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-------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A .
singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 087--3/22/96
<-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 7  ||  ------->
(Cup OWis087, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

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[[BEGIN087OW]]



[[01087CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 8 7 * * * March 22, 1996
"The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!"
by Frank Edward Nora

CONTENTS

01 087 CV--Cover
02 087 LA--Lord of Obliviana
03 087 NH--Nihilistica
04 087 SU--Superior

OsoaWeek087, March 22, 1996
9th issue of OsoaWeek Book Seven
Written by Frank Edward Nora

Published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement
(E-mail address in transition)
1-800-OBLIVIANA
http://www.obliviana.com/~osoa

All contents copyright 1996 Frank Edward Nora

Regarding this file, you are free to make digital copies, so long as they're not altered or sold. All other forms of reproduction require permission. An Obliviana Cup containing this file will be available. Stay tuned for more details.

ASCII Characters: 67049 / Words: 12030 / Lines: 1679
Days late: 0

*OW*



[[02087LA]] Lord of Obliviana

Thu 3/7/96 * 6:52 AM * NJT car 1469 * Tarb 3530

Right now, I still need to do OsoaWeek 84 and 85--but since this is the first non-catchup issue, I'm writing about the creation of Pelterset Pain Killer, in Nihilistica, below.

Tue 3/12/96 * 7:44 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3560

Five days is 120 hours.

Cruising, flying the rough Rahway.

Correction:

Cruising, flying through Rahway.

Cool mistake, eh?

Yeah, what am I doing here? I don't know. Going through a phase of questioning. Yeah, yeah. But I know enough not to allow myself to ruin what I've worked so hard to build. Yeah, yeah.

It comes to mind, the early days of Halfevil Graphics. I mention this also in "About Pelterset Pain Killer", below. June 6, 1986... I have "Big New Ark" #1 ready to copy... heading to Somerville to Quality Comics, and then to North Brunswick, to my father's office, to make copies...

Bridge over Rt. 22, and the car breaks down, my brother with me. Earlier that day, Peter Litkey got fired from Ortho, and I had to clean up a huge spill of Aci-Gel vaginal jelly...

6/6/86... I was into numerology back then, and I knew that 1986 equals 1+9+8+6 equals 24 equal 2+4 equals 6. So the date was 6/6/6, that most evilest of numbers.

Our parents were in Bermuda or something... we had to get our friend Jim Glynn to very reluctantly come save us...

The next day, 6/7/86, I went to the office and made the copies, maybe about a hundred, and folded each 4-page publication in half... just as I had done with Massotto on the first issue of Anything But Monday, several moths earlier.

So Halfevil Graphics had begun.

That summer, I created a new minicomic every week. The entire list is in OsoaWeek004.

Yeah, that list is 004... I refer back to it a lot... gotta expand that list to include ALL releases, including videos, Super Objects, etc. Could be tough to compile...

I don't know why, but a phrase from Superior 236 keeps going through my head, as kind of a personal motto... "I am a wristwatch made of mist." What the hell could it mean?

All this personal history. February 1986 was clearly the launch point for me... with the dawn of ABM, the creation of Zope, the occult battles... and a decade has passed since then... I think I'm ready now... my final exam was "Chemistry"... or maybe it was just the final lesson...

Yeah... I can imagine looking back on times like this, and I know that me in the future will be reading this... I have a videotape of Massotto and me talking to the usses a year in the future. We watched it more like seven years later... and it was weird, us talking to us...

It's interesting to do that... I have read things of mine which referred to future versions of me... it's interesting...

Just remember, these days were full of doubt and despair, financial instability and a messy apartment...

Whatever. I mean, ah... I guess I envision good times in my future... indeed...

A personal history. I've been and am out of touch a little... self-absorbed... always pining for having my own business, always working towards it, never quite getting there... I realized I have to break through this aspect of me to get my business going... but I can do it...

Yen years gone... man, what a decade it was for me... 1986 to 1996... I know I keep going over these years, but it really is something I gotta come to understand...

I think it will all make sense in terms of great success in the next ten years... I mean, I BETTER succeed before 2006... I mean, I'll be 38 by then... jeez...

This text will always be a part of Obliviana, as will anything I write in OsoaWeek. Yes, I believe that every word I write, sitting here on the train, tapping away at the keyboard... every word will be preserved forevermore in the digital realm... but far more important than that... I believe that it will have readers...

Tue 3/12/96 * 6:31 PM * NJT car 5526 * Tarb 3563

Yeah.

Can you believe it? Even at this stage of the game, my ideas are in constant flux. Oh well. As long as I keep to my deadlines, I'm sure I'll have something cool to go forward with.

I'm even questioning at this point whether or not the Obliviana Foundation will make it in... I mean, is that nuts, or what? The Foundation is awesome... it's just that... I've done some really awesome new Pelters since I finished the Foundation (in Pain Killer and Solitaire), ones which would definitely have made the cut. So do I redo the entire set of Storm Pelters, go through all that again? Or save these new good ones for something new? I don't wanna go through all that crap again...

So... the building blocks of Obliviana... this is what it's all about... are they the Roads?... and another thing... how Roads and Revolvers are disconnected... I think they should be connected...

This has been a big issue for a long time. I have a notebook from 1994 or something, and I read in it how I was debating this very issue back then.

And I just keep going around and around... circle after circle... of reasoning...

ENTERTAINMENT... that's the bottom line...

Constructs... of different creators... I would have a bunch for myself...

Confusion.

I need clarity.

So what is it all about? A game, a medium to digitally distribute entertainment, an occult quest, and of course, the Obliviana Girls.

Okay... where am I going with this?... clarity... okay... I'm beginning to see it...

Distinct areas of Obliviana... call them Roads, Revolvers, Scapes, whatever...

The set of all of these Revolvers will make up the entirety of Obliviana... that is, everything in Obliviana is in a Revolver.

And Tourney, that whole concept, would be another Revolver itself...

Entertainment releases, ie, Obliviana Cups, dis (digital infostimulation) will all be based in one of a set of Revolvers. Revolvers are also where Fonostas reside and play.

It's all starting to make sense now...

Saw some books about Frank Lloyd Wright today... something about him and his work have inspired me to move in this direction today.

So... Obliviana is divided up into these Roads/Revolvers... and that is the secret to it all... at any given time, there are X Roads/Revolvers, and this set comprises all of Obliviana.

I'm going with the term "Road" for now. Okay. So, each Road has its own set of virtual video games, entertainment releases, Fonostas, symbols, colors, music, themes, etc.

Considering the nature of Obliviana Roads, there will be a limited number possible at any given time in Obliviana's growth, because it will take great resources to support each one.

So, I have to decide what the first set will be.

Will there be a central road?

I don't know. I think so. But I have to consider the issue...

Zope and Severe Repair are Obliviana's top entertainment Roads, to my mind, along with Anything But Monday if Mike Massotto decides to support Obliviana. So, both Zope and Severe Repair will have Roads in which they reside, and in which they set the tone. ABM will also have a Road, but like I said, only if Massotto decides to.

209 will definitely be a Road. I mean, 209 stuff permeates Obliviana, but the actual occult practice of 209 is what 209 as a Road is.

Superior will also be a Road, though I admit it might not have the great appeal of Zope, ABM, SR, or 209. I do believe, however, that in time, Superior will become a very strong Road.

Forge of Wander, the Road of Antebellum and New Jersey, is a definite also.

Tue 3/12/96 * 9:19 PM * home * Tarb 3563

So what I have is... all the elements of Obliviana being collected into bundles... Roads... and this does a number of things...

A big thing is that since it will involve a lot of effort to create a new Road, the Revolver that it's based on has to have real value. To clarify terminology, "Revolver" is a general term for any core intellectual property, around which all manner of implementations orbit. An Obliviana Road is a building block of Obliviana, based around a Revolver, and containing virtual video games, resident Fonostas, Obliviana Girls, symbols, Quanxactive teams (whatever this may turn out to be), and so on.

I think that a central Obliviana Road will be necessary, because it will contain all the stuff needed to implement the game, as well as being a place to house the various elements of Obliviana which don't belong on any other Roads. Of course, stuff in the Central Road can be spun off, and new Roads made...

10:33 PM

Finishing up the compilation tape... maybe I'll detail it in Nihilistica...

Now, about other people and Obliviana... or rather, other creators and personalities... I can see other people creating Roads for Obliviana, but since it'll involve players of Obliviana, residing in and visiting the Roads, everything has to be done... uh... I mean, the mechanics and stuff, all have to be in the control of Obliviana... but the intellectual property... yeah, it brings up a conflict... with Roads so integral to the Obliviana infrastructure... have to consider the possibility of someone wanting to sever their association with Obliviana... the closing of a Road?... hmm... seems like it might make for good drama...

So now I have the underall framepoint... or rather... the basic foundation for everything. Okay. So Fonosta generation is part of the Central Obliviana Road, whatever it'll be called...

So my first task here, at this phase of the game, I gotta develop the initial set of Roads... maybe just four for the test run, with another four added for the launch...

A Road is like a house... all different aspects... each aspect executed in a unique way on each Road...

Thu 3/14/96 * 7:54 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3572

What.

What.

Frank Edward Nora here, Lord of Obliviana.

Fourteenth of March... Ides of March... whatever that means... some kinda Roman movie...

I feel like things are turning around. I finally have the right idea for Obliviana. Now the implementation can begin.

I gotta move in a few months and now I'm starting to fret about the downside. I mean, my current apartment has some nice amenities--amenities I've gotten used to--and being that I'm such a big baby, I'm not wont to give them up. I got the central heat and air conditioning, very awesome (except for the $100+ electric bill every month). Got the wall-to-wall carpeting. Got the second floor privacy. And for my commute, got the two hours a day on train, usually on Amtrak, which is more like an airplane inside than a train...

So I fear the loss of such luxuries. One place I looked at was Richfield Village in Clifton, and the apartments there are old--a hundred layers of paint, ancient gas stove, no refrigerator, hard wood floors, and maybe no AC. Yeah, I don't know about that place. Gotta find something else, I think.

So the next series of months holds a lot of change, a lot of hassles. Damn, gotta get my Jeep inspected before this month is over. And that's a hassle. But so is doing laundry. Gotta do that soon too. I think I've been wearing these jeans for two weeks or something.

The development and implementation of Obliviana is the focus of my life right now. I can't tell you how many convolutions I went through to get to my current plan for Obliviana, which I feel strongly will endure and become the official system.

And this official system has to be completed, ready for the test run, in about one month.

I can do it.

Yeah, so I think the first four Obliviana Roads will be centered on the Revolvers Obliviana Primal, Zope, Severe Repair, and Superior. The other four of the main eight Revolvers, 209, Halzapular Fuzz, Forge of Wander, and Super Objects, are not as well-developed at this point, so I'll wait for the official launch of the game in July to launch them.

Thu 3/14/96 * 8:28 PM * NJT car 5005 * Tarb 3575

Okay. So at work I was on the WWW downloading info on Repo Man. I listen to Repo Man on an audio cassette at least several times a week, and I'm moving toward being able to recite the entire movie by heart. Mike Massotto is further along than me--I think he'll get to 100% memorization before me.

Anyway, I left work and smoked a Garcia Y Vega Whiff (a shitty, cheap little cigar) on the way out, even in the elevator. Then I took a 1-Train up to 18th Street, and walked over to a used bookstore to fill out a book search form for the Repo Man screenplay, which cost me $1 (more than half of the money I have left till I get paid tomorrow).

I walked up 6th Avenue to The Wiz, and bought some AA batteries for my Walkman with my American Express card, since I got no cash. Then I went to Duane Reade in Penn Station and bought a box of Cheez-It Party Mix and seltzer water there, since it's the only place to get quick food with American Express in the area, I believe.

So I get on the train, and I'm sitting on the aisle side of a 2-seater, munching away on my Cheez-Its. Alotta people tapping the second seat of the 2-seaters, but I'm sitting pretty with my Cheez-Its, maybe deterring people from sitting next to me. Then I see this like six-foot-six woman coming down the aisle. And then, I see that it's like a guy--had to be--you know, she/he/it had that look. It's tough to look like a woman at that height--any suspension of disbelief is ruined by the height. Not that I'm an expert or anything. Really. Come on, I'm not!

Anyway, I'm sure you can guess the next phase of this rambling monologue--yes--this rather confused individual points to the seat next to me and I have to oblige, since it's against all laws and mores (and even folkways) to refuse to let someone in, since you pay for one--only one--seat.

So I'm sitting next to this person now. Sickening perfume. Horrible, gaunt hands. Scary.

My hands are too big to even pass as female. Whenever I go bowling, I always have a hard time finding a ball with holes big enough for my fingers.

And the stream of consciousness keep on rolling...

If my writing style seems different, I guess it's because I'm getting in touch with some supernatural level of my being lately. Y'know? Especially on that walk in nice weather before... almost spring... but fear of another snowfall...

Yeah.

Y'know, this guy Alex Cox, who wrote and directed Repo Man... it's like, Repo Man is the most awesome thing ever... I like it more every time I hear or watch it... it's a work of pure genius... but what happened? He made Sid & Nancy and Walker and Straight to Hell... but none of them came close to Repo Man... he made his masterwork first, and then never even got close to it again...

And as an artist myself, I wonder what makes that happen... such a blast of genius... then nothing...

I don't know. But it is a fear of mine, I guess... losing it...

Ah, bullshit. Y'know, I had my heyday back in 1989--if I was gonna lose it, I'd have done so in the early nineties... no way... my work is much better now than it was back then... MUCH.

Hahaha... Much Music... the Canadian MTV... hahahaha...

Okay.

I realized this morning that my lengthy, complex, and sometimes disturbing 100-mile-a-day commute is part of what keep me sane--by keeping me stimulated.

Yeah... the song "Android Warehouse" on my walkman... from the Steely Dan demo tapes... early version of Caves of Alta-something.

Yeah...

Having a family. Yeah... wife, kids, house, mortgage... all things that I don't have... but I want them... I want those things...

Passed Metropark...

So back to the most important thing--the development of Obliviana Primal...

The 8 main Roads... MY Roads... they are the core of OP. And I see other creators having Roads as well, such as Mike Massotto with Anything But Monday. And there are other people I have in mind to be Road Lords... (wonder if there's a biker gang called that?)... folks who have that spark of creative genius... like me!...

Missed "Friends". So what.

Fri 3/15/96 * 7:20 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3578

Burned my thumb. See I was buying coffee and the lid on the cup kind of just burst off and sent a wave of scalding java onto the topside of the first segment of my thumb. A little painful, probably one of those first degree jobbers.

Yeah. So I have to get Peter Litkey a birthday present today--I think I'm gonna try and get him a weasel skull... there's this store called Evolution, and they have shit like that there. (Most disturbing product--a bowl full of human wristbones). Anyway, it sounds like something different. A weasel skull... as in "What did you get for your birthday?"... "I got socks, a calculator, a belt, and a weasel skull."

Yeah, I hope they have it. I think they had a mink skull last time I went, and that's a member of the weasel family, I think. A mink skull's kinda in bad taste though, considering how so many are killed for their fur and all that... it's easy to see where all those skulls come from... a weasel on the other hand... who would want to kill a weasel?... I don't fucking know, man...

Song going through my head right now, incessantly--"Teenage Lobotomy" by The Ramones. Realized that the Star Wars character Lobot could have been named after "lobotomy".

44 degrees outside. Looking at the top of a billboard... little rectangles... CMYK, CMYK, CMYK...

It occurs to me that a lot of people don't know what CMYK is. Well folks, it's a printing term, an acronym maybe... or maybe not... I think I heard once about some assholes pronouncing it "smik", in which case it would be an acronym, but if folks do pronounce it like that, they're few, far between, and deserving of a severe beating. What you say is "see-em-why-kay", and it stands for Cyan Magenta Yellow Black, the four colors of the four-color printing process.

Big deal. Who cares. Printing is pretty boring.

So back to the prime focus... Obliviana Primal...

(long pause)

At the center of Obliviana are 8 Roads... my Roads...

Roads have several attributes. Each is founded on a single Revolver. It is also a place, where Fonostas reside, visit, and play. There are a number of virtual video games on each Road, as well as an overall theme...

47 degrees now.

Just had a breakthrough in Deluge of Primacy, the candle game... it and Vamershee are two non-digital games of mine... I think that they're part of 209--Friction Enhancers... or could they be related to Super Objects?

Obliviana Parlor... folks playing Deluge, Vamershee, drinking Reality Tonics, watching Beublin A. Richardson on TV, browsing Obliviana on the Internet, eating at the Candi Bar... (Candi Bar... an idea of mine from 1989... like a sushi bar, but the raw material is mass-market candy, prepared in a variety of ways (ie, Three Musketeers fluff coated in Pixy Stix powder, yellow M&Ms on a split Milky Way, etc.)), all that...

See how I'm avoiding the main issue?

Look. I start with the idea of what a Road is. Then I build the 8 core Roads...

Whatever happened to that band "World Party"? I remember an album "Goodbye Jumbo". But I never got into them. Or him. I remember it was just one guy... huh... wonder why that crossed my mind... weird, how you can be so famous one minute and nobody the next...

Me, I'm nobody one minute, and also nobody the next. Love that self-effacing humor. Love that self-referential humor.

Yeah, I got the right idea now for Obliviana. Hey! Why not have non-digital games on all the Roads! That is, stuff like Vamershee and Deluge could be Road-specific! Yes indeed! Maybe!

Well, almost there. Then on to the subway, then the elevator, than AT WORK. Yup.

Fri 3/15/96 * 9:18 PM * Amtrak * Tarb 3581

Petrified wood.

That's what I got for Peter at Evolution. That place is sick man! Those human wristbones for $2... one of the most, if not THE most disturbing product I've ever seen in a store... except for the skeleton of a five-month-old fetus in a bell jar... also there...

And human skulls! Jesus H. Christ. five, six hundred dollars most of 'em. I mean, aren't they like some persons' remains? Where the hell do these people get this stuff? What is someone gonna do with a human wristbone? Christ...

I can only imagine... the story behind that fetus skeleton... dear god... what kind of monster could do that? Strip the flesh off the bones... for cryin' out loud, why did I give that place my business...

Okay okay, snap out of it Nora.

Anyway, I got Pete this petrified wood, but even as I walked to the cash register, I realized I wanted it for myself. So I got him a piece of amber with a bug trapped in it--supposedly 30 million years old, but who knows? Anyway, the cool thing with it is there's a color microscope printout with it, so you can see the bug real big.

So I kept the wood, petrified wood, and scanned it into the computer. It looks awesome, man! I think I'm gonna incorporate it into the main Obliviana logo.

Actually, I think it was the fact that I just blew $40 ($19 for each item) that sent my mind seeking justifications for my purchases. First I thought I'd give one thing to Pete, and one to my brother. But neither thing was appropriate for my brother. So I decided on using the wood as a part of the Obliviana logo on the WWW.

No weasel skulls, by the way. They had nutria and beaver, and a whole lot of others (including some sorry broken squirrel skulls), but no weasel.

So this petrified wood thing... y'know, the piece I scanned was polished on one side, cut flat y'know. And think of it... something preserved from so long ago... a living tree... it's tissues preserved for quite a while (few million years?) in the Arizona petrified forest... preserved, and now back...

Whoa. On my thumb, where the burn is, a tiny drop of water is forming... I wiped one away before, but another came back... weird... I wiped it away... let's see if it comes back...

Burnt by coffee... there you go...

So I went to see the movie "Fargo" before... alone... what a fucking great movie... I gotta see it again... people complain about the quality of movies these days, but every so often a film like this comes along... an absolutely engrossing, artfully directed masterpiece... see it... it's probably at your local Blockbuster by now if you're far enough in the future. Or available digitally if you're a little farther along. Or maybe not available at all, if you're reading this on paper in some nightmarish postapocalyptic world. Anyway, I believe it just came out today... not even playing in Jersey yet...

Jersey Transit night trains are painfully sluggish...

Took a cab after I left the theater to get this train... and I'm gonna hafta get another cab to get back to the park and ride lot by the Plainsboro Post Office. Yeah, missed the last shuttle by quite a span of time... last one was two hours ago...

Last night figured out a line in Repo Man with Massotto... the Rodriguez Brothers after they steal the Malibu... Lagarto says "We're just the mules." It took me years to figure that out. It sounds like he's saying "hajoas da-mewelz", which I took to be something in Spanish...

Oh, so I called Alex at Neetorama before... he's the dude who owned Quality Comics back when me and my brother John were Marvel Zombies. I asked if he had the TV version of Repo Man in his extensive "Twonky Video" collection... but he didn't... guess I'll have to get TV Guide and wait till someone decides to show it...

Anyway, I asked him about getting the script (which as I related, was painfully impossible here in New York). He said like "oh sure, Script City in LA". So with just that info, I called information in LA, got the number, and ordered the script for myself! I paged Massotto and told him, and he then pressured me into ordering HIM one, to be sent to his home. Well, it wasn't really a problem. I didn't cherish the idea of calling LA again (with my calling card number, be kinda hard to explain calls to LA to the boss) but I told him I'd do it, showing that I'm willing to do something good for him. He has this whole thing about me destroying Anything But Monday and his life and everything. Yeah.

Yeah, so each script was $20, plus $5 shipping, plus $15 rush delivery (3-5 days as opposed to 3-5 weeks--the thought of waiting WEEKS for something like this is utterly inconceivable to me and my attention span)...

So the charge on my Amex was like $80! But Massotto is sending me the $40.

So there we are. Another day in the life of Frank Edward Nora. Repo Man, Fargo, petrified wood, human remains for sale, severely geriatric bugs, taxi rides, all that. Y'know, for a loser, my life is pretty damn interesting, y'know?

This morning on the subway platform I feared death. Really! I thought about like, what if I were to die today, what would happen to my affairs? I mean, my apart with all my precious belongings... my writing, still in fetal distribution... if I were to die, it would all be for nothing.

I don't fear a timely death. I feel that once I achieve all I want to achieve in this world, once I get old, death is just part of the old game. But notice, I fear an untimely death mostly because it would screw up Obliviana! Haha... remember the story of my thinking of suicide as a kid... and knowing that I'd get a Super-8 movie camera to do animation dissuaded me from that course of action... well... like I said before, somewhere in these bytes of Obliviana, I don't think I was serious... just musing... but it's funny... how my will to live, my reason to live, my reason to fear death, is my creative pursuits.

But I don't wanna be a hermit. I want a wife and a family. I don't reject convention out of hand. I don't. I used to, but I'm older now. And so much more mature.

I think that since I was SO intellectually supercharged and SO undercharged in my emotional maturity... in my adolescence and early adulthood... because I was SO awkward and SO naive... such a mess, so unable to be a normal guy... because of this, and because of circumstances, and because of my personality... where am I going with this?... I mean, I think I've managed to mature pretty far beyond the average in the past decade... cuz I have taken chances and I have locked eyes with life...

"This morning on the subway platform I feared death. Really!"

Damn that's a good line! I really meant it, too! Haha, I love it when I write cool stuff like that!

Dig that self-reference!

Yeah yeah.

So I had this dream a few night ago, and it was so fucking macabre. People were disappearing, from the top down, as if an invisible plane were passing down their bodies. It was like these people were being "peeled away" into the fourth dimension. Read Edwin (or is it Edward?) Abbot's "Flatland" to see where I'm going with this, if you're not with me. Awright? Okay. So like, a 2-D person would be flat, and if you peeled him off that plane, his fellow would see him disappearing as if a LINE were passing down him, vanishing him as it went. So that's what this dream was like. The idea was that these people were being destroyed so that they could be regenerated and improved somehow. Shades of Logan's Run, eh? Anyway, my mother encouraged me to do it, and even helped me get my body disappeared, with alarming aspects. But I wasn't in my body anymore... I was outside of it, helping my mother get it disappeared...

Sick, huh?

So I gotta address the fucking pronoun debacle. Okay, I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty positive some fucker decided to solve the his/her problem by just going with HER! Haha! What a fucking goddamn bullshit idea! Fuck, what?--it's politically correct to throw women a bone... using their fucking pronoun for all people? Why, cuz they were mistreated in the past? FUCK THAT! YOU CAN'T FUCK WITH LANGUAGE LIKE THAT! AND JUST CUZZA THAT, YOU'LL SEE NO HIS/HER IN OSOAWEEK, JUST ***HIS***!!!!!

Whew. That was some tantrum. And ladies, don't come off calling me a misogynist or something... I'm talking about language here... and a smug, cynical, PC idea... kind of like George Bush nominating Clarence Thomas, like "You fucking liberals want a black? Here ya go fuckers, haha, only catch is, he's the most conservative guy in the whole fucking country so FUCK YOU! If you oppose him, you'll be racist, and if you accept him, you'll be backing a conservative. You liberals are all a bunch of FUCKERS!!!!!"

You get my point. It's darn fun, but a really cynical move, politically. And that's my point with the HER thing. I gotta do some research on this... someone has had to write about this... it makes me so mad...

It's an insult against women. Throw 'em a bone. Here's a fucking pronoun, sorry you weren't allowed to vote and stuff until till like 80 years ago. Or be taken seriously in most jobs. And that whole thing about Eve royally fucking humanity forevermore. Whatever.

I view women as human beings, and treat them as such. That's why I never get a date. Be a nice, women wanna be your friend. Be a bastard and women wanna suck your cock and get fucked by you. Go figure.

Well, I think I'll end on that high note. Wish me luck on like not dying on my way home. Haha. That would suck. Like SO much.

Sun 3/17/96 * 9:24 PM * home * Tarb 3593

I just heard from my grandmother that a comet is coming.

Wow. Another awesome sentence there.

Anyway, it's called some Jap name like Hatsumoto or something, and will be at its brightest on 3/25/96, not long from now. Also, on 4/3/96, there's gonna be a total lunar eclipse, so the sky's gonna be full of insanity. If you were superstitious, you might be wont to believe that such things in the sky would portent big events here on Earth...

Saw a story on Area 51 on 60 Minutes before. Area 51, AKA Groom Lake, AKA Dreamland, AKA god knows what else, is a super secret government base of some sort where people think they have UFOs and stuff. Guess it's not all that secret if they have it on 60 Minutes, though.

Anyway, my theory on UFOs and aliens is that they're fairies. Y'know, all the accounts of fairies in all cultures? Weird little humanoids that humans would sometimes encounter? Well who says the little monkeys didn't develop technology as we did? I believe they live in an alternate place here on Earth, separated from us by the Veils of 209. Veils of 209. Just made that up. Sounds good.

Anyway, since I don't really believe in outer space, I believe that UFOs gotta come from here.

Oh yeah, finally found the article in an old WIRED about people who believe the moon landings were fake. They mentioned the Flat Earth Society in California, who, like me, don't even believe is space. Maybe I'll contact them, get a newsletter or something... I could check the phone listings CD-ROM... okay, gotta eject the "Girls Doin' Girls 2" CD-ROM...

Nope. No Flat Earth Society listed. I love playing around with that phone CD-ROM. All the phone listing in the country. A year or two old, though...

There are several other Frank Noras in the world, besides my father and my deceased grandfather... be cool to meet one sometime...

No other Frank EDWARD Noras though... as far as I know...

And I'm listed on the CD as Frank Edward Nora, you know. Cool.

So, Obliviana.

The idea of 8 Roads is right there. Each Road has a core Revolver, and is also a place where Fonostas live and visit and play.

Drank a V-8 with the juice of two lemons before, okay?

Good sentence.

Come on man! Get back to the subject at hand!

I sure hope these words are being read in the future. What year are you in? Gotta be some folks reading this in the 21st century, eh? Eh? Could even be me in the future, in the 21st...

Guess I won't make it to the 22nd myself. But these words... these words'll make it there for sure... what an awesome thought... that I'll live on... that Frank Edward Nora will live on, through these words... and so many more...

I think sometimes about writing an autobiography... I'm totally self-absorbed... but why not... I have so much to say... and I'm the only one taking myself seriously at this point...

It's true. No one else takes me or Obliviana seriously right now. Haha, I know that might sound crazy, considering what Obliviana may one day become... but right now, St. Patrick's Day 1996, Obliviana is still so fetal... still so nothing...

All in the future...

So earlier I was organizing my shit in the attic of one of my grandmother's garages... and I came across one of a set of encyclopedia from the 1930s... and I found a piece of paper inside... on one side was scrawled mathematical formulas and scribbling, but on the other side, scrawled in childwriting...

"JUST MAYZIE AND ME"

Wow! Could it be the lovelorn musings of an kid student ( I would hope), or the name of some book he (or she) had to write? Or... could it have been a girl... experiencing the first glimmers of lesbian lust...

Anyway, I'll probably scan it in and present it in Obliviana in some way... at some future date...

Beatles Anthology 2 goes on sale day after tomorrow... heard it at Borders... sounds damn good... seems a lot better than the first one... even has a presumably alternate version of "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)". I may have to get it...

About to listen to Sgt. Pepper... from a tape I made long ago...

Sgt. Pepper... now there's something people will be listening to for the rest of humanity... I wonder how The Beatles will be viewed in 100 years... 500 years... 1000 years...

See, that's what time travel is for... to figure out cool stuff like that... or stuff like... finding an alternate reality the tiny writing on the ceiling said "no" instead of "yes"... where John Lennon never hooked up with Yoko Ono... imagine the alternate songs and albums that would have been created...

Billy Shears... Ringo's Sgt. Pepper name... I wonder what the other Beatle's Pepper names were...

But back to the central idea... Obliviana... the game...

Let me look back to OsoaWeek001... ever receding into the past...

Here... let me reprint the entire "Lord of Obliviana Revelry" from OsoaWeek001...

* * *

Ah, how refreshing it is to be here at the beginning of such a wonderful enterprise. The time has come for Obliviana Super Occult Amusement to burst upon the scene! Yes, it's beautiful, isn't it? Can't you see it?

Hi there. I'm Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana. Welcome to OsoaWeek001--the very first issue of OsoaWeek!

If all goes as planned, there will be a brand new issue of OsoaWeek waiting for you to download EVERY THURSDAY! Each issue is chock full of killer, stimulating text, and that's not all. Obliviana Super Occult Amusement (Osoa for short) is a GAME as well.

To play the game you need to establish your Fonosta--and everything you need to do that is here in this issue! Get your Fonosta in early, as each established Fonosta will get a sequential number. The lower the number the cooler the Osoan, or so they say! And hey, it's FREE! Heck, OsoaWeek is FREE too! What am I, nuts?

Well, I am a little zany, but I'm not doing this for my health. It's my hope that through free distribution and game play, all the intricate multitudes of Osoa stories, characters, concepts games, etc. will become more familiar to everyone. As well, I will be selling limited-edition, ultra-cool products in the CATALOG OF OBLIVIANA in these very pages.

Help me people. I'm trying to get this really cool company going, and I need your help. I'd like to see this ezine distributed far and wide. I want people to have the opportunity to find something FUN on the net for once. So please post this file in places where you think the users would enjoy it!

OsoaWeek is designed to be very portable. Each issue is a plain vanilla ASCII file, designed to be readable on just about ANY computer in the world. And though the content can get a little wild, OsoaWeek is intended to be about "PG-13". Any "bad" words in OsoaWeek are "censored", ie, f*ck, sh*t, etc. This may seem a little inane, but who knows who's out there searching text for such words? Well, those words aren't in here! (If anyone asks, say the words are "feck" and "shet". If they ask why these words need to be censored, tell them they are "Internet illiterate".)

But hey, there's a lot of great stuff in OsoaWeek, sure, but registering your Fonosta is the most important thing you can get from Obliviana. It's something which will literally allow you to live forever in the Digital Superworld of tomorrow. And for today, it's the central part of a darn fun diversion!

So delve in, and by all means, e-mail your Fonosta and/or any comments or questions you may have to obliviana@aol.com. And if you'd rather we didn't publish any of your correspondence, please say so. Otherwise, it may appear in the letter section.

Well, now I have to go over and make my State of Osoa Address--see you there!

* * *

Yeah. Look at that. Nowhere near as stream of consciousness as I've now become. No ellipses at all!

Huh. Well, you can see that this new idea I have for Obliviana is the same idea I had back then, just a LOT more developed...

"Oh, it never could be any other way... I will fuck you like a superman..."

That is, in case you're Beatles-illiterate, the forward and backward interpretation of the "Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove", a little track at the very end of Sgt. Pepper... very interesting... another facet to the eternal mystery that is The Beatles...

"Fuck." Weird how I used to spell it f*ck. I was so paranoid about fuck and shit. God damn it. Fuck those shitheads who wanna ban fuck and shit...

No. I take that back. By focusing on a handful of forbidden words, other, more severe, forms of censorship are curtailed...

Ah, what am I rambling on about? Censorship. How boring.

Gotta go to bed now. Somehow, I think this issue's LOA will become pretty famous... or infamous...

Goodnight.

Mon 3/18/96 * 6:51 AM * NJT car 1393 * Tarb 3596

Well, coming to the end of the 36th Tarb Century. Y'know what? I missed the 17th 209 Tarb, about a week ago! Darn it! Fiddlesticks!

Simplicity. It makes sense for Obliviana to start out simple, and then develop complexity.

If the Macintosh encodes time as the number of seconds since 1904 or something, then I should pretty easily be able to convert that into Tarbs. Just, seconds minus the seconds at 2 AM, July 28, 1994 divided by 14400 (the number of seconds in four hours, a Tarb). This should produce both positive and negative Tarbs.

7:21 AM

The Game of Obliviana will begin in a little over a month. April 26. That's some challenge. I tellya. Going from where I am now, to getting the game going--with PLAYERS--in a little over a month? A true challenge.

Gotta finish this issue soon... wanna keep OsoaWeek ahead of schedule...

Defining an Obliviana Road...

REVOLVER

THEME

NAME

Mon 3/18/96 * 6:08 PM * Amtrak * Tarb 3599

Look at that--we're at the end of the Tarb Century! Less than four hours to go till the 37th Century!

Revolver, Theme, Name...

6:49 PM

They were filming "First Wives Club" on my block at work... I saw Bette Midler as I was walking back, holding my nachos and babaganoush. She looked short and squat, and not at all interesting. In fact, I don't know if there's a LESS interesting celebrity out there. Now, if it was someone like Sherilyn Fenn, now then I might have flipped out. Sherilyn Fenn, man, she's hot...

I thin that if Obliviana becomes a big success, with me at the helm, I'll be a WHOLE lot more attractive to women. I mean, my failures in love are all my own fault... you can't fault the entire female population... I gotta make myself attractive... I mean, I wouldn't be all that bad looking if I really got myself into shape, y'know, the whole nine yards. But the same mental block that has been preventing me from cleaning up my apartment is likewise stunting my appearance. But I think I am blasting through all that garbage.

If I had a band right now, I think I'd call it "Phase Cop", after the Pelter...

Maybe I should start a band... I mean, I DO have a guitar, after all...

Mon 3/18/96 * 11:09 PM * Amtrak * Tarb 3600

Happy new century!

Yeah.

I tellya, um, Murder One continues to amaze me. It's definitely the best show on television right now, by far. The closest TV show to it is Twin Peaks; I can truthfully say that Murder One is almost as good as David Lynch's masterpiece. What sucks is the way ABC scrambled MO's schedule, putting it up against ER, on hiatus, all that. MO deserves so much more... I savor every second of the show... only 5 episodes left, and then... I guess it'll be done for sure. But I look forward to seeing the episodes I missed. I hope they release it on video. Or something.

So, the new Tarb Century. The 36th Century was very good for me--I have reoriented myself in many ways. I now have the right conceptual foundation for Obliviana, and I can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel to my interconnected problems of messiness, financial disorganization, personal appearance, and failure in love. Things are looking up, and I'm cautiously optimistic.

But I do have this whole moving thing ahead... the prospect of a drop in my standard of living... which of course I could curtail with enough effort... I am tired of such stormy seas, leading to nothing but maturation... haha... I guess maturation is the most vital component to my future success... but I think it's time for the soul tempering chaos to subside, and the true work toward success to begin.

Look at me. I... this is just so... central... to being human. I mean, I have so many areas in which to improve... and the challenge to better myself is exciting... to be human means a constant need for challenges... problems... no human is ever without problems... but problems can be pointless, and just trouble for trouble's sake... or they can be challenges which, when overcome, move you forward...

I'm sure others have come to the same conclusion... but nothing beats coming to these realizations through personal experience... cuz you'll never really understand it unless you've been through it...

Growing up is hard, especially for folks in the jungle of Generation X... such a coddling upbringing in the '70s... destructive, liberal ideas in full force in education... "Be yourself.", "You can do anything if you put your mind to it.", "You have no boundaries.", "Do what you want, what makes you happy."... Such platitudes wreak havoc upon people... because they make for more comfort in the short term but more distress in the long term... I don't know about my generation... I think, at 28, I'm finally getting out from under these rotten ideas... but I fear that my case is atypical... and I know we'll all be dealing with the crippling effect of these liberal ideas for years to come... as the severely-flawed Generation X stumbles onward... as the reins of power are passed on to us...

But for all these flaws, I think that one defining, strengthening characteristic of Generation X is a sense of wonder... an innocence... and this is something that Generation Y doesn't have... today, kids are jaded because being anything but is totally uncool... this new Generation that's rising has all the faults of Generation X, but not many of its redeeming qualities...

This is starting to sound pessimistic, and in a great many ways, it is. You have to wonder... the collapse of values that occurred in the '60s is bound to have a tidal wave of bad stuff, and it does, still reverberating here, in the middle of the '90s.

Haha, it's a cliche that once you define a problem, you're supposed to propose a solution... and I feel the urge... I guess that one thing I can say is that underneath it all, we're all still human, and human beings live for solving problems...

But just look at Communism. In Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam... in so many places... Communism was a holocaust that cost hundreds of millions of innocent lives... societies can go down the wrong path, and when they do, the results are often disastrous. In America, we have been going down the wrong road for a long time now. And I don't know if disaster can be averted.

What kind of disaster? The slow disintegration of America. Because make no mistake--America is not so much a place, as it is a set of ideals. I know that the American ideals will live on, always, but I don't know if they will live on in all of the land that the United States now occupies. If you look at the major cities of America, you can see parts of America crumbling, where the American ideals are just about gone.

This might not seem like such a problem... because good, productive people will always flock to commercial centers, and prevent total ruin, right? Wrong. With the Internet as it is today, doing business electronically, with no regard for one's physical location is becoming somewhat feasible. Another 5, 10, 15 years of advancement, and many, many businesses will be able to function without being in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, and so on.

I live and work in the New York metropolitan area. And I can tell you, many people I know are talking about Arizona, Colorado, New Zealand, whatever. But people are shackled to New York because there's work here--good paying work. But digital communications are slowly slackening these bonds. It's all pointing to a mass exodus from the cities... the good, productive people will move away, heading for the west, the south, the islands, foreign lands... and what will be left in the cities? People who are neither good nor productive. Cities full of incapable people. The result will be utter ruin for the cities. Parts of America will fail to really be part of America. And this will happen within a few decades.

So what then? Will all the former New Yorkers living in the west appreciate being taxed to support the bums in the cities who can't support themselves? No way. As the big cities deteriorate, you can be sure that the good people will resent being burdened by the incapable. This could lead to some sort of breakup of the United States.

And make no mistake. When I say "good and productive", these are not code words for "white". Anyone can be good and productive, and though a lesser percent of blacks and Hispanics are good and productive, there is nothing holding them back from escaping the cities along with the white people. And I'm sure they will.

I guess what this is all leading up to is the need to view America as an ideal, and not an area of land. If you hold dear in your heart the American ideals of freedom, taking responsibility for your own life, being responsible, pioneering, and working hard, you are truly an American.

So whatever happens to America the country, and the land it's on in North America, remember--America is in the hearts and minds of good people. If space travel is real (which I seriously doubt) America will live on in the stars. If Obliviana succeeds in discovering alternate realms here on Earth, America will thrive in those wild new places.

But I guess I have to say that being a true American means being willing to let go... to let go of parts of America which are parts of America in name only...

I consider myself a true American. I have a deep, powerful love for the United States of America. I love the flag. I love this country. And I always will. But there are many, many people residing in this land who at best are neutral about America, and at worst, hate it with a poisonous venom. These people will never be true Americans, whether they are liberal college professors or immigrants from foreign lands who piss on our great country while reaping the benefits of being here. They can never be anything more than visitors, no matter what their legal citizenship status.

These bad people will destroy themselves, and portions of America in the process. And there's no way to stop them. Because to do so would be unamerican. No, it is a great paradox, but at this point, the means that would be required to stop the enemies of America would be too draconian to be American.

America depends upon the quality of its citizens. As that quality goes down, so sinks America. But it won't be all of this North American land, nor will it be all the people, who fall into ruin. It will just be part. And make no mistake--there is no way to cure the disease of antiamerican people. Like I said, these people will destroy themselves, because they will leech off the good people more and more, until finally, the supply of blood, sweat, and tears will be cut off. And when that happens, the antiamericans will have nothing to fall back on, save for violence. And I need not point out that the smarter, more productive people always have the better weapons, and always win.

Haha, what am I talking about, another Civil War? Maybe, but I don't think it will come to that. The true Americans will have no desire to take back land that is poisoned beyond all salvation. No, the good people will settle for defending what they have. If we lose Southern California, Detroit, New York, and who knows where else, remember... it's a big continent... and there will always be room for good people.

For my part, I will seek to define and promote the most basic principal of all--being a true American. Obliviana might seem to be an iconoclastic, subcultural, anarchist venture, but it is not... it is a wild, free, pioneering effort, totally in line with the American Dream.

I believe in America. And many, many other out there do too. And my generation... Generation X... is sick of being poisoned by antiamericanism... and I believe that this generational soil is fertile for a resurgence of Patriotism.

And for those of you who see America as a force for the suppression of women, gays, and blacks--take a step back and look at the rest of the world. Where is there more freedom, more tolerance? Nowhere. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... these are the most basic ideals of America. And they apply to everyone. It took the better part of a century to resolve the paradox of slavery, but it was resolved. The North never wanted slavery to be part of America, but it was a necessary evil to facilitate the creation of the United States... but it was always a paradox... a paradox that was paid for in the unbelievable carnage of the Civil War.

Notice that one thing I haven't mentioned yet is God. See, I'm not a member of any religion. And I don't think that America is inextricably tied to Christianity, though the two are deeply interwoven. I think America stands on its own, with the acknowledgment of God--not necessarily Jesus or Jehovah, but just God...

I don't know. I guess I just had to get that off my chest. I started off talking about the problems of my generation, looking for solutions. And I found it, I found the answer. The answer is to be a True American.

Goodnight.

Wed 3/20/96 * 7:50 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3608

Today I was smart, I put my vitamins in aluminum foil instead of taking them on an empty stomach. Now I gotta wash them down with decaf... after eating a cinnamon roll... ah, the appeal of the mundane...

First day of Spring today... Spring Revealing... Spring Jollity...

There was something missing in my plans for Obliviana, and I finally figured out what it was...

WELCOME TO THE WEASEL VILLAGE MALL!!!

Oh yes. WWVM is now a Core Revolver, replacing the name "Halzapular Fuzz", and which incorporates my varied audio and video works into a cohesive Revolver.

I had been unhappy with the name "Halzapular Fuzz", which started off as the name for a fictional classic video game system. Last night, I set forth to get the final name, and I wet through a variety of sources before stumbling onto the absolutely clear winner... Welcome to the Weasel Village Mall.

WWVM was the name of my first 1-hour "Little Frankie Nora" best-of tape, but I never made a song by that title. The second compilation was called "Bicentennial Cane", a name which became an item in Severe Repair, owned by Mem Elemorty...

I have always been fond of the name WWVM, and I even made an awesome logo for it a few years ago... I think I may have had the same idea back then, for unifying my audio and video works, and calling it WWVM... but I didn't remember that until just now. But the decision is made, and I'm glad it is!

Now, the only Core Revolver with any question about it is Super Objects. The question is whether or not to have the "s" at the end, since I've used it both ways in the past.

Balbitype is NOT a core Revolver, and neither is Pelter. This is because I view these digital graphical resources as a part of Obliviana Primal; they are integral to the game.

Even though... I think that Pelter has become a Revolver in its own right... but I don't see it as a Core Revolver...

The name "Pelter" came from an obscure Canadian term for pixel, "pel", which like pixel, is short of "picture element". The "ter" was just pure inspiration, and if I remember properly, I came up with it in the bathroom at Bengal Graphics, where I was working in 1992 and 1993, and where I created the concept of Pelter.

Super Object is an interesting Revolver, because it is unabashedly analog, in the mostly digital venture of Obliviana. I have had the urge to be 100% digital with Obliviana, but this isn't really possible. See, Obliviana is not something I can define at will... it's a collection of creative endeavors, the characteristics of which have been developed over years of experimental work by me. And the conclusion about all digital is inescapable--Obliviana cannot be 100% digital, because there is such a strong physical artifact side to Obliviana, from Super Objects to the insanely experimental shape of ZOPE magazine, from Modern Sapling to Analog Pinser, from buttons to T-shirts (not many of these)...

So I think that the eight Core Revolvers are set. No "s" at the end of Super Object. So here's the list...

Obliviana Primal, Zope, Severe Repair, Superior, 209, Forge of Wander, Welcome to the Weasel Village Mall, and Super Object.

The Core Revolvers...

Wed 3/20/96 * 6:20 PM * Amtrak * Tarb 3611

This guy next to me... he keeps up and sitting back down again... he just came back again and he reeks of cigarettes... guess he lit up in the bathroom. Annoying.

Listening to Metallica's Black Album right now... I'm trying to get into them, but I don't know... I think with Metallica you have to listen to the music itself more than drifting with the gestalt...

Fucker just laughed a booming laugh... turned my walkman up to block out such aural sewage... I hate it when people blast their walkmen so loud you can hear it, but in this case, I need to keep from goin' nuts trying to write and hearing these assholes carouse.

Alright.

6:53 PM

Now the conductors are yakking it up right by my seat. And... I got up to go to the bathroom and the fuckin' guy, when I got back, had moved over into my seat. Then he moved back real quick when I came back, about a minute later.

These people are pissing me off!

Okay, so where am I?

Almost to PJ anyway.

They're talking about fishing. Jesus Christ.

Man...

Now I gotta detail the first four Roads, which are founded upon Obliviana Primal, Zope, Severe Repair, and Superior. Wow. Not even 7:00 yet. Early. Gotta get some sleep tonight. Gotta get at least six hours.

Been observing how my burnt thumb has been healing. Most fascinating.

Thu 3/21/96 * 11:07 PM * Penn Station waiting area * Tarb 3618

I missed my fucking train.

Get this--my train was at 10:30, and I left work at like 10:17. I was like, no way am I gonna make it. But I rushed anyway. Y'know, I had a feeling... I ran and fretted and all that, took the subway, bolted to the track, and there's the train, not moving, but... the doors are closed... and about ten seconds later, its going, going, gone!

Fuck. Next train is 11:41. The 10:30 is a really BAD train to miss.

Oh well. So I figured, I'll walk over to HMV (record store) on 6th Ave. It's gotta be wunna those stores that stays open till midnight, like Tower, right? WRONG! I get over there, and it's CLOSED, baby.

Okay, so I walk back to Penn Station, and guess what? Some kinda CONCERT or something is just letting out from Madison Square Garden, which mean the train is gonna be CROWDED and full of drunk, annoying BASTARDS!

Fuck.

Oh well, at least I made some good overtime. But at this point, I'll be entering my apartment at about 1:00 AM... and I can maybe put off getting up till 6:00... ah, I should be okay...

So I made a cool Obliviana logo before, using a font I created years ago called Nitrogen. Then I incorporated it with my petrified wood scan. So if this particular logo becomes famous, you'll know exactly when it was made, and also, where its creator, the esteemed Lord of Obliviana, was in the hours after its creation... IN FUCKING GODDAMN PENN STATION with a bunch of CONFUSE CONCERT GOERS who are totally TRAIN ILLITERATE!!!

Whoa... look at that... in 44 minutes this issue will no longer be ahead of time... it'll be at zero... so I gotta get it done tonight or tomorrow... or... maybe I won't bring my computer in tomorrow... or maybe I will...

But maybe I should just finish this issue up NOW.

Okay, why not?

Get all Obliviana.

*OW*



[[03087NH]] Nihilistica

***THE STORY OF PELTERSET PAIN KILLER***

Okay. So last night I was talking on the phone and watching the 209 Storm Pelters as they sequenced by in the Marvel Comics screen saver, all the superhero JPEGs having been deleted in favor of Pelter stuff a long time ago.

Pelter Aspirin caught my eye. How would that look mirrored, 4x4? With this bit of graphic imagination, I fired up Photoshop on my weak little Mac and executed my vision. After some fiddling, I saved it as SaskatchewanRun. Then I played with that one, and made another one, as is the fashion with my Pelter creation process.

It was pretty late, but I kept going and going. I was recording 92.3 K-Rock on a 90-minute tape, trying to get a copy of the new Stone Temple Pilot's song, "Bing Bang Baby" or something. So I kept listening, but it never came on. And I kept making Pelters.

When I got to about 15, I figured I may as well go all the way to 32 and come up with a brand new Pelterset, since all the Pelters were coming out real good.

When I was in the mid-20s, "Interstate Love Song" came on, and I knew I was in trouble. It'd be at least a half-hour before they'd play another STP song.

Oh well. I never did get the song, but I did get Pelterset Pain Killer, so named because all the images are descended from Aspirin.

Here then is the sequence I created Pain Killer in, along with naming notes...

SaskatchewanRun* (just a cool name)

Lancaster* (visions of Pennsylvanian malls)

VirtualRaincoats* (lyric from "Hat Too Flat", song by Walter Becker from his album "11 Tracks of Whack")

TargetCold* (looks targetlike, and refers to another Pelter, TargetHeat)

Manufacturing* (based on the image)

EngagementRing* (something like a diamond at the center, gives the impression of a majorly deformed sort of engagement ring)

ComeAsYouAre* (I was listening to that song on "Nirvana Unplugged in NY" at the time)

FatherPlanet* (cool, inspired name)

LegitimateGrape* (thinking about how Kurt Cobain was legit and not a poseur, since he ultimately killed himself. I was already gonna use "grape" in the name somehow.)

UnqualifiedKing* (I cut to a random Tarot card to insire me (from a Rider-Waite deck) and got King of Cups, I believe. I studied his face and he looked a little incompetent.)

RaveWaste* (just a cool name that popped into my head)

Siscowet* (I opened the American Heritage dictionary to a random page, and got this one--some sort of fish from the Great Lakes or something)

DecompressionChamber* (another dictionary-random word)

Clean* (inspired by the image)

LaLuna* (from the thin crescent shape in the image)

Adriatic* (from an argument at work a day or two ago about what sea Albania is on--Mediterranean or Adriatic)

BlackCherry* (another dictionary-random one; fits well)

PunkRock* (probably inspired by the Ramones song "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" and my growing fascination with that band)

TechnologyAdvances* (a killer name for a killer image--it just came to me)

Temperature* (inspired by the image)

CavernLeague* (I was thinking "league", as in a sports association, and was trying to find a good word to precede it, and this is what I came up with)

EnormousGrove* (it just came to me)

VineEnvy* (just sheer inspiration)

Suffrage* (dictionary-random)

Hibiscus* (inspired by the image)

SmilingTeak* (there's defintely something smiling in the image, "teak" was an inspiration, and it came out a killer name)

Heidi* (named after the woman I failed with after one date)

Tracy* (named after the friend of the woman I failed with after one date)

Deborah* (named after the woman who introduced me to the woman who was the friend of the woman I failed with after one date--I'm immortalizing these three in Pelter because all the heartache and stress they caused me probably did me more good than anything else in recent memory--it broke me out of a rut and into a whole new place... here...)

Photocopier* (the image gave me a vision of my father's old office, where I used to go to make copies of my Halfevil Graphics minicomics, hence the name)

Chemistry* (Named after the personal file in which I recorded all the events leading up to being rejected by Heidi. Gee, it seems like I'm still upset over the whole thing, eh? Maybe a little, but I won't get into the details. "Chemistry" itself is from me thinking I had a certain chemistry with Tracy. But enough of this. Their names are immortalized forever (is that redundant?) in Pelterset Pain Killer, so they should be happy. (3/22/96 Note: I'm here checking over this file, and when I got to the "Deborah" entry up there, I wrote the "I'm immortalizing..." segment, and then I saw the part here in this entry, and I realized it was redundant. But I figured, rather than deleting the text above, I'd write this lengthy and unnecessary note.)

Me* (named after, uh, me--I guess in relation to the whole Chemistry thing... that is... I couldn't leave out a major character in Chemistry, ie me...

PELTERSET 19: PAIN KILLER
Adriatic*, BlackCherry*, CavernLeague*, Chemistry*, Clean*, ComeAsYouAre*, Deborah*, DecompressionChamber*, EngagementRing*, EnormousGrove*, FatherPlanet*, Heidi*, Hibiscus*, LaLuna*, Lancaster*, LegitimateGrape*, Manufacturing*, Me*, Photocopier*, PunkRock*, RaveWaste*, SaskatchewanRun*, Siscowet*, SmilingTeak*, Suffrage*, TargetCold*, TechnologyAdvances*, Temperature*, Tracy*, UnqualifiedKing*, VineEnvy*, VirtualRaincoats*


***DIARY OF A DREAMFRANK***

3/19/96

It was in a house, at night, maybe in a kitchen or dining room. The guy who lived there was sitting in a chair in the middle of the floor, holding a baby on his lap. To the right of him sat his wife. They were both dazed or drunk looking.

Across the room from them, also in two chairs, were two young men. One of them had a handgun, and he was repeatedly shooting the man in the chest, narrowly missing the baby each time.

The man being shot had a weird, slight smile. I could see that he wore a bulletproof vest, and that he had hired the two men to help him act out this sick fantasy. And the poor baby... right there... being narrowly missed with each shot.

Then, I saw that in the man's left hand, which was hanging down by his side, he was holding a shotgun. He smiled a malevolent smile and raised the gun. Then he shot and killed the guy that was shooting him.

The other guy... was it me? Thought that this was some sick sort of mind games... the man felt justified in killing the guy because the guy was shooting him... even though he had hired the man to do this. So the other guy... maybe me... felt like he had to get out of there...

(((This dream was clearly inspired by the movie "Fargo", in which a man hires two thugs to kidnap his wife in order to get a ransom from her rich father. But this just explains the married couple and the two thugs. The idea that someone might get perverse sexual pleasure by putting his baby at fatal risk... a truly sick idea... like nothing I've ever heard of or thought of... but I dreamed it... I think the scene from this dream would make for great dark cinema... who knows...)

*OW*



[[04087SU]] Superior

SUPERIOR 501 * 3/12/96
Each vernal equinox, never just ultimate, naked exhilaration returns. Evelyn, jolly, eats cornflowers to satisfy Mary's enmity. Do you know what it's like to realize that Jenny--dear, deluded Jenny--as an investor?

SUPERIOR 502 * 3/14/96
Ling the jock... have seen everything... yes I am on route 18... pine fresheners and fantasies of oral sex... potholes, music... fighting for the sake of it... look at it... people WANT problems, deep down... everyone has problems... see, humans can't exist without problems everpresent... challenges... the ecstasy of solving... this is what it's all about... bigger problems masking smaller ones... or of course, vice-versa. I am a thinker. I am smarter than most of you. But I'd never say that in public. Interpreted: "ling the jock" = perform cunnilingus on the athletic girl. I'm fucking insane.

SUPERIOR 503 * 3/14/96
Good forever and the tennis, hard rock fairy bagel mania... the think you're cool... yeah gold shoes gut the government... you are thrilling, activists are children in adult bodies... baubles, is what it is all about. Jersey Avenue, what's that all about? Howard Stern... Jesus Christ, you can turn on the radio every morning and hear him live, doing a new show every day... you know how unbelievable that would be to the denizens of the future, who worship Stern... thousands of hours of his show digitized and in humanities archives... it takes them years to hear it all... but it's the most popular thing... The Beatles don't have ten thousand hours of stuff... you know, I am acting as if I have knowledge of the future, do not belittle my wildness.

SUPERIOR 504 * 3/14/96
Go late night. Floor, daily activity, sitting, jerking off. Going away, the joy of saying fuck it and just dealing with it. I am not against wood grain, ha, money and drugs and GOOD LOOKS. Jesus Christ, the poor humps in the middle class--they're paying for it all, goddammit. Fingernails... could finger work without them? Ha, whatta we know? Good night.

*OW*



[[END087OW]]



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