Anyway, where was I? Oh, I was going on about how busy I am and how scattered it can make one... yeah. That was it. And I can't even bear to LOOK at the stack of PHYSICAL personal mail (not orders, but "creative contributions," EH EH EH) -- THAT mess has been stacking up since the HORRIBLE BOOK DEADLINE CRUSH in AUGUST... nay, since the PREACH-A-THON all through JULY!!! It's MONSTROUS. MONSTROUS and MALEVOLENT, that stack is. That task. But I must answer EVERY SINGLE PHONE CALL, LETTER, bribe, threat, interview request or devival query that might IN ANY REMOTE WAY aid sales of REVELATION X. That is the "JOB," the great MISSION -- STILL!! The Publishing Con isn't spending CENT ONE to advertise it! (Though can you really blame them?) They sent out review copies and that was IT!! So we the preachers and (haha) "authors" and art doktors are all BENT ON RAMMING THAT BOOK DOWN THE CRAW OF EVERY SAVED SUBGENIUS, UNSAVED BOBBIE, DUMB-ASS PINK and GULLIBLE POEBUCKER who might have the $15 a copy!!! PRAISE DOBBS!!! But that means I have to COMPILE, XEROX and DISTRIBUTE the reviews and p.r. ... oh yeah, and do the shopping and the wash... and Christmas, OH CRIPES!!! -- and the garage sale... gotta Mount the Heads for the holidays... fill the X-Mas Rush Fed-X orders... punish the recalcitrant zombie Dobbslaves...
-- but VASTLY more pressing than any of those, I need to PAY the BOOK DOKTORS!! And yet, to do so, in DOBBS -APPROVED FAIRNESS, I must pore through the entire book -- AGAIN!!!?!! -- and list & percentagize every single piece of art by each artist, and cut them their checks, piddling and miniscule as they are, in the mere hundreds of thousands, but I ALSO must NOTATE, using THEIR INITIALS, the AUTHORS of EACH AND EVERY LINE AND PARAGRAPH -- for I can ACTUALLY REMEMBER!! -- tally up those totals, figure the percentages, cut the checks, make the promises. A.S.A.P.!!! Oh yes, and if I don't plan out at least one "ROUGH" "DEMO" of ONE SIMPLE SUBGENIUS CD, just a barely-barraged MUSIC compilation (the easiest/cheapest/fastest of dozens of Sub-CD concepts!), why, our CD coproducers at Seeland will think we're ALL TALK. And I have to return all those phone calls. ALL those phone calls. AND GET THAT MONEY!!! Yeah, that MONEY. Must remember the MONEY. Dobbs sez, MUST... REMEMBER... MONEY!!! Oh, and that one little matter of the three HOUR OF SLACK radio shows that need to be produced and duped and mailed (good thing we recorded three new hours with Lonesome Cowboy Dave & Chas on ESO Radio (WCSB-FM) in Cleveland, not to mention the devival improvs and all the DOZEN NEW TAPES FROM PEOPLE, that I haven't even HEARD yet)... mustn't forget to reorder the Dobbsmug Mugs from Crux and the buttons from Ephemera... WAIT, I'M FORGETTING THE CD-ROM INTERACTIVE SUBGENIUS GAME PROPOSAL!!! I have to work up some kind of the rough proposal or the interested GAME COMPANIES will ALSO think we're ALL TALK! BUT WE STILL DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THAT INDUSTRY nor the TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES!! AIEEE!! Oh yeah, and Rev. Everybody wants a dub of that video. And postage is about to go up.
So that's PARTLY why you haven't seen me on alt.slack this week. I haven't even dared to peek in on it yet, not before composing this update. (If I had, I'd still be reading it now.) Believe you me, I would LOVE to be right out there on the front lines with you s... you soldiers, if I could, but they NEED ME HERE. But not HERE AT AMERICA ONLINE, NOT MUCH LONGER IF I CAN HELP IT, NO WAY!! I had to learn the hard way -- though lots of other stuff I learned the easy way, on the Path of L.R. -- that YOU PEOPLE who HUMILIATED ME and HARANGUED me and SCOLDED me for even so much as USING AOL, even for a SECOND, were RIGHT!! It wasn't their FIRST MONTH'S BILL that got me, nor even their maddeningly smug "family values" overall 'feel,' but the fact that they made me CENSOR my "MEMBERS ONLINE PROFILE!" And for WHAT? For QUOTING my PERSONAL SAVIOR! "FUCK 'EM IF THEY CAN'T TAKE A JOKE!!" CAN YOU IMAGINE??? THE NERVE! They wouldn't censor JESUS if he said it, now WOULD they?? Oh, I changed it alright, and then I tuned in to the so-called "SubGenius" board on AOL, and what little was happening there, such as it was, was plain SILLY!! The hellswami had fled; it is pathetic. You're missing NOTHING. So I flamed them all bitterly, and TWO MINUTES LATER, the AOL "p.c. police" told me I had to censor my FLAMING because I'd gone and used "that word," AGAIN!!! I know it's supposed to be a "family" service, but this was the SUBGENIUS board! Their human laws don't APPLY to us, DON'T THEY SEE THAT??
I guess not. SO, I have spent hours and hours and hours trying to figure out the best alternative. I finally was able to get a virtually free account through a vast industrio-alien military cabal, for which one must use Kermit(!) to get around;after arduous toil I managed to haul myself sweating all the way up into the Cleveland Free-Net, and stare alt.slack right in the face, but then they wouldn't let me IN because you have to be a registered user, AND THERE WAS NO WAY TO REGISTER ONLINE, apparently, ANYWHERE, (???) and their OFFICE is CLOSED on Saturdays.
HOWEVER -- I can see that if I have a little more patience, I WILL SOON have absolutely FREE, but clunky, hard to use, grotesquely clumsy Net access, through which I will finally be able to afford to peer into all those filthy little steamy alt.fetish type areas that AOL bars you from, and soak up all that fannish alt.badfilms, alt.weirdstuff this n' that until I'm sick of it.
BUT IN THE LONG RUN, being DEDICATED to Rewardianism despite being Emergentile by birth, I want something WAY WAY EASIER, more high-tech, more MacLike, which will allow us to cut a swath through the WWW... and juggle e-mail, FTP, and Mosaic or NetScape or whatever, with minimum of muss or fuss. We would even pay actual money, if it's REASONABLE charges. (Like $30 a month.) I conferred with my advisor, Philo, who was extremely helpful, but he is a Windows man and I am a Mac man. (I had a joke here about our respective politics, but I cut it because the truth about either of us would have upset so many of you.). Philo recommended checking into one of these new-fangled "INTERNET ACCESS" companies. He told me of some national numbers he saw in ads(he uses Surfnet but is switching to NetCom); but they were all closed Saturday, so I still haven't heard their spiels)... Anybody know anything SPECIAL about NetCom? InternetWorks, Internet in a Box, or InterCon?( What a name!) I also tried to check out companies found in a magazine called TEXAS COMPUTING, such as PICnet, Unicomp, Onramp, International Online Services, Connection Technologies, and Texas Metronet. Come Monday I can call them. BUT THEY WILL TRY TO REPROGRAM MY MIND!!! YOU MUST HELP ME WITHSTAND THEIR ONSLAUGHT!!
My question is, DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR ME ABOUT THESE? I'm using a Mac LC, 4mb ram, a UDS FasTalk fax32 modem (motorola), 9600, I have Kermit & SmartCom to DIAL with, but what I need is THE REAL EASY, TOTAL PACKAGE, EASY ENOUGH FOR THE DUMBEST FOOL TO USE! That DOES EVERYTHING! (At least, goes in & through WWW.) (Please e-mail me back with suggestions or warnings, unless you think it's of driving interest to all. (PC users -- remember, I'm a poor little old hippie with a Mac who flunked math. Please don't abuse me with what to me can only sound like insane meaningless gibberish.)
And WHAT, you say, about this so-called STARK FIST ONLINE on alt.slack you keep promising?? EH?? Isn't it about TIME?? Well hell yeah, what do you think is the "island of Slack" I've been trying to carve my way through this jungle to GET to? I could probably start dumping in some of the older stuff but I want to SET IT UP JUST RIGHT, partly for purely organizational purposes, but also to COVER OUR AND "BOB'S" BUTTS LEGALLY!! (Although Dobbs' butt is probably pretty well protected, his FACE requires special treatment.) So everything has to be prefaced with a little legalese, so we don't later look like SIMPERING IDIOTS. There's be all these "departments" that I'll start off, and anybody else can add to. alt.slack itself already has a kind of 'form,' discernible once you break the postings down into NEW categories, so to some extent I'm only planning to latch onto a lot of things that are already there. The HIGH WEIRDNESS and OTHER MUTANTS departments being the most promising -- I've already been collecting that kind of stuff from the net, what I didn't already have on hand. I have tons of new stuff to write up, however. And of course there're all the new rants and so forth that nobody's seen but the authors. And the endless bickering, that'll be something to look forward to.
Then later I can add artwork to it and print it up and mail it to the "real" world subscribers and Ministers.
I just need to keep hackin' away, that's all. Just a hackin' and a-hackin.'
A-HACK-HACK!! HAK! COF!!!
COF COF!!!
hhhhHHHOEK-
Ss-pTOOEY!!! *CLANG!!!*
Ahhh, yes. Hocking up one more lunger for the great Virtual Spittoon of "Bob."
Your close personal friend and prayer partner,
Rev. Ivan Stang
P.S. (I actually think alt.slack is PRETTY DAMN COOL and I thank all my fellow SubGenii for making it the cesspool of Slack that it is -- a septic tank filled with EVERY damn kind of Slack, brought to a boil, seasoned with its opposite, and stirred into a PUNGENT SLURRY of SIMMERING HATRED for the CON and LOVE of THAT MAN DOBBS. Oh praise his sweet name, and Merry Xistmas.)
Original file name: 1 Stang Update & Net Advice
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