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Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 08:07:45 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: tipi <TIPPY>
Subject: :) = DEATH!
IN COLD BLOOD
Goatboy whines that I flamed him but flames suggest heat suggests anger.
Goatboy can at best annoy and is too lame to inspire flame. I seem to have
touched some nerve in Goatboy though (not to worry, I washed up afterwards).
THE HUMILIATION OF GOATBOY CONSIDERED AS AN UPWIND ABATOIR
Goatboy should go back and read earlier posts for they are ALL about him.
Clues abound and are acrostic, caustic, anagrammatic, palindromic,encrypted,
anamorphic, parabolic, and gynecological. There are, however, no readingsfrom
the contents pages of magazines, for which I apologize. Furthermore, Goat-
boy, should he decide to investigate, will find numerous references to him-
self in works by William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, a num-
ber of fairy tales, The Encyclopedia Brittanica, several episodes ofBullwin-
kle, and a recent issue of "Women and Guns."
IN YOUR HEART YOU KNOW THEY WERE RIGHT
Face it, folks, this list was pretty moribund until the marauders descended
on it and shook things up. Maybe they even made you think. In NEW WAYS yet!
Things, and Goatboy's own testimony damns him here, WERE interesting. Irony,
anyone?
Play your HARmonicum, son.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 13:15:22 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Libalp <ART@ARTS.QUICK.FROLIC>
Subject: Re: :) = DEATH!
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 30 Jan 1994 08:07:45 EST from <TIPPY>
On Sun, 30 Jan 1994 08:07:45 EST tipi said:
> THE HUMILIATION OF GOATBOY CONSIDERED AS AN UPWIND ABATOIR
>Goatboy should go back and read earlier posts for they are ALL abouthim.
>Clues abound and are acrostic, caustic, anagrammatic, palindromic,encrypted,
>anamorphic, parabolic, and gynecological. There are, however, no readingsfrom
>the contents pages of magazines, for which I apologize. Furthermore,Goat-
>boy, should he decide to investigate, will find numerous references tohim-
>self in works by William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, anum-
>ber of fairy tales, The Encyclopedia Brittanica, several episodes ofBullwin-
>kle, and a recent issue of "Women and Guns."
>
Bullwinkle, yes, of course. I myself *became* (reread that last word,
as it is *packed* (reread etc.) with "meaning", he said, in a
punctuation-drunk (heads up, Kidds, pun in the area) haze) the Goatboy
2 weeks ago while ejaculating prematurely (no reflection on certain
parties, etc.) Altogether, I prefer Mongo, but then, gentlemen of
discriminating taste, such as yourselves and myselves, tipi, usually
are--oops, no-- do.
> IN YOUR HEART YOU KNOW THEY WERE RIGHT
>
Yes, but are they happy?
Ask me sometime about the Myth of Education, a pet theory of mine.
I'd love to explain it to the Kidd, but that would be, er, ironic,
wouldn't it?
regards,
ap
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 13:59:35 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: SAVIOUR@STINKY.GOLGOTHA.MTN
Subject: Re: one last comment on jesusfuck
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 28 Jan 1994 09:19:55 CST from <GS0383@>
On Fri, 28 Jan 1994 09:19:55 CST Melanie Willis said:
>shit in my face when it comes up on my screen. You make me feel likethis
>group is becoming satanist or something.
please unsub fnord-l
ps. Please shit in my face when it comes up on my screen too, if you
have time. Gratis, ok?
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 23:08:25 GMT
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: George Weishaupt Gates <gwagner@>
Subject: Re: one last comment on jesusfuck
In article <FNORD-L%94012811320540@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>, MelanieWillis
<GS0383> wrote:
>
> Ok, Ms. JESUSFUCK, let me tell you what I think of you:
>
> If you were to come out and call yourself NIGGERFUCK or JEWFUCK or
> HANDICAPFUCK or WHITESUPREMACY or something like that you'd have everyperson
> on this list jumping on your ass. But you think you can come out and
> callyourself JESUSFUCK and it makes you cool. Your purpose is tooffend.
> And no one on this list has enough balls to come out and say: Don't yoube
> fucking calling Jesus names like that. Well, I will, you little shit. Idon't
> care what your IQ is. I don't care what you do for a living. I'll tellyou
one
> thing though: I sure as hell would not want anyone who calledthemselves
> JESUSFUCK teaching my kid gymnastics. You think it's cool to make funof
> Jesus. You think words don't have any meaning and yet you use them todraw
> attention to yourself. You can't think of anything that's worth saying andso
> you come up with this outrageous name. You're a loser and a piece ofshit.
> Your presence, the constant flaunting INSULT of your name is like a pieceof
> shit in my face when it comes up on my screen. You make me feel likethis
> group is becoming satanist or something. You would fit in quite well witha
> satanist group. But I won't associate with someone who calls themselves
> JESUSFUCK no matter how fucking high your IQ is proported to be. I thinkthe
> evidence speaks for itself. You're a dumbshit.
What a way to spread the Word of our loving God. Oh my....
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 17:55:15 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: missing in plausible
Your Missing, should you decide there's no way you can evade accepting
it what with, you realize, *no telling* whereto, far and wide, it's going
to be publicized, you know, is, uh, *doing* Stephanie J. Nelson. To do the
doing in question, merely join ANTHRO-L@UBVM, sister station ofFNORD-L@UBVM,
which you do with the usual LISTSERV Subscribe ANTHRO-L Elizabeth N.Hubbard.
Your orders are to think of yourself as a little angel, gossamer thing with
fluffiest wing; no neutopia stuff which doesn't just leak out. Your *cover*,
according to advance billing already sent out, is postmodernist architecture
critic. *You are not up to anything*. Anything, on the other hand, will find
a way to be up to *you*, as is standard operating procedure. (Which will get
more than a little literal in the "operating" part if you screw up worsethan
your abysmal batting average thus far; psychosurgery has hit the comeback
trail.) You are to hold your fire, even when you see the whites of these
white people's white wash, with exclusive exception, conservativelyconstrued,
of fixating, getting fixation on, getting your next fix, shooting up with,the
target, Stephanie J. Nelson <NELSON@VM.USC.EDU>. Whatever is killed whena
neutron-tipped warhead from one of your Griffin launches, the Griffin
[="Merv," as in "Multiple Independently Targeted ReEntry Vehicles," MIRV]
is under construction of course in violation of international treaty
obligations, but what with total production of over 45,000 nuclear weapons
since 1945, who can argue with the imperatives of one of the nation'slargest,
most inefficient, yet for wholly curious and idiosyncratic reasons, *most
fully internationally competitive* industries? Anyone getting obliterated
when the neutron bomb goes off, I assure you, has only himself or herself
(not itself, since the beauty part of the weapon is its preservation of the
rights of private property for anyone sufficiently alive and armed, arriving
with the Army of Occupation, to claim them) to blame. Production of the
Griffin, now the mainstay of the Long Island economy if at this timeextremely
hush, and supplanting in this role the wellbeloved, now lamented, F14DTomcat
fighter-interceptor, uses techniques freely borrowed, by imitation,emulation,
or cold cash, from the governments of Israel, Iraq, South Africa, Pakistan,
and until it was learned with some dismay that its nuclear weapons program
was wholly dependent on Number 9 Erector Sets, North Korea.
You are reminded once again that your deadliness inheres, not in small-
unit antipersonnel "Flame" weapons, but from wide-area-destruction heavy
megatonnage ponderously invisible abstractions radiating dementia-inducing
gamma-frequency photons indiscriminately, following the shock wave upon
impact capable of oblitering the geographical features of discourse such
that the preexisting terrain cannot be reconstituted by the Enemy's most
expert discourse analysts.
You are to ignore the real or artificial organism called Rafael Candido
Alvarado unconditionally. He[?] has no independent existence; cannot be
considered as other than an outer defense of the Target, who is to be
terminated with extreme prejudice along with ANTHRO-L as a whole. I am
readying a Government White Paper for the consideration of the whole white
race and its ruling class once the the day which will Live Forever In Infamy
<chortle chortle> is consummated by fiery doom.
The files ZANG2 SCRIPT B, ZAND3 = =, ZANG4 = =, ZANG5 = =, ZANG6 = =;
this is ZANG7 = =; will be sent you in partial fulfillment of any of your
possible deficiencies in the historical background of the presenthostilities.
Not to mention, in even more partial fulfillment of the requirements of the
Degree of Master of Arts.
One thing is certain, viz, that you cannot Go Home Again. John Marsh
<libjrm@ > wrote, in a post to FNORD-L, Thu, 27 Jan 1994
15:26:05 -0500:
>'course, Leri didn't burn Lizzy. Leri just scorched her a bit. I wonderif
>Lizzy even bothered to wonder about her deleterious effect on Leri.
>
>But the question on everyone's e-lips, Dan, as b<c> pointed out,is:
>
>Dan & Lizzy - What Happened?
>
>Care to enlighten us?
[Frankly, no. - DAF]
This you do in remembrance, not of me, but of what might have been had I
been other than what I turned out to have been as initially apprehended by
you, that is, a Big Disappointment; but, what the hell, spilt milk under the
bridge and one swallow over the dam. Which never made a summer, never will,
but may return, someday...someday to Capistrano.
a fool forever,
Daniel A. Foss
Professor, Military Science and Tactics
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 20:00:26 -0600
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: moores7518
Subject: pick me up
Foss,
In terms of good soap opera material, you are surely the greatest! And Imean
that! Where once I might have thought the pure unrestrained libido of the
great Foss/Hubbard romance was all the heat I needed to fuel my ownimpassive
fires, now I see that you have added *thrills* and *chills* to the mix byway
of your alienation of, apparently, all the major idiots on the ANTHRO list!
Lurking in the background, of course, one Lamont Granquist from Leri, whoWILL
KILL YOU (gasp) should you and he, say, meet in a dark alley somewhere andyou
without your smart bombs -- natch that, would "smart" bombs even work? A
tangent. At any rate, feels to me, and hey, I just work here!, that said
efforts amount to pouring Robitussin (cheap drugs, remember?!) down thethroat
of this here rotting corpse, and just when I was getting used to that
particular stench -- ha! just kidding, Jerky, I'll *never* fucking get usedto
that. (Yeehah! Feels like alt. heaven to me!!) At any rate, mayhap I've
misconstrued your medicine for EMBALMING FLUID; anyways, couldn't Sgt.Murali
just unsubscribe Fnord-L from Fnord-L and get the whole damn thing overwith?
I'm just curious. Honest.
Your pal,
Scotto
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 21:53:03 EST
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: the doctor throws a good game in the opener
As FNORD-L dance and theater critic, it has rarely been my great good
fortune to herald the advent of a new star in the FNORDish firmament. Rare,
even, is Good Fortune of any kind on this job outside a fortune cookie the
waiter cannot understand one does *not* want stuck on top of the minidish
of chocolate ice cream.
As epitomized to perfection by the inspired choice of her new stagepersona,
"jesusfuck," which according to scripture he certainly did, having for his
"consensual social companion" the ever foot-caring Mary Magdalene; and for
more durable domesticity the mother-daughter pair, the surprisingly youthful
Mary and the incredibly mature Martha. Yet the incongruity, which the more
blase older folks would have thought feeble by this time, with everywhere
and on all hands copious indications of Christianity in terminal (and Iwrite
on one) decadence, retains evil magic, imparted or rather reimparted to the
combination of the innocence of Jesus and the NO!-saying imperatives offuck,
without our noticing. Bourdieu, not Gramsci, scores a point off this socio-
cultural Thingie, as we call - in the umpir-ical sense - it.
Yet "The Doctor," or as we've previously called her, Barbara TemplarHall,
MD, 21, avowed pursuer of Nobel Prize in Medicine for Neuroscientificdiscovery
of X marks exact spot of human mind in the head, has done it, with thesimple
undergraduate-y device for this Intro, or at least Lower Division, list.What
could be more refreshing for an undergraduate to do on a Lower Division list
than something so unprecedentedly unpretentious as to be breathtaking? In a
letter to an acknowledged genius, formerly the only hardcore unemployablePhD
other than myself in these armenian states, now stationed by theunemployment
office in Paris, France, where he is accredited to the Vagabond Management
Office and Computer Center of the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure,founded
by Napoleon for purposes of his own in the Napoleonic Era, the FNORDish
feature staff apprised Dr Adler (PhD SUNY Stony Brook, Mathematics, 1974;
LSD = 'Y') of real or more likely spurious cultural change and mutatingwomen
in his native country:
>0. May I introduce the second, once again, hardcore unemployable PhD in
>the USA, Dr Elizabeth N. Hubbard, PhD in Future Studies, U Mass atAmherst,
>1993. [line del to end]
>1. Barbara Templar Hall, MD is 21, junior, premed, Temple University, an
>institution founded in Philadelphia, a Hellenistic foundation now in the
>Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, for the training of Knights Templars, with
>a branch office in Philadelphia PA. Her IQ is at least 168. Her friend
>deb of the jungle/desert siegel, 19, is much smarter even than that.Smarter
>even than you, Allan.
>
>2. Leri@gossip.pyramid.com is an Internet list devoted to LSD,cybernautics,
>techofantasizing, techno-rock music, what is consciousness, what islife,
>what is truth sex beauty sex love, and other matters of undergraduateconcern
>of an immediate & pressing nature.
What is little known in cyberarmenia as yet is the "collapsing of the
boundaries of art and science," as my doused flame lizzy might have hailed
it. What I'm specifically hinting at, flipping a coin as to whether this
is the time or place to publicize it before it may be artistically ready,
legal, or safe from depredations of the Student Action Coalition forAnimals,
which does not unremind me right here and now that I <fuckin'> BESEECHEDthe
lot of you, and the leries among you who were supposed to tell theColonialists
the whole story, for warm loving homes for the 200 white rats the localSACAs
set as my quota upon the Day when the LIBERATE LABORATORY ANIMALS NOW!campaign
would be carried out, not the usual joke as usual. Now I get the reproach:
"One third of Liberated Rat Nation is ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-fed."Homeless
rats without food pellets dependably, munchably passed from E to S; tragic
enough. But ill-clad? A fur-bearing mammal without new sweaters? Boots for
the deepest drifts piled up in Campus Jungles #1, #2, #3, #4? What gives?
We digress. Barbara Templar Hall's earliest memories of live concert
broadcasts by the Philadelphia Orchestra were associated with the scurrying
of small animals, predominantly rodential; somewhat larger animals, the
majority feline, striving to outscurry then catch the former; and thelargest
in the vicinity, obliged in theory to exibit humane humanity, neglecting to
do so in the ensuing chaos, behaving of all beasts present most animalistic-
ally. As Barbara memorized finely printed latin nomenclature from hergrownup
cousin in medschool.
Now, at 21, she writes concertos for brain-dissection or brain-surgeryand
full orchestra. Resenting confinement, as if she were still a child, to the
cortices of rodents and cats, she dreams of music featuring her solo cadenza
on the brain of the living human. When I bought her a plate of fries in the
Major Network Deli on 47th street, a day she spent awaiting Discovery by a
media Columbus (those paid to Discover extreme, exotic, unspeakable, or
nauseating forms and varieties of Talent number in the thousands in Network-
land, and there were one or two present in the Deli, by simple calculation
of probabilities. That they failed to even condescend to recognize Barbara's
hair color shows that outlandishness in Philly doesn't get you so much as
a subway token in the Apple), she staired at my receding hairline. She said:
"Funny, the way your frontal lobe is misshapen like that. It sends a
musical theme through my head. I think, "second movement. Andante Maestoso."
I had trouble getting my matzohball down after that.
Daniel A. Foss
FNORDish Arts & Leisure Section
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 11:20:50 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: dubious existence at this time hence order halt to terror
ism:
I hereby order all FNORDist and FNORDian forces to cease and desist from
the practice of conscious and premeditated terrorism against Stephanie J.
Nelson and the ANTHRO-L list. No plans or premeditated aggression will be
or can possibly be tolerated as these negate and vitiate all this great
union of Nihilists on behalf of Nothing has stood for for no time at all.
If you are not in control of yourself, and as a result some untoward
event goes unbackwards instead, this couldn't be helped, I suppose; just
make sure you have the other driver's insurance policy number and that
you did not go through anything red, stopped at all stop signs, turned
right or left if that is the duty enjoined on your lane, and the usual.
Be sure to have time on the meter at all times, and never run out of gas.
Warning, The Amy Fisher Monstrous Regiment of Women is likely to disobey
orders and screw around with the battle plan. Be sure you know who is a
what before fraternizing with the enemy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 280
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94 06:23:56 EST
From: DFOSS@ccvm.sunysb.edu
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Subject: conceptualizing misadventure into sociology
To: Mike Lieber <U28550@>
Resent-Message-Id: <940131.062356.EST.DFOSS@ccvm.sunysb.edu>
Mike,
Have spent some time tonight collecting the postings on "What is culture
yet again [revisited]," and have just now begun to transcend personalizing
such as, "My, but I've been [subculturally] obliterated with remarkable
celerity: See Graber, Fri, 28 Jan 1994 09:54:25 CST, "Two Will Do,"commencing
as it does with that portentous word, "Objectively." Where we meet, justlike
old times, Ego and Alter "engaged in patterned interaction in time andspace."
In a time warp, we're thrust back into the 1950s genre of sociogibberish.Here
I'd entirely anticipated the two-organismic reductio ad absurdum case, which
is naive in that Ego and Alter have got to have been socialized into a pre-
existing culture to interact. The only loophole, aside from that apocryphal
story of Emperor Frederick II (d. 1250) having infants dumped on some island
and reared by nurses with tongues cut out to ascertain whether the language
developed by the children would be Hebrew, proven thuswise primordial, is
one where the pair are *emically discontinuous* from the environing culture
whereinto they had initially been socialized or assimilated. Which left the
notional possibility of the delusional psychotics on a ward who shared their
delusional system; but even this doesn't work. (Wed, 19 Jan 1994 13:26:01EST,
"jameson/existence of cultural thingies as continues variable")
Where one didn't know what one was talking about, in bygone days, the
1950s, one resorted to high-nebulosity verbiage. Most notorious were: the
"hyphen-oriented," "hyphen-directed," "hyphen-patterned." The most readily
abused was the first. If one didn't dare say that some Thingie was X, one
called it "X-oriented"; X-ish would be silly. Lexical polysyllabification
is at least preferable to early 20th century German practice, viz, assigning
lexical hereditary nobility via mock-Greek neolisms or deceptive meanings:
*Charisma* is the Greek for "imbued with additive-magical powers," cf mana,
baraka. This usage is a disaster; consider the healthier climate possible
where, say, the media tells us that President John F. Kennedy exudes charm
or something comparably prosaic; as opposed to getting told that JFKpossesses
- applicable to any comparable figure past present future - aje-ne-sais-quoi
mystified to the utmost by the alien, magical sound of the Greek word! My
other favorite, *schizophrenia*, was coined about the same time, 1903, by
Bleuler; *schizein* = cracked + *phrenes* = guts, as of an athlete-soldier.
(One Greek word vaguely denoting some aspect of "mind" is as good as another
as a snowjob on the classically illiterate.) The worst possible situation
would find the doctor explaining to relatives, "The patient's diagnosis is
'cracked up.'" (With the emergence of fine distinctions from research at
first mere typologizing, other *disorders*, not you understand true*diseases*,
were split off from the residual category, increasingly itself called "the
schizophrenias," the original name retained in plural form as "a mereheuristic
device," yet indispensable. (John Neale, Schizophrenia, 1981, p. 108)
The unit of known knowledge is, operationally, the published article or
book. There is an institutional imperative to generate known knowledge in
these units. There was disincentive, the mildest of the available words for
this context, to overtly state, "We frankly do not know what the hell X is,
and what is more, we do not care. Certainly we extend our apathy to any
question as to whether something is X or otherwise." Such was the permissive
climate of the 1950s.
The variant "-directed," indelibly associated with David Riesman for its
use or overuse or abuse in his The Lonely Crowd, 1951, was superficiallymore
solidly reified than "-oriented." This was an illusion, but it had social
and cultural consequences more solid than the denotational distinctions.
These illusions were in the 1950s as unquestioned among fashionable social
thinkers (not excluding C. Wright Mills) as the faith that "-directed" was
an original contribution by Riesman to socspeak and the English language as
a whole.
Worst of all was "-patterned." The existence of a "pattern" whereby the
Thingie, X, was "patterned" had a wholly notional quality. There was a major
figure, Robert K. Merton, who second only to Talcott Parsons dominated the
"profession" of sociology. His magnum opus, Social Theory and SocialStructure,
was quite plainly silly; and its greatness was based on appropriation ofsuch
handmedown Freudianisms as "latent." (Later done, on a higher level withless
impact, by Althusser. There was no hint of insanity however about Merton.)
Today I idly filched a xeroxed handout of Ch 4, "Social Structure andAnomie."
On p. 131, Merton brushes away the straw man/woman/machine of instincts atwar
with socialization ("biological impulse and social restraint"). Freudiansdid
not hold any such thing, Wilhelm Reich aside. Two sentences later comes aGreat
Cloud Nebula: "For whatever the role of biological impulses, there still
remains the further question of why it is that the frequency of deviant
behavior varies within different social structures and how it happens that
the deviations have different shapes and patterns in different social
structures." Suggesting:
1. Does "different" make any difference to the reader; and wherein if so?
2. We are in the presence of nonprogress, as of 1956 (pub. of STSS) and
1894 (pub. E. Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method); the contradictory
qualitative cum quantitative definitions remain; the word "pathological,"
only, has been euphemized as "deviant."
3. If one lived in an apartment house, as I did, "social structure" made
intuitive sense; and Merton had been a city boy like me, Philly not Bronx.
But to tenement or apt bldg w/elevator, many people preferred the SFDDU; so
did the great corporations and the State; and the latter engineered the
country, with help from the private sector, to sell cars to itself. If a
car's home was its family, would the palpability of "social structure"
diminish? We know that the latter occurred; the causality is unstudied to
this day, so far as I know. How far down into the nether layers of our
culturally filtered signification system of mixed metaphors did we need
to descend to expunge magical influences of this image-laden word salad?
Why do we say, "social structure," not "social cavity," more vaginal, less
penile; or alternatively "social mineshaft"?
Because, for one thing, the social structure Just Stands There, stably,for
a while; but comes the time, sooner or later, when *social strains* -whatever
those were, they were certainly popular in their day - had weakened the
building right down to the foundation such that it was now *fatally
undermined*. What else does a subversive, linguistically speaking, *do*?
As a mental exercise, I spent a few months substituting for each occurrence
of "structure" in any social-science context with "chocolate pudding" in my
head. Which induced strange giggling, occasionally contagious.
But I've digressed way off over there from where I was, patterns,
"-patterned." It was quite accessible usage, as "input" to if not"processed"
by my moldy young mind, to say, "random-patterned." This was dismaying. Here
was a Learned Authority, an expert who knew Methodological Thingies, who was
able to say, *without knowing it*, "I truly cannot say a goddam thing about
whether anything in this study is X, or vaguely X-like, or more X than Y, at
least for the time." The findings are that things are pretty much their own
things, and certainly do not care what is made of them. "The researchers,
myself included," the fantasy Statistical Methods expert would be made to
say in my head, "compensate for the blurred incomprehension of whatever we
may have been doing by repressively and rigorously maintaining deadlyaccurate
surveillance of our numbers, what with their tendency to consortpromiscuously,
and whenever possible, to mutate."
There was exactly one book ever written by 1969, when I got my degree,
wherein was taken a socially critical posture toward the uses of computer
technology in the context of a society dominated by corporate capitalism.
This was Joshua Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason. Even ten years
after its publication I'd met exactly one sociologist who'd read it. He was
a grouch who Doubted Everything. Quite obviously this wasn't a coincidence.
As I look at the latest batch of laserprintout, I think I see "patterns"
as popular as ever; all of you might just as well have been in some sewing
circle. Graber appears, Fri, 28 Jan 1994, 10:31:22 CST, "Where are Behavior
Patterns?" as a lone skeptical hero: "It never would have occurred to me to
take M. Hill's "shared patterns of behavior" to refer to *mental* phenomena,
as D. Read has done." (No kidding?) Then, "I think of behavior," whether
patterned or not,..." The daring assertion of possibly unpatterned behavior,
possibly just as reified as the patterned sort if presumably bearing more
watching, cries out, as reifications will, "Name one!"
Everything suffers from everyone's fear of challenging anyone and everone
to "Just name one, if you please, for example, to illustrate." Is this Mike
Lieber you, who wrote "symbol, gene, and cultural evolution," Fri, 28 Jan
1994 12:05:31 CST? Does the usage of upper case for "PROCESSES of change in
the USE of the unit specified" in any sense a dignification of processes?
How do we know we have a Process? It goes on. That it goes on is what the
process is paid for, its job.
One of my most vivid memories of the year 1968 was the endless recitation
aloud I annoyed people with of the verbiage in The New York Times used to
characterize student disruptions of schools. My favorites invariablymentioned
harm to "the educational process," as in "interference with the unrestricted
functioning of the educational process." What was indicated was thecessation
of occurrence of iterative, routinized events. The transcendent virtue ofthe
repetitive, ritualized, and ingrained-habituated-subservience toperseveration
in what otherwise contexutualized might have been obsessive-compulsivedisorder
required corresponding nonawareness of what in complexly sophisticated
ignorance we allow to be called "everyday life" and in personal terms our
ability to "function," to render us amenable to the continuity of this or
that "process."
The first time any "process" is mentioned or detected, the challengeshould
be posed, "I'm sure as hell that this damn thing has gone on too long, too
[obscenity deleted] already; stop it!" For a lot of them, the challenge is
bound to be absolutely valid and warranted. But only under certain
circumstances during propitious historical periods will the stoppage occur.
I am making believe I am in Canada. I am certain I am not in this
windowless room but am actually at 222 Willowdale, Kitchener, Ontario.
For which there exists a phone number, (519) 886-7813. The listing is
for Andrew and Harriet Lyons, who will say that I am not there and never
told them I would be. This is entirely true. Nor have I read any recent
post by Steve Mizrach to the effect that ("Dan Foss is not a Canadian.")
Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am native to a country which
is structured into a hierarchically Inferior position; and is powerless
to influence the latter due to external constraints corresponding to
unfavorable relations of power and domination imposed by foreign states
whose will is arbitrarily imposed.
To actually go to Canada, though, would be to risk reproducing Inferior
position in a hierarchy dominated by local Canadians, hence the imaginary
Canada, where I am now, is preferable to any Canada I might find by going
to Kitchener, Ontario. The Inferiority is reproduced in every socialcontext,
hence exists here. I am not implying, I am *stating in so many words* given
a record of mounting friction with Nelson and successive charges and
accusations of growing disregard for proportion or fact where I amconcerned,
that she *did not care* whether the "gainesville" post was a farce or not.
And not caring that it may have been a farce, she has become subjectively
and morally committed to the position that it was *racist propaganda* which
she will repeat whatever evidence is adduced against her conviction. Which
she will do because she is certain to prevail and she is certain that she
will prevail. (Further explanation below.)
The relevant, the only relevant, consideration was the *utility* of the
post to accomplish my exclusion: Her strictures serve notice that on any
occasion that I posted, at any time, for any reason, my post would be
scrutinized for smear-usable verbiage. It has been ordered that I curtail
my style, *or else*. By curtailing my style, I incur the certainty of
intolerable fear, which invariably has in the past been followed by the
certainty of temper-tantrums, explosions, and rage fits. The more I remain
in such a situation, the more vulnerable I become the next time, until the
list as a whole consensually agrees that I should be done to as Gil Hardwick
(only person expelled from ANTHRO-L by listowner) was. You recall that Gil
Hardwick became insufferable for the sole reason that he could visulaize the
academics subscribing to ANTHRO-L; detested them solely and exclusively
because of his Inferiority in the social hierarchy; and vituperated against
the membership for this reason alone.
I'm just a more complex version of Hardwick, having pseudointellectual
pretensions, "pseudo" because not socially validated, wherefrom I derive
the *effrontery* to exhibit unrecognized affectations of status, or, as
she says, "And this is not your list, so cut out the dominance displays."
This is an explicit order to suppress further use of my stylistic
repertoire. The long posts you praised were, for reasons you yourself
fully understand as to the tolerance of the readership for longpresentations,
loathed and excoriated by the "lurkers," whose specific detestation of me
was noted by Nelson (in a supposedly private letter) as my fault, that I
"started it."
And because they were as long as they had to be, any and every poster
writing difficult and abstract prose in response to difficult and abstract
prose became guilty of membership in "that asshole Foss and his bonehead
cohorts." Nelson in private, henceforth in public, will adopt a populist
championship of any lurkers who object to whatever I have to do to express
myself, which is always difficult.
The most infuriating, patently hypocritical, lying, hypocritical fakery
of all is the last, three-line paragraph:
>And cut the racist Jew thing too. All kinds of races and religions havemade
>this country what it is, for better and for worse. The last thing we needon
>this list is racist chest-beating. For shame, Stephanie Nelson
The absurdity, the hilarity, of wrapping herself in the armenian flag,
marching in the I ARE AN ARMENIAN DAY parade at the culmination ofBOARDERHOOD
WEEK, where little kiddies give their pennies to the inmates of migrantlabor
camps and El Exigente is HAPPY! And the village is HAPPY! is nauseating, is
fakery beyond even my capacity to imagine. Hollywood pasteboard and tinsel.
YET IT IS REAL, she believes every word of it, so long as she is immersed in
the situation in any case, and she will act on self-righteous conviction. I
know her that well.
She can do it, because she has popular support in whatever she condemns
me for, whatever the alleged offense, whatever the observable or documented
facts. She has the power of naming, as anyone who has read Andrea Dworkin
must realize is the most important thing to get hold of from the start. And
whatever she calls me, sticks. You ask me to stay in the game to lose bigger
and bigger until I get in Trouble which I am going to get in, anyhow.Nothing
doing!
Where are my credentials for self-display? Where is my celebrity status?
I have had an enormously difficult row to hoe just to keep the stuffchurning
out. I don't have enough Drugs to keep it up. The energy to fight does not
exist. The task of having to outsmart any possible hostile threat or rival
is a strain. Nobody should have to work this hard at what amounts to an
after-work hobby at most for everyone else.
This whole thing was *crazy*.
I have turned all relevant documents over to, uh, certain groups. They
have, each and every one of them, denied that anything will be done, and
I have condemned anything they told me they might do. I shall remain in
imaginary Canada for a few days; then I'll see whether I still have an
account on the mainframe and the University has not barred me from campus.
As a sore loser, I've always prefer that everybody loses, as there has
never been, should never be, any occasion when I should win. If this is
insane, I have stayed up all night, which is the last night I will be
capable of writing without distraction from users of this room. (And the
Drug supply is low, of course.) That's till next doctor visit.
As horror goes, it's been fun.
Regards,
Daniel A. Foss
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 17:36:05 -0500
Sender: New Ways of Thinking List <FNORD-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Jabberwocky <bwmatteo>
Subject: Re: dubious existence at this time hence order halt to terror
Sorry Foss, losing interest, Throw in some Prat falls and one-liners
wouldya?
-Beamish
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