Subject: YOU PEOPLE!

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Thu, May 2, 2002 12:59 PM

I have again been putting myself through the ALT.SLACK EDITING CRUCIBLE.

Before Indivival, taxes, the latest round of hardware upgrades,
yardwork, life, etc., I had almost finished prepping the alt.slack shit
for SubSITE. I had sorted through about 400 saved bits and I had 128
left to go.

Well, I just this morning did another hundred. (Of course, yet ANOTHER
hundred have accumulated since April 1.)

When I read alt.slack I save the good stuff. I probably only read about
half the newsgroup at best, maybe less. I look for certain things. The
completely ALONE posts, which are sometimes GREAT WRITING and thus go
uncommented on as per this ng's tradition. The threads that have a
HUNDRED posts, which usually means controversey, or else something
really funny, but which always require a ton of editing. And of course
articles started by my favorite authors. And anything with my name on
it. And anything with the names Dobbs or SubGenius in the subject. And
anything from NEW people whose names are unfamiliar to me.

I save only what I think will be good for NON-newsgroup readers, on
SubSITE, and hopefully later in a book of some kind.

Anyway, there's way too much here for me to chop down myself, though I
have done it in the past. (My tunneled out hands can't take it anymore,
plain and simple.) Three volunteers have said they'll do the detailed
chopping. However, I still have to at least pop open each saved
thread, skim it, and decide which of these categories it goes into:

websites
Devivals
historical
Dear SubGenius Answer
Horrible News
5-X-Day
Articles
Immediate Church News
Legume Art Antics
Misc. Alt.Slack Nonsense
Movie, TV, Books
New Holy Goods
Obits
Rants
science
Stang Reports
Tales
War

zzzOUTS & crap

Sometimes it's a stretch to fit certain articles into any of these
categroies, and sometimes I inappropriately place them for reasons of
irony or surprise or whatever the fuck.

The difference between "Rants" and "Articles"? Rants have more
exclamation points.

Anyway, my main point is this:

Y'ALL ARE SOME *FUNNY* MOTHERFUCKERS!!

When the ninnies and twits are removed, even with the horrendous
needless reprinted sections still in place, the material on this
newsgroup is SO FUCKING GOOD...

Well, let me put it this way. I have all the OLD National Lampoons. And
though some are really great, they are NOT A BIT GREATER in their
gut-blowoutability than is a good month of alt.slack. I have been
reading THE ONION since it started, practically (in paper form), and
WE'RE JUST AS GOOD.

And we have something they never had. A COMPLETE FUCKING FREE-FOR-ALL.

But, because it IS a free-for-all, it overall looks pretty FUCKED UP
before it's edited. It only starts looking great at the "second glance"
stage, the "first rough cut" level.

I remember the first time somebody showed me straight, uncut print-outs
from alt.slack, about 1990. It was SO BAD I wanted to AVOID it. Later,
after I learned how to read newsgroups, I saw that there was gold to be
mined.

The problem is, there's too much gold, AND too much useless old buried
latrine wastes.

WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT IF SOMEBODY HAD TIME TO SAVE GOOD A.S. THREADS
INTO THESE CATEGORIES ON A MONTHLY or even weekly BASIS, clean 'em up,
batch-html them, and upload them to SubSITE. Rather than do it on a
bi-yearly basis like I have to, between weekly radio shows and order
filling and etc. etc.

Every time somebody has suggested that idea to me in the past, I have
said, "START! Email the zipped files direct to me! If you can html 'em
then GREAT but if not, just having the word "Subject:" removed from the
first line is INVALUABLE, much less removing the dross and needless
reprinted text!"

Then nothing happens.

I know why -- it IS work.

But GOD DAMN, are ya'll FUNNY MOTHER FUCKERS.

As soon as I get these finished sorting, and zipped, I can mail parts
to the 3 Volunteer Stooges (Two Beans, Phloighd and Temujin, nyuk nyuk
nyuk), and get on to making the X-Day AD... maybe even just in time for
X-Day!

And the other stuff!

Oh FUCK, the BILLS! It's May 2. FUCK SHIT. 1 pm... FUCK!!

Well maybe tomorrow.

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

Subject: Re: YOU PEOPLE!
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

Yard man <Honk.blrpHOOOARGHH@excuseMe.com> wrote:
>"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> wrote:

> yeah. I'm gonna fall for this one. I can tell. Doesn't make me happy
> to be such a sucker, but those Vietnam-era bumper stickers on the back
> of your shopping cart fulla flattened soda cans, the threadbare flight
> jacket, snood-like bandana and the phony greasy pony tail suck me in
> everytime.
>> ok.

"WACO WAS MY WAKE-UP CALL" is not Vietnam era, and that grease was
hard-won, I'll have you know.

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Original file name: YOU PEOPLE! - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:44