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singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 111--9/7/96
<-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 9  ||  ------->
(Cup OWis111, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

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[[BEGIN111OW]]



[[01111CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 1 1 1 * * * September 7, 1996
"The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!"
by Frank Edward Nora

CONTENTS

01 111 CV--Cover
02 111 LA--Lord of Obliviana
03 111 LM--Life Mysteries
04 111 ZP--Zope
05 111 SU--Superior
06 111 SR--Severe Repair

OsoaWeek111, September 7, 1996
Seventh issue of OsoaWeek Book Nine
Written by Frank Edward Nora

Published weekly by Obliviana Super Occult Amusement
obliviana@aol.com
http://www.obliviana.com/~osoa
1-800-OBLIVIANA

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 from Frank Edward Nora.

*OW*



[[02111LA]] Lord of Obliviana

1/24/97 * 7:28 PM

An interesting idea occurs to me, and this is:

THE TROUBLE WITH ASCII TEXT

ASCII text is the universal format by which computers encode text. Each typographical character is represented by an 8-bit byte. These days, huge amounts of text can be stored very cheaply.

The thought that occurs to me is--how much text can you read in your lifetime? Therefore, how useful will ASCII be to you? This is in regards to ASCII as opposed to my Grayscale idea.

So let's do a rough calculation. I estimated a while back that someone can read 1K (1,000 characters) a minute. So let's calculate what someone might read in a lifetime. Say, 12 hours a day for 100 years. This comes out to about 26 gigabytes. It would take 40 CD-ROMs to store this much text.

But this level of reading is far beyond what any of us might achieve as a lifetime total. But just think about it. 40 CD-ROMS of text is much more than you could ever read.

Of course, DVD is on the way, each of which stores 4 CD-ROMs worth of data. So 10 DVDs worth of text is beyond anyone's capacity to read.

Now let's get a little more realistic. 75 years of reading, 2 hours a day. This results in about 3.3 GB, or 5 CD-ROMs. This is still a mammoth amount of reading, and very few of us will get anywhere near that.

In fact, to read one CD-ROM worth of text (around 660 MB) would take over a year and a quarter of CONSTANT reading.

1/28/97 * 10:51 PM

OsoaWeek is in bad shape. OsoaWeek doesn't really exist anymore. Right now, I should be working on issue 132, the second issue of Book Eleven. As it is, I'm still back here in issue 111. Why is this?

Perhaps it's because Obliviana is still in a state of becoming. Plus, I don't have any real readers for OsoaWeek. I don't know.

I have come up with the Obliviana Interface, and with this, OsoaWeek as it was is over with. Or at least, WILL be over with, in this form.

So where am I at?

I have the basic structure of my Interface. But I'm still refining it. And I'm still refining the overall Obliviana idea. But things are coming into focus.

Obliviana is about the experience, the culture, the personal effects of everything. I can make an interface and create content for it without considering the experience. But WITH considering the experience, I can make it something much better.

Okay. Obliviana is something that PEOPLE drink in. Yes, people focus in on the audiovisual content of Obliviana and spend time with it. People are very busy these days. And very confused. What I want to do is make Obliviana a very understandable, non-confusing thing, where a person will see SOME kind of reward for the time they spend with it.

1/29/97 * 1:16 AM

I've just spent the past few hours playing around with the WDW Explorer CD-ROM (which I got months ago), and checking out WDW stuff on the WWW (such as where the hidden Mickeys are on the disk).

From this experience, I have become aware of an aspect of Obliviana which I had been neglecting: placeness.

Walt Disney World is a PLACE. And even as a CD-ROM, it is a PLACE. To someone who had never been there, or if it didn't even really exist, WDW has PLACENESS on the computer via the CD-ROM.

Obliviana also needs placeness. It is a "Little World of Raceways", but this is just a starting point, in terms of making it a place. How shall it be a place? Shall it be real, or shall it be a fantasy? I think it must be a fantasy world, because right now Obliviana cannot afford to build a multibillion-dollar theme park. It cannot even afford a $210 classified ad in Wired Magazine for the March issue.

So--Obliviana as fantasy world. Try this: ANY interactive online system forms a WORLD, no matter what its nature. America Online is a world, albeit a confusing an unsatisfying one. Here's a question: Does such a place need to be analogous to a real place? Ie, does it need to refer to buildings and roads and rooms and all that?

Well, whatever the answer to that, I DO want Obliviana to be like a real place. This raises some questions with the world of Obliviana as represented in Primitive. Or does it? I do not want any sort of navigation system, not clicky like Myst, hallway-y like Doom or fully 3-D like Quake. I don't want the place to be explored that way. The place that is Obliviana is explored with Primitive, and that's it. But you can SEE and HEAR it through the Grayscale and Radio aspects of the Obliviana Interface.

A lot to think about here.

2/2/97 * 12:12 PM

Smoking a pipe, just added a few drops of Tabasco Sauce to it. It went out, have to relight it.

Okay, I am getting frustrated with my progress on Obliviana. I want to finalize my plans for the interface, so that I can begin CONSTRUCTION on Obliviana.

My CD of The Incredible String Band album "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" is all scratched up.

Okay. Well, I am very close to the final idea. But U have to make that final thrust, dammit!

The idea of the world behind the interface...

The idea of Fonosta... this is what I have to focus on. It is very simple... I've said before, define Fonosta and I define Obliviana. Well, even if the interface is beyond Fonosta, Fonosta is that which I am seeking to define now.

A Fonosta represents a person in Obliviana. Obliviana exists in computer but also in reality. Fonosta is the tool a person uses to channel their creativity into something that is ever-growing, and is also a tool to allow a person to do 209.

The idea of Fonosta as a thing beyond the company Obliviana, as something a person can make for himself independently.

So then, Fonosta as a means of recording information, yes. But beyond that, it is a WAY of organizing information. It is a thing people were always meant to have, from the earliest times. (That last sentence was very audacious, see?)

Okay.

What I have here is the idea of Fonosta. And the... the...

The new idea of organizing information. Think about a diary. This is something. But Fonosta is not just a means of recording, but a means of deciding what to do with your creative energies.

To act in a creative fashion, it can be an action in itself, or an action which produces an artifact/work, either physical (sculpture, or example) or informational (text, for example). Each creative act is...

Creative acts are often confused, disorganized, and fleeting. Fleeting. Fonosta establishes a format into which you can "place" your acts/works. It must begin with a format, a challenge, a defined thing. For example, a short poem that expresses an experience, that would be a work.

Aside here, consider OsoaWeek as my Fonosta...

That is, a means of organizing my work and defining categories/features.

Superior is a good example here. Superior is defined as a short written passage, with parameters I know deep in my mind but that would be hard to express in words. They are numbered, and as such, I am comfortable with the whole thing, that is, I just keep adding them in sequence.

So the idea of short bursts, forming larger wholes, etc.

Uh... getting somewhat fucked up here...

Tabasco and pipe smoke...

The idea of each work being a building block. Therefore, the content is de-emphasized. This is in order to sidestep the issue of WHY. That is, WHY are you creating this thing? It makes it simple. You are creating it to have another building block for your Fonosta.

So, the idea of Fonosta as a thing made up of basic blocks. That each of these blocks, or CUPS as I think I shall call them, is representative of an act or a work.

Okay. This is very simple. We define the idea of the Cup. Then we define the parameters for Cupsets (Cupset being a category). A Cupset is a template Cup. It defines the nature of the Cups with that Cupset.

This is very similar to an object-oriented programming language, like C++ or Java. Defining a kind of object, then defining the specific objects.

Okay. One of these Cupsets would be Storm, which is a 209 journey. So each Storm you go on would be entered into your Fonosta as a Cup.

Cup is not media-dependent. There is the act/work, and there is the Cup that represents it, and then there is the media that represents the Cup.

Okay, say that Friction Enhancers are a kind of Cup. Then using these in Storm Cups would be done. Setting a goal for using a certain number of Friction Enhancers in Storms would be ANOTHER Cup. That is, a challenge involving multiple Cups, that challenge would itself become a Cup, part of a Cupset of challenges.

Overall, your Fonosta is a tool to capture and channel your creative energies, so they are not spent into nothingness.

Obliviana Super Occult Amusement, then, is a way to OFFICIALLY record your Fonosta, or at least parts of it, in a public forum that will be preserved.

In fact, let us think of it as follows: you have your personal Fonosta, and that which is worthy is presented to other people through Obliviana...?

It is clear that computers will be vital to the recording of your Fonosta. Recording with a service like Obliviana means that a crash of your hard drive would not spell the end of your Fonosta. Neither would any sort of disaster (save the end of the world) because Obliviana will back up its data in multiple places.

Yes. So, the nature of Fonosta is such that it being recorded in a permanent and robust manner makes it much stronger. Think about it--if your Fonosta was recorded in a notebook, it would still be a Fonosta, but it would be tied to an artifact, the notebook. With Obliviana Super Occult Amusement, your Fonosta is not tied to any artifact; it is pure information, easy to retrieve, virtually impossible to lose.

Yes.

I do see Obliviana Super Occult Amusement as being ENTIRELY based on the Fonosta idea. That is, every Cup, every piece of content as part of someone's Fonosta. This is not Disney, there a work (such as the film "Pocahantas") is made by a company--rather, all works (monitor failure...went out but came back on after restart...1:09 AM now) will be part of a SINGLE PERSON's Fonosta. Collaboration will be handled by having a single person as the creative force behind something, with others helping, and this helping being Cuppable (newword!).

So, overall, Obliviana shall introduce the idea of Fonostas, will establish many Cuptypes (newword!), will present a unique and innovative computer interface, will store and organize Fonostas and Cups, and will present the best Cups for all people to drink.

Get all Obliviana.

*OW*



[[03111LM]] Life Mysteries

LIFE MYSTERY 20
"Claire From A Distance"
by John Nora

"I will call another day," said Claire from France.

She had once stood where I was then standing in East Boston, Massachusetts. She had been going out with my roommate who was a young pothead orangutang. Except he was far more opinionated, and less hygiene-conscious, than an orangutang.

Not a bad guy, though. That's who she had been trying to reach.

A little bit of the story of Claire: First, a whole planeload of nannies! Young french nannies in a loose, flirty formation at a gate of Boston's Logan International Airport. One of them, Claire, went to live with a rich Bostonian couple and took care of their child. (It really got me going to imagine Claire's Boston family living at the top of a black skyscraper, colossal and all business, hanging over a grey, workman-worn Charles River; but there was no such color in the Charles, and the family probably lived in a pleasantly green and soft suburb like Newton.) Then she met my roommate, shaggy orange Dan.

Now let's be fair here. I'm just jealous of Dan because Claire was very beautiful and tall and LONG. She had just the right tint of beauty in her face, which was almost, too, as long as LONG.

Just the right tint of beauty.

Not too much!

Actually she was sort of a tall, extraterrestrial and demure chimpanzee, to Dan's young pothead orangutang.

Claire first walked in on me as my second day in Boston brought my life entirely to the point of a tiny, windowless, unpacked room (I was, yes, a bit awestruck by those workman-worn waters and baroque, leviathan buildings that did not exist, on any river). My roommate Carla had ordered me to clean out an old, stowaway refrigerator, and gone away. The arm-exertion, mould, grime, and waterish smell of Comet helped work down my fears.

I was pretty relaxed.

Then the front door unlocked itself, and in came something I rarely know and always stirs me, soups me up: Receptivity in my own age-group.

Receptivity in my own age-group had a copy of the key made by its latest boyfriend who wasn't home yet and pulling up a folding chair told me its name was Claire.

Within the first few minutes of our conversation, as I continued with the fridge, Claire said, "You seem very quiet, and not like anyone else who lives in this house."

At that moment I think I felt like I was inside the dim, dingy, yellow-eaten belly of an East Boston Ark, bobbing and creaking and smashing it's way over subway lines and barge-containers and the inner harbor in order to vaporize the innocent Boston Aquarium with its seals, penquins, and jellyfish. I didn't want to be inside there and I don't think, either, did Claire.

After completely cleaning out the refrigerator while talking more and more to Claire, we went into my room and I showed Claire on my VCR a video-movie my brother had made.

My brother's work could be considered as the kind of thing only my brother and I and some select ghoulish conspirators would enjoy. But Claire enjoyed it, very much, laughing at the exactly correct and laughable moments.

It was time to smoke some cigarettes, I think.

That was the only time it was just the two of us.

But I thought of her a lot and even dreamed of her once, and saw her many times in the faces of approaching passerby.

She was my friend.

She was only my friend for about half-an-hour in front of the refridgerator, and maybe close to an hour sitting in my unpacked, stuffy room. But we smoked some cigarettes together, and there's no way around it, a friend is a friend.

*OW*



[[04111ZP]] Zope

ZOPE 038: "Ping Zope"
2/20/97

ZOPE
This space madness affliction is pretty neat. Neato.

MASTER JOE
Yeah. Neato.

ZOPE
Ping. Was that what it was called? The first videogame? Ping?

MASTER JOE
Now you're just pretending to be insane.

ZOPE
No! No. Haha! I really don't remember! Was it Ping?

MASTER JOE
It was fucking Pong and you know it.

ZOPE
Heh. Yes. I suppose I do know it. Oh Joe, remember your girlfriend Emily from Chaire?

MASTER JOE
WHAT?

ZOPE
Your girlfriend on that planet you came from. The one who was fucking her boss behind you back?

MASTER JOE
Why the fuck are you bringing that up?

ZOPE
I was just thinking, I could wish her here for you.

MASTER JOE
WHAT?!?

ZOPE
Yeah... forget it... we gotta just keep on moving along, forgetting the past... Linus Van Pelt would have fifty years of memory and still be a child if he retained it all...

MASTER JOE
You really HAVE lost it, Zope. You're fucking insane.

ZOPE
I know.

LINDEN
Zope, I have those 3,200 alternate reality Cinematronics vector arcade games you ordered.

ZOPE
Oh, good.

*OW*



[[05111SU]] Superior

SUPERIOR 597 * 10/25/96
Beeper seem caze, cut to the mall episode. Jopisode. Kim the kid, be her. Wereyelling, howling like the werehound and the contents of the dice museum. She is untouched by it all, of nothing am I referring. A few more nights and we'll all be fe gant.

SUPERIOR 598 * 10/25/96
Due to walrusary jamp tank and gone games places in youth, spots and stripes on lime fabrics of the tude. Tea yincsincle. Hum tore morm, no gleaze amp-hut the dorkiary. And university fence telling.

SUPERIOR 599 * 10/25/96
I'll do the morning like a halogen moonbeam. Smack and airy. Ivy wall lust, she is liking me and got a haircut. Dorm, lounge, couch... lumber and nails for mischief, needing a silent hammer. Door into unknown, making a spontaneous attraction, like a nerd Walt Disney. Blasting the envelope wide open I hope I don't become an accountant.

SUPERIOR 600 * 10/25/96
L Fierce like to go to the beach. Foze Dayharn has time jellies. Ashison Yobell spearheads the protest of the Snock-Assad Act. Hadrian Fozzcolt as the Dean of Torpor. Storyliner Hexo is a tiger turtle star of children's stories.

*OW*



[[06111SR]] Severe Repair

$~RIT002 "Harvey"
~~SEVERE REPAIR: A Hypertext Novel by Frank Edward Nora
Storyline "A Rather Interesting Tale" Packet 002
00012 * 3.393K * Old/OW025 * OW111
Copyright 1996 * All Rights Reserved~~

Dave found the trail, with some difficulty, and began following it.

"Uh... Rattt... what's 'TV'?" Dave asked.

"What?" Rattt shrieked.

Before Dave could answer, metal walls slid down in front of and in back of him, trapping him in the corridor.

"Where did you hear about TV?" Rattt demanded suspiciously.

"A g... g... gargoyle told me!" Dave said, surprised.

"Well Dave, just what exactly did it say?"

"Um... he said 'Guess what's on TV tonight?'"

"Oh I see... This could be more serious than thought."

"More... more serious than Guggon?"

"I don't know." said Rattt as the walls slid upwards.

Dave then continued to follow the blue slime trial until it led him to an almost impossibly dirty room. At one end of the room there something barely discernible as a door.

"Wait." Rattt's voice then said impassively.

"Okay."

Dave didn't particularly want to stay in this room. The dirt hung in the air and seemed to stain his clothes even as he stood there. Then there was a sudden movement in one corner of the room, which ceased as Dave looked over. What he saw amazed him--there was a small patch of cleanliness on the wall. He started to walk towards it to examine it, but Rattt's voice then boom out.

"Okay dammit--come in, willya?" Rattt said.

Dave walked over to the door and hesitated.

"Uh... where's the doorknob?" he asked Rattt.

After a few moments of silence, Rattt said "What the ruzgo d'ya mean where's the doorknob? Are ya some sorta idiot or something? Wait a second..."

Then came sounds of heavy machinery falling and breaking, and then the door opened. There stood Harvey Rattt. It was hard to tell just what Harvey was. At first glance, he seemed to be a sort of short human/rodent/scum combination, but Dave knew that much more than that, as well as a whole lot less.

"Come in." Rattt said.

As Dave entered through the doorway, he was surprised by what he saw, even though he'd been in this place before. It was just so incomprehensively... incomprehensible. Basically, it was like a huge cavern, and there was a mountain of trash and broken machinery in the middle of it. Bridges extended from the innards of this mountain to the cavern walls, and misshapen creatures limped about everywhere. At the very top of the trash heap, Dave could just barely discern Harvey Rattt's office.

"Come on. We've got things to talk about." said Rattt.

Rattt then snapped his fingers and there was what appeared to be a landslide on the mountain, revealing a stairway. They began to climb up.

"Mind if I fly?" Dave asked.

Before Rattt could answer, a huge glass something crashed and shattered onto the cavern floor, causing an immense racket.

As soon as the echoes subsided, Rattt said "Sure, go ahead! Just leave me here walking all the way up..."

Dave looked up the dizzying staircase and said "Oh, it's not that far. I guess I can walk it."

But Rattt had apparently disappeared.

"Rattt?" called Dave, but his only answer was the tortured groan of a gigantic elephantine creature dragging a building through the debris of the vast floor below.

So Dave took off and flew up towards the top of the heap, landing a few seconds later outside Rattt's office, only to find Harvey right there, with a weird smile on his sinister little face.

"Time to go!" Harvey said as he pulled a lever extending from a crumpled metal form to his left.

All was suddenly dark.

~$RIT002

*OW*



[[END111OW]]



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