Article 783 of alt.etext:
Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!agate!hilbert.dnai.com!redstone.interpath.net!mercury.interpath.net!not-for-mail
From:
[email protected] (Chris Porter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.etext,alt.zines
Subject: (news)letter 1:24
Date: 1 Sep 1994 23:04:37 -0400
Organization: Interpath -- Public Access UNIX for North Carolina
Lines: 339
Message-ID: <
[email protected]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.net
Xref: news.cic.net rec.arts.books:107172 alt.etext:783 alt.zines:5418
(news)letter
"Say the thing with which you labor."
Thoreau
from the porter micro.press
Volume 1, Number 24 August 30, 1994
_________________________________________________________________
Please send suggestions and submissions.
To get on the mailing list, send your name and address to:
CTPorter 317 S. Tate St., Apt. 3, Greensboro, NC 27403
or e-mail
[email protected]
Your input is appreciated.
The Internet is trendy now, and everyone wants a piece of it. It
is indicative of the current attitudes towards business and the
Internet that the magazine Inc. would have a headline on the
cover of the August issue that proclaimed "Inc. Does It: We
Launch a Business on the Internet (or Try To)." Turn to the
article, page 59, let's see how they went about it: first, the
teaser on the article's first page:
Inc. does it. Like you, we just knew there was gold to be
found on the information superhighway -- so we sent a
techno-savvy writer out to launch a business on the internet
and prove it. Here, expletives deleted, is her report.
(59)
The author, the "techno-savvy" Anne Murphy (remember that phrase)
then goes into her reasons for wanting to write this story: "our
fortunate readers would get an exhaustive explication of how to
make a bundle on the Internet, and I would get the bundle" (59).
She doesn't even have any idea of what kind of business she'll
set up -- she'll let what she finds on the Internet determine the
nature of the business. What she's doing, basically, is
announcing herself ready for business, and expecting the Internet
to drop everything in her lap for her. And I think it totally
appropriate that this glossy, money-oriented magazine should come
out with a piece like this -- good for them, I say, because
they've shown that they don't have a clue about what's going on
(besides showing horrible business acumen), just like most of the
press.
It's not a bad article as far as it goes. It is an
examination of what it takes to find your way around the Internet
and the "techno-savvy" author has a horrible time trying to learn
her way about the languages and the procedures involved. But to
combine the business angle is downright silly and blatantly
crass. You don't send a boy to do a man's job, and you especially
don't attempt to "open a business" without researching first the
market you want to enter.
Finding your way competently about the Internet is a hard
job. We're not talking about watching a television program or
hooking up your stereo to play a CD. This market is computer-
oriented and will remain so for some time in the future and that
doesn't mean a computer with Windows on it. It means reading
manuals and figuring things out for yourself and knowing that the
strength of the experience is that it's not television -- it's
active, not passive, entertainment. The psychology of the
Internet is such that the users disdain people like this, those
who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. "Oh,
we'll just start a business -- any business -- on the Internet
because that's where the money is. And it doesn't matter who we
send in there, it has to be easy, right?" Yeah, right...
And speaking of the Internet, I thought it funny that the
September issue of Internet World would be packaged to include an
America On-Line (AOL) start-up disk. AOL is now a part of the
Internet because it is a network with a gateway to the Internet,
so strictly speaking they are counted among the users. But AOL is
not the Internet. The AOL users and the old-style Internet types
certainly have some bad blood between them. When the gateway was
opened AOL users came into the various newsgroups with a roar,
rather than a whisper -- problems in the software at AOL kept
posting the same messages as often as eight times so the Internet
veterans got all sorts of mad and instantly formed a newsgroup
called "alt.aol.sucks". This was a fun newsgroup for a while, you
could find these veterans of flame wars just taking apart some
AOL kid who had no idea what was going on. It got old when the
novelty wore off -- there's only so much fun in watching a
professional fighter slap around a first-year boxer. They are two
totally different mentalities: AOL with its point-and-click
interface where, every option is controlled for them, as opposed
to the Internet where users are used to figuring things out for
themselves and the resulting freedom that comes with learning how
to make your own choices. But I'm not totally down on AOL -- it
just seems that including a start-up disk with an issue of the
Internet World is more indicative of the magazine, which does all
it can do to hype the business opportunities on the Internet,
than of the Internet itself.
Bad Man
I hate false advertising! Last week I picked up the book The
Natural Man by Ed McLanahan. Here is a thin little book that I
thought I could zip through and not feel guilty about reading,
and what's more this one blurb on the cover promises humor: "the
funniest novel I've read since A Confederacy of Dunces." Another
reviewer wrote that this book "will eventually find its place
beside great coming-of-age books like The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye." So I didn't feel guilty
about picking it up. But it's just another book about boys
learning about sex with a lot of scatological humor and the like.
Not a bad book, mind you, but far from a classic in the genre. I
couldn't even finish it because it was just so average. There
were funny parts, but Natural Man, you're no Huck Finn. It's like
those Chevy Chase movies, pretty good for a laugh once in a
while, but they'll never be nominated for an Academy Award, no
matter how many people go to see it. I can't understand the
rationale behind the hyperbolic blurbs. Didn't someone somewhere
in the packaging process say "stop, we can't make those claims"?
Does no one feel guilty about heaping such ridiculous praise on a
book? This book doesn't belong on the same shelf with those two
and I should be shot for letting a blurb like that raise my
interest.
Good Man
Has anybody ever heard of a performer named Robert Post? I saw
this wonderful program on PBS called "Robert Post: In
Performance." He did several one-man skits with some props. One
was a murder mystery in which this flat on the stage served at
different times as a wall, or a door or a closet. Post would be
one character, say the detective, then he would go behind the
flat and emerge right in step as another character with just a
minimal costume change, maybe becoming blonde French gold digger
by adding a wig. Later he might turn the flat on its side and it
would become a bathtub or something like that. It was just the
actor, the flat, and a bunch of props, and it was pure genius as
a way to tell a story. Just his expressions and contortions alone
were as valuable as the words, which were pre-recorded. Another
skit that was really good was the "Seven Ages of Man." All
through the skit he was caught between two "rewards," a huge,
all-day lollipop for when he did things right and a plastic bat
that would pop him upside the head when he did something wrong.
The last scene he had been in war and shooting missiles (these
were signified by full balloons let loose and you'd hear the
"phweeeet" as they flew out of view) firing off a couple of
squirt guns, all the while guarding a flag. At the end, I guess
he was supposed to be receiving a medal and both the lollipop and
the plastic bat were poised ready. He didn't know which one he
would get and there was such a pitiful look on his face as he
expected the worst but hoped for the best, and all he'd been
doing was performing his job, doing what the boss men told him to
do. What a powerful show, look out for him in the future.
Bitten Man
I watched People's Court one night last week, chanced upon Judge
Wopner, and what an interesting little episode they had to show.
The defendant's son was accused of shooting the neighbor's dog
(the neighbor being the plaintiff) in the eye; the kid denied
doing it but his father had paid the first couple of veterinarian
bills for the dog. He'd balked when the plaintiff presented him
with a third bill for over three hundred bucks -- "you should
have put the dog to sleep for ten bucks at the very beginning,
he's just a mutt" is what the father told the neighbor. The
father looked like he wouldn't put up with anything from anyone
but who certainly had a respect for the courtroom and the judge.
Well Judge Wopner sided with the plaintiff because the father had
originally paid the bills, showing that at one time he had
believed his son guilty. So when the Judge decided the case, the
parties came out and talked to the reporter; first comes the
defendant and he reiterates that he believes his son and he never
should have paid in the first place but because the judge said he
should pay this last bill then he would; asked if he and the
plaintiff could be good neighbors again the father said "I don't
think so; you know how used car salesmen are..." So then the
plaintiff and his wife and dog come out and the first thing the
dog does is to bite the reporter on the knee cap! No lie, it
really happened. At first I thought the dog had only lunged at
the reporter, but after the interview the reporter pulled his
britches up past his knee and there were teeth marks and a
bruise. That really shot the sympathy that the couple had won,
and when the fellow was answering questions for the reporter
after the bite, he was really nervous -- he knew his dog had
blown it, and he didn't know what he was going to have to do to
get out of this little fiasco.
Punk Man
I've been seeing the name Henry Rollins a lot lately so I decided
to look up his work. The library didn't have any of his stuff but
I was determined to read it and so went to the New Book Store and
asked the clerk. She said, "no, we wouldn't have any of that!"
but then checked and yes, there he is in the poetry section. She
seemed really surprised at my request so I asked her, "who is
he?" "Oh," she told me, "he's a punk rocker." I later asked Ted
about him and learned that he's a semi-legend in the DC Punk
scene and once stabbed a friend of Ted's with a ballpoint pen at
the Greensboro Armory. Ted did tell me that it was odd to see
such a figure become "mainstream" and it wasn't until later that
I realized that I was that "mainstream." It was quite a shock,
but I deserved it. I still haven't seen Rollins' tattoos, though:
the author's photo on the back of Black Coffee Blues shows a
noble profile, patrician and serious, not at all like the punk
longhair described to me. Anyway, the book is pretty good, more a
journal than poetry I'd say, though who am I to argue with the
New Book Store shelving methods? Two sections of this book that I
really liked: "124 Worlds" which is a collection of short
scenarios; and "Black Coffee Blues" a collection of journal
entries from various European tours he made with his band,
inspired by different cups of coffee at inns and hotels along the
way. Rollins presents a violent persona in his writing, often
writing of shooting someone in the face, but I get the impression
that he's barely serious -- it's like this hard-boiled tough guy
act that he works so hard to cultivate totally breaks apart
during the rigors of touring, when he's beaten down, exhausted,
and just wants to get on with it.
Music Man
Here's a plug for Crunchy Music Stuff, a local record store here
in the neighborhood. I got on their mailing list and they sent me
a 'zine titled "Crunch." Besides reviews and general music news
and notes, there's a couple of pages of the "Chris McGee
Fanzine." What inspired writing! I was reminded of a statement I
read in the book Cyberpunks, about the admiration aroused for
someone who you might not necessarily agree with: "he admired an
imagination that could follow such a steady course on such an
outlandish trajectory" (161). In a section on "Poor People" the
author proposes ways in which we could get rid of them:
a better solution would be to just be real rude to the poor
people so they will want to go far away. or we could all
learn latin and just speak that whenever poor people come
around. every time the poor people want food, we could
pretend like we didn't understand and just give them a
pretty pack of crayons instead.
See the quote of the week for a brother in arms to this guy.
Later I went by the store and picked up another 'Zine, this
one called "Soda Jerk" and put out by Dave and Nicky here in
town. Here are music reviews, a few 'Zine reviews, band
interviews and occasional pieces, as well as plenty of graphics.
The authors propose a solution to the problem of writing the
universal third person pronoun. Instead of writing "his or hers"
when you mean "somebody's," why not just use "shim's." They go on
to give examples of how it would change the language, and they
even propose that it could save the world: "We can change the
Earth's name to Shimmyville. Would you start a war in a place
called Shimmyville? We can all be Shimmyites or just Shimmies." I
wouldn't mind being a shimmy at all, would you? Start using the
word, it could lead to world peace.
Every time I go into the store I get the strange feeling
that everyone's laughing at me because I'm such a "mainstream"
old fogie, but I admire the guys who run it. They have the guts
to do what they want to do, and they seem to have fun doing it.
So support your local independent record store.
Killer Man
From the very opening scene of Oliver Stone's Natural Born
Killers you know you're in for a ride. Mickey and Mallory (Woody
Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) are in a roadside diner and when a
lewd redneck starts bothering Mallory all hell breaks loose,
literally. Man this film is violent! I was on the edge of my seat
the whole time just waiting for the next innocent bystander to be
blown away. Despite its violence it's also a very good movie, and
I give Oliver Stone some credit for the style. The film is a
montage of images, tableaux in movement, and the effect is fun,
in its way. The story itself is hard to believe -- Mickey and
Mallory never come across as that cold-blooded; I just can't
believe they'd kill so many innocent people. All of the actors do
very well, from Rodney Dangerfield as the lecherous, abusive
father in the hilarious home movie sitcom, to Tommy Lee Jones as
the prison warden and his spittle-spraying drawl. Robert Downey,
Jr., is just about average until the adrenaline starts to flow:
the wimp turns into a real man during the prison riot and in the
middle of the death and mayhem he calls his wife on a cellular
phone and demands a divorce; next he calls his lover and says
he's coming over for oral sex. Isn't violence liberating!
In the end the violence is a means to an end. Who would go
see a movie about Mickey and Mallory if they were petty thieves?
At least everybody's talking about it and Oliver Stone will reap
some big paydays out of this film just because people want to see
what the furor is all about. But it is a creative movie, too, and
I'll bet more filmmakers will adapt from this film than would
care to admit. You'll be seeing echoes of this movie for years to
come, I'll bet. The funny part is that the film itself is an echo
of the state of the media, taking a little bit from cartoons to I
Love Lucy to Hard Copy. It's like Stone has pasted together a
story out of a few months of channel surfing on cable television.
Quote of the Week
I saw this letter to the editor in the Charlotte Observer this
morning. John M. McDowell writes that he's disappointed to see
the paper making a big deal out of parents who choose to stay
home with their kids:
You portray these parents as making sacrifices for their
families; instead, I see the families assuming their
rightful and rewarding responsibilities of nurturing their
children. Also, aren't there any "stay at home" fathers out
there? ... When I drive home in the evenings and see parents
bringing their children home from day care, I think about
what the children are losing -- losing the parent's
nurturing, losing respect for their parents. I also wonder
if these working parents are satisfied with the upbringing
that their day-care provider is giving their children. I for
one do not want my children learning about life from a 19-
year-old minimum wage worker.
Why did this bother me so much? Sure, there are "traditional
family values" here, and I think most of us are pro-family. But
I'd like to hear the wife's side of the story, if she speaks for
herself. And does he really think that that "19-year-old minimum
wage worker" wants to be in that position? Or that all day care
workers are irresponsible louts? Do all families have the option
of having a parent stay at home with the kids? He shares a lot
with the sentiments of the "Chris McGee Fanzine": one is funny
and one is arrogant. What do you think?
