|| -------- -- -----  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 050--7/6/95 <-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 4  ||  -------> (Cup OWis050, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = [[BEGIN050OW]] [[01050CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 5 0 * * * July 6, 1995 "The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!" by Frank Edward Nora INSIDE THIS ISSUE! Chock fulla blurbs! You gotta scope this bad boy out! Cha! Check it out... 01 050 CV--Cover    !!!!!!!! I'm losing it. 02 050 IW--Into E-mber Forge of Wander    !!!!!!!! I gotta Jaguar here next to my computer. 03 050 HR--Hemisinister Review    !!!!!!!! Waterworld, Atari Jaguar, Cybermorph, Raiden, etc. 04 050 HT--Halfevil Times    !!!!!!!! Ever Wonder? Ever Notice? 05 050 CZ--Classic Zope    !!!!!!!! "Activision Zope" 06 050 TS--Trick Sojourn    !!!!!!!! MAJOR 209 DISCOVERIES! NEW BAND NAME! 07 050 LA--Lord of Obliviana    !!!!!!!! My 1987 girlfriend is happy today. 08050 SU--Superior    !!!!!!!! "Nightmare Chablis Rough Girls." 09 050 IS--Into E-mber Severe Repair    !!!!!!!! Talk about distractions! (that refers to the Jaguar) 10 050 SR--Severe Repair    !!!!!!!! ""Winter Stadium Them" CATCH THE OBLIVIANA TRAIN--COMIN' FAST! INFORMATION: OsoaWeek050, July 6, 1995. Published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement, obliviana@aol.com, 1-800-OBLIVIANA. All contents copyright 1995 Frank Edward Nora. This release is Predatorware--you are free to make digital copies, so long as they're not altered or sold. All other forms of reproduction require permission. You're Prey unless you get a Predator Deed for this release. Contact us for more on this concept. Character count: 67439 / Line count: 1749 *OW* [[02050IF]] Into E-mber Forge of Wander [:[FOW011]:] FORGE OF WANDER E-mber 011, July 6, 1995 Forge of Wander--get into it, man! INFORMATION: Forge of Wander E-mber 011, July 6, 1995. Published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement, obliviana@aol.com, 1-800-OBLIVIANA. All contents copyright 1995 Frank Edward Nora. This release is Predatorware--you are free to make digital copies, so long as they're not altered or sold. All other forms of reproduction require permission. You're Prey unless you get a Predator Deed for this release. Contact us for more on this concept. You can cancel or subscribe to this E-mber anytime, via E-mail. *OW* [[03050HR]] Hemisinister Review ***MOVIES*** WATERWORLD A total, and I do mean TOTAL f*cking ripoff of "Road Warrior". Not the worst film ever made, but nothing special. Full of contradictions and things which beg for an explanation. The little girl looked just like The Feral Kid. Why spend $200 on such a derivative story? Haven't they figured out yet that this dynamic of copying a popular movie doesn't really work? I mean, look at all the lame Indiana Jones ripoffs that came out after "Raiders'. Jeez. Could have used more sex and monsters too, the two things that make a movie great (according to those British dude, Wicliffe and Cheeves, "The English Guys at Home"). ***VIDEOGAMES*** ATARI JAGUAR SYSTEM Just got a used one. This was a system pregnant with potential when it was originally released--in 1993 I believe. But during its first year, it only had about half-a-dozen games--even though numerous others were constantly promised. Now, I don't know, maybe there's 20 or 30 games out, and not too many of them are worth buying. It might seem like the Jaguar is on its last legs, but the CD-ROM add-on is coming out in a few weeks--at $150. With the Jag itself also $150, the combo will cost $300--same as a PlayStation--or even a Saturn (if they lower their price to match Sony). Who knows--stranger things have happened--the Jag may just find its niche in the video game wars of the fall of 1995! Here's a look at the three games I have... CYBERMORPH The pack-in. A truly 3-D polygon game, which unfortunately has the rather pedestrian theme of flying around in a spaceship shooting at other spaceships. But as others have told me, the game does grow on you. It's cool being able to go anywhere in the 3-D worlds, unlike games such as Starfox for the SNES, where you're limited to moving forward. So all in all, not bad. TEMPEST 2000 Probably the best Jaguar game, this is an update version of the arcade classic. Full of melting, warping, inflating, and otherwise amazing graphical effects, this blastfest is a welcome addition to the dynamic history of videogames. Its boomin' techno soundtrack is also a plus. RAIDEN I've always liked this benchmark shooter, and this here is a pretty good version. Sparse options, though, and a few annoying features (like the cumbersome sequence between rounds). It's the one I've been playing the most though. That's gotta mean somethin'. *OW* [[04040HT]] Halfevil Times ***HALFEVIL TIMES PERCEPTIONS & PONDERINGS*** EVER WONDER... ...why every interview with a "cool" celebrity has to begin with an annoying description of the restaurant in which the interviewer is meeting them? ...why God designed humans to smell so bad if they don't shower and use deodorant? ...why God creates so many people who have no desire whatsoever to shower and use deodorant? ...why orange soda tastes nothing at all like orange juice? ...why when you see the moon in the daytime, the sun is in like totally the wrong position to be lighting it that way? EVER NOTICE... ...that Star Wars kicks Star Trek's ass? ...that real lemonade is not the slightest bit yellow? ...that roving bands of elephant-sized patriotically-American pit bulls wandering England would get those damn Brits in line once and for all? ...that the complete nuclear annihilation of France has gotta be a temptation for the guy with his finger on The Button? ...how when someone orders a dessert and it's real big they have to say "oh my god!" when they see it, trying to be humorous? *OW* [[05050CZ]] Classic Zope "Activision Zope" (was nameless--title newly created) 2/6/91 ZOPE Hiya Ed Ape! ED APE Well hello there Zope! What can I do for you? ZOPE Cut the crap. I want my Atari back RIGHT NOW!!! ED APE Okay Zope, but I busted all your Activision cartridges except for "Kaboom". ZOPE does not look pleased. *OW* [[06050TS]] Trick Sojourn ***MAJOR 209 DISCOVERIES!*** Recently, I was really tired and I was trying to smoke a cigar in my Jeep as I headed home from my parents' home. On Rt. 287, I was driving, and the cigar went out, and I relit it with some difficulty, and then, like, before I knew it I was at the Outerbridge Crossing--a bridge that goes to Staten Island! I had to take the "last exit in NJ", which landed me in a really bad part of Perth Amboy. I kept driving and smoking and getting more and more lost, till finally I turned around, and for a single frightening moment, I felt myself beginning to pass out--kind of a "high" feeling--certainly from the cigar. After that moment, things started to get better, and I managed to find my way back to civilization and home. What I took from the experience, which occurred on the evening of August 5, I believe, was that cigars can help in 209ing; they generate Morc (motion relative to corridor). Also, I decided once and for all that "209" is to be the official term for what I once called Zoning, and what I have recently been calling "Dashic". I have this gut feeling that "Dashic" refers to, perhaps, an evil form of 209. Or perhaps, it's just an evil thing unrelated to 209. In any case, goodbye "Dashic". TERMINOLOGY The overall practice is called "209". Doing it is "209ing", which can be shortened to "9ing" or "nining". The practitioner is a "209er", "9er", or "niner". 209 can also be used as a verb, as is, "Let's 209!" 209ing, nining, niner, 209er, etc. Check out Superior 73, from OsoaWeek010... SUPERIOR 73 Slanting tint the sine, torrid flat damp shackle. A blurry flash a rush of cartography, sevening nining lightninged. So silent city outskirt in silhouette, clangings forlorn into worn wall. Above the city it's goodnight in the night to meet the blasted incongruity hence, roaring with rafters befallen. Smile the lowly autochthon, feeling nerveshot octagon. Many an amazing crash pad anarchy, peace of the turnpike in night's minutes, forgetting so much more. See? I used the word "nining" there, long before I came up with this terminology! In fact, that line was written back in the late '80s! Hmm... so what was it--a precognition? Or was the term "nining" always there, buried deep in my mind? Hmm. Okay well also, I came up with something I should have come up with a long time ago--using Tarot cards as a Storm Codex! It's too complex to get into the whole thing here, so I'll just give you the basics. You need to construct a deck of 30 Tarot cards. Start with the major arcana, and set aside cards zero, 20, and 21. This will leave you with 19 cards representing the 19 Dires. Then choose a suit--swords, cups, wands/rods, or pentacles/coins/disks. Add cards 1 thru 10 in that suit to the 19 cards, then choose one of the "royalty" cards to represent you. This card will have the value of 11. Set aside the other "royalty" cards. Now you have a 30-card Storm Codex! Refer to 11028DC, "An Introduction to Dashic" for more details on how to use a Storm Codex. ***NEW BAND NAME REVEALED*** Good evening. Thank you all so much for coming. I am Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana, and tonight, we'll be revealing a brand-new band name. But first, let's take a look at what will be done with this band name... (The lights go down, a video screen is lowered, and the tape begins...) Remember "The Monkees"? Yeah, a TV takeoff on the Fab Four themselves, The Beatles. And even though The Monkees were a "fake" band, their music was among the most popular of that decade of wonder, the 1960's. So here it is--that idea updated for the mid-'90s--a post-grunge trio, two wacky guys and one wacky girl. And they get into all sorts of wacky situations! Check out their wild antics, on the TV show called... (The lights come back up. Applause.) Hahaha--sorry, had to stop the tape there, or it'd spoil it. So folks, whattaya think? A sitcom about a band, made especially with the mid-1990's in mind. And I do believe, by the way, that the mid-'90s can be considered to be 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996. Being that, like, on either end of that timespan there are three years--back to the 1980s, and forward to the 21st Century/3rd Millennium. Well folks, the time is at hand. Get ready to see the new band name, haha, AND the new TV show. Here it is... "The E-Mail Typos" Now we go over to Iggy Szalzo and Gil Mannings for commentary. IGGY Well Gil, I have to say, this is quite some band name. I mean, for those lucky enough to be "wired" into that Interjack thing, they know that typographical errors in E-mail is a thing you gotta deal with every day. GIL Well yes. The thing that occurs to me is that, eh, it's the SPEED of the thing--the speed of writing, eh, E-mail, that causes these mistakes. But it... it... IGGY And it has a "The" at the beginning. Personally, I believe that "The" for bands names is coming back, even after it was made fun of by that queer-ass band "The The". GIL Well yes. But the... the point I was trying to make was that... the PACE of modern life, with it' breakneck pace, is what makes people type so fast. And... it's a colloquial sort of, eh, communication. When we talk, our words aren't, eh, indelibly recorded. E-mail should be that informal, but due to its, eh, intrinsic nature, the mistakes kind of, eh, LEAP OUT AT YOU! IGGY Gil, I noticed you say "eh" instead of "uh". Why? GIL Eh... The scene cuts back to the Lord of Obliviana Hahaha! There ya go folks, those rambunctious and occasionally lugubrious (though never obsequious) prognosticators from the "Classic Fights" feature, Iggy Szalzo and Gil Mannings! (And hopefully folks, Franco Wolfini will get back from his vacation soon--otherwise we might have to replace intellectual quipster Gil Mannings with his even-more mind-boggling associate, Shannon O'Shannahan.) Well folks, like all good things (is this a good thing?) this feature band name announcement must come to an end. Join us again sometime--where another new band name WILL E REVEALED!!! Goodnight. ***SONGS OF THE WEEK*** "The Disregard of Timekeeping/Wait For You" by Bonham (from the album "The Disregard of Timekeeping") Bonham is a band featuring Jason Bonham--son of the legendary John "Bonzo" Bonham of Led Zeppelin. It's kind of sad that the only good song on the album is a full-fledged, total Led Zeppelin ripoff. Thing is, it's such a good ripoff, it sounds like an actual, really good Led Zeppelin song! ALSO, I've had these songs floating around, being bumped from issue to issue. Here they are... Mike Watt * "Against the 70's" (from the album "Ball-Hog or Tugboat?") This song is sung by Eddie Vedder, and is pretty good. Most of the rest of the album sucks, except for "Piss-Bottle Man", of course, sung by Evan Dando, I believe. "Sycamore Trees" from the "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" soundtrack. A truly nightmarish ditty by David Lynch. Really scary if you're conversant in the Twin Peaks Black Lodge milieu. "Mr. Roboto" by Styx (from a best of album, also, I think there's an album called "Mr. Roboto") This was a song I liked in the '80s but never had. Actually, I think I did have it on some obscure cassette tape--maybe one that also had some of my TI-99/4A programs on it... "Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson (from the album "Day and Night") I used to think this was a Steely Dan song. It's the kind of song I'd hear occasionally and say "That's a damn good song!" [:[END]:] *OW* [[07050LA]] Lord of Obliviana My 1987 girlfriend is happy today. See, Erin told me once how she couldn't wait for there to be a Hurricane Erin. So wherever she is, I'm sure she's thrilled that there's an honest-to-goodness Hurricane Erin pummeling the poor, third-world-like citizens of South Florida! I kind of remember there was a Tropical Depression Erin back maybe in 1987, but I don't think it ever became a hurricane. Besides--why would they recycle the name Erin after only eight years? What--there are only eight girl's names that start with "E"? Let's see... Erin, Eileen, Eunice, Elizabeth, Eliza, Ellie, Edna, Edina (like in AbFab), Edwina, Ellen, Elbereth (maybe not a real name--it's the protection word from Nethack), Emma, Empress (nickname I gave the girl I had a crush on in high school--man was I a loser), Ester, Esther, Erica, Erika, Etta, Evelyn, Emily, Eleanor. That's at least like 12 good names. Gotta look into this--I remember Erin saying in 1987 that there was some kind of Storm Erin--and--sh*t!--don't they alternate with guy's names too now? Jeez! I GOTTA check this out. It just don't make any sense! 8/2/95 On the train back home. We're on our way home. We're going home! So a condensed version the Unabomer's treatise was published in the New York Times today. It bears comment because it contains some very compelling and dangerous ideas. The tract is deeply flawed, but presented in such a way that I'm afraid a lot of people are gonna latch on to it intellectually. The basic idea is that technology and industry are slowly but surely destroying man's freedom, and that all technology should be demolished so that we can reverse this trend and survive as a race. Jeez, when I first heard of Luddites, I thought they were some quaint old crackpot religion. But anti-technology sentiment seems to be growing. The Unabomer's call to arms is rather pathetic, from an intellectual standpoint. As well, think of the hypocrisy--this guy embraces high-tech mechanisms and explosives, then proclaims that technology is a no-no! Jeez. No country or area can long remain free of technology. If, by some fluke, some sort of rebellion does take place, and technology is destroyed in one place, then surely the people living there will be defenseless from those who still have technology, especially of the military kind! Without technology, you're gonna be invaded, and technology is gonna come back. Imagine--if America destroyed all its industry and technology, we'd be easy prey for a Saddam Hussein type. Unabomer gonna incite the Iraqi people to destroy technology the same time the Americans do? Yeah. Also, this dude has a seriously warped view of history. The past--that was good? For cryin' out loud--every time I hear about how sh*tty it was in the past, I breathe a sigh of relief that I'm as far forward in the future as I am. And how the hell are you gonna create the kind of technology-crushing totalitarian government WITHOUT technology? Oh yeah--I got it--the government keeps technology, but the people are deprived of it. Gee--now does that sound better than taking our chances with technology? It brings to mind a book by Ayn Rand called "Anthem"--which takes place in world where technology was crushed far in the past, and where glass and the candle are the greatest inventions known to man. To the Unabomer's credit, though, he does make some valid points. One scenario looks forward to a time when robots and computers do all the work. He posits that a ruthless enough elite might very well decide to kill the masses of humanity since they're no longer needed. I've been reasoning about this issue myself--what happens when machines do all the work? What'll happen to mankind? Never happen, you say? Pshaw! Once artificial intelligence insures, you'll have programs feverishly designing and testing new programs, and these programs, so much more powerful, will start procreating as well. It could all happen very fast. And it won't be limited to the electronic realm--these computer minds will be able to design and test innumerable designs for physical machines, such as robots. By the time they're built, these robots will be exceedingly well-suited for their purpose. Gee--where am I going with this? I don't know. Let's see. Once this snowball gets going, machines will be able to take over just about every job now occupied by a human being. At his point, things can go one of two major ways. 1) The machines get out of control and humanity is f*cked. 2) The machines work, and exists solely to serve their human masters. Okay, let's take a look at number 2. Given the chance, a great majority of people will naturally turn to hedonism to pass the time. This will lead to a dreadful world of human slugs being coddled by obedient machines. Not good. I guess it all boiled down to, "what are we doing here?" I mean, what's this mad dash of modern life all about? Survival? I don't know. It seems to me that if all we wanted was a subsistence-level existence, we could all work a lot less. But that's not the way it is--we want our luxuries! Our TVs and vacations and lovers and drugs and music and all that. But what is all that--hedonism? Is the reason we're here to experience as much pleasure as possible? You might think, but that's not what human nature is all about. Human beings are designed to solve problems, adapt, overcome hurdles, muddle through, achieve, build, all that. Pleasure alone won't cut it. But what sort of challenges will there be in a world of supertechnology? Yup. That's a damn good question. Are we really headed for disaster, like the Unabomer says? I say no, cuz there'll always be new frontiers. And while it might seem that there are no more frontiers (what with space travel being impractical at best and a hoax at worst), I believe that new frontiers will appear in quite unexpected ways. Take Obliviana, for example. A place that coexists with us here on earth--a place where maybe technology as we know it doesn't work. Hooray! There ya go--problem solved. Tired of the aimless supertech life? Cross over into Obliviana and become a true pioneer, a true American. Uh-huh. And this is but one of numerous possible new frontiers. I bet in Rome they thought that they'd reached supertech. How wrong they were. And look--they fell into the evil and hedonism trap big time--but did it destroy the world? I don't think so. Their civilization collapsed, and after awhile people started to get cool again. The Unabomer is an intellectual. Like other intellectuals, he believes that his painfully limited ability to reason is nigh omnipotent. But listen to me Mr. Unabomer--you don't have all the facts, jack. What you know you got in the past few decades, from books and people born after 1850 or so. The entire realm of knowledge available to you is a painfully small slice of the full knowledge pie. Garbage in, garbage out. As an intellectual game, your reasoning is sound. But applied to reality, your ideas are a joke. P.S. Please don't bomb me. August 3, 1995 On the 7:15 AMTRAK to NYC Where I am right now... After my first Obliviana WWW release, but before I've even begun on the second. Schedulewise, into the Fifth Book, but still finishing up the Fourth Book. Yeah--today I should be releasing OsoaWeek054. Ah, not that bad. Four issues behind after a year. Man, most of my other publications fell apart by the third or fourth issues. OsoaWeek is here to stay, let me tell you. But yeah, I'm in kind of a limbo right now. Guess I really want to get this Fourth Book out of my hair. Organizing and defining Obliviana has always been my biggest challenge. On the WWW, I have to organize and define. Right now, I'm just basing it on the structure of OsoaWeek. But I have to build something better for Edition 2.0. I have to manifest the vision I've always had. So I've been off coffee for well over a month now. They say caffeine's so addictive, but I didn't have much trouble stopping. I mean, when you're on it, yeah, you crave it. But it wasn't hard to kick at all. It's weird, after being "Mr. Caffeine" and "Espresso Dude". I still might go back, but not to the level I was at. It cause me such anxiety--made me worry about stupid things. I wonder if it has any effect on my creative prowess? Maybe a little, in that it produces emotions--ranging from euphoria to the aforementioned anxiety. But if I had to depend upon the drug caffeine to write, I'd be a pretty pathetic dude, eh? I have a feeling that at some point, people are gonna realize how awesome Obliviana is; how awesome my writing is. I really think I'm doing something incredible here. Just, it'll take some time for the right people to read it and separate it in their minds from all the other stuff out there. It's interesting. This past weekend I was gonna go up to Boston to see my brother and help my friend Chris move in to his new apartment. I was thinking of stopping at the Foxwoods Indian Casino on the way up. So last night I have this dream where I keep passing this casino on the way to somewhere, and I go in and it's all weird. But just--how in dreams ideas are stripped away from context. Ie, going somewhere, and stopping off at a casino on the way there. Huh. There's a phenomenon--I don't even know what it's called--but it's like, when you read a story about the making of a movie, or a profile on an author and his work, or a review of a CD, it makes you so much more receptive to the work in question. It makes you FAMILIAR with it, I guess is the best way to put it. I want to utilize this phenomenon in Obliviana. Quickly familiarize people with and hype the myriad realms of coolness in Obliviana. It has to be done right, though, in order for it to avoid seeming lame. WAYHOME THIRD Now I'm starting to wonder if it was a good idea to say all that stuff about the mad Unabomer. But he wouldn't bomb a little Lord of Obliviana like me, would he? Nah. It's funny. Last issue, I said all that stuff about the Scientologists, and wondered of THAT was a good idea. Guess these bullies do a good job intimidating people, if even a courageous publishing juggernaut as myself takes pause. Yup. Bullying works. For the most part. Nah, I'll leave my Unabomer comments above untouched. Can't let fear rule me. Besides, if I get any packages with "Unabomer" on the return address, I just won't open 'em. I just bought a cool Super Famicom cartridge--"Nichibutsu Arcade Classics", containing what appear to be exact versions of three arcade games from 1980--Moon Cresta, Crazy Climber, and Frisky Tom. You KNOW this baby'll never get released in the US! Seventy bucks. A lot, I know, but what do you expect from the gray market? Made Vamershee at work today (see Vamershee Solitaire in OsoaWeek019, 07019FE) and some of the guys there were getting into it. We tried to make a fortress wall to break down--finally making it out of eight prism-shaped pieces, with a pellet on top. I really like Vamershee--I think it has the potential to--dare I say it?--become the next "Pogs"! Oh, here's something that so cool. You know that Glenn Miller song "Pennsylvania 6-5000"? Leland Palmer danced to it in Twin Peaks and stuff. Anyway, it refers to a phone number (they used to do it that way--a name and then five numbers). I figured it was a Manhattan number, so I called it--(212) PE6-5000. And guess what--the song started playing!!! Yeah!!! It's still the Hotel Pennsylvania, and they play the song behind the voice mail system! Saturday, August 5, 1995 12:55 AM Penn Station waiting area, hot as an oven, like. Just went to The Hard Rock Cafe with some guys from work and stuff. Missed the frinkin 12:40, gotta wait for the 1:40 now, f*ck. Super hot in the city today. And a pretty super thunderstorm earlier too. At Carmine's, saw a really good episode of "The Avengers", where this mad scientist creates a trap, in the form of a mechanized mansion, to drive Emma Peel insane, cuz she fired him once. Really good stuff. If you remember "Johnny Pitch" from Severe Repair (see SR in OW001 & OW005). This is what "Johnny Pitch" would be similar to, in terms of film quality and production values and stuff. Really bad here. Hot and beggars. Even Roy Rogers & Dairy Queen is closed. Sweat is dripping off my face. Maybe it's time to jaunt on down to the only remaining open newsstand, down by the LIRR. Monday, August 7, 1995, 8:50:19 PM I'm in a weird place in time, my time. Edition 1.0 of my WWW is on the Internet--and I just got my domain name, by the way! But I haven't started on Edition 2.0 yet. I still have 2.5 issues to go before I have Year One finished. And everything just kind of seems limbo. The heatwave broke yesterday. That was some heatwave--like two or three weeks! I hope it stays over. Well, I guess technically it will--but another DIFFERENT heatwave could start as early as like, tomorrow. I don't know. "Microserfs" is really fagging out. As in, losing steam. That's a book, by the way, by Douglas Coupland, the guy who came up with the term "Generation X". The guy who invented the term everyone is starting to hate a whole lot. So I started back onto "Atlas Shrugged" again--and it's getting good! Ayn Rand is a great author. I find I have to put a lot of effort into reading "Atlas", though, cuz the tapestries she paints with her words are not easy to render in my mind in "real time". I've been using the slang spelling "cuz" a lot recently. It looks like a sleazy sort of word, but it isn't. Why should I have to always write the tedious "'cause", when "cuz" is half the letters, and really a word unto itself now? Also, "'cause" is imprecise in representing the word "cuz"--it can be read as "cawz". So CUZ it is! Long live the CUZ! Moon Cresta is God, by the way. So--what can I say? I want to star this big electronic publishing empire, but I'm sitting here exhausted from my job, frustrated by the noisy kids outside every night, disorganized as hell, temporarily directionless, all that. Huh. Me, directionless? Well, that's why I said "temporary". For the past week or so I have been quite aimless. If it weren't for OsoaWeek, I think I'd be in pretty bad shape, lifewise. I had some kind of killer dream last night, but I can't remember any of it enough to describe. It really colored my perception of the world this morning. It was cool. As if I were in another world. I guess reading Atlas Shrugged also helped put me in that odd, kinda resplendent state of mind. The next month or so will see the release of 2 major new videogame systems--Nintendo's Virtual Boy and Sony's PlayStation. As well, Sega's Saturn, already in limited release, should come on a lot stronger. Kinda cool how Nintendo is fighting the videogame wars by releasing such an oddball system and delaying their high-end Ultra-64 to the infinite depths of mid-1996. Gotta wonder when this whole convergence thing is gonna start to happen. Tuesday, August 8, 1995 7:24 AM I'm getting that life-falling-apart vibe a little. Kinda scary. Kinda apocalyptic. Feels like the winds of change are starting to blow again. Where am I now? I live in Plainsboro, NJ. I commute 50 miles each way into Manhattan every day, where I work full-time at a prepress place as a Macintosh operator. I have virtually no savings, living from paycheck to paycheck. I live with my girlfriend, Kerri, and our relationship is going quite good. But what I want is to start Obliviana as a real company! An work at Obliviana full-time! That's where I want to be! What's preventing this? I'll tellya what! The perplexing, puzzling nature of the Digital Superworld, now in its youth! How do I parlay great content on the WWW into $$$? I mean, to be in business, I'd need to be able to pay myself thousands of dollars a month! Meaning that I'd need to take in a lot MORE than that! How? I think I just drank tree piss. Yeah, I got this bottle of Maverick brand "Vermont Maple Water". On the label they say it's produced in the spring by maple trees. It takes alright, but... I dunno. Never heard of anything like that before. Maverick Sugarbush, Inc., Sharon, VT 05065. Okay, back to the money thing. I don't know. Mail order comes to mind, but I'd need a lot of orders. Also, I'd have to fill those orders--a tedious process to be sure. Plus, Obliviana's greatest asset is CONTENT. I should concentrate on THAT, not on T-shirts, mugs, and the like. Of course, I could develop Super Objects, Modern Saplings, Upwacafuzen, Vamershee, and the like... but is this the direction I truly want to go in? No. I want to create digital content. How can I make money from it? Predatorware? Hmm... that's probably my best chance right now. Wednesday, August 9, 1995 7:37 AM Last night I walked Lucky, my grandmother's dog. She would sniff and piss all over the power line area--kind of a doggy BBS. There was a cloudline above and below the full or close-to-full moon. Were they plane exhaust? Who knows. I think there's more going on in the sky than we know. I bought books for all my living progenitors. "Why Cats Paint" for my mother and grandmother, and "Photorealism Since 1980" for my dad. I'm volatile. Not like getting angry volatile, but my emotions and situations are shifting wildly these days. Yesterday I thought a lot about time travel. I think I did it in past lives. And I started to FEEL time travel flowing through my veins again. If this is true, should I let myself return to it? What will become of OsoaWeek and Obliviana as a whole? Ah, I am I. Ten years ago I would have high-tailed in outta here and wandered time and space aimlessly, ignorant of the mistakes of my own history, and damned to repeat them. But now? Now, I think I could handle it. Look at me. Rambling on about past lives and time travel. What's wrong with me? I'm lucid. I have memories, impressions. I get flashes of other atmospheres, situations. Is this a sign that time travel is returning? I hafta tell you, I've had this feeling for a long time that where I am NOW is not the right time. That I time travelled to get here. Traveller. I remember a nerdy fantasy I had once, where I got dimension travel powers and became a superhero named Traveller. I dimension travelled to the Marvel Universe and showed up on the doorstep of Xavier's School for Gifted Children, hoping to join the X-Men or New Mutants... Yeah. Pretty bad. That was years ago, mind you. Adolescent power fantasies--maybe as a reaction to my lack of power at that time. Yeah. But I tellya--I understand all this psychology--why certain fantasies or delusions are a result of oppressions, undealable with memories, emotional development problems, and the like. And I hafta say--taking all this into consideration, there's still an unaccounted-for element in me--a tang of truth--the truth that before my life here, I was doing all sort of crazy, ultrapowerful stuff. I realize this all sounds pretty stupid, but I don't care. I feel like writing it. That's it. And no matter who or where you are, there's no way you can disprove what I'm saying. Ahh! What am I doing? I'm losing it. 33 days late again. Any chance of avoiding 34? Maybe. I'm thinking of an escarole and garlic soup, and I still have some in the fridge, from Nanny, my grandmother. Going under a bridge. What does it mean. Yeah I'm in a state. So what. People talking crap next to me, in some foreign tongue. I remember all the driving around from my aimless youth of a few years ago--unemployment and a little depression. The two go well together. People are hording into the train car. Still got a vacant seat tween me and the window. Am gonna hafta move most likely. Yup, just did. A bag man--a guy with alotta bags and not much hair. Haha. I am writing crazy. It's what you know. In the freeform glancer now. Huh, this is like Superior. Don't know what I wanna do, the future is wide open. Yeah, this is the point, I have no defined course. As the world changes around me, I'm ready to follow the most fortuitous course as soon as it opens up. But what does this all mean, really? Making money with Obliviana. A worthy challenge for such as me. Faces. A random cosmos didn't make them. Thun. Der. Ous. I do fall into these states. Where am I? Iselin? Car 1378. It means nothing to me. One guy hasta stand and another gets to sit, means nothing to me. It was '86? I went to Manhattan with some college buddies. I went to see Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave" by myself. There was a sign in the theater saying that the movie was played real, real loud. A guy I was with who was already not too sure about seeing the movie opted out at seeing the sign. I think this guy Chris Collier came with us that day--I met him during orientation--he was from Bermuda--he worked on boats--they called him Ganjaman--he would always say "Eat her bum." One time I called him on it and said how gross the idea was, oral sex on a girl's anus. He said I shouldn't talk cuz I never tried it and didn't know what he was talking about. In retrospect, I have to say he was right. What the hell's going on in that previous paragraph? Jeez. Anyway, years later, I found out that Chris Collier was killed in a bank robbery in Miami. I felt pretty bad about it. I woulda liked to meet him again someday. Who knows--maybe I'll time travel and wake up back on Brown 2nd--the dorm we were in. Brown 2nd was a great experience. A co-ed floor, which even had co-ed bathrooms for a time. We all knew each other there, we all socialized with each other. I should record all the people I remember from there sometime. Maybe that time is now. I had room 209, with my roommate John Rosta. Next to us were Lea Thompson (not THE Lea Thompson) and Ani Rubens. They were hot, man! Me and my roommate hopelessly fantasized about them. Across from us were Carson Hanrahan and Tom... Tom something. Carson was a character. Smoked a pipe, slept in a hammock, played sailor songs, was an audiophile, all that. He picked on me a little. I was a little weirdo then. I told everyone to call me Fen, and boy did they. Also across from us were two girls, more shy, reserved, and average than Lea and Ani. Can't recall their names right now. A few doors down was this guy Dale Peck--a few years ago I saw him in the New York Times--they reviewed his book--a book about a gay guy. I always thought he was gay. Then there was a guy--his roommate? Tim Truman? Wild blond hair, radio guy? And Tom Porcelli, my nemesis. A fat, useless f*cker who picked on me some. Mike Massotto lived down the hall to the left. I forget his roommate. This is where we met and formed Anything But Monday. Who else? Jeez, it's tough to remember. Gotta rack my brain, come up with some more later... These damn conductors use these paper punchers with a different shape every day, and sometimes they fall into my PowerBook keyboard, like just now almost. Prob'ly quite a few in there at this point. The Princess and the Pea. Why does this fairy tale suddenly come to mind? Hypersensitivity. Am I being hypersensitive and hypernostalgic about my past? I don't know. Maybe. And I think of Utah, driving around on my own in the rented Taurus. Listening to Nirvana's "Nevermind" over and over again, which I bought out there. At a mall, eating spaghetti--WHERE IS ALL THIS LEADING? I don't know. Guess I am kind of lost. Oh, I should tell you that my WWW is now: http://www.obliviana.com/~obliv But I don't like that. I want to change it to: http://www.obliviana.com/~osoa Hopefully this change will be made soon. "Made" in that last line, I spelled "amde". So? So here I am. I'm talking freely to you. What does it matter. Obliviana is random access. You can skip the Lord of Obliviana sections if you want. I like the idea of Obliviana as this long, long piece of text--OsoaWeek. I mean, I know there's a lot more to Obliviana than text, but it's just--reassuring--in an autumn leaves kind of way--that the whole thing is indelibly recorded as a digital sequence of ASCII characters. This is why OsoaWeek will not die. It's a record of Obliviana. And no matter what I'm doing in Obliviana, it will be put into OsoaWeek as much as it can be made into text. A rough calculation shows that I am near 3 megabytes of OsoaWeek. If we use 3MB per years as the standard, it would take over 200 years of OsoaWeek to fill up a single CD-ROM. Text is economical. It always will be. Bonsai trees. Why do I think of these stunted Japanese trees? Living beings deliberately held back from growing, forced to operate in limited confines, never able to reach their true glory, but in their miniature state, they achieve their own sort of beauty, grace, and purpose. The analogy is obvious. If I did have time travel and other powers in a past existence, I don't have them now. I am limited, but I am doing something good in Obliviana. Thus I am like a bonsai tree. I think of Somerville, NJ. Why? Comic book store of my youth, so important to me, Quality Comics, look it up in the phone books of yesterday. 8/11/95, 6:47 AM, train http://www.obliviana.com/~osoa That's it. My stable WWW address. The one I'm gonna promote. The one YOU would do well to check out. If you're interested, this issue is now 36 days late. But so what. It's a good issue. I just had the idea last night to make the opening screen of my home page be like a classic arcade game. I even sketched the idea out a little in Adobe Illustrator. Looks pretty cool. I'm thinking of using the video game paradigm for all of Obliviana. And you KNOW I've been looking for the right paradigm, dude. I used to go to Toys'R'Us a lot. I remember when I was unemployed and depressed, I crawled into the back seat of my car in the parking lot of the Toys'R'Us in Somerville and went to sleep. I remember thinking that it was my low point. In retrospect, it doesn't seem like such a bad low point at all. That was probably 1991. The great palindromic year. We'll have another in 2002. But after that, it'll be a 110-year wait for 2112. In fact, the one before '91 was 1881, 110 years before. So we'll have to palindromic years in one lifetime, only 11 years apart. Last time that happened was 999 and 1001, within 2 years of each other. But if you think about it, there was one every ten years back then. 989, 979, 969, etc. Huh. So these are the "'tween-palindrome years". Right now the major milestones before me are completing Book Four, and also creating Obliviana WWW Edition 2.0. These are the big thing in my near future. But afterwards? Hmm. There's Book Five, which is pretty much sacrificial, a cushion to ease the creeping lateness. But what of Book Six? What of all these remarkable features I have developed? Don't worry, everything will continue. But I have to focus on the WWW rather than the text form of OsoaWeek. See, OsoaWeek is meant as a text record of Obliviana in a given week. That is, all the stuff produced in Obliviana that week is presented as best it can be in text form. This is rather different from what OsoaWeek is NOW, though. Now, OsoaWeek is the SOLE place that Obliviana is presented. Even the WWW site--almost all of it is composed of OsoaWeek! Sunday, August 13, 1995, 2:41:35 PM This weekend, where I'm at, has gotta be the low point of the curve. It's not that bad things have happened or anything, it's just--just the greatest level of directionlessness I guess. Well, yesterday I DID invent the way to make a Storm Codex out of a deck of Tarot cards. And I DID do some honest-to-goodness 209. And I DID write the Daptin-Fox thing. It's funny. I went bowling with Kerri on Friday night. Before, we went to video game connections, where I got a used Jaguar, with Cybermorph, Raiden, and Tempest 2000. I'd bought the Super Famicom game "Arcade Classics", but Mike, the owner of the store, liked it so much I traded it to him, along with some bootleg movies I also got in New York. So I came home with the Jag, two used Super Nintendo games (F-Zero and Axelay), and about 8 used CD's. So we were bowling, and on the computerized scorekeeper, there was a numeric keypad, and at the bottom was an F, then a zero, then an X and a slash (as in strike and spare). Huh--F-Zero--the game I got also! Just realized it. Anyway, it spelled FOX. I remembered from when I used to be into numerology, that you'd see FOX vertically when you laid out the letters of the alphabet in three rows of ten letters each. I remembered from a Philip K. Dick book I never read, "Radio Free Albemuth", I think, that there was a president or something called Ferris F. Fremont or something, and since F is the 6th letter of the alphabet, it was like 666. So I thought about FOX showing up on the numerology chart. The vertical columns were those letter of the same basic numerological value. And all three letter in FOX have the value of 6! So FOX is 666! It's funny. I bought reality tonic for the people at work. It was Actuality Classic (see 14003FE, OsoaWeek003)--Yoo-Hoo, V-8, and Welch's Grape Soda. So I bought those three at Just Delicious, plus Glaceau Honey Dew Melon flavored water and peanut butter cups and a 100 Grand bar. It came to $6.66. Huh. All this 666 stuff. And I realized, that my own FOW--Forge of Wander--would be 665. I am convinced that 666 is not the number of the Antichrist, but rather, a code number for the end of the world. A big theme in my mind is that somehow the end of the world will be prevented. So FOW--665--is a symbol of that. A symbol that we'll never get to 666. That the Biblical prophecies have been somehow torn asunder and made obsolete, by forces beyond God and Satan. Our world shall continue on. There will be no Armageddon. Whew. What was that all about? Well, this is Obliviana Super OCCULT Amusement, after all. There is an occult aspect to it all. I have to tell you about the 209 I did. But first, let me go the Quakerbridge Mall. Why? I don't know. I know that I should try to finish OsoaWeek Book 4 today (this issue, which is just about there, 51 and 52). Thing is, the way I'm gonna create Edition 2.0 of my WWW site, I wanna have all 52 issues of Book one finished before I do it, cuz I'm gonna do it all with massive search and replace and macros. Be bacxk soon! Monday, August 14, 1995 6:36 AM, Amtrak You know, I go through Grover's Mill every day on my way to work. That was where the first spaceship landed in the infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast by Orson Welles. Also, I live right near one of the few working fusion reactors in the world. At least, I think it works. They had a booth at a Princeton street fair, and they said that yes, indeed, fusion was happening--but they had to pump more energy into the reactor than they got out of it. Yeah, Plainsboro is weird. I saw a weird fog over a field on the way to the train station. One night, there were these bright flashes and explosions, but I never found out what it was. Then there were the weird webs all over everything. And at night there's this weird humming--air conditioners elsewhere? I dunno. Princeton University is where Einstein came up with the atomic bomb. It's a really old town, way back, like maybe even the 1600's. I did 209 Saturday night, using a modified deck of Tarot cards. Wound up going to Belmar at the Jersey shore with one of Kerri's old friends and the friend's new roommate. The pinnacle event was at a Subway (the sandwich shop, not the means of mass transit), and this huge bug was flying around totally crazy--smashing into tables, walls, chairs, etc. It was big--maybe it was a cicada? A guy got bit by it and his arm was all swelled up. He tried to kill it with a broom at one point. Also cool was an arcade which had many classic games, such as Fax *a cool trivia game I'd love to have), Mr. Do, Tron, Joust (2 of them!), Space Invaders, Galaxian, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, a really weird game from 1985 called "The Wiz", and a bunch of others. So at the mall yesterday I got the Activision Atari 2600 Action Pack, with 15 classic games for the Mac, including River Raid and Pitfall. It's cool--each game in its original cartridge form was about 4K! In ResEdit, there's a resource called "cart" in each game, around 4K. Amazing! You could maybe even type in your own game...? So if you're interested, this issue is 39 days late. I'm starting to think that Book Five should have nothing but Lord of Obliviana and Nihilistica. I really have to look back and get an overview of what I've done. I'll be rereading Year One in its entirety, to get an idea where I'm at and where I'm going. Monday, August 14, 1995, 10:29:07 PM Looks like I'm gonna get to 40 days late. But ah, that has some Biblical reference--y'know--the flood--raining for 40 days and 40 nights and all that jazz. Kinda like, after the flood, a new beginning and stuff... Another thing I've decided is that Book Five will have only two features--Lord of Obliviana and Nihilistica. Three if you count the Cover. Now I know that Book Five goes until October 20 or so, but still, I think it's better to amass material, take stock, work on the WWW site, relax, all that. 8/15/95 early in the morning on an Amtrak train sitting with a couple of bozos 40. Here it is. 40 days late. Huh. 40. If I didn't have a coherent plan already, I think I might be worried about the future of OsoaWeek! Well, lemme tellya. These past few issues have been late, sure, but they've also been good. If you're looking back on Obliviana from the far future, as I'm sure some of you are, it doesn't matter squat to you WHEN a particular issue of OsoaWeek came out, only THAT it came out. I WILL release this issue tonight. That is for SURE. (A little "Beublin A. Richardson" quote there.) Last week Netscape had their initial public offering of stock--it started in the twenties, shot up to the seventies in a few hours, and settled in the fifties. A 24-year-old who helped to write the WWW browser instantly amassed a 58 million dollar fortune. Damn I'm glad I'm already on the WWW, otherwise I'd feel like sh*t that I wasn't. Dream last night, in a city, near dusk, overcast, gray, walking down a street, a stream of water falling, making a brown puddle, I look up and see a crane hundreds of stories up, where the water is coming from. Tuesday, August 15, 1995, 9:35:13 PM Okay. 40 days late for a few more hours. Gotta freeze this baby in its tracks, get it done! So there it is. I'll do it. Get all Obliviana. *OW* [[08050SU]] Superior SUPERIOR 289 Nightmare Chablis Rough Girls. F*ckin' hot hippie psycho. Das Damncover/The Damncover. Saccharon--sweet boat of the dead guy. He eats Vietnam peas. Teenage Ringleader. Standing with a backpack or the guy's head. Standing by a windowby. Naked Girls, Basically. Flaky 30 something lady hyper over a new technology. It's an ornery little bird, but look at the way it bites. Shooting symbols in the air out the back of an airplane with shaving cream. Burn the candy at both ends. I like The To Tawers by J. R. Token. I had this dear of the dawn. These Repeating Patterns. SUPERIOR 290 We deal in oxygen. Whacked out on coffee and in a mall is like the building block of my past. We are all life cannot be planned it's an instrument to be played. You can learn the basics, but to get good at it, you gotta get the feel for it. Zaps are needed in this auditorium. I am audience, I am pussy eater. Let me near you. There are waves in here. SUPERIOR 291 Beavis and Butthead are delightful. What I saw was a video game called Satan's Ping. Like an evil Pong. Damnation, ash, and cross-country deliveries. I got into the song "Rise" by Public Image, Ltd. unaware of the Sex Pistols. Got another Public Image, Ltd. album out of the Hillsborough Library, at a strip mall, with Peter Litkey's card, the first time I visited him. Just heard "Never Mind the Bollocks" a months or two ago for the first time. Played a Sex Pistols slot machine at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas. Saw a piece on the Har Rock Hotel on Primetime Live a few nights ago. Beavis and Butthead are God. SUPERIOR 292 When will this new train car eventually have to be dismantled? Who'll have the tools for the job? Black guys go "day-um!" The Yourself Needle. The Yourself Missile. The Yourself Miracle. $14.86--the kind of change I like! Got on a 9-train and it was hot as an oven in there. Thought I saw a guy holding a piece of wood, but it was a crumpled-up brown paper bag. Don't be overly dramatic at the card game. SUPERIOR 293 The hot museum, I stand in it. Left to yumma. I cold hall with railings, musty smell and scientific wall. The old house, scented old, why is it young people live here. No one who lived during the Civil War is still alive. The entire world of that time--all the people--are dead. Reincarnation. With it, they're not all dead, just different people. Living can become such a mess. Isn't it refreshing to know that you can restart a new life, just like restarting your computer? I don't know. If you accomplish things in life you might not feel so bad about having to die. SUPERIOR 294 A lesbian farmer was the day. Call it Reainstorm. SUPERIOR 295 Would you like to know. Echoless yawn. Kohut--sheet metal place of my youth. Truth. SUPERIOR 296 Thisis a lot. Thisis a lot of thesis. Okay--walkway to the Hall of Science? At Drew University? There was a. Reverser. It'd be good to go back. To wake up in the past, in my body, but with my today's mind. Spend a day there, go to sleep, then return. It would be helpful, useful, all that. Wouldn't cause any harm. To reality, it could just be a dream. Anything I did in that day would be erased as soon as I went to sleep. I think this technique can work. Because it can happen without going bad. But... would it make me live in the past? Every day, would I plot where to go that night? Life would take twice as long. Hmm. Maybe if it were tiring/draining, and you could only do it every few weeks... Okay. Let me see. *OW* [[09050IS]] Into E-mber Severe Repair [:[SVR011]:] SEVERE REPAIR E-MBER 011 by Frank Edward Nora How do I love thee, E-mber? Let me count the ways. Annoying and useless as you are, you yet stir some emotion in me. OKAY FOLKS! I hate keep having to do these E-mber intros, but alas, 'tis the way of this Book of OsoaWeek. Enjoy the story! INFORMATION: Severe Repair E-mber 011, July 6, 1995. Published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement, obliviana@aol.com, 1-800-OBLIVIANA. All contents copyright 1995 Frank Edward Nora. This release is Predatorware--you are free to make digital copies, so long as they're not altered or sold. All other forms of reproduction require permission. You're Prey unless you get a Predator Deed for this release. Contact us for more on this concept. You can cancel or subscribe to this E-mber anytime, via E-mail. *OW* [[10050SR]] Severe Repair SEVERE REPAIR 50: "Winter Stadium Them" "Ah, look who's coming--our wacky neighbor Darnazy Thonc." said Evelyn Fangdoor, AKA Appomattox Flight, at the breakfast table. "Comin' up Rillekon's?" asked Snoppy Parser, AKA Permanent Pioneer, wiping his mouth and standing up to get a look out the window. "Uh-huh." Evelyn responded. "Does he have enough stuff?" asked Enc Larabeth, AKA Accurate Rebellion, with a smile. "Oh yeah." Evelyn answered wryly. "Hey Snoppy," Enc said, "he still live up at Last-Wave Jixie's?" "Yup." Snoppy said, sitting down again and forking another block of pancake stack. "He's so funny." Evelyn said. "Yup." Snoppy said as he chomped down the huge fork full of pancake. The three sat there for a while, eating and watching as Darnazy Thonc made his way toward them. Thonc was a huge man--maybe seven or eight feet tall, stocky, with red big hair and massive red beard and mustache. He wore a huge assembly, something like an overcoat, in which he carried an amazing variety of stuff, like brooms and mops, a portable gasoline-powered electric generator, food enough for weeks, electronic amusement machines, guns and bombs, sporting equipment, apparel, toys, and the like. "I get this feeling," Enc finally said, "that we might get an assignment on the teletype today." Enc Larabeth had a smug look, glorious, flowing, curly blond locks of hair, and reserved, almost handsome beauty. She wore her eyes narrow mostly, as if she were constantly assessing the situation. In full outfit, as Accurate Rebellion, she donned a suit of brasslike armor and wielded a great black sword. Right now, she had on a T-shirt with a royal crest and a pair of yellow jeans. "That's funny," Evelyn said, "I don't get that feeling at all." Then she smiled. "Just kidding. I get that feeling too." Evelyn Fangdoor had this drunken sort of look about her all the time, but it was borne more of her cavalier attitude toward life and her great confidence than actual overindulgence. Her skin was several shades darker than Enc's china white. And like Enc, she was tall. Her hair was long, black, and straight. All over her, she had strange geometric designs in tattoo. As Appomattox Flight, she wore a black leather outfit with many tassels, and a belt made of fire. "Well dang the dang teletype," Snoppy said, "I was figgerin' on chonkin' over to Marriage Town this afternoon!" Snoppy Parser had a few scars, wore his brown hair very short, and wore his vast experiences in his face, along with a well-groomed mustache. His steely gray eyes were intelligent, but could at times be piercing and accusatory. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans, a brown leather jacket, and black boots. As Permanent Pioneer, he donned a strange black cowboy-type hat and a brown leather trenchcoat with white ornamental design. He also wielded a rifle, a knife, and a mean little crossbow. "You've been saying that for awhile." Enc observed, sipping coffee from a mug with a "Winter Stadium Them" logo on it. "I know I have, Enc. I know I have." he said distantly. "But it's time I had me a wife." Enc regarded him. "I thought you were going to marry Bolt Cutter America." "Bolt Cutter America is in Gnoboslast!" Snoppy snapped. "Ain't no way we'll ever see each other again, with her there." "You got out." Enc said. "Yeah, but I'm Permanent Pioneer--she ain't." "He comin' real fast now." Evelyn said, and they all saw Darnazy walking in fast motion. "Damn unpredictable roadway!" Snoppy complained. Darnazy disappeared from sight under their window, and they turned their heads as fast as they could, but Thonc was already at the top of the stairs, looking at them with a calm yet edged smile. "That was some slip!" Darnazy said, wiping his brow where a little sweat had collected. "Have not seen it like that for years." "What causes that?" Enc asked. "Uneven pitch." Snoppy said. "Inequalities between the phase grands." "Yes." Darnazy said, striding across the room to the breakfast table. "Hello hello hello all! Mind if I storage my stuff here for a time?" "Go right ahead." Snoppy said. So Darnazy backed up, turned around, and carefully lifted the entire assembly off of him. Then he gingerly lowered it to the ground, where it stood, a portable junk pile. "Have the big seat, won't you?" Evelyn offered, gesturing to a giant chair near the table. "Thanks you." Darnazy said, carefully sitting in the mammoth chair. "What brings you out so early in the morning?" Enc asked. "Callin'." Darnazy answered. "Good reason." Enc replied with a touch of sarcasm. "You came at a good time." Evelyn said, glancing from Darnazy to Snoppy. "Snoppy was just telling us how he's gonna get married soon." "Wha!? Oh! My dear fellow!" Darnazy said. "Ain't got no one yet." Snoppy said, looking down and shaking his head. Then he looked straight at Darnazy and continued "That's why I'm playin' with the notion of using the chonk to get over to Marriage Town and take me a wife. Darnazy smiled, but then wore an exaggerated perplexed look. "Snoppy my good man! With lovelies such as these sharing the Stadium, surely you need look no further than here!" The two girls gave Darnazy a good-natured "are-you-kidding?" look. "Yes yes yes." Snoppy said in an embarrassed manner. "That's a thought that has certainly crossed my mind. But the thing is..." The girls eyed him in humorous expectation. He continued. "Well, how could I choose? They're both so lovely and sweet and wonderful. It'd be as near to impossible as a thing can be. And to boot, if'n I did take one of 'em, that'd leave the other in an awful state..." "There's always bigamy." Evelyn said with a wicked smile. "Yes! Group Marriage!" Enc said. "The three of us could get married--but hey!--why stop there? Darnazy could join us! And we could all sleep together in a REALLY big bed!" Snoppy put his hand to his forehead and shook his head, smiling. Darnazy broke out into a thunderous laugh. After a few transcendental moments of this, a distant sound of dot matrix was heard. "Oh crap." Evelyn said. "What?" Enc asked, having just drank some juice out of a tall glass. "Teletype." Evelyn responded. "Darn it!" Snoppy snapped. "Everytime I wanna get myself married... hey?" He turned around to see several strange flying things enter the room from the stairway. There were three of them, with more coming. each was a long, slender rod with other rods sticking out of it in a variety of directions. On the rods were black, white, and gray little spikes. They were also covered in mysterious glyphs. But on the whole, they looked quite aerodynamic. A red and a yellow one were already in the room, and a pink and black one were just coming up the stairs. "Ah! Aha!" Darnazy exclaimed. "What the hell?" Evelyn said. "Damn unpredictable..." Snoppy mumbled as he stood up and grabbed a big metal pipe that was leaning on the wall. The girls also stood up. The flying things were now almost across the room, making a wide berth around the four people. "I like these!" Darnazy said. "Mascara from The Arpotruning Miller." "What!?" Enc said incredulously. "An obscure arm of research." Darnazy said, wiping his sweaty brow with a Winter Stadium Them linen napkin. "Pay no heed." "Whattaya know 'bout these things, Thonc?" Snoppy yelled. "Just a cursory theoretical passing..." the huge man responded. "But are they dangerous..." Enc said, but her voice faded as Snoppy leapt forward. "F*CK 'EM!" he yelled and he bounded across the room and bashed the yellow one with a tremendous blow. It made a terrible breaking noise, flipping in the air quickly away from Snoppy but remaining airborne. Darnazy broke out into his deafening laugh again. The other flyers didn't react, and kept coming. At this point, there were seven or eight in sight. Snoppy advanced on the yellow one, which was faltering, and bashed it again. It made another horrible noise and flew smack into a big case full of valuable dishes, crashing and smashing the whole deal. "I heard on the reality report this morning that there was sleeking on Cwickalty's Banjoose Pike." Evelyn said, biting her lip. "That's gotta be it..." Enc said. "But I've never seen it this bad..." The yellow thing was near the ground now, spinning slowly, agitating the pile of broken glass beneath it. "Lessee if I c'n ice this one, then we'll worry about the other." Snoppy said. Then he raised the pipe above his head and yelled "F*CKER!" as he brought the weapon down hard of the unknown thing. A sound like a massive electrical discharge filled the room, and the thing shuddered, then dropped to the ground. "Killable." Snoppy said with pride, nodding his head. "Ah! Aha!" Darnazy said, standing up and inadvertently shoving the table forward, tumbling pancakes, syrup, coffee, juice, and the like all over the damn place. "Aha! I have it!" He ignored the mess and strode over to his pile of crap. "I should get my sword." Enc said as Darnazy rummaged wildly through his stuff, making a most unearthly noise. "Yeah, go get it." Snoppy said, updating his grip on the pipe and getting ready to cream another flyer. "Looks like we got our work cut out for us." "No Snoppy! "Darnazy moaned. "I have just the thing. No Enc! Rest your sword arm. I have just the thing..." "Well hurry it up, Thonc." Snoppy said. "AHA!" Darnazy burst out. "Yes, haha, great!" He jumped up with a little blue something in his hand, his arm raised above his head, knuckles scraping ceiling. "What is it now?" Evelyn asked. "Haha! A blue hole! What did I tell you? Just the thing!" Enc looked around and sighed in frustration. "Do any of you have any idea what Darnazy is talking about--ever?" "It's just his way." Snoppy said instantly. "My good friends," Darnazy said in an excited manner, "They will be as attracted to the blue hole as I am to Appomattox Flight and Accurate Rebellion." The girls shook their heads in frustration. "Horny bastard." Snoppy said with a grin. "Well, do what you have to do." "Apologies to tablekind." Darnazy said, looking around wildly. Then he scrambled his huge body up onto the table, fully demolishing anything left. When he put his full weight on the table, it totally collapsed. But he continued on, unfazed, and stood up straight on top of the ruins of the breakfast table. Then carefully--oh so carefully--he extended his hand, the marble-sized blue hole a searingly dark bright negative blue between his thumb and index finger. With painful care, the hulking man position the blue hole according to some unseen logic of need, and gingerly let it go. It stayed there, motionless in midair. Then he ducked and scrambled forward, but managed to trip on all the destroyed table crap. He fell forward. "Calgareaux's mind!" Darnazy exclaimed as collapsed heavily into the mess. The impact shook the whole room. Enc took a deep breath in frustration. "Can't we have one day without stupidity, destruction, and the unknown?" she said. "Ugh." Darnazy said, wallowing in the remnants of breakfast, trying to get his bearings. "The tables are winning." "Why did he have to do that?" Evelyn asked of Enc, who shrugged. "Oh, okay." Snoppy said, observing as the flying things began to slowly drift toward the blue hole. Enc nodded. "Nice. Very nice job, Darnazy." "Ugh." Darnazy said again, crawling across he floor to get away from the vicinity of the blue hole. "Just a matter of scemlurboan my dear. Just a matter of scemlurboan." "Oh." Enc said. Now the first few flyers were getting to the blue hole, and they were crushing into each other, trying to get as close to the blue hole as possible. And as they pressed into each other, they made a horrible straining, creaking kind of sound. "What..." Evelyn said, backing away. "What're they gonna do--waste each other?" Snoppy asked. "Ugh." Darnazy said, sitting with his back to the wall, running a syrup-covered hand through his hair. "Yes my friend. They will ruin each other." "And how long is this lovely exercise going to take?" Enc asked. "Could take a few days, my lovely." Darnazy responded. "Days!?" Evelyn screamed. "Forget this damn business." Snoppy said. "And forget the teletype. I'm chonkin'!" "Snoppy!" Enc said, but Snoppy was already gone down the stairs, whacking flying things out of his way with the pipe. [:[END]:] *OW* [[END050OW]] -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----