I already
do that because of my tattoos anyway so 'ees no
big deal.

This isn't to say I have a problem with permanence,
or my tattoos. My very last one was gotten about a
decade ago. The colour has faded in them. But
they still have every level of personal spiritualism
to me that they did when I got them and I happily
let them hang out most of the time. Some domestic
institutions have, shall we say, slightly unadventurous
views on performers who also happen to be parents,
though, so wearing a lot of clothing becomes inevitable
at times.

Had I gotten a tattoo that said "I heart <insert
name of miscellaneous youthful crush, or maybe
even my first coupla husbands>", or something
that just looked cool, I would be very sad about
it right now. I am somehwat sad about the old
scars from haphazard slash and burns. I'm not
sad about my present state of non-permanent fun.

I reckon that if I, my boss (I), and my spouse,
have no problem with what I'm doing, then 'ees
no big deal.

Random note: needles through the skin (play
piercing) rarely leave a bruise, much less a
scar. At least if an experienced play piercer
is doing it. I'm not brave enough to allow an
inexperienced one to stick needles through my
back. I have heard that some people are though...

And, of course, the needles come right back
out.

Jasmine Sailing ^^^^ Cyber-Psychos AOD ^^^ jsailing@netonecom.net
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ http://cyberpsychos.netonecom.net ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I play with fire because the shimmering flames make everything look so
beautiful around them. And the same flames always lash out to burn me,
to leave me wailing in pain. Then they dance shyly away and everything
is beautiful once again so I blissfully return to my previous playing.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Jeff Stadt" <MrFrosty@swbell.net>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote in message ...
>The back of our hostess at Death Equinox Con, St. Jasmine Sailing (The
>Blasted One), after her Saturday night poetry reading. These people have a
>completely different approach to partying than I'm used to. And yet they
>talk just like real people, not like Yankees at all.

Denver cult throws a party. Headline news without the babble. And the
honorable Rev. Stang was an eyewitness, and I, being a humble St. in the
Church of Cnidaria, bore witness to his presence. Watched as he knelt
before the great Babushka, watched as he witnessed the terrible deeds done
to The Blasted One herself, St. Sailing. My queen. And we are not all in
Denver, for the cult has grown and prospered over the millennium. Some
dwell in restless L.A.; others in bubbasville, Arkansas; others in concrete
NY. The cult has grown, the great Jellyfish watches from the heavens, as we
all await the fiery reign. Blessed be the jellyfish!!

May you give alms?

St. Stadt, Cnidarian high radiate and DE ops droogie.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Steve James" <stevj@ipa.net>

NENSLO wrote in message <362005C0.1371@n.slo>...
>Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>>
>> The back of our hostess at Death Equinox Con, St. Jasmine Sailing
(The
>> Blasted One), after her Saturday night poetry reading. These people
have a
>> completely different approach to partying than I'm used to. And yet
they
>> talk just like real people, not like Yankees at all.

>
>This reminds me of a funny story. I was reading the local
alternative

Had you been in attendance at the reading that resulted in the
scarring on Jasmine Sailing's back, you would realize that your funny
story isn't relevant at all to what went on, NENSLO.

Instead, you would've been filled with the same sense of awe &
wonderment that the rest of us experienced. I've never before been
privy to such a powerful performance, & I find myself thanking the
jellyfish that I was allowed to attend.

Might I suggest you consider attending the next Death Equinox
gathering & find out just how wrong your assumption was? (Unless of
course, such things scare you).

--stilldazedbythemagikstevj