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-------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A .
singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora
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OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 143--4/19/97
<-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 11  ||  ------->
(Cup OWis143, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

[[BEGIN143OW]]



[[01143CV]] * * * O S O A W E E K 1 4 3 * * * April 19, 1997
"The weekly ezine of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement!"
by Frank Edward Nora

CONTENTS

01 143 CV--Cover
02 143 LA--Lord of Obliviana
03 143 NH--Nihilistica
04 143 HR--Hemisinister Review
05 143 HT--Halfevil Times
06 143 SU--Superior

OsoaWeek143, April 19, 1997
Thirteenth and last issue of OsoaWeek Book Eleven
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 1997 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*



[[02143LA]] Lord of Obliviana

3/4/97 * 11:24 PM

I updated my homepage yesterday, adding this:

-------------------

UPDATE

March 3, 1997

Frank Edward Nora here. Just wanted to let you know that Obliviana is still alive and well, even though this website is in serious need of an overhaul. It's been about seven months since I made any major refinements to this site, and in that time I have forged Obliviana into something much greater than what is represented here.

For one thing, there are about 26 more issues of OsoaWeek done which are not available here. If you do the math, you might wonder why more aren't done. Well, I'm pretty behind in doing OsoaWeek. Right now I'm working on Book
Ten, October '96 thru January '97.

"Obliviana Primal" as it exists in this site is no longer current. I have advanced the ideas in Obliviana Primal to a significant degree, and you'll hear all about it when I revamp this site.

I don't have a counter on this site, but I think it's just as well. I don't think many people have been here, and at some level I don't mind this, because I'm not happy with the way I'm presenting things here. With the new site I will make some effort to promote it. I hope to have the new site done soon, no later than April 26, 1997.

One exciting change will be that Severe Repair will have its own section, apart from OsoaWeek, and I will promote Severe Repair as the main content of this site, apart from the successor to Obliviana Primal. While there's a lot of good stuff in OsoaWeek, Severe Repair (my "hypertext sci-fi novel") is easily the best and most accessible feature.

Zope will also have his own area on this site. Zope is on this site now only as text in OsoaWeek. I intend to present Zope in actual comic strip form in the new site, which should be quite awesome.

I do intend to keep all of OsoaWeek available, but I think I'm going to present each book as a long text file with no internal links. You will be able to use the FIND function in your browser to navigate these texts, as each feature is identified by a unique, searchable code.

I'm very excited about Obliviana, which is just now blooming in its true form. If I were you, I'd bookmark this site and come back in May. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Obliviana is a wonderful thing that will really open your eyes.

Get all Obliviana!

-----------

Here are some notes from the past:

-------------------

10/24/96 * 1:52 AM

Still pursuing the details in the Primitive Obliviana Primal idea.

I like the idea of content being released in Cartridges, a lot of stuff from different Revolvers released simultaneously, in a big release.

Each Cartiridge will have a name and a theme, and will contain new Zope comics, Severe Repair Packets, Superiors, movies, music, fonts, etc. etc.

The idea is that by bunching these things together, ostensibly as part of the game, Obliviana will be brought into sharp focus. In my experience, reading and hearing about things that are GOING to come out is a lot more exciting than when the thing is actually available. So with these Cartridges, I'll have a lot of previews and sneak peeks and stuff.

In the heirarchy of Obliviana, the game video game/operating system Obliviana Primal is at the core. Everything is "in" OP, and OP is the "shell", the "surface" that interfaces directly with the public.

209 will be one of many Revolvers that are clearly identified as such in OP. 209 will pervade all of Obliviana, while not overwhelming OP. At one point, I saw 209 as the core of Obliviana. And maybe it still is. But as far as the structure goes, OP is the center. People can easily grasp the idea of a video game. A really cool video game you play on your home computer, and have fun playing. An occult system for travelling to other dimensions is not very easy to grasp at all.

What about the first few Cartridges and the content already released in OsoaWeek?

The existing content will be reorganized and represented. SR is a prime example, where the raw chapters will be reformatted into Packets.

The main consideration here is the frequency of new Cartridges, and having enough stuff to put into them. But waiting to release stuff that's already released is silly. So maybe I'll release all of the Superiors so far in Cartridge #1, something like that...

But this is the OVERALL structure--the OP virtual videogame system, and the cartridges that plug into it. Everything exists within these boundaries. (For example, OsoaWeek will exist as a "newspaper" or something in the networked subway/basement area of OP.)

The Cartridge format is the right idea. A big premiere with months to go till the next one...

cideogame

word "''''"

ABM IDEAS?
10/25/96

Mike wants me to figure out a new plan for ABM Radio.

Criteria:

* Weekly recording.
* Some kind of audience.
* Retain rights to performances.
* Eventual Internet-based show.

Idea--recording "Packets"--say 5-minutes each (or 10, 15, 30, 45, 60. etc)--perhaps contact CD-ROM magazines like Launch or popular Websites to include audio files of the ABM Packets, where we retain the rights.

idea: nerdwalking through scenes hurriedly carrying things, over and over again, different thing each time

Sound bite idea.

Howard Stern sounds--their addictive quality--create set of ABM soundbites--host a show featuring them.

10/27/96

"Murms"

* The idea involves using various sound bites, repeating them so that they become familiar and addictive, like Howard Stern sounds, for example.

* Anything But Monday is about, I've determined, the two "Nomads" characters. Once they opened the store "Things You Need". Now... maybe they start a company called Nomadi Entertainment!!!

* Internet-based audio entertainment.

* Different roles for Massotto and myself? As in, Masssotto as the main guy, and me as something else? Maybe not.

* HERE--short, maybe 1 minute, audio clips, which can stand on their own, as an innovative form of entertainment, being used in a variety of settings, like college radio, real radio, TV, WWW, etc.

* Structure of show--some level of clear orientation, as in talk radio. Some level of sound bites of the addictive quality, "Murms"...

* Idea: Structure the thing like a parody of a radio show--example "Hey folks, this is Mike Massotto here... coming up we have "It's a tuck-in Phil" by yours truly, "Are you dumb?" by the great Peter Litkey, and of course, the classic "Not In My House!" by none other than Frank's mom! But first, here's a (name of sound bite) by request... "Bumpy Personality"..."

* "Anbumo" as name for sound bites? ANything BUt MOnday? No.

* Minks?

* Value of sound bite idea in the shorter attention span of today's computer people, etc. and the advantage of delivering great entertainment in a vary short amount of time.

* Using the one-minute segments to introduce ABM audio entertainment to the world, then parlay it into a real radio show...

* How does this fit into my plans for Obliviana? Does ABM have to be an aspect of Obliviana?

* Sound bites followed immediately by some sort of quick "fanfare" sound effect.

Outline so far:

Production of a series of 1-minute audio segments, with the intention of pursuading various media outlets to air these segments--for example, college radio shows, commercial radio, Internet "magazines", CD-ROM magazines, and others.

The content of these one-minute segments must revolve around catchy sound bites, and these segments must be immediately compelling.

Okay.

Start each one-minute "show" with a different person saying "Aynthing But Monday". Then play a series of sound bites, maybe punctuated by sound effects. After this, me and Mike, giving number and date maybe of the show, and talking. Idea would be to record an hour or so of conversation between Mike and myself and edit it down to the best few sound bites. After our talking, then one more sound bite, and the show is over. If produced once per week, over the course of several hours, let's say that we could make 7 one-minute segments, one for each day of that week.

appearsin

-----------

Back in the present, 3/5/97 * 12:17 AM

Commentary on the preceding stuff. The first part about "Cartridges" in an outdated idea, but it's interesting, cuz I thought about the Cartridge idea earlier playing Namco's very medicre "Ace Driver" at Port Authority. The idea of hyping and previewing things still interests me.

The ABM ideas are quite good. I did record an hour with Mike a few weeks ago. I also did a new Beublin with Peter Litkey. I definitely want to pursue the Obliviana Radio idea.

The reason I put this stuff in here is that I am now writing in the file "OsoaWeek Book Ten", which I've had for awhile, and that stuff was here already.

I also have Superiors 625 thru 679 here now.

Oh, here's some more stuff, from the bottom of this file:

-------------------

The College of Interdimensional Travel of the United States.
CITUS
The College of Obliviana Interdimensional Travel of the United States.
COITUS
The College of Interdimensional Travel Rainstorms of the United States.
CITRUS
The College of Interdimensional Travel and R+++ of the United States.

PornoGrafX?
Loont

Snock.

Bus boarding series.
tomentum
toponym
The Snock-Assad Act.

Fozzcolt the Mariner/Tarper/Torpor.

Youpitity.

Hadrian Fozzcolt.

Ashison Yubell
Yune Belly

Smack airy.

pohoto

ANYTHING BUT MONDAY
24-hour Internet radio

Based on library of sound samples.

Guitar chords as audio "punctuation".

Massotto and Nora as central feature.

"Barnes, Pingitore, and Allawalla"
(and Powell, Gravell, and Espinoza)
as ficticious show?

Part of the "Obliviana Campus" world...

Or "Obliviana College", or "Nomadi University"...

Create the proper environment for Obliviana... an online college... enroll in classes... about interdimensional travel and other stuff (Introduction to Zope?)...

Obliviana College is the newest idea. How does is relate to Obliviana Primal? Simple--Obliviana Primal is the interface for Obliviana College.

Woulf

Dream 11/8/96--giant plums

*not an actual college

11/11/96

Two days ago, at 9:02 PM on 11/9/96 I connected with Denice about Obliviana. The first 209 trip was on 11/9/86 with Bryan Cassidy. At 10 PM on 11/9/96 Tarb 5016 began, the 24th 209 Tarb.

11/13/96

Central idea now focuses around the firrst stage of the occult side of Obliviana--the Storm using Friction Enhancers. Denice had idea of bringing people together to go on a particular challenge and then return later with results.

"Wonder, we're coming back." takes on a new meaning, as in adults who left Wonder behind now coming back for it.

Your Fonosta (Device?) is your record of Storms and their specifics. The more and better your do, the better your Fonosta.

New Forge of Wander is 64-page almanac of Obliviana listing all the Storms, many Friction Enhancers, and the whole realm of Obliviana.

Fonosta recordkeeping...

Name
Fonosta name
Date
Storm timespan
Storm used
Friction Enhancers used
locales visited
Blivs observed
comments

Need to define terminology. For example, what of "Stormwalking", "Reality Zoning", "Dashic", "209ing", etc.?

I need a coherent, simple set of terms to make this all work.

Storms
Friction
Storm Walking
Frinction Enhancer
Flip, Dire, Pilferid
Do 209
Wanna 209?
Let's 209.
Do some Obliviana.

Entertainment, dimensional travel, Primitive OP, etc. all REVOLVE around the central focus of 209.

11/14/96 * 1:12 AM

Downloaded an MSX emulator and a bunch of games off the WWW. Really cool. Mappy!

Talked to Massotto today--he really liked what I wrote. He's enthusiastic about the idea of a new ABM focused on audio, bringing ABM back to where it belongs.

The same old problem still exists, though--how can Obliviana (or Nomadi, or Halfevil Graphics) and ABM live together?

Obliviana is now quite specific, as a game/occult system. The ATTITUDE of Obliviana is extremely important, and ABM may be the key to that.

It will be interesting to see how Massotto reacts to the supernatural, maybe "cultlike" nature of Obliviana in relation to his Scientology beliefs.

I think that an idea I had awhile ago may apply here--for ABM and Obliviana to exist as rivals at some level. That is, Mike as the Lord of ABM, and me of course as Lord of Obliviana.

The interplay, the rivalry, etc. will provide the dynamic necessary to prevent Obliviana from ever becoming a "creepy cult".

Orange Weed

nm: Storyliner Hexo (children's character)
Tiger Turtle

Ra
Re
Ri
Ro
Ru

Ruckus
Recreation
Research
Robotics
Rebellion
Roulette
Rubber
Rock'n'Roll
Role-Playing
Ribaldry
Riddles
Rhombuses
Rhubarb
Revolution

"Stop Gloating like a Glitter" --Denice told 2/7/97

It's not a fream Emily.

Ed: "Zope has got nice."

"Afounding"

-----------

Watching "A Hard Days Night" on AMC now. In one scene a woman says "that'll be two and nine", and these guys are playing an interesting-looking game. Gotta find out what that game is.

Um, I want to talk about Obliviana. About the new stuff happening.

What I am working toward now is to have a new website up by April 26, less than two months away.

Severe Repair will have its own section. OsoaWeek will be presented, but SR will be removed. SR Raw 69, the 69 chapters presented in OW, will be presented in the SR section, as well as the showcase, which are the Packets, or whatever I'm gonna call them.

I think also that come April 26, I'm gonna change the format of OsoaWeek.

Let's look at things in terms of Revolvers. Severe Repair and Zope are my main Revolvers. But there are numerous other Revolvers out there.

Now I also have to look at the core of Obliviana, which is Fonosta/209, or perhaps I can just call it "Obliviana Primal", or "Forge of Wander". I think the latter is better. Plus, I'm beginning to like the term "Primal Wonder", so I think that the term "Obliviana Primal" might be kaput.

So, Forge of Wander is a Revolver, and it contains Fonosta and 209. It's a big thing.

Damn, could I be getting any MORE cigar ash on my lips? Fuck!

Okay. Here's an idea. You go to the Obliviana Super Occult Amusement website (I made a killer new OSOA logotype the other day, by the way) and you see a set of Revolvers, and you go into one. This contrasts with the Primitive Interface somewhat. Or maybe not.

Little World of Raceways. Here's something from the past:

-------------------

1: OBLIVIANA PRIMAL
Raceway America
WHEELS (7) driving

2: 209
Raceway Astronomy
CUPS (7) gambling

3: SEVERE REPAIR
Raceway Arctic
SWORDS (5) fighting

4: ZOPE
Raceway Aftermath
HAMMERS (5) building

5: SUPERIOR
Raceway Ancient
ROCKETS (3) shooting

6: WELCOME TO THE WEASEL VILLAGE MALL
Raceway Apparition
SPOTS (3) gathering

7: FORGE OF WANDER
Raceway Archery
WANDS (1) dungeon

8: SUPER OBJECT
Raceway Aqua
GUITARS (1) become a rock star

-----------

This scheme incorporates Revolvers into Racetracks/Raceways and vice versa. A Racetrack will have a Revolver, and a Revolver will have a Racetrack. A Racetrack is a place, a place where Fonostas are. Obliviana is a place, made up of the set of all Racetracks. The idea of competition, the game aspect, this will be partially realized by Fonostas choosing one Racetrack to live in, with a sort of "team spirit" for that Racetrack.

The set of Revolvers above is outdated, but a lot remains the same. "Forge of Wander" above refers to Antebellum/NJ stuff. But now FOW represents something new.

So what will the new Revolvers be?

Severe Repair, Zope, Forge of Wander, definitely.

"Obliviana Central", whatever it'll be called, has to be another Revolver. This is where OsoaWeek will be, as well as all the history of Obliviana, all the stuff that's going on, and all the stuff that's planned for the future.

That's four Revolvers.

Here's my current set of eight aspects:

I: Fonosta/209 [Forge of Wander]
II: Primitive/Little World of Racetracks [medium in which it all exists, but there will be Primitive-specific content]
III: Severe Repair/Zope [Severe Repair, Zope]
IV: Obliviana Radio/OsoaWeek [Welcome to the Weasel Village Mall/Obliviana Radio, "Obliviana Central"]

And don't forget Anything But Monday, but Mike Massotto hates Obliviana, remember.

The ABM situation prompts me to create WTTWVM as a non-ABM radio project, with Beublin A. Richardson, Train Crap & Blood, etc.

Maybe WTTWVM as the sound bite idea...

In which case, Beublin/Train Crap would be a separate idea...

Okay, goodnight.

3/6/97 * 12:38 AM

Well, what have we here?

The idea of Racetrack/Revolvers is HERE. I remember when I came up with LWOR I said that it was THE idea, but I then abandoned it and moved on. Now I have come back to it, and so my declaration about it being THE idea is back to being valid, though it is now only one aspect of Obliviana.

Obliviana IS very complicated. But I am striving to make it simple.

Where am I at now, overall?

Well, I have Obliviana as the "new way of life" thing, and Obliviana as the "cyberplace" thing. Where do these two meet, and are they maybe even the same thing?

Idea, Obliviana as an arcade video game, and then go from there. I think I have had this idea before.

Oh, another thing, the idea of the word "Revolver" replacing "Racetrack/Raceway". Or maybe Revolverway? Let's see...

RevolverwayAmerica
RevolverwayAstronomy
RevolverwayArctic
RevolverwayAftermath
RevolverwayAncient
RevolverwayApparition
RevolverwayArchery
RevolverwayAqua

LITTLE WORLD OF REVOLVERWAYS

3/7/97 * 9:24 PM

I just got home. Colloidal mineral day today, without a doubt. Feeling weird, odd.

I did a printout of the 13 Trees I have done so far. I printed out 8 and signed and numbered them, with the new OSOA logo.

I did wander a lot today. I went to The Vitamin Shoppe on 6th Ave. near 8th St. to get the colloidal mineral stuff. After work I went back there and got two more bottles, at $20 a pop. Then I got a cigar and walked through Washington Square Park and then called Denice, my dad, and my friend Bryan from a payphone, and then went to Tower Books and resisted buying stuff and then passed two cool-looking stores, Other Music and Anime Crash, but didn't go in cuz I had to catch the 8:40 bus and also I can use them as new places (newplaces?) in the future. Also during lunch I discussed the movie Lost Highway with Village Comics guy.

Writing. Looking at writing. Making and managing it. Gotta get and audience for it. Get.

Audiej. New word.

Yah.

3/10/97 * 1:18 PM

Played my Namco Classics Vol. 1 arcade machine today, finally. Absolutely worth $400, not that I can afford it, but I got it, and that's it. Superior 684 is about playing Mappy on the game.

So I know I keep saying this, but where am I at?

I had this inspiration today about Obliviana being multifaceted and existing in many different forms, ie, computer game, boardgame, card game, etc.

The Forge of Wander, the 11 x 19 grid, is the vore idea in Obliviana. A boardgame using this grid is obvious.

3/13/97 * 10:30 PM

OBLIVIANA BOARDGAME

Just played first solitaire Obliviana Boardgame. I made the board two days ago, and played an earlier version of the rules, but tonight I played with much more defined rules. Earlier rules called for drawing one card and moving two spaces toward that row or column. It wasn't too good.

Tonight, I played three games where I placed and retrieved four emtpy Cups. First game, it took all the cards in one shuffle (60) to complete. The next two games I was left with 16 and then 14 cards. Then I played to get a Grail, and did it in 148 cards.

I will put the five coins (four pennies and one quarter) I used in a Panter Tango metal cigar box. If Obliviana Boardgame takes off, these coins will be interesting to have.

It's funny, this text is the first thing I'm writing on my new computer monitor. My old IBM monitor finally died a few days ago, after a period of me having to hit it to make it come back on when it would intermittently go dark. Now I have a refurbished Magnavox Professional monitor, which cost $99, and which Denice picked up for me yesterday.

This morning on the bus I wrote down what have become the rules to OBG (Obliviana Boardgame).

I got the idea for OBG last Sunday when I went down to Video Game Connections to play my Namco Classic Collection Vol. 1 arcade video game. On the way home, I stopped at Barnes & Noble in Freehold and got a magazine called "The Games Annual". Reading it, I was inspired and got the idea of Obliviana being played in multiple forms. The magazine covers all sorts of games, from computer games to boardgames to puzzles to wargames.

The word "boardgame" is listed in the dictionary as "board game", two words. But I like combining it into one word, so that's what I'm going to do.

So here's the history so far:

3/9/97: Get "The Games Annual" magazine, get idea for OBG.
3/10/97: Print out small checkerboard FOW at work and write notes on it.
3/11/97: Make first real board at work, play first clumsy solitaire game on floor with undeveloped rules.
3/12/97: Continue thinking about rules, was going to play a game with Denice, but didn't. Good, because the rules yesterday were still undeveloped.
3/13/97: Conceive of current rules in morning, write them down on bus, played first real solitare game on kitchen table around 10:00 PM.

This is all assuming that OBG is going to be a big thing, but I have a feeling that it will be.

Now I will present the notes I wrote on that first little printout (written at Denice's house):

-----------
4/23/97 now. A block of text was removed, because it described the rules of the Obliviana boardgame, which I'm not yet ready to release.
-------------------

3/14/97 * 10:20 PM

I think in the past I have referred to this phenomenon where stuff happens to me and it is pretty obviously a lesson. Well another one happened today, which had as its bottom line that people might seem nice as can be while they're being manipulative and expolitative.

Basically what happened was this woman who owned a greeting card company came in and I got to talking to her about Obliviana, and she seemed very receptive. Naturally I got a little excited, being able to talk to someone new about Obliviana. But as this was happening I she kept pushing more and more for me to work on her job, this year's Xmas cards, more, and I did go out of my way to help her and be nice to her.

Okay. Then todayI found out that she called my boss in the morning and accused me and the other guy there of screwing up her job, not working fast enough, etc. So after we bent over backwards to accomodate her, which you might expect a little gratitude for, we got attacked.

So the only conclusion I can draw is that she was humoring me, flattering me in order to more easily manipulate me. The extent to which this was premeditated as opposed to subconscious on her part defines the level of creepiness. That is, if she was on-purposely flattering me from the start to get me to work harder on her job, it is deeply disturbing.

Anyway, I took a lesson from this, and that is that I should not, under any circumstances, sell any part of Obliviana to anyone else, and as well be wary of all the people I have to deal with in the business of Obliviana.

Here is the rule: I must retain 100% control of Obliviana. If I have to choose between selling interest in Obliviana and going out of business, I will go out of business. I know this is a bad business strategy, but I feel it very strongly.

These are rules I have to establish NOW, because when I'm in the rushing torrent of an expanding business, it'll be hard to get a perspective on things.

I'm dealing with all this because I think that OBG is such a good game that I could realistically market it and make money from it. In order to do it all myself, I will have to come up with an innovative means of creating the game package. But I have strong talents in this area, so I think I'll be okay.

I also have to develop a business model by which I can start the business for a few hundred dollars, and grow the company without any additional outside investment.

This idea may sound crazy, but I DO have a product in OBG that could potentially take off in a big way.

Idea: Use spare cards by cutting them in half or in quarters?...

Because I have such a product, it may be possible to grow my company without any outside investment, and only spending a few hundred dollars myself.

Using my WWW site will be key. I think I can get free advertising by hyping my website to Internet magazines. Then I can sell the game packages via mail order from my WWW site.

Idea: Cool Fonostas, Super Object style.

Now, let's look at the big picture.

As it stands now, OBG (Obliviana Boardgame) is officially called "Obliviana". Yes, Obliviana IS the boardgame. The idea is that I will release a radically altered version of Obliviana called "Obliviana Primal", which will be the Obliviana that I have been developing for so long.

Think of it like this. Say there was chess, the normal game everyone is familiar with. Then there's "Chess Primal", a wildly alternate version of chess. This is the way I see it.

As I've observed before, people understand new things by comparing them to things they already understand. OBG is eminently understandable, as it has similarities to chess, checkers, card games, and boardgames in general. I think that if OBG turns out to be a really good 2-player game, people will easily understand and accept it. OBG is very simple and traditional. In fact, on the second prototype board I made today, I call Obliviana "The boardgame that shoulda been around for the past couple hundred years." Playing it yesterday, it definitely has that feel.

So OBG is very embracable. And it contains all the seed aspects of Obliviana Primal. So OBG functions as the foundation of Obliviana. It will make people aware of Obliviana and make me money. And it will be the gateway to Obliviana Primal, for those so inclined. And I imagine that those so inclined will be a small percentage of those who get into OBG.

Now, what about the OBG package?

OBG will, I believe, be playable by one (solitaire) thru four players. So besides the board and rulebook, each player will require a Fonosta, four Cups, and a Storm Codex deck of cards. The Storm Codex is made up of 60 cards taken from two identical decks of playing cards. And that is the extent of the equipment.

The board is by far the most challenging piece of equipment to produce. My current prototype board is 15-by-21 inches, rather large. The production board will most likely need to be bigger, and will need to be durable and easy to mail as well.

So the board will have to fold up, be in segment, or be rolled up for shipping. I think that a cardboard tube would be the best means of packaging, with a printed sticker on it. This means the the board will have to be able to be rolled up, which means it has to be printed on a durable material which can withstand repeated rolling and unrolling, the rigors of being played on and be easy to lay flat.

Kind of a tall order, eh?

Perhaps a kind of cloth, but this would involve silk-screening of some sort. But maybe this is a workable solution.

Another diection would be to use actual physical tile of some material, which could be attached to each other somehow to make the board. Or probably 11 strips of 19 tiles each, which might fit in a cardboard tube.

But remember, the final package cannot be too different from what people are used to, and the graphics of the board will be a major factor in people being drawn to it.

Traditional boards are, I assume, quite expensive to produce. And even more expensive in the low quantities that I will require.

How about a checkerboard tablecloth or just plain cloth that I could buy in quantity? I would still have to have the row and column information, which would have to be separate from the board.

The game requires the board, a Fonosta for each player, with the number of players being , and four Cups for e...

3/20/97 * 9:45 PM

Vernal equinox today, eh.

OBG going very well. Some minor rules revisions earlier this week. Played a lot of games with Denice, Carrie, and their mother.

The problems of publishing the game by myself, which is what I'm going to have to do, are wuite daunting. But then, the problem of creating Obliviana in general has always been a bit daunting as well.

Before on the bus I realized that no amount of money in the past would have gotten me OBG.

Oh, I joined the Flat Earth Society today. I'm anxious to read their newsletter and stuff, cuz they seem to believe in a lot of things that I have also come to believe, but which virtually no one else believes. Specifically, the idea that science is very much like a religion, where a whole lot of unproven theories are thrust upon the world as facts (evolution, big bang, DNA, etc.)

One aspect of reality that I have been finding very much in conflict with the traditional scientifical explanation of our universe that the fact that the sun and the moon appear to be the exactly same size in the sky. The sun is usually too bright to make out its disk, and therefore this is something that is not usually observed. Solar eclipses demonstrate this point very clearly, though, when the moon blocks out the sun totally, leaving only its corona.

As well, the moon always shows the same side to us here on Earth. Scientists explain this be saying that the moon's rotation period is the same as its orbital period. That is, it's turning once on its axis each time it goes around the Earth once.

This phenomenon could be attributed to some sort of gravitational thing, I guess, but to me, the more likely explanation is that the moon is NOT a sphere, but something more like a disk.

And the sun and moon being the same size... in the scientific view, this has to be viewed as a coincidence. But if God created two lights, one to rule the day and one to rule the night, it would make sense that they would both be the same size.

This is all quite scary, because science is a real security blanket for people. Like religion, it explains the structure of the universe for people. But unlike religion, which emphasizes the value of human life and activity, science demeans it. So we have moved from the old religions which tell you that your life is sacred and has meaning to the new religion of science which tells you that your life has absolutely no meaning and that you are an utterly inconsequential little speck of a chemical reaction. To me, this throws science in a very bad light. And yet, there are very few voices out there making such observations.

Anyway, back to Obliviana.

I have this game, which is absolutely wonderful. This game is something that I could not have forced into existence. And if, for example, my Anything But Monday Magazine was a success back int he late '80s, I would most likely have never come up with it.

But now, I have this amazing boardgame, and I have named it "Obliviana". I believe that this game will have very widespread appeal, and it will establish an identity and a reputation identified by the name "Obliviana" and the "wings" logo. So the game is the means by which Obliviana Super Occult Amusement will get big.

The idea is that Obliviana will be a very conventioal sort of game, marketing to a wide demographic, and certainly capable of become very popular, maybe even a CRAZE.

Obliviana is very understandable. People understand new things by comparing them to things they are already familiar with. Obliviana has a checkerboard-like board, playing cards, dice, and mini poker chips. These elements are all very familiar, and the game play, while unique, is very easy to understand.

Obliviana Primal is a "variation" of Obliviana. And it is Obliviana Primal which will incorporate all my truly wild ideas. Since people will be familiar with Obliviana, they will use Obliviana as a stepping stone to understand Obliviana Primal. That is, if I released Obliviana Primal as boardgame by itself, it would be very confusing and it would turn most people off, since they wouldn't be able to move from what they currently know to Obliviana Primal which is quite unlike anything they know.

Obliviana Primal IS the Obliviana that I have been developing. It contains everything I have been working on all these years, and talking about here, in the digital pages of OsoaWeek.

So, in the simplest terms, I will be producing two games--Obliviana and Obliviana Primal, and that's it.

As simple and clean and well-defined as Obliviana is, Obliviana Primal will be wild.

All the weird and wondeful products, both digital and physical, I've been dreaming up will be a part of Obliviana Primal. Perhaps Obliviana itself is a part of Obliviana Primal, albeit a part that will be separate. I expect that only a small percentage of people who embrace Obliviana will embrace Obliviana Primal as well. I want to maintain a distance between the two, so that non-Primal folks won't be put off by the wild nature of Obliviana Primal.

Idea: Use playing cards and some kind of cloth with a checkerboard patterns to make the boards cheap? I tried it a little, and it doesn't seem like a great idea.

So what is the new structure of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement?

Well, I was thinking about it, and it seems like since OP will be having so many "sub-games", that Oblviana itself, from the OP side, would be a "sub-game" of OP. But OP cannot exist, really, without the repuatation and foundation established by Obliviana. So this issue is a bit confused.

Obliviana Primal is a game that has a lot of different aspects. It will retain the structure of Obliviana, but take in a direction that is very new, wild, and now ("very new, wild, and now" is from the "Declaration of Obliviana" which I wrote several years ago).

209 is part of OP. In some ways, it IS OP.

I'm getting tired, and I gotta go to bed soon. I was smoking a supposed Cuban cigar before, and I didn't get too far with it before I started feeling whacked-out and queasy from it. Guess it's really a Cuban, albeit one that doesn't taste too good.

I guess the major unanswered question is where does all the computer stuff sit now with the new O/OP structure.

Well, the Primitive Interface can be seen as an aspect of OP, or it could be a thing unto itself. I think it will be an aspect of OP.

So there it is. O/OP. Obliviana/Obliviana Primal.

Happy equinox.

CRA$E

3/21/97 * 8:50 PM

I really have to get on the ball here. I have to have the plan for all of Obliviana Super Occult Amusement set down BEFORE all this game publishing madness begins.

Up till now I have had the luxury of not having to deal with the realities of business. And those realities really suck.

3/22/97 * 12:18 AM

Wrote some Severe Repair, Quile storyline, some pretty awesome stuff.

Anyway, what's going on?

Yeah... the game... it could overwhelm the rest of Obliviana... which up till less than two weeks ago was ALL of Obliviana.

So I need to define and detail exactly what I want Obliviana to be like in its full implementation.

3/23/97 * 12:06 PM

Wow, it seems like 1997 is already in the past. When I write "97" on the date, I get that feeling, that I'm already past 1997. But it's just a feeling.

I guess it's good, though, to be in the past. Being in the past allows you all sorts of preparation. Specifically, I have room to move, I have leeway, I have time to get Obliviana started before things really start heating up.

I just finished up Superior 687, and it did hit me hard, that last line, about the feeling I get on Sundays. I remember feeling that feeling in old apartments, Iselin and Plainsboro. Failures. Mostly, failing to make Obliviana a reality.

Now, I stand at the threshold of making Obliviana real. And I have spent too much time and effort to allow it to be born with any fatal flaws.

So here is an interesting issue. I have, for a while now, believed that digital radio would be the next big thing. And I want to make digital radio a central part of Obliviana. But I just realized that I haven't really thought about the content of Obliviana radio very much. I think that this could be a keystone issue, and could help me in crafting a bulletproof vision of Obliviana.

Idea: Call digital radio "Yamp"? (Referring to nonsense word used in my publication Fovy: "Foolish Oblviana Vending Yamp").

So... what do I see as the content? Well, I suppose that at its core, there would be the idea of the little audio clips, maybe I'll call THOSE Yamps, as opposed to Murms or Minks or Anbumos or whatever else I thought of calling them in the past.

So I'll call them that for now. Yamps.

The idea of a Yamp is that it is a sound bite, from a split second to an average of one to ten seconds, probably more in the one to five second range, with longer times possible.

So there are Yamps. This is one founding idea, but it is a FORM thing, not a CONTENT thing.

Now, about content... well, I have to talk about form again. Digital radio

DIGITAL RADIO anagrammed as IODAIRGALTID (notice reference to "Atlas Shrugged": Galt)

Digital radio is defined as audio in the form of digital files that is delivered to an end-user to listen to. The idea is that a digital transmission will send the files to a digital device in the possession of the end-user, which can with play the audio immediately, or store it for later use, or both. Currently, there are several technologies for digital radio. In one technique, audio files in one of several formats (.iff, .wav, .au, etc.) are stored on a server on the Internet, and they can be downloaded by a user and then listened to and stored after they are downloaded. The problems associtated with this method are that the user has to manage the downloading, storing, and playing of the file, and as well, currently, it takes a lot longer to download one of these files that the actual playing time of the files, for average modem speeds.

Another method is real-time digital audio, such as RealAudio, which aloows audio to be heard as it is being downloaded. Quality is low for a 14.4 connection, better for a 28.8 connection. I am unsure whether these files may be retained after full download in RealAudio, but it would seem to be eminently feasbale, if expensive in terms of storage space.

Yet another method of audio storage is embodied in a new product called Audio Highway, which is a device much like a Walkman, but instead of using a tape to store audio, it uses RAM. My assumption is that the player can be hooked up to a computer that is hooked up to the Internet, and several hours worth of audio can be downloaded into the player overnight, so that every morning, there is enough new audio for the morning and evening commute. These files should be able to be stored on the computer for future use, and again, I am surmising.

The question of storage is an important one. Right now, audio takes up a lot of room, maybe 500K per minute (a rough estimate) for AM-radio quality mono audio. That's 30 MB per hour. In terms of Zip disks, that's about $6 per hour. 2 hours a day, and you have a monthly storage bill of $360 a month if you want to store all the audio you hear every day.

Of course, that amount of money will continue shrinking as the years go on. And, as anyone who tapes a lot of stuff off TV and keeps it knows, you'll never get to drink in all the stuff you've taped, cuz there's always new stuff every day.

This is part of the idea of Yamp... to define and format the stuff that IS worth hearing over and over again...

But I'm still in the realm of format here...

But I want to stay here for a little while longer... I want to forecast the ways in which Obliviana Radio will be delivered to people... so that I may use this information, because form DOES affect content...

Obliviana will produce new audio on a daily basis. Therefore, an easy means of a user getting this material is of prime importance.

As well, I have found that serendipity, as in "channel surfing", either on TV or radio, is more enjoyable in some ways than choosing from a set of choices. Of course, in terms of music, the randomness of radio has its value, as does having your own collection of CDs, from which you can hear for favorite stuff anytime you wish.

In terms of audio content, this question of stored vs. broadcast becomes very important, because it is no longer a matter of necessity. The very limited range of broadcast radio stations have been the only way you can get non-interactive audio content. Now, there will be an effectively unlimited amount of such channels, in digital.

So one aspect of Obliviana Radio will be that it is in competition with numerous similar digital radio content producers. So I have to come up with a way of keeping people "tuned" to Obliviana for as much of their day as possible.

This touches on the Obliviana demographic, which will be very wide in terms of the boardgame, but more limited in terms of Obliviana Primal. The question is, should I try to appeal to that larger demographic in digital radio, or should I instead focus on the more limited demographic of Obliviana Primal?

Let's take a look at the sorts of audio content that are out there. First, there's music, which is today the predominant type of recorded and broadcast audio. Then there's talk, from news to politics to Howard Stern, which is also very popular, but is more the domain of the instant, nonrecorded world of broadcasting. Then there's drama, which is stories and stuff, including comedy, and all that. This sort of content is quite scarce these days, but I think there will an increased demand for it in the future. Another type of content I can think of is background sounds, such as sold in recorded forms as thunderstorms, forest sounds, surf, etc.

Okay. We all live in a world of sound (except the deaf), and unlike our eyes, we cannot close our ears (except with devices such as earplugs or sound-cancelling electronics). And our lives are enriched by audio recordings and broadcasts.

Now. Obliviana Radio will be an ever-growing collection of recorded audio, with daily additions. I would like to hold as an ideal the idea that all the audio will be Obliviana-produced.

It's difficult to define Obliviana Radio without defining all of Obliviana. This is part of my problem--I have to define the parts to define the whole, but I have to define the whole to define the parts.

Here:

I: Fonosta/209
II: Primitive/Little World of Racetracks
III: Severe Repair/Zope
IV: Obliviana Radio/OsoaWeek

This is the definition for Obliviana that I have been using for some time now. Aspect I could be considered by far the most vital aspect of Obliviana, especially since it now contains the boardgame.

One thing I want to make clear is that Obliviana is a producer of entertainment by a few for the many. This bucks the Internet trend of entertainment by the many for the many, a trend which ignores the fact that only a few people have the talent to produce work which is compelling to the many. That is, yes, today's media may be a little restrictive in terms of trying to appeal to too large a demographic, ignoring smaller demographics, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, paying too much attention to those who have little of interest to say. In fact, in terms of content, it seems that the MANY content producers are merely aping the FEW. For example, fiction-writer on the Internet predominantly, it seems, base their work on existing Revolvers (X-Files, Star Trek, Anne Rice novels, etc.) rather than coming up with original material which is not derivitive. And here is an important distinction--good work can (and perhaps must) be INSPIRED by existing work, but cannot be too good by being derivitive.

My challenge with the list I have of these aspects is that I must weave them all together so that the whole thing makes sense. 209 is an idea which I believe is a long-forgotten way for people to enhance their lives. Can it be considered entertainment? Hmm...

Here's the premise I want to explore. Obliviana Super Occult AMUSEMENT as an endeavor whose main goal is to AMUSE people. Let me go so far as to look up the definiition of AMUSE is my favorite dictionary, The American Heritage Third Edition...

AMUSE--1. to occupy in an agreeable, pleasing, or entertaining fashion

I think that I can say that the goal of Obliviana is to amuse people.

In terms of 209, people are exploring their world in new and different ways. Doing 209 is amusing. And Fonosta, as a new way of recording accomplishments, makes otherwise mundane activities amusing and enjoyable.

3/25/97 * 11:13 PM

Idea, FOW board, in numbered squares, sequential SR Cups, Zope, Storm Pelter, Yargo Tree, Superior, etc. This is a major new idea.

3/31/97 * 11:31 PM

Okay. First of all, okay, April 26, 1997 is the start of OsoaWeek Book Twelve. OsoaWeek has really collapsed, I have to say. But it does not have to stay destroyed.

Right now, I see OsoaWeek Books 10 and 11 as just Lord of Obliviana and Superior. Book 12 will begin with OsoaWeek being BACK to being weekly, and being JUST a record of what is going on in Obliviana that week and will be posted online ON TIME. Okay. This is a good idea.

Okay, I have to plan out the new structure of Obliviana, as it will exist on the new website.

First of all, the new Obliviana will be all new. I will create it from scratch, pretty much. And it will begin with a whole lot LESS material than the current website.

I want to present material to people in a much more accessible way.

Okay. Revolvers are a central concept here. A Revolver is an Obliviana entertainment product that is broken down into basic units. Some of the main Revolvers are Severe Repair, Zope, Superior, Storm Pelter, and Yargo Tree. The Yargo format is very important here. Zope, Superior, and Yargo Tree will all be in the Yargo format.

For April 26, I want to have the structure set for Obliviana, with a few Cups from each Revolver, Cups being the basic units.

Here is the definition of Obliviana:

I: Fonosta/209
II: Primitive/Little World of Racetracks
III: Severe Repair/Zope
IV: Obliviana Radio/OsoaWeek

The FOW board is at the center of everything.

I want to define the Little World of Racetracks idea here.

The idea of FOW is that everything exists inside the board, with the board having multiple layers. The LWOR can exist on the board as well, with each Racetrack taking up one level, say.

So, each Storm (square) of the FOW (board) contains a lot of stuff. A single Storm would contain SR Cups, Yargo Trees, Zope comics, parts of each Racetrack, etc. Each Storm can be mapped out vis-a-vis LWOR in terms of the eight points representing the corners and midpoints of the connecting lines, with road entering and exiting. Idea here: rail lines and rivers.

Taking a step back, it would seem apparent that the website should show the FOW and allow the user to click on a Storm, and then see all the stuff that is in there. Indeed, this is what I want to do, but I think that the implementation is a little beyond me at this point. I can see that such a system would have to work with a database and CGI scripting. Maybe that guy Terry could help me with this?

Anyway, such a system is beyond me for April 26. Right now, what I want to establish is a plan for April 26 that I can definitely accomplish.

Morse Code for "OBLIVIANA":

---
-...
.-..
..
...-
..
.-
-.
.-

Got that from my Peanuts calendar.

Anyway, I want to establish the overall system (the form) and put in some Cups from a few Revolvers (the content).

The idea is that I will update the site weekly, with an OsoaWeek Cup (weekly update), and new Cups from the Revolvers, as well as new Revolvers.

So it is clear that I will have OsoaWeek144 as the first Cup-format OsoaWeek. The content of Obliviana will be disconnected from OsoaWeek, but all new Cups will be referred to in OsoaWeek, the week they are released. So OW144 will refer to all the new stuff on the website on 4/26.

Now I get to the issue of "unified field", in which I try to define everything under the same system. This would include images of the FOW, the website itself, etc. That is, even this infrastructural stuff would be defined as Cups.

Well, we'll see about that.

For now, here is a simple structure.

On the splash page, all the Revolvers will be listed, as well as the current issue of OsoaWeek. By clicking on a Revolver, you go to that Revolver's page, which will list all the currently released Cups. By clicking on the Cup reference, you will go to the desired Cup.

I do want to reduce the number of files I will need to update every week, so I might do this described structure all on the splash page, using "#" links. As well, I think I will contain Cups in the same Revolver in single files, at least until it becomes unmanageable.

Here is a list of potential Revolvers for 4/26, before I go to bed:

Severe Repair (text)
Zope (Yargo)
Superior (Yargo)
Beublin (audio)
OsoaWeek (text)
Storm Pelter (Pelter)
Little World of Racetracks (?)
Fonosta (?)
FOW (boards) (Primitive?) (?)
209 (Friction Enhancers, etc.) (text?)

Goodnight.

4/1/97 * 10:58 PM

I tellya, these people man...

I live in a large garden apartment complex. Every day, I drive about one minute to another parking lot in the complex to cut off about five minutes walking to the bus. And somehow, the people who live in this other part of the complex seem to be obsessed with me parking there.

First, as few months ago, I get a violation sticker on my window. I called the management, and they said they didn't put it there and that what I was doing was alright.

Then a week or so ago, in the morning, an old woman asked me to park farther down, nearer the road, since her "senior citizen husband would come home with groceries and have nowhere to park", to paraphrase. I noticed that parking in this new place actually got me CLOSER to the bus. I guess I originally started parking where I was parking cuz my Jeep got stolen from the park and ride lot and I wanted it to be safer, away from the main street.

Anyway, so tonight, as I get in my jeep and start it and this guy comes up to me and I roll the window down and he says he doesn't think I should be parking there if I don't pay rent there. "You did just get off the bus, right?" he said. I told him that I do pay rent and that I do live in Richfield Village, and that I talked to the management and they said it was okay, and that if I didn't park there I would have a long walk every day. He accepted what I said, and I left.

Anyway, these people man, they have nothing better to do in their lives than obsess on my Jeep and how it takes up a parking spot. That's another thing he said, that there's no parking available sometimes, as if my one spot would make a difference.

Anyway, it's just annoying that these people are watching me.

Okay.

Now, this evening at work, I punched out and worked on Obliviana. I made a new Illustrator file of Baskonontana, based on notes and files from about May of 1992. It's quite awesome.

Last night I searched for "UABN:" in my HG Files, and found a bunch of entries, and used these entries to name some of the new Areas on the map. My favorite is New Phocturnan Felty, one I had already established in '92.

I also scanned in Yargo Trees 25 thru 33, as well as Denice's Yargo Gardens 1 thru 5.

I also found a file from the same time period as the Baskonontana stuff (May '92) Where I list 26 main elements of Obliviana, in 8 major Themes. In fact, why don't I present that file to you right now:

-------------------

Halfevil Document #401
HG Report 5/22/92

by Frank Edward Nora
printout #2; 8/29/92; 7:11 pm
Document nascence: 5/22/92


7:53 pm.

Well, I'm leaving for Providence in a little while, but I feel like writing about Obliviana, and getting my thoughts in order before the trip. I think I want to get to some level of determination about Obliviana, as in a plan for its development or something.

I talked to Dave Kopperman before, and I was happy to hear him praise the 3 issues of ZOPE, asking if I had any more. I guess the general lack of respose has colored my own view of my work, but I know there is an audience out there and that what I do is of value.

Now, dealing with Obliviana, I think what I can do which will make the most sense is to comment on all 26 themes, and then deal with the ones which are the most central to things.

* Storm Codex

Storm Codex Deck
The SC deck is the focus of the whole practical occult system of Obliviana. The deck of cards itself is the basis of the system, but the system itself involves a lot more. But I feel that it's better to have a physical object as a focus, rather than have the deck as just another element in a larger thing. SC relies heavily upon 209 and Friction Enhancer and Wield of Transit, and of course the SC Journal.

Storm Codex Journal
This is the feature in FOW where SC is discussed in all its aspects. This is planned as the sole place SC info will be printed, besides AOI. So FOW will be the official place for info on SC. The basic practice of SC will take a lot of space, and therefore an early AOI may be called for, but more on AOI at AOI. But for the practice of SC, as well as theory, examples, etc., this is the place.

209
209 is the logical basis of all Obliviana. It establishes the 30 pilferids (11 Flips and 19 Dires), each with a name and symbol and color and sound and meaning and so on. The pilferids combine to form 209 Storms, and the symbols are designed so that each Storm depicts a vision of some locale or event. Then each Storm will have a unique element added, to round it out. A new alphabet, using characters based on the meanings of each pilferid, combined with phonemes and meaning will form the basis of a 209 jargon, which will provide for words related to Obliviana which have no English basis, so it will be a supplementary language. All these things need to be developed.

Friction Enhancer
Friction Enhancer is related to Wield of Transit, but there WOT deals with the generalities of propulsion, FE offers specific plans for things to do to generate thrust in Storm Codex.

Wield of Transit
Wield of Transit is the place where my vision of the modern landscape is developed, and where the aesthietic of Zoning is related. It is very important for a Storm Codexer to grasp the WOT aesthetic.

* Forge of Wander

Forge of Wander Magazine
Forge of Wander is the Monthly magazine of Obliviana, where all the new material is presented. It is related to AOI in that much of the information in FOW will wind up in AOI, eventually. FOW is intended to be the center and backbone of all Obliviana. I do plan to precede it with the first AOI, so that basic information will not have to be reprinted in every issue of FOW.

Nihilistica
Nihilistica is a feature in FOW which present little vignettes of humor, weirdness, comment, and miscellania. Some of the attitude and features from ABM can be found here, along with a lot of new stuff.

Hemisinister Review
HR is a feature in FOW in which all sort of things are reviewed. It is based on the idea that one want to see reviews to get an idea of what's out there and available. Reviews themselves are succinct, short and to the point. In each area there will be a number of entries, listed from best to worst, with no "stars" or equivalent rating system.

My Intro
Every issue of FOW will have an introductory feature by myself, in which I discuss matters of Obliviana in general and the specific contents of the issue at hand. I want this feature to be something people can count on to be brought up to date on what's going on in Obliviana and stuff.

Catalog of Obliviana
COO is a listing of every Obliviana artifact currently available, with detailed information on each, such as imprint, version, run, etc. COO will likely change from month to month, since new stuff will appear all the time, and short imprint runs will sell out quicker than larger runs. Basically, the minimum run is 30, and nothing is offered for sale unless it is part of a run. Each artifact has the name, printing, version, # of imprints in run, hand done number and signature, and some sort of seal of authenticity, plus whatever else.
* Almanac of Irreality

Almanac of Irreality
Ah, yes. Almanac of Irreality is the reference of all of Obliviana. Complete AOI's will be printed irregularly, with updates possible between major revisions, and new entries in every issue of FOW. As well as detailing all the information in Obliviana, AOI refers to things which don't yet, and may never, exist. I plan to have the first AOI be the first official artifact of Obliviana. Thisfirst tome will includeall the basic information of the various systems in Obliviana, so that such info will not have to be reprinted constantly in FOW. Anyone subscribing to FOW will automatically get the latest AOI, since a lot of FOW won't make sense otherwise.
* Balbitype

Balbitype
Balbitype will release original typefaces in a number of formats, but primarily Macintosh PostScript. The current protocol is for entirely original display faces, each of which has a one-word name, and each of which having but one member in their family. No bold or light or italic or outline&#151;just the best variation will be released. Other possible formats are dry transfer, TrueType, photo strips, simple photocopy originals, to eventually even Monotype matrices or foundry type, though I have little idea of how I'd go about something like that. In the long run, liscencing and revival faces are possible, as well as text families and the like. One idea I have is to work with comic book creators and letterers to come up with cool faces. The packages released will have much more than just a disk, so that it will be desireable to buy the face rather than just copy it.

Balbicade
Balbicade will release computer games in several possible format, with Macintosh and Psion most likely, but IBM, Amiga, and whatever else possible. The first series of games will concentrate on a coherent text-based system, with addition of graphics or primarily graphic games possible in the future.

The Balbitype Gazette
TBG is a feature which deals with fonts and videogames, past present and future. Reviews, comparasins, retrospectives, references, etc. will be presented, as well as details on Balbitype and Balbicade products.

* Severe Repair

Severe Repair
Severe Repair is the name for the fictional world of Aconck, Uvurt Cities, Occult Entities, The Dark of College, etc. Chapters of a novel will be presented, with related short stories and essays also presented. The world of SR will also be extensively referenced in AOI. Some restraint will be required however, since I don't want to give too much away too soon. In general, AOI will refer to what has been revealed in the pages of FOW. AOI will contain synopses of the stories, but not the stories themselves, which could be gathered together as a novel, but some material may just be in FOW. It is an important point to consider that FOW will have to have stuff which will be unavailable anywhere else, to increase the value of FOW.

* Dark of Whimsy

Dark of Whimsy Diversions
The DOW Diversions is a set of games, symbolic systems, patterns, concepts, etc. This set is related to FE, but quite distinct. Some diversion planned right now are Zarball, Blamnoom, 26 Cleona, Building of Yontaro, Be, etc. All the diversion will be related under DOW as well as under Obliviana.

Nanobook
Nanobook is a diversion related to DOW, but it is a thing unto itself. Basically, Nanobook is a series of little books based on a 32-page format formed from a single sheet of legal sized paper. Each book will have a theme, such as Warfare, Perfection, Water, etc. In each book, there will be a cast of whimsical characters, a map of where these characters live and/or act, conversations between characters, various objects, weapons, systems, etc. employed by the characters. Basically, related to the "Little Tiny Reality" idea. Drastic Cyclopedia may be included within Nanobook, or may be a thing unto itself.

Wreck Documents
Each Wreck Document is a letter-size sheet of paper which has been crumpled up and flatten several times. The imprint upon it is based on a protocol, with every aspect needing to be satisfied, such as a name, a list, a typographical basis, a thrust, a meaning, etc. As well, various things can be done with WD's, such as holding them out in different locations, and adding these locations to the WD's record. Stuff like that.

Super Objects
The new Super Objects will follow closely the model of the SO's of 1988, but each will be produced separately in a run of at least 30, with subsequent versions incorporating changes very possible. I have always held SO as a potentially very profitable product, and I hope to see that occur.

Actuality Destructor
AD is a set of named and possibly numbered short essays on occult and philosophical matters. Each essay will make a point in as succinct a manner as possible. New AD's will be presented in every FOW, with the full set to be found in AOI, possibly in full form, possibly in outline.

Vaster
Vaster is a set of short literary passages/poems/whatever. They are numbered, but not names. So there is Vaster #1, Vaster #32, Vaster #400, etc. These will be presented in FOW, with a full collection likely in AOI, due to their succint nature.

Confounder
The newest theme of Obliviana, Confounder, is perhaps the most essential. Confounder sets forth a set of protocols for individuals to create a personal Dossier relating to Obliviana, in which battles and conflicts can be carried out using a variety of things from Oblviana and also things unique to Confounder. For example, AD forms the basis of a philosophy combat system, and Vaster may also have a similar thing associted with it. Stickers, pins, T-shirts, etc. are part of Confounder. As well, people are encouraged to choose and champion their favorite variations in themes, so that a certain pilferid, Vasters, storm, character, etc. would be examined and an individual will express his or her allegiance to such an aspect through a variety of means, with the hope that friendly conflict will crop up between opposing sides. There is much more to be said about Confounder, and as I said, it is probably the most important single theme in Obliviana, since it brings everything together for an individual at a personal level, whereas the other all-encompasser, AOI, deals with raw information and not how the info relates to an individual.

* Ubiquity Archive

Ubiquity Archive
Ubiquity Archive is the theme in Obliviana where all old products and productions, as well as reprints, reorganizations, and reinterpretations of old stuff resides. Right now, I have plans for a set of all ABM Magazines which I have a lot of, a new ABM and EEF video, redone compliations of LFN and ABM Radio, and a host of other things. There's a lot of good stuff in the past, and I find it essential to bring the best of it into the world of Obliviana.

Beublin A. Richardson
This video series is composed of 5-minute episodes, and is at the moment my main video project. I hope to produce more episodes soon, and continue to develop the show.

Train Crap & Blood
With 6 hours recorded in 1991, TC&B has a lot of undiscovered potential. I envision release of all 4 tapes at least once, with a best-of also available. I want to continue with TC&B, but with a lot more planning, and prerecorded bits, probably presented within a live-to-tape format.
* Zope

Zope
And the best is saved for last. Zope has been my main character for well over 6 years, and I plan to produce new material for each issue of FOW, as well as presenting old material. Zope is both my favorite creation and the most difficult to work on. But Zope is a the cornerstone of my core endeavor, and as such deserved as much effort as I can put into it. Zope will be a major element of Obliviana.


Whew! I feel better now, having spent the last hour going through all of Obliviana. It's 9pm now, and just about time to leave for Providence. I feel better about Obliviana than I did before, because I'm beginning to see more and more the great value it has when all the element are viewed as part of a whole, rather than as disembodied projects.

Well, I'm off to New England soon. Obliviana!


-----------

So, you can see that about five years ago I was thinking along very similar lines to what I have now. This is interesting to me. Five years. Is Obliviana five years better now than it was back then? I believe it is. So where does my current system differ from that previous system?

[1] MUCH MORE CONTENT. Now, I have a whole lot more Severe Repair, Superior (which was called "Vaster" back then, very soon to become "Superior"), Zope, etc. As well, that was before I started doing Pelters. This aspect affects structure in that having done so much content, I can now see better ways of presenting my material.

[2] ON THE INTERNET. The old plan did not refer to the Internet at all. I don't think the Internet was real big back then. I was planning on publishing everything on paper, selling subscriptions, etc. My new system is not only Internet-based, but it does stuff with the Internet that no one else is doing, making me a big fish in a little pond in terms of my sort of implementation, as opposed to being a small-press publisher.

[3] DEFINED. Haha, this is a dangerous statement, but I really do believe that Obliviana is now defined, whereas in the May '92 system it was not very well defined. The idea is that the Obliviana system is "Obliviana Primal", whereas "Obliviana" is the boardgame that I recently invented. So Obliviana Primal is defined as a boardgame that is as complex and innovative as Obliviana the boardgame is simple and traditional. This is still an aspect that I am working on, but I believe that by defining My Core Endeavor as a boardgame, it finally makes sense--most of all, to me!

Of note is the entry in the May '92 system for "Confounder", which is an early vision of Fonosta.

Okay. So where do I go from here? It's interesting, that in the past few days, in my writing on the current system, I have not really mentioned the Obliviana/Obliviana Primal duality. This is because this duality exists somewhat beyond the confines of Obliviana Primal. But I do have to keep it in mind as I further develop Obliviana Primal, especially using the term "Obliviana Primal" or the shortened "OP" to refer to the current Obliviana System, since "Obliviana" by itself now refers to the boardgame.

So to distill everything that is going on... the boardgame Obliviana will be the main engine of bringing O/OP to people's attention. That is, people will easily embrace Obliviana because it is so familiar in its form, and then OP, as a variation of O, will be vastly more embraceable.

O/OP is a major new idea, and I believe that it is the first truly workable way to make OSOA into a real company.

An aspect of O/OP that I have not delved into is the question of whether or not OP will be released as a boxed boardgame. So let me delve into it!

I do see OP as a boardgame that will be produced AS a boardgame, once Obliviana is established as a boardgame. The boxed OP will be a playable game with just what is included in the box, but it will be very open-ended. It will be so open-ended that it will contain all of OP as I now envision it. That is, the website will be a resource for more advanced levels of playing OP.

By the very nature of OP, it will contain all of my ideas and content, so that OSOA the company can be conceived of as the company that produces the dual boardgames O and OP, and perhaps nothing more.

In this, I have achieved a definition for Obliviana. Achieving a definition for Obliviana has been an elusive goal for me for a very long time. Now that I have it, I can begin to direct my efforts in a much more productive and focused fashion than before.

One idea I want to refer to here is the idea of Obliviana as a fortune-telling game. I have considered incorporating a fortune-telling element into O, but it seems apparent now that such an aspect is much more appropriate for OP. It can, in fact, be an aspect of OP that will satisfy the more mainstream buyers of it. That is, it will make OP as a physical, boxed boardgame an acceptable purchase for those people who like O but may not be able to fully embrace the full nature of OP.

So:

Obliviana Super Occult Amusement is my company, which is in existence to develop and sell two boardgames, O and OP. Since OP is so open, it can contain all of the future development I can come up with.

Now, if I come up with new games which are different from O and OP, shall they be released under the auspices of OP, or should they released on their own? This question is perhaps moot, since such games can be part of OP and still be released with almost total autonomy. There is the idea that I have referred before, that O is also a part of OP. This is established, since O will be used in the playing of OP, but I don't have to say that in the O package itself.

So it can be said that OSOA is a company that produces ONE boardgame, OP, of which O is a part of, but this is also a moot point, since the O/OP structure is intended as a way of defining My Core Endeavor, and it is the way I will be presenting everything to the public, so O being a part of OP is not really a big deal.

Now, I have to think of implementation.

I have established that the revamping of my website is the central concern to me now. But really, the new website will the result of restructuring My Core Endeavor in general.

Note that I am using "My Core Endeavor" to refer to Obliviana in an overall sense, as opposed to saying "Obliviana". I think I will shorten it to "MCE" from now on.

"O"=the boardgame Obliviana
"OP"=the boardgame Obliviana Primal
"MCE"=My Core Endeavor, all of Obliviana in general

Okay.

My goal is to have O and OP as boardgames on store shelves. This is a very complex thing.

I am using my website as the infrastructure of OP. So whereas O and OP will be physically-produced boardgames, the website will be the true manifestation of OP in its entirety.

So, the splash page of my website should very succinctly impart the idea of the dual boardgame idea. I think it should have mock-ups of the covers of the two games. And it should describe the idea so that in a few seconds, people will understand what Obliviana is all about.

Now, I have the rules to O pretty well established. So what I have to do now is develop the rules to OP!

The idea for OP is that it starts out as a very simple game, but that it has an unlimited level of variations. The idea of Fonosta is key to OP. Once you start playing OP, your Fonosta is established. One aspect of this will be that certain elements in the game will not be available to you until you have been playing the game for a certain number of days.

Another idea is that for any given Tarb (four-hour period in synch with 2:00 AM) a single Storm is "in focus". Each new Storm moves on to the next Storm, and from Storm 209 goes back to Storm 001. One of these cycles will take 34 days and 20 hours. So a year would contain about 10.4785 of these cycles. Could this be an "Obliviana Month"?

This system will be calibrated with Storm 001 starting with Tarb 0001. So I could figure out which Storm we are in right now, but I have to go to bed, so I won't do it right now.

4/2/97 * 8:19 PM

I envision Obliviana Super Occult Amusement as a real company. I envision manufacturing and distributing the boardgame Obliviana by myself, with no other companies involved, save for services paid for (ie, physically producing the game for a fee). I see an office, with a few employees. I see a real thing going on.

This is very hard for me to envision right now. I have been in this "loser" mode for such a long time now, since the fall of ABM in November 1989. In my current state, I might be tempted to take on a business partner or make deals with other companies. But I cannot do this, as a matter of principle. I must produce Obliviana on my own.

At this point, I need X amount of money to get Obliviana launched. It's that simple. I have the skills to make it happen, the problem is that I don't have the money to make it happen. An additional problem is that I do not want to sell any interest in Obliviana to anyone. So, really, I don't want any investors. So that leaves me in kind of a weird position. It is a position where I do not have any money, and there are sparse options in regards to getting the amount I would need to get Obliviana moving.

In O/OP, I have an extraordinary product. It will be worth sailing rougher seas in the beginning to avoid any connections that may become unwanted later. The rule is that I will always maintain 100% control over MCE. This includes, of course, maining 100% ownership of all the trademarks and patents and copyrights and everything else associated with Obliviana. But it also means maintining control over manufacturing and distribution. It cannot be 100% control, because then I would have to rule out selling O in stores, and I do not want to do that. I mean, at some point you lose a little control, as in not being able to tell a store how to display your goods, etc.

What I am really getting at here is the idea of some kind of publishing deal. No matter what, if someone else publishes O, it will be a significant loss of control for me, even if I retain all the rights.

So I have to make OSOA into a real company without making compromises along the way. I have to be real careful.

You know how I've been getting these "lessons" from reality. Well this morning on the bus, I sat in the back, and this white guy was blasting his Walkman. So I tried to put up with it for a little while, but finally I couldn't take it anymore, and asked him to turn it down, which he did, but without an apology. Looking at him, for some reason I began to see that most people today are "severely limited". Maybe this modern culture has created an illusion that all people are wonderful and everything, but when you get right down to it, most people are in their own small little worlds, and they don't want to be bothered with anything new, and they cling to their pathetic familiarities like children to sheets, scared at night in bed.

I don't know. I mean, implied in this line of reasoning is that I am NOT like these people, that I am BETTER. Well, let's put it this way--I am TRYING to be better. And here's a little wrinkle. I feel like saying that BETTER refers to certain aspect of me, but than in an overall sense, I will not say that I am better than anyone else. I can be a better computer operator, a better writer, a better artist, a better game inventor than other people, but I can't be BETTER in an overall sense. I have to question this line of reasoning, however. If you take extreme examples of good and bad people, can you not say that one person is better than another? Maybe this is a moot question, because this idea of an ULTIMATE "better" may be an illusion. For inherent in the word BETTER is some kind of criteria. So it might be "better at running one's life", "better at using constructively what God has given one", "better at doing the right thing", etc.

Um, this is a tangent. What was my original point? Ah yes, that people are, for the most part, "severely limited". What I want to know is whether this is a symptom of the times, or has it always been this way? I would venture that the majority of society has always been relatively uneducated. These days we have that added Generation X thing of people being unable to grow up, having been raised post-sexual-revolution, with lots of liberal wishy-washiness and all that.

You know what thought just struck me? That in the time I'm taking to talk about this garbage, I could be writing Severe Repair. Y'know, I don't even want to deal with these issues. I mean, they do interest me, but I have better things to think about right now.

Okay.

I am not yet at the point where money is the only obstacle for me to ovecome. I do need to further develop O/OP. And one major aspect here is that I CAN afford to revamp my website and start to promote it.

REVOLVERS

I want to come up with the list of initial Revolvers. But I realize now that it is more important to establish the structure than to have an example of each Revolver online on 4/26. So I think I'll say that I will have, at the minimum:

OsoaWeek (text)
Severe Repair (text)
Zope (Yargo)
Superior (Yargo)

But in order to present some of the other stuff, such as images of the boardgames, logos, splash screen, etc. do I need more Revolvers?

This is why I need to fully establish the system, the rules of OP, before I can really continue on.

In general: The Forge of Wander (FOW) board is the foundation. It has 209 squares called Storms. Everything in OP exists and happens on the FOW, in the Storms.

What happens in OP?

[1] Entertainment. Stored in Cups.

[2] Fonosta. Personal universe.

[3] Game. Playing.

Hmmm...

Idea: Cups all exist at one level, and are organized by links. This is an idea I have had before. Cups have their "Liquid", or content, and their links.

This is a good idea. So the idea is that each Cup exists in a single Storm, and is linked with other Cups via links. I need a better word for "link".

Note that Cups are distinct from their Liquid. (Potion?) Cups exist apart from their content. Hence, all Cups are the same type of thing.

This system is best implemented using computers and networks; this is clear.

What of the organization of Cups within each Storm?

Each Storm could itself be a Cup, whose content is a representation of the Cups inside of it. Then even the FOW itself is a Cup. So by defining the Cup, OP is defined.

What have I already decided about Cups?

Most basically, each Cup will have a unique sequential code number. It will also have its Potion (using "Potion" now, instead of "Liquid"). From a computer point of view, the Potion is a series of ones and zeroes--binary code.

What I am describing here is very similar to object-oriented programming. But it is a specific system with specific goals.

Also, the Cup will have information telling where it fits in the world of OP. Revolver is the main type of designation.

4.5.97 * 4.04 pm

The idea that people have this this, this wild whipping need for entertainment and involvement and adventure, and if you can plug into it, you can make a fortune.


4/6/97 * 9:34 PM

Daylightsavings crap.

The structure of Obliviana.

O/OP. Okay.

O rules are cool.

OP rules are needed.

The idea of the FOW board, putting Cups in Storms (spaces on the board), and seqencing them with looped roads which are Racetracks.

This is the idea. Starting with one FOW, the roads of the Racetrack are established. Roads may not enter or exit a Storm via a corner, so just like in O, all movement must be horizontal or vertical as regards Storms. But roads on a 45 degree angle are possible by having them run from center left to center top, center top to center right, center right to center bottom, or center bottom to center left. Center top to center bottom, and center left to center right are also usable routes.

The question is whether or not the roads themselves will be enough to accomodate all of the sequencing needs. I think the answer is yes. The idea is that the roads will exist, and any number of Cups may exist in a Storm, so that the same road can be used to sequence many, many Cups.

So I have to take this idea from the beginning.

OBLIVIANA PRIMAL

Obliviana Primal (OP) is a boardgame which is a wild variation of the boardgame Obliviana (O).

QUESTION: Can OP exist as a physical boardgame? Or must it exist totally in computer?

ANSWER: I do want OP to be able to exist as a physical boardgame. It will be a goal to invent a physical version. But in general, I will consider OP to be a computer-based game.

Cups are one of the basic units in OP. A Cup contains what is currently called "Potion", which is content. Currently, the major kinds of Potions I have established are OP Text (for lack of a better term) (2K to 5K of text), Yargo (grayscale file 278 pixels wide and 480 pixels high), audio (needs a name) (an audio clip with a minimum and maximum length which I have yet to establish), and Pelter (a 24-bit JPEG file, the master of which is 512-by-512 pixels, with a smaller 128-by-128 pixel version as the standard, perhaps).

The board on which OP is played is called "Forge of Wander" (FOW). It is a board that is 19 squares wide and 11 squares high, for a total of 209 squares. Each square is called a "Storm".

Cups are placed in Storms. The FOW board has different levels. That is, one FOW on top of another. So the first FOW is FOW001, the next is FOW002, and so on. Therefore, each Cup is placed in a Storm and on a FOW level.

Now, in regard to Cups, they are seen, heard, read, experienced by people. Therefore, a way of sequencing Cups is needed.

IDEA: Trains as a set sequence which you "ride". Cars as a way to explore OP in a random-access way.

Roads are pathways through each FOW level, which are looped, and are therefore Racetracks. Cups are placed along these Roads, with the next Cup in sequence being on the next Storm that the Road passes through.

Roads run from center left to center top, center top to center right, center right to center bottom, or center bottom to center left. Center top to center bottom, and center left to center right are also usable routes. Roads may not enter or exit a Storm via a corner. Nor may a Road be diverted using the center point. That is, a road may not terminate at the center of a square. As well, no road may end, but must always lead to another Road.

There will also be Ramps which lead up and down to the previous or next level. And teleporters will lead to any Storm on any FOW level.

These ideas are the foundation for OP. OP is a system which organizes entertainment and information.

The idea is that while just about anything could be encoded using this OP system, I will be creating stuff with a good degree of limitation. That is, I will be creating a world of specific things, not trying to be all things to all people, but rather, a little world with very specific attributes.

Now, how about Fonosta? Fonosta (F) is that element in OP that represents people. As well, F is that which moves and acts in OP.

Now, regarding content, I see all content being produced by myself and a select few people. There is the aspect of user-created content, but I want to keep that separate. I think that in an overall sense, a person will create his own Fonosta and Cups in that Fonosta for his own personal use. But it is apparent that it would be easy for a person with a Fonosta to share his Cups with others, if they so wish. So OP will have a massive amount of content, but you will only "see" that which you want to see.

Goodnight.

4/8/97 * 12:38 AM

Okay. The website. The new website. Where am I at?

At square one. Or Storm 001.

I want to represent OP fully, at least, the full concept. So I need to have a Racetrack... maybe a section of Road to start off with... yes... it might work...

4/8/97 * 10:56 PM

Things are weird today. Reality doesn't feel quite right.

Anyway, I've been struggling with OP.

What I came up with was the idea that there is one FOW, and each Storm contains a number of Cups. The whole Road system is done with Cups. So the "FOW levels" are actually abstractions at the Cup level.

You could take this a step further and say that there isn't even a FOW, just a bunch of Cups with Storm Number as one of their attributes. Ah! But then, universal Cup attributes DEFINE the system, eh? So being that Storm is a universal attribute, the Storms "exist", and hence the FOW "exists".

Do Storms have their own attributes? Or could their be a type of Cup that defines a Storm? That is, listing all the Cups inside the Storm, how those Cups are organized, etc.

It's pretty clear that ultimately, what will exist in OP is a set of Cups, which an interpreter (program) processes, with input and output.

All aspects of OP are encapsulatd into Cups. It is a totally object-oriented system.

But now that I am at this microscopic level, I see that I am far from the idea of OP as a sister boardgame to O.

But I do have to build a strong foundation on which OP can be built.

I want to delce into the subject of OP being limited. What I mean by "limited" is that even though the described object-oriented system could accomodate...

11:09 PM. I am getting a weird feeling. A feeling of quiet, of calm, of the calm before a storm. Like the sense you get when there's a noisy refridgerator motor going, and then all of a sudden it stops. And you realize you've been hearing something, when a moment before you were unaware of it.

I feel that something is going on at the basic levels of reality. Another major shift? Or the beginning of the end of the world? No... it's just a shift... I think... but it feels like a bigger shift than the one that resulted in the massive revolutions of the late sixties/early seventies. What could it be?

It's weird, today I was thinking of time travel almost as if it were a reality to me. Could it be that the only place left is the past? That would mean that the world is ending. And I don't think it is ending. I mean, it better not. I mean, I won't let it end. Maybe... like I said in a recent Superior... maybe if there's anyone out there who really wants to the world to go on, it will. I know that I want the world to go on, so even if everyone else wants it to end, I want it to go on.

Yes, I sense that something big is happening. 11:14 PM now.

"It is Judgement Day, but it's nowhere near as drastic as it sounds." This comes to mind.

"A lot of things are going to be resolved. A lot of answers are going to come. Breakthrough."

11:19 PM. "The world is being tested. It will hold together, but it will be shaken."

"Natural disasters, wars, political upheavals, long-overdue revelations, and enlightenment will come in the months ahead. Something like this doesn't happen all at once."

"We will all be shaken."

"Most of us will survive."

"It will be a new world."

"Stop distracting me."

Haha...

Maybe all this working on Obliviana is driving me a little batty.

But I think I'll turn on the news nonetheless.

4/9/97 * 12:20 AM

"And I saw a huge tower, like a short cylinder, and it was blowing up or something."

Well, nothing weird on the news. Movie "The Prophecy" on Starz!

Okay. So forget this weird cosmic stuff for now.

I am a little upset at the object-oriented computer nature of OP. Okay, I know that I will have to implement it on computer, but I think I'm really looking for something a lot simpler.

Like the idea that 209 was a thing people did in Primal Wonder before we all fell. Where is this aspect of everything? Maybe now that this "cosmic" event has happened, I can get Obliviana rolling, and I can get OP defined.

So...

I want people's efforts to be not wasted. Like my Yargo Trees, doing something that has lasting value.

OP is the environment in which all this stuff happens.

It's about connecting with Primal Wonder, I see through a seething scene of crisis.

Like, hanging out at the Racetracks, and then taking excursion outward... then returning...

Using computers and networks in lieu of the natural attributes of Primal Wonder (PW). Like a working model of PW. Aha!

The place... the surface of the FOW... interlocking Racetracks... but all on one level... on each Racetrack Roads from other Racetracks seen as ghostly... or transparent... but you can cross over... and they all have different themes.

Like an amusement park...

A computerized place... but it could also be encoded in a book. And people create their own set of Cups, ever-expanding, and put them on the FOW. Even along the same track, a sequence can continue, overlapping, like a spiral...

But the track makes for a sequence nonetheless...

In the implementation... this is where the magic is...

Storms and Roads and Racetracks and Cups are all intrinsic to the system. As I said, it is a limited system even if it has the potential to be unlimited.

A world, a place to be.

The website... it will begin... with a view of the FOW... with a single little Racetrack... and a few Cups there...

This is it.

Wonder, we're coming back.

4/9/97 * 9:21 PM

Last night, I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, and I had this strong feeling that I would face some sort of ordeal in bed.

I went to bed, and there was this major ringing in my ears. I felt the presence of at least one godlike being. Then I drifted off into a bizzrre dreamworld, where things in the real world were like shadows, and there were many wonderful variations and impressions associated with everything. In general, it was a positive experience.

I heard on the radio earlier that a massive solar flare is heading toward Earth, but that it should only cause radio static and stuff like that.

Outside, there's a sliver of a waxing moon and the Hale-Bopp comet very clearly visible and even twinkling a little.

Things were pretty normal today, but I felt kind of awful. Ligering cold and cough, and some kinda sinus headache later in the day.

A pretty girl came today at work with corrections on her job, but she was cold and aloof and not very nice. I guess it's gotta be tough to be such a pretty girl.

Anyway, just talked to my friend Andrew for awhile on the phone.

So...

I have a much clearer idea of OP. All the Racetracks coexist on one level. OP takes place on the FOW.

What do I need to do to get my website revamped for 4/26?

Okay.

I need to establish the rules for OP!

It's crazy, all the levels that the creation of OP is taking me to.

So let me get back to the beginning.

Obliviana Primal is a system by which information is stored and organized. It is a central place, where folks in OP meet and share ideas and live, part of the time. But the real goal is to go out into the real world and see what's going on.

The mechanics of the system are simple, yet powerful.

And the definition of the Cup is the definition of OP.

Okay.

CUP

Cup #: A sequential number.

Storm #: From 1 to 209, the Storm where the Cup is located.

Fonosta #: The number of the Fonosta of the person who created it.

Revolver #: The number of the Revolver the Cup is under.

A note on hierarchy: Cups are going to have a hierarchical state, as defined in the Cup. At this point, I need to define what sort of definitions are going to be in a Cup. The four numbers listed above are definitions within the Cup. So I will say that in every Cup, there will be a number of definitions, stored as text.

Regarding hierarchy, Fonosta defines who created the Cup, ans Revolver defines the general subject of the Cup. How about:

Drink/Potion #: Defines the nature of the content of the Cup.

So already, there are four different "top levels" of hierarchy. Storm, Fonosta, Revolver, and Drink/Potion. This is the way I want it, to have many types of hierarchy available, with no single type as law.

Okay.

Perhaps:

Racetrack #: The number of the Racetrack the Cup is on.

This makes sense, being that multiple Racetrack Roads will potentially run through the same Storm.

So:

Cup #: A sequential number.

Storm #: From 1 to 209, the Storm where the Cup is located.

Fonosta #: The number of the Fonosta of the person who created it.

Revolver #: The number of the Revolver the Cup is under.

Drink/Potion #: Defines the nature of the content of the Cup.

Racetrack #: The number of the Racetrack the Cup is on.

Aha! Six of 'em so far, eh? Looks like I'm aimin' for 8, since that's the charmed number in Obliviana structure.

Date/Tarb of Creation: The date/Tarb the Cup was created.

Sequence: What sequence is it a part of?

That might do it.

Goodnight, at 1:06 AM, 4/10/97

4/11/97 * 12:36 AM

Number/Name: separate?

Fonosta:

Revolver:

Storm:

Racetrack:

Sequence:

Date/Tarb:

Drink/Potion:

So what's up with this system?

I think it's almost there. There could be an element that covers hierarchy, ie, contained by and contains. Racetrack and Sequence are... similar. Revolvers have Fonosta IDs, but one Fonosta can work on another Fonosta's Revolver.

Do Cups change or do they stay the same? I would say that they might be "set in stone" when they're "coined". Note use of term "coin", eh.

Idea of a rating, such as telling how good something is, etc.?


Number/Name:
Date/Tarb:

Racetrack: General location
Storm: Specific location

Revolver: General topic.
Sequence: Part of what sequence?
Drink/Potion: Type of content
Fonosta: Who coined it?

Now, to the issue of artifacts, both digital and analog.

I do want to have the digital artifact system, and as well, I want to produce physical artifacts. So...

Artifacts: Digital and Analog.

Hmmm...


So... analog (physical) artifacts are the content... maybe represented by a Yargo picutre of it?

4/11/97 * 11:22 PM

My primary goal with the new Obliviana website is to establish Obliviana Primal. The content (SR, Yargo Trees, Yargo Superiors, Zope, etc.) is, at this stage, secondary to the establishemnt of the system.

So how do I "officially" establish the system?

I need to figure out how I can make the described system work with the limited technology available to me, ie, straight HTML, probably without even image maps.

So I have, basically, text and pictures to work with.

Ah! This brings up the question of what Cup format will exist to show the FOW with the Racetracks on it. And this also brings up the issue of the Primitive Interface.

HTML will be a compromise in terms of interface. From what I read and surmise, HTML will be in decline soon and will be replaced by new interfaces in the future. I am very concerned about the interface for Obliviana. But I have an idea. I recall that in Primitive, there was space for 4 128-by-128 Small Pelters. If I shift the FOW display to the top or bottom, I can have four Small Pelters in a 256-by-256 square, and thus show four Storms at once. Aha! This is it!

4/12/97 * 1:18 PM

That idea worked. I have the basic interface I want to use. But first, I do have to accept an HTML compromise.

Now, what about OsoaWeek?

OsoaWeek, starting on April 26, 1997, two weeks from today, will be presented WEEKLY and will not contain major content, such as SR, SU, ZP, etc. Rather, it will list the Cups coined that week, and tell what's going on in Obliviana.

This new OW will begin with Book Twelve. Hence, I must complete Books 10 and 11 in the current format, preferably before 4/26.

So... Book Ten = 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 137, 128, 129, 130

Book Eleven = 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143

Book Twelve begins with 144.

At this point, as I have said before, OsoaWeek is drifting. I mean, what I'm writing right now will be put by me in an issue dated maybe in October 1996. That's silly, but there is a reason for it. I want to keep OW going, no matter what. In two weeks, OW will get a major jumpstart!

In fact... why not just put all this writing on OW143? It's possible... then all the other issues can just have four Superiors each...

0.

Don't know how that got there. Zero period. I think Denice hit it when she tripped before getting the phone when I was in the bathroom.

4/14/97 * 1:40 AM

Well, I got some work done this weekend. I got 12 days left to get the new website done.

Like I've said before, establishing the OP system is far more important than any particular content. So I must focus on the system as it WILL be, in full implementation, and then devise a way to present it on the WWW.

4/23/97 * 12:39 AM

Notes that were here:

-----------

qeird
Ceeagazin (again)
onject
to center gith
face

nm: Tea Asterjont

Beublin (audio) or Welcome to the Weasel Village Mall (audio)
Storm Pelter (Pelter)
Little World of Racetracks (?)
Fonosta (?)
FOW (boards) (Primitive?) (?)
209 (Friction Enhancers, etc.) (text?)

TOFU RECIPE

-------------------

That's it. See ya in Book Twelve!

Get all Obliviana.

*OW*



[[03143NH]] Nihilistica

***THE NEW OBLIVIANA PRIMAL***

4/15/97 * 12:16 AM

The new Obliviana Primal (OP) is coming!

Wow, my life and my mind and my work on Obliviana can get so confused and confusing... but I know that my current direction with Obliviana is the right one.

OP is a "Little World of Racetracks" that exists on the Forge of Wander, which is a grid 11 Storms (squares) high, and 19 Storms wide. In this world are Roads, Fonostas, Cups, and other sorts of things. The overall idea of OP is a sort of home base for the exploration of reality through focusing daily-spent energies in new directions.

9:28 PM

The idea:

The Forge of Wander board is the beginning.

Cups are a way of storing and organizing digital content is a random-access way.

Sequencing Cups is a basic idea.

Serendipity, such as "channel surfing" cable TV, or going to a store to buy one thing and finding another really cool thing, is a basic idea.

Since there are only 209 Storms in which Cups can go, there will be multiple Cups in each Storm. This is the basis of serendipity in this system.

Sequences of Cup will take place from Storm to Storm. Hence, pathways though the FOW are needed. There should be multiple pathways going through each Storm to aid in serendipity. Since these pathways shouldn't end, they will be looped. The pathways are Roads, and the loops are Raceways.

Thus, while each Storm will have a large number of Cups, they will be divided between all the Raceways passing through the Storm.

In order to drink a sequence of Cups, you need an interface. You will be following Roads. At any given time, the Road you are on and the direction you are going will be recorded.

A major complaint about the WWW is that you cannot see other people who are drinking in the same page and site as you are. In OP, it is clear that you should be able to see a representation of other people on the same Road as you. And they should see you as well.

The representation of people in OP is the Fonosta. It is clear that Fonostas need to have attributes. First of all, they have to have a visual representation. And since they are travelling on roads, attributes such as speed, maneuverability, etc. are called for. Being that Fonostas travel on Racetracks, it follows that Fonostas should be able to race.

It is also apparent that Fonostas should be able to get off the Roads and interact in other sorts of areas. These are the Environs (new term) of the OP world.

With Roads and Environs, Fonostas need to be versatile and have a number of attributes, from aspects of motion to aspects of creation and destruction.

It is a major philosophy in OP that freedom in OP be balanced with structure. In other words, regarding the look of your Fonosta, it might seem like a good idea to allow folks to make their Fonosta look any way they want. But this serves little purpose, and indeed serves to separate people and inhibit communication. Therefore, in look and all other aspects, there will be a limited number of initial choices, with upgrades and modification available through effort.

The interface of OP is called Primitive Interface. When looking into OP, it is always a top-down view, at various levels of zoom. It is a 2-D interface. There will be no interactive 3-D stuff at all.

Each Racetrack will have a theme. Here is a list of some Racetracks I developed a while ago and their themes. This will give you an idea of what I'm talking about, but the final Raceways have yet to be created.


Racetrack America--Patriotic theme, American flag, Uncle Sam, red, white, and blue. Colonial architecture and feel.

Racetrack Astronomy--Space theme. Outer space with stars and planets and comets and such. Spaceships and futuristic architecture and feel.

Racetrack Arctic--Snowy wasteland theme. Snowing, glaciers, bleakness, penguins, etc.

Racetrack Aftermath--Post-nuclear theme. Road Warrior-esque. Ruined cities. Craters. Wastelands.

Racetrack Ancient--Mystical theme. Think ancient Greece and ancient Rome, Zen and the orient, pyramids and temples, incense and cystals.

Racetrack Apparition--Ghost theme. Haunted houses, graveyards, restless spirits, jack-o-lanterns, Halloween, etc.

Racetrack Archery--Robin Hood type theme. Medieval forest, archers, castles, villages, etc.

Racetrack Aqua--Nautical theme. Boats and anchors. Seaports and docks. Shantys and all that jazz.

This gives you a little idea of what I'm aiming for.

All these Racetracks start with the letter A for some reason. I think that since I was aiming for eight of them only, and since about four of them were turning out to start with A, I went ahead and had them all start with A. This will not be the case in OP. There will be no limit to the number of Racetracks, and they will not all start with A, though you can be sure that a few from this list will make it to OP.

Now, since OP will be seen from "overhead", it has to be mapped out in a visible way. But I think that the map you see will change accordng to the way you are browsing. For example, you might only want to see certain Cups, or certain Raceways. And the environs may be represented by a single symbol, to be entered.

So I have a good general idea of what OP is going to be like. My goal right now is to figure out how this system can be translated into HTTP and presented on my website in about 10 days.

Two things I definitely want to accomplish are the establishment of Cups for the presentation of content and the establishment of Fonostas for people to start registering.

Both of these exist in some for on my current website, but I want to establish the official system and have even these first Cups and Fonosta adhere to the system that will be the standard when OP is in full operation.

OP will be in full operation when it exists as a program that connects via the Internet the Obliviana server, running the Primitive Interface. This will not happen for some tim, however, so I have to compromise and make due with the technology currently available to me.

So what I need right now is the system of defining Cups and Fonostas. I need to have the basics established.

Fonostas are established by "coining" a Fonosta Establishment Cup. So all of the attributes of a Cup will also be present in the Fonosta's Establishment, since it will be in a Cup.

I have done some work on Cup attributes. A few attributes that seem pretty solid are:

[1] Fonosta--the number of the Fonosta representing the person who coined the Cup. "Who made it."

[2] Tarb--the Tarb in which the Cup was coined. Tarb can be easily converted to day, month, year. "When it was made."

[3] Storm--the number of the Storm in which the Cup is located. "Where it is."

[4] Potion--the nature of the content, ie, text, Yargo, audio, Pelter, etc. "What it is."

[5] Racetrack--the racetrack where the Cup is.

[6] Revolver--the Revolver that the Cup is a part of.

Now, there are a few other aspects that I have to work on a little. One is Number, which would just be a sequential number, with each Cup being numbered as it is coined. I don;t see any problems with this idea. So...

[7] Number--a sequential number, given the Cup when it is coined, being 1+the number of all Cups currently registered.

Now, how about Name? Should Cups have names? Let's look at a SR Cup, for example:

$~PQM006 "Noze-Euming"
00006 * 2.744K * New '96 * OW108

This info is from the old SR system. But it is still useful.

The Revolver here is "Severe Repair", and that will be encoded in the Revolver number. Now, another aspect I need to explore is that of Sequence. In this case, the sequence would be "Perspective Quartz Mahoney", and it would have a sequential number within the SR Revolver.

Say Severe Repair is the 3rd Revolver, and "Perspective Quartz Mahoney" is the fifth seqeunce in SR. This Cup is then Cup 6 in Sequence 5 of Revolver 3. Hierarchy does not go any further than this in the basic system. So...

[8] Sequence--the sequence within the Revolver which the Cup is a part of.

[9] Number In Sequence--what place the Cup is in the sequence.

But... okay. I was thinking that perhaps sequence should be totally customizable, but this system does not negate that, it just establishes the idea of sequences, which is common sense.

So far all of these Attributes can be defined by a number. For our example, maybe:

[1] Fonosta--0001
[2] Tarb--6543
[3] Storm--142
[4] Potion--04
[5] Racetrack--02
[6] Revolver--003
[7] Number--000035
[8] Sequence--005
[9] Number In Sequence--006

or

000165431420402003000035005006

Wow! 30 numbers. Just what I would have wanted it to be! (11+19=30, after all).

A number like this is easily stored, and can be interpreted by a program to derive all the represented information.

But let us not forget the true goal of this system--to provide a rock-solid structure of ORDER to counteract the CHAOS surrounding creation. My Yargo Trees are a perfect example. They started out as doodling, on all different sorts of papers in all different styles, etc. But once I established the Yargo Tree format, with minumum effort I can direct all the same energy I was using to doodle, which was mostly wasted, to something that is far more valuable, enjoyable, and ultimately satisfying. This is the spirit of the system, and 30-digit number and stuff like that is just the mechanics necessary to make it a reality.

4/18/97 * 2:07 PM

Here it is. I may have figured out the Web version of Obliviana.

Basically, each page would be a Cup. I have developed a graphical format called "Marquee" which is 88-by-304 pixels, with "Small Marquee" at 44-by-152 pixels.

Each page would start with a Small Marquee of OSOA, followed by a Small Marquee of the Revolver of the Cup. These two would be side-by-side, and then below them would be a full-seized Marquee of the Cupline.

This system would be rigid. EVERY page on the site would follow this structure.

One question that arose when I was thinking about this was, what about the main page for each Revolver? Well, it would have to be a Cup of a Cupline "Main", or something to that effect.

Also, for "Yargo Trees", the Revolver would be "Yargo Trees", and then the Cupline would also be "Yargo Trees". Unless the Revolver was a general "Yargo". Regardless, The Cupline can be the same as the Revolver. That is, I see nothing wrong with it.

There needs to be also a text-based way of identifying a Cup. This would be a list of attributes in readable form (ie, not a code number).

I see now that the FOW-based Racetrack system will be present, ie, in the Cup data at the beginning of each Cup, but I will not have much on it on April 26.

Another question is how I will be able to present all the Storm Pelters. I now have 19 pictures with 11 SPs each, but the size of these files is not a standard interface style.

See, I intend to limit graphics to a few styles. Yargo, FOW, Marquee, Pelter, etc. This too will be rigid.

Here is a possible list of all the graphical formats:

Yargo: 278x480, grayscale
Small Yargo: 34x60?: grayscale
Marquee: 340x88, RGB
Small Marquee: 152x44, RGB
(Pelter Full: 512x512, RGB)
Pelter Half: 256x256, RGB
Pelter Quarter: 128x128, RGB
FOW: 340x176, RGB
Theme Strip: 32x480?, RGB

If I exclude Pelter Full from this list, as I think I might, I have the magic number EIGHT!

Under this system, I could present Storm Pelters in Pelter Half, though it might be tough to get 11 on there. Well... at 64x64 for the images of the Pelters, that would allow 16... and I only need 11, so...

Or I could just do it in sets of 16, requiring 15 pictures, where I could overlay the names or something...

Anyway, this is a good set of guidelines to start from.

4/19/97 * 1:55 PM

Got a lot done on the website.

Developed a bunch of Marquees representing the Revolvers and Cuplines. It brought up a lot of very challenging questions.

The idea is that EVERY page in my site will be a Cup within a Cupline within a Revolver. So when it came to the splash page, the first page you get to when you invoke the site, this page also needs to conform to the system.

So, I made a Revolver called "Obliviana Central" and a Cupline called "Get All Obliviana". I was going to have OsoaWeek as a Revolver, but it then made more sense for OsoaWeek to be under the Obliviana Central Revolver.

Another issue involves the O/OP terminology, where "Obliviana" represents the boardgame and "Obliviana Primal" represents all the rest of the system.

And another issue is that I have yet to involve the whole FOW/LWOR system in with this current system. The thing is, if I were to involve this system at a basic level, there would be too many levels of hierarchy. So I think I will make FOW a Revolver... but I will also put the FOW/LWOR data in each Cup...?

Anyway, here are the Marquees I currently have, all of them in both Marquee and Small Marquee format:

OBLIVIANA SUPER OCCULT AMUSEMENT (OSOA)
("Top Level Indentifier")

OBLIVIANA CENTRAL (OC) (Revolver)
--Get All Obliviana (GA)
--OsoaWeek Book Twelve (OW12)
--OsoaWeek (OW) (was to be a Revolver, now what?)

SEVERE REPAIR (SR) (Revolver)
--Goodbye Popcorn (SRGP) (Cupline 1)

SUPERIOR (SU) (Revolver)
--Primal Superior (PS)

ZOPE (ZP) (Revolver)
--Classic Zope (CZ)

YARGO (YO) (Revolver)
--Yargo Garden (YG)
--Yargo Tree (YT)

This gives me a lot to think about...

6:58 PM

Good time, that, 6:58 PM...

Anyway, the questions relate to the boardgame and the FOW/LWOR system.

The problem regarding the boardgame is that it is called "Obliviana" as opposed to the rest of the system which is called "Obliviana Primal". A solution to this would be to switch the names, calling the boardgame "Obliviana Primal" and the rest of the system "Obliviana". I think I can declare this to be my decision right now.

Now, "OP" will be the code for the boardgame, Obliviana Primal. Problem solved, as Perot would say.

Now, as regards the FOW/LWOR system, this is the basis of Obliviana, and includes Fonosta as well. While it is the basis, I think that it could be considered one side of Obliviana, while an unencumbered web-bsed system is the other side. For example, someone just coming in to drink SR or ZP or whatever, without getting into the whole FOW system. So FOW/LWOR/Fonosta shall be encoded in Revolver/Cupline format. Another problem solved!

Okay, so where am I at?

4/20/97 * 2:04 AM

Right now, I have to establish the exact contents of the website on April 26.

I think that the above list pretty much defines what I'm doing to have online at pre-launch. I really want to do a Pelter Revolver also, and maybe I will, but for now, I'll work on just what I have:

OBLIVIANA CENTRAL (OC) (Revolver)
--Get All Obliviana (GA)
--OsoaWeek Book Twelve (OW12)

SEVERE REPAIR (SR) (Revolver)
--Goodbye Popcorn (SRGP) (Cupline 1)

SUPERIOR (SU) (Revolver)
--Primal Superior (PS)

ZOPE (ZP) (Revolver)
--Classic Zope (CZ)

YARGO (YO) (Revolver)
--Yargo Garden (YG)
--Yargo Tree (YT)

Ah! But I have several more Cuplines to make! Namely, each Revolver need to have a "Central" Cupline, such as "Get All Obliviana" for Obliviana Central. That is, one Cupline in each Revolver which gives an overview of the whole Revolver. Or... could that be accomplished in OC? No... there should be Central Cuplines...

Or...

If Get All Obliviana is a "Complete Overview of Obliviana", then it should contain all the material that would be in the theoretical "Central" Cuplines of each Revolver. So I think I will, for now, have all the Overview material in Get All Obliviana.

In which case, the list above IS good. So there are just those seven pages to get done. But of course, establishing the system properly is the real goal here.. and making it easy to expand, since I will be expanding it every week from now on...

Now, a Cupline is a series of numbered Cups. A Cup can contain data in the Obliviana formats. It can contain any combination of formats.

The "Get All Obliviana" Cupline will be quite challenging, in that it will have to contain a lot of linked material. Where is it linking to?

Well, firstly, it must have a list of all Revolvers, Cuplines, and Cups, with links to all. of them.

4/20/97 * 11:56 AM

Now, I am getting to the point where I have to start producing the website. I still have to consider this question of Central Cuplines in Revolvers.

Also, a page in HTML, it will have the 3-Marquee header that defines the Cupline. Hence, the content of that page will consist of sequencial Cups in that Cupline. Multiple Cups CAN be presented on a single page. Therefore, Cup presentation in HTML is an issue I have to address.

Beyond the actual content of the Cup, all that is needed is the Cup establishment information. This will take the form of a block of text.

Now, I do want to establish my text-based formats.

I have one called "Packet" which is a block of text from 2K to 5K in length. The Cup Data section will be much less than that, so perhaps I will establish a text format for that.

So I have to get organized here.

Let me get back to the Cup Aspect system...


[3] Storm
[5] Racetrack
[7] Number

BASIC INFO
[1] Revolver
[2] Cupline
[3] Cup Number (in Cupline)
[4] Potion (nature of the content of the Cup)

ESTABLISHMENT INFO
[5] Fonosta
[6] Tarb/Date

4/21/97 * 1:41 AM

I went to Bowcraft earlier with Denice and Carrie, and I found 2 209 dollar bills! And also, afterward we went to Barnes & noble and I found the elusive, out-of-print "Game Inventor's Handbook". This put some focus back on the boardgame. Also, I decided NOT to rename the boardgame, but to keep it called "Obliviana".

But for now, the Cup Aspects are the mopst important thing for me. So let me continue where I left off, before I have to go to bed:

BASIC INFO
[1] Name
[2] Rtion Number (sequential #, all Cups)
[3] Revolver
[4] Cupline
[5] Cup Number (in Cupline)
[6] Potion (nature of the content of the Cup)

ESTABLISHMENT INFO
[7] Fonosta
[8] Tarb/Date

LOCATION DATA
[9] Storm
[10] Racetrack

Hmm... this seems pretty sound.

4/23/97 * 12:44 AM

There is the whole aspect to OP that involves the FOW, Fonostas, Racetracks, etc. I am very excited by the possibilities this system holds.

Let me move back and take a look at Obliviana from a distance.

Obliviana is a game. When you start to play the game, you establish a Fonosta. New idea: A Fonosta is a staff/rod/wand/stick sort of thing, as a paradigm. Remember the phrase I got in hypnogogic consciousness, "O passion of the Jukewand." The idea of a wand with jukebox-like attributes is quite compelling. But should this wand BE the Fonosta, or should Jukewand be an essential aspect of Fonosta?

Hmmm...

Anyway, let me just complete the thought I was working on before going back to this very intriguing idea.

Basically, Obliviana is a game which you play and keep on playing as much or as little as you want. It is played both in reality and on computer. A game world is established, and thus other things, such as entertainment, are provided for those playing the game, to help define the Obliviana community, etc...

Okay, back to the Jukewand idea.

If I choose that the wand will not be the paradigm for a Fonosta, I have to choose another paradigm. Also, what about the abstract Fonostas I had in the old Obliviana Primal and intend to use in the new Obliviana?

The paradigm and the digital representation would match up.

Fonostas in cyberplace live on Racetracks, and therefore must be able to race.

I absolutely favor abstract "avatars" over representational ones. Right now, the visual representation of Fonostas is totally abstract, with no clear representation. The problem with thsi is that without an anchor in a real thing of some sort, Fonostas lose meaning.

Okay. There is you, the human being, and there is the Fonosta. The Fonosta is NOT you. The Fonosta is a tool you use. Like a hiking staff, it is a great help, multifunctional, and very useful and helpful. It is like a friend.

So, there is a link between the manifestation of the Fonosta in reality and the manifestation in cyberplace.

One idea that strikes me is the idea of a wand with "wings" on either side. This is somewhat similar to the current system, as the two "models" of Fonosta that I currently have incorporate a central "gun" kind of shape, and then a symmetrical "carrier" on either side. This is a very sketchy way of describing it.

If I modify this idea to have a central wand, with symmetrical "carriers" on either side, it might be interesting.

Looking y Peanuts calendar, I see a baseball bat. Interesting. And I had already been working on the idea of a wand of sorts to carry around, made of PVC pipe with connectors, with a scroll of paper inside. I am being really vague here, but bear with me.

The suit of Tarot have always been with me in designing Obliviana. Cups, Swords, Wands, Coins. Cups are totally at the core of the system now. Fonostas as Wands would make sense, and also be a helluva paradigm.

So, let's say that a Fonosta is a wand. It would be manifested in reality as an actual physical wand. Aha! Something I can sell! Please note here that I am desperately seeking aspects of Obliviana which can make me MONEY so that this whole Obliviana thing will be possible. And mark my words, I will never rip people off when selling stuff. If you buy something from Obliviana, it'll be worth every penny.

Anyway, your Fonosta is a thing which is developed according to rules. For example, when you go to a place you haven't been before every day, each of these events "goes into" your Fonosta. Now, in a physical sense, an event cannot be put into a physical wand or staff. But in the mind, it can. And in compu it can.

So the wand/steca focal point fomething much larger.

So, now what about a top-down videogame-like interface where you "are" a wand/staff driving around Racetracks?

Okay. I sketch out in Illustrator a wand shape (11x19, four high). It is apparent to me that in OP, the Fonosta is the wand, and it can enter and control various "vehicles".

So this is it. Fonosta as wand/staff. Or as "Jukewand", with "Jukewand" as a term for such a wand/staff? Or is this getting too confusing, as in the idea of Fonosta being the name of such a wand/staff... no... Fonosta is more... Jukewand is a tool, Fonosta is the whole overall collection of your accomplishments.

Oh well. Gotta go to bed now. But I have accomplished a great thing here. I have defined Fonosta. Hopefully.


***OSOAWEEK SUPER STATS***

It has been the tradition in OsoaWeek to present the Super Stats in the first issue of every Book. This time, though, I'm doing it in the LAST issue, because OsoaWeek will be transforming a great deal in the next Book, Book Twelve.

So here I will present the final stats for Books One thru Eleven, this Book. This means that calculating these stats will be the last thing I do in this Book.

At this point, it looks like the final ASCII character count will be between 4.8 and 4.9 million. Of course you can look down a few lines right now and see what it was. But that is in the future for me right now.

So here are the stats:

Total for OsoaWeek Books 1-11:
ASCII Characters: 4875429
Words: 833364
Lines: 181357

I don't know exactly what will be up there yet, but I CAN n to the features and get the final reference:

FEATURES--BOOKS ONE THRU ELEVEN

AB--Antebellum (1, 27-31)
Actuality Destructor (14, 16, 17)
AX--Appendix (1-13)
CC--Classictronica (14)
CN--Contents (1-39)
CO--Catalog of Obliviana (1-26)
CV--Cover (14-143)
CZ--Classic Zope (27-33, 40-44, 46, 49-50, 52, 66)
DC--Dashic (27-30, 32)...continued from TN
DH--Dehumidifier (14-31, 34, 40)
DY--Digital Superworld Youth (14, 15, 17)
EF--How to Establish Your Fonosta (1)
EM--Your E-Mail is Gonna Come (1-4, 6)
FA--Fonosta (14)...continued from FW
FE--Friction Enhancer (1-5, 12, 14, 16, 19, 27-30, 40)
FW--Fonosta World (2-5, 79)...continued as FA
HR--Hemisinister Review (1-33, 36-37, 39-51, 66, 69, 70, 77, 79, 92, 143)
HT--Halfevil Times (1-33, 35, 39-46, 49-50, 52, 66, 143)
IB--Ibof (14)
IF--In the Flowers (1)
IS--Into E-mber Severe Repair (40-51)
IW--Into E-mber Forge of Wander (40-52)
LA--Lord of Obliviana (14-118, 143)...continued from LO
LM--Life Mysteries (93-117)
LO--Lord of Obliviana Revelry (1-13)...continued as LA
MB--Assignment: Mystery Box (1, 4)
MH--Masthead (1-13)
NH--Nihilistica (1-33, 35-40, 43-45, 52-57, 66, 67, 69-80, 87-89, 92, 94, 95, 105, 118, 131, 143)
NJ--New Jersey (1-4, 14, 27-30, 32-36, 39-40, 44, 52)
OL--Obliviana Primal (27-32, 39)...continued from TT
OP--Obliviana Primal Beat (1, 4)
SA--Severe Repair Almanac (27-31, 40, 53, 66, 79, 92, 93, 105, 118)
SO--The State of Osoa (1-13)
SP--Sneak Preview (1-13)
SR--Severe Repair (1-52, 66-78, 92-95, 105-117)
SU--Superior (1-143)
TN--209 (14, 17)...continued as DC
TS--Trick Sojourn (40-52)
TT--Tourney Today (14)...continued as OL
ZP--Zope (1-4, 14-33, 40-42, 44, 46, 49, 66, 105-117)

So that's 40 features. But how many individual instances of features? Hmmm... gotta figure it out...

What I get is 998. Huh. Maybe I should throw in two more features, then, to bump it up to 1000, eh?

Okay. So in this issue I'll put like maybe Halfevil Times and Hemisinister Review. Good idea!

I added the 143 refs to HR and HT above. So that's an even thousand individual features. Cool!

*OW*



[[04143HR]] Hemisinister Review

***THE NEW JERSEY TRILOGY***

CLERKS (review from OW015)
It is a wonderful directorial voice that sings the delicate cinematic song of Clerks. That is, there's a very gentle and pure undertow beneath the raw surface of this film. Made for $27K by New Jersey guys, and bought my a major studio, this is a truly great film. It strikes so many chords, creates an atmosphere so disarming, that it is truly an amazing experience. No wonder it won so many awards. See it!


MALLRATS (review from OW069)
Followup to "Clerks", some might say it's Kevin Smith's "sophomore" effort, but I don't like that word in that context. Anyway, this movie bombed even though it's totally awesome. Sure to become a cult classic though. Filmed at the Eden Prairie Mall in Minnesota instead of the Woodbridge Center in New Jersey, the mall I'm sure the director had in mind. Shannen Dougherty fits into the madness very well, and newcomer Jason Lee is perfect in the role of Brodie. Too bad this movie disappeared--but it was marketed as some stupid 80's valley girl throwback or something, as opposed to the sophisticated, smart film that it really is. Definitely give this movie a chance on video. I saw it twice, and it definitely stands up as a cult film you can watch over and over again. At the end of the credits, it says that Jay and Silent Bob will return in "Chasing Amy"--I hope so.


CHASING AMY

Date:  Mon, Apr 7, 1997 10:27 PM EST
From:  Obliviana
Subj:  Chasing Amy
To:      viewaskew@umich.edu

Dear Kevin Smith,

Have you considered doing a remake of "The Cable Guy" as well?

Love,

Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana

P.S. What were you thinking with Mallrats? How about "clearly".

* * *

Date:  Thu, Apr 10, 1997 6:25 PM EST
From:  Obliviana
Subj:  "Mallrats" is vastly superior to "Chasing Amy"\
To:      viewaskew@umich.edu

Dear Kevin Smith,

That last E-mail I sent you was stupid. I think I was semi-conscious when I sent it, or at the very least, incoherent. If you didn't get it, all the better.

I feel compelled to write you because I was very disappointed in "Chasing Amy". Also, I am dismayed that you are apparently distancing yourself from "Mallrats".

"Mallrats" was an absolutely wonderful film. And I think you know this. But I get the impression that its poor box-office performance and the bad reviews warped your own impression of it.

I think that "Chasing Amy" is a bad movie. I surmise that with CA you were trying to please the same critics who tore MR apart. The "Rosencratz & Guildenstern meet Vladimir & Estragon" line was particularly revealing in this respect. Most people saw in "Mallrats" only its "goofy" surface. But a lot of people, like me, saw something deeper.

So if CA was your attempt to bring the "brainy" side of your cinematic philosophy to the surface, it was both a mistake and a failure.

After I saw CA at Angelika on opening night, I was very confused. Taken at its surface, CA is bad. So I tried and tried to analyze and figure out what might be going on underneath. This is where I saw its similarities with "Reality Bites". But whereas RB makes its undercurrent relatively apparent, your film is just confused.

After a lot of mental anguish, I realized that CA is just a bad movie. This upset me at one level because I loved "Clerks" and MR and was fully expecting another wonderful film. But at another level, you are the personification of the fulfillment of the dreams of many young independent producers of entertainment in NJ. I was greatly inspired by your story. And now, seeing that you allowed yourself to be so warped by success, it throws a pall over the whole thing, the whole dream.

I don't know. And this whole thing where you're basically telling the story of your own relationship with Joey Adams in CA, it's painfully obvious that that story and the revelations in it are of much more importance to you than anyone else. Couldn't you see that?

And another thing--you managed to do something in CA that I thought was impossible--you made lesbianism with hot girls boring. Your examination of bisexuality in general was boring.

So what am I saying? No, I'm don't think you should keep on making "Mallrats" over and over again. But you have to get away from your current corrupt philosophy if you want to tear those really great films out of your soul that you know are there. Face it--your movies will never be popular. You have a small audience. I don't think you could sell out even if you wanted to. If CA was an attempt to sell out, it's bound to be a failure.

I did come up with an interesting theory about CA, though, which might cast it in a somewhat better light. It's the idea that "Chasing Amy" is a euphemism dealing with your own latent male homosexuality. If this is that case, CA MIGHT be a good movie.

11010001ly,

Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana

P.S. I love NJ, lived here all my life, I worked at a comic store at the Rt. 1 Flea Market, I published my own comic book "Anything But Monday" and worked with my partner in an office much like the one in CA, I saw MR at Movie City in Woodbridge twice, grew up being a nerd going to Woodbridge Center every weekend, and am now working on a game called Obliviana (www.obliviana.com/~osoa). Just so you know I'm something of a kindred spirit.

*OW*



[[05143HT]] Halfevil Times

HALFEVIL TIMES HOROSCOPE LITE

Aquarius (Jan 20-Feb 18) Use a biscuit scanner to find biscuits.

Pisces (Feb 19-Mar 20) This month you need to camp out in an office building parking lot at noon and hum Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".

Aries (Mar 21-Apr 19) Contemplate a Corgi ZZ Top car.

Taurus (Apr 20-May 20) See four snow-themed school plays.

Gemini (May 21-Jun 21) Curse them for not allowing a Joe Camel game for Nintedo 64.

Cancer (Jun 22-Jul 22) Don't buy that coconut--the homeless guy is not a time traveller, it wasn't used as a prop in the Gilligan's Island feature film starring Jim Carrey in 2004, and it's NOT worth $40.

Leo (Jul 23-Aug 22) Take a leako on Chico.

Virgo (Aug 23-Sep 22) Start a humor magazine and get it distibuted to comic book stores if you want to ruin your life for a decade or so afterward.

Libra (Sep 23-Oct 23) To liven up your sex life, buy a music box that plays "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves and playing while making love.

Scorpio (Oct 24-Nov 21) Live in the present and also April 14, National Library Day.

Sagittarius (Nov 22-Dec 21) Accept the halogen marsupial.

Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 19) The shallow Alice B. Toklas impersonator and the stevedore with the Shiva complex offer nothing but cheap gimcracks and disappointment.

*OW*


[[06143SU]] Superior

SUPERIOR 723 * 4/20/97
Of barely so, airy museum atrium, and new girls, friends of a friend. Ball, drive along pungent semi-highway, lie for Fruny on Friday and toss a can of paint on a defunct fire engine to enrage the billionaire's kids. Dove into a sea of cash. Stole a tropical trip, loving paradise, the money is running out, I have no way to get home, and I have no one to turn to. Got myself into this, gotta get myself out. And the way out is crime.

SUPERIOR 724 * 4/22/97
You gotta cross-juxtapose Christmas Trees and superspeed, such as a train. Lean on one thing or another. In a general store. Such a way to slash time. I am bored and I am dancing with failure. A point of reference would be quite valuable.

SUPERIOR 725 * 4/23/97
We're bound to have weird conversations when travelling the New Jersey Turnpike. Off to another wave. I have found an amazing thing. The godlike nature of the past. People are starting to fear a really bad future. Go away from it, stab at it with the spear of your enthusiasm for life. I have to refer to that escalator, have to refer to it, have to get it out, I see it so much. It is the escalator that goes up to the monorail from the Grand Canyon Concourse of the Contemporary Resort Hotel in Walt Disney World, Florida. Oh yes, and it is 1986. They had like film with clouds exploding and stuff. Misheard girl on bus. Shave, jerk off, write. Mediocre people suck. Let's move back for a minute. Last Superior of the first 11 Books of OsoaWeek. Talking about jerking off? I mean, come on. And misheard crap on the bus? What are we talking about here? I just might cut and paste this Superior to the end of the previous one and end the first 11 Books with a bang. I did it.

SUPERIOR 726 * 4/24/97
So Leo, got sopping fast brink of transit. Are dark holographic business dream. Seed here, being inventor, slap of erotic thunder and little refridgerator. Buyer is cold. Stage far away, getting gone, I love a chain as a trademark weapon for me, superhero.

*OW*



[[END143OW]]



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