I did everything I could possibly do. I learned how to rebuild a Power Mac 7500 from the ground up, software wise anyway. I down-upped the new System updown and unchuncked it. The next step, if this sorry bastard dies again, is the SERIOUS warranty confrontation with Comp USA.
I'll tell ya what, though. When this machine isn't choking on the 9,000 files in it, it works REAL REAL GOOOOD. The new system update (7.5.3) is worth the agony of acquiring it, if you have a PPC -- things happen SHOCKING faster. Websites load in lickety-split. The new Netscape beta for Macs, Atlas -- LORDY!! You pack that booger with a bunch of plug-ins and look at Mark Mothersbaugh's Mutato Muzika site (designed by Grady Sein at RUN&GUN!, Chicago)... it spews weird music at you, and there are leetle animations and such. If VDO would ever get their Mac player done, I'd be seeing video images too. And I'd be able to see AND hear the SubGenius/MTV minute at the SubGenius audio site.
AND!!! The Lord Jesus Fucking H. Christ Devilacqua and I discovered that WE can generate TRUESPEECH files for SUBSITE and have our OWN "Internet Radio" site. We had the Bombies rushing about rearranging the office furniture, and Jesus's PC fell into my Macintosh. All the wires and drives and little miniature battery looking things got mixed together and before we knew it, we had compressed the first 5 minutes of a recentHour of Slack from tape to .wav to TrueSpeech.tsp, uploaded it to a test bin at SubSITE, and BINGO! There was The Legal Documents Guy blabbering over Muleskinner's speakers here in Texas from a file in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
We can't compress whole half-hour chunks of radio shows; his PC can only handle ten minute chunks at max. But HECK... that's probably BETTER, given the glitchiness potential of longer files. We're starting with the short clips and bites that are already on SubSITE as wav. downloads. Then I guess we'll post Hours of Slack in 6 parts... OR, maybe just simply post the individual PIECES. Like, "THIS WEEK'S TRUESPEECH SPEW: Papa Joe Mama rant, "Life's Little Compromises." Dr. Legume Live in NYC. ESO Radio excerpt "Lonesome in Space Part 900". Song, "KILL "BOB"" by Kings of Feedback. Etc. etc.
(Well, I saved what I typed so far and it didn't crash. Good sign. Knock on wood.)
Great. Another THING TO DO. You wouldn't believe how many THINGS TO DO there are. The weird thing is, we're actually doing them. I would have done a lot more if I wasn't dicking with this Apple lemon. I still stand behind the Mac as a GREAT machine. I just happen to have gotten one with a physical problem of some kind.
AH!!! But that's just the BEGINNING! Though it's been delayed a bit, SubSITE should soon be moving over to a brand new machine on a brand new network of its own, www.subgenius.com. It will be VASTLY faster than the Sunsite server, and modern day Goliath of web gimickry David McConville (and his new friends at Mind in Motion) will have their hands right on it, using it as a TESTING ground. We'll have lots of Shockwave type stuff, and Java midi-sounds, in fact eventually there's be sound effects and stuff on EVERY main page. The fact that I'm simultaneously planning a CD ROM which uses the website as a STARTING point, and an audio CD series finally, makes this all more convenient. Mayhaps someday I'll even get paid.
Meanwhile, Jesus is implementing the new BUSINESS PLAN. I cannot BELIEVE this guy. Every Monday night he makes us have a BUSINESS MEETING. A BUSINESS MEETING!!! In the Church of the fucking SubGenius! We sit around in the CONFERENCE ROOM and he informs me and someone else and other Foundation officers like PHILO if they're AROUND, or WILL if he isn't off somewhere playing HOOKY, far along the various plans and projects are.
Despite the ongoing treachery of the Eritreans -- for NO Etritrean may ever enter the Kingdom of Slack -- our Lord is getting a lot done, and so am I. We've gotten the Bombies trained to new routines whereby I pretty much NEVER LEAVE THE BUILDING except to walk the guard dogs. And any time I DO leave it's to go HUNDREDS OF MILES. I never have to deal with DALLAS at all. Jesus tears around town all day in his new old van, Sorceror II, figuring out cheaper yet fancier ways to print and manufacture and mail stuff, then he works all night on his computer revising layouts and doing email business and plotting my overthrow and stuff like that.
We got a second Internet account:
slack@metronet.com
which the Lord uses. Now when I get stupid email questions I can just redirect them over to him. When the phone rings and it's some SubGenius wondering why he hasn't gotten his order yet AFTER A WHOLE WEEK, I can just say, "Oh, you need to talk to Jesus about that. Lord? It's for you."
Technically, Jesus's desk and gear are in the same room as mine, but the Layout Area, the Media Archives, and Tarzan's Radio Studio are in between, so it's more like we're in cubicles with a labyrinth between us. I should post a picture of the room to alt.binaries.slack. I don't believe there's been anything of a remotely SubGenius nature on that newsgroup for a while. My broken video camera is permanently plugged into my computer. You can't record or play tapes on it, but it'll still pump a picture and sound through the outputs, so I have it set up for when I mess with CUSeeMe and other televideo Net stuff. Eventually we'll set up a system whereby we do an Internet video broadcast from here every week. I'd try it now but I'm can't get seem to broadcast SOUND along with the picture via CUSeeMe. (Mac users who have done so, please give me a clue!)
*******KER-BLOOOEY******
SHEEEEE-it. I am now working from my old LC in the basement, surrounded by the soul, nerve gas and church air cannisters, which are CLEARLY LABELED this time to avoid more unpleasantries like that one in Japan... WILL!!!
Called the repair shop and talked to a Mr. Dobbs, who said to bring the box in on Monday and he'd apply his special Testing Pipe to it.
I suppose I could get Bombies to do all this crap, but to tell the truth I kind of LIKE messing with broken computers and fiddling about in their innards. I used to have such superstitious fears of these things. Now I realize it's just a series of bladders. Drink the water on one end, expell the pee from the other. In, out. Same old thing. When MWOWM gets here, we'll have new In, In computers and Out, Out computers, and Every-Which-Way Every-Which-Way computers, MAGIC ctrinary computers, and they'll be in the AIR and the FOOD and the WALLS, and they'll all be one computer, and it'll never break.
SPEAKING OF MWOWM, I got to thinking about the X-Day Drill. We have deliberately not "scheduled" A DAMN THING. However, we obviously must have a 7 AM Worship Service on Friday (X-Day '96), and probably also on Sunday just because so many people wouldn't be able to make it by Friday morning. We should probably chant something. Crowds of people are always chanting OM out there at Brushwood. I was thinking we could all chant "MOE" but that's pretty corny at this point. But think about the word "MWOWM" being chanted real slow by a bunch of weirdos. That could be an impressive, nay, fully CREEPY sound. We don't have to hold hands or anything stupid like that. Maybe link soles by having our shoes touch. Some will probably choose to chant something else, punctuating the main rub of sound with sonic bulldada. I hope I have a good stero recorder by then.
There is another SubGenius Doktor here in Dallas, not yet seen on the Internet, who will be going to X-Day Drill #1 along with Jesus and myself -- Rev. Ymott Zepol, aka El Diablo, the Antichrist (he was born the day AFTER Christmas, and he has a devilish goatee). His horns were removed at birth, but we have plenty of fake ones here, and with those and some red body paint, he looks every bit as much like Satan as Fightin' Jesus Christ "Steve" Devilacqua.
Yes, you will be able to BUY SUBGENIUS REMOVABLE TATOOS from JESUS CHRIST and SATAN at The X-Day Drill #1!!!
That's right I said REMOVABLE TATOOS!!! That's the next collaboration between the Foundation and Crux Productions. Now YOU can look JUST LIKE DR. LEGUME -- COVERED, HEAD TO DICKS, with SUBGENIUS TATOOS.
El Diablo pointed out that the Rainbow Gathering this year is in the Ozarks and starts July 1. The Ozarks are on the WAY to NY from Dallas.
And you just KNOW that SubGenius tatoos and Dobbs/AntiDobbs shirts will sell like NITROUS at a Rainbow Gathering. Especially if being hawked by JESUS in a robe and EL DIABLO in red body paint and horns!
Now the Lord is busy looking for sound editing shareware to download from Jumbo. He just mentioned that he once saw a parrot at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas that spoke the lines from the SubGenius Parrot and Parrakeet Training Tape, parts of which are on Media Barrage 10. "Help me escape. I have a mind. I can think. They torture me. Please believe me." Etc. Our CD ROM will have your computer saying things like that at random.
Where the hell is Will? NICKIE is going to have some EXPLAINING to do, if she ever gets here. (Stang whaps whip against his palms, speculatively.)
Original file name: May 5 Stang Report
This file was converted with TextToHTML - (c) Logic n.v.