NOTICE: NEW SUBGENIUS FOUNDATION EMAIL ADDRESS: i.stang@metronet.com
!>>Please remove subgstang1@aol.com from your records.<<!
My latest paranoid nightmare is that some dumb bomb or comet or sunspot is going to come along and wipe out all our hard drives, discs, wires and gizmos. Some of us here would be worse off than the dinosaurs -- it would mean we'd have to get REAL jobs, the kind where you have to leave your house and push around actual physical objects larger than keyboard keys. BUMMER!
But in the meantime, I'd like to report to my fellow SubGenii that, despite what common sense tells us, it is actually possible to have a GOOD DAY. Yes! For I had a good day yesterday. I couldn't believe it! Nothing broke, and everything worked. Well, my wife's car's brakes went out, and it cost $200 to fix 'em, but that was HER machine for a change. I DEPEND for my psychological well-being on knowing that my gizmos WORK, even if I don't really NEED them at the time. Of course, 90% of my heartbreak could have been avoided had I just gone out and bought a DECENT MODEM 3 months ago.
But that's what I did yesterday, and when I got it home, MY GOD IT WORKED!!! No "shall I proceed despite IMPENDING TERRIBLE ERRORS?" warnings. Suddenly, after all that anguish and snowcrash-course all-nite book-learning and modem-string-guessing sessions, I HAD PPP ACCESS! I COULD "P" FREELY! I was HOOKED IN! For 50c a DAY! PRAISE TEXAS METRONET, WE'RE ALL DEVO!! I COULD as of that moment TELL AMERICA ONLINE TO GO FUCK ITSELF!! (Although I will keep the AOL account just to keep DOING EXACTLY THAT for a little while longer, before they throw me off.)
By the hoary pubic beard of Wotan, AIEEEE!!! I am NO LONGER a mere infamous, handsome, fit, studly literary-outlaw redneck-hipster cool guy and close personal friend of Dr. Philo Drummond (close associate of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs)! I have ASCENDED! I have achieved my lifelong ambition: to become a CLASSIC NERDY COMPUTER GEEK!!! YES!!! I finally MADE IT!
I knew I was closing in on it the night before. While I was speeding to the nearest computer store to buy a new modem before they closed (I didn't make it), I realized that for days I had been sitting there at my desk, surrounded by empty coke cans, coffee cups, frozen burrito wrappers, pizza rinds and manuals... unshaven, bags under my eyes, wasted and spindly, with filthy 3-day old clothes on, my hair all tangled, ignoring the pleas of the DobbsDrones and my family alike... and here I was leaving the house voluntarily for the first time in days, trying to get THAT LAST PIECE OF THE EQUIPMENT PUZZLE, and I realized -- PRAISE "BOB" (or PRABOB in six-bit), I AM BECOME GEEK!! A TRUE COMPUTER NERD LIKE ALL MY NEW SHORDURPERSAVS!! I have, in one seemingly endless, painstaking, but FELL swoop, managed, with the help and advice of my new friends, and despite the barriers erected by babbling technojunkie show-offs, fax service technicians and computer store employees, to YANK MYSELF UP BY THE BOOTSTRAPS, OUT of the filthy Pinkish mire of America Online, leaving behind those NORMAL HUMAN DOLTS who are TOO LAZY to STOP PAYING $3/hr, too CRAVEN to think they could learn A FEW SIMPLE PROGRAMS, too IMPATIENT to continue striving against the crappy old modem for weeks before THROTTLING it, YES!!! For $16 a month, I have TOTAL PPP ACCESS TO MY HEART'S CONTENT ! I can now flit about in the airy realms ABOVE that mud-plane of AOL, like a veritable ANGEL OF LIGHT, UNENCUMBERED by the fear-sweat of "this better not take too fuckin' long!!!" and "oh, I'm just a poor Normal who can't CONFIGURE A GOD DAMN PROGRAM for himself," all the self loathing of being a commercial online service JERK, THAT'S ALL BEHIND ME NOW!!! I can gaze at all the pornography and SubGenius web sites I please! (Within my RAM's present capacity, anyway -- big artwork on the Web shuts that crowded brain right down. But it's nothing MONEY won't fix. It's not another frustrating TOTAL MYSTERY.) Now I can WASTE HOURS OF TIME looking at things like alt.fan.(insert geek hero here) and BASKING in HOW MUCH BETTER alt.slack is, how much more NOBLE even the DUMBEST SubGenius is than the most "intelligent" of those gibbering earth-fools, simply by virtue of our LOVE OF DOBBS and PURITY OF HATRED for EVERYTHING ELSE!! Ahh yes. Whew. What a deal. I'm gonna start with a CLEAN FRESH SLATE on Metronet from which to pounce and swoop like an eagle through cyberheaven. Yeah right. But...
My fax machine works! My answer machine works! My PPP access works! The programs are all easy to download and learn! I speak a new language! My Preacher's Lip healed up!
Then I learned that they really ARE going to fly me to New York to be on the Jon Stewart show on Tuesday, Jan. 31, and not only that, but the Washington Post "Styles" section wanted to interview me SOON to "scoop" the TV show! I was able to bask in this good Revelation X-selling news without having to actually DO the horrible, demeaning interviews yet. It was turning out to be a good day.
And STILL nothing terrible happened!
None of the zombies that work in the factory here screwed up too bad. Mavrides' tax case inched a few steps forward in the right direction. Cool anti-establishment musical shordurpersav MMojo Nixon called up to say howdy. Run&Gun premiered the demo of their DUELIN' FIREMEN CDRom-interactive game in Las Vegas and the game companies FLIPPED! So there's more "clout" in the right places for a PROPER SubGenius game to happen. The Pittsburgh show is shaping up to be a pretty weird devival. I found out I didn't even have to cook dinner. I took a walk with my dog Beast and emptied him out real good. My kids scored choice roles in their respective school plays. I FTPed for NewsWatcher and configured it, and the whole process was easy as making fun of Mormons. I spent an hour going through the ENTIRE Usenet newsgroup list, "subscribing" to every damn weirdly-titled newsgroup, all the ones that AOL won't let you see, like alt.aol.sucks and all the perverted fetish newsgroups, and the leftist-rightist radical ones, and the ones that are just funny names -- did Kibo do that? -- and alt.friends.sterno.
Suddenly it was after midnight, but I didn't want my GOOD DAY to END. So I cracked open alt.slack to try to catch up on things, marvelled at all the gossiping and hating... By this time I was cross-eyed from antisleep, but I made another pot of coffee, siphoned a little more life-force out of the Bobbie-soul vats (that's the one "perk" of my job), and didn't crash until 4:30. It was a Good Day.
When I woke up at 1 in the afternoon, I was sick as an over-fucked prairie squid from the coffee, souls and frappy. But it was worth it.
Now all I have to do is answer the REAL mail and "do" the "REAL" "jobs" for a change. There sure is a lot more mail than jobs, though. And I guess I better start watching this "Jon Stewart" show on the Fox network, so as to know what to expect, and which to hone of the 35 Talk-Show-Host-Besting techniques I learned at Dobbstown University. He seems to be a fast-talking smart-ass, so I probably should gear up to faster-talking smarter-assed Dobbs-fueled Mode. I'd RATHER do the cynical old fart shtick, because it's so much easier, but my kids insist that that would DEFINITELY be the wrong route to take if I want to sell books to that audience, or at least get them thinking about this "conspiracy" concept...
I've been so absorbed in my new nerd-dom that I'm 4 Hour of Slack Radio Shows behind. I feel like just turning on the mike and saying, "The show's on the Internet now! The music sounds a lot better, and it's interactive! We can't hang up on the callers!" And then just read from the alt.slack pre-Fist collection. For four hours. Used to be my greatest joy was barrage-editing tapes, but it takes so long! Yakking, hell, that goes by FAST. It only SEEMS slow to the LISTENERS, and who cares about them? If I had umpteen jillion killa-megs, on the other hand, I could barrage-edit on my computer, and it would be a joy again. Those Radio Shack decks just depress me. And you know something? SubGenius zombies aren't very good at raising money, and I'm too busy with my FORMULAS and PROGRAMS to be DISTRACTED by this LOW EARTHLY BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SILLINESS!! But, to quote the great Oat Willie, "ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG!!"
Rev Ivan "I AM GEEKDOM" Stang
Remember, that's i.stang@metronet.com!
FUCK America Online. FUCK THEM RAGGED WITH A GREAT BIG FAT SPLINTERY TELEPHONE POLE!! With BIG, REAL REAL ROUGH SANDPAPERY BRIGHT RED STRAPS!!! FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANK BLOBB ALMIGHTY I'M FREE AT LAST!!
I am now qualified to join all the cool techno-snobs in razzing future AOL addicts who need to be REFORMED. I'm gonna write up a... let's just say an instructional paragraph on HOW TO DO MORE, CHEAPER and ... well, I better not say here.
-------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Stang's Good Day & New E-Address
From: ncm5662@is2.nyu.edu (Nicole C. Michaud)
I know what ya mean about sitting in front of the computer for HOURS,
neglecting all the other aspects of life. I've ruined clothes eating
while on the net, because I'm paying more attention to the screen than to
where the hell my mouth is. Also, Going to the little girl's room gets
put off WAY longer than it should. Even now, I am starving, but consider
it more important to finish looking at alt.slack than to actually GET UP
and get some damn food. Hey! "The Internet Diet"!
---Rev. Nickie
---------------------------------------------
From: deadslug@cats.ucsc.edu (David C. "Davy Baby" Brogden)
i.stang@metronet.com (Rev. Ivan Stang) wrote:
> I FTPed for NewsWatcher and configured it, and
> the whole process was easy as making fun of Mormons. I spent an hour going
> through the ENTIRE Usenet newsgroup list, "subscribing" to every damn
> weirdly-titled newsgroup, all the ones that AOL won't let you see, like
> alt.aol.sucks and all the perverted fetish newsgroups, and the
> leftist-rightist radical ones, and the ones that are just funny names --
> did Kibo do that? -- and alt.friends.sterno.
No, Joel Furr did that.
> FUCK America Online. FUCK THEM RAGGED WITH A GREAT BIG FAT SPLINTERY
> TELEPHONE POLE!! With BIG, REAL REAL ROUGH SANDPAPERY BRIGHT RED STRAPS!!!
> FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANK BLOBB ALMIGHTY I'M FREE AT LAST!!
> I am now qualified to join all the cool techno-snobs in razzing future AOL
> addicts who need to be REFORMED. I'm gonna write up a... let's just say
> an instructional paragraph on HOW TO DO MORE, CHEAPER and ... well, I
> better not say here.
Yes. AOL is EVIL EVIL EVIL. Very very EVIL.
Now, then Stang, will Metrocom do that domain registration for you?
--dave
--
--
o o David C. "Davy Baby" Brogden
__\_\_ deadslug@cats.ucsc.edu
/ \ __ "I want total sensory depravation and
\____ \ Fiat Slack / \ backup drugs!" -- Edina Monsoon
\ \____________/ /
Slugs \ /http://www.armory.com/~deadslug/index.html
Undead \________________/Due to budget constraints these aren't UCSC opinions
---------------------------------------------
From: wbarwell@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (William Barwell)
Gee Revern' Stannnng? Why's yer punctiation all fucked up?
Don't know if you can SEE it from your end, but from here,
every ' seems to come out a funny-assed special character.
Hate t' mention it. But...
Know what ya mean. Just had to replace a Hard Disk controller.
Had to live off a floppy disk only for over a week.
Just barely able to boot up and net up. I had withdrwal symptoms.
I have no job at the moment but still HAD to have a HD so I spent
$150 bucks on a new SCSI controller.
Hard disks are an addiction no less than heroin. Technology
is an addicition. A Hard disk allows you to stay up to 2:36 in
the morning playing Doom II.
There is a company working right now to build and market
VR goggles that will inject the image DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EYE'S RETINA!
No more bulky goggles and grainy LCD screens. 1280 X 1280
directly onto the retina. We will never be able to be dragged away
from the Computer now. 250 mhz DEC CPUS are here NOW for when the
goggle shit and we neeed these CPUs to run the games of the future which
will be better than life. ISDN laser cables will allow vast amounts of
data throughout the world. I could get Stang on the modem and we could
play DOOM IX only instead of killing cartoon demons, I COULD ROAST LIVE
STANGS! It would be as real as actually snuffing him. He too would be
killing dozens of shotgun weilding Popes on the other end.
There are already boards being tested for computers that allow full video
to be compressed and decompressed in real time of today's phone lines.
I know already of one Porn Lord who is intereseted in the next succesor
to phone sex. The Girls are interested too. Mo more having to make
the rent by giving blow jobs to all comers cause phone sex really doesn't
actually pay all that well. Virtual Sex is so much ... safer.
Of course we will still need cheap day labor to support all
us otherwise not actually all that useful computer savvy people
who are too plugged in to actually DO anything Physical.
How will those unlucky ones be chosen. Simple.
They are the ones who can't figure out the software manuals.
That's why the manuals aren't allowed to be well written.
Pope Charles
SubGenius Pope Of Houston
Slack!
---------------------------------------------
Subject: Rev. Stang's Good Day
From: christuck@aol.com (ChrisTuck)
My Dear Brother in Dobbs:
So, here's this fish thing, it has, for some reason it cannot fathom,
crawled up onto the dry land. It's gills start to whither from lack of
water, yet, it doesn't die. Oh sure, it opens it's mouth and gasps a bit,
and discovers that all this gasping seems to work almost as well as those
gill things, and that it's stiff fins and flippers seem to work almost as
well on this hard not-water.
It blinks it's eyes a few times to carry away the scum and algea that
covered the surface of the water, and then it sees what all this hard
not-water really is...
At which point, some preditor lunges out of the sea, grabs it by the tail,
and hauls it, shreiking and bleeding, back into the sea, where it is
swallowed whole, and dies slowly in a wash of stomach acid and peristaltic
contractions.
Right now, you are that fish-thing. And you probably don't want to get
eaten, just yet.
You gain wisdom, Grasshopper, but yours is but the first step on the path
of True Geekdom. There are many dangers and pitfalls in your way. Do not
let your beatific vision blind you to what lies in your path towards
enlightenment. The most dangerous is the Seduction of Hardware.
As Dobbs counsels us, "Don't just (verb) (noun), (verb) the HELL out of
it!!" In your instance, the lowly LC may seem like a slow, inferior,
Creeping Terror kludge of a machine, and that it needs to be replaced by
the biggest, fastest monster made by Apple. No, it is a fine machine that,
once you learn the hell out of it, will serve you, yea, unto that Final
Voltage Spike.
As the budget allows, stuff that sucker with RAM, get an acellerator card
(it plugs into the single slot on the motherboard and makes it SCREAM!)
and investigate larger external harddrives. Y'all hang a one gigabyte HD
on it and you can actually EDIT an HoS on the LC.
The Net is awash with people who, deciding that their little Mac Pluses
and 386 boxes are just doubleplusungood, went into debt to get the latest
thing, and discovered that the latest thing can't even divide correctly,
let alone co-exist with a modem, sound card and CD-ROM drive.
The True Geek, much like Dobbs, stumbles along with his machine, the
machine he understands, the machine he truly groks.
You still have much to learn, and beware of thinking you Know It All, too
soon. As a learned sensei once said, "In the first year, you will learn
enough karate to get the absolute living SHIT kicked out of you in a
street fight."
As you were told, you need to run that gauntlet. However, in the right
frame of mind, running that gauntlet can be the most fun you'll have with
your clothes on.
Please keep all of us on Alt.Slack, particularly those of us who are still
without REAL Net access, informed of your progress and revelations.
***********************************************************************
* Chris Tucker 27 Terrill Street * Karl Marx Is A Dead * This Space*
* Rutland VT 05701-4157 USA * White Heterosexual * For *
* 802.775.6277 ChrisTuck@AOL.COM * Northern European Male * Rent *
***********************************************************************
Original file name: Stang's_Good_Day_&_New_E
This file was converted with TextToHTML - (c) Logic n.v.