|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 030--2/16/95 <-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 3  ||  -------> (Cup OWis030, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = [[BEGIN030OW]] [[01030CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 3 0 * * * February 16, 1995 "The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!" by Frank Edward Nora INSIDE THIS ISSUE! * Truly a Wondrous Innovation of Modern Digitalness! * The Brady Bunch Movie--an enormous hit * In The Mouth of Madness--just okay * "Zope's Curious Proposal" * Class R Dorm Materializer * Yexfloix-12 Thunderstorm Generator * A Horde of Ankylosauruses * Actual Real E-Mail * Songs of the Week--by Nirvana and Beck * "Wake up and smell the VIAT" * The Scanticon * "Buildings Over Yonder" * "Bicentennial Plus Nine" * Beublin A. Richardson--Episode 4 * Severe Repair Almanac * Yellow Sail, Bee Leroy, Dime, Mustard, and Ragtag B * "Stormbolthouse Leitmotif" * And a whole lot more! * BE COOL, RINGO--DOWNLOAD OSOAWEEK EVERY WEEK! (Permission is granted to make complete, verbatim, digital ASCII copies of this copyrighted ezine for the purpose of free distribution. All other forms of reproduction require written permission from Frank Edward Nora.) OsoaWeek is published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement, and originates from New Jersey, USA. Copyright 1995 Frank Edward Nora . All contents by Frank Edward Nora unless otherwise noted.Phone: 1-800 OBLIVIANA E-mail: obliviana@aol.com Mail: Osoa, P.O. Box 60, Iselin, NJ 08830-0060 Character count: 90434 / Line count: 2414 The Table of Contents is at the very end of this file. For the mail order Catalog of Obliviana, send an e-mail request to obliviana@aol.com. *OW* [[02030HR]] Hemisinister Review ***MOVIES*** THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE It's funny how the innocence of "The Brady Bunch" is so lampooned in this film. TBB is at the apex of GenX nostalgia culture--most of us hold it dear in our hearts. But the cynical, nasty, and jaded attitude of today could do little else that make fun of the purity of TBB that we all cherish. This, then, is what the movie is--a technically clever, longform SNL skit--that jokes about all the little foibles of TBB. I am a little uncomfortable the way the film turns the Bradys into a bunch of verifiable freaks. It's the Brady Bunch circa 1971 or so living in a realistic, gritty 1995 Los Angeles. The Bradys were a cool, hip family in their native early '70s--and that's part of their appeal--the innocence of the age. I guess Hollywood couldn't think up any better angle, but still, it's a shame. Even worse, various Brady characters are changed to make them even more freakish. Jan is reduced to a true paranoid schizophrenic--hearing voices in her head and the like. Mike is an inept architect whose every design is identical to his house. Alice is into leather. Don't get me wrong--the film IS entertaining. All six kids have problems from various original episodes. Marcia has "oh my nose!" and Davy Jones. Greg has Johnny Bravo. Jan has "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" (about a dozen times), and her glasses. Peter has his changing voice and bullies at school. Cindy has tattletaling and her lisp. Bobby has the safety monitor thing. The casting is good--all the actors do good impersonations of the originals. I guess this is what they were going for--like I said--SNL-like impressions. Marcia and Peter have the greatest physical resemblance, Greg and Cindy the least. The best part of the movie is, like I said, its technical cleverness. It recreates the grainy film quality, sound, music, and spinning dissolves of the TV series--all done to perfection. Too bad the point of it all is "look how lame these people are." There are some inexplicable subplots, also, such as Marcia's lesbian friend (played by the wonderful "Beakman's World" girl), and a horny alcoholic neighbor's wife who lusts after the Brady men. As well, cameos are unbelievably sparse--only the original Carol, Alice, Greg, and Peter, as far as I could see. All in all, The Brady Bunch Movie is an interesting film with a lot going on--sure to be a MAJOR hit of the $100 million plus variety. Too bad it had to turn out this way. IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS Nightmarish, scary, and self-referential, this film has a similar atmosphere another good John Carpenter horror film--"Prince of Darkness". This movie wants to be one big mindf*ck, and it succeeds--you leave the theater pretty creeped out. Clearly derived from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this film follows an insurance investigator as he looks for a missing horror writer. The characters and their interaction is weak at points, but that's made up for in the eerie atmosphere evoked. There ARE a lot of cliche elements here, but they work in the overall context. But with it's self-referential brain game, this film may be a one-trick pony, diminishing the value of repeated viewings. That is, once you get the gist of what's happening, it just doesn't pack the punch of the first time through. As a creepy experience, ITMOM excels. But as a film, it's just okay--"Prince of Darkness" is much better. *OW* [[03030HT]] Halfevil Times HALFEVIL TIMES PERCEPTIONS & PONDERINGS EVER WONDER... ...what those three men were doing in a tub together in the first place? ...why with some foods, the microwave cooking directions are tens times more complex than the traditional method? (ie, heat for 2 min., rotate 1/4 turn, let sit 5 min., flip over, rotate 3/4 turn, heat for 30 seconds, rotate 1/16 turn...) ...how bad it would have been if it was the EBOLA Gay instead of the Enola Gay? ...why people find it necessary to combine every food product known to man with pineapple? ...why you always slow down when you pass a cop who's pulled someone over? What is he gonna do--let the guy off and go after you? EVER NOTICE... ...that if you fast forward a supermarket, it's just a lot of piss and sh*t? ...that your collection of mugs grows larger as your supply of socks dwindles? Could it be that socks metamorphose into mugs when they reach maturity? ...that any location on Earth is "minutes away"? ...that on the back of the $100 bills, a man and a woman are making out near the front door of Independence Hall? ...that the clock on Independence Hall on the back of the $100 bill is exactly right two times a day (it appears to be 2:22)? ...how there used to be an idiotic sign on escalators saying "no sneakers"? ...how people shorten the movie name when buying tickets to try and be cool? (ie, "Two for Brady", "One for Pulp", etc.) ...the richer the area, the earlier the malls close? *OW* [[04030ZP]] Zope "Zope's Curious Proposal" ZOPE I wanna bash some brains. I'm pissed. WEASEL Now Zope, come on--the person you're rooting for on "Wheel of Fortune" can't always win! ZOPE You know Weasel, what you're saying makes sense at some esoteric level, but regardless, someone will pay--and pay dearly. WEASEL Okay Zope--how 'bout this? Why don't you channel your aggression in a positive way. Why don't we do one of your mayhem proposals? ZOPE Ah! Aha, yes, my friend! That's a great idea. And I know just the one... College Night 1983 Materialize-A-Dorm! WEASEL Uh, I'm afraid to ask, but is this one of your REALLY, REALLY involved proposals? ZOPE Nothing of the sort! All we need to do is time/space travel back to a college campus at night in 1983, and use a Class R dorm materializer to create a brand new, ultra cool dorm where anything goes! It's a wicked scenario, guaranteed to provide over a week's worth of entertainment. I worked it all out on paper. WEASEL Well, I don't know... ZOPE Relax pal! See, what happens is, kids start coming in, and there's all the stuff they like--drugs, alcohol, rock'n'roll, and sex-slave-androids for everyone! Soon all the students are killing each other trying to get in, and the administration gets the local police involved, and eventually the National Guard. Of course, there'll be an inexhaustible supply of small arms the kids can use to defend their stronghold! WEASEL So how does it all end? ZOPE Well I'm not through yet! After a few days of intense combat, enormous vents begin to spout forth billions and billions of dollars in cash, and the resulting rain of currency causes even more mass hysteria. WEASEL What then? ZOPE I think we'll use a Yexfloix-12 thunderstorm generator to create a perpetual thunderstorm over the school, with all these lightning strikes destroying everything! I mean, after a few days, everything is reduced to rubble, new dorm and all! WEASEL So everyone is killed? ZOPE Not at all! What we do, see, is start teleporting everyone to Ancient Rome--guns, grenades, missile launchers, and all! Think of the chaos! Think of the utter disaster! WEASEL Uh--what about after that? ZOPE Well, now here's the good part. The students, administrators, police, National Guardsmen, TV news crews, protesters, and the like eventually take over Ancient Rome and are poised to take over the rest of the world, see? WEASEL Yeah? ZOPE But then Jesus comes and kicks their ass with his superpowers! WEASEL Okay, okay... ZOPE Wait! I didn't tell you about the olive oil tidal wave, or, or, or the horde of ankylosauruses, or the deadly hail of Thor Hammers... or, or... WEASEL I have a better idea... ZOPE What? WEASEL Why not just break Pat Sajak's legs--wouldn't that be easier? *OW* [[05030CZ]] Classic Zope "Zope in the Street" 2/21/89 ZOPE (standing by a road) I am very tired. I am screwed. ZOPE sees a car coming. ZOPE But here comes a car. Good. Zope holds out a sign reading "STOP F*CKER". ED APE (driving car, and thinking) What's this? ED APE stops next to ZOPE with a screech. ED APE Well well if it isn't Zope. ZOPE Cut the wise cracks and gimme a ride to the airport, Ed Ape you f*ckhead. ED APE Ask me nice and maybe I'll consider it. ZOPE Eat sh*t assh*le and let me in. ED APE pulls away. ED APE See you later. ZOPE CINDER BLOCK! ZOPE throws a cinder block at ED APE'S car. BOOM! It hits, destroying the car. ZOPE Haha. *OW* [[06030LA]] Lord of Obliviana Welcome, my fellow Oblivianans! Here we are--at the THIRTIEST issue ever! That is, the issue most like thirty, uh... because it is indeed issue thirty. Yes. The number 30 has a special meaning in Obliviana. Basically, 30=11+19. And if you're been reading your OsoaWeeks, you know that 11 and 19, when multiplied, form that number 209, which is the basis of Dashic! I've never got to a number 30 of a publication before. Pretty much, 13 was highest I got on a few pubs, but that was a long time ago. But since 1986, I've published 98 publications in a physical, paper-type format (97 before OsoaWeek, and one--"Read This Or Die!--since) (see OsoaWeek004 for details on the 97). I guess it'll take me awhile to get to OsoaWeek098. Hmm--when will that be? This ain't so easy to figure out... OsoaWeek098, Friday, June 14, 1996? That's my estimate, there, folks. (Note: It's Friday, 'cause Obliviana Day (the 209th day of the year) falls on Friday this year.) But of course, I have to get issue 30 done before I can get to 98! And that's just what I intend to do! You know, doing OsoaWeek every week is tough. And I've been noticing some interesting things about the way I've been doing it. For one thing, I find that I'm not conversant or familiar with all my writings. Much of the time, I'll write something in OsoaWeek, and never read it--even to proofread. This is due to the tight schedule and time restraints, not to some prima donna self-loathing--when I get a chance, I do like reading what I've written. But what happens is sometimes I'll repeat or contradict myself on certain subjects. I want to go over all my writings in OsoaWeek which pertain to plans about Obliviana's future development, 'cause I knows there's a lot of that in the deep recesses of OsoaWeek. But right now, I have to concentrate on writing, not reading! Another interesting thing is how OsoaWeek has progressed, with two Books of 13 issues complete, and the Third Book well underway. Back in the First Book, I had a fairly large stockpile of writing from the post-ABM years of 1990 to 1993, especially Severe Repair. But this stockpile began to run out as the Second Book began, and at this point, is all but kicked. What this means is that I have to come up with much more new writing every week than I had to back then. I do still include writing from the past, but now, it's pretty much confined to Dehumidifier (with the current "Beublin A. Richardson" run) and Classic Zope. In the case of Beublin, which is a 13-episode video series I did, I have to do a lot of work to get it into text form. See, we never had a script when we taped it--it was all improvised. And let me tell you--transcribing it is a bitch. Well, guess what gang? I got some e-mail! Well, I got it on a disk, but it's still e, in terms of being electronic. It's from none other than Frank Panucci, who's been reading every issue of OsoaWeek! Here it is... Hey Frank, 11/21/94--5:14 PM I just got home with the disk of OSOA 11-16. Thanks. Have yet to read anything. 9:37 PM OSOA #11... Just passed your mention of the pre-release review of ED WOOD in OSOA 11. Can you believe the damn thing has not opened in this market yet? I think this must be the only city in the country where it hasn't played. There aren't very many screens in the Charleston area (less than 25, maybe) but ED WOOD could play here if so many of them weren't showing the same movies. (((Great movie--gonna get some Oscars.))) man, better be careful. The other day on CNBC this corporate executive guy was talking about how he had figured out a legal way to steal your creative prowess, and the process had already been set in motion. He mentioned you by name and everything and he laughed until he spit up baby formula. Did you sell any forking PELTERs yet? Jeez, those things would fly out of any computer store at that price. I've seen way less useful CDROMs selling for a couple hundred bucks. (((Not really. When I produced Pelter CD-ROM back in the Summer of 1993, it seriously f*cked my personal finances up for 3 or 4 months. I considered putting an ad in Macworld, but the tiniest one was like $1000! It costs money to sell something--and after Pelter was done, I had none.))) Huh. I saw FAST TIMES a bunch of years ago but I didn't like it. Everybody I know says that FAST TIMES is really funny and it's surprising that I didn't respond to it. HEY! HEY! Motorized Loony Bins? Did you get the idea from my RADIO-CONTROLLED LUNATICS in my NAXTA and PRAK comics? Dammit. (((What happened to PLAK?))) 10:33 PM Wow. This looks like a particularly involved SEVERE REPAIR. I'll wait until I can read the whole thing at once. 11/22/94--7:49 PM Just read SR in OSOA 11. Cool'n'epic. The live network feed of the bad foreign ruler being dismembered by Granticaine is hilarious. I forget-- Did you say you had or hadn't read the work of Roger Zelazny? Your stuff is real similar to his books like the Amber series and Lord of Light (his most spectacular) and a bunch of other books he did that I can't remember the names of but I liked a whole bunch. (((Zelazny is definitely an influence. Whenever I go into a bookstore I reflexively look and see if the new Amber book is out yet. Lord of Light was excellent. As far as being REAL similar, I don't know--SR is based a lot on my own supernatural experiences and stuff. And on dreams. But I guess in the entire field of fantasy/sci-fi, my stuff IS quite close to Zelazny's, at least in its overall gist.))) 11/28/94--4:47 PM I have a bunch of random text generators and I used a particularly crappy one from Germany to generate some SUPERIORs. They're on this disk as JPEG screen grabs. Read 'em and curl up from envy! (((Okay--I want to deal with this whole "Superior sounds like it was randomly generated" thing. EVERYONE tells me this--but it just isn't the case! I write almost every Superior off the top of my head. I contend that Superiors are superior to randomly-generated text! Here are Frank's "SUPERIORs"--which I've renamed "INFERIORs" (transcribed from the JPEGs)--you all be the judge!))) INFERIOR 1 lovely lamps can be left in a few days in Grand Cannon. Saddam and Doug from Pencilmania are looking beastly hedgehogs. If the greasy raspberry looks nuns, the stupid highways are taking beneath senseless raspberrys. in a few days you can eat clean lemmings in Kanvas City. If the black program throws desks, the black packages are giving over comfortable chairs. yesterday Steve ate down the imbecile book. sweet streets are writing Henry, because George is a blue lamp. slow cats can be ran next year in Pencilmania. well lemmings are counting George, because Steve is a yellow TV set. clean streets can be left next month in Los Hellsangeles. in a few months you can feel flowered mailboxes in Cutah. the street counts in the black mountain. honest computers are printing Steve, because Peter is a fast pencil. next year Nought Dakota is the host of a lamp-meeting. white skyscrapers can be sold in a few months in Cutah. convenient programs are running Francois, because Henry is a imbecile car. INFERIOR 2 impossible horses are writing Francois, because Dietrich is a incredible ocean. the day before yesterday Bill took under the convenient program. next month you can give flowered birds in Boregon. in a few months Rentucky is the host of a drawer-meeting. the drawer runs beneath the dirty cable. Doug of Cutah is a black tree! in a few weeks Aircondido is the host of a mailbox-meeting. lonely AMIGAs are forcing Mum, because Dietrich is a green AMIGA. next month Potatomac is the host of a bird-meeting. impossible dining rooms are looking Mum, because Peter is a beastly TV set. Francois and Steve from Screw York are running fast skyscrapers. Karlheinz and Dad from Screw York are printing merry beds. greasy airplanes can be looked in a few years in Screw York. Is the hot book running? in a few weeks Potatomac is the host of a liquor-meeting. Henry and Edmund from Sandy Ego are counting impossible citys. last month Peter counted in front of the stupid program. (((I rest my case.))) Hey, I'm reading OSAOAOAAAOA 12, and this IBOF thing sounds like what oughtta be happening with OSAO. I got a idea for a new PELTER: A CD ROM collection of sequential PICT or TIFF or TARGA or WHATtheF*CK images of animations by you using Photoshop and/or CoSA Afterimages or whatever it's called to be used as clip media--animated background images of weird-ness to decorate the world's video and multimedia productions! $119.95 list. Available everywhere. (((It'll happen.))) re EVER WONDER: Frank**'s guess: When 680MB of ram costs less than $10 the CD will have been augmented by the blue-lazer quad CD (4X the data on current media) and the Sony Minidisc for removeable storage (over 100MB, I think, on a $14 disk) or perhaps newly inexpensive PCMCIA-type flash-memory cards. They're pretty cool. Hey, I got a idea. You could, like, review illegal drugs in HemiSinister Review. Since you're not a head or anything these drugs would hit you like two tons of bricks and you could write about being massively f*cked up on unfamiliar substances. (((Dashic and drugs don't mix. Besides, Dashic is the ULTIMATE drug!))) I'm putting away SR 12 until later. Looks to be purty day-um cool. 12/5/94 Mundy evening 6:13 PM 80-A-Clarity. Good as always. This one seems more of a plot-advancer than an action-packer. The grammatical slips and typos are a little confusing, but no big deal. (((This is due to my method of writing, ie, writing and not revising or proofreading--I just don't have the time.))) OSOA 13: I agree about coffee. Intense stuff, I mean. Wow, did you sell a couple of PELTERs or did I forget how many you had? (((I may have given a few away.))) Later for Severe Repair #13. 1/10/95 Holy sh*t. I've been too busy to look at OSOA for a while. Where was I? DOLTHETHMEN: Yow. Ennui's clutchin' this guy. I used to think the word "ennui" was pronounced "enn-yoo-eye". Heh. Ya kind of want to crawl inside DOLTHETHMEN's brain and yell "Shut up! Shut up!" Mall musin'. Merciful heavens. (((I remember that when I wrote Dolthethmen (a long time ago, when I still resided in my parents' basement) I had just read a big chunk of Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" on the toilet.))) Scene in the arcade w/confounders & Am-Emily: Hilarious. 13 is a really cool and different Severe Repair. Re OSOA #14: Hemi Review: Yes. TICK is a good cartoon. Very good. I dug up some of the old TICK comics and they're good, too. ZOPE is funny like the old zopes. I like these ZOPE comics. Vitamin A is not normally funny, but in 10 pound quantities it somehow becomes funny. Ever Notice: Yeah. "Check local listings" is disappointing. We don't get ROBOCOP, which I hear is cool, or IRON MAN/FANTASTIC FOUR, which I hear sucks except for the title song for IRON MAN by Keith Emerson. (((Yeah, it does suck. You gotta wonder what goes wrong in a project like that--where they spend mountains of cash on the animation, the sound, the music--but wind up with writing that's total sh*t.))) Hey, here's a new VIAT experience: You're running down the hallway of a deserted office building with your beloved pet/companion, a blue hekkimer, which is an intelligent, long- haired Mammalian-Insectoid-Mineral thing shaped like a light bulb, only 18 inches tall and dangling colorful, flailing "pooter-nozzles". Your hekkimer is named Dodge Clot ( her birth-twin is named Plymouth Clot ) and she slips and skids down the hall into an open elevator shaft and plummets 18 stories to her grotesquely audible doom. You poke your head into the shaft and scream "DODGE!! DODGE!! DODGE CLOT!!!!! OH NO!!!!!" over and over until you pass out. You wake up in a hospital with some kind of horrible new disease you caught from being in the deserted building. Cool, huh? Mobius Crochet is a great idea. REPAIR #14: Really powerful mindf*ck with Millicent in the movie and all. Just when this Severe Repair seemed on the verge of treading water, in pops the cool story device. I really hope to see this stuff produced as a video/ maybe interactive presentation sometime. OSOA #15: Hey, are you gonna review the newest THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS album and single? Maybe you did in an OSOA I haven't read yet. I guess I'll find out, or maybe you already did and I forgot. (((I used to like TMBG a lot, until I met them during my MTV internship. They were kind of jerks to me. I had to hold a backdrop up behind them and my arm started to hurt and I wound up shaking the thing behind them. I was talking to them at one point, and they told me to get out, 'cause they needed some privacy to write a song for MTV. I have "Flood", and while there are a few good songs on it, I can't listen to the whole thing, 'cause of all the bad songs. As far as "John Henry" goes, I only heard "Snail Shell" so far, and it didn't impress me.))) Funny Classifieds. Liked the tornado and cow. KILL THE POMPOUS FOREIGNERS is kinda like the first JOEY script. I mean, I like it. It's much wider in scope than JOEY #1. Epic. Did you ever produce it for video? Probably not, because of the relatively large cast necessary for the airport sequence. Oh well. (((Unfortunately, no. I would like to produce it someday, though, y'know?))) SEVERE REPAIR #15: Save for later. 1/10/95 It's later. SR 15: As usual. The hell-confrontation scenes have great visual potential. The reality-jacking bridging stuff is a neat mental exercise. Powerful. OSOA #16 PASTA CRUCIFIXION is real holy. Hey, since MicroSoft made Windows for people who were too dumb to grasp DOS, then they made BOB for people too dumb for Windows, they oughta make something called Retard-O for people who can't figure BOB out. (((How 'bout "BOB COSTAS" for people who like to be interviewed late at night?))) Wow, the letter in OSOA #16 is really entertaining. ACTUALITY DESTRUCTOR #2: I remember this one from before, and no matter how weird I stare at this damn door in here, the erasers I throw through it just keep bouncing off the walls and stuff. CURE FOR CANCER: A new Joey! The nastiest Joey ever! This one made me laugh a lot. It would be a perfect ABC Afterschool Special. You can rearrange the letters in "THIS" to spell "SH*T". SEVERE REPAIR #16: The concept of a world "crashing" like a computer program is deep sh*t. It may not be a new concept--I suspect it might have been dealt with in some of that "cyberpuke" stuff I never got around to reading--but I really like it anyway. Yuh-Ow! This one really twists about itself. Better and better. OSOA #17: Mall of America sounds like a nice little place. SCIENTIST ZOPE cracked me up. Heh. If you start doing OSOAWeek Fractions, you could start a column called FRACTION ENHANCER and...ah, forget it. Digital Superworld: Your content theory holds water. Hey, remember Faith Popcorn, the washed-up trendmonger? You could incorporate her into Severe Repair as Faith Reality Popcorn and...huh? Okay. Is there no end to the JOEY scripts? These things are hyper-real. TYPEWRITER OIL: This one is even funnier than the last one. This is the kind of thing someone would watch on TV in TWIN PEAKS if TV existed in TWIN PEAKS. You know what I mean. ((("Typewriter Oil" was the last of the original FJ's, but I hope to write more someday.))) Severe Repair #17: Fantastic Colonia sequence! Compliments, etc. OSOA #18: AFTERNOON the word-processor game sounds cool. Is it like when you use search-and-replace to replace "the" with "fart" in a huge doc file? I remember the STORY. I thought the stuff you call the "cringe factor" was done that way on purpose. Son of a gun. My brother RUDY reviews movies for a local paper. He really hated THE FLINTSTONES (Who didn't) and especially detested Rosy O'Donnell as Betty. For Xmas, in addition to the usual gift-type object, I got him a Rosy O'Donnell Betty Rubble bendy figure for a buck at BIG LOTS. He got kind of pissed off so I told him to cut it up or burn it or something. Idz lade. I will attend to SR 18 later. 1/11/95 Home for lunch. SR 18: In the space of a few paragraphs, this Doug Brine narrator guy has come upon a sidewalk and two car wrecks. He must be really tired. I commented on this one, TOM KNEDDOES, a few years ago. I still like it a bunch. Cop killin' is always good for a laugh. (((Yeah, but the story extends beyond the original as published in ABM.))) 1 11 95 evening OSOA 19: Zope n obscure sticker: perfect. This Lordo Obliviana: Cool musing. Severe Repair deserves readers numbering in the figures you mention. Can't help but think OSOA would attract more attention with some kind of snappy graphics. I don't know too much about this "home page" WWW stuff or if it costs anything to maintain other than devoting a computer to it 24 hrs a day , but it seems like a more commanding way to get attention than just posting ASCII stuff superficially indistinguishable from the hundred and fifty zillion other low-rent postings online everywhere. This stuff does indeed have content of merit, as you asserted in an earlier Lord-O-Obliviana, and burying it in invisibility seems wrong. (((Quite right. I address this problem elsewhere in this issue. But rest assured--OsoaWeek won't lay dormant for long.))) SR 19: Hypergod situation camera is a wonderful idea. Funny and deep stuff. Good exchanges here with the future superpowerful pervert comment and other banter. For some damn reason I picture this Amnifaoz Hypergod as looking exactly like GOLDAR from MIGHTY MORPHIN' POWER RANGERS. Video store sequence is great stuff. Reminds me of my childhood dreams where reality shifted and later I could never remember if the stuff that happened was real or not. I spent about two years (age 4-5) convinced I could fly in a limited fashion, but it only worked sometimes. I didn't know the difference between waking and dreaming so I skinned my knees a lot. I also thought Andy Griffith and Ricky Ricardo were my uncles and I believed some guys in hoods wrapped my Aunt Lee up in a blanket and ripped her in half on her front porch. Maybe some time I'll tell you about the tickle man, and that horrible bitch-beast Elsie the Cow and her monster of a bull husband, Elmer. In 1962 I tried to kill Elsie. About five years ago I was in a rural grocery store and I walked down an aisle and was really freaked out by a five-foot tall fiberglass statue of Elsie that had been there about 30 years. Freaked out good. (((I, too, used to feel I could fly--at least, jump down a hill and float longer than physics should allow. Also, I saw all the planets hovering in the sky while standing in my front yard one day. I even wrote an essay about it in school (1st or 2nd grade or something), called "I Saw All the Planets". My father said I probably just saw the Sun and the Moon. I think it really happened, though--I don't think it was a dream.))) OSOA #20: ZOPEANDEIGHTTONSOFPOLLENISREALLYHILARIOUSANDILIKEDITALOT. AH! Too damn sleepy to read Severe Repair. Later. Later. 12:24 PM home for lunch SR 20: So far very cool, the Granticaine flashback and everything. Hey, I'll bet you've read David Gerrold's THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF about this guy who travels into alternate timelines to have sex with his various female and male incarnations and in general messes things up. I just remembered the book. I read it about 16 years ago. (((How depressing. Here I thought the idea of time travelling to have sex with previous incarnations was my idea. I never read that book. You gotta believe me!))) left at line 1225>resume later. 7:12 PM resuming SR 20: Beautiful ending in the booth in the water. Nice origin-type story of Granticane's Overwhelm entry. OSOA 21: ZOPE/invisible wristwatch: good. I notice you use the word "queer" as an adjective a lot in situations that don't involve homosexuality. Is this an attempt to reclaim the word for the masses, or do you just think the word sounds cool? Hey, there's a new word for gay people. I've been trying to convince the world to use it(with no luck). It's...HUMMEL-SECTIONAL! Use it now. While I'm coining new words, here's a replacement for the most annoying, rapidly tiring "MULTIMEDIA". Ready? Here it is..... "Wryturdpalsydrunkkovakwife". The root syllables explained: Wry turd--MUL, as in Martin Mull, a wry turd of a comedian. palsydrunk--TIM, a coworker of mine at my day job, who has cerebral palsy and is alcoholic. kovakwife--EDIA, a contraction of Edie Adams, the wife of really cool dead comedian Ernie Kovaks. Brilliance! LORD of OBLIVIANA: OBLIVIANA WORLD will be a Macintosh only application? Bad move, man. Although PC architecture and Windows suck, it's the world standard, or practically so. Mac market share is shrinking. Of course the Mac is cooler, but so what? Remember the Amiga? A very useful, powerful, easy- to-use device that was inexpensive and fun, and specifically engineered to be a video computer with all kinds of neat custom chips and stuff, and the OS operations were faster on a 7.5mhz 68000 Amiga than Windows is on a 486DX66 with cache out the ass and stuff. Nobody bought Amigas in any quantity, Commodore botched the marketing beyond belief, and now Amiga's an "orphing". Apple is making what may be a really stupid bunch of decisions right now, and it could fade as a presence in a few years. PC is here forever, unfortunately. Yeah, I know MYST and FREAKSHOW are incredible, but FREAK has been ported to PC and I'm sure Myst will be if it hasn't already been. I so strongly express this boring opinion about platforms because I think Severe Repair and some other OSOA things deserve the best possible chance of greater recognition, and that means you gotta develop on the most widely available machine and OS. I just got to the part where you said you want to make a Windows version of OBLIVIANA, so ignore everything I said in the above paragraph. I would just delete the above, but it's such a powerfully impassioned piece of junk, I'll leave it in so you can let the emotion wash...oh, f*ck it. Wow. Indeed, a revealing resume. This "Psychic War" sounds as if it could rival SEVERE REPAIR in terms of niftiness--what with it ostensibly true and everything. You oughtta chronicle it. I'm curious as hell. (((Be assured, I am sincere in my assertions regarding the occult battle at Drew University. In fact, it took place just as Anything But Monday was starting up--but Mike Massotto had nothing at all to do with the occult battle. The aftermath of the main battle (which lasted about 3 months) continued on for years and years. Thankfully, it was apparently laid to rest a few years ago. I think the whole thing relates to who and what I was in a past life, but that would take too long to get into. Who knows--maybe the whole thing was so that I could open up the realm of Dashic for everyone to explore!))) Cool cogent letter from Scott Carson re FOW. I agree that ZOPE need not be autobiographical, especially now that you've adopted a socially recognized POLITICAL STANCE that would seem, in principal, to cause you to denounce ZOPE as violent, pointless filth that should be banned, and to hell with the Constitution. If indeed Clinton is as horrible as he appears to be, ZOPE would support him as a fellow destructive force. ZOPE must not fall prey to the idealogical whim of his creator...ZOPE must remain pure! ZOPE must retain his pattern integrity! ...and other exhortations, etc. (((I don't think Zope has ever really been autobiographical. And take a look around you--it's the LIBERALS and DEMOCRATS who are spearheading today's censorship initiatives. Zope is not "politically correct"--he's pretty conservative. As he said in ABM--"The rain forests of the world piss me off! Cut 'em down, slaves!" He hates Bill Clinton. And you know--characterizing Zope as purely destructive is unfair--he's a much more complex character. Come on Frank, join the Republican party! Democrats have no sense of humor.))) Heh. This ABM history reminds me of a bunch of years ago when you sent me a video of the local TV coverage of the controversy, and I made a whole bunch of people watch it. Afterwords, we imitated for weeks the black girl in the piece who said, in a hoarse, urban, vernacular growl, "Dis Insuhts not ohnee blacks, buh ori-ennals, eskeemoes, and...WIMMING!" SR 21: This Gene alligator thing is another of your boggling coolnesses. These throwaway bits and beings really pack the atmosphere of SR with a sarcastic yet childlike sense-o-wonder. This SR is particularly joyous. Great ending! Your character-interaction is becoming much more natural and convincing. The Fluffy bathtub sequence is your best dialogue writing so far! OSOA 22: Risk of redundancy: ZOPE n FANBOY is real funny. Lordy Obliviana: What do you mean "that Japanese chicken could wake me up from any level of sleep"? Did you get a new pet? Or is it some kind of food that gives you fatal indigestion? Or is one of your neighbors a Japanese coward who shrieks and throws things all night? What? (((Just an alarm clock, but it's funny--I do have a Japanese coward living next door.))) WILL THERE BE A VOLUME FIVE OF ABM?: Hey! Wistful stuff, man. Epic tragedy and so on. SEVERE REPAIR 22: These giant police cars are fantastic inventions. What a cool excuse for computer-aided animation they would be! Kind of like in AKIRA or GOOF TROOP where the vehicles are computer animated, but the characters are traditional cel-style. SR 22 is a real screen-scroller. OSOA 23: This ZOPE...this ZOPE'S NEW DISEASE story...it's obviously a thinly-veiled, yet heavy-handed AIDS allegory. The fresca=HIV. The AMAZING ANIMALS videotapes=caposi's sarcoma. Metallic Sphere Blue=Prondoni, the voice of Doom and Wisdom. Ed Ape=Art Cloky, a deity of sorts. It's all so obvious. Picture this: the newest CD-ROM game success--DOOM in MYST! Ethereal mayhem! Placid yet puzzling carnage! SOOPER NEWS: As good as SEVERE REPAIR, except much funnier. You should do tons more of these. LORTOFF OBLIVIANA: F*ckfinding mission made me laugh a bunch. THERE'S PEOPLE IN THE WOODS FOR GODSAKE!: This is kind of like a junior baby SEVERE REPAIR. Hey, what did it mean on the label of your old audiocassette BICENTENNIAL CANE where it said "Watch for SEVERE REPAIR, the new band?" Huh? (((I was planning on forming a band at one point. I talked to this bizarre girl Rachel I knew from high school about playing the tuba. I was gonna stir an oil drum full of broken glass, and my girlfriend Erin was gonna play a tape recorder. Somehow, I think "Severe Repair" turned out a lot better as a story than as a band.))) SR 23 DAPTIN'S LAND: Deep. I like this recoverable crashes stuff--like the universe is a huge multitasking OS and all the Earths are simultaneous programs and there is some kind of fault protection, etc., which I guess is what you intended. You could follow it through to the ultimate level and get insufficient memory alerts, and media crashes, and bugs, and patches, and updates, and incompatible peripherals, and your characters could meet beings from higher and lower reality bus-widths (like if an 8-bit Atari 800 person and a 64-bit Jaguar person came to visit a 32-bit person in Windows or whatever). Maybe that's what you've been doing with all the gods and stuff in SR. (((More likely it's the other way around--computers are similar to reality, not the other way around.))) Nice ending. SR's chapter tag lines are becoming perfect. All this reality-shifting stuff reminds me of "glitching" video games back in the early eighties. I had an Atari 600 computer and 20 or 30 game carts for it, and some of the games could be disrupted by just barely inserting a cart, and gently flipping it with your finger or a pen or something. Sometimes, if you were lucky, bizarre stuff would happen, like the playing field of, for example, MINER 2049ER, would be a totally random nonsense construct, with some identifiable elements from the regular playing area, and some weird ASCII and odd control characters in different sizes and colors scattered around, and ugly little boxes that did unpredictable stuff--some would kill you if you touched them, some would make weird noises or give you bonus points, and some would freeze you forever. The best thing was, it was functional! You could actually play the game in this scrambled mess, and the monsters would fall off the random girders and stuff, or get stuck so they couldn't kill you anymore, and so on. My wife at the time thought it was weird behavior. She'd walk into the room when I was messing with these old carts, and ask, "Are ya glitchin'?" Ah yes, those were days of wild adventure. (((I used to do that all the time with the Atari 2600. In Pitfall, Harry would float around in a kneeling position and be totally black. Frogger had all these alternate, incredibly strange songs. Defender had a wave of all bombers. I used to love glitchin', dude!))) Well, Frank, that wraps up all the OSOAweeks I've seen to date. As usual, I am impressed, especially with SEVERE REPAIR. Keep doing it! I would very much like to see this property developed into a pop-culture masterpiece cartoon someday, by me or whoever. Keep building the OSOA equity, and congratulations on your first successfully long-lived endeavor. 23 of these is a hell of a lot of work, and I'm sure you've done 2 or 3 more by now. Good luck and keep me updated! Frank** Panucci Evening of 1/12/95 (((Thank you very much. As you now know, I've done 7 new issues since OsoaWeek023--hope you enjoy'em!))) This issue is twelve days late at this point--the latest I've ever been. Tonight, the last night of February, I plan to finish it. Being that there are only five hours till March, I imagine that OsoaWeek030 will be born just as March is dawning. "The Dawn of March"--huh, sounds like a good title for something. Anyway, let me struggle my way forward. You know, I'm really behind on OsoaWeek, and yet, in the next four days I'm gonna see a Broadway show and go to a strip club in Philadelphia. Do I like have even barely enough time to do all this? Nah. But am I gonna do it all anyway? You bet! Okay, people. I have to get moving on this thing. If issue 30 drags on any longer in the womb, I'm gonna go haywire. So let me get it done, eh? Oh, and by the way, if y'all have time, GET ALL OBLIVIANA! *OW* [[07030NH]] Nihilistica ***OSOAWEEK ON AMERICA ONLINE*** Ever since OsoaWeek began on July 28, 1994, I've uploaded each and every issue to two places--America Online and a NJ BBS called The Familiar Spirit. America Online keeps download counts on all files, so I know how many people have downloaded each issue of OsoaWeek from America Online. The Familiar Spirit doesn't have download counts available, as far as I know. Here's the data from AOL as of the morning of February 25, 1995 (yes--this issue is late). Data--date posted, issue, number of downloads (in parentheses), date of latest download 02/22 OsoaWeek029 Ezine (4) 02/24 02/12 OsoaWeek028 Ezine (11) 02/20 02/07 OsoaWeek027 Ezine (8) 02/18 01/29 OsoaWeek026 Ezine (11) 02/18 01/19 OsoaWeek025 Ezine (11) 02/14 01/10 OsoaWeek024 Ezine (16) 02/22 01/02 OsoaWeek023 Ezine (12) 02/13 12/31 OsoaWeek022 Ezine (6) 02/13 12/19 OsoaWeek021 Ezine (21) 02/14 12/19 OsoaWeek020 Ezine (5) 02/13 12/05 OsoaWeek019 Ezine (34) 02/24 11/25 OsoaWeek018 Ezine (12) 02/13 11/19 OsoaWeek017 Ezine (9) 02/13 11/18 OsoaWeek016 Ezine (2) 01/29 11/06 OsoaWeek015 Ezine (13) 01/25 10/31 OsoaWeek014 Ezine (8) 01/07 10/19 Osoaweek013 Ezine (15) 11/19 10/14 OsoaWeek012 Ezine (3) 10/28 10/05 OsoaWeek011 Ezine (5) 10/28 09/29 OsoaWeek010 Ezine (3) 10/15 09/20 OsoaWeek009 Ezine (3) 09/29 09/20 OsoaWeek008 Ezine (5) 11/05 09/13 OsoaWeek007 Ezine (7) 01/07 09/06 OsoaWeek006 Ezine (7) 12/26 09/05 OsoaWeek005 Ezine (3) 01/08 08/22 OsoaWeek004 Ezine (7) 09/06 08/22 OsoaWeek003 Ezine (14) 09/04 08/21 OsoaWeek002 Ezine (12) 09/04 08/21 OsoaWeek001 Ezine (20) 02/14 Total: 287 Average: 9 Median: 8 Highest: OsoaWeek019 (34) Lowest: OsoaWeek016 (2) To find OsoaWeek on AOL, follow this path: KEYWORD: PDA Software Libraries Palmtop Paperbacks Ezine Libraries Humor Other Humor Now maybe you can see why OsoaWeek has such a small audience right now--it's tucked away six levels down on AOL. Also, I haven't done any real promotion for OsoaWeek. As far as OsoaWeek being in the humor section, that was AOL's call. And being that OsoaWeek is tough to categorize, I never complained--humor is an okay pigeonhole. One interesting note is that The Familiar Spirit is connected to the Internet--so folks can log onto TFS via Internet and get OsoaWeek--but I don't know the proper address or anything--that's something I should really look into! Anyway, this is just a beginning. I truly believe that content, above all else, is what's gonna matter in the Digital Superworld. Text is not very sexy, but it IS a fine crucible for content. Obliviana will go graphic sometime this year. I mean, Obliviana has a very strong graphical side which just isn't coming through in text. But Obliviana needs a strong text foundation upon which multimedia data can reside. And of course, these early issues of OsoaWeek will always be available to people--on into the future of mankind. Cool man! ***SONGS OF THE WEEK*** Nirvana * "The Man Who Sold the World" (from the album "MTV Unplugged in New York") Beck * Truckdriving Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat) (from the album "Mellow Gold") *OW* [[08030OL]] Obliviana Primal ***WAKE UP AND SMELL THE VIAT*** VIAT (Virtual Invoker-Artificer Technology) is an idea which I introduced back in OsoaWeek 004. It's basically a system by which a computer system (either a personal computer or videogame system) communicates with a central service (via a traditional modem) in the creation of a fully interactive, online, 3-D world. The computer system would handle all the rendering, contain extensive object, graphic, sound, and other libraries. In this way, only descriptive information need be passed over the telephone connection--everything else is done in the computer system itself. The bottom line of VIAT is that immersive online systems are not a decade away--they're virtually here (no pun intended). Let me give you an example to show you just what I mean. We all know the game Doom--wherein you're immersed in a 3-D world of corridors, killing zombies, demons, and sh*t like that. This game, and its countless imitators, can run on fairly inexpensive systems--from $1200 PC's to the $250 Atari Jaguar and $160 Genesis add-on 32X. Doomish games have at their heart an engine which makes everything happen. The layouts of various levels, textures of walls, floors, ceilings, and backgrounds, sounds, enemy graphics, etc. are all stored as separate data. The engine reads this data and renders the on-screen action. Doom and its progeny each have a fairly limited library of data--just what's needed to create the game. But just imagine, if you will, a Doom-like game engine which has an entire CD-ROM's worth of data libraries to draw from. Then, add a modem to the recipe--with which the game engine can be connected to an online service. The online service can tell the game engine what data set to read from the CD-ROM. That is, the textures, objects, maps, layouts, backgrounds, sounds, etc. to be displayed. You're probably getting the picture by now. With VIAT, it would look on the surface like you're playing a Doom-like game, but you'd be in the "tunnels" with other real people from all over the world. And you know what? You don't have to be limited to tunnels, to running around killing demons, or anything like that. Let me tell you--the interface of current popular services like America Online, or any of a plethora of BBS's, leave a WHOLE LOT to be desired. A Doom-like interface would be incredibly welcome--and would move the Digital Superworld forward in a massive way. Even though I developed the idea of VIAT pretty much on my own, you better believe that a lot of other people have the same idea. I mean, come on--what sort of a leap in logic does it take to go from networked, multiplayer games of Doom to a Doomlike online service? Not much. And kids, the next generation of video games (Jaguar, 32X, Saturn, PlayStation) have 3-D rendering abilities which go far beyond Doom. And the Genesis modem, the X-Band, is already up and running. I don't know exactly how long it will take before a major online service appears with a Doom-like interface, but I feel pretty confident the first ones will begin to appear this year. And like a game of Chutes and Ladders, we will climb to a much higher level in the race to the Digital Superworld. As for Obliviana, I am not in a position right now to develop a DLOS (Doom-Like Online Service). But this is fine--being first in this category won't necessarily mean all that much. It will be the DLOS with the best CONTENT that people will flock to. And friends, OBLIVIANA PRIMAL will be the DLOS with the best content. So what's the timeframe for all this? Obliviana Primal will ignite as an interactive e-mail "game" in about two months (on April 27, 1995). After that, I hope to have some sort of Internet things--like WWW or something going. And as soon as it becomes possible--maybe in a year or two--make it a DLOS. *OW* [[09030NJ]] New Jersey THE SCANTICON 100 College Road East, Princeton (609) 452-7800 or (800) 222-1131 A "Conference Center Hotel", The Scanticon is a very interesting place to visit. It's ostensibly located in Princeton, but when I looked at a map, it was pretty f*cking far from being in Princeton. But hey--they do that a lot--extend the theoretical boundaries of a prestigious town. The place itself is a cool compound--part hotel, part conference center, part restaurant. It has a lot of nice architecture, especially it's lobby. I went there with my family for dinner, and wandered around its halls--actually getting lost at one point and having to orient myself at a map. The Scanticon's logo is a kind of elongated blob called the "Super Ellipse"--which was designed, they say in their literature, by "renowned Danish poet and inventor, Dr. Piet Hein." They say it's "the one curve that relates to both the circle and the rectangle, which symbolizes perfect harmony." Dude--it just looks like an oval, I'm telling ya--these foreign people are so full of themselves. You can see a nice statue of the "Super Ellipse" at The Scanticon--almost worth the trip in itself! And of course, being that The Scanticon is located in "Princeton Forrestal Center" (whatever the hell that is), you're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Forrestal Village--that failed outdoor mall concept thing which has to be seen to be believed--maybe I'll review it soon. But for an interesting change of pace, and a cool place to stop while Dashing, check out The Scanticon! Directions: Take Rt. 1 to the Princeton area, and take exit for College Rd. East. You'll see the sign for The Scanticon a little ways up. You'll know you're getting close to College Road when you start seeing signs for Forrestal Village, Forrestal, Center, etc. *OW* [[10030FE]] Friction Enhancer Friction Enhancer 13: "Buildings Over Yonder" This is a game based on a pastime I partook of in high school. I'll give you a brief overview of it here, but I'll have to go into it further another time. The basic idea is pretty simple. All you need is a sheet of paper and a couple of pens. The central action of the game is the "penshot". This is accomplished by placing the pen perpendicular to the paper, it's tip touching the paper. Then you put one index finger on the other end of the pen, so that you're holding the pen steady. Now, you move the top of the pen with your finger, while continuing to apply pressure. When you start to lose control of the pen, the tip will shoot quickly over the paper, leaving a trail of ink, or the "penshot trail". So basically, how the game is played is, each player starts off with a set of little circles or squares (fighters). The players take turns, each doing one penshot per turn. Each penshot originates from a fighter, and can either move the fighter, or fire its gun--the player must announce which before doing the penshot. For movement, the fighter is crossed out and redrawn at the end of the penshot trail. For the gun, the first enemy fighter the trail crosses, if any, is crossed out and destroyed. If a player is moving and the trail hits enemy fighter, it's considered a kamikaze run, and ALL enemy fighters the trail touches are destroyed, alone with the kamikaze fighter. Before the game begins, a playfield of any sort can be drawn--with walls that limit movement (ie, when a moving fighter's trail hits a wall, it must stop there). As well, crossed-out fighters act as walls. In the basic game, each player draws a home base on his side, and the goal is to destroy the enemy's base--which requires only one shot. Another rule is that a fighter can go through and obstacles in one turn, so long as one other fighter is sacrificed. That is, by destroying one of your fighters, it will allow another fighter to be unaffected by walls, crossed-out fighters, etc. FOR ONE TURN ONLY. For the basic game, start with ten fighters each. As I said, I need to get further into this game later on. I'll probably produce pre-printed battlefields sometime, which will make the whole thing a lot easier. Until then, see if you can get a game going with the description I give here--and let me know how it goes! *OW* [[11030DC]] Dashic ***BICENTENNIAL PLUS NINE*** I just wanted to make another observation about the origin of Dashic. The United States of America celebrated its 209th birthday on July 4, 1985. And it was almost exactly two months later that I met my friend Bryan, and we discovered that we each had a dorm room number of 209. You know, 209 is everywhere. Just last night, I bought some coffee beans at Pathmark, and the checkout woman typed her code number into the register and it was--you guessed it--209! I myself, Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana, was one of two people with dorm room 209 entering a college where all sorts of supernatural stuff was going on in America's 209th year. And we made a big deal out of the whole 209 thing. So it's my assertion that it was month after month of heavy 209ness which eventually push Bryan and myself into essentially discovering the art of Dashic. And now that it's discovered, all of you out there can enter unto of realm of ultimate exploration! Yeah man! Cool! *OW* [[12030AB]] Antebellum YELLOW SAIL Profiles: Devil/Rain County: Bergen Sex: Female Description: Yellow Sail is a beautiful devil girl with a big yellow sail on her pitchfork. She can create thunderstorms with violent rain and lightning, and ride the winds with her sail. Mischievous and buoyant, she can get real serious real fast and kick some serious butt. BEE LEROY Profiles: Bastard/Pest County: Burlington Sex: Male Description: Bee Leroy is an odd, pudgy little fairie guy with a black and yellow striped suit on and a real bad attitude. He wields a diminutive baseball bat which might look silly until he bashes your brain in with it. Always in a rotten mood, Leroy avoids being a total downer with his sarcastic humor. DIME Profiles: Astronaut/Lovely County: Burlington Sex: Female Description: The enigmatic Dime wears a light blue spacesuit which hugs the every contour of her voluptuous body. Even with her heavy breathing and lack of speech, she can quickly seduce just about any man--they just wish they could see inside her helmet! MUSTARD Profiles: Soldier/Vagabond County: Burlington Sex: Male Description: An experienced warrior, Mustard wields a nasty shotgun and wears a tough yellow and brown suit of body armor. With his teleportation powers, he can jump all over a battlefield--often right into midair, firing his gun and teleporting out before he hits the ground! Good-spirited and determined, Mustard is a good leader--so long as he doesn't get obsessed with a vendetta against one of his enemies! RAGTAG B Profiles: Aggressor/Swift County: Atlantic Sex: Male Description: This superfast young fellow wears a suit of tattered rags--anything he wears is shredded by his supersonic speed! Beyond his quickness, Ragtag B is a deft and skilled hand-to-hand combatant, able to take out foes much bigger and stronger than him. Cheerful and curious, Ragtag often lapses into a blue funk, searching for his place in the world. *OW* [[13030SU]] Superior SUPERIOR 169 Was you slowly my get you I'm knowing you for goto. Aquamarine tick tock, guitar diorama in your sneaker heel, a figurine of Susannah in there too. Went to school in Arizona dream, loved the blonde. Woke up before I could buy a valuable New Jersey tray. Truce in speed, aquamarine highway now, black lines blur, I am known. SUPERIOR 170 Do what you are, honey. Your arm never left your other arm. Forget about science, it's wrong. Do what you will with me. It's a world of strangers. I am going soon. Step back, black blasts, put on a show, never go! SUPERIOR 171 When days were of ago, find me jaunting the avenues of eld cities. When flying motorcycles are for real, I'm there. Please let me go to sleep. SUPERIOR 172 Through these dank fields, did we all amble, chomping on shields, dining on bramble. The light of the morning, a massacre made, remember the warning--in fog we do fade. *OW* [[14030DH]] Dehumidifier ***BEUBLIN A. RICHARDSON*** Episode 4 by Frank Edward Nora Dialogue Improvised by the actors, with direction from Frank Edward Nora Peter Litkey as BEUBLIN A. RICHARDSON John Nora as ANTHONY NEURO INTERIOR--OFFICE Close-up of label on record, reading "Richardson Enterprises Records". Zoom back to BEUBLIN talking on phone. BEUBLIN Anthony, seriously, now the whole situation with the video the way you want it and the way I want it you have to understand one thing--and that is that as I said before, I only want it my way. Anthony, listen. Don't give me your horsesh*t. I'm in no mood to listen to it right now, okay? You have to understand one thing, that you might be the director and all that, but your idea of changing the whole entire meaning of the song is something that I really do not want to be in my video. Because essentially, what you're doing, as I pointed to you out before--and I don't see why you can't see this--that you are changing the whole entire meaning of the whole entire video! Okay? And the way I want it, I want to have the evil, the industrial type of atmosphere. And you want it to be down to this, this nonchalant, no big deal type of thing. And, and take way from the whole entire meaning of it. That's what I don't understand, okay Anthony? And if you really want to direct this video, you are gonna have to learn that if I don't like something, you have to accept it. Oh don't give--don't start blubbering--please. Okay? You have to try to understand my point. And that I am the creator here, okay? You are just input--I don't have to follow your orders. You follow mine--you understand? Okay? Close-up of movie poster--"I OF DESTINY", "by Anthony Neuro", which shows a picture of ANTHONY with messy hair. BEUBLIN looks at poster strangely as he listens to ANTHONY talking on the phone BEUBLIN (cont.) Yeah... yeah Anthony. Uh, we can talk about this later. And please--DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT HAIR! INTERIOR--OFFICE Shot of ANTHONY, with brand new short haircut. BEUBLIN gets up and greets him, shaking his hand. BEUBLIN (cont.) Anthony! Hello, hello! ANTHONY Hey. The two sit down across from each other. BEUBLIN Take a seat! Anthony, I think we had better get this video off the ground. In order for us to get our ideas flowing, I was thinking about going into the parking lot, and try to get some ideas through that way. But I was also thinking, before we do that, to get some Orangina and some Cheyenne cookies, and go in the parking lot and think about things for awhile to get some good ideas. ANTHONY Let's do it. EXTERIOR--STREET--NIGHT A car quickly goes by. EXTERIOR--SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT--NIGHT The car pulls into a space, and ANTHONY gets out of the passenger side. He walks around the car to BEUBLIN'S open window. ANTHONY (cont.) So we going in or what? BEUBLIN Andy, I can't go in there--I'm frightened. I'm scared that I might not find my way out. ANTHONY Okay... okay. INTERIOR--SUPERMARKET--AISLE ANTHONY searches for the right foods as he hears BEUBLIN'S voice ringing in his head. BEUBLIN'S VOICE Small bottle Anthony. Small bottle Anthony. Small bottle Anthony. Small bottle Anthony. Small bottle Anthony. ANTHONY grabs a 4-pack of Orangina in small bottles. BEUBLIN'S VOICE (cont.) Cheyenne Anthony. Cheyenne Anthony. Cheyenne Anthony. Cheyenne Anthony. Cheyenne Anthony. Cheyenne Anthony. Cheyenne Anthony. ANTHONY grabs a package of Cheyenne cookies. EXTERIOR--SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT--NIGHT ANTHONY approaches the car. INTERIOR--CAR IN PARKING LOT--NIGHT BEUBLIN Anthony--I'm so glad that you're alright. EXTERIOR--SHOPPING PLAZA--NIGHT BEUBLIN and ANTHONY lean against an abandoned store. ANTHONY It's gonna look really amazing. BEUBLIN Mmm hmm. ANTHONY Black leather. Minion in black leather. Gonna be incredible. The sound of a falling metal object is heard, and BEUBLIN starts breathing heavily as he walks forward. He reaches into his bag of Cheyenne cookies and starts throwing them like Frisbees. BEUBLIN (deranged) I have a vision, of things of the past, of going into the future. YES! YES! HAHAHA! YA HA HA! I AM THE MASSIVE CREATOR! BEUBLIN laughs in a bizarre manner as be take a cookie and crushed it on his forehead, letting the crumbs fall over his face. Then he turns to ANTHONY. BEUBLIN (suddenly lucid) Oh, by the way Anthony, my TV show's on tomorrow. *OW* [[15030SA]] Severe Repair Almanac ***SYNOPSIS OF SEVERE REPAIR CHAPTER 7*** "Yellowhaus" (14 pages) Chamomile, leader of the team called Yellowhaus, tells her teammates that their base, Yellowhaus, is actually an interdimensional vehicle--one which is set to automatically travel to another world if the one it's on is about to end. She reveals to he teammates that this mechanism has kicked in, and that the world will end in 40 minutes, destroyed by the villain Universe O'Riley. Buff and Lemon go outside to get Buff's bicycle, and when they're heading back in, someone teleports in and falls to the ground. It is Colonia the Sword--a member of the Freedom Wave. They bring him inside, and Chamomile seals Yellowhaus--taking it slightly out of phase with reality, so that only light can pass back and forth. But soon, Universe O'Riley appears outside, raising an awesome storm. Yellowhaus is unaffected of course. But soon, Buff tackles everyone--he realizes that O'Riley can use hypnotic pulses of light to kill them, by shutting their hearts down or whatever. They all shield their eyes and try to opaque the windows--which Colonia eventually does. Now safe, they prepare to be transported to another world. * * * On the Overwhelm pirate ship Urbandersnacheron 4, Baw Veppen and Norlime Eckert talk about philosophical matters, especially about how hard it is to distinguish reality from fantasy. Soon, Zoipin Jurple Jupter joins them and tells them the ship will be bridging soon, to Arch Bedew Earth. * * * Cursive Caxopy and her sister Elaine explain a mission to Daptin Gone and Fake Cerquaine. It's their first mission as mortals, and it involves a very interesting Styrofoam cup of coffee, some 40,000 years old. Through the cup, they can hear the voice of a girl named Tavmatey Numblem-- the idea of the mission is to rescue her from wherever she is. Soon, they order pizza and some bizarre beverages from Xould Pete's Camera, and Cursive goes out to get it. ***SYNOPSIS OF SEVERE REPAIR CHAPTER 7*** "Yellowhaus" (14 pages) Cursive Caxopy returns from Xould Pete's Camera with the pizza and beverages. Daptin Gone and Fake Cerquaine and there waiting. As they start eating Daptin raises concerns about being expected to kill. Elaine Caxopy gives him a black metal coin, and tell him it might help. Fake looks at it too. It turns out to be a "killable coin", which makes anyone touching it unkillable. Daptin and Fake are then introduced to Jerald Hapal Hatch, a fellow mortal who'll be accompanying them on their mission. Several hours later, the three are in a shopping mall in Plutomiana, looking for the location of a bridge to Boltpike. With constant bickering due to Jerald's complaining, they search the mall for the bridge, and finally find it in a record store. As they enter, the cashier calls security on them, and Jerald fires his machinegun. Daptin grabs him and pulls him into the bridge. They walk through a tunnel for a little while, and finally come to a ladder which leads them out into Boltpike. But they aren't there for more than a few minutes before the world drops out from under them and they find themselves in a world of grassy hills--soon to encounter Cup's Club for the first time! Threatened, Fake prepares a slay balloon... *OW* [[16030SR]] Severe Repair SEVERE REPAIR 30 "Stormbolthouse Leitmotif" "Everybody, I have an announcement to make. Something incredible will happen this evening." Daptin Gone said. I was uncomfortable here, it just seemed too weird. The main hall of Daptin's House, sitting at a huge table, having dinner. The thing is, just about EVERYONE in this world is sitting around me at the table. I looked around me at all the people--a crazy bunch. Daptin's Land--population 45. I think Daptin was playing cupid and matchmaker with his powers--everyone seemed to be furtively scanning the group for a possible mate. I have to admit, I was doing it too. It's funny how things worked out. 22 girls and 23 boys. Considering all the chaos that surrounded everyone getting here, there's no way Daptin could have planned it--or is there? I don't know. There are some pretty hot babes, though. I hate to admit it, but the ones I'm drawn to the most are those devil girls--from that Yellowhaus thing when it appeared the other day. Insurance and Lemon--I think those are their names. God damn hot. I may as well record a list of all the people here in Daptin's Land. There's me, Prince Ferrajalt, and the nine others I came through with--Ledrant Hate, Injure Bodoni, Ann Saply, Amnifaoz, Nevrippa Den, Vike Varmabey, Treyess Arcomany, Sleap Drassy, and V Sincein. From the Urbandersnacheron there are another ten--Baw Veppen, Flicker Sa, Hilltop Jone Rallity, Norlime Eckert, Caffeine, Zoipin Jurple Jupter, Ky Ly Quids, Ow Muchy Moyar, Bellicose Billion, and Toggle Joseph. That's twenty. From that Yellowhaus thing there are the two demonic lovelies I just mentioned, Insurance and Lemon, as well as, I think, Chamomile, Sulfur, Buff, and Canary. Yeah. So there's twenty-six. Then there are these totally bizarre people who call themselves "Cup's Club". The leader is some sort of god named Coabler the Sawman. The others are Classic of Logic, Demolish All, Kesh the Vector, Pattern Integrity, Tickle the Monster, and--get this--Bith the Silly Train. So where are we at--thirty-three? Yeah. Of course, one person I wish I'd never see again is Red Archer Booze--still rooming with Treyess, by the way. She makes thirty-four. Granticaine Chug Perion and the rest of Provocation Team D--Wreckage Mallie, Iterator of Rail Avenue, and Pantry Lurkin--make thirty-eight. Then there's Daptin Gone, of course, and some of his friends from that alternate world Agoopish--Fake Cerquaine, Jerald Hapal Hatch, Spanking New Sarah, Pine Run Glara, Tavmatey Numblem, and Millicent. And that makes forty-five! Yeah, so I was sitting there at the table, feeling weird. It was hard to believe that this was all that was left of the entire multiverse. Forty-five weirdoes in a room. For some reason, my thoughts turned to Engiondofer Castle, the traditional home of my royal ancestor. I've always felt a strong affinity with it, and even now, I could sense its presence, somewhere out there. With this feeling, I felt sure that somehow, someday, it would be possible to return home. Anyway, after Daptin announced that something was gonna happen later, everyone kept asking him what it was, but he wouldn't say. I don't know about Daptin--he seems so old now. Not that he looks old, just that he acts like he's ancient. That Spanking New Sarah is always at his side. I guess they're going out, or whatever. I've heard that she wants to be Queen of Daptin's Land. Apparently, she granted him sexual favors when she was high and mighty and he was a nobody. Maybe now she was looking for some payback. Who knows? One thing is for sure--Daptin had to set a good example for his breeding stock--I don't think forty-five people was enough for him. The dinner itself was nice as usual--just a bunch of fruits, juices, foodstuff from Warhomes--all laid out on the table, so you could just reach out and take whatever you wanted. No servants, of course. Just a bunch of powerful oddballs, most of them deluded. I talked to Baw Veppen mostly during the meal. She was originally from a tribe of low-tech folks--seems she was their prophesied savior. Unfortunately, she didn't some through for her people when they expected her to. She was barely two months into her self-imposed exile when Overwhelm recruited her. We got into a discussion about the whole "why me" thing. "You know what I mean?" Baw said. "For as long as I can remember, I always asked 'why me'? Why am I the Chakilool, the Savior? And then, when I failed my people, I asked, why am I the Chakilool who failed?" "I know what you mean." I said, fiddling with some grapelike fruits on my plate. "I often wonder myself how I managed to be born into a royal family, heir to the throne. I mean, what are the chances?" "Right." she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. "And now of course, all this. All the universe gone, but somehow, I manage to be one of those who survive--one of less than fifty. It's "why me" all over again." "Yeah." I said. Baw was kind of boring, but she was okay. Her handsome, plain features had a dignity. Her quiet, reserved, sane manner was a welcome change from the psychos I'm used to dealing with. She mentioned a few times that she was a virgin--another refreshing thing about her. Most superpowerfuls--myself included--seemed to delight in all manner of sexual excess. So I really didn't view Baw in a sexual way. She didn't turn me on at all (not like those devil girls). Thing is, I get the impression she's sweet on me. Not that she'd ever act on it--I can tell from her personality that I'd have to be the one to initiate things. And she DID tell me that she was relieved to get off her Earth--apparently she felt that her vow of celibacy (imposed on her since birth) was invalid off her world. Taking a Savior's virginity? I have to admit the thought did give me a little thrill. But again, it was of the perverse sort--just the idea of popping God's cherry, y'know? Ah, whatever. What kind of sicko am I becoming? As I talked to Baw, my gaze constantly drifted over to the devil girls, and it was like a jolt when the one in yellow--Lemon--returned the glance. How sweet she was. My heart raced and my stomach was full of butterflies. And the eye contact lasted longer than such a thing usually does. Those eyes! Deep violet, round, alluring, above such a lovely nose and mouth--I was floating in her visage. Finally, I smiled and looked away awkwardly. She was definitely the one for me. The other devil girl--Insurance--was hot too--but somehow she didn't have the--potency--of Lemon. And somehow I knew--I knew that the Greatcoat (presently back in my room at Bay House) would help me in getting together with lemon. Her fangs DID look awfully sharp, and beneath her luscious exterior I saw that she could deal some major damage. With the coat on though--I'd be impervious to any real harm--I could make love to her like a devil without fearing for my life. I wondered if what I heard was true--that Lemon was heir to the throne of her Earth's hell--but that she rejected the whole thing, and the only way she could escape her infernal family was to take a vow of goodness--apparently a pretty difficult thing for a devil to go. But she did--she swore to do good--and she got away. I tell ya boy, I can think of some good things she could do for me... Heir to the throne... so we did have a lot in common. Baw stopped talking, and I realized she was expecting a response from me, but I hadn't heard a thing she said. "What?" I asked. "Nothing." Baw said, lowering her head and looking very unhappy. I felt horrible for being so obvious. I knew Baw liked me, yet I was flirting with another girl across the table, and ignoring Baw. I was trying to figure out what to say to her when Daptin rose to his feet at the head of the table and spoke. "Okay everybody--it's time to go outside and see something remarkable." We all went outside, and Daptin led us down to the bay. "Look." Daptin said, point across the body of water. I looked, and saw a dark shape in the distance, surrounded by occasional flashes of light. "What is it?" Demolish All asked. "You'll all see, very soon." Daptin said with a smile. A let out a little sarcastic laugh and looked over at Baw with a critical sneer. She smiled back at me sweetly. I wasn't thrilled by this guessing game, and I guess she wasn't either. The dark shape grew larger and larger pretty fast, until I was able to make something out. It looked like a little storm cloud--like a concentrated thunderstorm--but there was some sort of structure on top. And as it came closer, I saw that the structure was like a big house with a slanted roof and lots of windows. And through the cloud, I could faintly see the outline of a vehicle. And... hmm...it looked like the house part on top was a sort of control tower. The thing approached the shore, and we were all hit with a strong wind, misty with water droplets. A few close lightning strikes shook us with their thunder. A lot of folks were now pestering Daptin for an explanation, but he kept quiet, just staring calmly up at the enormous vehicle. Without much delay, a small craft flew from the vehicle and came toward us. It was a sleek little aircraft with swept-back wings and what appeared to be armaments. It landed a ways down the beach from us, and Daptin led us toward it. "Is this what the rest of our life is gonna be like?" I asked Baw. "I hope not." she said. Then I regretted saying 'our life'--as if I was gonna spend the rest of my life with Baw. I certainly didn't want to. Or give her that impression. As we approached the craft, two people got out of it. In a moment, I saw that one of them was Injure Bodoni, wearing a weird sort of gray robe. The other person was... I don't know... a short woman, in the same sort of robe. Huh. I wondered what happened to Ann Saply, the little cat lady that Injure always hung out with. Unless.. was this what I thought it was? Did she transform into a human so the creep could have a girlfriend? "Greetings everyone." Injure shouted as we approached. The wind was still going very strong, as the giant vehicle hovered in the air over the bay. "Greetings, Injure!" Daptin said. "I see you found considerable success in your venture." "That is yet to be determined. But the Stormbolthouse Leitmotif is a fine ship, to be sure!" Injure said. Now that I was closer, I saw that the woman bore some resemblance to Ann Saply--and I knew I was right about it. "Ann?" Daptin said, looking at the woman. "It's me," she said, smiling. "Found it a little awkward to share romance in my central form." Bingo! How predictable. So they had to relieve Injure's clogged-up pipes to get him to work his technical magic for them. Beautiful. Everyone sort of feel silent at Ann's comment--at the idea of going out of your way to have romance with a nerd like Injure. "Indeed." Daptin finally said. "So may we board?" "Yup." Injure said. "Okay people, listen up." I hated it when he tried to take charge of things. What a little freak! "I'm going to activate to mass boarding function." Injure continued. "It'll send out multiple Wavers like the one we came in on. Each one will sit two. Just get in, and it'll automatically carry you back into the Leitmotif." Baw looked up at me and I gave her a smug sort of "I don't know, this is so stupid" look. With her expression and body language, I could tell she wanted to go into the Waver with me, and with my body language I assured her we would. Whatever. Injure went back inside his Waver for a moment and then came right back out. "Okay people, here they come!" I looked up at the Leitmotif (I guess that was it's name) and didn't see anything immediately, but then--yes--a whole formation of the little Wavers was coming toward us. "Cool." I said, looking over a Baw, who smiled. Soon the Wavers were landing all around us, and I approached one. The hatch opened on it, and I motioned for Baw to enter before me, which she did. I knew how to be a gentleman when I wanted to be. Then I got in, and the hatch closed. The smell inside the thing had the same new car sort of smell that Warhomes have when they're freshly woven. Could it be this Stormbolthouse Leitmotif was another vehicle the matter handlers were capable of weaving? A few moments after the hatch closed, the Waver quickly and deftly took off, and the Leitmotif and the storm that surrounded it loomed closer and closer. I looked back at Baw, and she smiled in wonderment and fear and confusion. "I know what we're gonna find in there--" I said, "--a whole bunch of Inure Bodoni clones." Baw laughed. "If there are, we're gonna turn this thing right back around!" she said. And I laughed, too. Not that either of us said anything that funny, just that we needed to laugh a little right then, I think. We soon entered the cloud, and for a few moments we couldn't see anything. Then everything suddenly got darker and we were in some sort of tunnel. I took a deep breath. After a few seconds, the tunnel broke open into a large, multilevel hangar, full of Wavers, with some other vehicles as well--including one Warhome. Our Waver found its way through the swarm of other Wavers also entering the hangar, and we set down on a little landing pad. "Well, we're here!" I said, standing up as the hatch above us opened. "Amazing." Baw said. "Yup." I responded. "Okay folks." I heard Daptin say over a loudspeaker. "We're gonna continue our dinner here in the Leitmotif. Just head for the exit with the flashing blue light." I looked around and saw the door he referred to. I turned to Baw and said "I wish I could have a Warhome like this!" "Yeah!" she said. And we started walking toward the door. Soon we were in the banquet hall of the Leitmotif, sitting at an ornate table, albeit without any food. "Injure informs me," Daptin said, "that he's having trouble with his food systems. I told him it was okay, since we already had a good meal." Some people laughed. Why, I don't know. "Anyway," Daptin continued, "I think I'll fill you in on just what's going on here. Okay. I think all of you have been to my Bridge, and have seen what lies beyond the railing. As you know, what you're seeing there is all of reality, viewed from an outside perspective. Up until now, we haven't been able to enter this space, because of how matter is warped around the opening. And while I have great power in my Land, it doesn't extend too far beyond. So clearly, we faced a dilemma--exploring the remnants of reality is vital--but how to get there? Well, that's where Injure Bodoni comes in." Everyone looked at Injure, and he acted kind of shy, but still clearly slurping up the praise. Daptin continued. "I asked him if he could figure out some way to use a matter handler to create a vehicle that could cross into the superreal space and allow us to travel there. He said he'd give it a shot, and the rest is all around you. I think he can explain better than I exactly what he did. Injure?" Injure stood up and looked over the crowd. Then he began. "The Warhome matter handlers are designed to weave other Warhomes of the same exact design, except for the call numbers. So what I had to do was to warp reality to the point that I caused the matter handler to 'think' it was designed to weave something else. Daptin helped me a lot in this, easing up the fabric of local reality to help me do my thing. I made it happen to be a vehicle which could crossover into superreal space. And hopefully, that's what I've woven." Injure continued on with his techno-jargon for some time, and a lot of people were getting up and milling around. Me and Baw retreated to a smaller table in the corner of the room and started talking. "Well, I don't know." I said. "I guess this is a step in the right direction." "Yeah, " Baw said, "so what was it he said again? About the matter handlers? That the ones inside here will create another Stormbolthouse?" "I guess that's what he's saying, but he used so much jargon I couldn't understand him." "I know, I know." Baw's gaze was so--complex. Those dark eyes, both adoring and piercing... "So what the hell." I said. "How did we get into such a strange lifestyle as this? I mean, just a few years ago, you and me--we were both living it up as royalty, the world as our oyster and all that. Now look at us." She smiled. "Yeah. But I don't know. I never felt comfortable in my position. I always felt like such a phony. People kept telling me what awesome powers I had and everything, but I never felt any. So I just faked my way--there was no way I could disappoint everyone like. But when the time came, I just didn't have what it took." "So now what--if you don't mind me asking--what exactly happened that you failed your people?" She shook her head to indicate she didn't mind and leaned forward, leaning on the table. "Well, it was a story, a prophesy. About how the underdog comes through and eventually wins. See, my tribe has been downtrodden by a much larger tribe for many centuries. We've been enslaved, murdered, raped, killed, all that, by them--especially when they didn't have much else to occupy them. Anyway, a great prophet--around 75 years before I was born--predicted that a woman child would come, you know, and all that, and in a time of great crisis between our people would defeat the bad tribe and make everything cool for our people. Well, you know what, the time came--the other tribe was developing several mines, and they needed a bunch of slaves, and guess where they looked to--us. And the strongest of us had just been decimated by a horde of wild predatory animals--so the thought of losing so many more able-bodies persons was just--let's just say it would have meant the end of us." I nodded. Pretty Interesting story. She continued. "So we knew of their intention to enslave us for awhile, but there really wasn't anything we could do--and the people had such faith in me they hardly even worried about it. Then the first enemy parties came, and began selecting their slaves. I was totally unprepared--in fact, they chose me as one of the first ones! Well, when they found out who I was, they let me go, but... but I mean, I didn't know what to do. They considered me bad luck I guess. But what they said to me--I mean, it's funny, I guess. I mean, it sort of fits into this whole world we're in now. But they said they also had a prophesy, about me beating them and stuff, and that THEY would also have a savior, who would somehow prevent my powers from ever fully developing. And I guess that's what must have happened, 'cause I didn't do a damn thing. They just came and took all these people and I didn't do a thing. And THAT was just for some sort of exploratory mission in the mines--they didn't even get started yet with the serious mining." "Man!" I said. "Yeah, Ferrajalt, let me tell you. There I was, and it was like, so weird. We all went about our lives like normal, but it was like--people acting so strange when they talked to me, as if they were expecting me to reveal some sort of incredible plan to save our people. I mean, I was their ONLY hope in the whole world. Nothing--nothing else could have helped us. But I was just confused--I never wanted to be savior, so I was like, sorry folks, I never asked for this job, so don't blame me if I can't do it. But of course they did." "So what happened?" "Well, the Keoptenbarc--you know, the other tribe--they came back and took more people, and then the elders had to confront me. I mean, the story--the prophesy--was so joyous, so--I don't know--so smug, like as if the little guy always wins in the end--as if good always prevails over evil. I told them the key thing was that the story was on paper and our people were on the ground--I told them the prophesy was wrong, that I wasn't the savior, and that our whole tribe was totally screwed." "Jeez!" "Yeah--and they were mad, but they were all so scared of me--still thinking I WAS the savior--that they didn't do anything. And that night, my mother had a talk with me, and she felt it would be best if I left the village, so that's what I did. After I was gone a few days and everything started to sink in, I started crying a lot. More about how all my friends and family were being enslaved and hurt and maybe even killed. And I kept thinking, I should have told them--I should have let them know that I was a phony--then maybe they would have sought an alternate course of action and not depended on me so much. But, I guess it doesn't matter much any more. They're gone, along with everything else. Or so I assume." "Well hopefully with this ship we'll be able to find that out." "Yeah." she said. "So what happened--you were only living alone for a few months before Overwhelm got in touch with you?" "Yup." she said brightly. "Was there about two months. Not even. It was like I was living in a daze. Only my mother came to see me, and only about once a week at that. And each time she came, something more horrible had happened. After awhile I just blocked it all out, and it didn't register. It's like, just, like most of me shut down. So when Overwhelm called, it was a wake-up call. I told Jake when I met her in my P-Vest, I told her get me out of here ASAP. And that's what she did. I left a note for my mom and took off. I never felt better than when I was stepping through that first bridge, not even looking back." "Whew!" I said. "You had a pretty tough time." "That's putting it mildly. And then--then I had to wonder--what made me the Primate of my Earth? Being that I was such a failure? But as you know, the algorithm is non-understandable, so why try?" I nodded my head, and then looked over to see Zoipin Jurple Jupter coming over. One of the most bizarre people in Daptin's Land, Zoipin is this tall, thin bird guy of some sort--with a long beak and a wide-brimmed hat. And man, what a weird guy. I mean, in his personality, too. "May I join you?" he said. "Sure." Baw said. Zoipin sat down, looking a little uncomfortable as usual having to sit in a chair designed for humans. "Some kind of thing going on here, eh?" Zoipin said. "You know it." I said. "Something new every day." "Yeah." the bird guy said. "You know, I heard some of the others talking--they said that no one--no one at all now, mind you--has ever been in superreal space. They say we're going to be the first." "What's this 'we' business?" I asked. "They're not planning on going through Daptin's Bridge with all of us on board!" Zoipin shook his head. "Nope. Nope. I just meant 'we' as in us as a people, us of Daptin's Land." "Oh." I said. "Good. I'm not gonna risk my life out there--it doesn't mean that much to me." "You know guys," Zoipin said, "they say there's another Land out there--they say they're seen it through a telescope. Another Land like Daptin's. And they're going there tomorrow. That is, whoever gets to go on the first mission." Baw looked at me, and I looked at her, then back at Zoipin. "Yes." Zoipin said. "We are not alone." *OW* [[17030CN]] Contents of OsoaWeek030, February 16, 1995 BEGIN 01 030 CV--Cover 02 030 HR--Hemisinister Review 03 030 HT--Halfevil Times 04 030 ZP--Zope 05 030 CZ--Classic Zope 06 030 LA--Lord of Obliviana 07 030 NH--Nihilistica 08 030 OL--Obliviana Primal 09 030 NJ--New Jersey 10 030 FE--Friction Enhancer 11 030 DC--Dashic 12 030 AB--Antebellum 13 030 SU--Superior 14 030 DH--Dehumidifier 15 030 SA--Severe Repair Almanac 16 030 SR--Severe Repair 17 030 CN--Contents END *OW* [[END030OW]] -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----