|| -------- -- -----  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 037--4/6/95 <-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 3  ||  -------> (Cup OWis037, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = [[BEGIN037OW]] [[01037CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 3 7 * * * April 6, 1995 "The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!" by Frank Edward Nora INSIDE THIS ISSUE! * It was an April morning and they told you--get OsoaWeek! * Encomium, the Led Zeppelin tribute album--kinda sucks * I'm on a Train * About the E-mbers * 11K to 19K * Majestic Floating * Excessive LP Buyage * Incoherent Past Love Chat * My #1 Fan * "Antelopes fight in the chromium light." * "Ladies" * In the outskirts of Boltpike * Ink and Nudity * Lemon's Most Excellent Pitchfork * White Marble * And a whole lot more! * ARE YOU F COOL ENOUGH TO DOWNLOAD ME? (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: 53808 / Line count: 1331 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* [[02037HR]] Hemisinister Review ***CD'S*** VARIOUS ARTISTS--ENCOMIUM Led Zeppelin rules--so of course a bunch of bands have to get together every so often to skewer their songs. This latest romp with the enigmatic name (meaning "tribute") is a mixed bag, mainly marred by a plethora of pathetic bands (Blind Melon, etc.) Stone Temple Pilot's "Dancing Days" is reason enough to buy it--a cool Templeized version of one of Zep's best songs. "Misty Mountain Hop" by Four Non-Blondes is surprisingly great for such a pathetic band. Darling Sheryl Crow coos "D'yer Mak'er" in her usual f-me manner, and it grows on you. But a lot of junk--the entire second half of the album is offal. Why they couldn't make every track a winner is beyond me--with all the great Zep songs and all the bands out there who idolize them, why not? Ah, who gives a f*ck. *OW* [[03037LA]] Lord of Obliviana Hello! I am Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana. It's 6:25 AM, April 19, 1995. I'm sitting on my couch, watching The Weather Channel, writing on my PowerBook, about to get ready for work. I just finished OsoaWeek036 last night. I guess the emergency is still on, being that this issue is already 13 days late and I'm just starting on it. Just this issue and two more and the Third Book is done! I've felt the same way toward the end of Books One and Two--anxious to get it done with and move on to the new format of the next book. The Fourth Book is set to begin in eight days. Am I anywhere near ready for it? Yo, I don't think so. On the train now--a local--good, takes a long time, more time to write. I've been thinking about the Fourth Book, and I think I know what I'm gonna do. Basically, I see myself publishing two E-Mail-Based Entertainment Releases (E-mbers) per week. These would be "Forge of Wander" and "Severe Repair". Both these would be put into a weekly OsoaWeek, to be released as usual. OsoaWeek may also contain other material; it's designed to be the repository of all Obliviana material released that week. E-mbers will have a minimum of 11K and a maximum of 19K. I know these numbers look an awful like the 11 and 19 of Dashic fame--but there's a reason. Many systems impose a limit on the length of a single E-mail message. America Online, which I use--excellent for cheap E-mail--has a limit of 20K. But know how screwy things can get, I imagine that a file at 19999 bytes could gain a few headers and footers and be unsendable. Thus, I figure leaving 1K as a buffer should work. (Maybe I should test it, though.) OsoaWeek currently has a 50K minimum and a 100K maximum. So I thought about 10K/20K, but then it became 10K/19K, and it just struck me--11K/19K! Fits in nicely with the Obliviana Milieu, and is functional as well. Now, doing the math, you can see that OsoaWeek in the Fourth Book will have a minimum of 22K and a max of 38K, at least in the two E-mbers. This is a whole lot less than the current standard, but y'know, nothing to sneeze at. It'll still be okay, I think. As you may be experiencing, I've fallen dreadfully behind on OsoaWeek, and the high minimum of 50K is part of what's been burying me. The other part was the rigorous feature set I created for Book Three, which I threw out the window when the emergency began. (Remember Beublin A. Richardson, Severe Repair Almanac, Antebellum, etc.?) So with less to write each week, I can keep Obliviana on schedule and keep my sanity as well. As far as those shunted features I mentioned at the end of the paragraph before last--these are the sort of things which might appear in OsoaWeek only and not in any E-mber. Maybe. Obliviana War is a whole nother thing going on here. With 512 cards, I'm gonna be busy as a beaver getting 'em out--maybe even at the rate of one Pelter a week! So I think this plan will work. OsoaWeek will still keep its 100K maximum, but allow for the 22K minimum. As for the E-mbers, Severe Repair will be the same as it's always been--a new chapter every week. The only difference is the size attributes. Right now, each chapter is at least 20K. As an E-mber, the length is from 11K to 19K. Forge of Wander, the other E-mber, will be a concentrated entertainment powerhouse--with Hemisinister Review, Halfevil Times, Zope, Superior, and others. It's meant to be pure fun--a real blast of infostimulation! Later today. Feeling groovy, not. My new favorite drink is the tall iced redeye. Iced coffee, black, no sugar, with to shots of espresso in it. A real sipper. Wow. Look over there. An airliner majestically floating down to Newark International. Cool world, this world of New Jersey. How long to midyear? Less than 2.5 months. Then 6 months to 1996 and Phil Graham's Presidential victory (a little political forecasting there). And all the new video games--Nintendo Ultra 64 looks to be the next level. Or maybe the Sony Playstation. But no doubt, the next wave of video games will be at the center of the blooming of the Digital Superworld in late 1996. Craziness. When am I gonna finish this issue? Gotta get to 50K. Not even at 10K yet. What's the date on this--April 6? Yeah. Gotta go to the dentist Saturday--a new guy. Got a dental plan at work, but you gotta use their dentists. Luckily, there's one about a minute or two walk from where I'm moving next month. Got a killer cavity in my upper right wisdom tooth. It's gonna hafta go. Got 5 other little cavities too. Love that dental work. Who knows. I hope this new guy is good. Maybe I should locate some emergency already-existent text for this issue. I got A LOT of text, but the snag--it has to meet OsoaWeek standards. I'm feeling weird here on the train. Chrysler sent me a letter--my Jeep has a defect--the gas tank could spring a leak and spray the underside of the vehicle with fuel. A little spark, and BOOM--you're on fire, dude. So I think I'm gonna get this problem fixed. Remember that song "Popcorn" by the band "Hot Butter"? Inspiration struck me during lunch today and I went to an obscure record shop to see if they had it. They did, albeit in an unseen basement warehouse. They had both--at $40 a pop. I might still get 'em. They also had that Beatles album--the one with the butcher cover. The guy said it was in the 4-figure range. Jeez, I gotta get rich with Obliviana, if just to get something like that. Station stop Rahway. I knew a girl from here in college. She came onto me one night, and I resisted for some reason. I still remember and regret this incident. But who knows what situational vistas going out with her would have opened? I have no clue. I think about it often though--I wonder why? I remember going to her house, staying over for New Year's or something. I think all her friends and her thought I was gay--'cause I liked Duran Duran and the fact that I rejected her advances. I remember we were sitting side-by-side in the all-girl dorm she lived in, reading from an astrology book. I was a total virgin then--I never even kissed a girl. I don't know what happened. I remember walking away and asking myself about it. I thought something like, "I coulda just gotten a girlfriend." And I didn't know why I froze up. It was weird. I guess it must have been the better part of a year before I'd finally find love. It was tough. I was so shy--the girl finally came to visit me in the video editing booth, where I was working on "Weird University". She kneaded at me leg with her foot. Eventually we started kissing. Those were weird days. Next day. Here comes the train. I don't know. Where I'm at right now--I feel kind of lost. I mean, I know I'm creating something big here with Obliviana, but it's weird. Maybe it's the immateriality. I have all 36 finished issues of OsoaWeek here on my PowerBook. But they have no WEIGHT. They have no true existence. Pure information. That's the way it's gotta be, though. I have to bite the bullet and plunge into the digital realm if I ever want to be able to buy the Beatles butcher album. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like I said, it's confusing. There's so much material in OsoaWeek now that I'm having more and more trouble keeping track of it all. But right now, I'm just blasting away with my content gun, creating a stockpile of intellectual property. So I guess I can sort it out later. What's going on. Back on the train, going back home. What's happening with OsoaWeek? I'm still behind, but not as bad as I was. I hope that the smaller minimum I'm planning for Book Four will help me get back on schedule. I got another letter from Frank Panucci, my #1 fan in West Virginia. In the interest of enlightenment, stimulation, philosophical rapture, superego enhancement, and just to fill up space, here it is... (my responses in the triple parentheses as usual) 3/12/95 FRANK! Got your letter and disk 3/10/95 and just got a chance to look at the letter and copy the OSOAWEEKS to the hard drive. I'm happy to see you've been keeping up the OSOA pace on a fairly regular basis. Glad to hear you've gotten into HTML--The WWW, I think, is the logical home for OBLIVIANA (and especially SEVERE REPAIR) for the near future until a better mode of presentation comes along. ISSUE #24: Up to Severe Repair: lots of stuff I've seen before. Good stuff. I wrote you about it years ago. The "nugget" or whatever you call it where you present the old catalog listings of past ABM's is somehow depressing. SEVERE REPAIR: (((You better believe that old ABM stuff is depressing--but for some reason, I still see a future for it. I guess it must look like a real loser thing to others--hanging on to this ultrafailed magazine--but you just wait! I'll show you--I'll show all of you!))) The boat and plane of WARHOME are described with proper adventurous glee and promise of coolness to come. Nice Daptin's land bit. SR structure is becoming more episodically interlinked within each chapter as opposed to its earlier compartmentalized style. It's more commercial now--in a good way. The work is now more suspenseful and tightly woven. (((Severe Repair wouldn't be so Severe if it remained predictably chaotic--so a period of cohesion, while in the short run seeming a move in one direction, is just another aspect of severity. Y'know? And things are even now changing.))) ISSUE #25: ZOPE and the stack of TACO BELLs is really existential. This "Rather Interesting Dehumidifier" is really spectacular and I like it a lot. It would make a great short cartoon. So you wrote this in high school? Yow. The inclusion of the odd advance warning of the slick'n'pro ABM is hugely pointless. I like the pointlessness itself, but the vehicle of the pointlessness perhaps was an injudicious choice, seeing that the pointless presentation of a pointlessly mangled bit of PR goes quite beyond the mere act of pointlessness alone and threatens to become endlessly recursive and conceptually not only self-aware, but self-consciously aware to the edge of pain and infinity. This is serious business. (((I see your point.))) SEVERE REPAIR: Tell ya what. I'm gonna skip over the Severe Repairs and read them all at once so I can remember what's happening in the storyline. Meanwhile, I'll subject the remainder of OSOAWEEK 26-30 to the harsh Panucci Glare of Judgement. 3/14/95 O26: V-game and movie reviews: They are cool. Zope is cool. Lord of Obliviana: Cool. Dehumidifier: Ha. Malacious. Cool. O27: Hemifinster Reviews: I ain't never seen no Superbowls, so I got no idea what this is all about. As for VOYAGERS, you are exactly one million percent correct. I have given up on it. (((Yeah--Star Trek Voyager blows big hairy moose c*ck.))) Pretend Zope: A all-time classic for real. LoO: Cool. 3/23/95 O27 continued... Declarations of Obliviana, Dash*t, etc.: Um...okay. Blue Star Shopping Center review: Evocative images of a dreamy, childlike PLACE of CONSUMPTION. "Mommy, buy me that, Dammit!" Strip Lapmall: You forget to add that, if the gathered pebbles are placed in a bag more sturdy than a plastic ziplock, like a small canvas sack for instance, you have the makings of a fine but simple hurling and/or bashing weapon. (((Lotta fringe benefits in Friction Enhancer.))) Dashic: I reserve judgement 'til I find out how serious you are. (((I'm serious--but due to the nature of Dashic, it's hard to work on it; Corridor constantly pushes me away from it. But it is real, I assure you.))) Aunty Bellum: What the hell is this? (((Uh, it's like this cool videogame, y'know? The list of all the characters is in OsoaWeek001. Check it out! It WILL be a game someday.))) Dehumidified Beublin: I saw the video already and liked it. D.E.H.U.M.I.D.I.F.I.E.R.-- Daft Eclecticism Hiding Under Musical Instrument Digital Interfaces For Ill-defined Existential Reasons SR Almanac: A very good Idea. This will help later. O28: Hemisinister Review: Tea is not interesting. Stick with the basics, man, coffee and beer. (((I'd like to make tea a little more interesting in this world of ours.))) VOYAGERS does indeed suck with a might unmatched. Heh. I was at my damn day job this afternoon and this girl Diana and her boyfriend Scott got into a bitchy fight about Captain Miss Jane or whatever, because Scott didn't like the character but Diana did. These are like, adult, more or less grownup people so it was really weird to hear them arguing about horsesh*t like that. Diana has kids that are already well past "POOBERTY". I think she's over forty or something. Lost and Found: Particularly funny batch-o-stuff. Help Wanted: Ditmo. LORT OFF OBLIVYONNA: You're veering dangerously. NIHILISTICA: I haven't thought about Crystal Pepsi in years. I drink water with all meals. Since I live in Cancer Valley, West Virginia, the tap water is chock fulla mystery chemicals. While tap water may sound boring, the local variety is a LIQUID LOTTERY of DEATH, so it is wildly adventurous to drink it. It is also very cheap. DASHIC: Come on, now! I gotta see this cloud-destroying business. Has your housemate seen this? Maybe she could write an eyewitness account in a future OSOAWeek or something. (((Maybe I'll videotape and digitize it--how'd ya like that, eh! How dare you doubt my superpowers!))) Okay. You oughta go into some Dashical Backyard and take pictures and publish them in the future multimedia spectacular OSOAWeek. Did you see that new FOX show, SLIDERS? I didn't, but reputable witnesses told me it was horrible beyond all expectations, and ripped off David Gerrold's old novel THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF. Some have suggested the show was even worse than...VR5! (((I haven't broken through the Corridor Barrier yet, but when I do, y'can be sure I'll be videotaping it. I saw part of Sliders, and boy did it rot. I liked VR5 for a few weeks, but I just kinda lost interest in it--I guess it was just too stupid.))) Wait...wait a minute. You claim to have told the story of Drew University's grand occult war in OSOAWeek 21, but you barely touched on it. How 'bout the whole story, now, huh? (((I should. Maybe I will sometime soon. The implications of my analysis of the events point to some very wild possible conclusions--both about myself and about the nature of reality. Something supernatural did happen--but it appears to be a crazily twisted matter, full of deception and illusion. I mean, ever since I was young the thing I've wanted most is my reality travel powers back--so at the time, a grand college occult battle was okay, but not really what I was looking for. Since then, I've revised my desire--downgrading the reality travel to time travel, then just time travel to the past, and now--maybe, just maybe I'm satisfied with my current state of no active powers. Is this whole power thing just a loser immaturity thing? It might seem that way, but I know better. I know there's truth to it.))) The STORM CODEX redesign sounds like a prime call for graphics of power and distinction. (((As you know by now, Obliviana War is the deck of cards project currently on stage.))) ANTEBELLUM: Did I miss something? What is this stuff? ...still 3/23/95, but 4 and a half hours later.... Excuse me, I had to finish illustrating a catalog of orthopedic devices. OSOAWeek 29: I read an advance review of DAISY HEAD MAYSIE so I didn't watch it. My brother Rudy watched it and agreed with your opinion. (((Yeah--forget about it. It tarnishes the legacy of Dr. Seuss, and is EVIL!!!))) It is too late now to read further OSOA. I will go to sleep. 3/24/95 O29 continued... This Halfevil Times Horoscope is one of the funniest ones ever. What are Peak Freens? The term sounds oddly familiar. (((The jingle went something like "Peak Freens are a very serious cookie, serious, they're made for a grown-up taste, Peak Freens are much too serious a cookie to be eaten by children..." Something like that.))) Zope's Hamburger Cough Drops: Bring on the director's cut instead of this bastardized studio version with the new happy ending. I ain't buying it! LORDY! Obliviana: Appears to be a progress report. O-Primal: This Xappen concept is a real winner. The idea of concisely expressed zaps of info and entertainment available in every digital form isn't new, but in this context I see great potential for expression and revenue generation. OSOAWeek 30: Zope's Curious Proposal: A fine example of the core essence of Zope, flayed steaming for the world to enjoy. The E-mail in issue #30 is particularly interesting and well-written. Hey, when I write these really long letters it fills up a lot of space in OSOAWeek. Thank me kindly for providing filler! (((You're a life saver. Really. I'm like so behind, this letter is helping me out tremendously. Thank you!))) NIHILISTICA: Yow! Download counts. This should be interesting... Why is OSOAWeek 19 so much more popular than the other issues? Hmm. (((Never figured that out, but an AOL file search for "Star Trek" will hit it. (Generations review)))) I agree that the AOL interface and others like it do not fully exploit the technical and aesthetic possibilities available digitally. A DOOMlke interface sounds cool, but with legacy modem speed being as slow as it is, I see a simpler, more abstract 3D interface as a more realistic alternative until the next generation of either modems or cheap on-the-fly file decompression comes along. Maybe online participants can be portrayed as a floating stylized icon or something--with wobbly little spiky tendrils and a buzzy, inhuman voice from some inferior brand of Hell. (((It's VIAT man! All the graphics and sounds and everything, as well as the entire 3-D engine is AT YOUR LOCALE. All that's transmitted is INSTRUCTION CODE! It's happening NOW! VIAT system will be ONLINE later this year! I am EMPHASIZING things EXCESSIVELY, I KNOW.))) Antebellum: I don't know what these things are but this one is really cool. OKAY! Now I will comment on all the Severe Repairs at once, but this must wait until I've actually read them. 3/27/95 SR24-"Insurance": As usual, the mechanisms are described in appealing, weirdly engaging detail. The plane is very cool. Well-done Daptin business. SR25-" Dog & Rabbit": The dog'n'rabbit/rooftop/empty building/score sequence was a real good evocative characterization-action combo. Severe Repair is quickly becoming more professionally structured and presented. It flows more smoothly from episode to episode. Downside: You may need to revisit the earlier chapters yet again and revise them to meet the new, higher standard of writing. I really like the older stuff, but the new stuff is even better. (((Like I said before, this is not a smooth progression from raw to refined, but just one particular direction--I'm sure you'll see that once you've read up to the current SR. As far as my writing skills go, though, they are getting better. Remember--a lot of those early SR chapters were written years and years ago.))) Nevrippa Den's dialog is especially funny here. Her description of the Hypergod fight is great. SR26-"The Aleximis Degrader"-or something like that: Jeez. I read this one all the way through without jumping back to the text editor to comment on it. Yow! This chapter would be spectacular as an animated cartoon or movie or something. SR27-"Weaver": It's really cool that the best work of sf/fantasy/weirdness I've read in many years is Severe Repair. This chapter is another boggler. The narrative perspective is what holds all this cool stuff together--you write this stuff with conviction, which I guess is what a writer is supposed to do, but I'm always surprised when I find anything I like 'cause I've read thousands of sf/fantasy books and I got bored with them a long time ago. (((Your kind comments mean a lot to me. With the situation I'm in, I don't get much feedback, and there's always that niggling hangler of doubt back there that maybe my writing sucks, even though I think it's good. So your praise is extremely welcome.))) SR28-"Nocturnal": Damn! SR29-"Greatcoat": This stuff keeps getting better and better. The Greatcoat is another typical very appealing artifact/gadget. Incredible. SR30-"Stormbolt etc.": Very neat the way everything is coming together. The Stormbolt thing is the most massive NoraConstruct yet. It reminds me of the absurd escalation of weaponry and devices in the old LENSMEN series of books, by a guy called, I think, E. E. Doc Smith or something. I read them a long time ago. Eventually in the series, wars came to be fought with enormous cannons that used entire planets as ammunition. I liked the books when I was a little kid. Of course, they might seem like crap if I read them now. I saw a Japanese Anime thing ostensibly based on LENSMAN, but it was made in the 70's and had a bunch of stuff ripped off from STAR WARS and some horrible disco sequences, so it may not have been very close to the source material. Anyway, I like this batch of stuff as usual. I'm sorry it broke off where it did because I was really getting into it. Keep me updated. Oh, yeah, thanks for the eclectic assortment of trading cards. The funniest one was the COLIN POWELL one. His name sounds like one of those bowel-stimulating breakfast cereals for old people. You know--COLON POW! Later. Frank** Panucci 10:54 PM 3/27/95 This is later on. I haven't put the letter above in yet. Later, later. Always later. Today at work we got a new Mac, with PlainTalk--a system extension which allows the computer to talk in a variety of voices, as well as understand speech input via microphone. What I did was open up some recent Severe Repair stories and had the computer read them in a female voice. And I don't know--it kind of gave me a new perspective. Gave me a glimpse of how other people might deal with my work. I mean, I know it's just a machine, but hearing another voice besides my own read my work out loud--I don't know. Not that I read my work out loud, but... you know. It was like hearing someone else read it. I'll be on my way to the dentist in 12 hours. Worrying about it is far worse than the experience ever is. Tomorrow, tomorrow, going to Princeton. Get a tooth yanked. Loud, drunk lowlifes again--you get that on the train on Friday night. Yo yo yo. Where am I? Feeling weird, where am I going. Why always these feelings of being lost? Isn't Obliviana at least a somewhat stable foundation for me? I've done a lot, no doubt. And I've charted a pathway into the future. But things are still very chaotic. I'm nowhere near ready for the changes in the Fourth Book. I feel drained and strung out--out of touch with OsoaWeek. Wow, just saw a dreamlike thing. A ghostly image of another train, about 20 feet lower than the one I'm on, heading diagonally under us--cool. It's funny. I used to write about stuff in my life in a personal kind of journal (actually a series of text files). Now, it seems, I'm pouring the intimate details of my life into your lap. It's interesting--what I write seems to hold so much more impact when I know others are gonna read it. I do kind of worry about this at times, that I'm too rambling and personal, but I figure that in the future OsoaWeek will be totally hypertextlike and you won't have to Lord of Obliviana wade if you don't want to. In the final analysis, or maybe not the final analysis, these passages at least give a snapshot of my state of mind at this time. These words, frozen forever in ASCII, maybe even in print somewhere. But they come alive when someone reads them. Okay. We've been sitting still between New York and Newark for quite a while now. What's up? Who knows. No message from a conductor yet--can't be that bad. Yet. Here's a message--running single track--we're next. Okay. Yeah, maybe this sort of writing is an experiment. Gotta see is it works. I know the Digital Superworld will explode open in the next few years, and I know I'll hold on and be a part of this exciting new age of human endeavor. Moving. Good. I always do something, or maybe... sometimes I do it, sometimes I address myself in the future. So, hello there, Frank from the future. How's everything? How'd that trip to the dentist go? How'd that move to Plainsboro go? How'd the Fourth Book of OsoaWeek go? You know all the answers, if you're far enough in the future. But I know, I know that it seems kind of quaint and remote when I read something like that from the past. I usually just think, like, what an idiot I was or something. Yahoo! I got Peanut Butter Cups! Huh. I'm thinking. Come the start of Book Four, OsoaWeek040, 4/27/95, it'll have been 9 months since it began. The time it takes for a baby to grow, you know. Kind of a connection, maybe. Also, 040 will feature Superior 209--a massive milestone, at least in my personal milieu. It's the 21st, isn't it? Huh. 040 should begin in 6 days. Unfortunately, 037 here is maybe halfway done. Then there's 038 an 039. 6 days. What a blast. I just took a look at a random back issue--OsoaWeek028. I made me feel a little better, 'cause it's good. I guess most of OsoaWeek is good. I guess I'm pretty talented. I mean, aren't I? Just look at it all--such a huge amount of material for one person to produce, and I'm still 27. But I still just get a void as a response. What do I want, accolades? Ah, whatever. The train's slowin' down, and I gotta get off. Sunday now. The dentist wasn't so bad. The unpleasant stuff is gonna wait a few weeks. Back at the park now, back in the Neon. Put those Hot Butter LP's I got on tape. Pretty good. But worth $75? Who knows. The date? April 23, 1995. Four days till Book Four. Am I gonna make it? Am I gonna get all this done in 4 days? That would mean finish this, 037, do 038 and 039, and also do 040. I don't think it's gonna happen. I'll try though. Before at home I got the newest 128 Pelters finalized. Now the Pelters Lawn, Monte Carlo, Military, and Deja Vu are complete! The list is below, or will be by the time you read this. So now I have all 512 cards of Obliviana War ready in the wings. I do think that Obliviana War will be the thing that brings Obliviana to the masses. It has that jenesequais--or however you spell it. Lotta rollerblading going on here. Or "inline skating", as RollerBlade (TM) would like you to say. Lady just fell on her butt. Hard to see the screen in this bright light. In conclusion, sitting her in 1995, slowly, steadily building the foundation for the Obliviana you know, all you people of the future. You know the one--the Obliviana that's an international megacorporation, bigger than Coke and Microsoft and Disney combined. That one. Until then, I will always GET ALL OBLIVIANA! *OW* [[04037NH]] Nihilistica ***SONGS OF THE WEEK*** "Popcorn"--Hot Butter (from the album "Popcorn") "Mr. Moustache"--Nirvana (from the album "Bleach") *OW* [[05037SU]] Superior SUPERIOR 197 Coralgoing coralglider, cofind me a suitable car automobile. Bad mid-decade school jones. Woodgrain halhora. Jenkins. Jenkins! Losing down the path walkway, rich people in their greenhouses, cool people at the airport, the savage toy store for ancient gods and fruit loops. Can't I excape can't I stand on hotal and see free dream lit? Emblematic of this state, I flow. SUPERIOR 198 Selfish waves of aching desire. Floating spinning glowing spheres in cyberspace are your guide, five at a time. Slammed my Walkman so hard against the wall its insides are now jelly. Your daughter turns 18. A lick is just a lick. Gotsta take in the smell after the rain. SUPERIOR 199 Antelopes fight in the chromium light. Ten little plastic explosives. How am I to destroy. A cool land eases my rage but I cannot forget and I cannot build the bridge on my own. Talking about transformation. Lemon library, slash of skid memory, wire of telecasty. I talk to you. SUPERIOR 200 What I know about Rome, chances with young women, and living in the world's coolest treehouse. Wild saw-mangled energy motorcycle, take the plunge Barry. Laughing on wingtime the spot gravellette. Earth hole wandering, just another airday tramp. Emma, the flask of the, Wallace, of splinter of congress of them, I opened the theater. *OW* [[06037SR]] Severe Repair SEVERE REPAIR 37: "Ladies" Fluffy Netherf*ck stopped her motorcycle and looked around. Somewhere in the outskirts of Boltpike. Light snow flurries danced all around. A vast dusk plain stretched, dark forests and mountains in the distance, a good cold fresh smell in the air. She got off the bike and took off her dull silver helmet, cradling it in her left arm. Yeah, this was the place. Maybe. She was so old--there wasn't near enough room for all the memories she must have accumulated since the beginning of time. After making love with Tanner Loblolly for a month-and-a-half in the peculiar lather, she just had to get away from him--away from The Supbam Hotel, away from Agoopish. Here she found a place where no one else was around. A wild, unknown place. She embraced the promise of solitude. The promise of rest, the promise of calm. Her sexual exploration of Tanner had been extensive and certainly out of bounds. She wondered how he was handling the emotional aftermath of the experience. They were inside and outside of each other so massively. But it was what she saw, deep within him, it was what she felt, impossibly intertwined and buried in him--it was this that drove her to solitude more than anything else. In the vision she lazily received, there was a boy in the back seat of a car, riding down a highway, heading south, pen in hand, pen to paper. It could have been Tanner, but she couldn't be sure. But she saw next, Tanner as a sketch, as an incomplete creature. As a patchwork. This scared her. When she first met him, he had questioned her origins. She told him about her memory--of how parts of it go to sleep every so often. How she only had 315 years of memory online right now. Of how it wasn't a problem, but be implied that it was. In him, though, she saw strange origins--and maybe an envy. An envy of her huge age. And she saw more things in him. A whole scene, a whole vista, a whole life of Tanner as some sort of cat god--and even a name--Payjaych. And even another name--a name she had to dig for, to strive for, to challenge for. Kat X. She saw that Tanner feared this name--was it his true name? Was it the secret of his origin? She saw confusion. Tanner as Payjaych as iconoclast in pantheon, getting banished and imprisoned to Earth, to Thatterine College. Then she could see it--how his past was swallowed up--how he became Tanner Loblolly for real, how he lost his past. Then she saw the boy from the car, older now, wandering a lovely city, with a friend, an Asian friend. Little floating seedlets all around, the boy looked at his friend and said "I love Alison." And she wondered. What did it all mean? What sort of creature was Tanner, really? Yeah, the whole issue of her past. She knew what Tanner was driving at--that her assumptions of what happened farther back than 315 years were wrong--that there was some intricate masquerade gong on. There were rumors--she caught glimpses and flashes of them between her exit peculiar lather and her enter solitude. Things about Daptin Gone and Cursive Caxopy and the discovery of new universes. About Daptin Gone having created his own world. About the deepest secrets of Avert. But she didn't hang around. She didn't get the full story. And she really didn't care. Putting her helmet back on, Fluffy remounted her bike, revved it up and continued down that nowhere highway. Getting here was tricky--she caused a little commotion driving her motorcycle through a department store, down into its basement, and even farther down, into the catacombs below. Deep down there, she emerged at the top of a crazy leaning tower full of art, and she roared down the spiral stairway within, and burst into the queer little town all around. A few bewildered denizens eyed her, but she ignored them. It was onward, onward onward. Into a vineyard, into one aisle, reaching a certain great speed, and the grapes melt away, leaving--this. She forgot how she got back the last time she did this, but she felt she'd know the way when she saw it. Speeding along, she felt a great surge of emotion and teardrops began mingling with the little dying snowflakes on her face. Her utter theft of Tanner's innocence in the lather. But was he? Was he an innocent? There was no answer. Deeper into nothing she rode, bursting out into total crying. glad there was no one around to see. She felt an awakening, as if she'd been asleep for hundreds of years, and only now opening her eyes. Her life as a goddess--always engaged in coolness, politicking, sex, one-upmanship, collecting, decorating. And ignoring life. Or maybe--real life was something she couldn't experience. But she knew--she knew--that she had been truly alive at some point. Beyond the 315-year barrier? Yeah. That sounded right. But if she was really so deceived, what did that say about her? How could a deity be so fooled? Even, even this being a possibility, a plausible alternative to her baseline world view--this was scary. This was devastating. Daptin Gone. She'd met him a few times. He was definitely similar to Tanner, but Daptin seemed so much more--together. Fluffy envied Spanking New Sarah and her relationship with Daptin. That was why... She knew that Tanner lusted after her. In an earnest, youthful, fresh way. If she couldn't have a Daptin, she could have a Tanner. And so she did. And it lead to this--running away. Running away from everything. Speeding along at 90 or 100 mph, Fluffy noticed it wasn't getting any darker. Or lighter. Forever dusk--yeah, that was one aspect of this place. She seemed to remember that far down this road were buildings--maybe something like an abandoned ski resort. She could stay there for as long as she needed. She had artifacts to provide all the food, clothing, shelter, and comfort she'd need, no matter what, even if there were no buildings to be found. Away from Agoopish. She needed a mortal to get through to Boltpike, even though she was better at handling the crossovers than most of her pantheonic brethren. She used one of Von Beable's protoges, Lofercomfan. The girl was good enough--going to Boltpike was no big deal. Fluffy even considered trying it on her own-- it was possible, if a supreme test of skill and willpower. But with the motorcycle and everything, it just wasn't worth the risk. Where was this place, anyway? This devastating limbo. It must have been in Boltpike, right? No crossovers, that's for sure. Space was all screwed up in Boltpike. But this place--maybe it held some secrets? She knew she'd been here before, but what were the specifics? Who came with her? What was she doing? As she rode on, the snow began to get heavier. Funny, she thought, that something was changing here. For some reason she though the whole place was infinitely stuck in the dusk/flurry mode. But now it was really coming down. The visibility as it was becoming, she might have slowed down. If there were the possibility of something else being on the road, which there wasn't. Or at least, it seemed unlikely. Soon all Fluffy could see was a white vortex. But she didn't slow down. She sped up. She maxxed the throttle. Daring? Maybe, but she knew that even a dead collision with a rock wall wouldn't harm her much. Might even feel good. Then she began to laugh a crazy laugh. Things were going to change. She could feel it. * * * Sally Sust lay splattered and smudged in black ink. Doug Brine was gone. How long ago he had mounted her she couldn't tell--her state of consciousness was still pretty hazy. She remembered him putting on the Irregular Shirt, taking a deep breath, then taking the lid off a barrel. A barrel full of ink. He lifted the ladle that was in the barrel, and slurped down a gulp of ink, finishing with an energetic "Ahh!" He drank a few more ladlefuls and then glared at Sally. His chin and the Irregular Shirt were deeply stained. He looked at her as if he were seeing a whole lot more than he had before, like he was examining a very detailed diagram. Then he smiled, and Sally felt a jolt. Instantly, she was filled with lust for him, filled with a fetish for ink. All that ink--so sexy, so erotic. She slinked forward and lightly embraced him. As soon as she touched him she felt a ravenous hunger for ink, which he administered to her, ladle after ladle, taking more for himself as well. She was totally into ink and totally into Doug. Somewhere in her mind, she knew that it was all wrong, but her lust, her ink id, were too strong to resist. They made inkful love for a few explosive minutes, and somewhere in there, Sally lost consciousness. Now, she was starting to emerge from the bizarre mental assault. Had she just been raped? No. She was totally willing, even demanding of Doug. But had he caused her to feel like that? Yes. But--don't people cause other people to feel that way all the time? Whatever, she was a wreck. Disoriented and stained. She sat up a little and looked down into the main lobby. It was night now, and her fellow students were about their mundane activities like little ants, like always. She wanted to be down there, and not ink-covered and violated. But that wasn't the way it was. In the midst of her misery, she began to feel a surge of excitement and awakening. It was the speed limit sign that caught her eye. So much brighter, so much more real than all the other crap in this secret room. And Doug wasn't here. So it was hers for the taking. She started getting up, but paused. Look what happened when Doug satisfied his attraction for the Irregular Shirt--he started drinking ink and seducing innocent women. What would happen to her if she took--Hider. Yes. As soon as her eyes locked onto it, she knew its name. Hider. Now there was no chance of holding back. She stood up and walked over to the sign--it was a great blazing sun in her awareness, blotting out everything else. She grasped in by its pole and lifted it. Immediately, mental patterns gushed into her. She got information. She knew about Hider. And she understood about Doug a little more too. And she saw--she hadn't been raped by Doug--both her and Doug had been raped by the awesome forces from whence Hider and Irregular Shirt came. But there was no going back. Hider was hers. Interesting. Hider could hide things. Like it had hidden these rooms. Somehow, Sally had circumvented its effect. Just how this had happened was not apparent to her. No one should be able to find something hidden by Hider, even in broad daylight in an obvious location. Enormous power. This is what she held. The power to hide, and also the power to find. To find things previously hidden by Hider. There was a lot of that at Thatterine College--a lot of stuff hidden by Hider. Another cool thing she was aware of was that Hider would make her effectively invisible to others. No one would look her way, no one would be aware of her. She could walk around naked and covered in ink and no one would look at her. Cool. And that's just what she did. She stripped away her torn clothing and shoved them aside. She regarded her ink-stained form. It looked good. She had a good body, was lucky in that sense. The ink made it look great. She shook her head--no--ink should not be erotic. It was a fetish forced on her. She'd have to get rid of it. Someday. For now, though, it really excited her. She opened the trap door in the floor and lowered Hider into space, then herself. It was a bit awkward crawling along with the speed limit sign, but she managed. Incredible. She was sensing a whole bunch of offshoots to the tunnel. She had discovered one before--but it only led to a small, dingy space. She now saw that that little room was the nexus of half-a-dozen different tunnels. Wow. Soon she was at the other end of the tunnel. She shoved open the trap door and looked around the first room. Huh. Doug's books were still here. She wondered what happened to him. A trail of ink told her that he did indeed go this way, and back out into the library. Huh. He tried his best to replace the books on the shelf that led into this room, but they were all now smothered in ink. She wondered if the Hider curve here would prevent folks from noticing the mess. She knew it would, for most people. So Sally carefully pulled the books into the room and looked out into the library. Not much of an ink trail out there--Doug must have been careful. There were a few student feet to be seen though, and nearby. She regarded the Hider curve around her--would it really hide a wriggling, inky naked chick from roaming eyes? It seemed rock solid, so she wriggled. Soon she was back in the library, kneeling before the entrance to the rooms, holding Hider like a staff. There were several student in plain eye view, but they didn't look at her. She even cleared her throat lowly, but still, no response. She considered more drastic tests of the Hider effect, but she became aware that certain actions on her part would ruin the Hider curve. Like, if she walked up to someone and shoved and yelled at them. Hider couldn't hide something like that. Sally then replaced the books to their right position, stood up, and took a deep breath. It felt good to be naked in public. She realized, anybody could do this--walk around naked--so long as no one noticed them. But without Hider (or dark of night, or a college for the blind) they'd undoubtedly be spotted. So she strode through the stacks, and made her way down to the main lobby that was visible from the secret room. Soon she faced a big staircase with a lot of student traffic on it. She hesitated--common sense told her there was no way she could avoid detection. She grasped Hider tighter, though, and set forth. Indeed, no one happened to look her way. A lot of the folks were distracted--a group of friends imitating cartoon character voices, another few doing some heavy horseplay. It was glorious to be able to do this, she thought. But the fact that no one could see her took the fun out of it a little. But only a little. Soon she was on the floor of the main lobby. She walked across the marble floor, cold to her bare feet. She stopped in the middle and looked around. A crowd. And none of them noticing the nude woman with the speed limit sign. Looking up, she sought the location of the secret room, and felt it with her Hider senses. And she also... there were other secret areas, all around. She sensed an intricate mazework of tunnels and rooms, pulsating throughout Big Building. Places to explore. Places for her alone. She turned her thoughts to Doug. Was he a friend or an enemy? She wasn't sure. At first, she didn't really appreciate what he had done to her--but like she realized, it really wasn't his fault. It was the Shirt's fault. Hider was stable, but the Irregular Shirt was wild and uncontrollable. Sally smiled as an idea struck her. What if she tried to hide the lobby? Her Hider senses responded with the impression that it'd be just about impossible--the surface seemed too slippery to apply a curve to. Oh well. She crossed the lobby and headed for the outside. Almost to the door, she looked to her left and could have sworn she saw a guy looking right at her. A guy she recognized from around campus. He had long, wavy blond hair and a green leather jacket. She just looked away and stepped out into the chilly night. No way could he have seen her. Somewhere within her, though, she wished he had. Made it more exciting. Outside, the Hider curve around her eased its tension a great deal. Less work to do out here, she supposed. What now? Finding Doug seemed a good course of action, but she didn't sense him anywhere, nor did she know if she had the ability to sense him. Back to Spoin, she supposed. Maybe a shower? Hopefully it wasn't permanent ink. Then--homework, boyfriend Trad, call Mom, laundry--no. The mundane was shot. Sally couldn't go back. She'd pursue this trail with her ultimate tool, Hider. But first, a little naked stroll around campus... * * * Lemon woke up. The devil girl, remember? She opened her eyes and was hit full force with the ornate ceiling of the banquet hall of Stormbolthouse Leitmotif. "Yuck." she said, sitting up. Immediately, an extreme dizziness hit her. She grabbed her pitchfork, which was lying on the ground beside her, and muttered a simple spell, which relieved the disorientation a great deal. "What the..." She surveyed the scene--a room full of sleepers--just about the entire population of Daptin's Land, she mused. Standing up, she used her pitchfork for support and made a thought grimace. Okay, she thought, I remember flirting with that nice Wreckage Mallie--there he is, knocked out like the rest. She poked Mallie with the end of her weapon. "Hey there, kid--wake up!" Mallie rolled over and began snoring. "Hmph!" Lemon said in frustration. As she continued looking around, a smile came to her face. With everyone out for the count, she could snoop around this big spaceship! Heh heh heh. But was snooping good? When she rejected her infernal heritage, Lemon had to solemnly swear to always do good in her life. Wasn't sneaking around--well--nasty? Nah! The others were probably in trouble, and by exploring, she could be helping them out--maybe even saving their lives! So she carefully stepped over a number of dozing bodies and made for one of the exits. The hallway beyond seemed like some sort of central corridor. She followed it a ways, and then turned down a smaller hall. The way soon curved to the right and ended in a huge vaultlike door. She stared up at it. Really big. Made her look like a little yellow devil doll. So she tapped on it with her pitchfork. It felt solid. Real solid. Looking around and behind her, Lemon smiled a devious smile. A door no one should be able to go through. But she could. Her pitchfork could break down the gates of heaven and hell--for sure it could take on this pipsqueak. She uttered an arcane spell for the better part of a minute, and then gently touched the pitchfork to the door. The moment contact was made there was a shocklike pop, and the air rushed in to fill the little vacuum that grew around the now-mangled and ruined vault door. She surveyed her handicraft. The door was way gone. Blown apart. Huh. It'd been as thick through as it was high. Really musta wanted to keep people out, whoever put it there! So she stepped through the wreckage and into... Hmm... A big chamber, circular, white marble walls. And a thing floating in the middle--like the shape of a cut tree segment, a very wide, flat cylinder. Whatever. It was also made of the same white marble, and like the walls, was arranged with a number of flat panels. The hovering thing bulged at the top and bottom, like a lens--and when Lemon looked, she saw that the room did the same thing. Whatever was going on here, the room was custom fit to hold this thing. She walked around the room and saw that indeed, the thing was freefloating. There were no visible openings at all on it at all, but she got the impression that there was something inside. So she willed her pitchfork to lift her up, and she flew up, reaching out and touching the marble. The moment she did, the whole thing went transparent, and she saw what it contained--a plush, ornate couch in full circle, deep violet in color, facing inwards. That was it. The marble walls were still partially visible, and when she touched it, it was still solid. She floated around the whole thing, but no luck. Then she flew underneath it, and when she was centered underneath it, she felt a force tugging her upward. She eased on her own flight and let the force lift her. It did do gently, and then moved her over to one side gently, depositing her on the carpeted floor within. "Very weird." she said, delighted with the whole situation. A puzzle to solve. She loved puzzles. She looked around for a few moments, but nothing was happening, so she sat down on the couch. Immediately, things changed. It was like--the thing changed. No--it didn't change--she was in a whole different place. It had a couch like the thing she was in before, but it was a very different shade of purple, on the red side. And there was a lot of stuff going on here--a lot of brass piping and junk. And windows--looking out at... What? She got up, walked a little set of stairs out of the well the couch surrounded, and looked out. A sprawling city far below. Was she in some sort of flying vehicle now? Very weird. She turned around and scanned the area. That one window... no, it wasn't just tinted--there was something else outside that one window. And a chill ran up her spine. She slowly circled the couch area, staring at the odd window the whole time. Yeah, definitely. Something different out there. It was... A huge courtyard with a glass ceiling, very profound-looking. And a fountain in the middle, a wonderful fountain. And hovering above it were a bunch of letters, and they spelled... DEER EXPRESS *OW* [[07037CN]] Contents of OsoaWeek037, April 6, 1995 BEGIN 01 037 CV--Cover 02 037 HR--Hemisinister Review 03 037 LA--Lord of Obliviana 04 037 NH--Nihilistica 05 037 SU--Superior 06 037 SR--Severe Repair 07 037 CN--Contents END *OW* [[END037OW]] -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----