\input zine.sty \parindent=0pt \centerline{\hl Rude Noises from the Editor/Censor} \vskip\parskip \bar \vskip\parskip In case you haven't been reading this since issue \#1, I'll simply repeat this, it says it best: \vskip\parskip \lline{\hlsm What the Fuck is HOMOCORE?} ``You don't have to be a homo to read or have stuff published in HOMOCORE. One thing everyone in here has in common is that we're all {\it social mutants}; we've outgrown or never were part of any of the ``socially acceptable'' categories. You don't have to be gay; being different at all, like straight guys who aren't macho shitheads, women who don't want to be a punk rock fashion accessory, or any other personal decision that makes you an outcast is enough. Sexuality is an important part of it, but only part.'' \vskip\parskip \begindoublecolumns \centerline{\hlmed News \& Shit} gilman pit. 2nd life-changing event in a pit; (once in wolf creek) punkrock 2, faeries 1. This is very probably the last issue of HOMOCORE, though what happens in the next month or so will determine it's final fate. Please -- don't deluge me with letters saying ``you can't stop HOMOCORE!'', because I do understand what's going on (really). Part of it is simply, I wanna do other things. Nothing lasts forever. I have lots of ideas, talents, resources, energy etc, and it might be nice to have room for other things. But there is this other thing -- the very fact of providing sometimes the only support for far too many near-suicidally isolated people is incredibly draining. I only have so much energy. I feel guilty and get depressed when I simply can't answer some of the worse-off ones. The full-on insanity ones are easy, and sometimes fun, like the guy with the ``cure for AIDS'' who told me that the government keeps lists of people who don't stick flag stamps upright. The you-are-my-last-resort-I-am-turning-into-a-robot ones are sheer torture. How the fuck can I honestly answer these? ``Everything's alright''? It isn't. What I'd like to do is shoot their parents in the back of their heads. In public. Burn the fucking public schools and kill all the people who run them. Have people not laugh when I say I think that religious behavior is a mental illness. Tell the fucked up kids to go have sleep with and fuck each other, except they're too paralyzed to touch themselves or others, more American upbringing. I know about that, first hand. I survived for a combination of reasons (but this ain't a psychiatry column). And it's a fuck of a lot of work. Like -- a hundred hours of typing in letters, reviews, articles, etc. Spending hours at Krishna Copy's Laser Copier to screen photos and album covers, calculating reductions. Managing the hundreds of letters, orders, special responses, trying to get articles that are appropriate, never mind the responsibilty of all the damaged people. I had no idea it would be like this. Trying to fend off the ``inevitable'' (as in default, everyone-does-this) expansion, like more is better. OUTWEEK dumped all their phone sex ads, so that they can get ``real'' advertisers, and expand muchly. (I agree it's not good to be reliant on one form of ad income -- the near-abolition of phone-sex by the telco under pressure from fundies illustrated that need -- the bottom line is still that they pitched gay (smaller) businesses for straight corporations. And never once doubted that maybe, just maybe, there are other ways to do things. Same old same old. But at least for a while longer it's still a good rag to get fag/dyke info from, especially if you're isolated in East Bumfuck Nebraska or something.) Anyways -- hell this is my column after all, and if you don't like my whining and rambling don't read it -- HOMOCORE has become this monster that -- I admit it -- makes me feel guilty when I don't do it. Guilt is always bad, no matter what. It is no longer enhancing my life, and if I'm not doing OK, then I cannot do a good job either. Time to stop. And all this loneliness is a fucken drag. It reminds me how bad it was, or rubs in how bad it is, depending on where I'm at on a given day. (Where are all the young sissy boys? Not the fussy Boy Club bar boys, but actual sissies, who don't like (or are too young for) bars, not yet brain dead, maybe into sci-fi, sex, camping, sex, critical thinking, sex, isn't an Intellectual (but is intellectual), and is cute as fuck? Seems as soon as someone moves to SF, they instantly give up their uniqueness (funny clothes, silly hobbies, personal vocabularies, etc) as soon as is humanly possible to join Queer Nation, ACT-UP or whatever. I know it's fun to join a club and belong to something, but really, why all this conformity? ``Alternative'' conformity is {\it still} conformity. Send photo please. No cock-tease correspondence please; as soon as I write ``Let's visit!'' it all stops?) One time sex or long-time relationship, anything is possible. Write soon. I travel in other worlds also. There is very little overlap. I don't do this on purpose, it's just that very nearly zero people understand more than one or maybe two of them. There's this punk-rock HOMOCORE thing. You get that. I'm also the architect of the FidoNet, a very large computer network, based upon anarchist principles, that carries more private electronic mail than any other computer network, period. It's totally decentralized. I started the newsletter, the mathematical ``addressing'' scheme, the critical non-partisan terminology, and the primordal social organization behind it. And it's all free, and public domain, and I don't make money from it. Just to keep things from getting too ``legitimate'' I remind everyone occasionally that I'm an out scary screaming fag; I publish gay stuff in the electronic newsletter, and even reran the MAXIMUMROCKNROLL Guest Editorial about one Saturday Night, and got a bunch of death threats from x-tians (electronically!) and lots of ``such language, you should behave so gay people will look better'' type liberal responses. Fun! It's under attack too, so far just indirectly, mainly by (surprise) our good ole government. What's at issue is the basic right to privacy, freedom to associate with whoever you choose. The feds are using what's known as ``prior restraint'', ie. stop people {\it before} they do something ``wrong'', ie. thought crimes. Under the guise of stopping computer criminals, they are seizing computers and personal possessions of people who are suspected, by federal organizations who are completely ignorant of the technology involved, trying to set precedents to make their enforcement job easier, with no care for individuals' rights. One case, when trying to get a computer bulletin board merely {\it suspected of} having a Bell document that was available freely upon request, they seized Steve Jackson Games' CYBERPUNK role-playing game book, claiming they were literal instructions for computer crime! Idiots. So as a rather prominent electronic communications person, I'm a bit paranoid, I believe with good reason. It's triply depressing; on top of all this, most people don't understand that what is being decided is basic sci-fi police-state stuff (your rights to control/access mail, fax, telephone, credit and police records, ATM transactions, personal profiles based upon where you go, what you buy, etc\dots), but even most of the bulletin board and telecom world has their heads up their asses ``oh they're just after those criminal hackers, not me''. It will be all our losses. I also own and shoot guns. Mainly, the senseless murder of innocent paper targets. No, I don't hunt (yuck!), and no, I don't walk around armed -- ever. They're locked up, unloaded. I ``compete'' with a bunch of guys once a month (if you want to call being 28th in a field of 30 ``competing''), and practice occasionally. I am not a rambo type. I like the machinery, and as soon as someone tells me I can't do something, I want to know about it. Taboo = interest. (And ignorance == fear.) So it's not punk rock, or liberal, or OK to own guns. Sigh. I've heard it all already, save your breath. I love how ardent supporters of the First Amendment would give away other Amendments as quick as can be, overlooking that the process for one is the process for the other\dots and how, being so all cool anti-government, anti-system, they suck up without question all the anti-gun stuff, and the lies that pass for info on guns, from the sounds of which you simply waggle a gun in some direction and all the good guys drop dead, or the bad guys, depending on who is holding it at the moment. Yeah, I know the NRA are a buncha creeps, well, so is Handgun Inc. They all have their own agendas. The leftist/liberals want to make us all equally powerless. After writing letters to a bunch of politician types, the local liberal scumbag (Alan Cranston) sent back a form letter which said that ``people who want to own guns like that have psychiatric problems, and simply haven't been caught yet''. Fucken-A. I could tell you stories. I've never been truly arrested, but I was ``detained'' once because I (foolishly) wouldn't show a cop ID, when we were outside a club hassling a band called BIG JAG or something, about their song ``DIE FAGGOT DIE''. OK so I'm detained, in cuffs, in the back seat. They type my name on the car 'puter, my name/address appears, plus the usual gibberish codes, etc. Then, a line in all caps -- CAUTION: MFG/SELL DANGEROUS WEAPONS. What the fuck?! So I ask the lady cop, politely, where that info comes from. She says, the FBI compiles it for the local agencies. I said, well, that's interesting, cuz I had this revolver I sold back to the store I bought it from, which is perfectly legal and ordinary, (and the only thing I could think it meant) and I though it odd that they would lump a legal sale with manufacturing. She said, well, some people convert guns to full automatic, and we like to know that, you know. I said yeah, but and she said shut up. I told my shooting friends (some cops, security types, other professionals, a doctor, etc) about this, and they kinda freaked. They said that that is {\it not} usual, that gun ownership info is {\it not} routinely available, and one guy said that was the worst thing he heard all year; it scared him. Punk rock, dude -- these guys are more tolerant, in their actions, than the punk-rock places I occasionally hang out. They explicitly know I am gay. I had to explain the homo-anarcho-logo button on my leather jacket, and related stuff. Mainly polite reactions, but some curiosity. A few months ago, during one event, we ran into some equipment left behind by some shooters into some absurdly specialized shooting (rather exotic PPC stuff if you care), plumb bobs to level their targets, etc, and this one guy said that they were a ``bunch of faggots''. I was working the even, scorekeeping or something, and there were all these people standing around, and I\dots let it pass. It's kinda hard, but still, there was no excuse\dots For the next few days, I'm going through things in my head you might expect; what am I doing here, do they all hate me or what, didn't I tell them I'm gay, etc etc. Well -- I get a call from the guy with the big mouth, an apology for making the ``faggot'' remark. He said, I didn't mean it, it was just a word I grew up with, he regretted it the second he said it, and so on. I was incredibly relieved that it was out in the open, thanked him for calling about it (suggesting he meant ``wimp''), and even talked about related stuff for a bit. The next monthly match was December, with the annual meeting, planning, munchies and end of year prizes. Everyone gets one, even us lousy shooters. (We're still better than 90\% of the ``professionals'' out there.) I chose a Colt 45 T-shirt, saying it would be a gas to wear to Queer Nation meetings. Some people choked on their soda, some giggled. The faggot remark and the apology had opened things up a bit, and I ended up talking to about a half dozen people about it, with about that many standing way off to the side, but close enough to overhear. The club President, and regular combat shooter, asked what it was like for me and this other woman what it was like for two obvious ``outsiders'' to join this rather small and tight-knit group. He said he thought I was gay, but wasn't something he could ask someone. I told him -- I'm used to being an outsider, and we talked about that sort of isolation. It was all pretty cool, though I can tell you a bit nerve-wracking at the same time. We've even discussed politics, and funny enough, at least some of them realize that punks and alternative weirdos are the ones most like them when it comes to ``basic values'' -- freedom of choice, the right to privacy and to be left alone, home made do it yourself attitudes, etc. While most of them were really pissed about ACT-UP style blocking traffic, etc some agreed that their purported goals were OK. And -- we agree to disagree. Something I wish lotsa punk-rock people would learn. (These guys though have the decided advantage that most of the world is theirs, large-scale social-wise. It ain't out to get them, in the same sort of way it is out to get us.) Though they are surprisingly anti-government, being pro-gun activists by default, they get Illumined when they discover the same lies we do. (It's also fun to take my friends shooting, or better yet, through the one-day NRA-approved basic handgun safety and marksmanship course. The guy who runs it, Ray, is totally cool, and everyone seems to enjoy having mohawks around, hell, they could use the new blood, the average age seems to be about 60+, and they know they need new members!) depressing energy drain responsibilities (letters...) paul bonomo, letters, photos, reviews not in this issue GLAAD bashing (cuz of criticism of "why we are gay") I dont want a peaceful world strait bashing vs. gay bashing, they get one eensy insult and they go off lost p. pans pictures sissy boys \lline{\bf Technical History of HOMOCORE zine} It is likely this is the last issue of HOMOCORE, though anything is possible. Once again (I keep saying that -- it's really quite continuous) I have to reexamine what the fuck I am doing. And at the moment I'm not getting back what {\it I need} from what I'm putting out. This zine, amongst other things. I went to the annual Solstice Party -- all male/fag. A pretty special event, and one I look forward to. They start the usual time, and go until the next day. So I shit/shower/shaved, after working all day on putting a heater into our freezing house (it was again 44 degrees as I sat down to type; I just dragged in the LPG heater\dots), and I'm excited about going, but I've been here before, and know about expectations\dots Now I don't know if I can describe this from here. There a hundred? two hundred? people at or through the place, and I know easily half of them, probably much more; bars, friends, political meetings, events, f\ae rie gathering(s), Rainbow family, neighbors, ex-boyfriends, ex-tricks\dots and it seems other people I don't know know me. But I'm totally un-connected, amazingly so. I do this zine, which gets me notoriety of an obvious sort. But, other than that, and the mere fact that I like boys, I don't have anything in common -- I realized, with a few exceptions (hi Deke) what I do has no value, no meaning, there. I never see any of these people anywhere except night-club type environments (again the few exceptions -- you know who you are!) What do I do in my life? Mainly I build things, physical and otherwise. I just built a propane powered car, and ancient Rambler (consrtuction article to follow). I value my physical skills, which I work hard at; most of things gay and so-called ``alternative'' (see G.B. \& BLaB's article re: ``alternative'' (sic)) have completely devalued physical skills; it's simply fucking classist. I've been slowly moving away from most things perceived as gay for a long time now. Tonite: I'm surrounded by hot guys, some of them even available. Sure I'm as scared as anyone else, but I can get over that at least occasionally. Small talk, etc, I've got a big mouth. But -- little I do crosses this gay world; computer network, LPG, zine stuff, being an out fag in weird places. While diversity and open-mindedness It's not just that noone's into building cars; that's just an easy illustration. Punk rock, dude. Almost no-one cares, but tough shit, this is {\it my} zine. HOMOCORE is typeset using a program called \TeX, pronounced ``tek'', a program written by Donald Knuth of Stanford University. It is in the public domain, meaning you can copy it, modify it, or even sell it. It was written in the previous Computer \AEon, aka ``the mini-computer age'', and is in some ways typical of it's era -- absurdly large, overly complex, with layer upon layer of arcane commands (I bet there aren't even 1,000 \TeXnicians in the U.S. -- plain \TeX, not \LaTeX \& derivatives.) I'm a programmer by way of trade, a good one, and I consider myself after two years to be a novice \TeXnician. However, it's probably the most sophisticated computer typesetting program, period. Desk Top Publishing? Fuck that weak shit. I get readability with incredible density I don't think I could get with Page Maker or Ventura. I got this thing about a month before HOMOCORE\#1 came out, and \#1 and \#2 look it. Pretty awful. By \#6 it's more or less OK. With this issue, it's about as good as it will get (well, I gotta work on ``style'' related stuff). The typefaces used are Computer Modern sans serif 11 point for the main typeface. (Increased over \#6's 10 point to help those without perfect eyesight.) Bitstream Swiss Bold for headlines; 14 points for article/section headlines, 90 point for the cover logo, 52 point inside front cover. Nope, don't have a laser printer. Wanna buy me one? Printing is done on a NEC Pinwriter P2200, \$400 including the sheet-feeder, using factory-new ribbons, and matte-coated 60 lb.~paper for the masters. \#6 was printed using Fuyun Ling's DVINEC printer program, which uses laser printer fonts; it looks OK. This past summer I got Knuth's {\manual METAFONT} program installed; it {\it creates} fonts using mathematical rules. I created a set of fonts specifically for this printer, and now I get the full 360 $\times$ 180 DPI resolution this printer is capable of. ({\manual METAFONT} took an {\it entire week}, running 24 hrs/day, to create the fontfiles, even on my monster 25MHz '386 computer.) Print quality is damn well as good as a \$1500 laser printer; alas, it takes nearly 5 minutes to print a page. The only other zine I know of you use \TeX\ is THE PENUMBRA, editor Flying Gecko, out of NYC.