Then another Monday of auto-htmling and (actually the biggest chore) the index tweaking. And a modicum of art-linking. In theory, I can ftp it all to Sunsite at UNC on Tuesday morning -- that should only take a few HOURS -- with still enough time left over to pack for the Atlanta devival. Packing for devivals doesn't just mean throwing the white suit, the fake Head, and the Sacred 9-Iron into a bag. It means somehow squeezing all the shirts, books, fridge magnets, mugs, etc., into 3 suitcases AS WELL AS dubbing and LABELING all the TAPES. I guess I'll have to come up with a "new" rant while on the plane, as usual. (Incidentally, at all recent devivals I have asked the pew-packers to raise their hand if they're on the Internet. I'd say it's about one in ten. I dunno, this month it might be one in five. But more than half will be on AOL or Prodigy or some such UTTER RIP-OFF. The regular snail-mail SubGenius ministers out there HATE ME for not getting a printed Fist together. I don't blame 'em a bit, but if they'd buy more Dobbs t-shirts and tapes and crap from us, maybe we could get ahead a couple of grand or so.
Dragon Con looks like it will be a MONSTRO devival, with Legume, Janor, Joe Mama, Susie the Floozy, Rev. Mike Ro Phone, and apparently a vast gaggle of locals. Dragnon Con is fun even without the devival because there are so many cool looking monster toys to look at in the dealer's room. And they have a Bettie Page Look-Alike contest.
After that, the Chicago Underground Film Fest, where I don't really have to "preach," just bullshit, and meet with about 5 companies regarding the elusive SubGenius CD ROM project. And apparently I'm a "judge"!! I will HAVE to sit and watch movies, which I haven't done in weeks. Actually, on July 4 I was physically unable to keep up the pace so I went to BATMAN FOREVER. Two-Face is my shordurpersav. I want a house like his. He is TOO COOL.
I'll be back at Foundation HQ here the last week in July. Maybe I'll get to look at alt.slack or even my own web site by then. There might even be one or two pieces of email to catch up on. But best of all, I'll be out of debt.
Then Cleveland for the Aug. 5 devival at Peabody's. Lemma tell you, these devivals, which I normally regard as GRUELING WORK, are going to seem like a VACATION compared to the last few weeks. Did you know that working too much at a computer can WRECK your HEALTH?? Well, that may just surprise the living hell out of you, but it's true. My embarrassing case of Preacher's Lip re-erupted just in time for these devivals. I went to the Doktor to get the killer dope (it kills viruses) and he asked me, "Say, you haven't been under an unusual amount of STRESS, have you, Rev. Stang?" And I said "AW HELL NO, just been working for WEEKS on something that DOESN'T PAY A DIME and is INCREDIBLY COMPLICATED, while knowing the BILLS are stacking up... STRESS??? NAAAHHHH."* But, if it was easy, everybody's be doing it.
Come to think of it, it IS easy (if you're not a COMPULSIVE FIEND) and everybody IS doing it. I paused in my labors one night to actually look at OTHER SUBGENIUS WEBSITES. It was reassuring to see that most of them are quite plain and short. I was however STUNNED by how SLICK is Dr. BDB's, especially VISUALLY. Dok, it looks GREAT and I am AWED. Lovely graphics. Makes me want to plunder your code. My section of SUBSite is thus far pretty spare on the graphics, because I haven't GOTTEN to that part yet. Oh, it's got lots of <font size=7><bold><blinking>LOUD STATEMENTS</font></b></blinking><p><hr = 50%>, at least in the index pages that lead to more index pages, but most of the actual "articles" are still pretty basic, pretty auto-htmled. But then, most of it came from alt.slack to begin with so there wasn't much built-in formatting. I'll have to go back through most of it eventually to put the ASCII shit and special sigs in monospaced fonts... don't envy me...I'm gonna try to cram in the 40 or so good pieces of digi-art that I have here before I leave... AIEEEE!!! (But MAN I kinda LOVE fiddling with TECHNICAL SHIT!!)
And MODEMAC's web site is truly in the Modemac tradition -- personal, serious, and chock full of Krazy Kultish Kitch. Modemac is the SENSITIVE SubGenius, one of the "Nice SubGenius" tribe. The WELL-MEANING. His Hate is Tempered by Mercy. Modemac seems like a SWEET GUY and I don't mean that at all sarcastically. I know that in real life he's a rampaging studly biker type, but STILL.
For some reason, I have been utterly unable to get through to ObE/KOF... it's like nobody's home at that server. But that might be due to a glitch somewhere else downstream. And I NEED to get to that one because it's half of THE EAR OF "BOB" section of MINE!
Steve Bevilacqua's The FLYING LEMUR BOOKSTORE website is coming along... any of you that have diffilculty finding Weird Books locally, Steve is the mail-order place to go. He's a real personable guy and a PLEASURE to do business with... a true Son of Dobbs. It's got its own "look," kind of like his bookstore. NOTE TO WEBBISTS: Steve says that he's getting 5,000 hits a week or something, and it's because the first words in it are something like "Bookstore of the Unusual, Occult, SEX," etc.etc. When most of those AOLer's first use a search program, the first word they type is SEX. So... obviously, we must all work that word into the first few on our Websites.
St. @andrew and Radar Labs 23 both have fairly bare-bones new ones up, which I'm sure will inflate like balloons. St. @andrew's leads to one I'd never seen before, Slack-O-Rama. (Actually, I've hardly DONE ANY "web-surfing" at all, compared to most people. Too busy harvesting everything from the ocean and moving it through the processing plant to do much actual surfing.) Kevan was wise enough to include a photo of his long-suffering, lovely Vietnamese wife.
Those addresses:
Dr. BDB: http://www.shadow.net./~bdb
Modemac: http://www.tiac.net/users/modemac/home.html
ObE/KOF: http://world.std.com/~ObeKOF
The Flying Lemur: http://www.apk.net/lemur
Kevan Smith., Radar Labs 23: http://www.unicomp.net/prysm.cuthulu
St.@andrew: http://www.prairie.net.org/~saint/homepage.html
The Grand Clavister: http://www.phantom.com/~clavis (Haven't seen that one yet... lost the note 'till just now!)
And my notes here tell me there's a big Dobbsian bbs at 1-810-792-0032.
OH SHIT!!! I need to be be flipping tapes and get the dubbing moving again. That reminds me... you FIST-WEB ZOMBOID VOLUNTEERS, if you haven't yet, tell me you vid-aud-tape REWARD PREFERENCES. I probably won't be able to dupe 'em and get 'em out while this "tour" is going on but... I dunno, maybe Will can.
OH YEAH -- and only about TWO of you have emailed me your own free "OTHER MUTANTS" AD-BLURBS regarding your services, fanzine, website, etc. GET OFF YOUR BUTTS!!! The "O.M.SubGenius" main section is still out, luckily for you. Adding new stuff to the indexes after the fact is a pain in the ass. Jesus, for ONCE we don't have to worry about LENGTH and the COST OF PAPER. I'm certainly taking advantage of it...
Back to the Slack Mines,
Rev. Stang
* Stang went to the doctor. Doctor said, "Stang, I'm gonna have to cut your dick off."
Stang said, "DOCTOR? Then you gonna have to cut it down to the MOTHERFUCKING BONE, 'cause if you leave ANY meat, I'm gonna FUCK RIGHT ON!"
Apologies to Dolomite
Original file name: STILL BARELY ALIVE
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