THERE IS JUSTICE, AFTER ALL
Just as I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself -- well, running
around FRANTICALLY, feeling sorry for myself -- because I need to print a
Stark Fist, produce 5 Hour of Slack shows, write 4 articles and book
intros for RENT MONEY, write the SubG CD Rom game proposal, learn more Web
lore, answer the 5 foot deep box of personal snail mail, track down the
latest lost mail orders, return the phone calls, put more stuff in
alt.slack, PACK, and do the dishes, ALL AT ONCE, RIGHT NOW, preferably
before leaving for Pittsburgh Thursday -- just when I was trying to figure
out WHICH to work on FIRST, and despairing, I got the MOST WONDERFUL
OFFER, and it cheered me right up.
The folks at SunSITE (sunsite.unc.edu) called up and offered The SubGenius
Foundation not only a FREE Web site and expert help, but a slot for THE
HOUR OF SLACK on THE WORLD'S FIRST INTERNET RADIO STATION!!
In the course of the conversation, it finally sunk in that I was talking
to legendary Internet Gods! SunSITE at U.N.C. was the FIRST WEB SITE IN
NORTH AMERICA. It was set up partly by the European guy who INVENTED the
Web. When the WHITE HOUSE wanted to get Internet connection, THESE are the
guys the FEDS came to. (The White House archives were first set up there.)
SunSITE is also the main distribution point for the Linux operating system
(the freeware Unix thing also called Slackware, with little Dobbshead
graphics in it). I asked my new buddy at SunSITE, David McConville, if he
could put me in touch with the guys who were developing Linux , so I could
ask them to add our trademark info to their use of the Dobbshead... he
leaned away from the phone and said, "Hey guys, he wants to know if I can
'put him in touch with the people creating Linux!' HAR HAR HAR!" This was
them.
Anyway, it turns out that, now that they've bought themselves some Slack,
clout and leeway with their previous work, and have all this equipment and
expertise at their disposal, they're rounding up people they figure are
new to the Net and might do some interesting work there. They "recruited"
and are doing Web sites with Negativland
((http://sunsite.unc.edu/negativland)), Craig Baldwin (who made the film
Tribulation 99), even Bob Moog (yes, THAT Bob Moog, as in the
synthesizer). The way David put it, he and his coworkers helped create
this technology. They know its every limitation inside and out... so they
were looking for people who didn't know JACK-HOOEY about the limitations,
who were in other words ignorant enough to be TOTALLY CREATIVE, who would
thus think up stuff to do with the Web that no expert would be DUMB ENOUGH
to attempt, but perhaps SHOULD ANYWAY... well, they certainly had me
pegged. I've got lots of time to kill while on the road next week so I
plan to finally hide out from my email and alt.slack, and devise elaborate
plans for both a SubGenius CD Rom "VR-game-environment-encyclopedia" and
the most multimedia, interactive Web site imaginable, BEFORE I LEARN
ANOTHER THING ABOUT WHAT'S POSSIBLE AND WHAT'S NOT.
For instance, I knew that you could put sounds and videos into a Web
site... but I didn't know you could BROADCAST LIVE RADIO THROUGH IT IN
REAL TIME! But it makes sense. I'd read that parts of a Stones concert or
something had been "broadcast" live over the Net, and I'd already heard of
a program called Maven which allows you to use your computer as a
telephone. (And CUCMe which makes a rinky live TV hookup.) You can talk to
your Ma in Boise through the Net... both of you just need good equipment.
The SunSITE folks wanted to be able to hear the UNC student radio station,
WXYC, down in their basement lab, so they used Maven to pipe it out of
their computer speakers. Well, by gobbs, it worked better than they'd
thought, and that turned out to mean that YOU can listen to that station
through YOUR COMPUTER TOO -- you simply use Maven and connect to WXYC
through SunSITE. ((for specifics, look at their Web page,
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wxyc)). I FTPed a copy of Maven from Adam Engst's
tidbits.com place and tried it, but Maven wouldn't open for me -- said it
needed the new Mac System 7.5 and/or Sound Manager... I gotta get some new
RAM, that's all there is to it. Hopefully I'll sell mountains of T-shirts
and tapes at the Pittsburgh show and return with enough money to get some
brain surgery for my little 'frop-encrusted Apple friend here. But
theoretically you only need Maven, a SLIP or PPP connection, and at least
a 14.4 modem. David says the radio signal breaks up and sounds a bit
crackly at on a 14.4. But with anything faster, it sounds fine. I would
have expected some kind of telephone-grade sound at best, but he says it
sounds just like an AM radio broadcast -- depending on your SPEAKERS, of
course.
Now, this doesn't do you a hell of a lot of good if you're sitting at a
dinky little machine like mine, connected to some college Freenet. But in
a couple of years we'll all be up to speed... won't we? (I will be in a
couple of weeks, anyway.) And YOU'LL BE ABLE TO HEAR THE HOUR OF SLACK
ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
They are going to put Hour of Slack in their WXYC line-up. That and the
Negativland show from KPFA in Berkeley, OVER THE EDGE. In fact, since Over
the Edge is produced live at a radio station, WXYC is planning to be
CONNECTED to KPFA so that it will be broadcast to the Internet, LIVE. The
Hour of Slack is currently produced in the SubGenius Foundation studio and
mailed to stations on tape, so it won't be "live" exactly... yet... which
may be just as well...
Other stations are planning to do this too, but SunSITE/WXYC is apparently
the very first. (WREK in Atlanta, which coincidentally also carries The
Hour of Slack is working on this too. ((URL: http://www.gatech.edu/wrek)))
It is a great honor for we Foundation SubGenii to be invited to
participate in this historic undertaking. But the SunSITE people are
worried that it won't last long; they say the Clinton administration is
trying like crazy to jump in and CONTROL (THROTTLE) such uses of the
Net... like the FCC does with TV and radio. As things are, I can't play
half of my favorite songs and rant or comedy recordings on The Hour of
Slack, just because they have CUSSWORDS in them. The Net is the last
unFUCKED place where one may speak one's DAMNED MIND FREELY, and those
Conspiracy glorps have NO INTENTION of letting such a thing go on much
longer... but you knew that.
Speaking of which, there was a great quote in the Austin Chronicle last week:
"The net is at the same crossroads as the American West when the
sodbusters had fenced in the open range and the Good Citizens of Dodge
decided to close the saloons and whorehouses to make the streets safe for
their wives and daughters. There's also the same load of carpetbaggers
arriving EVERY DAY on the noon stage. Your presence will be YOUR VOTE on
what kind of net we have in the future." -- David Fricke
But until the day that the Con finds a way to force Internet access
companies to all turn into nasty little nosy busybodies, reading
everybody's mail for subversive buzz-words, we're going to GO NUTS with
it!!!
We're dubbing tapes RIGHT NOW to get SunSITE started with the show, and I
don't know what the times will be -- I assume it'll be weekly -- but we
should know soon. I just looked at the HoS info Web site they set up:
<http://sunsite.unc.edu/wxyc/slack.html>
but so far it's just a list of the OTHER stations that play Hour of Slack,
with times and frequencies. And some art that my machine won't open until
I get it a new brain or a missing mystery program.
BUT, MAN??!? WOMAN??!? THING??!? DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS?? We'll be
able to SAY, to BRAG in fact, that The Hour of Slack, our humble little
compendium of Churchly audio madness and idolatry, will be one of the
first radio shows ever to be AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE through the INTERNET.
We'll be able to SAY that we have vastly more potential listeners than
RUSH LIMBAUGH. Can they get Rush in MOSCOW? In BEIJING? Can they get that
lying monster in ICELAND? And would they even WANT him? Well, most of them
probably won't want THE HOUR OF SLACK, either. I'm sure they'd RATHER get
Howard Stern. But we'll just leave that part out of our bragging.
It means we have our FOOT IN THE DOOR, either right at the very beginning
of something marvelous, or else at the very last moment, in the nick of
time before it's SLAMMED SHUT! Uncontrolled Internet radio -- it's where
all us ranters and musical groups and whatnot who don't want to have
ANYTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE RECORDING INDUSTRY CONSPIRACIES will get to
HACK AND GOUGE at the very EARS OF REALITY to our heart's content. SO WHAT
if nobody's listening at first!? There was a time when only TWO TELEPHONES
existed.
So we got us a new radio outlet with immensely high compu-geek status, we
got us a damn WEB SITE -- it's already there, they created the blank spot
for it and opened me a SunSITE account right then and there while we were
on the phone, WE GOTS EVERYTHING!! All we have to do now is fill the damn
Web site up. That shouldn't be hard... heh heh heh...
That URL WILL BE <http://sunsite.unc.ed/subgenius>
There's nothing there yet. Probably won't be for a while. But before we're
done with it, it'll have bells and whistles, inside-out 3-D art tricks,
noisy psychedelia, a minute or two of sync-sound video, and GOBBS ONLY
KNOWS WHAT-ALL ELSE!!
And my registration for the domain name subgenius.com came through. Yep,
we nabbed it before anybody else could. I don't know how soon that'll be
the actual address we use here, but at least Philo and I can rest assured
that nobody ELSE gets to use it! We're still waiting on subgenius.mil.
Here's the plan so far. First we upgrade the Mac here, learn some html,
and take advantage of this free Web site donated by those wonderful people
at SunSITE. When we're a little more sure on our feet, we'll beg, borrow,
steal or be donated some beat-up used Unix machine that will sit here in
our offices, on auto-pilot, forming the basis of our own NETWORK... so to
speak. You would be able to connect to it, ftp stuff from it, play games
on it, etc. I only have a rough grasp on the possibilties. Run&Gun, the
most original game creators in the universe, are fooling with some sort of
"Stark Fist Online" PROGRAM or INTERFACE that SubGenii might use to
interact with this thing. It's still all very nebulous, obviously. Ye who
KNOW YOUR STUFF are welcome to help guide the halting, faltering steps of
Pore Old Nearsighted-and-Blindfolded Rev. Stang into this brave new world,
dragging the giant sacks of SubGenius Art, Words and Noises behind him.
Those sacks seem to WRITHE FITFULLY as if containing LIVING THINGS,
clawing to get out...
One thing we surely ought to develop is a new, ongoing HIGH WEIRDNESS
listing. Mitchell Porter's HIGH WEIRDNESS BY EMAIL, accessible on the Web
through any of the SubGenius web sites, is a real inspiration. But it is
concerned mainly with electronic weirdness. I have a HUGE box of new
oddball mags and videos and tapes, etc., sitting here waiting to be wrote
up when I get half a second. Or a month or so. That archive would be one
of the things at our Web site, as would the collected "Best of alt.slack,"
as well... and of course it all needs to be laid out with graphics and
printed as a for-real STARK FIST too. So we definitely have our work cut
out for us. YES-SIR-MAAM.
Well, I ought to quit speculating and scheming, and get back to
administrating and doing. We'll need all the help we can get. We certainly
appreciate all the help we've gotten so far!
---------------------------------------------
From: pphelan@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu (Neckstump)
> Here's the plan so far. First we upgrade the Mac here, learn some html,
> and take advantage of this free Web site donated by those wonderful people
> at SunSITE. When we're a little more sure on our feet, we'll beg, borrow,
> steal or be donated some beat-up used Unix machine that will sit here in
> our offices, on auto-pilot, forming the basis of our own NETWORK... so to
> speak.
Why bother? Use a Mac. FTPd HTTPd, and others allow people to connect to a
Mac for ftp and web docs. This has the following advantages: it is not Unix,
you already have a Mac(although it is difficult to work on it while it is
FTPing for other people.). It also has a smiley face.
I personally am running an FTP site (192.55.120.90) an a PC people expect me
to do work on. It is however, not a Mac, so all the file names are
truncated to 8.3. Feel free to view the various "Bob" related docs, and
other assorted stuff I see in my job as a professional web surfer.
--
PPhelan@stevens-tech.edu, a CodeWarrior for Wotan
If you look deeply into the jello you will see him, but by then it will be
much too late. -- Neuronics 7:45(TM) Carrier Pigeon-Cheep Modem
---------------------------------------------
From: rwo@raptor.eng.ufl.edu (Video Jesus)
He's right. A Mac hooks up into the Internet just fine. The problem
is connecting in the first place. I don't know how much a leased line
from the telco costs, but I bet it's not cheap. Of course there's
something called ISDN -- that's technology of the future (always has
been and always will be.) ISDN is prabably expensive too.
On one hand, if you can appeal to the generousity of some techno-SubG
who will let you set up a gopher/web/FTP site, then fine. You don't
need to own the machine. You just need to have the space and have the
say-so about what goes into the space. You want to be able to say,
"this is MY web page and I'M gonna put WHATEVER church slogans I
want to here!"
And if no kind soul provides the space to you for free, then there's
PLENTY of Internet providers who will for a modest fee. Let us know
talk of famous mutants on the Net:
Bill Barker of Schwa fame has a place on The Well
Fringeware Review has a place on Steve Jackson's Illuminati IO
Well, the list should be longer, but anyway.
Look, even a Free-Net (tm/rx/phd) will provide you with a web page
and some disk space. Of course, it's the alleged for-profit status
of the church that gets in the way.
Yeah, I aught to say that out loud: The Church of the SubGenius is
a BOGUS FOR-PROFIT OPERATION! This is all consistent with the Inverted
Reality of Dobbs. You guys COULD be incorporated as a NON-PROFIT club.
Heck, what's the tax status of the Masons or the Elks or the Moose or
whoever? Damn! All you'd have to do is go out an pick up HIGHWAY LITTER
once a year, an you could claim to be a civic minded bunch who just like
to 'Frop together and make music and tell some jokes and send around a
newsletter. And we could pay you a salary to be Sacred Scribe.
---------------------------------------------
From: jamie@moncomm.clark.net (Jamie Schrumpf)
i.stang@metronet.com (Rev. Ivan Stang) says:
>
>THERE IS JUSTICE, AFTER ALL
[rest of high-powered Dobbsian sales pitch deleted]
Well, actually there ain't no justice. This lovely system works only for
Macs -- and while I don't know the Mac/IBM/Unix/other ratio on the net,
I DO KNOW THAT I'M REALLY PISSED OFF to be left out in the cold on this
here Hour of Slack.
When will the IBM/Windoze side of the coin come up? If you think you're going
to discriminate access to "Bob" based on OS's, you've got another thought
comin'. Get those propellerheads at SunSITE goin' and get the rest of us
in the action, too!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What is Slack? If you don't know, then I can't explain it to you.
However, I can offer a clue: Nirvana and ecstasy look like sheer torture
when compared to Slack."
-- Modemac, from a post in alt.slack
Official Firesign Theatre newsletter -- http://www.clark.net/pub/moncomm
or email me at firesign@moncomm.clark.net and I'll send you a copy
---------------------------------------------
From: rwo@raptor.eng.ufl.edu (Video Jesus)
jamie@moncomm.clark.net (Jamie Schrumpf) wrote:
: i.stang@metronet.com (Rev. Ivan Stang) says:
: >
: >THERE IS JUSTICE, AFTER ALL
But if THERE *IS* JUSTICE, then everything the Conspiracy has been
saying all along is right and *we've* been WRONG. Thus when the
Conspiracy does the RIGHT THING, it _destroys_ the SubGenius!
Wise up, Stang! You're about to be SHAFTED with a POLE-VAULT stick!
The Conspiracy has decided to BUY YOU OUT with techno-trinkets. Bevare!
How did the Conspiracy buy Manhattan? THEY'VE GOT YOUR NUMBER, Stang!
They slipped you that little Macintosh back ten years ago and it was
just like letting a FISH SUCK on the HOOK. These are WHIZ-BANG battery
powered propeller-driven flashing-light LURES that they're dangling
out in front of you. Bevare!
Besides, how do you think you're going to sound with your voice
digitized and spewed out of a 14,400 baud modem? Oh, the horror!
Well, congratulations anyway. These Internet hackers really DO OWE YOU.
:
: [rest of high-powered Dobbsian sales pitch deleted]
:
: Well, actually there ain't no justice. This lovely system works only for
: Macs -- and while I don't know the Mac/IBM/Unix/other ratio on the net,
: I DO KNOW THAT I'M REALLY PISSED OFF to be left out in the cold on this
: here Hour of Slack.
I've got a Mac here at "work." How am I going to explain staying here
at nine o'clock at night? I never "work" late, so that excuse won't do.
And here's my new .sig:
....................TEAR.ALONG.THE.DOTTED.LINE.....................
Epopt of the Exploding Head of JFK. Lincesed to blaspheme the Gods
My skull is bigger on the inside than the outside!
Send $1 to SubGenius Foundation, P.O. Box 140306, Dallas TX 75214
---------------------------------------------
From: talysman@jasmine.psyber.com (John Laviolette)
Video Jesus (rwo@raptor.eng.ufl.edu) wrote:
: Of course there's
: something called ISDN -- that's technology of the future (always has
: been and always will be.) ISDN is prabably expensive too.
Our provider is adding ISDN lines, and he said it's only about $150-$200
a month if you *rent* the equipment/line. Me, I dunno what ISDN is, so I
can't tell you how right that is...
: On one hand, if you can appeal to the generousity of some techno-SubG
: who will let you set up a gopher/web/FTP site, then fine. You don't
: need to own the machine. You just need to have the space and have the
: say-so about what goes into the space. You want to be able to say,
: "this is MY web page and I'M gonna put WHATEVER church slogans I
: want to here!"
: And if no kind soul provides the space to you for free, then there's
: PLENTY of Internet providers who will for a modest fee. Let us know
: talk of famous mutants on the Net:
: Bill Barker of Schwa fame has a place on The Well
: Fringeware Review has a place on Steve Jackson's Illuminati IO
If you have to go commercial, go with io.com. Remember, THESE are the
guys that fought the Secret Service -- and WON!!! (well, partly.) They
already have High Weirdness by E-Mail areas, and know about "Bob", so you
might even be able to convince them to give a discount "to draw more
customers."
Oh, and although they are located in Austin, they are adding a Dallas POP
number, which will allow Dallas SubGenii to make a LOCAL CALL.
--
----John Laviolette---------|-------His Most Feathered Eminence------|
talysman@psyber.com | My CoCo wants to kill |
Sacramento CA USA | your mamaboard! |
---------------------------------------------
From: David McConville <id@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu>
On 17 Feb 1995, Video Jesus wrote:
> : i.stang@metronet.com (Rev. Ivan Stang) says:
> : >
> : >THERE IS JUSTICE, AFTER ALL
>
> But if THERE *IS* JUSTICE, then everything the Conspiracy has been
> saying all along is right and *we've* been WRONG. Thus when the
> Conspiracy does the RIGHT THING, it _destroys_ the SubGenius!
>
> Wise up, Stang! You're about to be SHAFTED with a POLE-VAULT stick!
yes, but a it's pole-vault stick of love, frop, and exremeditation...
>
> Besides, how do you think you're going to sound with your voice
> digitized and spewed out of a 14,400 baud modem? Oh, the horror!
HAH!!! IMAGINE!!! it'll sound PHENOMENALLY like an AM transistor radio
miles away from a very low-power transmitter picking up a signal you can
HARDLY understand...in other words, EXACTLY like the effect that Stang's
felllow Texans the Butthole Surfers have paid THOUSANDS of dollars to get
in their fancy well-lubricated hollywood-style recording studios...
CONSPIRACY INDEED!!!
> I've got a Mac here at "work." How am I going to explain staying here
> at nine o'clock at night? I never "work" late, so that excuse won't do.
got a Unix box? set up a reflector so that YOU TO can assist in the
netransmission of HoS!!! we need all we can get...that way you can tell
The Man that you're participating in a Highly Scientific Internet
Experiment...
david
UNC Office for Information Technology (919) 962-5646
SunSITE Workstation Development Group http://sunsite.unc.edu/id/
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
---------------------------------------------
From: dynasor@infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)
Rev. Ivan Stang (i.stang@metronet.com) wrote:
: The folks at SunSITE (sunsite.unc.edu) called up and offered The SubGenius
: Foundation not only a FREE Web site and expert help, but a slot for THE
: HOUR OF SLACK on THE WORLD'S FIRST INTERNET RADIO STATION!!
[more gleeful celebrantry deleted]
Had to happen, UberRev. Were you suprised? You shouldn't be.
Civilization as we know it has already ended. What you see around you that
resembles it is merely momentum of social change and ignorance in the
finality of it all.
This is truly the Dawn of a New Age for the CotSG. Get ready to hang ten on
the wave.
I *tried* to rant at you that this net thing was going to go ballistic.
You ain't seen diddly yet. You won't need a domain-name, you'll need a whole
phucking telephone number prefix.
It's gonna be better than Jefferson Airplane's _Volunteers_ was as a war
call to the second AmeriKKKan revolution.
--
dynasor@infi.net The Doctor is on.
---------------------------------------------
From: David McConville <id@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu>
exhibit A:
Video Jesus wrote:
> And if no kind soul provides the space to you for free, then there's
> PLENTY of Internet providers who will for a modest fee.
exhibit B:
i.stang splurted:
> : > Here's the plan so far. First we upgrade the Mac here, learn some html,
> : > and take advantage of this free Web site donated by those wonderful people
> : > at SunSITE. When we're a little more sure on our feet, we'll beg, borrow,
> : > steal or be donated some beat-up used Unix machine that will sit here in
> : > our offices, on auto-pilot, forming the basis of our own NETWORK... so to
> : > speak.
hmm...i'm gettin REAL confused...the point is that the Church NOW HAS A
FREE HOME...besides, MacHTTPD on an LC? hmmm...it'd get REAL gooey REAL
quick...we's got a T1 and a SparcServer 1000...but hell, if it'd make you
happy, vj, we'll charge a dollar for the services...
david
---------------------------------------------
From: ljduchez@en.com (Lou Duchez)
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.950218232839.25272B-100000@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu>,
David McConville <id@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu> wrote:
> On 17 Feb 1995, Jamie Schrumpf wrote:
>
> the "rest of us" will have plenty of time to ROT IN WINDOZE HELL when
> Bill G. unveils HIS version of "Bob" in a few months...
Fear not! SlackSite sunsite.unc.edu is the birthin' grounds for FreeDOS,
a DOS that doesn't cost a dime! FreeDOS isn't ready yet, but it's on
its way. That, and Geoworks, will help you get out from Gates's thumb.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sick of Windoze? Try Geopublish, the shareware version of Geoworks
Ensemble! Positively SCREAMS, while providing a full GUI interface.
Includes a desktop publisher. FTP at:
ftp.mcs.com /mcsnet.users/jbarr/GeoPublish
130.219.44.141 /pub/geos/publish
Original file name: SubGenius_HQ_Web_&_Net-R
This file was converted with TextToHTML - (c) Logic n.v.