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singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 096--5/24/96
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(Cup OWis096, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

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[[BEGIN096OW]]



[[01096CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 0 9 6 * * * May 24, 1996
"The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!"
by Frank Edward Nora

CONTENTS

01 096 CV--Cover
02 096 LA--Lord of Obliviana
03 096 LM--Life Mysteries
04 096 SU--Superior

OsoaWeek096, May 24, 1996
Fifth 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: 7556 / Words: 1389 / Lines: 236
Days late: 58

*OW*



[[02096LA]] Lord of Obliviana

Sun 7/12/96 * 5:34 PM * Home * Tarb 4348

Watching the Olympics, women's gymnastics.

Went to the All-Star Cafe with some folks from work on Friday, pretty cool, opening ceremonies, had a Gardenburger.

I wonder if you can buy Gardenburgers at the supermarket?

Anyway, I'm in the process of catching up with OsoaWeek... gonna do a bunch of issues today... last issue was 65 days late, which will hopefully be the record, the latest any issue will ever be.

Weird. An ad for the All-Star just came on. And I got an issue of Time on Friday for the long, late-night bus ride back, and it had an article on the theme restaurants. It has "Wills" on the cover, the future King of England. What a yawner.

I have to have Obliviana Primal up on the World Wide Web by midnight Friday, five days from now. I have the first major game that will be played. It is a gambling game which uses an 11 by 19 grid of 209 Storm Pelters, and each week 1, 2, 4, or 8 Storms will be chosen, with 2 being infrequent, 4 being rare, and 8 being unlikely. Players will make bets with Frontier Cups, which are digital artifacts with multiple attributes, a major one being as a betting chip.

There will be a number of different bets possible. A Flip/Color bet is placed on one of the 11 rows, and pays off 11:1. A Dire/Totem bet is placed on one of the 19 columns and pays off 19:1. A single Storm bet is placed on a single Storm Pelter and pays off 209:1. The even/odd bet is placed on the even or odd betting square off the board, and pays off 2:1. If square 209 comes up, ALL bets are paid off! A single Storm bet on 209 pays off 418:1!

Those are the rules as they stand now... I might change them a little as the week goes on.

Obliviana Primal is played in 13-week Trick Sojourns. Each Obliviana Year begins on Obliviana Day, the 209th day of the year, July 28 except for Leap Year, which makes it July 27. Each week of a Trick Sojourn begins on the day that Obliviana Day fell on at the start of the Obliviana Year. For the coming Obliviana Year, the first day of each week will be Saturday. The last day of each week will therefore be Friday.

Sun 7/12/96 * 7:22 PM * Home * Tarb 4349

Okay. Watching "Time & Again" on MSNBC... a repeat... no joke... from the launch on July 15, last Monday...

On the Olympics they played an instrumental of the Garbage song "Stupid Girl" behind a story about the US women's gymnastics team...

On Time & Again they're doing the Apollo 11 launch... a young David Brinkley...

So, I guess I might as well finish up this issue... gotta do a whole bunch more today...

Get all Obliviana.

*OW*



[[03096LM]] Life Mysteries

LIFE MYSTERY 4
"The Stratosphere, China, Porcelain"
by John Nora

Mark was talking to his psychiatrist.

What had been on his mind?

Mark said, yeah, he was thinking about chopping up Regina in his bathtub.

Regina had been renting a room in Mark's apartment, and had left a terrible mess a few days previously, for Mark to find when he got home.

Stop here.

Mark hates messes. He hates messes so much that at the very sight of one in his apartment he becomes a raging psychotic ventriloquist's dummy.

Not raging, Mark looks like a psychotic ventriloquist's dummy anyway.

Imagine a Goggles. Or Woody.

Mark will dump out and scrub clean an ashtray after you've smoked one cigarette in it.

Because she looks like a tall, beautiful Irish china doll, separating Regina from her limbs should be a matter of a few cracks and pops without a lot of bloodiness.

But that's my opinion!

A day or so before going to his psychiatrist, Mark sat at his smooth kitchen table, smoking a camel straight next to a gleaming crystalline ashtray, as clear and limpid as light.

He lit up another camel straight.

Yes, chopping her up in his bathtub. Regina, chopping her up in his bathtub.

The bathtub could be dined off of, he would clean that bathtub so well.

Perhaps it was all an excuse to clean the bathtub.

He'd clean everything, the ceiling, the stratosphere.

His psychiatrist would say that Mark was escalating.

Well, he'd chop up that asshole, too.

He'd fold him up into a match box.

As a back-up plan he might throw Regina out the window.

Later, Mark called me up to discover if the world and things were just rosy.

So, Mark yelled at me over the phone.

"Yeah, I smoked up the whole fucking carton, plastic and cardboard, too!"

*OW*



[[04096SU]] Superior

SUPERIOR 536 * 5/13/96
Not only that, you become PART of the action. Jam in a virtual rock concert, where YOU are the star of the show! Help pilot the starship to fight the aliens. You can do it! Slay the dragon! And behind the scenes, brilliant young adults keep the machines in working order, a tower of working capital, not Babel. If it falls apart, folks will take a loss, but is it worth it? To have the chance to be there at the dawn of the next big thing? I am just thinking, writing down. I am thinking of a city street now.

SUPERIOR 537 * 5/13/96
Having fun in the woods, caprice, untethered, intoxicated, magic and freedom. Boys and girls in love with the great big question mark the world around them presents them. But such a state is very hard to achieve, the baggage of too much getting-along in the real world, or something. I was wondering whether those woods, and those mischievous young people could be recreated... digitally... with folks maybe not so young playing the parts... What is there to lose? That is a wonderful vision, and I will pursue this notion. It is another piece of the puzzle that is Obliviana.

SUPERIOR 538 * 5/14/96
Bad calligraphy photocopied onto goldenrod paper, folded over, like a little magazine, I know this is your work. Talking about the status of the elves. Fearing dragons. I like you. Your good looks clash with your nerdy interests. Sasha, I hope to bed you down. I am optimistic. We have similar interests, and I'm working on a love spell to grease the wheel. And I think we could send anonymous E-mail to each other on the VAX in fantasy personae, and get to know each other better that way. Plus I have a sword in my dorm room like my character, I know it is against the rules, but rules cannot stand up to my blade!

SUPERIOR 539 * 5/14/96
A rainy backwoods, financial tension, but news by cellphone that it's okay, and here I am with you. Little trap door deep in the forest, leads into my luxurious underground hideout, where I can cheat on my wife with you and we can watch any movie. Being allowed to do all this, I think, is God's way of making up for bad things that happened to me in past lives. I fully savor the good things that happen to me, because I know how precious they are.

*OW*




[[END096OW]]



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