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singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 093--5/3/96
<-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 8  ||  ------->
(Cup OWis093, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

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[[BEGIN093OW]]



[[01093CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 9 3 * * * May 3, 1996
"The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!"
by Frank Edward Nora

CONTENTS

01 093 CV--Cover
02 093 LA--Lord of Obliviana
04 093 LM--Life Mysteries
05 093 SU--Superior
06 093 SA--Severe Repair Almanac
07 093 SR--Severe Repair

OsoaWeek093, May 3, 1996
Second issue of OsoaWeek Book Eight
Written by Frank Edward Nora (except where noted)

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: 86195 / Words: 15962 / Lines: 2064
Days late: 45

*OW*



[[02093LA]] Lord of Obliviana

Fri 5/10/96 * 7:26 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3914

Last issue is not done yet because (A) there's a mistake in the Stats section, and I have to check the stat spreadsheet at home to correct it and (B) my brother did some writing for OsoaWeek, so I want to include his feature at the beginning of Book Eight.

Let me tell you, that girl of AOL was a phony. I mean, I don't know what I'm complaining about--MOST people online are phonies. But she had me goin' there for a few days, giving me her home phone number and all that. Like I said before, you screen your calls with an answering machine, you never gotta talk to someone you don't wanna talk to... unless they catch you on call waiting... which you don't get if you're like that.

Alright. Just another unpleasant experience which can serve to make me stronger. I remember, when I was a kid and saw the Schwartzenegger film "Conan", I couldn't figure out the quote at the beginning "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Now, of course, I understand it very well. All the difficult situations you get out of alive make you better able to deal with similar crises in the future.

I watched "Friends" last night, and they're really running out of ideas. The situations seem forced and disconnected. And, like I said before, the theme is already passe--the coffee bar, the glamorization of bad jobs and bad sex lives, the whole sanitized Gen-X thing in general.

I think that maybe, just like the initial bright young image of the peaceful, capricious, good-natured hippies rotted into the more realistic image of dope-addicted, directionless, anti-American, lazy, unloyal, coward fools.

So the image of Generation X may be changing. There's a quantum difference between a 27-year-old living in his parents' basement and a 30-year-old doing the same thing. You got no job, no love life, no ambition, and in ten years, you're gonna be 40! This is why the joke is wearing thin. The state of many in Generation X has passed from a youthful phase into a ruined life.

Hey! Look at that! I'm talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation!

It's 1996. In less than three years, it'll be 1999. Once we get to the whole turn-of-the-millennium thing, I can't see how laziness, directionlessness, and failure could possibly be seen as good things. I mean, going into the 21st Century, there's gotta be a feeling of optimism and drive and renewal.

But as it is, I think that even now, the Gen-X mystique is dying. Direction is gonna be "in"--and maybe, just maybe, the direction provided by Obliviana, and especially 209, is just what the doctor ordered for my miserable generation.

7:55 AM

So I decided not to go to Clementon tomorrow. I'm just stretched too thin for time and money. I even had a dream where I decided to go, regretting my decision. But I know myself--and I know that if there's a video game there that I GOTTA have, I'll spend money that I can't afford to spend, and spend time I can't afford to waste, to get it. And I just can't risk that. I didn't get my tax refund yet, and it could be months before I do. So my decision is made, hard as it is for me to make. Clementon is, by the way, an arcade machine auction somewhere near Cherry Hill, NJ, which happens every couple of months.

Foggy and drizzly today, like most days have been this week. Leaving Newark now. This weekend, I'll be able to move all my stuff out of my grandmother's garage attic, a feat I've been struggling to perform for years now. You can't imagine what I've been going through, trying to come to grips with my myriad possessions, a good portion of which was garbage, as I've discovered over the past month.

But in the end, it's really very simple. Everything I own will either be in my storage in Iselin, or in my new apartment in Clifton. Sounds simple, eh? Well, it's a fucking nightmare, and it's not over yet. Tomorrow I gotta finish up at my grandmother's, and Sunday I gotta work in my current lame duck apartment, questing after the least possible stuff to bring into the new apartment, taking the objects instead to storage.

Right now, the move is looming ever more massive on the horizon, and indeed, it's going to be THE thing in my life for the next few weeks. But once I'm moved, settled in and everything, the big thing in my life will be the Dawn of Obliviana--the start of the game. The game WILL be ready to go on July 27, either as a test run or as a maiden run. Maybe the maiden run can be the test run, since there won't be that many players to start with, anyway...

Here we are, Penn Station, New York.

Fri 5/10/96 * 6:51 PM * NJT car 1531 * Tarb 3917

I've been and am dizzy a little from a cold and too much cold medicine.

Well, only one more week of trains. Then it's on to the bus. A whole different lifestyle. I've done bus commuting in the past, and it is a different thing, lacking that certain amazing magic of the train...

This weekend I gotta get movin', and it doesn't help being sick. I still have 15 boxes of books to go through at Nanny's! Nanny is my grandmother. I've pretty much given up n selling books... so I'll just have four categories for 'em... new apartment, storage, give away, and trash.

So I'm missing Clementon. Ah, what the fuck. Unless I get that check from the Federal Government tonight, that tax refund. Otherwise, forget it. And even if I HAD money, I couldn't really afford the time. But watch--this is the way it always happens--I'll get the check in the mail when I get home, and I'll have to make the difficult decision of whether to go or not, spending the time... and money better spent on other things...

Alka-Seltzer Plus--that's what I've been taking. Four so far today. I don't know the proper time between doses, I'm assuming four hours.

So I got a form letter from K-Rock acknowledging the receipt of the ABM sample tape. They say if there's any further interest on their end, they'll contact us. Which of course we already knew, and which is a thinly disguised form of "don't call us, we'll call you", which is no problem, since there's no way I'm gonna make a follow-up call to them, cuz I just don't care about it--I don't really want to be a DJ, but if by some miracle they want to hire us--I think I'd do it--but if it meant I had to quit my current job, it'd be a very difficult decision.

I don't think I'm gonna make my fortune as a radio personality, though. I think I'm gonna make it as Lord of Obliviana.

So I conditioned a text file of OsoaWeek Book One into my new WWW format--with hyperlinks at the head of each feature--using a QuicKeys macro. Now, I'll have just 13 files for the first 13 issues (as opposed to the hundreds and hundred I have now)--with potential links to every feature. The main difference is that the entire issue has to load to get to a particular feature, but the old system I used, which had each feature on its own page, gave the whole thing a disjointed feel. I think it'll be more intuitive to have each document in its entirety.

The system I put in place previously was well-intentioned, but in the end, did not work.

Now, if I get Book One online in this new form and it works, I'll be able to get the rest of the issues on there without much trouble, a Book at a time, probably.

Just talking to an old guy about computers, struggling to understand what he was saying, talking about his son who's into computers, whatever. He seemed at first to be Italian, but by his accept and appearance, I think he was Indian or Pakistani or something.

I always try to be so nice to people. It's only recently that I've characterized this as a possible personality FLAW. "Nice guys finish last." Seems to be very true. When you care so much about pleasing others, you might not care about pleasing yourself enough. You might not be selfish enough.

One thing I'm think of doing in the WWW OsoaWeeks is adding a hyperlink at the end of each Severe Repair episode leading to the next one. But I'd do that ONLY for SR, not for all of them, like I had before, and which took massive amounts of time to code.

7:29 PM. Will I make the last shuttle bus home? I got 15 minutes, and we still gotta make New Brunswick! Well... those shuttles are usually a little late... so maybe I'll be able to avoid blowing another $10 on a taxi...

I just closed the computer to go to the bathroom, but another guy beat me to it! Confused people, not knowing whether this is New Brunswick...

Well, given the time, I just might make the last shuttle! Then... shall I go get cigars? I haven't been there in a while... I was spending $30 a week there for months...

The last time I went there, after I bought my cigars, I kind of hung around, wanting to talk to the owner guy, Jorge. I guess he realized that I was looking for attention, cuz he asked me something like "so, what did you buy this time?" or something, which I could tell was just him trying to satisfy what he perceived as my desire for attention. And it made me feel really low, not what he did, but that I could be in such a position. Then I mentioned something about trying bad cigars now and then, just to encourage me to keep working, to see what I'd be smoking if I got fired. He agreed, and then I said something about them being Phillies Blunts or some other such trash, and he said that that wasn't what he meant--he meant like a $1 cigar, and it was kind of a joke but also kind of embarrassing, like "you still smoke those? Come on, you can admit it..." That kind of thing.

Then I asked him about his WWW page and said if he ever needed any scans that I could do 'em for him, and I regretted saying it right away, regretted making that offer. So all in all, it was kind of a bad experience for me. Before that, I was seriously considering driving all the way down to Princeton every week or two to go there. But since that day... I don't know... I just feel a little uncomfortable about the whole thing...

Maybe the worst thing is that I drew phoniness out of a guy who doesn't seem to be very phony at all. Or maybe it's just the contradiction that I want to look the way I do, unkempt, long hair, weird clothes, and yet fit in with a very adult male crowd of cigar smokers. I think that that is probably the core of the issue. I want one thing, but do things which move me in the opposite direction, and then I lament the consequences of moving in the wrong direction.

7:44 PM. It's gonna be close!

Yeah. I know the whole cigar store thing is very minor and unimportant, but I feel better having discussed it with all of you. It's just... after I left the store and got into my Jeep, I was thinking to myself "is THIS how I am? Hanging around, begging for attention? That's really BAD, man..."

When was that? Had to be... maybe three weeks ago now... I don't know. I don't have many cigars left, but I can't afford to spend too much on 'em either... Maybe I'll go and spend under $20...

On the shuttle bus now. I ran and I made it and I probably would made it without running but so what.

So I want to delve into this issue a little further. The cigar shop incident, where I lamented not being more accepted into the store's circle, but in appearance I knew that I was perhaps the OPPOSITE of the conservative cigar smoker in my appearance.

But I totally buried this contradiction and pouted when things didn't work out.

And the cigar matter is just a microscopic example of this--it's with my LOVE LIFE that this phenomenon kicks in, full gear and beyond. I look like a fucking hobo all the time, and I wonder why chicks don't dig me. IT'S CUZ YOU LOOK LIKE A HOBO, NORA! COME ON! IF YOU WANT TO DRESS THAT WAY, WEAR YOUR HAIR LIKE THAT, FINE! JUST DON'T EXPECT TO BE A BIG BABE MAGNET, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

And it's not only in appearance--I mean, I don't go out and socialize, I don't meet new women, I don't put any effort into it. And yet I lament my "bad fortune", utterly avoiding the simple truth of the matter--that it's actions I am taking (or not taking) that keep me alone at night. It's MY fault, not the fault of the girls out there, not the fault of some cosmic power.

So WHY do I continue to "blank-out" (to quote Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged) the reality of the situation?

Mon 5/13/96 * 7:26 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3932

Well, this is the last week for me on the train. One week from today I'll be in Clifton, taking the bus to work.

I'm not planning on bringing this PowerBook with me on the bus. The main reason is that I get carsick when I read or write on a bus. Also, the ride is only 30-40 minutes, so there's not enough time really to justify the burden of carrying the computer around all day.

So, last issue still isn't done. My brother was gonna give me some of his writing, but he forgot. Also, I still have to correct that error. So, it gets later and later. Just as this issue does.

Yesterday, I finished up with my stuff in my grandmother's garage attic. It's all outta there. It's something I've been trying to do for years. And now, finally, I've succeeded.

After the fall of Anything But Monday in November 1989, I was unemployed and at home, living with my parents. I was 22 years old.

I had a huge amount of stuff--books, magazines, objects, files from ABM, leftover issues of ABM, and many, many more types of things. I remember that my father let me keep some stuff in his warehouse, and I had some stuff in my parents' basement. But after awhile, I think my mother started complaining about the stuff, so my grandparent's offered me the attic above one of their garages to store my stuff.

It must have been sometime in 1990 when I started moving stuff into there. The leftover issues of ABM were already in a trailer right next to the garage--probably 30+ boxes.

I remember the worst stuff I put into the garage attic. It must have been 1991, the year I was at my most pathetic. I was on Rt. 22 during the day, where the Watchung (?) flea market used to be, also there "2 Guys" used to be. Anyway, there's a building which used to house an arcade called "Fun Time", which had a roller rink in its basement. It's long gone, but I have some interesting memories of it. Like going there with my Cub Scout troop to roller skate, and having to stand by the top of the stairs or something and wait, video games mere feet away, and the den mother prevented me from playing them. I remember being really upset over that.

Another incident with the Cub Scouts--the worst one--was this. They had concocted a ridiculous little game. They had an inclined driveway, and what you had to do was sit on a bicycle at the top of the driveway, and ride it down without pedaling or touching your feet to the ground. The prize for accomplishing this was a piece of Hubba Bubba/Bubble Yum.

So, I sat on the bike, rode it down, and did it perfectly. Then I asked the den mother if I could do it again, just for fun. She said I could, but this time, I didn't make it--my foot touched the ground.

I didn't think anything of it, but when it came time to give out the gum, I didn't get a piece. "You didn't make it." the den mother said (I'm paraphrasing, you know--my memory isn't THAT good). "But," I said, "I made it the first time--the other time was just practice!". "It doesn't matter." she said. "Your foot touched the ground. It wouldn't be fair to give you a piece of gum." "But..."

I couldn't persuade her. So I resigned the cub scouts over the incident.

Check out Superior 327, in OsoaWeek056--it's about this same incident.

I gotta write more about my cub scout experiences sometime--it was such a phony organization, but it was fun.

So anyway, I was behind this building, where Fun Time once was, and I found this stuff that someone had dumped there. There was a dressform/mannequin kind of thing, some wallpaper sample books, some classroom maps, and god knows what else. Thrilled by the discovery, I loaded the junk into the back of my father's Volvo station wagon (the car I was driving those days). And soon after, I guess, I brought the stuff to the garage attic, where it stayed for several years.

During the early '90s, I must have fiddled around and searched for stuff up there, cuz the place was a mess. Books and magazines everywhere, intermingled with the decades-old construction crap my grandfather had first used the place to store.

I got a self-storage in Iselin in early 1994, I believe, and it was always my intention to move the stuff out of the garage attic and to the storage. I finally achieved that goal yesterday, almost two-and-a-half years later.

Thank goodness, though, I threw out all the major garbage well over a year ago, including the mannequin, maps, and wallpaper samples. Thank goodness my father has a dumpster in the yard of his construction company--I used it a lot. Especially in the past few weeks--I dumped four Jeeploads of garbage.

In January of 1994 I had this "brilliant" idea, to figure out what stuff I wouldn't need that year, and put it in storage. Well, I finally went through all the "Not Needed in '94" stuff, and found a bunch of worn-out clothing (which I donated to charity, aren't they lucky), comic books, books, magazines, etc. I must have thrown out well over half of the stuff I put in storage. SO WHY DID I PUT IT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?

I don't know. All I know is, everything that was in storage or in the garage attic I went through--every last scrap of paper passed through my hands as I sorted and sifted and organized. It's a real mental strain to brig back so many memories.

And to top it all off, in the garage attic, there are all these weird containers of unknown construction powders and stuff--so I had to wear a dust mask whenever I worked up there. What a pain!

In the end, I threw out an awful lot, but I saved some stuff to give to one of my second cousins, James. Even so, there are three piles of boxes in my storage from this whole thing, reaching all the way to the ceiling!

And I'm not done yet--some of the more difficult boxes (the ones full of papers and scraps of papers. I took to my apartment, and I still have to go through those!

In fact, yesterday, I was going through one, and I found all these love letters from Erin Foley, my girlfriend in 1987-88. They're very tough to read, dredging up all these long-buried emotions and stuff. Reading them makes me want to get in touch with her again. But I don't know if that's a good idea.

I have this cold, and I've been living on Alka-Seltzer Plus and NyQuil. The few nights I didn't use NyQuil I got feverish nightmares about my boxes and the garage.

My lease on my new apartment starts in two days, on Wednesday. Since I have to work that day, I gotta wait till Saturday to move in. But I don't have to be out of Deer Creek till the 31st. So I have a little leeway in terms of moving my stuff. So, if I have to go through some more boxes, I can leave 'em in Plainsboro till the next week, or whatever.

Mon 5/13/96 * 6:32 PM * NJT Car 1409 * Tarb 3935

Just think... everything I write... every word I enter into this PowerBook keyboard, here on this train, will be instantly searchable on Alta Vista and many other WWW search engines... as soon as I get this issue on the Web...

Very compelling thought, yes.

So where am I at? I'm gonna do the moving thing this coming weekend. And this week, every day up to Saturday, I have to work on the mess in my apartment, getting it to the point where I can at least move most of my stuff to move into my new place. Like I said before, if I have to leave some boxes in Plainsboro until the next week, so be it. I'm paying an extra $330 for the pleasure of having two apartments for two weeks, so why not take advantage of it?

Just read the entire Lord of Obliviana section in OsoaWeek069. Very interesting. I talk about a lot of stuff. I wrote it between five and six months ago. I mentioned all the junk I had in storage, and how I wished I could get it under control. And here, in the present, I read it, and realized that I succeeded in doing a very difficult thing, something that would have been unimaginable six months ago.

Also, I was planning on a "winter of asceticism", where I'd live like a hermit or something, gaining self-discipline and stuff. I was really into the idea of improving myself by the springtime. And y'know what? I think I HAVE improved myself.

It's weird--having a thing like OsoaWeek... it's like a diary or personal journal, but it's meant to be read by an audience. So it's weird. I mean, reading that six-month-old LOA, it was a strange sort of feeling... I don't know...

I've used LOA to help me remember when certain things happened in my life, to help keep everything in perspective. I am indeed happy to have something like OsoaWeek. And soon, all of OW will be available on the WWW! (But I CAN'T work on it this week, cuz I have to work on what's left of my mess!)

Tue 5/14/96 * 7:51 AM * Amtrak * Tarb 3938

OsoaWeek092 is finally done! 18 days late.

I saw a good movie or something on channel 13 last night, PBS, with James Earl Jones as a cult deprogrammer helping this English girl and stuff. I think it was Masterpiece Theatre. It was very well done, don't remember what it was called, though.

I've been thinking of subtitling Obliviana as "Online Magazine and Game", something really simple like that, so people can get a quick, rough mental picture of exactly what it is that I'm doing with Obliviana.

Defining Obliviana has ever been a quandary for me. I think it's because I am intimately familiar with the parts, but I can't quite get a bead on the whole.

But I'm getting there. It's all starting to make sense to me. The game is the platform upon which everything else rests. I had a vision for the game, that it would be infinitely scalable, that it could be played by two people on a tabletop, or by thousands of people over the Internet. Nice vision--the only thing is, the game has to have such a scalable and compelling nature. And creating a game like that is not easy. But, is what I currently have anywhere near there? Maybe...

Raceways concentric?!?

Wed 5/15/96 * 6:49 AM * NJT Car 1416 * Tarb 3944

I tellya, it's the middle of May, but I've been wearing my winter coat every day this week! It's gotta be around 45 this morning. Crazy! Global warming--hah!

So Fox aired their "Doctor Who" movie last night, and I was pleasantly surprised--it was a pretty much seamless continuation of the classic BBS series, with the previous Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, appearing at the beginning, where he gets killed and regenerates into the new guy. I forgot how big a Whovian I was back in high school. Man... those were the days... being so young and such a nerd...

Anyway I came up with an important development in the game of Obliviana, last night on the shuttle bus. It is an idea that is, I believe, a major step toward constructing Obliviana as I envision it. Okay. Imagine driving down a highway surrounded by woods, rain pouring down on your windshield, and you're going around a curve. Slowly, a large vista is revealed as the forest clears. And then you see it--far in the distance--a mammoth sword sticking out of the ground, as if it were thrust there by some angry god. Taller than a skyscraper, jutting out of the ground at an angle, you marvel a thus shocking and majestic sight. What you are seeing is an Obliviana Sword.

This fantastic vision, of a colossal sword stabbed into the earth, is the symbol I am going to use for a variation on my Revolver concept. The idea is that each Sword represents a particular "sub-Revolver", a game, a series of comic strips, a series of chapter in a novel, an occult system, etc. The idea is that each Sword delineates an area of endeavor in Obliviana.

This is a departure from the system I had been developing, but it my not be that much of a departure. See, I had eight different "Suits", each of which had suit point which, along with the Circs you earn by going around the Raceways, you can buy "Suit Artifacts". Then you go into Video Games, and use the artifacts you bought to help you get further.

The problem with that system is that it wasn't very content-centric. That is, the actual content, like Zope, Severe Repair, 209, etc.--was on the sidelines, almost an afterthought. This doesn't work, cuz Obliviana is very much content-centric. So I have to steer the design of Obliviana toward being more content-centric. I don't want to trash the old idea, but I do have to revise it.

Cups will be the containers of all artifacts... but I have to consider activities... fighting... building... gambling... collecting... exploring... climbing... ground shooting... space shooting... playing music... driving...

But this list of ten can be reduced... different kinds of activities... all content-centric...

Fri 5/17/96 * 6:46 AM * NJT car 1497 * Tarb 3956

This is it--my last day riding the trains to work. Come Monday, I'll be mostly moved into Clifton, and taking the bus to work. And because of the shorter travel time and the likelihood of getting carsick, I won't be bringing my PowerBook with me on the bus. So this is, more or less, the end of one era, the beginning of another.

I wonder if I can find the first entry I wrote on the PowerBook on the train? Let me see... I bought this PowerBook on April 9, 1995. Okay...

Yeah, I don't know. It's in the mid-40s when I started writing on the train, but I don't think I dated and timed and located every writing session like I do now till somewhat later.

So, a year on the train with my PowerBook. Over today. In fact, later on, I'm gonna go up to Port Authority bus terminal and buy a 10-trip ticket for the bus, so I can take it next week. It's only $26 for the 10-trip weekly. On the train here, it's $76! So you can see there are some advantages to where I'm moving.

So last night I managed to finalize the OsoaWeek HTML format, and convert the first three Books, 39 issues. There could still be a few changes, but overall it's lookin' good.

There will be an issue index, which can take you to any issue. Each issue is a single page, with hyperlinks to the start of each feature. The top of the page has an Obliviana Wings logo, which takes you back tot he home page, and an OsoaWeek logo, which takes you back to the index. Then there's a contents section, listing all the features in the issue, with hyperlinks to them.

This is the raw infrastructure, the nuts and bolts of getting around as massive a collection of text as OsoaWeek. So next, I'm going to make a "Guide to OsoaWeek" page, which will be the real gateway to OsoaWeek.

There's a preliminary version of the page in Nihilistica, below. It divides OsoaWeek into 12 categories:

(1) SCIENCE FICTION STORY--Severe Repair

(2) COMIC STRIP--Zope

(3) HUMOR--Anything But Monday

(4) THE AMAZING PETER LITKEY--Beublin, etc.

(5) FRANK EDWARD NORA'S INTRODUCTIONS--Lord of Obliviana

(6) MISCELLANIA--Nihilistica

(7) SUPERNATURAL MAYHEM!--209/Friction Enhancer

(8) REVIEWS--Hemisinister Review

(9) NEW JERSEY!--Antebellum, etc.

(10) THE GAME OF OBLIVIANA THAT WASN'T--In the Flowers, etc.

(11) POETRY?--Superior

(12) EVERYTHING ELSE--Appendix, etc.

This list is not final yet, and I want to refine the order to be from the most compelling to the least. This page will start with the list, and a brief description of each area. These intros will have hyperlinks to detailed indexes later on in the file. Severe Repair, for example, will have a guide with chapter titles and possibly a brief plot synopsis (or at least the major characters in each chapter). Each entry has a hyperlink to the chapter in question.

Likewise, Zope will list the title of all the text-comics, Superior will list the best first line in each issue, Nihilistica will have all the sub-features, Hemisinister Review will list the items reviewed, etc.

This guide page will be the key to OsoaWeek--the element that has been missing all this time. It'll provide an overview of OsoaWeek such has never existed before.

Ten months ago, when I first created my WWW site, I devised a method by which each FEATURE is its own page, linked to the features before and after it in each issue, and also the previous and next instance of the feature.

It took me countless hours to establish all the links, and all I did was the first 13 issues. It was ridiculous. With my new method, I did 39 issues over the course of two or three hours--so full completion is in sight. The only thing that could take a lot of time is the Guide page, but that could be continually upgraded. That is, I could do a quick, sketchy version and then upgrade it later.

Since I now have this link from America Online, I have to speed up the release of my new website. I think it might be possible to FTP all 91+ files tonight. But of course, I have to move tomorrow, and my apartment is an utter disaster, so maybe I should put the WWW stuff on hold for a few days?

Yeah. In the tunnel under the Hudson River now. Almost there. Now I got the trip home, and that's it. No more Princeton Junction for me.

Oh well. See ya later.

Fri 5/17/96 * 3:50 PM * NJT Car 1510, my last for awhile * Tarb 3958

It hadda happen!

Okay, I left work early, about 2:55. I went to Port Authority to buy some bus tickets for next week, then took the subway back down to Penn Station. My train was at 3:42, and it was about 3:25, so I figured I'd walk across the station to the bathroom at the LIRR, cuz the NJT bathroom is fulla queers salivating at the sight of each other's penises.

Anyway, I'm walking down the main corridor, and I pass the Transit Museum Shop, and who do I see standing there but... CONDUCTOR GIRL!!!

Now come on. What are the chances of this? I've been wondering when our paths would again meet, but to happen at my VERY LAST DAY riding the trains... it's beyond chance... there was some force behind it... but not necessarily a rational force.

Well, to be brief, I blew it. I had a golden, if difficult, opportunity to make contact with her, but I failed. I didn't talk to her. I lost my chance. I HAD the chance, but I failed to take it.

Okay. Anyway, she appeared taller and better-looking than I had remembered her. She seemed more solid, more real. She was talking about infrastructure with a nerdy guy. I pretended to be shopping as I listened to their conversation. She was making a point about the state of the Long Island transportation system or something. It sounded like she was saying some really intelligent stuff.

Now, it would have been difficult, but I could have joined into the conversation. I could have worked an angle, like "Oh, are you talking about infrastructure on Long Island? Yeah, I tell ya..." shaking my head for emphasis. But I didn't.

I played it by ear, looking for an easier opening. But she said goodbye to the fellow and departed. I followed her, figuring I'd get on the train she was gonna be working on. But she disappeared into an employee lounge.

I hung around at a public phone, calling my answering machine and listening to old messages, waiting to see if she might emerge. She didn't. It was 3:39, and I had to decide to continue this mad vigil, or just go the hell home. I decided on the latter. So here I am. I lost my chance.

But let me clarify my view on Conductor Girl. I'm not like obsessed with her or anything, it's just that she seems like a really cool person I'd like to get to know. I see her as a kindred spirit. And I think she might like me also, as a friend. She fascinates me, for some reason.

So, at this point, it seems unlikely that our paths will cross again, and like I said, I'm not obsessed nor am I a stalker.

As I got on this train, I came up with a good angle--that I wanted to write an article for OsoaWeek and New jersey Transit, and that I was on a train with her that went torturously slow, and I thought maybe I could interview her about it. It would have been perfect! I mean, she definitely likes to talk about transit and stuff. But no. I think of it 20 minutes too late.

Oh well. I guess that now my only hope of ever meeting Conductor Girl again is you, dear reader. She is about 5'8" or 5'9"? (I'm not good at this stuff), medium build, Caucasian, short black hair, maybe 29, 30, 31 years old. She's a conductor (or trainperson or whatever) on New Jersey Transit. And I saw she was wearing a digital watch.

So, if you know her or run into her in your travels, tell her to E-mail me or call me or something. I really WOULD like to interview her about transit and stuff--come to think of it, that might make for a pretty awesome feature in OsoaWeek!

Oh well. There you go. Man! I can't believe I blew it! But then... I don't know... if I talked to her, it might have blown the mythologic impression I have of her...

Wherefore art thou, Conductor Girl?

4:10 PM

Jeez... Rahway already...

Will I miss the train? Ah, a little. It's just that GETTING to the train is such a nightmare at Princeton Junction. Like this morning. I get there at 6:35, and I get a spot, but the bill changer where you buy your token was out of service. I cursed and trekked over to the other machine, but smiled as I realized that this was the last day I'd ever have to put up with that kind of shit. At least, that kind of shit at Princeton Junction...

So... I just wanna analyze this encounter I had with Conductor Girl. I mean, it was many, many weeks ago that I first encountered her... but you know... I was just thinking... I HAVE talked to her... so why couldn't I have done it 45 minutes ago? Ah, why should I keep on torturing myself about this... it's over with, and besides, it was a coincidence that went far beyond reasonable levels of chance. It was as if it were scripted. If it was, was my failure also scripted? Ah, I still don't know what the right approach would have been. "Hi, will you be my friend?" Come on.

So what caused it to happen? I'm sure that it wasn't just a coincidence. I think that situation and probability have a structure, and that somehow, the irony of my seeing her again the last day on the trains... maybe irony is some sort of real force in the universe... maybe our paths were attracted like magnets due to the nature of the situation... like, me thinking "it's my last day on the trains, guess I'll never see Conductor Girl again." I know that thought went through my head this week.

But she wasn't my conductor this time--she was just THERE. Oh well. I liked talking to her that one time. I could have even referred to our talking on that train, she might have remembered. Even if she didn't, we'd still be talking, right?

Yeah, it's times like this makes you want to turn back time, and be more prepared for something when it happens. But unfortunately, I still don't have my time travel powers back, so I'll just have to depend on the whimsy of chance for our paths to cross again...

Of course, if I ever DO make contact with her, she might wind up reading all this stuff and determining that I'm a total psycho. Oh well. In terms of conventional chance, I'll never see her again. But if Obliviana gets big, someone who knows her might tell her to get in touch with me so that she can become the transit correspondent for Obliviana or whatever.

I don't know. At least this whole Conductor Girl thing makes for some good ASCII.

On a side note, coincidences are associated with Stormwalking with 209. "Stormwalking"? Hmm... first time I ever used THAT particular term...

So, back to the level of more mundane stuff, I managed to complete the HTML conversions of OsoaWeek Book One thru Seven today at work, and now I have the whole thing on four floppies. I started the index, but I still have to finish it. So I think I WILL FTP it all to my site this evening... even though considering all the work I have to do for my move tomorrow, I can hardly spare the time... but come on... all of OsoaWeek can be ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB TONIGHT!!! It's too incredible an opportunity to pass up.

4:36

Yeah. This move is gonna be chaotic. I spent all that time cleaning up my storage and my stuff that was in my grandmother's garage attic, but I neglected my apartment. Well, my general philosophy is this... EVERYTHING in my apartment is going to my new apartment, OR my storage, OR the garbage. But for tonight, there will be another category, and that is TO BE ORGANIZED. I know I'll have to go back to Plainsboro next weekend to finish the job up--but the thing is, all the stuff that I KNOW is going to Clifton, I have to make sure it gets there this weekend.

Plus, I have to dispose of two old couches... wonder how I'm gonna do that...

Oh well. I have my work cut out for me. This is the end of my writing on the trains. Okay. That's it.

Sun 5/19/96 * 9:20 PM * new apartment * Tarb 3971

Oh man.

I've been through the ringer this weekend. Like just now, Mike Massotto convinced me to call Erin Foley's parents to get her phone number. She was my girlfriend in college, and I haven't seen her for almost seven years. I found a bunch of love letters she sent me when I was sorting through my stuff the other day, and it really made me want to look her up again.

Well, I called the number, but I got the answering machine, and I didn't even leave a number. If they have Caller ID with the name and number service, they'll see FRANK EDWARD NORA on their little machine.

Mon 5/20/96 * 8:18 PM * new apartment * Tarb 3977

I have to tell you what happened to me a few hours ago, around 5:45 PM. But first I need to delineate some background material.

First of all, here's an excerpt from "Lord of Obliviana" in OsoaWeek089:

* * *

I only went out with Ilana till January break, when she went to Israel, and when we got back in February 1987, it was so funny... neither of us sought the other out...

That February... haha... I remember threatening reality at large that I would destroy it if I didn't get a new girlfriend by the end of the month... I remember actually attempting the first stage of destroying the universe... I remember it... like knocking out support pillar at the base of something... I actually thought I could do it...

Well, whatever the fuck was going on, it worked, and right at the end of February, if I remember correctly, I started going out with Erin Foley, a relationship which lasted well over a year... yeah... I remember that summer we used to go to Drew with two sleeping bags zipped together, and we used to go up to a field in the Arboretum and make love...

* * *

Okay. So that's when I started going out with Erin Foley. That fall she went to Washington D.C. for a semester and started seeing other guys and stuff, and by early 1988 I think our relationship was over... I think it was me who broke up with her... because of her cheating on me and being dishonest and stuff...

Anyway--I remember that during the summer of 1989, I was at Jim Lord's office, where I would sleep sometimes while plotting against Mike Massotto for control of Anything But Monday... but somehow I wound up calling her and driving all night and arriving in D.C. early the next morning and I think I spent a day or two with her, and we made love and stuff.

Now... after that... I don't remember what happened. I think that was the last time I had any contact with her. I don't know why U wouldn't have stayed in touch with her... I didn't have a girlfriend then and I could sure have used one... but I just can't really remember... maybe... I think it's coming back to me... maybe she made me leave a day early or something... I don't know... I know I went to where she worked on like a Sunday or something... but I don't know if it was this trip or another one where she made me leave early...

No. It was another one, I think. Fall of 1987, she went down to D.C., and I couldn't get in touch with her, so I took the train down there and found her... I remember waiting in the lobby of "The Woodner"--the place she was staying for the semester... I remember I went with her and one of her girl friends through these dark, suburban streets, maybe cutting through some backyards or something, to wind up at this bar with nothing but black people inside... I remember being really freaked out--I had the distinct feeling that I wasn't welcome there...

Anyway, I think we left soon thereafter, and she made me leave earlier than I had planned... I remember seeing "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" at a movie theater in Union Station, the train station there.

But yeah... how did our last meeting, in 1989, end? You know, I can't remember. Like I said, I needed a girlfriend back then, so... man, I can't remember what happened.

Anyway... let's come back to the present. Or, nearly so.

Okay. Last week, I was going through a box with a massive amount of stuff from my past in it, like orders from distributors for Anything But Monday, letters from fans, written notes, etc. Well, I also found a bunch of cards and letters that Erin sent me... stuff like "I will always love you" and "I know it's going to be a long, painful time before we can be together, but that day will come", and stuff like that.

Over the past year I have thought casually about trying to contact Erin again. I went through my phone CD-ROMs, checked Alta Vista on the Web, stuff like that, but it didn't turn anything up--except that her parents still lived in the same place and still had the same phone number.

Oh well. The thought of calling them to find her crossed my mind, but I never had the motivation to do it.

So finding those letters really revived this whole thing in my mind. I know that I still have feeling for Erin, but that's something I have long since reconciled, and I felt that I could live comfortably with those feelings, never seeing or hearing from her again. And I still feel that way. Except... well...

Okay. Mike Massotto, my partner in Anything But Monday, dated with girl Nancy in college. But they broke up and she... she went to D.C. But, about a year ago, they got back together again and now they're engaged. Okay. So this past weekend I was hanging out with Massotto and I mentioned the letters to him. He suggested I call her parents and get back in touch with her.

Then last night, as I related in the previous entry, he prodded me to call her number--a number that I still remembered after all these years (after getting the first three digits from information). But... also, I've been finding old phone bills, and I found a bunch that had calls to Erin with her number printed there...

So anyway, I worked up the nerve to call, and I got the answering machine, but I didn't leave a message, on Mike's advice.

Okay. So I go to work this morning on the bus for the first time (besides my test run last month) and go through the day with the call hanging over my head... I knew I had to make it... and it was making me real nervous.

Okay. Now let's rewind a little bit to me in bed last night... I try to use my "powers" to get some information on Erin... and I see her in another country, maybe something tropical... with another guy, doing her own thing and everything, and I get the strong impression that nothing is gonna come of this contact I'm trying to make with her. Cuz of course, I'm thinking in the back of my head that somehow I'll wind up going out with her again, cuzza the whole thing with Mike and Nancy and all that...

Okay. So I'm at work earlier and it's about 5:30 and I really start to sweat over this call. I mean, I'm really losing it. So I figure, I better make the fucking call or I'll be miserable all day... and all night... and forever, until I do it.

So I go to the bathroom, and then I come back to my workstation, turn down the Led Zeppelin, and make the call... and Erin's father answers.

"Hi, uh, this is Frank Nora, I uh went out with Erin back in college. I don't know if you remember me, but, uh, I was thinking of getting in touch with her and I figured I'd call you to maybe find out where I could reach her."

"Well, no, I don't remember you, but she's on her honeymoon, so..."

!!!

Okay. So the conversation went on. The wedding... her wedding, was YESTERDAY. The day that I finally try and get in touch with her... IS HER FUCKING GODDAMN WEDDING DAY!

Okay... so I was shocked, and I told him that I really wanted to get this tape she had made once, where she interviewed my grandfather and stuff, since he's dead now and stuff... so then he remembered me... and he took my number... and he said he'd give it to Erin, who is "out of the country", when she gets back in like ten days.

!!!

Okay. Okay. I hung up. Okay.

WHAT THE FUCK? I don't have any contact with her for SEVEN FUCKING YEARS, and the EXACT DAY that I call to find her is her wedding day... too much... too much....

I was freaked out. My mouth and my throat were dry, and I was shaking and mumbling to myself. I was losing it. So I went to the soda machine to get a Sprite. I take a dollar out of my pocket and scan the serial number before inserting it... as I always do, to find ones with 209... I've been going through a dry spell... I've only found eight so far, but I haven't found any for like five, six months. So I look at the serial number, and it starts with 209!!!

Wow. Remember, when I was coming up here to sign my lease, my odometer turned over from 29999 to 30000, and second later, the trip odometer turned to 209! So I took it to be a good omen, 209 turning up like that, you know, to signify that this apartment was the right choice any everything...

And now, after this fantastic coincidence, I get a 209 dollar bill!

I told a guy at work, Miles, about it, then I paged Massotto and he called and I told him about it, and everyone was amazed.

Okay. The story's not over. Let's rewind to this past Saturday... while preparing to move out of my old apartment, I found a pair of $100 Oakley sunglasses that had been missing for months... Kerri gave them to me for my birthday in 1994... I even have a picture of myself opening the box and looking thrilled beyond reason at seeing the sorty things.

((( I have no idea what I meant by "sorty"... it must have been a typo... but what did I mean to write? --6/17/96)))

Anyway, I was wearing the sunglasses today... and in the subway I took them off because someone's shopping bag had a rose on it that looked three-dimensional, so I took 'em off to see that it wasn't 3-D. I put the glasses in my shirt pocket, where the 209 dollar bill also was.

Then I got to the bus platform, and my "powers" were giving me all sorts of intense impressions about events being put into motion, and things that I couldn't imagine, and things like that.

So, I get on the bus, and I give the give my ticket, and I start to walk back into the bus, but he stops me and says "Take your ticket, cuz.", pointing to a little strip ticket the machine has spit out after I gave him a 10-trip ticket.

So I take the ticket, grab a seat near the back and look at the ticket... and one of the code numbers of it started with 209. I stuck it in my pocket with the dollar bill.

! ! !

Oh man. No way was that a coincidence. My mind is bursting with impressions and visions now. Then the bus starts. And the sun is in my eyes and I'm leaning back in the seat with my eyes closed... and I reach for my sunglasses which were in the pocket with the dollar bill and the ticket, and... they were gone. The Oakleys had vanished. Disappeared. I looked all around my seat, on the floor, all over. I thought back to time between when I put them in my pocket on the subway and when I got on the bus, and I don't remember leaning over at any time... I even thought I remembered them when I was at the bus platform... but now, they were gone. They mysteriously vanished, while in contact with the two papers artifacts with 209 on them.

So that brings us to the present... I got off the bus, walked home, took a shower, and started writing all this.

There are so many aspect to this... the idea that Erin was having a major change in her life, marriage, the same day I was having a big change in my life, moving. How I used my "powers" and saw her in another country, with someone else and everything, when she IS out of the country, on her honeymoon?

I'll reveal this next thing with some hesitation. It refers back to a weird thing in my relationship with Erin, where we sort of pretended that I was Greek god Hades and she was Persephone, the daughter of Ceres, who Hades kidnapped, and who spent half of each year in the underworld with her husband, and during that time Ceres, goddess of crops and stuff, was so sad that it caused winter and stuff.

So, this thought about the relationship between Hades/Persephone and Me/ Erin came into my mind, and I got a lot of intense impressions from it.

So I don't know exactly what to make of all this. I mean, first the Conductor Girl thing, and now this. Amazing, nearly impossible coincidences, within days of each other. And the psychic stuff and the 209 stuff and everything else.

Whew. So where so I stand now? Well, I STILL have to drive down to friggin' Martinsville to return my father's truck, and it's past 9:00 already! But... in terms of all these supernatural shenanigans... I don't know...

Something ELSE I didn't mention is how me and Massotto were planning out the rebirth of Anything But Monday all weekend! Another major thing from the past being resurrected!

So... in ten days... around the end of May, beginning of June... I might get a call from Erin Foley... man, the thought of that blows my mind! Huh, maybe she'll remember what happened the last time we saw each other and why we didn't keep in touch. But she's married now... JUST married... so it don't look like I'll be dating her anytime soon, folks.

Now, by the way, I swear to 209 that everything I've stated in this entry is true. And if you know me, you know that swearing to 209 is not something I would do lightly. So all of this is true, as I have experienced and interpreted it.

Wow.

Another incredible series of events... a lot of you out there probably think I'm nuts... well, try and open your mind and begin to understand the power of 209 and stuff. Y'know? I mean, it's hard for ME to believe this shit, but I've just experienced it, so it's hard to refute!!!

Okay. I still gotta do two fucking hours of driving tonight.

So now you know a little more why I am the Lord of Obliviana... cuz all this weird shit happens to me and stuff... okay?

9:13 PM

I just called my parents house and talked to my mother about coming down there and how the move went and everything. This is the way it works with me. All this supernatural crap happens to me, then I go right back to dealing with the mundane world and I kind of just forget about the supernatural stuff, y'know, brush it aside, blow it off.

Oh well. That's it for now. Read on, if you're lucky enough to be in the future, and see what happens next in the Erin Foley saga!!! (...or... whatever her name is now...)

Fri 5/24/96 * 7:49 PM * new apartment * Tarb 4001

Happy new Tarb millennium!

Okay. Referring to the stuff that happened on Monday night, one of the psychic impressions I got while waiting for the bus was "you can't imagine", referring to the chain of events the phone call to Erin's father would put into play.

Okay. So after I wrote the stuff up there, I went to my parents' house to return the truck and came back with an air conditioner, two window fans, and three director chairs.

Okay. The next day, Tuesday 6/21 whatever, I went to work and then came home. I got home maybe 6 o'clock, something like that. I went on America Online to continue FTPing OsoaWeek issues to my Web site. Okay. I was feeling a little punchy, and I went to the People Connection member rooms, went to "create room", and typed "New Jersey". See, doing that brings you to the room if it's already created, or, it'll create it if it's not currently there. But "New Jersey" was full, so I typed "north jersey". There wasn't one just then, so I created it.

So, I started FTPing with the "north jersey" window in the background. I lazily watched the chatting going there, as it attracted more and more people. And I checked the people to see if there were and cool girls to IM. I saw that one girl went to Drew University, and I IMed her and chatted for a few minutes. I kept FTPing, and then I saw this person named "Sam She Is", single female from New York State. I thought it was a cool name, and I IMed her, asking her how many Dr. Seuss IMs she gets. She responded that she got a lot, and we started chatting.

I kept FTPing as I was talking to her, but the conversation got more and more interesting, and soon I had abandoned the FTPing. In a nutshell, we talked for over four hours, and when it was through, we had a date to meet the next day at 6 o'clock after work. Who knows, maybe I'll publish the entire chat session sometime in the future.

Okay. I have to relate this to the events of Monday. I mean, I got the strong impression that something cool was gonna happen to me, something that I "couldn't imagine". Could this have been just such a thing?

Okay. During our conversation, I sent Sam She Is a good picture of me, cuz I also gave her the URL for my Web site, and there's a very evil picture of me there. She said I was "very pretty". Okay. Anyway, there were three pictures of me on my Web site then (currently only one), so she saw four pictures of me, but she didn't have one of her. She assured me that she wasn't some 300 lb. monster or something, whatever, stuff like that.

So the next day I'm thinking about this date. I was a little apprehensive, but definitely more exited than nervous. She had such a cool personality and was so intelligent, it didn't matter to me if she was a beauty queen or anything.

So Carmine from work lent me some money (I was broke yet again till payday), and drove me up to The Coconut Grill at 77th St. and 2nd Ave. But we ran into all this traffic, and eventually found ourselves virtually stuck in a weird little tunnel on 1st Ave. in the '40s. He was driving a little crazy, bursting forth, accelerating at a stomach-churning rate, and lurching to a halt with equal G force.

I finally got to the Coconut Grill at about 6:15, shaken and a little queasy from the trip. I walked up to the bar and saw a woman sitting there... from the description Sam gave me, it must have been her. I said her name, and she turned around. And after worrying all day what she was gonna look like... she was beautiful.

! ! !

We drank and talked for many hours, had a hell of a time, and I wound up staying overnight at her apartment in Jersey City. The next day I went right to work from there, wearing a T-shirt I had borrowed from her.

We were both very drunk and very tired, and she went to sleep pretty much right away, after we perused a few Dr. Seuss books together. I found it hard to sleep for some reason, and wound up only getting a few hours of sleep.

At work the next day, Wed 6/22, I was dead tired, and I didn't eat a thing all day except for some meuslix cereal with Rice Dream milk substitute. I got home at 5:30 and went right to sleep. I got up around midnight, and watched my newly-installed cable as I finished FTPing my stuff to my Web site, completing version 2.0. I applied to Yahoo and Alta Vista, sent some E-mail to Sam, and went back to bed for a few hours before getting up and going to work, this morning.

I talked to Sam briefly yesterday afternoon, and we made plans to go out next Friday.

So. Quite interesting, eh? In the context of the stuff that happened Monday, and the feeling I had that something extraordinary would happen to me...

I meet this incredible woman online and meet her the next day. Beautiful, intelligent, awesome. I mean, is it just another coincidence? One of an increasing string of them? Or IS there something supernatural going on?

Some other little coincidences to report. On Wednesday afternoon, I saw Theresa from Bengal, the woman who fired me in November 1994. But we've since made up and see each other occasionally. But I run into her every couple of months maybe. So I saw her at the Varick Cafe, and I told her about my blind online date. She told me to watch out, a lot of weird people stalking around online.

Then a few hours ago, I was walking up 5th Avenue in the '20s, and I saw this guy Ken who used to work across the hall from me, and who I used to have all these intellectual arguments with. He was at a payphone and he called out my name. I waved at him but I didn't stop, cuz I could see he was talking to someone and just wanted to say hi.

Okay. Also on my walk today, where I went to Skyline Books on 18th St. to pick up the out-of-print "Repo Man" screenplay that I entered a book search for months ago and which finally came in, all sorts of chaotic stuff was happening all around me. Like, some woman from a hospital cornered this other woman and confronted her and everything. And a woman at a phone yelled "OKAY THEN IF YOU WON'T HELP ME IF IT DOESN'T WORK IT'LL BE YOUR FAULT!" and she slammed the payphone down and stormed off. And one taxi hits another taxi as it stopped late for a light. Stuff like that.

I wound up buying the Led Zeppelin CD "The Song Remains the Same" at the Virgin Megastore, and then I came home and started writing this, listening to disk two.

(((Rare occurrence! Block of text removed from issue for being too weird!)))

Sat 5/25/96 * 8:57 AM * new apartment * Tarb 4004

The winds of Thor are blowing cold...

(That's a line from "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin.)

Yeah.

So here I am. I'm going down to Plainsboro soon, right after I go to the Midlantic bank branch here and switch to it. Seems like there's always a Midlantic near where I live...

Yeah, so last night I kind of lost it, and I had to amputate a good deal of text. Don't worry, I didn't destroy it, but it's just not fit to print. Too personal. Okay?

So. Yeah, I have the hellish, mammoth task of sorting through all my irksome possessions and figuring out what stuff to throw out, what stuff to put in storage and... and what stuff to BRING HERE. I gotta be careful. I don't have alotta room here. So I guess alotta what I'm gonna be doing is organizing stuff to go into storage.

The bank is open now... so I guess I'll be moseying on along...

Anyway... like I mentioned above, all 91 issues of Books One thru Seven are on the World Wide Web now. The index is totally raw... it just lists the issues in order, with links to each... and in each issues there's a set of hyperlinks to all the features... so getting to anyplace in OsoaWeek on the WWW is now a breeze... the only problem is, there's no guidance at all... and indeed, the next thing I'm working on is the Guide to OsoaWeek... I already did the links to every chapter of Severe Repair... I did it at work yesterday... but I also have to tell people what Severe Repair IS, right?

Oh well... this coming week I do have things to look forward to... being OUT of Plainsboro, conquering the tyranny of my possessions, upgrading and promoting my Web site, and seeing Sam again. And also, setting things up at my new apartment here.

Things are looking pretty good. My life's dream, my life's work, Obliviana, is finally starting to bloom. And after over a decade of hard work, you can imagine how much it means to me. Of course, there are other things that mean a lot to me right now, things I don't have control over. But Obliviana, at least, I do have control over. And if I exit this springtime with nothing to keep me afloat but Obliviana, I can deal with it.

See ya later.

Sat 6/1/96 * 12:57 AM * new apartment * Tarb ????

Well, here I am. It's weird. I feel like after the multiple ordeals I've gone through over the past two weeks, I'm finally back to square one. Yeah. The move is over, but I still have a lot to do. My Web site is finally updated, but I still have a lot to do. And this girl Sam I met, things seem to be pretty cool, but we have to see how things go.

All three of these things had somewhat intense beginnings. Now things are settling down. I was in like cat-with-arched-back-and-hair-sticking-up mode for the past few weeks. Another interesting thing is that I lost 7 to 10 pounds over that time period. Weight I definitely needed to lose... and I still have a ways to go... but I'm almost below 200 now... which is good...

I just went to a Mets game at Shea Stadium with Massotto and a friend of his. Kind of an interesting separation point... a signpost in time that marks a change...

Last weekend was the worst. It was total mental agony, the move and all that. But... a GOOD sort of agony, if that makes sense... like muscle pain after a good workout... it hurts, but you know it's good...

I don't know. This isn't very interesting, what I'm writing, but it is necessary. To tell my story. I mean, as soon as I moved up here, my life started changing in a number of ways, beyond the direct effects of the move itself. I have moved beyond the darkness that was Plainsboro. I am now leaner and meaner in a number of ways. And it's clearer than ever that the central goal in my life now is Obliviana.

But I have to start LIVING the goal... I am, at some level, AVOIDING the actions necessary to make Obliviana a reality. THIS is what has to change!

I know this is all awfully mundane... except for the supernatural aspect of it...

Wow. Look at that. Look at what I just wrote. Mundance except for the supernatural stuff. Yeah.

(((Okay... "Mundance" should have been "mundane", of course... but I figured it was such a cool typo, I'd leave it. --6/17/96)))

My life is not mundane. But still, I avoid the issue of making Obliviana a reality. I go through phases where I think other things might be more important... especially finding a new girlfriend... and it's tough, because I could say that I'm using Obliviana as an excuse to not apply myself in looking for love, just as it works vice-versa. But I have to establish priorities, and right now, my priority is Obliviana. And mark my words--the next few months will be critical to the eventual massive success of Obliviana.

I'm going to bed. Goodnight.

Fri 6/7/96 * 6:42 PM * new apartment * Tarb... god only knows...

Well, I don't know. All the stuff that's been going on, I haven't been doing much OsoaWeek. I don't know where the hell I am at this point. But I will recover, as I always seem to do...

Anyway, the big thing right now is that today is the tenth anniversary of Halfevil Graphics. That's right! It was June 7, 1986 when I went to my father's office to print up "Big New Ark" #1 on his photocopier... thus truly initiating that which would eventually become Obliviana...

A few months earlier, in February of '86, there were some other major Obliviana milestones... the creation of Zope and Anything But Monday (the radio show). The first issue of ABM Magazine came out in March or April... but it was June 7 that really started the ball rolling toward Obliviana...

I know I've told the story of the day before June 7, 1986 at least once in OsoaWeek, but I'll go over it again.

June 6 was a Friday, and I was working a summer job at Ortho Pharmaceutical (a birth control factory) with Peter Litkey (of "Beublin" fame, later). I was working one of the production lines, when this supervisor Danny said to me "Frank, we need your assistance.", and proceeded to present a massive product spill... someone had turned on a pump on a vat, and then gone to break... but the pump wasn't connected to anything, so it all poured out onto the floor. It was "Aci-Gel", a slimy, green, therapeutic vaginal gel. Massive spill, easily ten feet across. $30,000 dollars worth, they said.

"What a mess!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, and YOU'RE gonna clean it up!" yelled gruff but lovable Vince, a factory work lifer.

They gave me rubber boots and a snow shovel, and told me to go to it. It was tough... I had to scoop the junk up and then put it in garbage cans... it was slippery shit, almost like ice skating... at one point a guy came walking by and fell right on his ass in the stuff...

Anyway, it was probably later that same day that I saw Peter Litkey, very overwrought, working the diaphragm line. As I passed by he fucked up and dropped a whole boxload of diaphragms all over the ground.

He was fired soon thereafter.

The thing about June 6, 1986 is that it's like 666, the Biblical number of the beast and all that. 1+9+8+6=24, 2+4=6. Numerology. So I figured bad stuff would happen. (Yesterday was NOT 666, but 667, as 1996 break down to 7).

Anyway, I had "Big New Ark" #1 all ready to go, and after work I went with my brother toward Somerville in my parents' silver BMW 2002... but on the bridge over Route 22, we broke down... then we found "Demon" comic books in the glove compartment that I had put there probably months earlier... we were stranded cuz our parents were in Bermuda or something... we had to plead with our friend Jim Glynn to come save us, which he did eventually, if reluctantly...

We were gonna go to Quality Comics and then to my dad's office in North Brunswick, but with the breakdown, the plans were shot...

So I went the next day, Saturday. I'm glad I didn't start Halfevil Graphics on such an inauspicious day!

Anyway, today is exactly ten years later... I sit here waiting to call a girl to set up a blind date... another girl I met online... Sam has been kind of blowing me off... but I have this new acquaintance, Denice now... let's see if it really happens... maybe for once reality won't pull a Charlie Brown on me and let me have some success in life...

So... here at 7:00 PM, I'm going to announce the rebirth of Halfevil Graphics... as an Obliviana ezine containing all graphics... Pelters, scans of Obliviana products, Frank Edward Nora's Gallery of the Ego (pix of me), scenes from videos, scans of various things, etc.

There you go!

7:33 PM

Denice is running late, her sister says, and now I'm calling her around 8:00. Sounds kind of promising... would she tell me she was gonna be home late just to blow me off in person? You'd hope not...

So... the new Halfevil Graphics... just thought of it on the bus... it makes a lot of sense... instead of adding pictures to OsoaWeek, publish them separately... it'll be cool...

I'll need more WWW space for this, of course, so I'll have to work on putting stuff on my AOL FTPspace... or getting a new provider... cuz I hate NJCC... as I'm sure I've mentioned...

A couple of things... a cool thing I thought of on the bus... "Knock War"... a supernatural thing where reality has this hidden thing where if you knock on something in a certain pattern, it'll make magical things happen... also, "The Bad Little Couch"... maybe a couch who can be human(oid) for perhaps an hour a day... interesting character, eh?

Fri 6/14/96 * 5:28 PM * new apt. * Tarb ????

How late is this issue now, 42 days? Is that a record? I don't think so... the record is 44, for issue 53... but I have no time to finish this issue now... I'm leaving for Pittsburgh in half-an-hour... maybe I can do it on Sunday... not go to 45... but I don't know...

Ate some smoked mozzarella before and it's playing havoc with my digestive system... of course, right before a trip, that's gotta happen, right?

Mon 6/17/96 * 11:07 PM * new apt. * Tarb ????

I've lost track of Tarbs as you can see.. just had to empty my AOL Web Browser cache folder, and there were 209 items in there...

Time to finish this issue... went to Pittsburgh over the weekend... tell you about it next issue... 45 days late... now THAT'S a record!

Get all Obliviana.

*OW*



[[03093NH]] Nihilistica

***SONGS OF THE WEEK***

"Carouselambra" by Led Zeppelin (from the album "In Through the Out Door")

"School" by Nirvana (from the album "Bleach")

"Again" by Alice in Chains (from the album "Alice in Chains")

*OW*



[[04093LM]] Life Mysteries

(((Here's the first OsoaWeek feature not written by me--"Life Mysteries"--by my brother John.)))

LIFE MYSTERY 1: "Tristan"
by John Nora

I had the greatest dream of my life last night. Three Playboy
playmates had moved in with me. They were all three on a bed in my sister's old room. At one point I was laying there with them (they were naked) and I was finger-fucking them and things like that.

They said I should keep writing my book with that character Tristan.

I lay there in the soft, shallow, blonde-skinned gully of three playmates thinking, very clearly, Tristan? Tristan? Who's Tristan?

I may have walked back into my room and jotted down a perplexed notation about Tristan.

I remember I was kind of nervous my dad would start getting uptight about these frolicsome new playmates in the upstairs of his house, but it didn't really matter because I had to go get my bookbag together and get going.

I had to go to high school.

You see, in all my dreams, I at some point have to go to high school. I was still the same age (26), demeanor, etcetera, as my sleeping self, but in my dreamworld it doesn't matter how old or young you are. You still have to go to high school, every day. Weekends too, probably.

You could be 67 years old. You'd still have to go to high school.

My high school was up in Boston, I think. I would have plenty of time on the train to smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and finish my homework.

Again, it pretty much goes without saying that this was the best dream I have ever had.

*OW*



[[05093SU]] Superior

SUPERIOR 524 * 4/30/96
All the malls of New Jersey I can think of... Woodbridge Center, Menlo Park Mall, Princeton Marketfair, Quakerbridge Mall, Bridgewater Commons, Rockaway Townsquare, Livingston Mall, Short Hills Mall, Echelon Mall, Phillipsurg Mall, Cherry Hill Mall, Paramus Park Mall, Garden State Plaza, Bergen Mall, Riverside Square, Brunswick Square, Headquarters Plaza, (Flemington), (Brick?)...

SUPERIOR 525 * 4/30/96
There it is and there is a mussed-up honey for me.

SUPERIOR 526 * 4/30/96
Wherefore art thou, Conductor Girl? Yellow soap with teeth. Your own, finally, your own personal waterfall in your room. Does wonder for the air, for the health. Rivers, creeks, waterfalls, all kinds of moving water... it has become THE trend of the 2030's. I read all the magazines about it. "Faller" is the one I like best. Haha, sitting here in my cubicle at the video game company in 1982, I read the May 2034 issue of "Faller". I haven't gotten laid in over eight months, but I feel like the coolest being in the universe... just casually reading a magazine, anachronistic, and gained through time travel. The thrill of feeling that a time enforcement agent will step out of the wall at any moment and yank the damn thing out of my hands. Wherefore art thou, Conductor Girl? I know I can get more. Me and my friends... we figured it out, it's... we can't go there ourselves, but there is a device in the future... a manufacturing device... and it is unknowably complex, and sending things back in time is one of its functions, Conductor Girl.

SUPERIOR 527 * 5/6/96
Cool people don't care about crops, hold farmers in disdain, but love to eat. People joke themselves--they get sickened by slaughterhouse footage on TV, yet consume ever more meat. "I try to avoid thinking where it comes from." That's probably why I became a vegetarian--to end the self-deceit of pretending to forget where it comes from. If you CAN face the fact that meat is animals who are killed just so that we can feed on their flesh--then by all means, eat meat. I'm not against meat in general, just for myself. But I AM against hiding the truth from oneself.

*OW*



[[06093SA]] Severe Repair Almanac

The first part of this weeks chapter of Severe Repair is the verbatim notes I wrote down on March 29, 1996. I deleted the date and the closing comments, because they don't fit into the scheme of Severe Repair. I present them to you here...

* * *

THE SOLVENT IJSANE
3/29/96

(((First part of chapter 67, below.)))

Much of this is based on a dream I had during a brief period of sleep I had on Amtrak earlier this evening.

I came up with the term "The Solvent Ijsane" a few days ago.

First, I came up with the term "Ijsane" after misspelling the word "insane", I think it was when I wrote the line "I am fucking insane." at the end of a recent Superior.

I was reading a book called "Pocket Ref" in my bathroom, and opened to a page with the heading "Solvents".

The word "Solvent" impressed me, then I combined it with "Ijsane".

* * *

I realize that the first part of the chapter is purely expository, and that traditionally, it's preferable to reveal such information in the course of telling a story. But in something as gloriously broken as Severe Repair, I think it's strangely appropriate.

Another source for The Solvent Ijsane is a dream I had once about hanging out at a bar, with cool rock walls and stuff, like someone's basement, but at the top of a skyscraper. I was thinking along the lines of a stable environment for some characters to live in, and a place that readers could get familiar with and comfortable in. The Solvent Ijsane is somewhat distant from this original vision, but still, the vision is a major contribution to the nature of Te Solvent Ijsane.

I don't know who the Ijsane Agents--old or new--are at this time. I have to work on the overall story and see how it fits in.


*OW*



[[07093SR]] Severe Repair

SEVERE REPAIR
Book Six, Chapter 67: "The Solvent Ijsane"

The top of a skyscraper.

People live and work there.

There are a number of Screws, of great power.

When a very powerful microphone is placed by the Screws, sounds can be heard.

The Screws respond to various colors of light.

Violet/indigo light produces a harmonious sound, other frequencies produce a discordant sound, especially red/orange.

Each Screw is maintained by a single person.

The Solvent Ijsane is a liquid which is the only means to destroy the Screws.

The only Solvent Ijsane is also in the place called The Solvent Ijsane.

The exact nature of the Ijsane Screws is not known.

Each of the Ijsane Agents is autonomous... each maintains his or her Screw.

This arrangement is meant to prevent any one Agent from gaining the ultimate power of the Ijsane Screws.

By analyzing the sound from the Screws, the Agents can determine whether or not all the Screws are at The Solvent Ijsane.

The Agents seek to obtain all of the Screws.

Once they have all the Screws, with the means to destroy them, the Agents will have a great power--a power, defining the nature of which is another of their goals.

Combining two or more of the Screws, touching them to one another, produces more complex sounds.

Every individual Screw is miked 24 hours a day, and recordings of the sounds they produce are stored in a central computer.

The Screws came into existence after the death of Fox.

The Agents know that the Screws are related to the death of Fox.

Fox was the Primal Entity whose purpose was to end the universe.

With Fox dead, the universe no longer had a definite end.

The Screws therefore relate to the end of the universe, but the Agents are not sure how.

There were four Original Ijsane Agents. Their quest took 150 years, and in that time they obtained five Screws, plus the Solvent.

At 150 years in the future, the Agents transmitted information to the present as to the whereabouts of the five Screws and the Solvent, referring in the transmission to their imminent demise.

At the present, a few weeks after the death of Fox, the transmission was received by an individual who, along with four associates, founded The Solvent Ijsane on the upper floors of a skyscraper.

They then located the five Screws and the Solvent.

Each New Ijsane Agent has a single Screw in his or her quarters.

The Solvent is stored in a central location in The Solvent Ijsane.

The New Ijsane Agents seek to find the rest of the Screws, but they have no way of knowing how many more there are--only that they will know when they have all the Screws.

* * *

Daptin Gone was in the bathtub in his Warhome, masturbating lazily, fantasizing about oral sex with Spanking New Sarah.

God, he thought, how I wish she had zinclered onto me before I got banished from my own Land... this damn million-mile trek... it would have been perfect, just her and me, all the privacy in the world, the inner world of the Warhome...

But no. The only female within... uh... 714,000 miles... was Agatha Petunia Wack... the bizarre girl he met on Rillekon's Road, the place he wound up after getting the boot from Sleap Drassy. Yeah... it wasn't that she was ugly, exactly, it was just that she had this aura... like you could just tell that sex was not something she'd even remotely consider... oh well...

She said that their meeting was fortuitous--that her team, Pseudoairport, had just broken up, and she was looking for a new job. Hooking up with Daptin to save the universe seemed like a pretty good deal to her.

With her considerable skills navigating the many ways of Rillekon's Road, she managed to get Daptin back to his apartment at the Greatwall Base of Overwhelm Associates... back to the Cup of Coffee...

She had sent the vastly powerful artifact into a "sideplace", she said, before embarking on the mission to save Bellicose Billion, after Daptin got the psychic message from the former crewmember of the Urbandersnacheron IV. She didn't elaborate on the "sideplace" much... Daptin warned her, telling her about what happened with the Goodbye Popcorn in the Cupslipped World, but Agatha insisted it'd be alright...

What else could he do but masturbate? Thinking vivid thoughts... the mind-blowing taste of her pussy... and her expert lips and tongue on his cock... unbelievable...

Then his fantasy turned to the orgy going on at his Land... wondering how many of the people there were getting their share of Spanking New Sarah... all of them, he supposed... except Bellicose Billion, poor fellow, who only got the devil girl Insurance...

Then he started getting angry and he came mad.

It was HIS Land. His. Created by him, solely by him. But he was kicked out... party due to his own mistakes, but mostly because Sleap Drassy was more powerful than him by a long shot. To be a god... but to be a weakling compared to a woman... a weird woman... Sleap Drassy... a fucking waitress in a Hello Tarby... fuck... she gave Granticaine a note to give to him, but Granticaine kept it... what the fuck...

More powerful... more powerful... what the fuck... when he was in that doctor's office... when he found out he was going to die of some random disease... Daptin realized that it was THEN that he felt most alive... the tingling excitement of still being alive... with the prospect of fighting for that life...

And now... as a god... undeniably a god... with the prospect of thousands of years of youth... thousands of years of unbridled creative power... stupidity... lying back in a bathtub... his juices mingling with the water... the water created by the Warhome... created from hydrogen and oxygen... hydrogen and oxygen that might have entered the Warhome's compressed matter heap as rock, as vegetation, as earth... carbon or gold or praseodymium or whatever else... protons and neutrons and electrons ripped apart and remixed... the water... his fluids... barreling a million miles down a road in a world he couldn't even have imagined when he was human...

Human... was he human? What was he? What was it that fox had observed? That he had wondered? Whether Daptin was the Prime Creator... whether he was a pinecone...

Lost... so lost... limited awareness... unanswered questions... non-omniscience... lost... and no longer human... no longer on a thin ledge between life and death... no longer worrying about the little things in life... the Warhome... catering to his every need...

The Warhomes... what if one was to fall into the hands of a normal person on a normal world? With reality travellers... gods... superheroes... fantastic beings... the Warhomes were a convenience... Daptin and Agatha and Ferrajalt and Billion would probably have found another way out of their dilemma when they found themselves a million miles out on Twicvion Lane... but a normal person... a normal, fragile society... just imagine...

Thinking of geometric progressions, Daptin could see that one Warhome could become ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, and on and on... until everyone would have one... no one would have to work anymore...

And what would be left? Sex and romance. And exploration and freedom... but exploration and freedom might get tiresome after awhile... if it was so easy... but other people... men and women... at least the Warhome couldn't make THAT part of your life easy...

Sarah... oh Sarah... Daptin rode on a wave of emotional pain... smiling and reveling in it... a vestige of humanity... pain... the sweet pain of the longing heart... if Sarah was here with him... that last glimmer of humanity would be ripped from him... and he'd have to trifle with matters of reclaiming the world he had created... of saving the universe from destruction at the hands of Sleap...

He tried again to make contact with his Land... as he had so many times before... and he felt something... something vague... he couldn't be sure whether it was his imagination... aha!... there again, something human... doubt...

He got out of the bathtub and started drying himself with a perfect fluffy towel, as perfect as all linens in the Warhome... he smiled as he wondered whether the Warhome could be programmed to make thing imperfect once in awhile... then he frowned when he realized that it probably COULD be programmed that way...

Warhomes are strange... they have a strong intelligence... but nothing like the full speaking entity in the Stormbolthouses... the Leitmotif, he had spoken to... and the progeny of the Leitmotif... as Ferrajalt had described to him... Lunatether... was a fully realized consciousness... so much so that it (she?) had destroyed itself to be reborn as a human being...

Warhomes didn't talk, however. They showed graphics on a screen, and interacted with people in a somewhat childlike way, finding out what you want through a series of graphical options and things...

He wondered if the more primitive minds of the Warhomes were also yearning to be human... but he just didn't know...

They were like dogs... wonderful, loyal companions that can afford you companionship and help without the burden of speech... allowing a soothing aloofness... maybe the same way cats feel about their human companions...

Daptin's Land... there was so much more he had to do... so many unfinished things... the Land was an infant... and it must be suffering now without his constant tending... home to a despicably inappropriate orgy... an orgy decreed by a woman he had resurrected from the dead... killed by Ferrajalt in a fit of anger... a death he had felt like a tons of bricks falling on him... the first death in his Land...

And now... the one who he breathed life back into spat on him and committed the most horrible crimes against him... he should have known better... he should have known...

Still naked, but a little dryer, Daptin walked out of the bathroom and into the Warhome's master bedroom, getting under the sheets of the oh so comfortable bed and curling up into a fetal-type position... hiding from reality and liking it.

Sex... relationships... the game of it all... the wellspring of human brightness, the wellspring of ALL brightness... but for now, for these months of absurd travel, Daptin had to get by jerking off thinking of Sarah... and a lot of other girls as well... doing a lot of things in his fantasies... a lot of things...

Maybe the answer is... maybe it's all about... taking a good thing when it comes along, and cherishing it... all those relationships we pine after in later years... at the time of their happening, were wracked with doubts and insecurities, which may have diminished their intensity... but back again we are... to the fragile nature of humanity... where doubt and insecurity are in themselves invaluable treasure... to cherish, if one has the wisdom... but of course, such wisdom would diminish the humanity of the whole thing anyway... so it wouldn't work... we can't appreciate being human too much... or we stop BEING human...

Bad train of thought... not leading anywhere... Sleap could pop reality's cherry anytime... any second... with unknown results... but almost certainly it would be a cataclysm...

Somehow, Daptin knew about That Which Lies outside... at some level... in some primordial way... and the feeling he got was urgent... DO NOT LOOK OUT THERE... WE CAN NEVER SEE THAT WHICH LIES OUTSIDE... WHY DO YOU THINK WE SEALED OURSELVES UP IN HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Daptin curled up in his blanket, as trillions of souls curled up in their universe... good parallel... but all about hiding... all about avoiding what one should be confronting... but hiding can be for fear, or for self-preservation... and Daptin didn't knows which one was happening on a universal scale...

Then Daptin touched his neck and got a feeling... that everything would be okay...

*OW*



[[END093OW]]



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