Oh tEG. I had a dream last night. It took place in a libertarian utopia, though my part in it wasn't necessarily too great. I appeared suddenly in a busy place, like an outdoor market, more like the rivers of traffic between consessions at a carnival. I simply sprung into existence there, along with my father. For some reason unbeknownst to me, older people could not be out unattended by a young person; for some reason I filled this position. My father was acting like an idiot, bolting around bumping into people (exactly why they need to be chaperoned) and generally embarrassing me. I had to keep grabbing onto him and yanking him back. The background environmental rules were completely alien, and it was pretty obvious we didn't belong there, especialyl with Frank acting like an idiot. We were forced to run down a short road, at the end of which was a car. I climbed in the drivers seat, grabbing at the unfamiliar controls (though the overall layout was similar to what I was familiar with). My foolish father managed to get in the other side by himself. There was no key; just a switch, and I managed to get it running and bolted out at high speed. Once underway I was able to relax enough to look around at the car; it was a brand new Rambler! (None manufactured in our world since '68.) Styling was high baroque hi-tech; smooth curves, unnecessary chrome strips, excess detail and utterly alien. Unlike the last 40 years of American junk-shit cars, well crafted. Already moving along very fast, felt like 60 though the "speedometer" calibrations were unreadable, upon mashing the gas pedal the thing bolted with the longitudinal twist of buckets of torque. "This ain't no Rambler inline 6!" I said out loud. The small road we were on curved then met another, larger road. At the curve was a sign that said "RT 00F"; being ambiguously far from the upcoming interesection I wasn't sure which road it referred to, though I assumed it was at least a road sign because it was the familiar reflective white background with black lettering and thin black border. It was quite dark this far from the town? market? carnival? we just escaped from; when we reached the intersection, I turned left into an unpaved, rutty lot, really just a large roadside shoulder (finding the brakes very, very hard to operate) and poked around on the various oddly asymmetrical controls until brightness appeared in front of us; presumably this was the headlights. Through the trees was a house that became visible when a small number of vehicles pulled up a driveway not visible from the dirt lot where we were parked. The headlight beams bounced up and down as the cars they were attached to drove up the apparently rutted driveway. A bit afraid of being discovered, I waited until the cars became silent at the house in the woods, I pulled out of the roadside onto the larger road, left, towards the beach [don't ask me how I knew this]. The road was a high-speed two laner, broad and smooth, visible out to the limits of my headlights. Ahh, you don't want to hear this. OK, so I disappeared on you. I could flatter and inflame your righteousness and say I was mad at you, but it wouldn't be true. Neither was I set out on some particular adventure. It was more like a withdrawal, a retreat not out of loss but of consolidation. In other words, I was fucking off. Well, really I wasn't, or not *just* fucking off. A lot *has* happened. (Stars aroudn a word is what passes for *emphasis* in the barbaric telegraphic world of electronical "communications" (sic)where you get to represent all of existence in any arbitrary string of a fixed set of 126 characters. It is somewhat less than YELLING, like so. But I digress.) Lessee: we closed up our warehouse (Shred of Dignity is more or less no more), it having been taken over by CONTRABAND (proper name, not yelling). The house truck is being repaired and taken over by Dave "MDC" Dictor, the dress-wearing queer fag punk-rocker hard-working community-servicing (in oh so many ways) whowill use it in his hauling biz. Josh and I (my boyfriend) moved into a 3-br flat in the Mission subletting the 3rd room until Dina gets here. I pulled out of the FidoNet world (2nd time in 10 years) (TEN YEARS!! (yelling) Can you imagine FidoNet is 10 yrs old May? 94...!). I'm no longer editing FidoNews, the weekly, 16,000 circ newsletter. I don't run a bulletin board -- for now. I'm no longer the fix-it mammal, trouble-shooter and dish-washer for a household. FREEDOM! I'm sorry that I utterly ignored you for so long. It wasn't personal, I assure you; I ignored *everyone* not in my immediate vicinity, and I even ignored some of them. Such are the side-effects of independent existences. Deke is... I don't know. He's in Santa Cruz. I think. I'm not sure how he's doing. Far as I know he doesn't have a mailing address, 'cept maybe his old box here in San Fagsicko. I miss him. Ahh Deke, he used his not-inconsiderable power to make a big mess here, of course taking himself out of commission in the process. No no absolutely fucking NO I am not going to any idiotic spews. The horse is not only dead, it's been smelling for quite a while. No offense meant to those putting these things on, but it's become our street-fag version of "publish or perish", oh dear, you don't edit a zine? Oh... Zines are still great things obviously, and I really am glad to see them proliferate. People learn to write, some are fantastic, but the whole "scene" concept is so stupid. It's a medium, but aolso JUST a medium. Yeah I read McLuhan too, but the message in many cases is getting AWFULLY REPETITIVE... as Deke might say, "Hey I seen this scene before!" Probably not going to DC this year. Money, is really the issue. I'm making $490/month in my weirdo job. Which is managing an Internet cooperative. I get a chunk of the monthly proceeds. I have a machine on the Internet. The internet is this utterly non-organized global network of about 2 million (2E6) computers; the resources are literally unimaginable. Finland is 500 milliseconds away; Berkeley, 400. (Don't think the irony is lost on me; here I am living un sub-sub-poverty wages plus foodstamps, and I can't live without a full-time internet feed plus four other machines talking to it at all times.) Much of my job is purely technical, we've got computers in San Fran, Palo Alto and Mtn. View, about 20 members, and I keep them running, updating, maintaining, researching new stuff, etc. It's also to a large extent political (ie. what happens when you have > 2 people in a room); our Internet carrier is getting mad that were' connecting up so many peeples; they consider it competition. We're right at the point of, this thing used to be clearly R&D, gov't, corpserate biz, you know, big guys, and they paid for this stuff dearly. The data networks are very definitely becoming carriers, but they consider themselves "service providers". We don't wanna get serviced, we wanna rent a fucking pipe, thank you. It's of critical importance to alter the playing field. John Perry Barlow pointed out at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference two weeks ago, that we won the fucken revolution. And know, he's right. We did win, and it wasn't the fucken lefties that done it. It was the street-level assholes like us. We out-paradigm'ed 'em. We have, in fact, networks of communication that are basically unassailable. We have the ultra-best encryption technology (public-key vis. PGP), and methodologies of organization that are utterly resistant to infiltration (ACT-UP, and all of our wierdo enclaves). Many thanks to Hakim Bey and Uncle Bill! We lost something too, in that war. Something of grave importance. We lost our independence, to a large degree. Barlow pointed out, in the 40 years the US battled the Evil Empire, it came to resemble them, utterly. The secrecy and espionage reiterated in their closed world changed them both into each other. To a large extent we did this too. The traditional lefties too much depended on their enemies to survive. So do too many of our modern peers. Oppositional politics is a very dangerous course. The ones that lost the least were the ones that instead of directly opposing, worked from Askance, in Harry Hay's words (that big fairy). You build a thing you want to live in, now, not "tomorrow". "Opposition" comes from actions that benefit yourselves, not giving energy to your enemies. What we lost was our independence. The very tools we built to make our own worlds are used by other people for not very much fun. We have become intertwingled with them. We haven't become our enemies, but we are almost peers in some ways. All of the successful communications networks are decentralized, truly. The old model of rigid top-down is recognized to not work in lots of places. Even corporations are forming short-term alliances to reach some goal, then dissolve. (Sue them after you get ripped off? Oops! They don't exist anymore! Sorry!) I can FINGER Alekz Vermont on her scammed account and find out that it's been 6 minutes since she's been there, and talk about March on Washington stuff; your bank sells (in bulk) which neighborhood you use your ATM card, and the ex-NSA buys this data on the open market and rifles out which people withdraw cash in "high drug crime" corners, and passes this to law enforcement. (This is done at Los Alamos, ex nuke-weapon computers...) People who insist on living in a pure world won't survive. They never could though, so nothing's changed there. Fuck 'em, I say. The Situationists were right, to a large degree. But ACT-UP proved them wrong; ACT-UP *did* shift the spectacle, during the 84? AIDS COnference here. Big time. And of course the spectacle sucked it up -- but there's something that was overlooked -- the eater is changed as well. The "AIDS issue" was changed, forever. The techno-capitalists are not completely in charge -- and Luddite purity won't save you from it's reach. The capitalists are susceptible to their own propagana and productism. We popped one level up and looked at the processes themselves -- but now so have they. So many of oppositionists argue from a position of stasis -- "once we get rid of the bad guys we'll go back (forward) to a good place", as if the world were a place -- rather than the process that it is. It's not reversible!! The FIFTH ESTATE already look like buffoons; they'll be forced to do something soon, or continue to wither. Oh hell maybe not, there's always Flat Earth societies out there, with enough people to join them. Oh fuck I'm ranting. That's what happens when I don't have any immediate feedback. I wonder how many people have internet access? My address is: tomj@fido.wps.com. (WPS == World Power Systems). Well this is a really stupid long letter, it doesn't say anything about me. Too bad. If you're ever in San Fran... and if I'm ever in MN... etc. PS: When did you start swiping huge chunks of other peoples works and putting t hem into your zine? PPS: Logic is a trap, it's just another me(me). It's a tool. Don't fall forward on your knife. PPPS: Etymology is our version of Bible research. "The modern word 'snarfulous' comes from the Atlantean word 'snarfodontus', a giant 9-toed beast" and all that rot to prove some point. It all sounds great, but what's it mean to me?