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Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 18:50:13 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "'[*] Neuromancer'" <mjd@ >
Subject: Re: The First Letter Of Each Line: Andrew J Solberg
In article <1992Aug15.103819.3052@cco.caltech.edu> ajm@ (Abner J.
Mintz) writes:
> Mr. Churchill was very drunk at a party. The hostess, outraged,exclaimed:
> "Mr. Churchill, you are drunk!"
Yes, that was Bessie Braddock. She gave good parties. I remember in
particular she always served some sort of Dutch gin that everyone was
ater, but she never would reveal her sources.
Now of course Bessie would never have said such a thing under ordinary
circumstances, because no matter what you think about the English, it is
not true that they are so stupid or naive as to be surprised when a
person becomes drunk at a party, and particularly not when the person is
a vulgar, sensual man like Winston Churchill. In fact he was drunk,
and the last time he had been drunk at one of Bessie's parties he had
behaved very badly. He abused the servants, I think, and had to be
restrained from striking the Lord Chancellor. (I wasn't at that party,
so this is second-hand.) In any case, the story he and his friends told
the following day was that he replied:
> "Yes, Bessie, and you are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober."
It does little credit to Winston that this was what he wished he had
said, because once you get past the idea that it was a clever thing to
have said on the spur of the moment (which it would have been had he
said it on the spur of the moment and not made it up the following day
while hung over) you realize just how devoid of real wit or quality the
remark is. Beauty is only skin deep, and although Bessie Braddock
wasn't beautiful, she certainly wasn't deformed either, and she was a
particularly astute and forceful woman, a clever speaker, and a talented
politician. If she was ugly (and I do not think she was) then in any
case it was not her fault. On the other hand it most certainly was
Winston's fault that he was so drunk at a party that he inconvenienced
and embarassed his host.
--
And for to see, and eke for to be seye
Mark-Jason Dominus mjd@
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Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 14:22:05 EDT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: LIBWCA
Subject: Re: The First Letter Of Each Line: Andrew J Solberg
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat,
15 Aug 1992 18:50:13 GMT from <mjd@ >
This puerile Winston Churchill Drunk At A Party claptrap has caused me
major inconvenience, Mr. Domini Domini. Seeing the subject heading,
and believing it to contain the coded message I've been waiting for
prior to launching my planned war of Utter Annihilation on all the
People I Don't Much Care For (you'll be honored to hear that you are
now one of them, but don't get too flustered; it's a very long list,
and can't be begun upon until I've completed the list of People Who
Really Cheese Me Off,) I quickly aborted a message which I was
preparing for distribution to Pat's Clubhouse, and which was to have
been a Major Work; future historians will curse your name while
struggling over the fragment. Turning my attention to your note, I
found the coded message as expected, and you almost got me, sir- you
almost did. I sat with my finger poised above the Big Orange Button,
slavering wolverines crouched at my feet, sluice-traps opened to
receive the requisite rivers of gore etc., when suddenly I saw your
mistake: Winston Churchill, being an Englishman, was *always* drunk;
therefore the condition would not have been noted by reputable observers.
This is compounded by the implication in your story that some, but not
all, of those present were also of the British persuasion, so that you
could possibly have escaped your predicament by framing the tale in some
appropriate way, e.g.- "I was at a bar in Queens once, and the bartender
told me about the time he spent in England, and how all these drunken
Englishmen..." or some such. Absent this rhetorical device, your gambit
was bound to fail, but I do congratulate you on coming so tantalizingly
close, and promise that your end, when it comes, shall be a fittingly
gruesome one.
Cuthbert
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Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 15:12:00 EDT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: General Mills <LIBALP>
Subject: Down in the mouth
If Cuthbert is alive, then whom did we eat? If not Cuthbert, then the
complete incompatibility of the Sacred Barbecue Sauce with the ribs
is explained. But still, whom did we eat? Also, limited number
of kidneys (which precluded making "Kidney Korn" (tm)) is explained.
Do we know whom we ate? I may still have some skin (for "Skin Sandwitches")
in the Refridginator. I could run tests, so that we would Know Whom We Ate.
GM
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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 14:35:00 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "H." <H.UNIATZ>
Subject: Re: Come back in real time, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Somethings Come Up & Systems Go Down & Attendances Go On & I AmOnly Here
dr haggard consign coolest collapsed chat by courier & swipe Care ofSame
cannot change petunia to uniatz shall sue for defamation of ros character
>mistake: Winston Churchill, being an Englishman, was *always* drunk;
between a cold ocean & a hard stone chip stand and dare prefer Budapest
lack of gumption there arthur in deeming m'dear@wherever less than specious
mock-heroic in his knightly variations run amok for a Red Badge ofExcellence
promises & cathexes are what his words are good for i'll tell him thathe
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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 08:55:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: POLEAXED BY PTOLEMY
Benjamin was always a strange child. It showed in the manner in which
he would press his face against the pet store window whenever someone
walked past. The grunty throaty mewling sounds he'd make when the old
Swede Gunter Punjab brought the morning gruel would set your nerves on
edge. Once he injured a tiny hamster in his frantic attempts to flee a
casually strolling cockroach. I think it fair to say that Benjamin was
equally hated by all the other pets.
Oops! Someone is coming!!!
Hastily Yours,
Dickens
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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 17:09:01 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: queue cue <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Come back in real time, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Would you, could you, might you, my beautiful H, journey to
Budapest with me? I would not find any storm or stress in
delaying to spend a few quality days kicking around Albion
or setting up shop in the heart of Gaedhildge, if so urged,
but, should you be willing, might I be able to abscond with
you briefly to the Magyar capital?
After all, it could be worse; I no longer have any facile
illusions of trip-ticketing you to the sea-to-shining-sea
of good grace and money for films of this-land-is-yr-land
this-land-is-my-land from-bean-curd-sustenance to death-at-
the-hands-of-a-total-stranger. Picture yrself ... Smiling.
M.
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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 18:38:58 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
Comments: Warning--LIBALP is an apostle subservient
From: M <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: amour gist
Calamiting onto the Puritan's plankton-feeder survival kit, ensconced
at the intersection of Morse and Braille, the voice the edge of this,
all this, manuscrapped cranial bend to pick out the things that go
bumptious in the night; "it's just someone falling up the stairs
again, no need to panic", self self-instructs. Condemned or damned?
Remince me forthright to find with the sharp-edge cutback mouth-roof
laceration hook or the ready-steady-does-it-go stealth clamo(u)r
knocked-off corner shop crook any thing even mo(u)vefermenting into
Hero-role, Flaith-healer, sparsely a(n ad)mired Admiral, to coal-rake
a coked fine-coating many-colo(u)red birthday soot (Sept. 5), naked
glazed, with which to enCage you (would have been 80). O! I know!
Yr M, yr primp, whadda chump, "Cretin" she self-quoted, cleaved by
the idea of prattelling scool's[sic]-out tales of rough-necked side-
riders humming chance-medleys of stilletoed steel-toed Blueshirts,
q.v.:
The price to be paid for a fresh piece of sod,
The skull that rests on the sand.
Could those be the bones of Kevin O'Higgins,
Who lost to the lay of the land.
And in future installments (a right-set pogromystic piece, y'know),
the bastille comes crashing down in another unnoticed Civil Warp,
the Woof of Hovering in Time, a reset instep for marching to what I
would most hold dear as (fa)mine, the famous ballad singer reduced
to penny-work pres du la fleuve that knows no other name, having
been cried out once too, and, pulling the inspiration from the we
are yr Muse misused pluribus tacendi, he sings yr name. I stop,
dust-baked; and know that you have yet surmisted me, yr prize should
you so choose: I'd thought you couldn't lapse into a dreamy
approximation to the point directly above my heart and between mes
yeux (but, then, I'd forgotten that you'd quoted Pink Floyd to me in
the nearliest staged-scans of our nightclubbing) -- away! away! the
dream's still there, but just past my rasp; and soon to be standing
in (O!) the Forest Primieval, legal claimant upon attornied stock
of some New Fine Dazed contracted covenants (considered, albeit im
Brief). What then, a song? I Shall Not Leave Your Side / As We Go
Headlong Into That Night / Of the only violence left (op. cit.).
Is this pathetic enough? The touchstone could be a headstone by the
weight of these self-abraised-&-basted cuts trader passed
(safe at last)
& yr eyes Smile at me from afar:
"I did."
& I do.
M.
========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 09:42:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: PUBLIC CERVIX ANNOUNCEMENT
I've grown lazy and slothlike, my tender Darlings.
I shall begin my summer rerun season now, featuring such prized jewels
as AND HIS MAMA CRIED (pts. 1 & 2), THE JOHN CAGE SAGA, and WINO NIGHT.
These are all pieces that I performed to thunderous ovation on other
nets. As always, I'll ask that you hold your appluase until I give the
nod.
Thank you so much.
Merciful Lee Dickens
a/k/a Felonious J. Cubensis
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 10:38:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: Daniel Foss? Agent Penrod,
FBI.
I have someone here that would very much like to speak with you, sir.Would you be so good as to follow me?' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' Daddy? ' / |______\_____O
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 09:45:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: And His Mama Cried
Well, since no one else will sally forth and babble, I support hose I
will have to do it myself..........
I was in the unique position back in the Seventies of managing a
hippie boarding house/commune known as the Ghetto. I acheived this
ignoble status by virtue of the ignorance of a man who'd recently
bought the estate. I was working for a band named "Menagerie" at the
time and had one of our bumper stickers on my door. The imbecile who
bought the place thought it said "Manager". Perhaps he thought I was
French. I don't know.
At any rate, I soon found myself thrust Steinbeckoningly into the
role of landed gentry. It was like riding herd in some twisted LSD
experiment gone howlingly astray, as I attempted to keep up with a
gaggle of lunatics the like of which would've made Daumer seem a
shimmering pillar of Sanity in contrast. It was a time of my life that
I fully intend to chronicle. It, like the man said, was the best of
times and the worst of times...
It was a two story house with 10 rooms, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen. It
was a block away from the Auburn campus and two blocks from the center
of town. There were 5 other boarding houses catering to the weird
whims of those who didn't mind living in a run down section of town
known as The Ditch, and they, like The Ghetto, had their own names of
loving description.
There was, first of all, the Plantation House (so-called due to the
architecture, which featured tall Gothic pillars and individual
balconies (out upon which even a roach would be loth to venture),
behind that Padiddle Manor (where I also lived a couple of times), next
door to the Plantation House was the PhUK House, named in honor (or
more appropriately, in dishonor) of the Greek letters for Phi Upsilon
Kappa which were placed in huge evidence across the front of the roof,
the Ghetto, and then The Ditch (proper) and The Ditch (annex).
If it wasn't quitting time, I'd tell you more.
Perhaps if you're all real good
And finish your peas and carrots
I will tell you about the strange denizens of this forgotten time and
place.
Night All and Excelsior,
Felonious
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 09:46:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: And His Mama Cried II
During the time I was manager of the menagerie known as the Ghetto,
my reign of terror extended over a dramatic cast of characters. My
girlfriend, Erin, and I lived in the front apartment with a super-smart
dog named Boogie and an ornery old Siamese cat named Chingo. Erin was
a superb artist as well as a beautiful, hilarious, hard-drinking,
hard-playing, intelligent friend and confidante. She was something of
a Mother Superior to the crazed crowd in the Ditch. She was treated
with respect and a little bit of awe. She could handle even the most
berzerk Vulgarian with the ease and confidence of someone who'd worked
the night shift emergency room for years.
I was still working with Menagerie when I first became the Ghetto
"manager", then later got off the road after 7 years as a lightman to
commit the ultimate sacrilege of becoming a disco jockey. Who'd
a-thunk it? But hey: the money was just as good and I could sleep in
my own bed and wake up without wondering where I was, staring at that
ever-present "clipper ship painting" that cheap motels are so fond of.
The discotheque in which I spun that spell I spun was a cavernous
bar housed within a large hotel called, at that time, the JoVonn Inn.
"Jive on down to the JoVonn Inn" was one of my wildfire catch phrases.
It was a very popular bar with the college crowd and it was not unusual
to see a line of polyester-clad disco ducks and duchesses waiting to
get in and boogie.
The JoVonn was also the focus of a lot of official scrutiny, owing
to allegations of improprieties on the part of the owner, who owned, in
addition to a string of hotels, controlling interests in several large
Alabama banks that had ALSO come under the official eye for creative
business dealings. It was across this cracking sheet of thin ice that
I found myself skittering and caterwauling in a furious strobe-lit
disco frenzy and it did nothing if not heighten the surreal atmosphere
of my home life.
The others who waited to greet me upon my return were:
Eubanks,
probably the funniest person I have ever met (although when we first
met him he'd signed his lease as "Otis Bunch" - later when he ran out
without paying his rent, we realized the significance of the name),
Allen Hinds,
who later won Guitar Player magazine's best amateur guitarist contest
and was off to free tuition at the Guitar Institute of Technology or
whatever it's called, where he was later asked to teach and whose
roommate Adam was keyboardist for Miles Davis group a few years ago and
provided me the insider's basis for my earlier observation on Miles'
assholistic attitudes, which is a moot point, I know, but I'm trying to
stretch this sentence into oblivion. Allen is Hiroshima's lead
guitarist when they go on the road, incidentally. He was one of the
killer guitarists in our band back in those days. Chingo the cat was
his originally, by the way, and I really really hated that cat -
everybody did - he had the piss-poorest attitude of any creature that
ever walked the earth. On the day before Allen left to attend Boston's
Berklee School of Music (this was before the Guitar Player magazine
thing) he came up to me and asked if I would please take care of his
cat for him. "But I hate that cat!" I sputtered. "Well, could you
just, you know, maybe feed him once in awhile?" I ended up loving that
cat for a great deed which he was soon to do for me, but I'll save that
for later on in the narrative...
Hey folks - it's quittin time
I'll pick this up a little ways down the road
Felonious
Gone to drink Corona
========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 16:52:00 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "H." <H.UNIATZ>
Subject: & you do.
My own particular love is like a red-letter red-light bedlam of roses;
comes there a day when I can foretell a trace of word or deed before
the fact and I shall have cause to entrap him, but, in greatest truth,
as I keep observing his passes & trespasses & surpasses, I cannot
believe that time will come. As I recall, my second(ish) last(ish)
husband was sad(ish)ly killed by a cia(ish) agent masquerading as an
omnibus as he roller-skated down Bond Street, singing lethal(ish)
dirges; I trust that M does not enumerate that chic(ish) mode of
self-transport, at least, among the accomplishmenaces that would make
my eyes smile at any far(ish) distance. King Libalp and the Knights
of the Malte Shoppe shrewably stridented in a capital scream: I'd advise
you to thump him, libjohnrmarsh, rilly hard, if he tries calling you
"BOY" again: he'll be extremely understanding as he knifefights you
hackingly, I guarantee it.
Sing: "Scaramouche et Pulcinella // Qu'un mauvais dessein rassembla //
Gesticulent, noirs sur la lune..." -- Excuse me, I mean:
Must all successful rebels grow
From toreador to Sacred Cow?
What cults he slew, his cult begot.
"In my beginning," said his Scot,
"My end;" and aging eagles know
That 1912 was long ago.
Today the women come and go
Talking of T.S. Eliot
and, briefly, of John Cage.
Having stated in diehardline that it would be my severest pleasure to
"follow you to the selvedges of the world & over", how could you doubt
the wishfulness of my strobedientally Budapestering you on any mapped
pin-point? No camels, though. Now your physiological localefaction
has been narrowed to an "approximation to the point directly above
[yr] heart and between [tes] yeux", that same strange and imprecise
place is where I dwell and, for yr record, yr book of hours &
revilations (sic) & scraps of songs, and yr possible intentions of ever
absconding to (soli)tarry in a geographical anywhere, I wish you to
know, if you do not already know, that I would not do without you.
Hang on, turning the page, here's another:
"I think of my wife, and I think of Lot,
And I think of the lucky break he got"
Or so they sing.
========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 12:32:43 EDT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS >
Subject: Budapest
Budapest. Very good, that, M.
========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 17:56:50 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: M <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Budapest
Daniel! Merci. Would perhaps you care to join me/us? I've not received
confirmation or abject (and nodoubt astute) rejection from the other
camp. Elsewise--
remember hus' prague, son; the time's they are a-n-giolla, lapse-a-daisy
to the more ordered and forebearing guardians. how much time've we
got, son? roughage cling, please, no need for but approx. apocs.
========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 13:30:40 EDT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <DFOSS>
Subject: Someone else did go to Budapest
There is someone else who did go to Budapest who is now twenty yards fromyou
know who and when she got there she cried for a week, to Budapest that is,
but would not go back there again because she has got over him because shehas
got over me.
DAF
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 13:32:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: JOHN CAGE SAGA
This was originally posted to another list several months before Cage's
death. As if anyone were interested, I'm trotting it back out now in a
boorish attempt to capitalize on even the slightest hint of interest in
something/anything that I may be so foolish as to venture.
*******************ORIGINAL MESSAGE************************************
For those who may not be familiar with John Cage, let me give you the
thumbnail synopsis and say he's a famous avant-garde artist, in his
Seventies now, I should think, and best known for his performance art.
His work has included shows where (stay with me now) the spontaneity
of the moment has been carefully considered and "allowed for" in the
piece- such as the time he had a row of babies in high chairs with
different colored helium balloons tied to their wrists, extending above
them to a giant sheet of music paper. Each colored balloon had a
correspondent orchestra member. When the baby's movements caused the
balloon to move on the scale, the musician had to play the notes -
follow the bouncing ball, more or less.
I am overjoyed to report that I missed this performance because I
understand that it just never really left the ground.
Cage's classical work is in much the same vein as Charles Ives'
(my back is twitching with the flames I could get for that humble
opinion, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it). He also leaves
measures blank for the performer to "play anything you want here".
Anyway... I hope you get the picture.
Also, he's a mushroom freak - psychedelic and otherwise. And a super
nice guy.
Okay, cut to the chase fer Chrissakes!
Back in 19 what? 74? 75? I was working with the phenomenal Zany
Murphy Band. One of our two excellent guitarists, Sid Woolfolk, was
teaching classical guitar at Columbus (Georgia) College and received an
invitation to attend a party for Cage, who was giving a performance at
the College that night. Sid turned me on to a lot of the avant garde
artists and composers, including John Cage, of whom he was a big fan.
He was overjoyed to get the invitation and was told he could bring
friends to the party, which was being given by a student/artist of some
caliber or configuration.
We went to the performance, which consisted of Stage Left - a table and
chair, with a desk lamp, a glass of water and the Tibetan Book of the
Dead. Oh yeah, and a single piece of blank paper on which had been cut
a hexagram from the I Ching, thrown (presumably) prior to Cage's going
out to do the performance. Stage Right - a prepared piano (prepared in
the time-honored tradition of objects affixed to the strikers and
strings - silver dollars, Barbie doll heads, I Like Ike buttons - you
get the idea). What Cage did was to sit down at the table, turn on the
desk lamp and nod to the audience. He then took the aforementioned
sheet of hexagram and, placing it over a page of the Tibetan Book Of
The Dead, proceeded to chant only the words and parts-of-words that
showed through the stencil. And he did this - in a monotone - for
about thirty minutes, pausing to select a new page now and then. It
was relentless in its manifest gusto. Then came the historic
intermission where I overheard a Skeptic threaten to "fuck up his face"
if he didn't "hurry up and play that damn piano!"
After intermission, he did indeed play the damned piano, but I
seriously doubt if the thirsty audient found it worth the wait.
It was interesting - I'll give it that - but it wasn't jazz.
Now my story gets up-close and personal - the party!
Bear with me, I must attend to pressing business, then I will
continue...
Stop Me If You've Heard This One,
Felonious
========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 13:55:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: CAGE UNCAGED
>
Read the other Cage message first. This is part 2.
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
So, after being told this party would not only feature Cage, but -
more importantly - free wine and munchies, the Sound Man and I (a Light
Man in those psychedelic light show days) decided to attend along with
our diminuitive little guitar virtuoso and foot-in-the-door, Sid.
The first thing I noticed upon entering the tiny, cramped deficiency
apartment was an ominous lack of cannabis in the air (unusual for
art parties in those days), and then the amazing resemblance of the
party-goers to R. Crumb characters - I was expecting someone to offer
me a Sherman's at any minute! (Wait a minute - who drew Arnold Peck
the Human Wreck? Was that Crumb? Anyway) We squeezed past the front
door and through the anteroom down the nave to the altar, where sat an
uncomfortable-looking John Cage, mired in a circle of fawning would-be
sychophants, who were looking thoughtful in their berets and trying
to be as insightful as hell to him. It was truly tragically hip.
Cage was literally surrounded like a reluctant guru by a throng of
way-too-serious kids intent on getting to the heart of this guy's
Statement.
Right as I came in, he made one of the most endearing statements I have
ever been priveleged to hear. It made me his fan for life. It has
got to be one of my all-time favorite repartees, a line that I treasure
to this day...
These frowning art students were peeling back the onion of truth with
Cage, asking him a lot of bullshit questions (please believe me - it's
not just my misanthropic judgement) and one kid, a goateed, bereted
artist said to him and I quote her nearly verbatim:
"Mr. Cage (frown), during tonight's performance (pause), I noticed
many parts were boring - almost INTENTIONALLY so (frown) - would
you care to comment (combination frown/eyebrow raise)?"
Cage matched this kid frown for pregnant frown in his deliberation,
after which time he cleared his throat and said in a voice so quiet
that all were leaning inward to the center of his universe, straining
to hear the Master's words,
"Sometimes I find it very ....frightening."
Everyone leaned back, nodding, mulling this kernel of wisdom until I
broke the reverent silence with the question I've always asked
celebrities,
"What do you think of American girls?"
The sychophants were horrified! Who let ME in?!
Cage loved it! He smiled from ear to ear.
I figured I had better head for the free wine quickly before I was
ushered into that good night, so I made a beeline for the fridge. I
snagged a bottle of some kind of cheap (hell, free!) rotgut swill and
was still in there, hiding out, when Cage came in an hour or so later.
I poured him a Dixie cupful of the red and shot the shit with him for
awhile. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a
switch-twiddler, working lights in a rock and roll band.
He smiled and ahhed, "Keep up the good work" as he moved out of that
tiny kitchen and into the evening.
The moon came out from behind a cloud.
A bird chirped.
All was well.
Love,
Felonious
*** Comments from ROLLIDE - Rollins, Dana; 08/14/92 08:25am:
I'm anxious to hear more Cage anecdotes.
Got one?
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 15:23:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: BRAIN IN A JAR SEGUE
OBSERVER:
I left the Derrida discussion group because I could not afford the
beret. It took itself too seriously. I much prefer the comfort and
relative safety of my foil-lined fishing cap. Its heavy duty aluminum
repels all attempts of the Pope to read my mind.
Is it true - what John Kennedy said before he died - that basically
we're all a bunch of brains in jars, electrodes trailing out in some
branching will to synapse?
I knew an Entity whose nickname was(maybe still is) Strick. Strick had
a simple way of dealing with the brain's will to synapse. If you
mentioned another Being to Strick by means of starting conversation,
say, for example, "Hey Strick, what do you think of that guy over at
the Tastee Dog?", his response was patented, predictable. He would
always say, "What's WRONG with him? Why don't he want to DO right?".
It didn't matter of whom you spoke; with Strick, the first thing he was
going to say in reply was always "What's WRONG with ________? Why
doesn't he (or she) want to DO right?".
He also lectured at great discourse about how he wanted "a woman with
a big butt": "I mean a BIG butt!"
Wait.
There's one more thing.
I also knew an old woman from the dim recesses of my past whose
simple-minded whiffle ball-like wit still wafts down the corridors of
time to my jar. She had a line that was so unintentionally laughable
that I find myself quite unconsciously using it in MY conversational
attempts. If you asked this woman if she knew some particular, you
know, if there was ever a such-and-such or so-and-so around here,
etc., she would always say the same thing. She would look down, say
"Nossir, not to my nose of". Isn't that great? She meant, of course,
"Not that I know of", but no one (of which I am aware) ever corrected
her...
It's not easy being a hedonist in this world, is it, Observer?
One more thing, then I promise I'll let you go.
I think it was Roger Corman who first penned the immortal words, "My
God, it's not a cantaloupe at all -- it's a HUMAN HEAD!".
MAD Magazine editor William Gaines is dead. His jar, silent.
Have A Nice Day Anyway,
Felonious J. Cubensis
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 13:47:06 PDT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: JEFFREY
Thank you Felonious, for the marvelous anecdotes on John Cage
and the great opening to the story about your tenure as
manager of the ghetto. You write well; I am anxiously
awaiting more.
--Jeffrey
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 18:57:24 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: M <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: & we do & they do & he/she/it do
too.
Quickly, though I dimly fathom these days' stark pattern of crimson
paces that you've gone off again to that resort which harbors you no
ill-windedness during non-virtual book of hours times, where second
husbands ishishly are crushed (and I was not roller-skating at the
time you sent me a bed of red-life-eviction notices but merely rushing
off to scrawl my days away, a bit further away, to that softly-into-
placid-third movement that keeps me dodging unthrown plates which do
not fail not to shatter upon the undamaged and unmarked wall -- where
are you tonight, e.g.), motorlogged in these rewilations which are
yrs, unmisgivenly, I'll attempt to clasp you real time to say, "yr
dulciment dulcimer tones are cacophony, but my [jellyfish] is real
enough", which will be followed by several long pauses of intermittent
lengths by which to measure cavaliers and cadavers upon the stares
of people who just don't understand that, when you've got to crush
chalk in your hands, you've got to crush chalk in your hands. Might
I request that you kindly stop making SBCCVM fall down on its hands
and knees, so that I could please stop sending messages stating that
you haven't done something which you have but have withheld in the
interests of riddling me with holes?
Untolden goldy as to whence might cop it I, I pass on to you a sincere
complement and appreciation at yr ability to run linear-in-parallel
blah-blah-blah -- O! Would That I Could Have Been A Po-Et! Who's to
sing you awake beneath yr pane during dawnings of new knifefightingly
good hackneyed days? Not as long ago, oddly, as 1927; but, it occurs
in cold-blooded fetes of apperception of yr good graces (secret and
swiveled, entered alighting upon all the half-beens and jackanapes
in the room) to inquire: Do Tuesdays still fail to amount to a whole
hill o' beans in this crummy world? [If the LIBlads come a-knockin',
will you tend to (at least) the open wounds?] My concernation from
fear that you'd not bowingly take my meaning as literal as I could
have eschewed: if you'd "once-you-have-fo(u)nd(l(ed)(y))-me", might
I inquire *where*? Small details. No Thanks to Salamander for in
quotating a featured and valued source of the Best Of East-Anglia.
So, no more suspence, let's move to the array of roles (DAF'll be most
proud, athair-like): tell me, in bored, hushed tones, of the fares
of Norwich as they chummed with Chelsea today, and I dispense of a
small fortuning in c-notes and do-nots-tragically-ignored ("I'm a
gamblin' M") to the very encephelonelyness: banish me to the pits of
hell, deny me my freedom, it makes no matter, as long as you are lost
to those same.
Unlike Lot, y'see, I %like% salt (the Enemy edible indeed).
M.
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 22:56:31 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: M <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Someone else did go to Budapest
This begs the question, this begs the conditions, this begs a response,
this begs to be spared, this begs the agnostic-context. Dan: Consider:
These may be the only people left who will accept the trappings of
a good, old fashioned, deception-deployment scheme; and who knows?
It may come in handy to me in the future, if she's as unNormal as you
and I know she that is you know who but not the other you know who
who isn't around here at least not yet has to be.
M
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 23:03:11 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: M <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: BRAIN IN A JAR SEGUE
Dana--
Do you have any William Gaines anecdotes to share? Any fond EC memories?
--M
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Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 11:16:00 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: stranglerish <H.UNIATZ>
Subject: Excuse me for listening in on a private conversation but
Daniel, what was it that he ***meant***, exactly, by this:
>remember hus' prague, son; the time's they are a-n-giolla, lapse-a-daisy
>to the more ordered and forebearing guardians. how much time've we
>got, son? roughage cling, please, no need for but approx. apocs.
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Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 08:28:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: HEY FOSS!
Submitted for your inspection:
What do you make of this? If you take the phrase "Republican National
Convention" and stare at it long enough, the letters rearrange
themselves to spell 2 prophetic messages:
"Puritanical ban on innocent love"
and
"Concentration on unlivable pain"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Kind of gets you right HERE, doesn't it?
Get back to me on this, Big Guy.
RAW hide,
Merciful Lee
P.S. - I should point out that this was brought to my attention by
another person. I was busy getting laid and didn't personally tumble
to the Eureka with my own lightbulb. Achtung, if you will forgive the
expression, numb.
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Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:19:00 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "H." <H.UNIATZ>
Subject: The Rain In East Anglia Falls Mainly Sur Self
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Any ails inflicted upon SBCCVM darling you most basely caused; //////////// it would not surprise me at all if Mr.Postmaster@there knows //////////// you better than he would wish to in your phantomnipresence. //////////// I'll be passing your compliments on to Viereck (b.1916: would //////////// he still live?) who is a better Po-Et than I, or even you; //////////// mirrors, mirrors, all around, tell me who ... o, pardon, your //////////// words tend to manifester themselves in the rhythms of my days, //////////// even in these less troubled times when uncrumbled chalk is //////////// better futilised in noughts & cross-purposes of roller-skating //////////// round a soul in search of a door. Tuesdays amount to as much //////////// as you'll allow them to (I have this courtesy of the women in //////////// the upper stories needing faces in the panes in clasp-a-little //////////// -closerenades): given the least cause to forswear limping //////////// psychodramatics, I should not now and not ever throw templates //////////// at you; mugs, maybe, in bored, hushed pitches. If the Liblads //////////// come a-knockin', you can knock them senselessons in //////////// lovelornateness; I'll cry over their strewn limbs while you //////////// concoct libhaggis for yr Edinburger Festival Stall (in memory //////////// of yr one-time lucubration of the vegetarian list) & set //////////// narrow-strait yr "%other% Gaelic ex-fiance [sic]" <<Darling>>. //////////// Meanwhile, musing on the precision with which you wish the //////////// significance of your lines to be literallied... in saying //////////// "*where*", do you mean "*where*" or, well, "*where*"? //////////// //////////// (Delicacy prevents me from depicting the tadpole fatalities in //////////// all of this raen (sic).) //////////// //////////// [jellyfish, real jellyfish, really real jellyfish & //////////// sodiumpteen chloridolatries as salt to yr saltimbanco], //////////// //////////// H. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
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Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:30:57 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: "urk." <cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: Viereck? No.......
no, not Viereck, this speaks even more ill than Berryman. Darling.
Alas, one can not influence one's idols, I suppose, so I'll be learning
to support the guided missled reaction tenets to yr hearts content ....
========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:45:27 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: strangler's extremely willing victim<cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: What Private Conversation?
A flourish of fan-fare-waving arms for vixen stand-at-attention: "I
know! I know that one!" would have been her voice at a younger age
previously well-hypothecticized by DanBoyd, the uniform not tattered
nor pleated nor furled, a blazon demi-vierge even then for passant
standards-bearers blanketing the world under the Roinn Oideachais'
watchful eye (whadda self). Jan Hus, delightully cute accent like
an upside-down circumflex [sic] upon the postpenultimate letter, swung
from the rafters twice, once in daring-do indearing to whomever but
not the vestiges of a spanned (in)continent; next, in a cage, sans
yeux glauques, a lattice testament well-meant and well-understood.
Prague, you've heard of. These stained and stretched outreminitions
riencompass that cOld gloWorld lurCharm that you are so very, very
close to. Dan Foss knows or would at the very least in his attempts
here and elsewhere have us know or prepare unknowing whence the apocs.
(short for Apocalyptics, a emphasis that may be chosen in the Paranoia
Dktrship) come; I asked him humbly and with great re(fe)verence to
elucidate and expound, a Pariah for our kicks, but well worth it all
and having nothing to do with LaVey (sorry, JS).
Incidentally, if that was "listening in on", my dalliance pillar, "a
private conversation", then, prey tell, does that accreditto us in
a mag. stat., or do we (me not existing and you, well, you being you)
slamount to noiseserial noisedition noisediment? Assail away with
me; I'm utterly confounded by yr charms.
Dan: Question still stands. Step up to the microphone, boy (oops),
the throng-in-throes (wrong-in-whose?) awaits.
M
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Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 09:59:00 -05
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
From: Merciful Lee Dickens <DICKENS>
Subject: RE: RAIN
The precipitation in Portugal
Pelts primarily on the plateau
========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 19:32:45 GMT
Sender: SUNY/Stony Brook Literary Underground<SBRHYM-L@SBCCVM.BITNET>
Comments: Warning--DFOSS, That's No Special Agent
From: All Partied-Up & Nowhere To Go<cheating@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject: Raen, raen, come to play (A Mug's Game Gone Over the Wall)
The psycadramatemathematics that give shade to 20 degrees worth
are not near enough. Now, you'd once again place me sideways
by the road, divining-deceiving booth at hand, and allow me, a
mere charlatangent churl to yr better times & better things to
do, to mountebank at least the Future (Escape To) if not the
Past (Escape From) in the name of clarity's rites and Lapsed
deems during hours of austerity (Escape Route, Box 760, @UEA,
Heaven or Hell, make yr pick). Should I aim higher in my loft-
expressed gaol goals? The women in the storied fablieux might
at least provide a rationalefaction (or so she said.) to make
certain that, come 9.00 GMT, I'm (not you, I'm sure of this)
standing beneath a windowry panearest-of-all practicing my
serenaiding of the Darling. pretext. Given the literallons-y
choice, I'd have to say "*where*". "*Where*"? (She still, I
think, believes this to be all mere shadow-play; I, she thinks,
merely wish to tadpole-vault in performative indelible
indelicacies as a passant whim.) And yr confusing yr apposites
again, H; JS spoke in dwelloquent over-coated-tones of
flavoracious acts, be they of God for looking over one's
shoulder or of carnallocating Di-Et for sexploratory
purposelves, picked up in: "Stew in my own juice / In a another
kitchen" -- as the song says, [jellyfish] dais in wait. Bored?
Hushed? My %other% Gaelic ex-fiance was somewhat misrused, and
it was you who spoke of bother bother, so any and all
>>>>>>>>>>> bother
manichean manifestations are not my fault except insomuch as
everything is my fault. Darling, The Enemy Edible Indeed, a
concoction I wouldn't have expected you to made, forsooth and
for all time.
M
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