|| -------- -- -----  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 067--11/3/95 <-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 6  ||  -------> (Cup OWis067, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = [[BEGIN067OW]] [[01067CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 6 7 * * * November 3, 1995 "The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!" by Frank Edward Nora CONTENTS 01 067 CV--Cover 02 067 LA--Lord of Obliviana 03 067 NH--Nihilistica 04 067 SU--Superior 05 067 SR--Severe Repair INFORMATION: OsoaWeek067, November 3, 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. Check out Obliviana on the WWW at: http://www.obliviana.com/~osoa Character count: 65873 / Line count: 1679 / Days late: 19 *OW* [[02067LA]] Lord of Obliviana Nov. 2, 1995 7:33 AM I know showing the time is a waste--or is it? Could be interesting to future mes, delving into their pasts. Totally broke this week. I've been spending so much less than usual cuz I don't have much money. Shows me I could spend less every week. If I had the discipline. Kerri is still gone. Moved out 18 days ago. Starting to look permanent. Just finished last issue a few minutes ago. Book Six is begun! Trying to get myself going, but it's not so easy. I have to focus on the most important thing in my life right now--establishing Obliviana. By this I mean creating and starting the game Obliviana. Having a goal has gotta be the greatest thing ever. But having a goal with full intent to move toward it but no capacity to move may be the worst thing ever. A few weeks ago, when I set aside a whole Saturday and part of Sunday to clean up y apartment, I just couldn't do it. That event leaves me upset and confused. Wanting to do something, being able to do it, yet being unable to make myself do it. It is my intent in this issue to describe the game Obliviana in some detail. Maybe if I have this as a foundation, I'll be better able to move forward. Nov. 6, 1995 7:14 AM Not a bad weekend. Family and friends and such. Such. I've been telling people about the idea for the Game Obliviana. When I tell them I've come up with a solution for the problem of digital infostimulation piracy, they're impressed. They tell me not to tell anyone, to get a patent, keep it secret, etc. Then I start explaining it to them, and they don't get it. My grandmother had a great analogy--people don't want to steal a puzzle with all its pieces loose--they want to wait till it's completed before stealing it. My latest term for my container of dis is "FrontierCup". It's interesting to note that these two words are the ones I was seriously thinking of adding to my company name--I was gonna go from "Obliviana Super Occult Amusement" to "Obliviana Cup--Super Occult Frontier Amusement". But wait a second--"CupFrontier"--ah--YES YES YES!!! CupFrontier. Wow. That's the word. So... CupFrontier is the core concept of the new Obliviana system. A CupFrontier is a digital artifact--a container of dis. Use pirates' innate disorganization against them--ie--allow freeflow of Obliviana dis--but flaunt orderly, completist nature of owning CupFrontiers. 7:07 PM Jump in. Yeah, what's going on. If my vision becomes reality, you might be looking back here, to this text, to see the dawn of the term "CupFrontier"--a term you might now be hearing and talking about every day. Well, you know what friend? I'm sitting on a train, I just had two Taco Bell Nacho Supreme, no meat, and I have a stack of bills to pay and I don't even know how much I have to pay. Right now, I'm just this guy. Maybe in your time, I'm a very successful entrepreneur. I hope I am, but remember who I am at this moment. Remember that to get to where the me of your time is, I have to do everything he did from this moment onward. Oops! A lady just asked me if this train stops in Edison, and I said yes, then I said I wasn't sure, then I said I was pretty sure, then they announced that the train doesn't stop in Edison, and a second later, it started moving. Now she's sitting next to me and I feel a little uncomfortable. But, X amount of time will pass, she'll get off, and I'll never see her again. So it goes. Um, so this whole new Game of Obliviana thing--see--it's a thing which is to be called simply "Obliviana" or "Obliviana Super Occult Amusement"--not "Game of Obliviana"--but I have to use some new terminology to distinguish the new Obliviana from the old Obliviana. The origin of the word "Obliviana" goes way back to 1991, when I used it in the Severe Repair story in one of the three issues of ZOPE magazine. This story was edited to fit into the current SR milieu, and was presented in OsoaWeek005, 8/25/94. All references to "Obliviana" were changed to "Distantwind House"--I didn't want the term "Obliviana" to be a game in SR. So go back and check it out!!! Yes! The lady's getting off! Haha! Heck, it doesn't take much to make me happy, see? Haha! Well, I have sour cream on my shirt, no napkins, and I'm gonna go buy numerous apples. Could the preceding paragraph be a Superior? Nah. In Metropark now. Where I used to live... Listened to Hawkwind today--I was thinking of all the work they put into the music--and how they're now so obscure. Ah, what's it all about, leaving stuff behind. The thought of folks drinking your works in the future is intoxicating, yes. I know I am. Got a blood blister on my left thumb, got it from a cheap umbrella. A busted toy car bit me last week. So--my goal now is to establish the new Obliviana system. I seek to get the whole operation moving by implementing the idea in a rudimentary form, at first. Monday, Nov. 13, 1995 7:01 AM This past weekend has left me emotionally beaten-up. Right now, I feel messed-up, but I believe these emotional bruises are part of an overall renewal of myself. Friday at work I called this woman to see if she wanted to hang out. We'd hung out the week before, and I really enjoyed talking to her. She said she couldn't that evening, cuz she had plans, but next week definitely, and call her over the weekend to talk. Okay. Then there's this whole other thing with the supernatural, that's probably the biggest factor in how I feel now, but which I might not want to detail here right now. That night, I got back to the train station (it was already dark), and drove my Jeep straight to my parents' house to go visit my brother. About an hour's drive. Well, five minutes from my destination, I hit a deer on a back road. I was just driving along, went BAM! the thing came out of nowhere and I hit it dead on maybe a quarter second after I saw it--no time at all to respond. I saw or heard something shatter. It bounced off my Jeep so hard, I think it was thrown to the side and I didn't run it over. But I can't be sure. Two seconds after my first indication of trouble, I was back driving down the road. Shocked, I kept going, thinking of making an anonymous call to the police, but where was there a phone ahead? Outside my old high school? I didn't remember if there were outside phones. But then, I figured I should turn around and see what happened to the deer--other drivers could be in danger. This was less than a minute after the event, when I turned around. I saw the deer by the side of the road, kneeling down and trying to move forward, stumbling. That's the last I saw of it, cuz I headed for a strip mall maybe half-a-mile away. I parked and checked out the damage--my driver's side headlight was demolished, and the grill was bent in. Yeah, another reason to call the police, besides euthanizing the deer--getting a police report for my insurance. So I called information to get the non-emergency number, as this was not appropriate for a 911 call. I gave them the info, and they said they were sending a car over. Then I called my brother and told him what was going on, and I told him to come on down--we were gonna go down to Border's Books & Music anyway to get Howard Stern's new book, "Miss America". The cops came, took the info, and gave me a reference number for the report, which of course would only be available during business hours weekdays. My brother hadn't showed up yet, so I went to the bookstore, where he later met me. We each got a copy of the book (for only about $20, as opposed to the $27.50 cover price), then went to the mall, where I got cigars and, after some soul-searching, the letterboxed Star Wars set, for $60. At home, we had to watch 20/20 to see the Howard Stern story. But of course, it was gonna be the last story, so me and my brother went outside to smoke cigars. When we came in to see the story, my mother flipped out cuz she smelled the smoke on our clothes, and she said it was messing up her sensitive sinuses. Okay. After the story, which was pretty good, we watched Star Wars. Once you see it letterboxed, you can't imagine seeing it in regular video form--so much is lost. I fell asleep during the Death Star battle, and went to bed after the movie ended. I had a hard time getting to sleep cuz I drank a Mistic Energy Booster drink with caffeine a little earlier. I woke up early on Saturday, about 7:30, even though I only had about 5 hours sleep, cuz I'm used to getting up at 5:30. I started watching Empire, and my brother was a little pissed when he came down later to see it halfway done. I tried to spend some time talking with my mother also during the morning, taking a break from Empire, and I was able to have a somewhat civil conversation with her. Later, we started watching Jedi, but I went back to bed. I called my answering machine, and heard a message from Kerri and also Peter Litkey. I called Kerri, and left her a message. Then I called Peter, and we planned on getting together in a few hours. Later, Kerri called back, and we planned on getting together on Sunday. read novel, Pete gaming, drive Julie, John cranky, Pete Lost, Sportspark, bowlingo, Ace Ventura, rain, MADTV, SNL, Mom crazy, stay over, tree down, go home, 7-11, Princeton, cigar store, book store, Birds of Britain (compelling reason for time travel) call Kerri, call friend, feel sick, friend never calls back, see Kerri, Stuff Yer Face, back home, no message from friend, play Raiden, get all the way thru, go to bed. 7:49 PM Yeah. It's been a tough few days, even today at work, my sister called and gave me this diatribe about how fucked-up and unattractive I am. Yeah. And tomorrow we're getting a nor'easter, possibly "Superstorm '95". So more hassles and stuff, getting emotionally beat up. Beatles Anthology next week. Cool. So my emotional self is getting beaten up--but I think maybe I need it. My focus is on Obliviana. The process I've been going through is a very slow and laborious conceptual growth, which began reaching maturity a few weeks ago, and will, I believe, finally bloom once I write some kind of "Principia Obliviana". I am having a hard time. But I feel confident that I'll come out of this time, and into 1996, ready to play ball. One thing I can tell you, one piece of wisdom I can impart, when you have lofty goals, realize that perseverance means years, maybe even decades of struggle, confusion, and darkness. Being able to endure such may be integral to your nature, as it is in mine. Or it might require great effort, concentration, and sacrifice. Or maybe, you just don't have what it takes to endure year after year after year of disappointment. I believe that my endeavor will bear fruit of a marvelous sort. And let me tell you, I will richly deserve it when it comes. Maybe that's it, about the emotional beatings. Every time your emotions get their brains bashed in, they grow back stronger. So that's why I'm able to see this period of emotional unease in a positive light. Also, I think that emotional turmoil is the grease that encourages change; hurries up change that's stuck. Several days last week, and continuing this week, I've been editing Superior with the goal of presenting a "Superior 30"--the best 30 Superiors. Going through the 364 Superiors of the first five Books of OsoaWeek was itself an emotional journey. At one point, I was disheartened by the quantity of less than awesome material. But when the dust settled, I had over 80 Superiors that I thought were pretty darn good. Even now, after intense weeding, I have 46 Superior vying for the 30 spots--and it won't be easy finding 16 to toss out. As well, I have single sentences from various Superiors, and these are shaping up to be part of "Preamble", a new sort of literary format I'm developing. Working with my Superiors, and seeing the fantastic work I've produced, has reaffirmed my faith in my own abilities. Two or three months ago, around September, I finished the first year of Obliviana and fell into a kind of depression. It was the shock of such a voluminous creative output, and I felt contempt and confusion toward my work. I think it's a natural happening, the body's way of coping with such a strain. I was smart enough to give in and give myself a break--I mean, I think that's what my body was telling me--"gimme a break from the strain of creativity for awhile". Yeah. Right now, Obliviana can't really be considered a company. It's just me. It's not much of anything from an outside perspective. But from my perspective, I see its potential--I see how it will burst forth! The word "goad" just popped into my mind as the train stopped at Metropark. To goad is to prod, I believe, to convince, to pressure. Maybe it'd be a cool title for something. I don't know. I think I should start working on this "Principia Obliviana". I think the time has come. 11/16/95:5:46 PM I'm a lot calmer now. I believe I'll do some laundry tonight. Haven't done any since Kerri left me. That's over a month. My apartment is an unbelievable mess. As are my finances. As is my personal life. Well, my personal life isn't as bad as the other two. Actually, maybe it is. I don't know. It's just, I'm going through the wringer now. Time is passing by fast motionlike. How can I build an enterprise such as Obliviana with such chaotic footing? Yeah, I don't know either. 588391 words--that's what I wrote in the first five Books of OsoaWeek. Wow, just think if I was being paid 50 cents a word like I was that one time--I'd get $294,195.50! But I wouldn't sell OsoaWeek for that much. No way. It's worth way more than that. 11/17/95 8:01 PM I used to hate the World Wide Web. Then I started liking it, and an event where I got on the wrong train and had to spend over $30 to go to Trenton pushed me onto the fast track to getting Obliviana on the World Wide Web. Then I fell into a malaise, and started to hate the World Wide Web again. Now, I think I'm back to liking it again--or at least--liking the idea of an Obliviana presence there. See, for the past month or so, WWW coverage has exploded in magazines. This means not only that there's a lot of hype afoot--but also that people will react to the hype by making the WWW even bigger. Another event that occurred is that I got a little overextended on my American Express, and as a result, my America Online account was suspended. I had been using AOL as a means of releasing OsoaWeek--but I hate AOL so much now that I don't think I'll be reviving my account. Thus, the WWW will be the sole method of distributing OsoaWeek. So I'm forced back into sharp focus on the WWW. Now I am in the process of creating a new Obliviana WWW site. At least, I've started thinking about, started planning it out in the back of my mind. I'm watching that show "Strange Luck" and eating some dill havarti cheeses with Triscuits, my PowerBook plugged in and on my lap. 6:28 PM 11/21/95 Went to the Hard Rock Cafe last night, pretty cool. Time to finish this issue. Get all Obliviana. *OW* [[03067NH]] Nihilistica ***YOUR E-MAIL IS GONNA COME*** 6/27/95 8:21 pm Frank! Got OSOAWeek 39-45 yesterday in the mail. Just opened mailer and popped them onto hard drive for easy pee-rusing. However...it may be some time before I get to read them because I'm preparing a preview cut of the Braxton County Monster documentary for a gathering of gifted high-school kids and local politicians. It's some kind of whack-off to generate good press for the initial local retail offering of the video, and the opportunity is too good to pass up. Since it's basically an education-booster thing, a college professor who is a good friend is allowing my partner and I to use his school's semi-okay S-VHS editing bay for free to do this short preview cut, which should run about 10-15 minutes. I'm doing lo-tech title animation especially for this version, and re-editing the music I've already written for BRAX so it'll match this more concise edition. I'll get to these OSOAWeeks either 7/1 or, more likely, 7/8. Of course, since you'll be reading this all at once, this time-table blather is entirely irrelevant. 7/6/95 Finished the preview cut of BRAXTON today. It runs 24 minutes, which is incredibly bloated and flabby, considering that the finished version is to run approximately a half-hour with four more interviews than we have now. Still, it's a good dry run to give us a feel for the texture of the piece, and let us know how many more animated cutaways we need now that the format of the documentary is totally changed from the original plans. I'll send you a low-quality dub. Keep in mind that this version is full of slugged-in shots that will NOT be in the final cut. Among the slugs are all of the MYSTERY HEAD narrator screens. Also note that the sound is not equalized or de-hissed in this cut, the narration is a scratch track, and there has been no attempt made at color correction. The color artifact flickering on the left edge of the screen is due to a malfunctioning edit deck. Enjoy the video! Oh yeah, have fun looking for your PELTER clip-art backgrounds. (((At this moment, it is 132 days after July 6, 1995--WHERE THE HELL IS THIS MYSTICAL VIDEO YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT!?!))) Um...I'll do the usual thing and comment on the non-Severe Repair OSOA stuff first, then I'll go back and comment on the SR chapters all at the same time. This makes fine sense. OSOAWeek 39: LORD OF OBILIVIANANIMAL: I'll be three kinds of son-of-a-bitch! In early May, I and a bunch of people around here had nightmares all at the same time just like you did in New Jersey. Stop copying us. I'm serious about the dreams. (((All the occult wars going on sometimes release such energy that their effects are felt at this mundane level. That, or it's just mass hysteria, whatever that is.))) You are indeed using the word "fuck" a lot in this LoO. Perhaps the new slogan of Obliviana should be "Fuck fuckedy fuck fuck, fuck fuck." Heh, heh. So, like, you're cool because you're on the train with a Foster's and a Powerbook. Why is that cool? I'm cooler, cause I'm sitting at my desk at a hopelessly obsolete AMIGA 1200 with a big hole cut in the top of it for a muffin fan from Radio Shack to cool the half-assed SCSI adapter that gets hot enough to melt the plastic casing of the computer and render the internal HD useless within 15 minutes until I put in the fan, so now I can run my double-speed (zoom) CD-ROM and horrible clanking antique 88MB Syquest without starting a fire and it only slows the whole system down to about half its blazing 50mhz 68030 speed, and I got a whole six-pack of ICEHOUSE and a pint of Bacardi and part of a pint of Southern Comfort, and I think maybe a Corona and a Red Elephant in the back of the fridge, but I'm not sure. Now THAT'S cool. I'll bet you couldn't even carry all this cool shit onto the train, or find a place to plug it in since there wouldn't be any place to do that. (((Let's stop all this bickering about who has the best combination of computer equipment and alcoholic beverages in mass-transit vehicles and/or personal dwellings. It's leaders like you and me, Frank--giants who the little people look up to, almost as if we were gods--who must set a good example. All the youngsters out there dragging mainframes, supercomputers, pocket calculators, etc., along with obscure wines, ales, liquors, and the like into trolley cars, condominiums, helicopters, penthouse apartments and such are doing so only because of smug, disoriented, powermad, ultrageniuses like you and me. I feel their pain. Let the healing process begin. Thank you, and god bless Obliviana.))) What the hell is Arena Football? (((It's a sports that's not nearly as fun as aureola football.))) VISION of OBLIVIANA WORLD I: I haven't read this yet, but let me guess--among the artifacts and activities proposed for OBLIVIANA WORLD will be: *Stinking Plexiglass Rods *Forces to be Reckoned At or On *Plentitudes of Platitudes *Broken Edges of Fiberglass Debris with Sharp Hairy Edges *Thumbs from Beyond the Stars *Pre-natal Nodal Point Pan Heads for Hanging Miniatures *Shards of the Shattered Frozen Corpse of Boris Karloff *Tiny Little Photographs of Boris Karloff *Cassette Audiotapes of Boris Karloff Sneezing into a Hanky-Chiff *Stuff Actually Ripped out of Regyptian Pyramids with a Crowbar *The Rarest Viewmaster Reel of All, the Name of which I Cannot Say *Punky Brewski *Square Dancing for Silly Enormous People *Dog Shaving Contests *Eyeball Fondling Therapy *Pentacostal Colostomies for Collossal Pentaprismatic Charismatic Fossils ...and much mo'... Oh well, I better read the damn thing. Hey, this idea ain't nearly so enticin' as my stuff about the plexiglass rods and all that. (((Crap, I gotta dig up that piece to refresh my memory so I can defend myself here. Um--after reviewing the material in question, I have no comment at this time.))) DIARY of a DREEMFRANK: This is hilarious. NOMADS PLANKTON COMIC SAGA of FEAR: Disturbing tale of censorship by AOL. I didn't know to what extent AOL policed content. I thought it just cruised for hardcore porn and bumped it off the network or something. Pretty durn sad. NEW JERSEY: This is my second-favorite fictional part of OSOAWeek. It's cool the way you think up all these places in New Jersey that ALMOST sound plausible enough to be real. It would be fun to visit retirement homes and read this part of OSOAWeek aloud to incoherent old people. OOPS gotta go. (((Ladies and gentlemen, please refer back to OsoaWeek039. In the NEW JERSEY feature, I review a park and a frozen yogurt place. Mr. Panucci is lacking any real sense of New Jersey--that's why he's in denial.))) 7/8/95 OSOAWeek 40: Halfevil Times Classified: These are particularly funny, especially the ones in which...oh, I won't bother to comment on each one specifically, because I'm sure you remember each individual entry in great detail and you know which ones are funny already. (((Indeed.))) ZOPE'S NEW CATCHPHRASE: Zope has mellowed, hasn't he? I mean, in this episode, he doesn't kill or even hit anybody. He just yells threatening stuff. Good heavens... could this be the dawn of...PUSSY-ZOPE?! (((Your pathetic attempt to get a rise out of me by criticizing my good friend and premier character, Zope, is as laughable as it is insane.))) NEW NIRVANA ALBUM: Uh...I'm not real familiar with Nirvana. I know they were real popular and stuff, and the main guy killed himself, and his widow is a Hole or something. I never really listened to any of Nirvana's music. So, uh, well, I dunno. (((It's a real shame how much great music a "cool" person has to miss out o, just because it's "popular". Open your mind, pal! Just because a band is popular DOES NOT MEAN you have to shun it! I learned my lesson--Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins--I hated them all, in an irrational, warped manner. Now, I see the error of my ways, and enjoy all cool music as I see fit. The only thing I can't figure out is, whether it makes me cooler or less cool to disregard the lack of coolness in liking popular bands.))) DREAMFRANK DIARY: OOPS gotta go. It's 5:12 PM Saturday I'm back. Now it's 10:35 PM Saturday. Cool bit about the gigantic Iron Man robot. I haven't read Iron Man for about 18 years or so, but I remember the Mandarin as a really cool bad guy. In the dream, was it the REAL Iron Man (the Don Heck/Gene Colan round chest-beacon one from the sixties and seventies) or one of those new ones that looks kind of like a fucked-up imitation of a japanese robot toy? (((I'm not sure, but I DO know that he was turned to steel in the great magnetic wheel.))) Hey, while we're on the subject, here's a for-real transcript of one of my dreams. No, I did not make this up right now to try to be funny. This is actually from my bedside notebook: 6/7/95 DREAM 5:10 AM Flying cross-country on a cargo-plane that has been sabotaged by my arch-enemy, Mr Gutsy-Natural, so the plane won't slow down to land. Pilot to Co-pilot: "I think several hundred miles an hour is too fast. We're going to wreck." Delivered very calmly. Passenger: "I read somewhere that they pay them people who write magazine articles about consumer products to lie." We crash in the parking lot of Plaza East, a failed strip mall downtown from me that's been converted to state government offices. I wake up, heart pounding. Gee, that dream seemed more funny and interesting to me at the time. Huh. (((This is kind of unrelated, but me and this guy from work went to a restaurant called Caliente Cab Co., and there were these two girls sitting at a table right next to us, and one of the girls looked just like Clarissa from that TV show "Clarissa Explains It All". She was hot. Anyway, me and my friend had this lengthy discussion about Scooby-Doo, which we later realized would have killed any chance of us striking up a conversation with the ladies and going to a hotel to fuck their brains out, as if there were any chance of that happening anyway. I was saying, like, "Shaggy and Scooby were the only characters with any personality!", and he said, like "When I was a kid, I wanted to try a Scooby snack.", and I would say, like, "After finding out the monster is just a guy in a suit like a hundred times, why is it that they never figured this out, and always acted like it was a real monster?" You know, it's kind of sad that hot chicks who look like Clarissa don't appreciate discussion about Scooby-Doo. You know? By the way, this wasn't a dream--it was reality. Happened earlier today, 11/15/95.))) NEW JERSEY: Sounds like a place. (((That phrase, "Sounds like a place." is very 1982.))) Lord Of Obliviana: Wow! Most of the ATM's around here give out amounts as small as five dollars. I'm not health-obsessed or anything, but your power breakfast of 5 Macdonalds hash browns sounds like it could immediately form an impenetrable plastic-like grease-plug in some important artery or other and explode your heart into pleural cavity cave paintings of raw horror and goosh. Is this part of Obliviana? (((If "this" refers to the sentence the word is in, then yes, since it is in OsoaWeek, it is part of Obliviana. Of course, that's not what you meant, and my banal, literal interpretation of your question is also very 1982, but screw it all, all of it.))) Oh yeah, I forgot. The introductory theme music to the rough cut of the Braxton Monster documentary features a sample from one of your old recordings. I edited it and manipulated it pretty severely. I think it's you screaming. I grabbed it out of one of the files on PELTER after you told me there were sound samples hidden on it. (((To be fair, the screamer is none other than Peter Litkey, well-known to the readers of OsoaWeek.))) Okay! That is my response to OSOAWeek 40, concise and pungeant as usual. Next, I guess I'll read OSOAWeek 41. Not now, though. It's late. I gotta get up early and do stuff. OSOAWeek 41 7/9/95 11:25 AM GALE ZOPE: This reminds me of one of the coolest short science fiction stories ever written. You GOTTA find a copy of this story and read it right away. It's called "I See You" and it's by Damon Knight. I won't ruin any of it by telling you about it but it bears great similarity to much of the stuff you cover in ZOPE and SEVERE REPAIR and elsewhere. I read it 20 or so years ago and it completely blew me away but I forgot about it until just now. You gotta read that story, man! (((What?))) Cool ZOPE story, by the way. I like it bunches. LORD OF OBLIVIANA: This is the second time you've mentioned your weight of 220 pounds. In your old videos you appeared to weigh far less than that--or maybe you're seven feet tall or something. Odd that you mention your weight in relation to beer consumption so frequently. What's the deal, huh? What? (((Okay, let's get right into this. The weight/beer thing is based upon the theory that the heavier you are, the more alcohol it will take to get you drunk. I was trying to point out what a pathetic drinker I am, getting drunk on two beers. You mention "frequently"--how silly--I may have mentioned it twice, if that. Now, as to my weight, in college I weighed 145 lbs. Then I became a vegetarian, and gained 80 lbs., to my current weight of 225 lbs. I know you'll question the relationship between vegetarianism and weight gain, so I may as well explain it here. Basically, I have to eat more stuff in order to get the same nutritive value, especially because of my chaotic nature and my poor planning skills. That is, it takes some organization to be a healthy vegetarian--organization I can hardly spare from my Obliviana endeavors. I hope this answers your tired, semireal question.))) Glad to hear your symbolic moving/thunderstorm/rainbow incident. I had an experience like that. 11 years ago, after much adversity, my girlfriend and I got married in January and it was about 10 degrees outside, but when we got to the courthouse there was this beautiful freakish rainbow that appeared to come down right on the courthouse itself. We chose to take it as a portent of goodness to come, etc. Now, years later, the marriage is over and destroyed and my ex has became a nuisance who keeps showing up at my place and calling me often enough to fuck up my answering machine, even though I've told her again and again to stay away from me and leave me alone. Four days ago, she called me about a thousand times when I was getting ready to leave to edit that Braxton video, and when I wouldn't answer the phone she showed up here AGAIN with some goddam story about a demon and dead cats in her neighborhood and how THE EVIL had been around recently and a whole bunch of related garbage. So, I hope you enjoyed my little rainbow story. (((I remember my first girlfriend, Ilana, played the song "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie, and I thought it was sad and poignant--her listening to it, not the song itself. Even though, it is a sad and poignant song. God damn that killer virus that killed Jim Henson. He was the supreme being of creativity, he was higher than Lucas, and almost as high as Disney was. What a terrible, tragic loss. I remember being at work, Imaging International, had to have been '90 or '91--when I heard of the tragedy. Man, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, the Muppets--dear god, how could this have happened? I'll... I'll... I'll use time travel, and... and... go back in time and get a fresh copy of Jim Henson, and... and bring him back, and... and he can make more cool movies and stuff... and, uh, give me part of the profits since I'm the one who brought him back and everything... and put in in a bubble like the one from "The Boy in the Bubble" so no germs can get him...))) OSOAWeek 42 HEMULOMINSTREL REVIEW:DRUNKEN I am delighted that you've come to sing the praises of beer. I feel as you do on the subject. (((How 'bout an Obliviana Brewery--I could put all sorts of cool stuff in the beer! Yeah! "You Ale" maybe (referring to Superior 318--you know Superior--the thing you always skip over as if it weren't vital to the ongoing survival of the human race).))) CRAN-JAY ZOPE: I kinda like this one. The whole Lester Gulpem thing left me cold before, but in this context it almost works. One Gulpem drink name has stayed with me for quite some time. That one is EXISTY, which I think was a Pasta Beverage. Or maybe not. Maybe that was SQUOTHA. I'm not looking it up. (((Okay, let's clear this up. EXISTY! (note the exclamation point) is a Pretzel Beverage. SQUOTHA is a Hash Brown Beverage. And the Pasta Beverage you refer to is none other than HANDER. If you don't believe me, look all the way back to OsoaWeek001. By the way, was that a pun--"left me cold"--as in a COLD beverage? I imagine not, as you're not apt to use such weak instances of wordplay, but in some context, weak wordplay might be considered cool, especially if there's an abundance of strong wordplay about.))) Lord of Obliviana: Yeah. OSOAWeek 43 TRICK SOJOURN:SPICKS It took me about five minutes to stop laughing long enough to return to the keyboard and type this. E-MAIL FROM DMcDONIEL: Hey, I was all set up to read some compulsively in-depth commentary (you know, like the kind you get from that Panucci guy) and all I got was this. Piss. AWESOME COMPILATION TAPE: I was gonna skip over this section entirely, but I had to acknowledge the presence of one of the finest songs of all time, MINNIE'S YOO-HOO, which my littlest sis had on a 7" 45RPM record back in the seventies. It kinda reminds me of some of the best stuff by the BONZO DOG BAND, like HELLO MABEL, JOLLITY FARM, and MISTER and MRS. MICKEY MOUSE. Have you heard the BONZOs? They're this great band that broke up about a hundred years ago. (((As you will mention later on in the letter, I have indeed heard of the Bonzo Dog Band. As well, I know that these lists of the compilation tapes I have made are the lowest form of amateurish, fanzine, self-obsessed, self-indulgent, irrelevant, cringe-inducing crap--but it works because I'M THE LORD OF OBLIVIANA AND THERE IS SOMETHING UNIQUE AND IMPORTANT ABOUT MY COMPILATION TAPE! GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!))) LORD of OBLIVIANA: You have fond memories of your parents' separation. That is incredibly cool. Wow. I guess I've known you-by mail and phone-since 1986, the birth year of HalfEvil Graphics. That's a bunch of damn years there. What the hell ya want a ZIP drive for? The JAZ looks way cooler, but I haven't seen the price yet so maybe it's not a good alternative choice. It just seems neat that the JAZ carts hold a whole gig as opposed to the ZIP's 100 megs or whatever. (((ZIP's ppm (price-per-megabyte) is not too good. At approximately 20 cents, it's around 20 times more expensive than DAT tape. This doesn't figure in the price of the DAT drive, which is about $1000 as opposed to $200 for the ZIP. For $1000 you could get a ZIP and 53 disks. that's 5.3 GB. Then again, you could do 6 GB on DAT for about $1050. ZIP is easier to access and everything--but clearly for those who only have need to store and transport a few gigbytes. As for the JAZ, I don't know. One strike against it is that it's magnetic--as opposed to Magneto-Optical--which means that it is susceptible to damage from magnetic fields, unlike the MOs. See, this is one of my great strengths--being a technical genius as well as a creative genius. Kinda like you, Frank.))) NIHILISTICA:PAINFUL ESSAY ON ABORTION This is just about the worst jacking off you have ever done in OSOAWeek. Does anybody still give a shit about abortion? I haven't been paying attention. I think abortion is cool, but I really don't like kids, and I'd rather cut off my legs than be stuck with one, so maybe my opinion can't be considered impartial. (((Let me reprint the first paragraph of this essay: "I've been from one extreme to another on the abortion issue. Full Left in the late '80s, full Right in the early '90s. I've done a whole lot of thinking on the issue, and at this point, I think I have something worthwhile to say on the subject. And by the way, this is not parody or satire--just my true musing on the subject." Why would you call this "jacking off"? I'll tell you why--cuz you're totally pro-abortion, and unwilling to hear anything to the contrary. I can't participate in one of the most compelling intellectual discourses of the 20th Century without being uncool? Eh? My perspective on abortion is rather unique--apart from the hard right and hard left views. I mean, hey man, if you stick your penis into a woman's vagina, is it so much to ask that you take responsibility for the possibility of a baby being conceived? If you can't take the reponsibility, then don't stick it in. Get naked, lick each other, suck each other, whatever, but don't stick in the vagina. Cuz whenever you do, condom, pill, or whatever--a pregnancy can occur. But no--folks like you advocate that guys should be able to stick it in and be FREE of any responsibility. Don't worry, there's always abortion. Right? I mean, does this seem okay to you?--that your viewpoint serves to disintegrate personal responsibility in men? You must come to realize that politically-correct liberalism has become the status quo. To rebel, you gotta become a Republican. Conservatism rules. It's a whole lot funner than being a bleeding heart fuckhead. Not that I'm calling YOU a bleeding heart fuckhead, but, uh, you know what I'm trying to say.))) OSOAWeek 43 TRANSCRIPT ZOPE: Meanders. DREAMFRANK: Kinda sad. NEW JERSEY:FOUL RIFT What is this Expresso stuff? I've been hearing about it for years but I never stop at any coffee shops to get any and I never got around to asking anybody about it until now. I always drink coffee at home, freshly ground from the cheapest, nastiest grade of bean available, made triple- strength (3 spoons of ground bean per cup) and served with a third of a cup of non-dairy pre-sweetened french vanilla creamer in each cup of coffee. It makes things change size and shape for a few minutes, and the sweetener overload makes you sort of pleasantly nauseous. Try it! (((Espresso, which I sadly must limit my intake of due to palpitations, is a sensory pleasure several quantum leaps beyond regular coffee. The aroma, the taste, the high--you gotta try it, dude. Heck, if I could end all abortions, but only if I had to stop drinking espresso, I don't think I could do it. It's THAT GOOD, DAG NAB IT!!!))) Reading the Foul Rift adventure has weakened me. LORD of OBLIVIANA: I see you address the issue of SEVERE REPAIR development here. I'll discuss this with you later as we arranged. Wow! You got THRAK by King Crimson! I hope it's good 'cause I'm gonna buy it. I got a tape of the EP (VROOOM) and it's incredible. NIHILISTICA:THE OBLIVIANA CHANNEL I guess it's not so unrealistic an idea to store way more massive amounts of video on CD than is possible now because of the ultra-high density CD-ROM formats poking over the horizon. Your idea could be close to feasible, the problem, of course, being securing the requisite enormous quantity of fully-produced content to fill up a disk. Yow--as I get to the end of this bit, I see you mention the high-capacity CD's I just brought up. You're already thinking that way. Cool. OSOAWeek 45 Damn! You know how when you're reading something good and the urge to dump overtakes you, you of course carry your reading material into the can and keep reading while you crap? Well, I'm reading this OSOAWeek stuff and I gotta go the bathroom now, and I don't have a TOILET TERMINAL and I can't carry this computer and big-ass monitor into the bathroom so I suppose I'll just LOSE MY GODDAM TRAIN OF THOUGHT while I'm in there. Life is tough! (((I'm in a diner car on Amtrak, and there's some friggin' disoriented French bastard rambling on about AT&T and the stock market and shit with these two American babes. Anyway, yes--a display technology and interface that could be used while taking a dump would indeed be a benchmark. It will happen. Heck, you could do it already, with a PDA, but you'd have to transfer the text and by the time it was done you'd have gone in your pants, so that's not too useful.))) Ahh...that sense of intestinal void. Where was I? E-MAIL: I see you're going to answer my letter. I'll have comments and questions to make about your editorial intrusions into my copy. Re your taking me to task for disliking DURAN DURAN as a kneejerk coolness thing: That ain't it, man. I just didn't used to like their old music and image and all that. However, compared to most of today's pop stuff, it has a depth I didn't appreciate at the time. It still sucks, though, along with the bulk of everything else. Supreme coolness is passing judgment on stuff without checking the judged thing's status among one's idealogical peers-- that is, if you're one of the uncool cool who consider yourself to have idealogical peers. What the hell am I talking about? I forgot. (((I assume you mean "intrusions" in a good way. I had previously written "But you're forgetting that it's cool to like uncool stuff once a certain amount of time passes.", but decided to chuck it once I realized it was an uncool sentence.))) Yow. Nothing else to comment on here. Deep E-Mail. SONG OF THE WEEK: So you HAVE heard of the BONZO DOG BAND! Are they spectacular or what? Great choice! Uh...I believe they dropped the DOO-DAH after the first or second album--but it may have been restored for a collection issued in the seventies. LORD of OBIWANKENOBIANA: Not much to say about this one. It's rather of a personal and irrelavent nature. Future historians will no doubt unearth this mundane musing and marvel that such great atrocities could have sprung from one who, at least for a short time, labored under concerns and distractions no different than those that beset us all. But the GREAT KOLTICH WAR will change all that, when the madman to be known as GOD BALBI EFF NORA strides across the world killing stuff and stompin' on babies and great nations and laying waste to all the works of man and crap like that. Make sure you got film in the camera, man, you'll get some really dynamite pitchers when it all comes down. No lie! (((Your quaint little flight of fancy amuses me.))) That appears to be all the non-SEVERE REPAIR content in this batch of OSOAWeeks. When time next allows, I will absorb the SEVERE REPAIR chapters and tell you exactly what they're worth. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 7/12/95 Wednesday morning 6:12 AM Just a perverse aside--we premiered the rough cut of BRAXTON MONSTER last night to a group of 180 or so high schoolers (average age about 15) who were participating in a program for gifted teens from appalachia or something like that. I thought that during 2 distinct spots in the preview, we were going to be lynched. The kids have a pretty full schedule while in this summer program, starting about 11:00 AM and going for 10 or more hours to various classes and exhibitions and events, and by evening they're pretty tired and pissed off. Our showing was at 9:40, following a stultifying half- hour of PR from a chemical plant (where they store large quantities of MIC, the stuff that killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India about 10 years ago), and a 50-minute documentary about the nature of the pride and insularity of West Virginians (Jesus Fuck) so the audience was already pretty hostile. However, this same audience gave loud ovations to my heavily syncopated animation/music sequences, so our path is clear. Trim the interviews to the bone, even more extremely than planned, and put in tons more punchy music and relevent animated inserts as crowd pleasers. One thing I hadn't expected is how badly the test audience reacted to old people on screen. If somebody looked about 50 or older, no matter what that person was saying or doing, many in the audience yelled "Shut up" over and over. Steve, the coordinator of the event, told us we were very brave to have shown our rough cut to such a group. Yow! (((I hope you videotaped the whole thing, especially the kids yelling "shut up!" to the old people. Nothing I like better than an immature, snotty fucker hurling insults at the phosphorclone of an aged human. Um...))) 7/16/95 1:27 PM Sunday afternoon SEVERE REPAIR 39: TO VIXENWAY: Killer stuff. The Camp-in-bottle. The drama clam. Wonderful inventive things. The big INJURED SPARROW TRANSIT wooden UFO is a powerful image. Hey--is this Fratch guy and his publication STPRCNDCTR kind of an autobiographical allegorical reference to you and your various publications? (((Yes.))) Good chapter. Very different from the usual Severe Repairs. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just in a weird mood. Maybe this is a lot like the other chapters of Severe Repair. I just ate a bunch of cake and some eggs, and I hardly ever eat eggs and cake, and I feel really strange, as if the long-term absence from my life of eggs and cake have made me unusually sensitive to the pschoactive properties of these foods. Reality does seem a trifle askew, and the only odd occurrences of this day so far have been my consumption of cake and eggs, and the stuff that happened this morning that's too awful to talk about. (((Haha, yeah, it was.))) SR 40-SAVING COURIER ABHAY Seems like a short chapter. Liked the hellpower fight with the freak-turtles. SR 41-GNOBOSLAST Shredding the infernal maw is a cool idea with lots of visual potential. This dreality bit is packed fulla situational possibilities. I like the clumsy term "dreality"--it sounds kinda like "dreary reality" or "dire jollity" or "diarhetic realty" or something. Heh. "Reality D", as opposed to reality A (our more-or-less consensual one), reality B (known to us as dreams), and reality C (the odd aura of expectant consumption in shopping malls). What am I talking about. (((And the best part is, it turned out NOT to be dreality.))) WOW! Granticaine: "We're in Where Everything Sucks." That must be a place where um...god DAMMIT I forgot the stupid joke I was gonna put here. (((...must be the alternate reality where Bill Clinton beat George Bush in '92?))) SR 42-FINFORA This description of THE ALECHE DEGRASION book sounds like the outline of a really deep (in a pop culture kinda way) stand-alone property. It's all there, man. Really sixties. Kinda like that Heinlein book--the one about that kid from Mars--what the hell is the name of it. Shit, am I getting alzheimer's or what? Um...um...WHAT the FUCK? Uh, the kid's name was Valentine Michael Smith, and he grokked and stuff, and there was some kind of a religious angle...I wanna say it was I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM but that can't be right...yeah, that was some damn stupid Ellison thing...I dunno. Maybe it'll come to me later. ((("Stranger in a Strange Land"? Eh?))) Great ending, about not wanting to crush the machine's spirit and all that. Touching, yet twisted. A good dramatic combo. SR 43-Truly Makes It This emerging night-creature bit is easily one of the best passages you've written. What's a lamp dainty? STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND! That's the name of that damn book. It was impressive to me when I was a kid, but now it just seems kind of lame. (((Never read, never will read it, never vwonk read it.))) SR 44-BELLY A perfect followup to Truly Makes It. Hey, I just talked to you on the phone (It's Sunday evening) and you told me a whole bunch of stuff and I told you a whole bunch of stuff and then we hung up. I just remembered something from the Anything But Monday days. You and Massotto had just gotten your phone bill and there were some enormous charges for long conversations with me. The next time you guys called me, Massotto said something like, "Can the small talk. It costs a lot of money to exchange these pleasantries." He dragged out the word "pleasantries" oddly, kinda like "pleasantreeeeeeees", and it cracked me up. Once again, what I thought was an amusing memory is not amusing at all. These bulk low-grade memories are taking up a lot of room in my brain. (((Yeah, that Massotto. Too bad he lost his creative urge--think of all the cool stuff he could have written in the past six years.))) SR 45-THE MILDRED CORK Mildred Cork's electric dork was spraying on the mantle. Drops were flung like dots of mung and tumbled through the room. Plates of pork, imbedded forks aquiver with the patter Of the fibrous spew gave up miasmic clouds of doom. Thank you, thank you. This one is really twisted and adolescent and cool, and a hell of a cliff-hanger since it's the last one in the batch I have here. (((Damn, I really haven't sent you issues 46 thru 66? Sorry dude. They're on their way. If I get around to it, that is. But by the time you'll read this, issue 67... Screw it, I was gonna go into this whole time frame-of-reference thing, but I have to reserve my strength to do laundry tonight.))) Another great collection of work. (((Thank you.))) That's all for now, Frank, so keep me updated on OSOAWEEK, if you will, until I get a modem if I ever do that. Later. (((Fuck modems, fuck the World Wide Web, fuck America Online, and... and FUCK THIS GODDAMN SPELLING FUCK AS FUCK!!! THAT'S IT! NO MORE! FROM NOW ON, FUCK IS FUCK!!!))) Frank** Panucci 7/16/95 Sunday evening !@#@!@#@!##@!@#@!##@!#!@#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#!@!#@! 8/14/95 last-minute addition Just checked out your web page (I talked to you about it earlier today on the phone) and it's pretty cool. The graphics were sensibly small to avoid lengthy downloads and the layout and interface and stuff were impressive. You already know my opinion of the content. My brother looked at some thing you have on there called "Pilfereds" or something, and he said, "What the fuck is that?" (((A Pilferid is either a Flip or a Dire (read Pilferid backwards). There are 11 Flips and 19 Dires, and they go together to form the 209 Storms. This is all core to my very own occult system, 209. By the way, lately I've been calling Flips Elevensides, and Dires Nineteensides. That may not last, though.))) *OW* [[04067SU]] Superior SUPERIOR 373 Can. Imtertrontransic prototype here in theme park. Her, you have unresolved feelings about she is. Rinter the old west, gimme telecommunications money any old time. Here we are, we have more days than we ever thought. The time technology, never knew it could be so easy, we could do ten thousand years easy. And we drift, unhappy yet truable. Missing?... mall is. Mall is. SUPERIOR 374 Twas the mighty place to go, language, rushing to be, are many, & freeing the foulness inside to disperse or grasp. Rumtund, can we ever, I am trying, nothing J--marchoonis-oopial. There yet, yethery dusk trespassings, the glorious sting of the chill, it's like a symphony, with beauties there to blossom it. You don't know what I'm talking about--maybe--okay--I was with a group of friends, and we went to this private school at night and just walked into these buildings--inement of this building and had like a picnic and there were these girls there and one was so hot. But the memory of it, and the whole experience of it, was what I was thinking of when I started writing this Superior. Right now, I'm on the train, coming home from work, maybe gonna indulge in some reckless spending, maybe gonna get the new live Steely Dan CD. How successful is this blending of reality and poetry? I always said, Superior is not poetry. The strange ducking, I was full of yarn says you, and for many a fine pillow stuff, I was trying, and just the jay of thought, Fun or Fire. SUPERIOR 375 Yikes, was a mouse saying, in time un the goi back to kings are trying to ilip, knowert, stoom a storm of the love. Have structure, I have mother, dealy smuckthing. Do you see me as infinite, for I am like so infinite. Muctches. Ah yes, solve it all with the smell of awesome smoke. I won't be there. Dangerous yesterday, call it a flyer, and I'm great with tomorrow. The dame, call her a woman, she is a person, here is an observation--that making a woman a love object may be far worse than making her a sex object--talking about crushes and obsessions, how one so innocent and so uninvolved can so fluster you, and who are you to do it, but it is nature, and we deal with it. Human beings are nothing without their difficulties. Listen to me, I'm one of them. I think. SUPERIOR 376 As existing merely to regard the freeze aboard the good ship "Magnetic". My awareness is extending into sweet spaces. Finding your inner Norse goddess. I am Persephone. SUPERIOR 377 Astrid, when? Independence have to. Flyer foxmania the and turbulence and...! Some character blew apart... him was never was golo...! SUPERIOR 378 Licklink tovevver. Arpon language. Moster dialomp. Piscincia rantramp. Regal night brawling to team ruin. Scumlayer dortnait. Niff of Gosub. Song "I love you more today than yesterday" loser feeling buying yogurt. Apron language. SUPERIOR 379 Dortrait. Dorthate. House, wrappin efcayn, smelting paragraph, theories on nudity. She on TV am not naked unless nipple, pubic hair, buttcrack, or of course genitalia, are showing. Why not have a totally nude lady TV show where they block that stuff out only, with little flesh-colored dots? And... what sort of touching between these actresses would be okay to broadcast...? A touch on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek, a hand on a leg... Sounds like this show could beat both ER AND Murder One (time specific reference... top TV show battling for supremacy, Thursdays at 10... if you're far past Fall 1995 in time, you might not get the reference at all.) I feel to continue... SUPERIOR 380 To accomodate futurians, you must precognate their nature, or they'll just laugh at you. Pierce Brosnan is the new James Bond. I took banter too far at work on occasions in 1990 and 1991. Ha! Ha! I am warm and kicking, out here, able to ingore or pursue you as I please. Please, be in a hotel lobby in 1983. You expect the mirror image to mimic reality, you have a lot to learn. To look like that... personality... everyone around me... they all know each other... to simulate madness... caught in the scary streets of the city... and at a 7-11 in the suburbs--can you feel it?--a rising tide, a monster of a subtlety. Do you feel the need to judge, Siskel & Ebert Jr.? *OW* [[05067SR]] Severe Repair SEVERE REPAIR 54: "Witchcraft Paranoia Films" Witchcraft Paranoia Films sat on the train, and asked the woman sitting next to him what she was drinking. "Hot hydrogen peroxide." she answered. Indeed, that's what the smell was. He knew he recognized it from somewhere. "You can drink that stuff?" he asked, furrowing his brow in skepticism. "Oh yeah." the woman said. "You never get sick." She smiled at him. From the expression, he could see she was looking at him as he if were an idiot, perhaps part of a whole idiot segment of society. "Huh." Films said, holding the woman's gaze a second or two too long, then turning away. "Are you visiting?" the woman asked after a long pause. "Huh?" Films said, started out of some musing he'd just begun. "I was just wondering if you were visiting. You have a very interesting accent." "Yeah?" The woman nodded. "Yeah, I'm not from around here." he said. She reached over and touched the top of the first joint of his right ring finger with her left ring finger. Films wore bafflement on his face. "Do you know what that means, boy?" "No." The woman smiled. She looked kind of old--late-40s, early 50s. With the look of youth desperately holding on, in the hair, the sparkle of the eyes. "It's a request, from one unmarried to another, to indulge in undressed passions." Films felt a wave of concern fill him, he took a sharp breath, and looked at her with eyes so wide. "You don't know anything about this?" she asked. "Are you from another planet or something?" He nodded, and she laughed. "We go into the tussle room, get undressed, and share the pleasures of the flesh--all except that act reserved for the married." "Yeah?" "Where are you from anyway, kid?" "Um--something like what you said--another planet..." She smiled and shook her head. "They really do shield you youngsters in Deav these days." "Deav?" She stared into his eyes with a passionate glance, and he felt some part of her consciousness enter his head. She seemed to go through a bunch of several-second stages of ascertaining, then she looked away. "If you touch my ring finger we can go to the tussle room." she said quietly. "Here, on the train?" She smiled and faced him, looking a little worn out. "Of course--who'd want to travel on a train without rest rooms and tussle rooms?" "Um--everyone where I come from." he said, imagining kissing her with that hydrogen peroxide breath. "The tussle rooms, not the bathrooms." "What's your name, friend?" "Uh--um, it's Witchcraft Paranoia Films." "What?" "Witchcraft Paranoia Films." "That's your name?" "Yeah. It must sound strange to you. Most people just call me Films." "Huh..." she said, nodding. "Well Films, you can just call me The Sommern Swift." "Why?" "Cuz I like it." Suddenly a screeching filled the air, and the two were thrown forward as the train seriously decelerated. "What the hell..." Films growled. "Blam..." Swift mumbled. Soon the train came to a halt, and a scary silence rang--no engine or generator noise--just the talking of anxious passengers. Soon, an announcement came: "Ah, attention passengers. Due to a signal failure, we dumped our merval core into thin air. Just totally out there. There will be a delay of an indeterminate period before a replacement train can come to pick us up." "Settle in." the conductor added sardonically. Films sat still, looking out the window at rolling hills and farms. "Well there ya go." Swift said. "Those two vovos just jumped into the tussle room--you know long that'll take." Films didn't answer. Swift leaned over Films, squinting her eyes to peer out the window, one hand on his thigh, squeezing--ostensibly for support, but a more aggressive element there too--especially considering her recent proposal to him. "Where are we?" she asked. "The world of Snake Alan College." She turned to him. "Huh?" "Nothing." She nodded, and continued to scan the landscape. "I think I know where we are." she said. "Near Oholine. In fact... I think we're only a few miles from..." She turned to him again. "Come on!" She was up, grabbing Films by the wrist. "Hey, what gives?" "We're getting off this junk heap and goin' to The Casino at Hacta Home!" "What do you mean?" "I mean, the railroad's not gonna get its act together for hours, maybe days." she said, letting go. "So?" "So? So--I'll tell you 'so'. We're only a few miles overland from one of the most amazing attractions in the world." Films frowned at her. "And YOU need to make a phone call. The Casino's the closest civilization." He continued frowning. "The little mindscan I did?" she said. "It didn't get me much. But I know you're going to see someone, and that you're very anxious." "Do I have a choice?" She smiled a wicked smile. "Do any of us? Just look at the situation--we can sit in this decrepit old train for a day, or walk for an hour and get to the coolest place on Earth. So considering the situation, you DO have a choice, but you'd be stupid to--" "--okay, okay. But--who the hell are you--why are you so interested in me?" She narrowed her eyes. "Maybe I'm an agent of a government bureau that investigates the paranormal. And maybe we know all about this 'Dark of College' of yours. And maybe I just hooked a good one in you. And maybe--just maybe--I'm not a very loyal or obedient employee. And here's another maybe--you go along with me, maybe help me a little, and I'll help you." Films swallowed and stared Swift in her eyes. "Come on." she said. "Let's go to Casino." The doors of the train were still closed, so Swift kicked in a glass emergency case and took an axe out, which she used to shatter a window. "You know..." Films began, backing away. "What?" Swift said, glancing back at him for a moment as she cleared the edges of the window of glass shards with the axe. "You'd rather wait for the overpaid, incompetent, apathetic, retarded conductors to come along and open the doors for us? You think they want to take responsibility for passengers wandering off into the woods and getting destroyed by bears and Schall's daunks?" Films frowned. "Now come on, you!" Swift said, climbing out the window. "And mind the glass." "Whatever." Films said under his breath and followed her out the window, managing to cut his hand pretty good in the process. "Sonnovabitch!" he yelled, holding his hand and staring at it in horror, the kind of look you put on subconsciously to get sympathy. "Don't be such a baby." Swift snapped. "We'll have them look at it at the casino." "But--come on--this is... this is serious. I'm sure they have a first aid kit on the train..." he said as he turned back to face the train, looking for an entrance, since the window they climbed out of was too high. "Forget it, Films!" Swift said, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him away. "You better do things my way--remember what I said--I'm sticking my neck out for you--don't fuck up." "Look," Films said, with an exaggerated look of pain, "Just how far away is this place? I mean, I..." "I don't know. Not far. But it'll be a god damn eternity if you don't stop that whining!" "What...? Look at my hand... will you look at it? It's a deep cut, and... and..." He looked sincerely concerned. "What?" "I... I'm scared of the germs that might be here... on this... this world. I mean, okay I admit it!, I am from a different world. And... and there might be germs here that my body is totally unfamiliar with... I could fucking die." Swift walked right up to Films and put her hands on his shoulders, looking him in the eye. They were about the same height. He locked eyes with her, tears welling up in his. "Now listen to me, Witchcraft Paranoia Films. If you used The Dark of College to get here, you needn't worry. They who designed it were way ahead of you, in this germ issue and a whole lotta other things. They built in situational governors to protect you from such mundane hazards. In fact, that cut of yours should heal at a far faster rate than you'd normally expect." Films looked away, a frown on his face. "You wanted to kiss me just then, didn't you?" she said, hands still on his shoulders. "What?" "You heard me?" "What--are you reading my mind?" "No--I just have a little situational sight. You should have done it--on this Earth, things are a lot looser. So why don't you--why don't you just go ahead?" He looked at her, a few tears trickling away from his eyes, and moved forward to touch lips with her. He didn't press any further, but she opened her mouth slightly and touched his lips with the tip of her tongue. He responded, and soon they were in the middle of a truly passionate kiss. Films did taste a faint hint of hydrogen peroxide, but he didn't let it bother him. When the kiss ran its course, Swift let go of Films and started walking across a field, toward the woods. He silently followed. As they walked away from the derelict train, Films looked back to see a tall figure, a man with long brown hair, standing next to the train, wearing a dark overcoat. The man was staring at the two, and it looked like he started to raise his hand to hail them, but he stopped himself. Under his left arm were two bulging folders of papers. Films was puzzled--he hadn't been there a moment ago, but... he probably got out the window The Sommern Swift knocked out. Yeah, that was a good explanation. The walk through the woods lasted under an hour, without much excitement or conversation--the kiss kept both of them pretty quiet. After the woods ended, they mounted another hill, and that's when they finally saw the Casino at Hacta Home, and the commercial buildup that seemed to flow out of it like dozens of leaks. "Wow cool." Films said without much enthusiasm. "What's the matter?" "What do you mean?" "Something's bothering you." "Yeah, I don't know." "Tell me." "I don't know--just that guy back there by the train. He seemed like... like he wanted to talk to us or something." "Oh, him? He was probably just some fucking loser who thinks he's the author of a story where we're the characters. Those dossiers were full of information about our past and future, no doubt." "Huh?" "Don't worry about it. I encounter such people now and again. They always say that they're writing a story, and they decided to put themselves in it. Some of 'em even display amazing powers in changing reality, to prove themselves. Where they come from is a mystery. But just do what I do and you'll be happy--ignore them." "That's funny. I often feel like I'm just a character in someone else's story--the way things just seem to HAPPEN to me." Films was a stocky fellow with a broad face, short, unkempt beard, and mustache. Height a little below average, unstyled hair with bangs over his eyebrows. And he wore a baseball cap, the logo on which he knew no one else in this world would have--for the Vavon Sockers, a wiredrama team--consisting of a cartoon character punching, his fist "closer" and hence much bigger than his body, a V being formed from the rings he was wearing. The hat was black and the logo light blue and gray, with bright orange trim. "Well, don't worry about it--you're about to experience one of the biggest--if not THE biggest attraction this Earth has to offer--The Casino at Hacta Home! Lucky I brought along massive amounts of local cash, eh friend?" "I got a little too." *OW* [[END067OW]] -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----