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========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 16:23:56 -0500
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: THE KIDD <KIDD>
Subject: Re: fnord-l
>everything everyone knows is wrong!
>teepee
But wait, I think I know I'm hungry, and I'm even more sure that I
really enjoyed the icecream sunday I inhaled earlier...
And by the way sorry to have confused your initals with toilet paper,
I now c that it's more like a dwelling, though I may be wrong about
that too...So what then do you mean teepee, like everything you know
is wrong period or are we talking solipsism? Either way you look at
it, I'm still really sure I enjoyed that sunday...now society on the
other hand, now there's a masquerade.
--
*THE KIDD*
"KNOWLEDGE IS POWER"
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 23:37:50 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Teleologically Palatable <TIPPY>
Subject: Re: fnord-l
The operative Word here is, I think, "know." How do you know that what
you liked was, in fact, an ice cream sundae and not a bratwurst that
had simply convinced you it was a sundae? Maybe you had a nasty case
of meme poisoning which our friend warned about. How do you even
"know" you're you and who says so anyhow? Maybe you're just a brain in
a vat who thinks "he" "likes" "ice cream sundaes." Then again, you'reprobably
just "The Kidd" "talking" on the "net" with another "schlemil" and this"you"
*do* "know." Maybe I'm the brain in the vat. Kee-ripes! How do we "know"
"Daniel Dennett" isn't just a well-paid brain in a vat spreading his own
form of meme warfare on behalf of some shadowy terrorist network engaged in
the sale of bratwursts disguised as ice cream sundaes for nefariousporpoises
from the hollow earth? Huh? Answer that, my fellow brain in a vat.
Totally Paranoid
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 00:02:13 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Tragically Positive <TIPPY>
Subject: Re: Excuse me, but...
Yes, dammit, the unicorn IS red!!!!
Typically Ponderous
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 08:51:42 EDT
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: EJ Fnord <EJFORD>
Subject: Why I am here.
I am here for two reasons:
To chew bubblegum and talk to Doctress Neutopia. The Grate God Foss
has told Us of You, Doctress.
We are prepared to venerate Your Presence, should that become
necessary. You are said to be a first class Sort of Persona.
In Your Name, we serve.
All Hail Neutopia.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled tripe.
EJ "Former Title Character in Exile" Fnord
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 15:28:20 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Subject: welcome to the lizzy show lizzy
Lizzy you should now be apprised of the Lizzy Show, where you play Lizzy,
being a sitcom with a laugh track. This is is necessary to camouflage or
propagate or render palatable the true nature of the Enterprise, whose
strange five-month mission is to bring into being The Next-To-Last Politics,
the purpose whereof is to be a miserable flop, as the Left is, has as its
sole and exclusive ostensible purpose, total failure incarnate, until the
Last Real, which may be a short real, no more than a fullword, or a long
real, which is a doubleword, or an extended real, which is two doublewords,
in the old days, what with them likely to have messed with the wholefloating
point part of the architecture since I took Assembler. The Last Real will be
deprogrammed using the Last Politics, which I shall whisper into the ear of
zeek on my deathbed from congestive heart failure, which someone herepredicted
from the astrology page of Long Island Newsday but they missed a planet. The
congestive heart failure is the entirely probable result of sneaking aciggie
after filling this prescription for The Patch, which is the most efficacious
quack cure for ciggie addiction, but with a Penalty for Cheating (sacrilege,
I know, but Lizzy does not, someone fill her in on who he was and the true
cause of death if known yet which I can't I cry). The waving of the penalty
flag on the play is entirely probable behind tearing the filters off, which
is customary and traditional; it being the Law in my country that the ciggie
is to be smoked the way had the president of armenia done it with a joint
he'd'a got stoned.
What you need to know by way of background about The Next-To-LastPolitics
is, I wiped out The Newest Politics in April 1992 just before the New York
Primary when this clown named Brown, what used to be a star? went out with
whatshername? he came to this place for a rally in the Cultural Arts Plaza.
There were these lesser clowns waving signs which all said:
**** TAKE BACK ARMENIA ****
...which could mean only one thing, the warranty was gonna run out unless
I went to WALMART, which for obvious reasons was supporting the Front
Runner, what never inhaled, and claimed defects in design, parts, and
workma...workpersonship. Now, even you take for granted that I have been
to shopping malls, but there is nobody on Long Island less Modernized and
Westernized and this boy, who didn't know where the store was in Smith-Haven
Mall, so when I got there the place was Closed. This was the end of that.
And on with the show. We want, we will get to what we are in a second,
we want to deal only with Lizzy, your depressive phase, who's guiltridden
behind her namesake Elizabeth Hubbard, and you are by birth or marriage
Elizabeth N. Hubbard, even if no longer legally, having named names to
the House Unarmenian Affairs Committee (HUAC) during the Salem Witchhunt
of 1692, which is true, I looked it up. If that wasn't bad enough, you
are terrified you are the notorious, if believed dead, serial killer and
axmurderperson, Lizzy Borden, as in the cow manufacturer, of Amherst Mass,
which is not merely guilt-inducing, and you don't even know that all four
places named Amherst in the US are named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, British
general in the Seven Years War, 1756-1763, who invented biological warfare
by giving away smallpox-infested blankets to the Algonkian Ind, uh, Native
Armenians, proving you can't get something for nothing in this world; you
are mightily afeared that you are waiting for Armenia's Sweetheart, Amy
Fisher, to get out of jail so you can bash her with the ax and bring the
crown, with her head, back from Long Island to New England where it belongs.
Which is necessary to help explain the magnitude of your suffering, whereof
I alone can make you suffer even worse on this earth should you be *bad*,
we get to that is one moment, in your depressive phase.
By *bad*, and this is very very bad no matter how well you do it, because
it is not allowed on the show, of which I am Media Producer, an entity far
more malign than any "violent and abusive" ex-husband, with my partner in
crime, the Sponsor, is meant (a) failure to be funny in your part because
you lack a sense of humor; or (b) sickeningly exposing us to your manic
phase, wherein you are Doctress Neutopia, which you are to save for your
dissertation which you will slave on under the whips and scorpions of Daniel
A. Foss, PhD, who existed at one time if never Real.
This dissertation is to be completed not later than ten years following
any occurrence of: the coming of the Jewish Messiah; the Second Coming of
Jesus Christ; the coming of the Sunni Muslim Mahdi; or the deoccultation of
the Shi'a Muslim Hidden Imam. Till your endoctoration, or the End of the
World, therefore, we are not gonna see any trace of your manic phase on
the air; you knowing that I speak not only as your Producer, but the only
thing standing between you and being a two-time loser in the Bin, where
they will surely brush your mind with Colgate mental cream containingHaldol,
whose invisible defective shield prevents thought going in or out, unlessthe
duty nurse has it on the form. If you read a newspaper that civilized people
read, which is The New York Times, you would have read the cover story ofthe
magazine section couple sundays ago on Scott Rudin, who is a Producer, and
is all the more brutal in beating up on hapless women, as he is gay, so is
capable of being the *complete* asshole.
Which is to bring up how we, on FNORD-L@UBVM, handle revenge, see, we
*relax and enjoy it*. That is what the homophobic crack is about. If the
Lesbian Gay Bisexual Association here does not like this crack, you get to
watch the gay men gang rape me, and have to cheer when the lesbians prod
you; and I have to watch when the lesbians to the corresponding things to
you and so forth. What the bisexuals do depends on the bisexual.
Now, since you've been a good girl, I'm going downstairs to think up
a nice fantasy to make you feel vulnerable and feminine, only slightly
tinged with bondage and sadism, so you can attain the spurious sense of
vulnerable femininity we all despise but you couldn't do it, is the major
decisive Thingie, so you can *tell jokes* when you repeat the story of
how you were an ugly girl in high school in Greensboro NC, home of the King
Cotton Hotel; and get to *parody* the body parts inadequacies enforced on
women which your manic phase exists to cover up.
The only reason Leri gets a copy of this Thingie is, they have this
superficial need to know how evildoers are punished in the Afterlife, which
this is.
Daniel A. Foss
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 05:18:27 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Subject: what it was
It wasn't worth doing.
Nobody else however, on earth, can do it.
Nobody, sadly, has suggested a name for whatever it is, as a form, thatis.
Yet I'm quite proud of my exclusive ability to do it.
According to a count made by EJ Ford, six (6) people collect them.
Upon my death from emphysema or congestive heart failure thesecollections
will not be worth the plastic they are printed on.
EJ Ford is the exilarch, or *resh galutha*, as we say in Late Antique
Aramaic, of the FNORDish Diaspora.
He and I are the advance party of Fnordish zionist intifada, the object
whereof is to subjugate *you*, as we were, as an inferior race, to sent*you*
to the stinking refugee camps where we dwell, where majcher's Blue Helmeted
Pakistanis feed us watery gruel lost 90% of food value since North Dakota to
whom we sell sister's honour so ye dwell in our land; but now ye die ormarry
our sisters, choose to prove yourselves as Things.
We have no Dead but CHEATING.
Dead is not God.
Some of us left women behind named Rose and Cynthia who have got good
jobs working for Texas-based oil companies in the hot stinking albeit air-
conditioned desert and will not brave the pioneering life and real estate
investments; and Lizzy is a shameless whore who at this very moment is with
some young boy she picked up at an Info Fwy truck stop called Leri@gossip.
pyramid.com before the natives drove her away with rocks as a raving
pseudointellectual, let her tell you; but we carry on on daytime television.
Anything I say is true which is not about women, because I was a virgin
until 21; this must be true, is not about women.
Anything else, ask EJ "Yasir Ben-Gurion" Ford.
Daniel A. Foss
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 10:30:16 -0500
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: "Joseph Z. Provo" <PROVO>
Subject: whatis WAS, what it IZ, and where it WILL BE, my man!
What the mean, lean, green literary machine that IS Doctor Dan
"Mountain-out-of-molehill" Fossy-bossy said is 100% truth. We,
the FZI, the Gorilla Linguists of Nee!, Your Worst Nightmare, Inc [(c)
Merciful Lee Dickens, all rights reserved, used under exclusive license,
ipso facto sub ubi id est et cetera], the Beast with a Thousand Names ButNot
Nearly That Many Young, I Mean No Where NEAR What Ol' Shub-Niggurath Could
Pump Out... Boy Was She A Breedin' Machine...
Umm, I'm sorry. I need to borrow some of Bent Brent's medication. Sadly,
Our Life Among The Bees went unappreciated... not nearly as welcome as that
wonderful vid-aud-art that was WEX: The Discovery of Television Among The
Bees, broadcast on the m-bone ages ago, but we never brought that up withthe
BEEkeepers, as they seemed a staid, stogy and sad lot. So we must come to
retake the homeland, as it were. We have the full arsenal of the CHEATING
Bunker, and new recruits have been had and are needed. I have jumped ship,
seen the light, been washed by the blood of our Betters, and not yet grabbed
the SYBRHM-L archives from our secret and glorified electronic resource.But
I will, for it is vital to my research...
While Doc "The Rock" Foss' accusations on Lizzy are out of my ken, I believe
the little barbie-doll could be up to _anything_; I have the necktie aboutmy
head and my Korzybski #2 Pen-o-matic at the ready, prepared to live up to an
old, recently unearthed nickname -- General Semantics. Beware my boldswaths
of critique! Watch out for my path of Figurative Destruction to be carved
out of your shallow attempt to raise metaphors in my path! I will not be
stopped!
AIEEEE! JIHAD!
joe "Into The Breach" provo, cleaving your cerebellum since the 80s... the
1880s, that is...
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 22:09:16 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Subject: white rats & liberated documents
Looking for loving homes for a few hundred white rats, which is my quota
for being allowed to annoy the red balloon collective, 919 25a E. Setauket,
which has got an interlocking directorate with the Student Action Coalition
for Animals (SACA); which has stuck stickers, this is really true, all over
the place which say, FREE LABORATORY ANIMALS NOW! the largest cache whereof
is used for Ratlab, enormous enrollment, up at the Psychology Quad; required
for major, etc. Frankly, me and Winston Smith from 1984 never got along with
species; only vertebrate I ever killed, in Newark NJ; wouln't pay its half
of the rent; but it wasn't a *white* rat. What is more, I have got Salman
Rushdie under my bed since General Aidid moved out, which is another story.
Mainly, I want to prove that we are up to Nothing here on FNORD-L; so here
is part of a cache of Documents liberated by Nihilists for Nothing Now from
the local offices of Paranoids For Total Fear. - DAF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------br>Date: Sat, 08 Jan 1994 11:50:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Doctress Neutopia <NEUTOPIA>
Subject: Re: evens out
To: DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU (Daniel)
Dear Funny Danny,
One of the reasons I was put into the mental "hospital"
was because I refused to get a Normal job (like a typing job). My
parents thought that was crazy; everyone has got to work if you are
a decent American. It was a difficult time to be a young woman back
then in the last '60's and early 70's. The woman's movement had made
it so that being a mother and houswife, like my mother and grandmother
had done, was no longer cool. Men now wanted to marry career women and
so it was clear to me that if I wanted to success if love, I needed to
get a professional job. Then I had a real problem because you needed
a college degree in order to get into a professional school. My
academic record was not too good since I had failed out of three
colleges and had been asked to leave St. Mary's College in Raleigh, NC
because of misbehavior (another story). Something was wrong with
school. Back then it was just an intuition that something stunk about
school, but now I know why.
I have real problems with Normal jobs...I don't really have a
Normal job at the moment. For the past five years, I have worked as a
guard on the art collection at the library. So what the job means
is that I have to show up on time and be prepared to spend eight hours
doing my own work. So, for the past five years, I have been one of the
only payed revolutionary poetesses by the State of Massachusetts
without them even knowing it! But all good things end. After January
I can no longer work there because I will be a college graduate and no
longer a member of the Old Boys Club. Without that ID, I can't even
use the gym, or interlibrary loan. Isn't it lovely the way they treat
people at these wonderful universities, the places of lofty ideas and
good will towards all men? I must have been insane going to school
all these years in a field like future studies just for the love of
wisdom! But I really couldn't do anything else with my life because I
just don't have the Smarts for engineering, law, medicine, business,
politics, humor (as you, funny Danny, well know) or marriage.
Now, wisdom can lead me to the homeless shelter.
Because of my handicap, Mother has advised me to go to some of
these academic conferences and play up to some man I feel in any way
attracted to who has enough money to support my art. According to
Mother, playing up to men means to smile a lot, act
like I am having a good time and, she says, most importantly, to keep
my mouth shut. She says what men like most is to hear themselves
talk, so I must become a patient listener and fake it when I could care
less what they are talking about. She said she would even pay for me
to buy some new fashionable clothes for such an occasion. So, now I am
deciding which conference I should attend where with the richest and
most attractive academicians will be.
Funny Danny, do you have any suggestions as to which ones
these might be? How about computer science? As I recall William
Hulley is organizing a panel on the economics of Cyberspace at a
conference this spring. What about that one? Hey man, you know this
is about survival! I mean survival! Good thing I am of above average
looks. Oh, dammit! Wondered if they feel those two huge breast lumps I
have growing on each breast? Do you think they will off turn some
professor if he feels them? The nurse at the poor people's health
clinic (they are the only ones I trust) said that if they were
hormonal then they would go away after my period came. Well, the
period came but the lumps didn't. But I don't have any health
insurance so what do I do? I wonder how it feels when your breasts
are totally fill with cancer and it starts popping out in your brain?
> I am in terms of objectively existing rules which it will occur to
> absolutely nobody to break, I am not sexually selectable.
Oh yes, other words of wisdom from Mother is not to tell the
prospective suiter than I have unexplainable infertility. She says
want until after I am married to tell him that little secret. She says
that most men these days who are my age aren't interested in having
children because they already have a few with their other wives. What
they are looking for is long-term AID's free companionship with an
attractive younger woman who has enough sense to KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT
and be a good girl. If not, he will then squeeze my hands with his
stronger hands until I submit to the Word of God.
> And I'm the only one you know with the angle of vision
> I have got on, you know, Stuff.
What in the fuck does this mean? Don't keep me guessing because
have give these Messianic delusions which are tied with my eros
remember?
> Sex fantasies and things like that are for public consumption.
> Period. Of course, you're welcome to practice tempting me in
> private.
Isn't that too bad. I like public love...like that I want to post
this letter to leri...but you are squeezing my hands, now aren't
you?
> you when you are getting good. The phone call made an awful impression;so
> does your rectangular blocks of prose and your dreary poetry. Try forfunny.
I am real sorry that you don't see the humor in my prose and that
you feel i am such a dull witted person. Every man I have every
gone out with (is this a new form of going out with?) has told me
how much they hate my writing, especially my poetry which is why now
I have to focus all my libidinal energy and sexual fantasy on my ideal
virtual lover....and you know who that is. We *all* really know who
that is which is the real reason why I am put in the bin.
Since this is a writing media, and since you don't care for my
writing why in the hell are you reading it now? Are you hoping that
I might become your little whore/slut/saint elizabeth whom you can
practice S&M virtual sex with?
I have tried funny, funny Danny. But sometimes the poetry/prophecy
don't come out funny, but starkly serious. There is nothing worse
than forced humor. The last sexual boy friend I had was a year
ago. His father was the late Jack Gilford who was a Jewish comedian
who was in such movies as Cocoon and Forum (I can't remember the
name). He made a lot of money doing commercials in the '60's.
He was the Craker Jack man. He had to resort to commericials because
they were the only job he get after he was black listed during
McCarthyism. The point is that I have heard all the Jewish jokes,
been around Jewish leftist who are now rich, and I am really tired
of them. Do all New York Jewish men think humor is the only way to
subvert the youth? Are you all clones of Woody Allen?
Tell you what. You can be my court jester after the planetary
lovolution? You you like that job?
> There is nothing which is harder work than humor.
Try prophecy. The funny thing about prophecy is that it makes the
Normals laugh these sinister laughs when they burn you to the stake
because they are planning to ignore the fact that you ever existed.
Now, I hope that cracks a smile on your depressed face. :)
Your virtual Queen,
Doctress Neutopia
PS: Have you been obeying my orders?
NO CIGARETTES
If not, you will be severely punished!
(You will not merit seeing me again in RL)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------59
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 94 21:23:13 EST
From: Danny <DFOSS@ccvm.sunysb.edu>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Subject: could not post your personal letter to fnord
To: Lizzy <NEUTOPIA>
Lizzy,
First, you are not allowed on Leri, you make Trouble, when it's cool I
let you back on.
Second, your personal letter has some Funny in it, but not personal
enough and is from the wrong person. Try to write a more personal letter,
with more Funny, from Lizzy, this time, or I'll post that one to FNORD-L
anyhow.
Third, one Funny angle you might try is having Lizzy catch the Doctress
up to her old tricks.
All in all, I like it, and were I playing Doctor instead of Attendant&
Ward Nurse, I'd say, "This is your First Major Positive Step." Hey, I like
this, Lizzy; think I'll post both of them. Nobody's got any Privacy in here,
we are all Patients on this network, and after *capitalism* is polished off,
you know, there won't be any Privacy out there, either; illegal, unconstitu-
tional, and possibly gets you shot while the Provisional Revolutionaryregime
has got to Take Care of Business, you know, but we will have the whole thing
staffed by *women* because of their innate hormonal suitability to bureau-
cracy and civil-servanthood; males egotrip, which reduces inefficiency below
the tolerable point, promotes bribery top to bottom which girls, being nicer
and more honest, wouldn't dare get away with; and there is no problem with
factionalism based on abstractions, what with all the innate relatedness on
Carol Gilligan's Island. How come you can't do it, Lizzy? Southern bellenever
got tolled, just told off and told about. Another product of armenian design
& engineering. Why not have Doctress style herself Commandante of theEllen
Liu and Mili Subodhi National Liberation Front, and hallucinating that I'm
Leader of Nihilists for Nothing Now, the legal political arm of the Colin
Ferguson National Liberation Front (the latter shot up the Long Island RR
car on Dec 7; the former two, of whom nobody heard, were honor students at
Ward Melville High School, this is the Ward Melville Social & Behavioral
Sciences Bldg, we got a Frank Melville Library; lotsa copies of Moby Dick
by black sheep Herman; in aquatic mammals business till extinction, of the
mammals, I mean; went into shoes; then vast landed estates which appreciated
enormously when this campus, which is hole in the middle, was given to NY
State under Rockefeller; give at least fifty dollars a year to save whales
from the Japs; girls were 16 and 15, died in suicide pact Dec 2, weren't
white either).
*Then*, you sneak up behind the Doctress and *catch her* in the act!
The duty nurse gives her shot of Haldol; lets you off with a warning;
and I pretend to be affectionate on imitation kiddie television. Gee, if
those suckers on FNORD-L ever suspected what we were thinking....Gotta flip
channels to ANTHRO-L; they got a new regular named McCreery who's anabsolute
genius; so good they sold the Rights to him to the Japs, he's got anInternet
address ends with .JP, makes a fortune explaining the inscrutable armenians
to this Jap advertising agency. See, it's a problem of niche. I found the
niche for you, so there must be one for me.
Daniel A. Foss, PhD [objectively real and able to prove it, Brandeis '69]
<who is being formal cuz I warned you about the other one>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 1994 05:09:42 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: daf <DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Subject: first public denial of what of if the next-to-last politi
...cs is with disclaimer of belief at end so DELETE this Thingieimmediately:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------br>Date: Sun, 09 Jan 94 03:42:17 EST
From: DFOSS@CCVM.sunysb.edu
To: Leri@pyramid.com (Leri)
Subject: yes consciousness is really great but
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Just read Michael J. Gourlay's post, and I was overwhelmed, let me tell
you, but good. An inspiring message, to meet the challenge of solipsism with
the weapons of solipsism, go up one's own navel with entrenching tool and
find the root of the thing, bash it to bits, and philopophically speaking
emerge clean and pressed. Which was all way over my head. As one who suffers
from *sour-grapes solipsism*, "if I don't exist, myself, which is Known, why
should I worry about any other userid on the net existing?" And I have
documentary evidence: Dwayne, a userid in Australia, called me an "imposter"
[sic] on Leri, and Steve, a userid in LA on ANTHRO-L, called me "as many
as five or six people," I introduced them, they agreed that they existed,
I dissented.
But Leri is still not telling me what The Next-To-Last Politics is,
which requires that Leri would concern itself, when Leri gets around to
it as Leri finds it necessary, what objectively exists. Unlike a mutual
friend of ours, who is living as happily ever after as she is likely to
get, I am not going to tell Leri what to do, and in return Leri is not
going to throw me out. But it was just a few days ago that sameer posted
600 lines, this was Paranoid Night, on what to do about "the cop who's
knock knock knocking on your front door." (Firesign Theater, 1970.) This
was one of Leri's rare preoccupations with *objective reality* whichactually
exists; not the kind listed under that last name in the phone book, Reality,
as explained in what you should have DELETEd without my telling you likethis
one.
So here's the *good* reason why I don't make sense. Intentionally. You
know all the bad ones. Too much sense is made. It is crap, it is false, yet
makes sense.
Example 1: Someone, I don't mention names, I'm on too many Enemies Lists
even for Paranoids, said three? days ago: "If you want to change the world,
you should change yourself first." Makes such perfect sense it slipped right
by everyone; but it's *wrong*, in the observable, behavioral scientific,
statistical sense. The rare, *extremely rare*, organism which reads some
piece of trash sold on the intellectual dogfood rack in a drugstore will
"change," but more often it's like the dietfreak losing 2 lb, gains it back.
What happens is:
a. You don't change yourself.
b. You don't change the world, which is a piece of shit; and youcertainly
don't change the united states of armenia which is to blame for that.
c. You enrich some Shrink or iatrogenic disease vector to half the extent
you impoverish yourself; or worse, depending on your corrupt insurance
company as part of the medical industrial complex.
The predictability of that is what makes life go on, same old senseless
way. But I am not your friend and mine, you know better than I do what is
to be done about it, and when you tell me I'll say rah rah. this is not my
point.
Example 2: Lamont Grandquist is depressed. He explains it with science
fantasies. But the rule of scientific parsimony is, with a completely non-
understood Thingie like consciousness, that book The Nature of Consciousness
notwithstanding, as it's guesswork, the existence of depression isexplicable
by environmental causation. Is Lamont Grandquist poor, African-American,
discriminated against, denied higher education, facing a bleak futurewithout
"marketable skills" acquired via "human capital formation"? I betcha, no.His
whole culture makes no sense at all to him, he calls ideas "intellectual
bullshit." In the last century, well hell as late as the 1930s, people took
Ideas very seriously. Only lately has there been an intellectual revolution
where it is now fashionable to say that Ideas do not have the slightest
relationship to behavior; what explains behavior is what you take forgranted,
and one of the things we all take for granted is that our armenia, the most
irrational society in human history, will be That Way forever. "And Them
shall reign forever and evvvvver," the song says. Maybe this works better
than chemical imbalances.
3. Example 3: Jurgen Habermas, my sucessful competition, the world's No.1
"macrotheorist." I wanna give you a whiff of how "real" sociologists talk to
each other and make sense to each other. This man is Really Smart; his name
is Anthony Arnove; and he wants to overthrow capitalism, this is one of the
Good Guys:
>generally, is that is that it specifically seeks -- through the
>_collective_ labor of theoretical construction -- to get beyond all the
>limitations of common-sense "subjective empirical reality" and toconstruct
>_counter-intuitive_ models of the way social relations operate. This is
>not to say that material social relations do not bear on consciousnessand
>that we should not care aboput what people "experience"; it is rather to
>reintroduce
>
>a) the problem of ideology under capitalism
>b) the problem of "systematically distorted communication" (Habermas)under
>capitalism and
>c) the limits of subject-centered, idealist reason.
>
>We are often told, indeed it is basically taken for granted by many who
>consider themselves leftists, that people's subjective reality doesn'tlink
>up up with socialist interpretations and socialist programs, that classis
Which shows the way Habermas makes sense to him. (But not to me, and I'd
use the words of George C. Scott in Patton, "I read your book, you fucking
Kraut bastard.") Habermas believes that, if humans communicated withprecision
and logic, the way machines do when you put a very logical proposition into
one box and the identical, therefore equivalently true, proposition comesout
via satellite on the other side of the earth, we would all be free from
"domination": We'd be defended against rulers who distort reality by shifty
and sneaky verbiage, excessive information here, inadequate informationthere,
misleading videotape, doctored photos, propaganda, advertising. But he is
*wrong* even though he makes sense. This is entirely ignoring the fact that
only a narrow elite gets or could ever get the training in logic andphilosphy
he says is necessary.
Here is word for word what I said, with the help of LSD, whatcommunication
is *for*: "To make what makes sense to me make sense to you." As,considering
how sexist I was at the time, seemed in the Nature of things; what could she
make sense of without help. When the message is important to the context of
the communication, we communicate to persuade, which is to exert power, over
someone whose understanding is inferior to our own, and by that very fact,
that orgainsm is Inferior to us. Right, "girls"? What I just said is, that
all idelogy in our culture is *gendered male*, or how could we take Reality
seriously, right, fellas? Otherwise, why bother talking with people: "No use
[arguing][trying to reason] with *your kind*; all you understand is*force*!"
The latter kind of people have *nothing to say*, and those who open their
Stupid Traps get Seriously Killed. The great Chinese sage Mencius, exact
contemporary of Aristotle, said, "Slight is the difference between man and
the brutes." So far so good for some primatologists, all vegetarians, and
the Student Action Coalition for Animals (SACA), which at this very moment
is trying to liberate all the white rats in the Psychology Quad, wants to
find warm loving homes. "Don't bother me, I've got Salman Rushdie hiding
under my bed since General Aidid moved out." You out there interested? But
Mencius goes on, "The common man loses this distinguishing feature, while
the gentleman retains it." (D.C. Lau trans., p. 13.) Distorting and
dominating are the *motive* for communicating, inextricable from the
message: There is no such thing as *pure communication* which in principle
both humans and machines do the same, in the abstract as abstracted from
actual social relation in which people use people and people use machines.
In the latter case, there is no good reason to have a machine to communicate
unless the message is precisely just so, or we junk it for a better one.What
High Fidelity is all about, no distortion if it's state of the art.
Of course, there's more to human communication. From one angle, society
is just people "interacting" with other people. (Don't ask a sociologist
what he she it means by "interacting"; it freaks them.) So they just have
got to talk a lot, talk it over, have a talk, shoot the breeze, chew the
fat, schmooze, hang out, have a *very private conversation* to keep someone
else out and nothing else, etc ad inf. 90% of sex is talk. My friend Mickey
has the amazing gift of being able to talk to absolutely any woman about
absolutely anything; and to date has never got a complaint of exploitation
from any woman he wasn't married to.
This post took a longer time than expected, because I got an offlineletter
from someone you don't know, zipped over to her house on Telnet, said,"thank
god where you been have been satting here three days going crzy," she said,
"paranoid" etc, and I haven't read the letter that set this off. (In any
relationship, one party or the other has more of a vested interest in self-
deception, almost always the party that does the walking out.)
This is why it is important to destroy sense wherever you find it,meaning
the spurious sense that is made by false cultural assumptions; as I say, too
much sense is being made. It adds up to the Big Lie, but Them has got us on
Automatic. You need to know what's spurious; some of the time you're gonna
be Wrong. But, for the record, in the 1930s, the Side of Good used Theories
and Ideas. In the 1960s, the Side of Good used Drugs, in particular LSD. As
somebody scrawled on the men's room in Amherst MA in 1974 (have not been
there since, swear), "acid dissolves 44 times its weight in reality,"without
knowing, of course, which one he meant. (In sociogibberish, LSD is "demysti-
fying." That's what is was used for, as a Left Drug. LSD made Timothy Leary.
Timothy Leary did not make LSD. Owsley, they said, made the LSD, when they
wanted to overcharge. Keep that clear. Without LSD making Leary, he would
have been the boring moron he was created as and still is.)
But can't be again. Lookit, Michael J. Goulay sent out a 500-line post
on "the ME Meme and the WE Meme." What is a meme? A reification. Right.
A meme is *imaginary* before it is anything else. "[Ideological] Reality
has a[n objectively] real part and an imaginary part, of which the real
part is allowed to be zero." LSD is obsolete, you screwed yourselves, go
unscrew up or find something else is my guess on the choices, I am nottelling
you what to do, I am trying to figure out what you will find your choicesare.
**** THE ABOVE IS SHEER GUESSWORK AND IS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE TRUTH****
Daniel A. Foss
<this was too much sense and i swear will never try to make this muchsense
again i know what you are supposing since i am a Professional Paranoid with
a certificate of expertise and incompetence and a merit badge in the line
of doody>
**** WARNING LINCOUNTER DISABLED YOUR ENEMIES ARE FREAKING SHUT UP ****
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