Is it me????

From: Phinny <voicejail@NOSPAMNOSPAMyahoo.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Wed, Aug 6, 2003 2:11 AM

I don't know what the fuck happened.

3 weeks ago I was as productive as FUCK, I was churning out so much
stuff I felt GUILTY.

Now, I can't get nothing done, I sit here like Jabba the Hut with
amotivational syndrome. I'm driving myself crazy with THOUGHTS because
I can't DO.

Someone said it's cuz it's 'dog days' dog days of summer. It's the
weather.. Are other people out there going throug this too?

I hate this cuz I have this little Stang-like workaholic demon inside
me going 'c'mon let's go we gotta produce produce produce go go go!'
and i wish it would SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! I wish I could smoke fucking
FROP to get it to shut the fuck up and just STONE it but no, I'm
psycho and that's like a diabetic wanting to eat a slice of wedding
cake!

DAMmit!

Does anyone have any ideas on how to kill the emergentile inside of
you for a while til the weather clears up?

Yours etc.

Phinny

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

:
>
> ...Does anyone have any ideas on how to kill
> the emergentile inside of you for a while til
> the weather clears up?
>

It helps to get a whole bunch of different
newspapers and clip out the similar headlines,
like "Mad Slasher Takes Seventh Victim: Police
Baffled", and make a little altar with candles
and things. It really impresses your friends.

Collage art is easy and FUN.

--
I don't know what you're talking about.
I've never met you before in my life.
That story sounds like utter bullshit.
I wasn't there and it wasn't me.
I am *not* in denial. Shut up.
--nu-monet

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

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Wed, Aug 6, 2003 2:38 PM
Message-ID: <060820031438104920%stang@subgenius.com>

In article <3F311085.ECC6A369@tellurian.com>, purple
<purple@tellurian.com> wrote:

> http://catalog.com/mrm/zappa/html/bobd.html
>
>
> Bob Dean
>
>

And I understand you're still having equally lively conversations with
the late Mr. Zappa to this very day.

--

PRABOB

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

From: "Blackout" <blackout@sususaywhatsubgenius.com>

I heard that if you hold a sea shell up to your ear frank will narrate at
least 14 pages of bullshit for you to "transcribe"

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Wed, Aug 6, 2003 2:57 PM
Message-ID: <060820031457304543%stang@subgenius.com>

In article <vo61jvstaap7n1a89utldk7g4ll2eln60k@4ax.com>, Phinny
<voicejail@NOSPAMNOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:

> I don't know what the fuck happened.
>
> 3 weeks ago I was as productive as FUCK, I was churning out so much
> stuff I felt GUILTY.
>
> Now, I can't get nothing done, I sit here like Jabba the Hut with
> amotivational syndrome. I'm driving myself crazy with THOUGHTS because
> I can't DO.

Well, at least you don't have to feel guilty any more.

Just kidding.

>
> Someone said it's cuz it's 'dog days' dog days of summer. It's the
> weather.. Are other people out there going throug this too?
>
> I hate this cuz I have this little Stang-like workaholic demon inside
> me going 'c'mon let's go we gotta produce produce produce go go go!'
> and i wish it would SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! I wish I could smoke fucking
> FROP to get it to shut the fuck up and just STONE it but no, I'm
> psycho and that's like a diabetic wanting to eat a slice of wedding
> cake!
>
> DAMmit!
>
> Does anyone have any ideas on how to kill the emergentile inside of
> you for a while til the weather clears up?

Phineas, there's nothing in the rulebook that says you have to keep
churning out stuff. I understand, you WANT to, but can't; however,
perhaps until you feel better you could look at it as "INVOLUNTARY
SLACK". It might even turn out later to have been JUST THAT. Not in the
way of turning lemons into lemonade, but maybe being forced to forget
the lemons altogether, you might find that your true calling was in
apples, or oranges, or kumquats, all along. (Probably not, but hey,
until you're back in lemonade mode it's worth a try.)

I wish you luck in getting past the doldrums. I'm sure an excruciating
wait will solve the problem, if nothing else.

I'm not being flippant, I'm serious. The important thing is always
this: DON'T KILL YOURSELF BEFORE X-DAY!!

Actually I *don't* quite how you feel because, I guess, all the work I
crank out is how I apply my own amotivational syndrome to *avoid
DOING.* It's how I avoid doing a REGULAR PAYING DAY JOB.

And a whole lot of what I do is really just organizing and reprinting
in more permanent forms the fine work by my many fellow SubGenius
workaholics, you included.

It's usually lack of money and enough time in the day that frustrates
me, not amotivational syndrome, and in such cases, I blow off the huge
things I can't do and do what little things I can do. For instance,
just this morning, I couldn't work on my computer for various reasons.
I really, really wanted to. But I cleaned the house some. I didn't WANT
to, but I did it. Then I called my mom and dad.

I can't afford to MAIL a Stark Fist, so I keep making stuff I CAN
afford to make, and posting it to a.b.s. or SubSITE or whatnot.

I grok that your problem is not your computer, but your brain. But,
maybe work on SMALL things. Those small things need to be done just as
much as the large things. One THING at a time, as they said in that
great 1950s sci fi movie.

You now have permission to BLOW EVERYTHING OFF and read a gook book. I
have been enjoying the hard sf of Stephen Baxter, if you like hard sf.
This guy's sci fi is so hard it gets ME hard.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 204206, Austin, TX 78720-4206
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com
For SubGenius Biz & Orders: call toll free to 1-888-669-2323
or email: jesus@subgenius.com
PRABOB

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: KRONOS <null@void.com>

Could you recommend some good gook books? I have an intense,strange
and unnatural interest in the Vietnamese people.

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

"The Look Cool Pure Fool Luck Gook Food Cookbook",
by Phuc Thieu and Ichy Kan

--
"He's just screaming out
'Neuter Me!'"
-- some guy about his dog

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

From: joecosby@mindspring.com (Joe Cosby)

Sooner or later in everbody's life there's a moment when you gain
perspective enough and you see a pattern in it all, even the worst
times, and you realize that at some level you knew what you were
doing, and there's nothing you can do but sit down and laugh.

You can't really tell people that shit though because it sounds like
new-agey bullshit and it doesn't make an impression until they go
through it themselves.

And when they do, they forget the whole thing again in about 5
minutes.

But still.

...

I think I'll go back to posting fantasies about running people over.

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> wrote in message news:<060820031457304543%stang@subgenius.com>...

> You now have permission to BLOW EVERYTHING OFF and read a gook book.

Awwww...and you once said you weren't a NICE or a KIND man! I also
sincerely believe you meant a GOOD book; if you meant GOOK book, the
government snoop programs would already have caused Them to come after
you as a goddamned Commie. They really hate those.

>>>> I have been enjoying the hard sf of Stephen Baxter, if you like
hard sf.
> This guy's sci fi is so hard it gets ME hard.

I'm getting alternately hard and THEN SOFT AGAIN, poring over the
Digital Performer 3 manual. If I don't soon find something to which I
can devote all this burning, churning Hueyism, I'm gonna appear on the
news, running/waddling through a mall nekkid, waving a 7-Bladed
Windbreaker and screaming at people in what will appear to be a
Turkish dialect, but will be revealed post-mortem on slo-mo video to
have merely been insane babbling. Nothing new about any of that except
the nekkid part. Otay!

HellPope Huey, hellpopehuey@subgenius.com
A coolness rating of 40 MegaFonzies!

"For every child, rich or poor, there's a time of running through
a dark place;
and there's no word for a child's fear and no ears to hear it if
there was a word
and no one to understand it if they heard.
God save the little children! They abide and they endure."
- from "Night of the Hunter," screenplay by James Agee.

"How's that 6-toed 0possum-baby your mother had with redneck?'
- 'King of the Hill"

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

>
> Could you recommend some good gook books? I have an intense,strange
> and unnatural interest in the Vietnamese people.

I'm sorry. I meant Korean.

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

>
> I think I'll go back to posting fantasies about running people over.

Yeah, that's partly why I read the sci fi and Korean books. In
"Moonseed," for instance, the entire planet Earth gets run over in
juicy detail.

Not that I would recommend that particular Stephen Baxter book to
paranoids.

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

In article <8cc8cffc.0308061354.5153fd47@posting.google.com>,
HellPopeHuey <hellpopehuey@subgenius.com> wrote:

>
> Awwww...and you once said you weren't a NICE or a KIND man!

I'm not. Anything helpful I do is for entirely selfish reasons. That's
probably true of anybody who wants to be "good," it's just that to
succeed you first have to admit what's really going on. What's really
going on is your DNA trying to perpetuate itself, and there's nothing
either "good" or "bad" about that. You can pick ways that other people
think are bad, like raping, or you can pick ways that are "good," like
helping to see that children grow up unfucked. But the DNA is gonna get
its way whether you're "good" or "bad."

> I also
> sincerely believe you meant a GOOD book; if you meant GOOK book, the
> government snoop programs would already have caused Them to come after
> you as a goddamned Commie. They really hate those.

I MEANT a COOK book... DUH... I was suggesting that Phineas fix himself
a nice hot pastrami sandwich, or, failing that, a damn Boca
fake-sausage hot dog with saurkraut.

FOOD is in fact #4 on the priorities list. Follows PEEING.

>
> >>>> I have been enjoying the hard sf of Stephen Baxter, if you like
> hard sf.
> > This guy's sci fi is so hard it gets ME hard.
>
> I'm getting alternately hard and THEN SOFT AGAIN, poring over the
> Digital Performer 3 manual. If I don't soon find something to which I
> can devote all this burning, churning Hueyism, I'm gonna appear on the
> news, running/waddling through a mall nekkid, waving a 7-Bladed
> Windbreaker and screaming at people in what will appear to be a
> Turkish dialect, but will be revealed post-mortem on slo-mo video to
> have merely been insane babbling. Nothing new about any of that except
> the nekkid part. Otay!

So that was you on the news! Sorry you didn't get Digital PErformer 3
going sooner.

Well I've been learning Final Cut Pro... again... waddling through the
help files every time I come to something that I don't know how to do.
Like, getting it to RECORD and then PLAY was no so tough, but the
double-cross-around pull-down slide-back overcut dissolves... I know
how to do that with film, you just cut the damn shit, tape it back
together different, mark in and out lines with grease pencil, then do
that for all the soundtracks too, and then conform the negative, and
then send it to the lab and wait a week to see it not work, for $500.
But this new-fangled FREE way of doing it... I'm telling you, when you
have to teach an old dog a new trick, that trick ain't comin' FREE to
that old dog!

But, ONE TRACK AT A TIME, that's how I get it started... or one NOTE I
guess in your case. I actually have done almost no multitrack mixing
outside of jabbering into my mike over music for Hour of Slack, which
is mixed live with a $30 radio shack mixing thing I got from Ydnax when
he upgraded. Just hasn't come up. I have done it in Final Cut Pro but
that doesn't count since it is a video editing program with only
rudimentary audio mixing capabilities. Good for Joe Narrator over
factory sound effects and library music, but not for compsing music on.
And as you know, I leave the music making to weird drug using beatniks
with the talent for that. Best I could do music-wise is holler over
anti-music bands about how much I actually, sincerely hated listening
to anti-music. (But boy, don't you know the crowds ate that shit up!
Those were the days, if you had good earplugs)

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

In article <20030806155308.06821.00000136@mb-m03.aol.com>, SubSpecies23
<subspecies23@aol.comyourmom> wrote:

> I haven't been able to do anythign productive for about the last 4 years now.
> I haven't been able to write anything in years. I'd try frop, see if that
> helps, but I don't know where to get any.

Have you tried throwing all your televisions and radios out the window?
Just asking. Maybe you already tried that. It won't get you frop,
necessarily, although if you do it in a big city from a street-facing
aprtment window, maybe They will come and put you where you CAN find
DRUGS, which are the next closest thing to 'Frop in the human world.

Frop is only good for helping you to PREVENT yourself from writing and
producing TOO MUCH, and as such is an invaluable tool. Nonetheless a
lack of frop is probably not your problem. So instead of throwing the
TVs and radios out the window, you could just sell them, or give them
to the Needy.

That might well be a really good start towards productive creativity.
Ignoring Their shit as much as possible has worked for many of Us. It's
hard to get away from Their shit in most regular day jobs. But when
you're home you can turn everything off and just THINK. Eventually
you'll become so tired of your own thoughts the way they are, you'll
want to"dress them up" in "wild and crazy clothes"... and the next
thing you know, you've created something.

It might SUCK but least you got STARTED UP.

Boy I'm just full of advice today. Compensating for stupidly having
lost the gas cap off my lawn mower this afternoon, then foolishly
burning the tip of my left little finger on the motor, while fiddling,
I guess.

Actually to tell the truth I'm so full of advice today because I can't
do any more video work until the one in the computer is done rendering,
and my wife is busy, and the lawn is already mowed, and even alt.slack
is better than facing my email, which has become frighteningly
voluminous during the busy summer, and they all want SOMETHING. No
offense. I appreciate the help. I think I better go have another one of
those special Rev. Geo brownies and watch Futurama now, though, before
I start needing my own advice. (It's not actually especially good
advice, it's just designed to SOUND good for LONG ENOUGH.)

* NOTE: the Rev. Geo brownies are special because of the powerful,
drug-like SECRET INGREDIENTS in them: SUGAR and CHOCOLATE.

Which I believe are like #s 18 and 19 in the Priorities list. Pretty
high up there actually. Way before "housecleaning" for instance.

--

PRABOB

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

Subject: Re: Is it me????
From: Ben Allen <hiway@speakeasy.org>

[delurk]

The problem for me is that that wouldn't work at all unless I actually
killed my internet connection too. And, um, it's pretty much impossible
for me to live without one, at least without changing professions and
such.

plus, it's fun. internet == fun. Never mind that it sucks up EVERY FREE
HOUR I HAVE, WHICH I INVARIABLY SPEND EITHER READING OR WRITING THINGS
THAT NO ONE, ESPECIALLY NOT ME, WILL REMEMBER 15 SECONDS FROM NOW. dammit.

--
Ben Allen, hiway@speakeasy.org
"My cat can eat a whole watermelon!"
-Rubin Farr, "Rubin & Ed"

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

From: zosodada@aol.com (Zosodada)

<<each moment happens to be too precious to lose.>>

If you really believed that you'd stop wasting so much time with this incessant
drivel, Dick.
"I have used my God-given gift of mental disease as perhaps the most valuable
component of my work. . . [in the hospital] they jammed herbs up my nose. One
of them was quite large. . . when I pulled it out it was like a dried
rosebush." -- Harry Smith

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

From: "nikolai kingsley" <nikolai@broadway.net.au>

> Does anyone have any ideas on how to kill the emergentile inside of
> you for a while til the weather clears up?

nethack. works for me. you can get lost in attacks by letters of the
alphabet.

nikolai
---
@ me,
f, my cat,
/ and a wand of polymorph

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

From: Phinny <voicejail@NOSPAMNOSPAMyahoo.com>

>
>Phineas, there's nothing in the rulebook that says you have to keep
>churning out stuff.

It's just that I feel so GOOD when I do, except if I feel TOO good,
then I feel guilty. It's like that scene in Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory when they rise up toward the rotating... never mind.
But, I like to be productive cuz it keeps my mind off my neurotic
bullshit while ALSO fully on it, it's hard to explain. Problem was my
dad is a TOTAL emergentile and my mom was an UBER-REWARDIAN and I've
got BOTH those genes wrapped around inside and intertwined inside each
CELL of my body grapplin' and a clawin' at each other!

I live in hell.

(sniff)

But at least it makes for some good art which will be enjoyed after I
die BY the space aliens or the cockroaches or whoever is left around
and this gives me some kind of satisfaction.

Actually I wish I could just keep working and working and working but
i'm BIPOLAR so I work untill I hit those rotating blades, then I have
to burp and come back down and CRASH. If you see my webpage, you'll
notice there's like no activity on it for weeks and weeks and then ALL
SORTS OF CHANGES AND NEW MATERIAL in one or two weeks. Then no change
for another month.

So FUCK. I just have to find inspiration is all. I'm going to watch
this 2nd MR. SHOW disk tomorrow and I bet that will motivate me.

'Narco' never really meant 'drugs' it DIDN'T it meant 'narcissism' cuz
I know I'm self-obsessed... but it may as well mean drugs cuz my brain
is a pharmacy or a drug din it manufactures speed, downers,
hallucinogens... I don't think I've ever been in an un-altered state.
Right now is a downer. Paranoia. BTW, if you want to download my new
album titled "Paranoia" take this link:
http://www.nationalcynical.com/sounds/Phineas%20Narco%20&%20Pumpkinhead%20-%20Paranoia.mp3

Oh, the pain... the pain... Help me Will... (What were you saying?)
Oh....

> I understand, you WANT to, but can't; however,
>perhaps until you feel better you could look at it as "INVOLUNTARY
>SLACK". It might even turn out later to have been JUST THAT. Not in the
>way of turning lemons into lemonade, but maybe being forced to forget
>the lemons altogether, you might find that your true calling was in
>apples, or oranges, or kumquats, all along. (Probably not, but hey,
>until you're back in lemonade mode it's worth a try.)
>

Hmmm, sounds kinda fruity to me. Well yeah... I think of my 90 year
old stepdad and he is PISSED cuz he's getting OLD and his body is
running down and he is PISSED OFF!! And I think what's wrong? Take it
easy! Lay in bed and slack off! Be old! Rest! You've earned it! See
but he's emergentile. He has to constantly keep going and he can't.
It's like your car's running down. I can relate. I'm not that old but
it's just the definition of frustratiing to not be able to do what you
want.

Didn't The Stones write a song about this?

Anyway as I say I will always be tortured, (except for brief glorious
moments of equilibrium which I continue to pursue on a sacred quest)
because I am (and Onan can confirm this) a mushed up, wrapped up
twisted up conglomeration of emergentile and rewardian. Like two
pieces of gum mushed together and wrapped around each other.

>I wish you luck in getting past the doldrums. I'm sure an excruciating
>wait will solve the problem, if nothing else.
>
>I'm not being flippant, I'm serious. The important thing is always
>this: DON'T KILL YOURSELF BEFORE X-DAY!!
>
>Actually I *don't* quite how you feel because, I guess, all the work I
>crank out is how I apply my own amotivational syndrome to *avoid
>DOING.* It's how I avoid doing a REGULAR PAYING DAY JOB.
>

I don't know if you've ever done speed or meth or any of those things.
I haven't. But what I feel, I am assuming, is like 'coming down' from
those drugs. Which really sucks I understand. I base this on pure
related description not experience. OR coming down off of coke. I tell
you my brain is a den of vice, horrible things are happening in there,
chemically I can feel it... Dave... I can ... feel .. it.....

>And a whole lot of what I do is really just organizing and reprinting
>in more permanent forms the fine work by my many fellow SubGenius
>workaholics, you included.
>

Well I don't mind. It's symbiotic as far as I'm concerned. I like the
exposure (oh, excuse me, let me zip that up).

>It's usually lack of money and enough time in the day that frustrates
>me, not amotivational syndrome, and in such cases, I blow off the huge
>things I can't do and do what little things I can do. For instance,
>just this morning, I couldn't work on my computer for various reasons.
>I really, really wanted to. But I cleaned the house some. I didn't WANT
>to, but I did it. Then I called my mom and dad.
>

I got this thing where I can't clean the house. It's really nasty.
Every 3 or 4 weeks I take out all the garbage that's about the best I
can do. I eat out so there are no dishes to wash and I get out. I use
paper plates on the rare occasion I do eat in.

>I can't afford to MAIL a Stark Fist, so I keep making stuff I CAN
>afford to make, and posting it to a.b.s. or SubSITE or whatnot.
>

I on the other hand have a guy who wants to DISTRIBUTE my stuff
waiting in Ann Arbor and I'm terrified of completing the projects,
utterly phobic and fear I'll never get over it, cuz I fear I can't
stand the stress of having something officially released. You can't
reason with my brain, don't even try. I'd really love to get HIGH long
enough to get the masters done and the artwork done and bypass all
that fear...BUT I know I'd be asking for trouble down the line. He's
not rushing me though. In the meantime I put out things on the
internet in case I DIE in the interim, which would be depressing. But
quick! and you get a box of ashes you can pretend are hers....

>I grok that your problem is not your computer, but your brain. But,
>maybe work on SMALL things. Those small things need to be done just as
>much as the large things. One THING at a time, as they said in that
>great 1950s sci fi movie.
>

Yeah my brain, I swear it's getting larger. In pictures I have a
forehead that looks like the Krell in This Island Earth, in recent
pictures. I'm evolving, I think like that guy in The Outer Limits. j/k
No, really. No, j/k. No really.

But seriously yeah gotta work on the small things and that's HARD cuz
I have this all or nothingness to my thinking (I guess a lot of
Subgeniuses do) that makes that HARD. It wants to go to extremes. "Too
much is better than not enough" kinda thing. It's hard to DO SMALL.
Part of me is like the 90 year old stepdad ANGRY that it / he can't do
BIG all the time. But that's just the way it is. but I hear what
you're saying.

>You now have permission to BLOW EVERYTHING OFF and read a gook book. I
>have been enjoying the hard sf of Stephen Baxter, if you like hard sf.
>This guy's sci fi is so hard it gets ME hard.

A gook book? Uhhhhhnn.... I think what you meant to say was... a 'cook
book'. I don't cook. But I see what you're saying.

Nn, but, my mom did give me one called 'The Van Gogh Blues--An
Artist's Guide Through Depression' I don't know if I'm going to so
much read it as skip through it. I don't know if I can keep my mind on
reading it, I'm kinda too depressed. But it had a very good quote by
Jackson Pollock. He said:

"Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you're not
painting."

Boy is that ever true.

-=-Phinny

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Original file name: Is it me???? - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05