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singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 095--5/17/96
<-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 8  ||  ------->
(Cup OWis095, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

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[[BEGIN095OW]]



[[01095CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 9 5 * * * May 17, 1996
"The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!"
by Frank Edward Nora

CONTENTS

01 095 CV--Cover
02 095 LA--Lord of Obliviana
03 095 NH--Nihilistica
04 095 LM--Life Mysteries
05 095 SU--Superior
06 095 SR--Severe Repair

OsoaWeek095, May 17, 1996
Fourth issue of OsoaWeek Book Eight
Written by Frank Edward Nora (except where noted)

Published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement
obliviana@aol.com
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: 28416 / Words: 5208 / Lines: 706
Days late: 65

*OW*



[[02095LA]] Lord of Obliviana

Sun 6/23/96 * 1:33 PM * New Apt. * Tarb 4179

I will now try and figure out what Tarb it is... above is the Tarb I figured out... haven't written it yet... writing is like time travel... back and forth... how many thinkers have said this and thought they had struck upon something original? Many, I suppose. And by referring to such, I shield myself from looking stupid, saying something that may have been said many times before...

Like at Sam Goody before... I got the new Beck album... and the girl making change was like preparing to give me way too much, and then she caught herself... but I realized... you might say "heck, I'll take it!" or something as a comment on the situation... but it's just been said so many times... that it's not funny anymore... it's just lame.

And this phenomenon is behind a lot of things... so many things are being said, that we're kind of using up things to say, and everyone has to become jaded and cynical...

But on to the Tarb thing...

From the Tarb Guide in OW078:

Fri 4/26/96: 3829 thru 3834 (OsoaWeek092, first issue of Book Eight)

So... here we go...

That was 58 days ago. (Good title... "That Was 58 Days Ago")

So... 58*6=348...3829+348=4177... So it's now 4179...

Just made a flood in the kitchen... filling up a pot to make pasta for the first time here... and I forgot about it... and caused a little flood...

Denice stayed over last night... and the night before... now she's home doing some homework... but she's not in college... she's taking classes and stuff related to her job...

Now, here I am... OsoaWeek is late... my Web site index is still in the works... and I am at the heart of the matter of Obliviana...

I am probably going to make some Obliviana hats... real professional-looking ones... they have a hat stitcher thing at the mall... and at Port Authority... maybe the Port Authority one would be easier, since I pass by them every day...

8:11 PM

Geez! I've been sleeping all afternoon! It's night already! Totally chaotic!

Lost... don't know where I am... need to get a grip...

9:13 PM

Was watching a boot of "Eraser", smoking a cigar I've been smoking all day, on and off. Still smoking it. Denice is coming over in a little while.

7/7/96 * 11:16 PM * home

I just got back from Virginia... a wonderful trip to Shenandoah National Park with my girlfriend Denice...

Anyway, Obliviana is in bad shape right now. It's been a long time since I've done any real work on it. I don't want this to be a logbook of the end of Obliviana. It's not. This time... this time, to me, is a time of destruction and rebirth... corny as it sounds... and I don't know what I'm saying... and... and...

Let's just say that in the nearly two-year history of OsoaWeek, I have never been later and I have never been more unfocused. There is the danger of collapse, but I don't think it will happen. I've come too far to allow things to fly apart.

The two-year mark is coming up soon--in about three weeks. I want to set that as a deadline for a new direction and stuff. I have to.

So... what will it be...

I dealt with the word "Dashic" somewhat over the weekend... I think it's a word of great power, and I am going to use it cautiously and with respect.

Anyway, where am I? I know my "voice" here in my writing sounds funny. But my mind is somewhat messed-up. And that's the way it is.

So... Obliviana... where is it going...

It has to be an Internet game. It has to be free and simple to start with. Folks establish a Fonosta for free, and then make choices every week for their Fonosta from a "menu" of options, updated every week. There could be certain Pelters available, for example, for a price (in Circs?) and with a limited availability (digital artifacts). I want to keep it very simple to start with. The idea is that you can make your free Fonosta bloom into a True Fonosta by paying a game fee and stuff.

So THIS is what I need to focus on... getting this game going... making it simple enough for people to grasp quickly, and for me to be able to administer realistically. The simple system at the heart of the complex universe of Obliviana.

Sat 7/20/96 * 11:43 AM * Home * Tarb ????

So... one week from today will be the second anniversary of OsoaWeek. And on that day, there will dawn a new era for Obliviana--for then, the game will truly begin.

This issue is easily the latest ever, at 64 days. If not for the impending launch of Obliviana Primal, the game of Obliviana, things would indeed be looking grim. But with Obliviana Primal will come a new beginning for Obliviana. And in one week, OsoaWeek will be back on schedule.

What I'm planning on doing is completing this issue, then doing the rest of the issues in "loose" fashion, with just the Superiors and the Lord of Obliviana features. Unfortunately, this means that Book Six of Severe Repair will only have 4 chapters. But, since each Book of OsoaWeek represents 13 weeks, and since in these 13 weeks I have been focusing almost exclusively on developing Obliviana Primal, it's the right way to go about it.

On May 18, I moved into this new apartment, and my life began to change at a wild pace. So it is appropriate that this issue, dated May 17, should be the prelude to great change in Obliviana.

OsoaWeek Book Nine, starting with issue 105, will coincide with the first Trick Sojourn of Obliviana Primal. It will be a fresh start, but I will have a massive history behind me... thousands of pages of OsoaWeek... not to mention the great history of Obliviana before July 28, 1994...

I have one week to launch Obliviana Primal, and I still have much to do. I'd like to finish all the issues of this Book of OsoaWeek today. Because I have not slipped so far that I cannot recover. I shall recover.

So let me get to it. I had some amazing dreams last night, and I'm gonna put them in "Diary of a Dreamfrank" in Nihilistica, below. Also, I have embarked on a new phase of Severe Repair with "Get Real, Daptin", in which Daptin Gone enters THIS world... I did it as a way to make it easier for me to write a bunch of Severe Repair, but also, I think it's a really cool idea, and one which fits into the wild, untamed nature of Severe Repair.

So let me write a few Superiors... take a shower... finish this issue... then finish nine more issues... and then... focus like a laser on the launch of Obliviana Primal...

My writing voice right now... it's strange... I realize that... but I am in a unique place... with a unique challenge... a challenge I will rise to and come out of triumphant...

2:26 PM

Actually, maybe I'll just incorporate my dreams into Severe Repair. May as well kill two birds with one stone, eh? Last nights dream were the terror on the train, going for cigarettes, monster and book stores, chess and rock book.

3:09 PM

That's it.

Get all Obliviana!

*OW*



[[03095NH]] Nihilistica

***ALL THE SUPERIOR "B" VERSIONS SO FAR***

SUPERIOR 195B
Flew at latenight rented car earlymorn, domed hotel and ralcifice office, the tin bannister sanction. Was I not a warrior, of skill and power? Billiard winter drink, I was in you, I was the deep glass window at the airport last night. I am burning.

SUPERIOR 313B
Hint of pepper in the air and she's finally with me. Today for adventure, tonight for sexual adventure. Why are there computer graphics in my thoughts? Dear home, I depart, and must hope you'll survive. You have a mundane life, not here, but at most a day out like.

SUPERIOR 152B
People? I was one, here in the wood, we had Ahalhia. People. Derive cursive floralities to snow Dallas, winter window, the desperate journey of four confused teens, and the little baby antelope who binds them all together. Helf, and I'm back in the stupid studio with the miserable ones.

SUPERIOR 324B
Gotta deliver silver confetti torrential rain to the horny pieces of ass at college. What I blew up. Donut break. Keep on stumbling, you're bound to jackolantern sooner or later, kin. Thine ray ignored, quiet mind pub. It comes to mind.

SUPERIOR 21B
Wondering heavier than usual night alive I'm swept I'm deter the mind. From southwest departings, how fuse a fuses, in first of fur stroke on face. Freight set the rare object down upon my desk if you will. Set it down my fair companion, set it down, a mug of fire for you.

SUPERIOR 176B
Comma J, the code word for the attack. The details were scoundrels, and our faces were none to match. Scuse me man, has the day to die arrived. It's not always like that boy, we have a paranormal girl with us, none of us will die, she will kill them all, so relax, you won't even have to fight. I remember languishing and meandering on windy hilltops&#151;I don't have to work, I don't have to fret. This place is strange&#151;got here in some peripheral wisps of ultramagic on the battlefield. But I can't wait too long.

*OW*



[[04095LM]] Life Mysteries

LIFE MYSTERY 3
"Sarah and The UFOs of Mexico City,
To The Mexican Surf-Temples"
by John Nora

A lightly freckled New Yorker, Sarah went on to Mexico alone.

She got back quite appealingly alterated; sporting a white t-shirt and a trusting, nubile tan. Crouched forward on her elbows when she sat down, and twenty-one years old.

At the time she was in love with a long, strong contractor's son, who was heavily freckled, a redhead, and who also wore white t-shirts.

In fact, so obsessed with him, lastingly, was she, that she would androgynously dress herself like he dressed, quite subtly, but as much as possible. She would even cut her hair very boyishly short.

So out from this storm-sky of freckles, the relationship not so dreamy as her clothes-horse body was nagging for it to be, she'd gone to Mexico, after he bowed his tall, gruff-voiced self out of the trip (school this, school that).

She just went all by herself to Mexico, for a vacation.

With gulping, black bravery, I will now reveal to you what I imagine were the highlights of her trip:

1. UFOs. There have been a cornucopia of UFO sightings in the early evening's pineless, dull-mooned skies of Mexico City. On video shot from an aristocratic, hillside pool patio, the UFOs flounder, high up, like horde-appeasing, contraptional, 18th century Mexican stars.

I'm pretty sure the UFOs were all hoaxes, so let's just wipe those right out of this metaphysically-pouring picture of a lost time.

2. Mules of atticy Mexican paths, and their sombreroed shadows.

3. The people she associated with and the sorts of things they did together during her paella-aired travellings.

God knows.

4. 19th century Mexican stars.

Close to a year later in New York City a hot June, marijuana-decay-smelling night, Sarah said she had just broken up with the long, strong contractor's son.

Right now, two years after that, she's living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I don't know. All afternoon I've been haunted by sorrow-smelling, dusky-red-horizoned, Sarah-palimpsested, ochre-gold skies of Mexican Surf-Temples.

Haunted? Really.

A lot of Americans, even beautiful, thoughtful, sexy young female Americans, go to Mexico to unwind, or find themselves, or whatever.

She could show you polaroids of her Mexican vacation like peepshow interiors through the changing bright pure yellows to greens of cats' lenses, if you could only get the right angle on them.

*OW*



[[05095SU]] Superior

SUPERIOR 532 * 5/13/96
Fun, I said, for fun I would climb, I said, I would join the secret agents in their deserted base, babe. And cool hats. Fascination by the near-moronic, taking drugs and being like a fountain, by it, sitting on it, but unable to distinguish myself from it. Pieces of a shattered glass... our lives are all like that... nothing left to do but clean up... nothing to do, nothing means anything... means everything... even contradictions fall on deaf minds these days... and to be in a supermarket! Mannikins who use all their energy to build a fake reality, to tell themselves that everything is alright, when everything is falling apart around them. And... and they say it's ME who has a problem, that it's my OWN mental problems that's making me perceive the world like this, that they're just so "FINE", and I'm like, what, a "NUT" or something. But they are all brainwashed. I see the truth. I see the real way thing are. Why me? Why am I, of all people, blessed to be aware of the truth? Maybe that doesn't make much sense. But to admit I'm wrong would be tantamount to suicide of the ego.

SUPERIOR 533 * 5/13/96
I am someone who has many fantasies. I have a very vivid imagination. I see people and I imagine doing things with them. Part two. I have this thing about the woodland and young people, and being young, and having fun. We say "frolick, youngsters!" With a suggestion of the spice of magic and the occult, of course sex, and maybe a little computer science as well. Intelligence. That is the key to it all, and the inability to deal with the society you've been dealt. The third. Interacting with people--you commute to New York, you go along with millions, you are all in the same space, but people rarely interact. All the beautiful women! So THERE, but so out-of-reach. And I wonder what it was like in this city 100 years ago. The same thing, always sex and sex and sex more. But I don't know. Sex is such a versatile paintbrush. Suggestions of it, subconscious awarenesses of it, promises of it, etc. all are the true spice of life on earth. And that is all.

SUPERIOR 534 * 5/13/96
Here is the problem, when you are old you are not young. That is not a good sentence. You are where you do not want to be, exchange pleasantries with those you hate, and pick berries with a relative just so as not to offend them. People are so crazy underneath, it's amazing people are able to put up such competent facades. I love life. And I want to live it. And I am capable of that.

SUPERIOR 535 * 5/13/96
All the time avoiding you. You! You are avoiding YOU, yourself. See the magician, he is competent, he tricks you like you trick you, like you do to get through the day, to not suffer a nervous breakdown or something like that? Forget it. The theme is how people delude themselves, and how to get past it, but the way to get past it is easy, it is to be aware of the deception. All that is needed here is awareness.

*OW*



[[06095SR]] Severe Repair

SEVERE REPAIR
Book Six, Chapter 69: "Get Real, Daptin"

Am I Daptin Gone?

Stupid, what a pointless train of thought, what a waste of time.

Here in my Warhome, alone, alone, wanting Spanking New Sarah, wanting her, losing my mind...

I created a world! I have that much power! Fox even thought I might have been THE ultimate creator of the universe!

Yet I'm miserable...

I just want a LIFE! I don't want to travel between alternate worlds and dimensions. I don't want to cavort with monsters and goddesses and superheroes. This sort of superlife is deadening, I don't feel human, I don't feel much at all. I just want to LIVE!

A normal life... in a normal place... stuck on one world... no superstrength... having to fear being hit by a car or a passing bullet... fear for my life...

I feel such power within me. Surely I can do this. Surely I can have a normal life. Surely it makes sense. I feel it. I feel it. I'm going to do it. It's going to happen.

I will come back to my Warhome, back to saving the universe from Sleap Drassy, but I have to experience a LIFE. I need to be REAL. I need to get REAL.

Here goes.

* * *

I woke up and I was in my apartment. Wow, it worked. It all worked. A bank of newly-minted memories flooded into my head. Cool. It worked perfectly. I was in the middle of a real life.

My name is still Daptin Gone... my hair is still green, but that's cuz I dyed it... I live in an apartment in Jersey City, near the Newport Center Mall, a few minutes walk to the Pavonia/Newport PATH station. If I lived on the other side of my building I could see Manhattan from my balcony, but unfortunately I don't, so I get to see the mall.

I was pissed, cuz I figured a view of Manhattan, especially at night, would be great to impress girls. Girls... yeah, I have a girlfriend... Bonnie Pollard... but it's not too serious... yet...

I work for this guy Comma. He had his name changed, legally, to Comma, I swear! He's been into this creative stuff all his life, like publishing minicomics, putting out his music on little cassette tapes, making movies with cheap camcorders, all that. I met him in college and he kept me on his mailing list (and more recently, E-mailing list), and when he said he was starting this company "Hull" and was looking for computer people, I gave him a call and he hired me right away.

I had been working in a desktop output bureau and it was miserable work. When I got the latest (and very delayed) issue of his E-mail newsletter "Comma's Coma", I was at my wit's end with that job on 14th Street in New York. But it all fell together, and I got to make about the same as I was making at Union Imaging, in the mid-30's.

Comma won about $100,000 in the Connecticut Lottery, and then the next month won another $200,000 playing blackjack at the Luxor in Las Vegas. And THEN he somehow a few months later he bought a bunch of stock in this crazy IPO for this Internet company, Spacedust Sources, and sold it two days later for god-knows how much, and started Hull New Media right then and there.

I've been working at Hull for two months now... and things are going pretty well. There's a cool gang of Generation Xers there, so I'm always steeped in Star Wars, breakfast cereal, Brady Bunch, memories of Letterman, Zeppelin, and all that.

I smiled and I was till in bed... here I am... it worked... I('m no longer in that Warhome... no longer part of all that interdimensional intrigue... I'm HERE.

It was... a Saturday. I... I was supposed to call Ann from work about going to Figurine Dream at the mall at South Street Seaport to get some statch work done for the Hull Gang chess set, which was my idea.

Figurine Dream is this awesome idea... I think the one at the Seaport is one of the first... they have this full-body scanner, where you step onto this pedestal and stand perfectly still while all these scanners and things input you in 3-D into this Silicon Graphics computer... and then you get to preview the model of yourself on this screen, and see if you want it "printed" out on this "object printer" thing. It's so cool... there's this layer of plastic resin or something, and a laser inscribes it, and wherever the laser touches, the liquid becomes solid... then it lowers that later, and starts working on another one. And after a few hours, voila!, a perfect little figurine of you!

So I figured we could put together a chess set with all the people from Hull... with Comma as King of course... they have three object printers, with three different resin colors (brownish, bluish, and greenish)... we decided to go with the brown and the green, kind of a nature theme, good juxtaposition with the heavy techno theme of our lives.

I went down there with Ann and Brandy this past week and checked it out... Brandy got a scan, but the printers were down. The scan alone cost $29.95! The figures range from $19.99 for the smallest to about a hundred for the largest. So our chess set is gonna cost us at least a grand, but Comma likes the idea and says he'll chip in for part of it.

When we were down there I bought a few bootleg videos... of "The Cable Guy" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Ann and Brandy think I'm crazy paying $10 for a shitty bootleg rather than spend $8 to see it in glorious cinema. But who has time to go to the movies?

"Cable Guy" was alright. Kinda cool to see Jim Carrey in a darker movie, a movie that's at least ambitious, at least trying to do something more than be a backdrop for Carrey's "genius".

I got out of bed, naked, and headed for the bathroom to piss. Looking down at my body, I marveled at it... so frail... so real... if I jumped out the window, I'd be killed...

I know this probably doesn't sound like something that should excite me, but it's like... like the feeling you get when you're out all day in the heat in oppressive clothes, and finally come home and strip them all off and take a shower... all of my invulnerability and superstrength and power served as a security blanket... but life is boring when you know that no matter what happens, you'll just keep on ticking...

I had my HUMANITY back... and it felt wonderful...

But what if I DID die here? What would happen? Would I be whisked back to the Warhome, the whole thing having been as a dream? Or would I indeed be dead, faced with whatever afterlife this world has to offer?

I didn't know. I also didn't know how long my memories of my "real" life would last. As I pissed, I realized that I was fully aware of everything... my induction into Overwhelm... my introduction to Agoopish... my mission for the Caxopy sisters with the Cup of Coffee... the Goodbye Popcorn and being erased from existence... my salvation by Ultra Occult Entity Obfuser... Wreckage Mallie's gun kemig call that ruined and crashed the universe... and the fall into nothingness, where I reached out and created a world of my own... my resurrection of Red Archer Booze after Prince Ferrajalt killed her... to getting booted out of my own Land by her and Sleap Drassy... to my meeting up with Agatha Petunia Wack... back to my apartment at Greatwall, back to the Cup of Coffee... then Ferrajalt walked in... then I got the psychic plea from Bellicose Billion... and we went off to save him... and wound up a million miles out on Twicvion Lane... and made Warhomes out of the buttons in Ferrajalt police uniform... to the endless days and weeks of driving along... of masturbation and frustration... till finally I reached out and made a new life for myself here...

And I smiled as I shook the leftover urine off the end of my penis, as it came to mind the whole mindfuck of all of that maybe being a fantasy, with this new life being my true life... living with two sets of memories is mentally stressful... but I like not knowing... I like being unsure... I like being human again.

I walked back into my bedroom, sat on the bed, and picked up a big trade paperback that was on the floor, "Chess Challenge for the Video Generation". Comma sent me out the other day to get him these really obscure cigarettes that he likes, Waster's Umbers, and I had to take the 6 train up to somewhere in the 70's or 80's, and when I got out there was this cool little alley with all these oriental stores and stuff. One place sold just monster figurines--Godzilla, Ultraman, that sort of stuff. Another one was this awesome used bookstore run by this old Chinese guy. I went in and asked him where "Wong News" was, since that was the place that Comma thought might have the Wasters. The guy told me "This IS Wong News!", so I looked around and didn't see any cigarettes, and asked him about it, and he said that the cigarette guy didn't come yet... apparently he takes his entire stock away with him when he leaves, and he only sets up for a few hours a day. He said the guy would be there within the half-hour, so I started browsing the books, knowing that Comma would rather me be out for a long time than come back empty-handed.

The first book that caught my eye was an old hardcover with a worn jacket called "Rock Formations in the U.S.", and I looked to see if Shenandoah National Park in Virginia was listed, because I always liked the rock formations there. It wasn't. Instead, it was sort of a narrative... maybe a story... about the development of National Parks and stuff. It was all in two-color... black and a light green. I read about how this one guy with a hard hat on did something to upset these other guys with hard hats, and then put it back on the shelf.

Then I found "Chess Challenge for the Video Generation"... a gorgeous piece of work, four-color on every page, with tons of photos of vid-kids against dark backgrounds, faces lit by video screens. It was published in 1982, and was an attempt to teach chess strategies by relating them to video games. For example, they had a chart showing how bad defense can allow one piece to start chomping up your pieces just like Pac-Man. Stuff like that. An awesome book.

Anyway, I got the chess book and the obscure cigarette guy came. He had three variations of Waster's Umbers! There were two different sizes of the regular Umbers (regular and tall), and also Waster's Umber Blackjacks, with a really awesome, colorful package. I asked him about them, and he said enigmatically "They're not available in this country."

I bought two packs each of the regulars and talls, and three packs of the Blackjacks, figuring I'd like to keep a box for myself, just to put on the shelf, since I smoke cigars, not cigarettes. It cost me almost $100, which I put on my American Express, knowing that Comma would gladly pay me back. I felt a surge of pride for serving my master well.

When I got back Comma was indeed thrilled with the discovery of Waster's Umber Blackjacks, and said he was gonna go up there the next day and deal with the guy personally... he said he sounded like a good gray market connection...

Brandy showed us a movie she made in college which she digitized into QuickTime. We watched the tiny image on a computer screen. She a very interesting girl, half Apache Indian and half Philippino. You might think she'd be a real beauty with that kind of heritage, but somehow she didn't luck out with the old gene pool. She has a weird case of bad acne, and her body is kind of skinny and weird. She has a really good personality, though.

Her movie, "The Yellows", was about this evil force that's let loose into the world, and how people deal with it. The best scene was on this train car, where a Yellow was slowly moving down the aisle, turning people into little pieces of candy and eating them. It was this 7 or 8 foot tall mannequin or something, and it was really scary. The two main characters, these two guys, were sitting there and no one was moving, and they were talking about how if everyone started running away, there's no way they would make it, because they were so far from the exit. So no one knew what to do. Finally they popped open the emergency exit and got out while the rest of the people were destroyed. Outside, the two guys were wondering if they should call the police or the government or something, with this evil force turning people into candy and eating them. But they figured that someone else was sure to inform the authorities, so they went to an ATM, took out all the money they could, broke into a car, hotwired it, and started driving south. That's how the movie ended. It was pretty good, but I wish I could have seen it on a bigger screen.

Huh. I wondered about all these memories. Did all this stuff really happen, or not? I remembered when I first got hired at Hull... I decided to celebrate by having my hair colored green... something I had always wanted to do but never had the guts...

Hull New Media has it's offices in The Ed Sullivan Theater Office building on 53rd Street, right next to the Letterman show. Every evening tons of tourists and other assorted thrill-seekers gather on 53rd to catch a glimpse of departing celebrities... or at least Biff Henderson...

So that's where I am... here in my new life... which will last who knows how long... but I know it'll be fun while it lasts...

*OW*



[[END095OW]]



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