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888 -=[ Issue 1 - 06.19.2016 ]=-
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+----------------------------------+
| "Notes on the Origin of dephunk" |
#@ | by bunz | @#
8^7x +----------------------------------+ x7^8

***

I'm sure I'm not the first person to feel like they're a burnt
out has-been at the relatively young age of 28. But that's how I feel. I
am fast approaching another decade (the 30's) and as I look back on my
life I see that I have accomplished jack shit. I have basically only
succeeded at self-destruction. So I am trying to "accomplish" something
here. I know, a text 'zine? Real accomplishment. Maybe it's therapy. I'm
not sure. But as I type this I am hit with a nice dose of that good ol'
nostalgia. Ah yes, that decaying phantom of "better times" that everyone
clings to when they reach a point of true apathetic, passionless boredom
and regret in their life. Let me take you back...

Back in the day,
when my hair was still full,
and I smoked cigarettes,
and thought I was cool.
I browsed the Internet in 2000- and 3,
and oh the things did I see, did I see!

When I was around 14 I got really into hacking, well, not actual
hacking, more like fantasizing about hacking and looking at shit about
hacking and renting books from the library about hacking and not reading
them. Well, once that fad wore off, I had inadvertently stumbled upon
another thing that was much more fascinating because it appealed to my
essentially lazy and dreamy nature. This was called the "Text Scene."

The text scene had began and evolved from the original hacker
underground that formed in the early 80's around bulletin-board systems
or BBSes. They were before websites. Go look it up. Anyway, the quickest
and easiest way to distribute the clandestine information was through
text files. Plain old ASCII text. The first electronic magazine or "zine"
was Cult of the Dead Cow, and they published anything from code to
poetry to fiction to whatever. A trend formed behind this method of
communication and a whole subculture emerged from the anals of the BBSes
and the genesis of the Internet. . .

Now when I came on "the scene" it was taking its last breaths.
There were only a handful of zines still left, and god knows if anyone,
besides the people who wrote them and shared them, even read them. Still
there were about 10 regularly publishing zines and twenty consistant
writers in the scene. One of them, BMC, of "The Neo-Comintern," ran a
website called "The Current Text Scene" at textscene.com. It would
periodically publish updates of current text releases.

The sense of humor and irreverent attitudes of the scene appeal-
ed to me. They were people who did not take themselves seriously and saw
the world with a goofy and imaginative perspective. I made a few friends
within the scene, notably gir and Steak. gir was my "mentor" of sorts,
and he had his own zine called Angstmonster.Through him I was introduced
to the other writers and "elders" of the scene, the only one left being
BMC, the others having gotten bored or moved on or grew up. . .

I "participated" in the scene for about two years, fantasizing
and creating nonexistent zines that I would publish myself. I only got
around to creating one zine called BLAZED: Tales of Subliminal Congress.
The premise was simply getting stoned and writing textfiles, and
featured a "Chief-O-Meter" at the end of the file indicating the level
of stonededness. Ten issues were released. I only wrote one of them, and
I wasn't even high when I did it. This is a common theme in my life,
starting things and never finishing, half-assed attempts, etc. etc.

I did manage to publish one other file under my handle EBA, aka
Ese Bastardo Amarillo, called "Eba's Guide to Online Emceeing". It was
in Angstmonster #28 <http://www.angstmonster.org/txt/am28.txt>. I
eventually got away from my long anti-social computer focused life and
found another "scene": drugs. I lost touch with all my old zine buddies,
and it seems like less than a year after I'd dropped out the whole scene
had vanished, and it seemed no one really gave a shit. . .

So anyway, that explains the nostalgia. Explains why I have
chosen this medium to write in. The basis of the text scene was
originally pure distribution of knowledge. No extra bullshit or
distractions. No fancy fonts or pictures. In this day and age it is not
that hard to see why the scene died. In this super intense sensory rape
culture we have created, textfiles just seem boring. Shit, most people
do not read outside of what is on their facebook, twitter, email or news
feeds.

After I dropped out of the scene the desire to be a writer had
been implanted in me and it didn't go away. I began to form an identity
of myself AS a writer, much in the vein of Henry Miller, as he spent a
good portion of his life fantasizing about being a writer without ever
having set a word to paper. I didn't write. But I read. I OBSERVED. And
one thing I have noticed, looking back, that when I had this identity,
my life was much more interesting. Things HAPPENED to me. I met many very
interesting people. My life happened in sequence, like in a movie. In
fact, from age seventeen to nineteen, my life COULD have been made into a
movie.

But that was long ago. And not to say my life has been a complete
waste up until this point, but it definitely hasn't had that "magic" in
it in a VERY long time. I want to feel that magic again, I want to be a
part of life, to experience things, to not feel everday is just the
continuance of one prolonged monotonous dream.

Getting addicted to heroin didn't help either. Oh yeah, that was
definitely hands down the worst decision I ever made, and I have made
quite a few bad ones. Fuck, I am high right now. And anyway, I am pretty
sure I have explained what dephunk is all about. Oh yeah, I am so brain
dead from freebasing heroin that the best I could come up for a new zine
name was dephunk which is the name of a website I wanted to create when I
was still in the scene.

I don't care if anyone reads these. My goal in doing this is to
practice my craft (henceforth I once again IDENTIFY as a writer in an
attempt to once again have an interesting life), to DO SOMETHING, period.
To sort through my thoughts, to get the creative juices flowing. And
really I would be lying if deep down I didn't fantasize about using
dephunk as a spark to revitalize the scene and at least get the fucking
Portland hipsters starting their own zines and getting a community going
again. See? See? This is how my mind works. Delusions of grandeur, big
time.

So. . .Need to get a website. . .Shit! Tripod and Geocities are
both gone! Fuck, the Internet has changed. I remember when everybody had
a fucking Geocities page. Got to get off heroin. Man, that spark of life
you get when you get off, it's literally like waking up from the dead.
Time to get on that, after I finish these hits. . .

. . . +-----------------------------------------+
,-| ,-. ,-. |-. . . ,-. | , | dephunk, the last e-zine | Issue 1 |
| | |-' | | | | | | | | |< | copyright (c) 2016 dephunk & Bunzy |
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|
' gopher://gopher.club/1/users/bunz/text/dephunk/