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From: tachyon@news.tac.org (TACHYON)
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Subject: State of unBeing #8 Seizure
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Date: 25 Aug 1994 12:52 CDT
Organization: The Astronomy Consortium NewsWire- Austin, TX, USA
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Summary: This is a news article covering the seizure of SoB #8 
   by the US Government.
Keywords: Paranoia news worldevents thingstocome dangers
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.50    
Xref:illuminati.io.com alt.world.news:84651 alt.illuminati:1027 
news.answers:23138 alt.aswr:3106

State of unBeing #8 SEiZED BY UNiTED STATES SECRET SERVICE!!!!!

by Tachyon
The Astronomy Consortium NewsWire Service Wed Aug 24 1994

AUSTIN,TX-On Monday, August 22 1994, just prior to the release 
of SoB #8 on the next day by editor Kilgore Trout, the United 
States Secret Service entered the home of said editor and 
immediately seized his computer system. They then proceeded 
on-site examination of the files therein, whereupon they 
copied any and all files related to SoB #8 and promptly wiped 
them from the system.
        After much persuading, Kilgore Trout finally agreed to 
comment on the matter. Kilgore informed us that no one really 
knows what is going on out there. He was told by the SS that 
he must tell no one of this incident, and in fact to maintain 
his earlier story that no material was received for SoB #8 and 
that is why it would not be released. "I had previously told 
people that so that I could get out what I think was our best 
(and most lucrative) issue yet. I didn't want the Fedz to get 
word of it, but somehow they did."
        Several of the writers who actually had submitted 
articles for issue #8 were also visited by the Secret Service, 
whereupon their copies of their articles were also copied and 
wiped. No charges have yet been filed by the Secret Service. 
We visited one of the writers in his home, and this is what 
Hagbard had to say:

   "I have never been raided by the SS, I have always been too 
careful... so it was a real surprise to me when they showed up 
wanting to take my stuff. The purpose of SoB was to distribute 
valuable information, AS WELL as literary trash. I guess I can 
see why the SS got so fired up though. My article was 
entitled "Miscellaneous Government Secrets I Have Uncovered". 
It had most of the files on the UFO cover-ups, detailed plans 
for neutrino bombs, biochemical warfare data, missile command 
access codes, and Milnet dial-ins. In fact, they were not 
completely successful in wiping my info... would you like to 
see what I have left?"

        We most certainly replied in the affirmative, and so 
here is an excerpt from the issue most coveted by the US 
Government:

äilànetáDia2-in: Ü512)950+1288J6Login: uestÄôPwKeg+es/è#
heâSou-úw+stertivis@onjfKNORAD#¼ssͬcated under the East
0all[bt
LtÍs¤AcessÆrodes§foêentraÿcea+eó931ÿ3#65-#34231705
bm
bhereDexi+tsa6§und7rg+ounpcit7Üin souèhe(npNevaaæbuiQtduring
æhe Col#u+ar whach i< stiflàin op+rat

We won't interpret it for you, but there is still some 
information locked in there somewhere.

        The real question is what will come of this? Will the 
writers be forgotten? Silenced? Terminated? Will these secrets 
and others ever be printed again? Time will only tell. To get 
a feel on exactly what was going on here, we decided to 
contact the Secret Service themselves and ask them if the data 
will ever be returned.

Tachyon: Hi, this is Tachyon from The Astronomy Consortium 
NewsWire and I am calling in reference to a recent incident in 
the Austin district where SS agents seized an electronic 
magazine. Could I get some info on that?

Secret Service: Hold on, let me transfer you to that 
department... what was your name again?

T: Tachyon.

SS: Ok... one moment.

[Several minutes of bad hold music.]

SS: Hello this is Agent Timothy Roberts, how can I help you?

T: Yes, I was wondering if I could ask some questions about 
the electronic magazine State of unBeing which was recently 
seized by the Secret Service.

AR: Ok.

T: Why was it seized?

AR: It was a document which published information 
electronically which was illegal.

T: How is electronic publishing illegal?

AR: Well, it isn't, but the information was.

T: And how was it illegal?

AR: It was a threat to the National Security of the United 
States.

T: Oh really. In what way?

AR: No comment.

T: How does the SS get jurisdiction over matters of National 
Security?

AR: Well, we don't... not directly... but we do handle 
computer crime.

T: Yes, but you said it was a matter of National Security, not 
computer fraud. Under whose authority where you operating?

AR: I am not at liberty to say.

T: Was it the Office of the Director of the National Security 
Agency?

AR: No comment.

T: Well can you transfer me to someone who can comment?

[Long pause]

AR: Er.. hold on for a second...

[Whispering in the background]

AR: Ok.. hold on...

[Dead silence for a minute then periodic clicking and beeps]

Unknown: The articles prepared for State of unBeing issue #8 
were an obvious threat to the National Security of the United 
States. The data will not be returned and no record of any 
incidents involving said issue will be maintained or 
acknowledged. Thank you and good day.

[Hang up]

        The Astronomy Consortium Security Division traced the 
call as far as Panama. When we asked our sources in Panama 
about the incident or who it might be, the merely replied that 
they knew of no such agency. Maybe there are some witnesses or 
informants out there who will speak up, but until then we have 
hit a brick wall.
        If you have any information on this event, or you have 
Top Secret Government Information you wish to see published, 
send it to State of unBeing. DO NOT send it to The Astronomy 
Consortium NewsWire. Our sources in Washington have informed 
us that a shut down of our net is imminent and termination of 
our organization is in the works. Keep up the fight.

                                        Tachyon
                                        Sri Lanka Aug 1994

Copyright (C) The Astronomy Consortium NewsWire 1994 All Rights Reserved
NewsWire is a Registered Trademark of The Astronomy Consortium

===============================================================================  

 Living in such a state          taTestaTesTaTe          etats a hcus ni gniviL
 of mind in which time         sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA         emit hcihw ni dnim of
 does not pass, space         STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE         ecaps ,ssap ton seod
 does not exist, and         sTATeSt        oFOfOfo         dna ,tsixe ton seod
 idea is not there.         STatEst          ofoFOFo         .ereht ton si aedi
 Stuck in a place          staTEsT            OfOFofo          ecalp a ni kcutS
 where movements           TATeSTa            foFofoF           stnemevom erehw
 are impossible                              fOFoFOf             elbissopmi era
 in all forms,                             UsOFofO                ,smrof lla ni
 physical and                            nbEifof                   dna lacisyhp
 or mental -                           uNBeInO                      - latnem ro
 your mind is                         UNbeinG                      si dnim rouy
 focusing on a                       unBEING                      a no gnisucof
 lone thing, or                      NBeINgu                     ro ,gniht enol
 a lone nothing.                     bEinGUn                    .gnihton enol a
 You are numb and                    EiNguNB                   dna bmun era ouY
 unaware to events                                            stneve ot erawanu
 taking place - not                  -iSSuE-                 ton - ecalp gnikat
 knowing how or what                 9/24/94                tahw ro woh gniwonk
 to think. You are in                N-i-N-E               ni era uoY .kniht ot
 a state of unbeing....                                  ....gniebnu fo etats a

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE

EDiTORiAL by Kilgore Trout
STAFF LiSTiNG

ARTiCLES
POETRiE
FiCTiON

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

EDiTORiAL
by Kilgore Trout

We're back, folks. Yup. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the world of e-zines. So what's been going on in the month during which our publication was absent? Oh, not much, just getting raided by the Secret Service and having a hellish time dealing with it. As most of you know from the newswire feed, the SS confiscated all copies of the e-zine. Luckily, Griphon moved off to an undisclosed location in this country (for his own safety, naturally) and had most of the articles with him. So, in the next couple of months we'll be reconstructing articles and try to get out SoB #8 sometime around Christmas.

As for this issue, we've returned to our normal diet of, as Hagbard would put it, "valuable information AND literary trash." Some very interesting articles, good poetry, and some unique fiction, I must say. I think you'll enjoy it, especially after two months without a new issue (oh, how could you survive? <G>).

A few technical notes before I finish up. In issue #7, we stated that "Times Like These" was a poem by Harlequin. Due to a transfer error, it was actually a Joy Division song that was put on there by mistake, and I mistook it for one of Harlequin's things. Also, on io.com, the submissions directory has now been fixed, so you can actually put stuff for submissions in there now.

Well, I guess I'll let you get on with your reading. Remember folks, today is a State of unBeing, where knowledge empowers us and absurdity keeps us human.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

STAFF LiSTiNG

EDiTOR
Kilgore Trout

CONTRiBUTORS
Azagoth
Captain Moonlight
Crux Ansata
Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
Flying Rat's Nostril
Gore BrainRot
I Wish My Name Were Nathan
Kilgore Trout
Midnite Scholar
The Reverand Toad

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[=- ARTiCLES -=]

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[Editorial | Next]

GENESiS, CHAPTER 2.3
by The Reverand Toad

  1. When God created the heavens, and the earth, and all that is beneath the earth, He saw fit to grant unto each of the beasts in the heavens, and the earth, and beneath the earth, one gift, that they may better live, and tell each other apart without a name tag.
  2. For name tags are expensive, yea verily, and hard to keep track of.
  3. So too did he see fit to grant a gift to all the birds of the air, and fish of the sea, and politicians of the sewers.
  4. So did the skunk get its smell.
  5. And so did the slug get its slime.
  6. And so did the airhead get that hair that stands up so tall.
  7. And so did the lion get its claws.
  8. And so did the zebra get its stripes.
  9. And so did the tiger get its claws and stripes. (Package deal, saith the Lord.)
  10. And when all the gifts save one had been distributed, the Lord calleth the man, and asketh the man, What gift do you desire?
  11. And the man looketh on all the denizens of the Garden sharpening their new claws.
  12. And quaketh he him.
  13. And saith the man, God, some body armor would be groovy.
  14. Tough, saith the Lord, yea, even and, shit.
  15. And the Lord, in His wisdom, gave the man an opposable thumb.
  16. And the Lord, in his mercy, gave the man a ten minute head start.
  17. And the Lord crieth, Good luck, even as He ascended to drink martinis by His cosmic pool.
  18. And muttereth He, even under His breath, Punk.
  19. And as the man went, even out to find stuff with which to smite the Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, and Ghosts, and Oliphants, and Hyenas, and Stag Beetles, and Cockroaches, and Herons, and other beasts, moveth he a boulder.
  20. And there, even where the boulder had once been, hid the Paranoid.
  21. Oh! crieth the Paranoid.
  22. And, Shit! addeth he him.
  23. And the man, pleased even for this brief diversion, crieth out, Lord, You forgot one.
  24. Dammit, muttereth the Lord.
  25. And the Paranoid, even with the accusation forming on his lips, crieth, No! I know you are all going to conspire and curse me.
  26. Dammit, repeateth the Lord.
  27. And, Dammit, elaborateth the Lord.
  28. And, Give peace a chance, sangeth Johnny, yea even Johnny Lennon.
  29. And the animals, even in their confusion, thought only of finding the man.
  30. And devouring they him.
  31. And rending they him even unto little bitty strips of jerky.
  32. And crieth they, Can we get this over with?
  33. The Lord lamented, and moaned, and crieth, Dammit, several more times.
  34. And muttereth He, But I'm out of blessings.
  35. Smiteth the Unicorn, cried the monkeys, who always were a bit bastardly, And giveth the Paranoid a big horn.
  36. Shut up, crieth the Lord, And let me think.
  37. (And this is why monkeys, even to this day, cannot speak, for their cruelty to the unicorns.)
  38. Nay, muttereth the Lord, We need the Unicorn.
  39. Yea, reflecteth the Lord, We may yet have virgins, as America, the TV, and Materialism have yet to be created.
  40. Well, mentioneth the Blue Koala, timidly.
  41. For Blue Koalas are wont to be thus.
  42. (Have you ever seen one? interjecteth the Scribe.)
  43. Why don't you, continueth the Blue Koala, Curse him, nicely.
  44. There, crieth the Paranoid, I knew you were working together to curse me.
  45. Cutteth it out, yea, even like now, screameth the Lord.
  46. And the Lord gathered up Holy Anger, and pointeth He, yea, even with His pointer finger, at the Paranoid.
  47. Eeek, crieth the Paranoid.
  48. May you, crieth the Lord, Get on everyone else's nerves as much as you get on mine.
  49. And, Dammit, added He a few timed, yea verily and even for good measure.
  50. And to this day, the Paranoid irritates everyone, and everything, and all and sundry giveth him wide berth.
  51. And both are quite content.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"I myself did not want to sleep because I had been living for a long time with the knowledge that if I ever shut my eyes in the dark and let myself go, my soul would go out of my body."

-- Hemingway, "Now I Lay Me"

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[Prev | Next]

BABBLiNGS OF AN iNSOMNiAC
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan

Ya know, people hardly ever talk about what they do when they can't get to sleep. Yeah, yeah, there's the old "I got three hours of sleep because I tossed and turned all night" line, but people who do that have relatively little imagination. I'm sure a great percentage of people simply lie in bed and, in the nearly-frantically-rested state of mind, explore the taboo.

Taboo? Yeah. Stuff we know we all think about but no one admits (unless ya ask 'em, I suppose). In a country like ours where "regularity" and douches are common T.V. commercial fare, it's strange that people don't talk about their going-to-sleep worlds.

For instance, most of the stuff I think about is really self-centered and perverse, but that's what makes it interesting. Sometimes, when I'm in a nice suicidal mood, I wonder what my friends and family would think if I actually did it. Since I know I prolly never will, it's a safe train of thought. Like, how'd I do it? Get the hunting knife my brother gave me out of my trunk, maybe. It's real sharp. I never used it for anything, because it smells sharp steelish. My brother used a sharpening thing on it for weeks. He was crazy about that knife. He got another one and gave me his. The knife looks like it'd be good for skinning something. Hell, maybe me! But, I despise pain. I really don't even know what it's like to bleed profusely, but I think I could stand a nice open gash somewhere like my leg. Skinning myself alive would take more effort than I care to conceive.

Anyway, I -- like? -- nah, fantasize about what my parents would do when they came in the next day (after I "didn't wake up", hee hee). Prolly scream and shit. I actually don't like thinking about that part too much. I do sorta care for them. Still, they'd get over the way mourningous grief after a few weeks or so. Then, when my friends'd call up asking for me, my folks'd have to say, "He can't come to the phone right now, he's dead." I bet they wouldn't be that creative. And now that most of my friends are out of town for college, I suppose they wouldn't even get the chance to make such a witty remark. Oh well.

What's stranger to me is to imagine my friends offing themselves. The strangest part being that most of 'em I don't think'd have a reason to do it. I guess that's good in a way; it makes me feel content that I'm one of few people living in hell on earth. (But that's a different story altogether.) As I imagine possible reasons, though, I realize I don't know them all very well. I wonder if that's normal. I have concrete (well, sorta) images of them in my mind, but only in the specific contexts in which I'd known them. All this just serves to make me more progressively neurotic about how I'd have to react if they did off themselves. Confusion? Crying? Maybe sarcastic laughter? I can think of people who'd fit in all those categories. It's all very sick.

Oh, but the thing I think about a lot, which I know everyone thinks about, is killing someone you don't like. You know, I wonder if this tendency says anything about the nature of the human race. Hmmm, prolly not. Anyway, I'd get out the hunting knife, all sharpened and stuff, and go somewhere isolated. Like this one place, under a bridge near the suburbs. That'd be great. I'd be sitting there, admiring the nature abounding around me, watching the river go by, and then some dumb fuck with spraypaint would walk in and be about to start adding some exceedingly witty retort to the conversation going on on the concrete wall behind me: "Kickers suck! / Preppies suck! / Life sucks! / <- that guy sucks, hard! / Kill the fags! / Kill the preachers! / Kill the fucking fag-kicker-preppie-preacher bigots! / Floaters rule! / ...", etc, etc, etc. So, the guy, upon seeing me there, may actually find his conscience slowly creaking into action: "Duh, paint=fun. Paint=wrong? Person=witness. grind grind grind Let person help me; blame him? flip-flop on the negatory Act innocent and leave? boing!" So, it'd be necessary to take decisive action to lull the person into victim stage:

"Hey, fuck-o! You do this stuff?" I'd ask, pointing at the wall.

"Uh, yeah, man... See there? I did that," he'd say, gesturing toward the wall with his spraypaint can. "'Preppies suck!' 'Kill the fags!' 'Etc, etc, etc!' Cool, huh?"

Of course, it would turn out that this'd be the one to kill. "Yeah! Way cool. C'mon, put something else up there. I wanna be a witness to your mastery."

"Huh, gee, thanks. Lemme see. Uh, whooda you hate?"

"Dumb fucks!" I'd cry out gleefully.

"Gawd, you know it. Dumb fucks are just so... er, dumb. Huh-huh!" Then he'd reach his hand up to scrawl the letters amidst the garbledygook of dumbfuck graffiti artists long since past. He's only a relative newcomer. His words are much too large and faint; one needs to stand in the river to admire his artistry. I'd wonder if it's really fair to kill him.

He misspells "fuck". I grab the can from his hand. "Hey, lemme put something up there," I moan plaintively, so eager to deface the cement wall of a bridge no one can see. Then, I'd grab the can upside-down, aim the nozzle upwards and towards the guy's face, and smash him with it. In my dreamlike imagination, the nozzle would puncture his lower lip, and paint would spray up his nose and in his mouth and eyes.

"Hey, watch it," he'd say.

Then I'd whack him upside the head with the can. bong! He'd fall to the ground. Then, it's knife time.

The details of that last part are much too varied and complicated to be repeated here, but I'll let you know the end result -- 206 bones smashed with rocks and a tasty protein-filled meal. Cool, huh?

After all this thinking is done, I'm usually really really tired. When I glance at the clock, of course it's like 4:15am, and then I'm finally ready to go to sleep. Man! Three hours of sleep! Can you believe it?!

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back."

--Leo Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do?

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[Prev | Next]

REMEMBER THE UNiTED STEELWORKERS MARTYRS!
by Captain Moonlight

Remember the United Steelworkers Martyrs! Try crying that at the next rally you attend; most likely the cry will soon be picked up by many of those around you -- people who most likely don't know who the United Steelworkers Martyrs might be, and, chances are, don't care. These people are the kind of people who, if they claimed to be on the other side of the fence, would be the ones to sing loudest the "Star Spangled Banner," and then run off and dodge the draft. They merely do the Revolution lip-service, they do not really feel for what they proclaim. They wish for the Revolution because of what it may do for them, rather than how it would help the masses. These are the true enemies; not the extreme Right, but the hypocrites, those who, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, "professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises." If you truly feel for a cause, go after it! If not, do not lie and bring your own misdeeds down on our heads.

September Seventh marks the one year anniversary of the murders of the United Steelworkers Martyrs, who were killed while on strike outside a National Standard plant in Columbiana, Alabama in 1993. Keith Cain, 22, an employee at the plant for five years, and Walter Fleming, 53, a plant worker for 24 years, were killed by scab Larry Gray, Jr., when the latter ran through their picket-line with his eighteen-wheeler after making a delivery at the strikestricken plant. According to Ray Wood, President of United Steelworker Local 15015, the Union leading the 186-person strike, claimed that Gray "stopped and told a security guard that when he went out, he was going wide open and [would get] anything and anybody in his way." After passing the security gate, the truck accelerated and went about twelve feet wide. Three or four people ran to get out of the way. Fleming was hit while running, while Cain never had a chance: he was sitting with his back to the truck and didn't see it coming until it was too late. Police had repeatedly ignored complaints that scab drivers were running over tables and chairs at the sight and brushing people with their trucks. So, what should the people do when the system fights them? The people should fight the system!

This tragedy of a year since could have been averted had the police set up a protection cordon, or had the security guard on duty held Gray and reported the incident. Unfortunately, authority shall not protect those who wish to change authority; those working within the system cannot change the system for the very reason that the system was set up so as not to change. When those who are supposed to "Serve and Protect" fail in their jobs, and instead Intimidate and Threaten, they must be done away with and replaced.

In Ireland of 1913 conditions were very much like America of 1993 and 1994. But in Ireland, brave men and women rose to the aid of the weary and the oppressed. What is needed in America today is very much like that which was created in Dublin eighty years since. 1913 Dublin was beset by the Great Lock-Out, caused by labour disputes between the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and the bosses led by William Martin Murphy. During this time, due to sympathetic strikes, strikes where members of businesses owned by the same people would strike to support those in another line of business. This led to a general lock-out by the bosses of all workers who belonged to Unions. Places left by the Union workers were filled by scabs and soldiers. During the period which ensued, the police, who were under the control of the bosses (some things never change), clubbed peaceful demonstrations. These batoncharges claimed the lives of two men, with another dying from ill-treatment in prison, and the life of a woman shot to death by a "free-worker" or scab hired to replace the Union-workers. However, when the police and the bosses turned to violence to put down the strikes, the people did not lie down as they do today. When the bosses bit the hand that fed them, the hand that fed them hit back. 1913 saw the birth of the Irish Citizen Army, raised from the oppressed and led by Jim Larkin, President of the ITGWU, the Countess Constance Markievicz, the British Protestant noblewoman recently converted to Socialism, and the Mighty James Connolly, just arrived from Belfast.

The Irish Citizen Army did not lay down and take whatever the bosses decided to dish out. Instead, they fought for the workers throughout their existence until their merger with the Irish Republican Army in 1916. The Irish Citizen Army, while underarmed, fought against the British soldiers and police, not with the Nationalism of the Irish Volunteers, but with the Socialist International ideal and the general love of Freedom of those who lived in the land. It is to this ideal which we must strive.

Were a militia of the Citizen Army calibre in existence in the United States today, such tragedies as the United Steelworkers killings and the invasions by American police into low-income homes such as is currently going on in Chicago would be avoided. Where are the people's protectors? Every group of protectors of the people, from the Black Panthers to the Weathermen, have risen from the oppressed people, from those who truly feel for their cause. Blind patriotism has never won a war, and surface-deep support for the Cause will not move the Cause forward. The best way to remember the memory of the Martyrs is to see that no more Innocents die, and that no more widows must grieve at grave-sides rather than rejoice at new-found Freedom. If there are to be more Martyrs, let us go down fighting for our beliefs and protecting those to whom we have sworn our allegiance, rather than profaning the memories of the dead with catchy slogans which mean nothing. The only way we shall ever win the fight is with men and women devoted body and soul to the ideal of Universal Brotherhood, not with those who merely go with whatever wind blows strongest. Remember the Martyrs, for their life's-blood is the milk which feeds the new-born Babe of Freedom.

For more information on the National Steelworkers Martyrs, please see Les Bayless' article "Picket Line Deaths Spur S-55 Fight" in the Saturday, September 18, 1993 edition of the People's Weekly World (Vol. 8, No. 16; pp. 1, 11), which is, incidentally, where I got my information from. If you cannot find a copy of this, and can contact me, post me and I will relay a copy to you.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[=- POETRiE -=]

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[Prev | Next]

THE DARK MiSTRESS
by Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes

From her lips come promises unfulfilled.
From her eyes spring tears of a thousand miseries.
She wears a mantle of things come and things gone and things yet to be.
She kills men and civilizations.
She is a giver and a taker, a builder and a destroyer.
She is a killer of loves and hates.
She is the Death of all things.
And Time is her name.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist."

--Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Bishop & Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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THE HOUSE OF LONG AGO
by Midnite Scholar

the dying lawn
the rotting trees
the dusty path
the bleached, peeling paint
the creaking, cracking steps
the steps from plank to plank
the caution of a stalking cat
the heavy, solid door
the rusted knob
the scream of
the rusted hinge
the stench
the cold draft on
the cheek
the stagnant time
the ancient dust
the stone hearth
the eternity
the morbid beauty
the broken wing
the dying, porcelain angel
the clouded mirror
the murky reflection
the stranger
the child long forgotten
the cold, dead breeze
the house of long ago
dusty path
the bleached, peeling paint
the creaking, cracking

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"The Solar System has no anxiety about its reputation."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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CANCEROUS LiFE
by Kilgore Trout

scribbled pain on a lying face,
he sits beneath a sycamore tree
oblivious to the demons that surround him.

the grass underneath the boy lies soft and flat,
cushioning his hardened heart. the sky,
clear and periwinkle, darkens as the day
draws nearer. what will he become?

still sprawled out under the sycamore tree,
thirty-one yellow teeth rest by his feet.
the squirrels now have new playthings.

a small, insignificant creature among
billions of others. he is beautiful,
yet unimportant in the scheme of things.
a rotting society awakens his fears.

bleeding gums gnaw at tree bark,
searching for some small amount of
nourishment. he starves and dies.

soon his memory will be nothing more
than a picture in a chest in an attic.
lost and decadent were his actions--
a strangled voice in a sea of imbeciles.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"The warriors arose together, together they met, together they attacked, with single purpose; short were their lives, long the mourning left to their kins- men... in the fight they made women widows, and many a mother with tears at her eyelids..."

--From the Gododdin (Seventh-Century Welsh text)
attributed to Aneirin

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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DONA NOBiS PACEM
by Captain Moonlight

I pick my way among the corpses, blood trickling into my footsteps as I pass by. Here and there a scream, a moan, a cry for help, a cry for Mother, a prayer for Life, a prayer for Death. The Book of Dead Names grows thicker today. I pause, contemplating the body lying at my feet. A large hole, from which the man's life-blood now flows in scarlet streams, shows in his back. Pale flesh shows through tears in the soiled uniform, chestnut-brown hair is seen protruding from beneath the tortoise-shell of a helmet. The young man's right hand is frozen grasping his rifle, his finger still on the trigger as if fighting off the Demons left behind after the fight, the common enemy against which all the Legions of the Dead must fight. My gaze drifts down his left arm, stretched in front of him, which boasts a great scarlet gash from elbow to hand. I watch as a slight sticky trickle of the now-coagulating blood oozes down his hand and splashes the golden ring around his long pale finger, and I think of the wife whom he would never again hold (a blonde? a brunette? a red-head?), as tears escape my eyes. Was her name on his lips as he died, his last words floating away like a Dove to the Heavens as his Soul was carried away by the Valkyries to the great hall of Valhalla (or as it slipped into the dark recesses of Oblivion) or, more likely, was his dying cry for his Momma, thinking of her loving embrace and his infant protection? The sick sensation and pain I have been feeling grows more intense, and I vomit upon this hapless corpse as I think of my own part to this great name-writing for the Book of Dead Names before some Divine Audience. My hand flies to the wound in my stomach, not as superficial as I thought, as I stumble to the ground and fall upon the man's body. Our blood mixes in some strange marriage and, as my Earthly eyes fail I can hear Divine Hosts, crying, or laughing, at Man's folly.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

My youngest son came home today
His friends marched with him all the way
The pipe and drum beat out the time
While in his box of polished pine
Like dead meat on a butcher's tray
My youngest son came home today
And this time he's here to stay

--Eric Bogle, from "My Youngest Son Came Home Today"

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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SPiT: PART II
[to part I]

by Azagoth

Milk white skin caresses book of pulp.
Breach of closure revealing mechanically-crafted falsehoods.
Bow-ing, squint-ing
concentration finds not its salvation!

Desperation permeates
from skin sunken.
Bone defined structure
gropes book ashen.

Fish-hook glance - evil in disguise
Shun the oversized sword, centered in disgust
Darken nimbus stains not the inherently impure air.

Tearing tranquility, the crackle of brittle shell.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"There are many animals in the world which are in human form."

--The Gospel of Philip

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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THE iNEViTABLE
by Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes

Standing on the shore
Staring at the sea
Watching Them come in
They appear at the horizon
Oh, when the Angels are gone
The Demons play
The Old Ones shamble to shore
Humanity must not live
Does not deserve to live
So I, their agent, calmly stare
And as the Gulfs Between the Spheres Beckon
I Answer

The Things come in Human form
Unnoticeable to Their prey
Until, too late, they see the gleam in Their eyes
The Ancient Intelligence
The Incomprehensible
The Unnameable

The Angels have all run away
And left us with the Beast
Which reaches out Its tentacles
And takes part in the feast
The brave are the first to go
The cowards soon behind
The fools! They thought Man had a chance
To out-run the Divine
Lost, in the Darkness of Time
Man stumbles, falls, and dies
Mourned not even by the wind
Forgotten to all but Oblivion
And Humanity was arrogant enough to think it could win!
The Beast licks Its lips and laughs
And falls prey to the Other

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"It was kind of all wrinkled up like beef jerky."

--John Webber, on a human hand found in a
car at the auto-repair shop he manages

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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TORN
by Midnite Scholar

life
and
death
fight for my soul
love
and
hate
both try for my heart
light
and
dark
each want my mind
life and death
love and hate
light and dark
want control of my being
torn
i walk with Pain

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

[=- FiCTiON -=]

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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SEVEN TALES OF SPAM, VOLUME II: FRUiTS OF A FEATHER
by Flying Rat's Nostril

Author's note: If you are by chance wondering what happened to volume one, do not be alarmed. Volume one does indeedly-doodly exist. It was, however, printed under a different name, that being "Mindsweepings." If you don't know what I'm talking about, Do Not Panic. Not having read the first story will in no way effect your understanding of the present one.

PROLOGUE
or
"The Part Before the Actual Story Begins"

Long, long ago -- but not quite as long as the first story -- there were two cavemen. Their names were Coconut and Banana; why they were called that is a total mystery seeing that neither the Coconut nor the Banana had been invented yet. Neither cavemen were bothered by this fact, however, for they had both participated in many debates at P.N.A.U.F.A. (People Named After Uninvented Fruit Anonymous) meetings, finally coming to the conclusion that blue-tongued yaks tasted better than green-tongued yaks. Except, of course, with white wine or Vaseline. That, however, is a story for another time.

Suffice it to say that their names were Coconut and Banana and that they were satisfied.

This tale takes place shortly, to a God, after the first one. A mere thousand years had past, Prometheus had just given man fire, and Hormel, who turned out to be Prometheus' younger, transvestite sister, had just given man Spam.

CHAPTER ONE
"The Nitty-Gritty of Cake Baking
or
Twelve Steps to Better Ice Fishing"

There was a steady, driving, cold, wet, chunky, loud, foul-smelling rain outside the cave. It had come on suddenly, one moment it was clouded over, but dry, the next minute it started to sprinkle, and within an hour it was as if Lorg himself had flushed his toilet. Coconut sat sorrowfully by the door, "Ung-blok-luf-doof-quasilegal-lok-Spam," he said sadly. Which would mean: "Hissssss-Rattle-hiss-sss!" if translated into the language of the Highly- intelligent-if-badly-adapted-Rattle-snake-people of the planet Zxy!?*@PQMANZ157Quang-lek-neeth-Spam3. I have just been informed by Ali- Jamima Jr. speaker of the 3 1/2 sacred tongues of Spam that many people do not speak English, which coincidentally is the language of the Highly-intelligent-if-poorly-adapted-Rattle-snake-people. For those poor, uneducated, mortals who don't speak English, I will henceforth translate all conversation into an English understandable to "those who eat Spam." That being the name that the Highly-intelligent-if-poorly-adapted-Rattle-snake people have conveyed upon us. Now, beginning again:

"By Spam! but I hate the rain," he said sadly.

Banana looked up from his whittling, "It can't rain all the time!" he said, laughing at his own joke. He returned to his carving, missing coconut's baleful stare. And so the day past, Banana mutilating a block of particle board, and Coconut cursing the rain with such common caveman phrases as: "By the Bloody Spork," and "Blessed Jamima, Aunt of the sacred brothers."

The next day was much the same, the rain was there -- still; Coconut was cursing at the before mentioned rain -- still; and Banana was still hacking on his piece of wood.

Several things had changed: first, a shape -- a vaguely curved cylinder with tapered ends -- was emerging from Banana's carving; and fifth, Coconut was now busy losing a game of chess to a pet rock.

Now, you might be in the mind set that it would be quite impossible to lose a game of chess to a pet rock, or that it would be testimony of a person's stupidity. This is a common misconception, but as the name misconception implies, it is false.

In that Era long past, pet rocks were not just small, painted stones that some guy named Joe pasted googly eyes onto. Oh no! In fact, although they tended to look like small, painted stones that some guy named Francine pasted googly eyes onto, they actually belonged to an ancient and enlightened society that had previously discovered the meaning of life, but had forgotten to write it down.

After the fall of their vast and powerful empire, called "The Vast and Powerful Empire of the Paete Qwress" (pronounced pet rocks), they spent most of their time playing chess, and had gotten quite good at it. The Paete Qwress moved a piece (as to how he did this without the use of arms is, quite frankly, none of your business) and uttered a noise not unlike the sound a 1.4 pound piece of pumice would make if it were dropped approximately two feet onto the head of an old man who had dozed off at the diner table.

The Paete Qwress' comment does not translate into anything English, but we will just pretend that it meant, "Check and mate, you Spam-eating fool!"

Coconut knew he had lost the game, and although he did not know what his opponent had said, he did not like the gloating quality in the rock's voice, so he drop-kicked it onto a dusty, and unused shelf. By pure coincidence, the Paete Qwress had been trying to get onto that shelf for several years, and was very happy by this turn of events. Coconut would never know, however, and so was very pleased with himself. The Paete Qwress made a sound not unlike that made by a heavy piece of granite laced with marble falling a great distance and landing on a cat. Similar to: "Meow? . . . Thump!" but not quite. The pet rock's statement, if translated directly, means: "A dancing chicken never wears lingerie in the rain." That, however, makes absolutely no sense at all, so we will ignore its meaning and just pretend that he said, "Ha! you stupid little man! you have made me happy!"

On the other side of the cave, Banana was still working furiously on his particle board. He began to sing softly as he worked. He began on a low, off-key note, "Duhhh." His voice raised and octave, "Duhhh." He raised one more octave, "Duhhh Duhhh-Duhhh!" He dropped down low again, "Bum-Bum, Bum-Bum, Bum-Bum!"

Coconut stumped over unhappily. "My Lorg, will the rain never stop!?"

As if on cue the rain stopped. Coconut cried out happily, ran outside, and began to dance a jig. Just as he was finishing the dance, the clouds burst, sending a torrent of rain down on top of him. Suddenly, a peal of laughter came floating down the hill.

"Damn you to a Spamless hell!" Coconut screamed at the tribal rain dancer, "Lorg will punish you for that!"

Just then, a Paete Qwress came flying over the hill, striking the rain dancer dead moments before the dancer came up with an ingenuously creative comeback which would have saved the world from Glooth (don't worry, I'll explain in a later story).

The rock in question had just beaten the chief of the tribe at chess and said something that sounded like gloating. That particular rock later met another rock who had always wondered what it would be like to kill a rain dancer. In response the rock made a sound surprisingly similar to the one he made striking the rain dancer. Something almost, but not quite like: "Oh yeah! well, . . . Thump!"

In the language known to the Paete Qwress as cheese, this meant: "My cat's breath smells like pu-pu."

That makes perfect sense if you think about it. Which is what the questioning Paete Qwress did, and walked away happy.

CHAPTER TWO
"The Immortal Frog Dancers"

The rain continued for the remainder of the week, which in those days was twelve days instead of seven. Approximately ten years after this tale took place, the population of the world went on strike, that is, they held their breath, until Lorg gave in and shortened the week.

It is a well known fact that withholding oxygen from your brain can cause brain damage and eventually death.

This fact was first discovered during the fight for a shorter week, in which many protesters either died or committed unwitting self-lobotomies. This does, however, explain the condition of many T.V. sports broadcasters.

On the dawn of the third day after the rain stopped, Coconut and Banana were still asleep. By noon, however, they were both awake and contemplating the age old question 'Why does a zebu walk at midnight?'

They never had a chance to determine the true answer, which happens to be Spam cubed, on account of an ear splitting scream from outside the cave.

Both cavemen snapped back to reality, or a close facsimile of it anyway, and ran like Hippies out of an FFA meeting to the source of the scream.

Outside, a treewoman -- women tended to believe that caves were dark and smelly, which they were, and so they preferred to live in trees -- sat cringing on the ground, surrounded by three imposing figures.

Without warning, the three men yelled "Uno . . . dos . . . tres!" and dropped their crushed-bug-purple colored robes.

What they revealed was indeed a terrifying sight. Well, to some at least, and for those of you who like that kind of thing, please keep silent. All three men were naked, totaly, completely, disgustingly naked. Every inch of their bodies, except their heads and a four inch square box that was marked 'for office use only' (I'll let you guess where), was covered with tattoos of small, pink bunnies. These were actually a species of bloodsucking bunnies which were notorious for taking small children and leaving a quantity of multi-colored eggs in their place.

The tattooed men began to dance lop-sidedly around the women, shaking rattles made from human skulls filled with Spam. As to why it made a rattling noise is a long lost secret. The woman screamed and bolted between the dancers, disappearing over a ridge.

Banana and Coconut were not the only ones there, in fact most of the village was there, staring with a kind of fearful awe.

Except, of course, for Coconut. Oh, he was there, as you would know if you were paying attention, but he stared with more of an interested awe than a fearful one.

This irked the Frog dancers to no end. They could not abide anyone not being afraid of them.

They immediately stopped dancing and closed in on Coconut.

Everyone backed away from Coconut, even Banana. The last person who had interrupted an Immortal Frog dance had been Seemore Butts (ha, ha, you perverts). He ended up being Spammed, drowned in distilled Spam juice, for the crime of celibacy. This was just a coincidence, but we hope you will drink "OK" Soda anyway.

One of the Frog dancers was about to clobber Coconut with a zucchini, when the Spam in his rattle suddenly gained a malicious intelligence and devoured him. The others were not phased by this, things like that might not happen every day, but something can happen quite often without happening every day.

The remaining two Frog dancers had started toward Coconut, when one of them suddenly exploded. This was quite shocking, for while that particular had been known for his particularly strong flatulence, nothing like this had happened to him before.

The last remaining Frog dancer dropped to his knees and yelled, "Oh, please spare me great lord!"

This confused Coconut for he had nothing to do with what happened, but he did know an opportunity when it kicked him in the butt, shaved his head, and doused him in gasoline.

He looked down on the Immortal Frog dancer, summoned up all of his dignity (which wasn't much) and said, "I will spare you on one condition!"

"Oh yes, great lord! anything!" exclaimed the Frog dancer, jumping to his feet.

Coconut cleared his voice, "Why are you people called Immortal Frog dancers if you've got tattoos of pink bunnies all over you?"

The Frog dancer jumped to his feet, outraged, "I cannot tell you that! It is the sacred trust of we Immortal Frog dancers!"

In that subtle and crafty method that people you owe money to often use, Coconut called the frog dancer's attention back to the reason he was in debt.

The Frog dancer glanced over to where the now maliciously intelligent Spam had built a rocket out of tinker-toys and was beginning the count down sequence. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He looked at his other companion whose bowels were still burning with a foul, green, putrid, stinking, green (oh wit, I mentioned that already) fire.

He made a small whimpering sound, and finally turned back to Coconut. "All right, all right! I killed him! And I enjoyed it!"

"What?!" asked Coconut perplexed.

"Oh! I mean, All right, all right! I never passed the final exam! I don't know the answer!"

"How did you become an Immortal Frog dancer then?!" demanded Coconut enraged. (Actually he was faking the anger, and pulling it off nicely.)

"Well . . . " said the Frog dancer meekly, whose name was Phill by the way, "I bribed them."

"Really?" asked Coconut, "how much did that cost?"

"Well I got a great deal, it was $122.95 but I got it marked down to $99.95."

"I guess I'll never know, will I?" Coconut asked glumly.

"Well actually," said the Frog dancer, "I can tell you how you can find out.

"You must fix a can of Spam onto your head and run east," he said, pointing to the setting sun.

"If you come upon a turtle, you must tell it, 'I am a squid!' before continuing on you way.

"After five days, you should come upon a forest. Go to the tallest tree you can find and offer it a herring.

"After you have done this, a three foot tall man, who is a spitting image of Fabio will appear. Ask him what two plus two is and he will say five, but in a way that will make you understand."

"That's a lot of trouble just to find out why you people call yourselves the Immortal Frog dancers," Coconut said worridly.

"Well, OK," the Frog dancer admitted, "there is another way. You must think on this question until you know the answer. 'What would you rather have, two tons of latex or two tons of squid legs?'"

EPiLOGUE

It is said that after many years, Coconut did know the answer, and became the tribal medicine man. He was killed at age 32 1/2 when a giant were-chicken attacked the zebu herd. This caused a stampede in which a butterfly was crushed to death.

If the insect had lived, Coconut could have pulled off its wings and boiled them to make an antidote for Spampox. A dreaded disease that he got through a mail-order catalogue. Many historians believe that if he had lived, he could have prevented the horrible fate of Glooth.

Author's note: It has occurred to me that not all of my readers know what a zebu is. Well, if you care . . . look it up, any dictionary worth its Spam will have it.

[to part III]

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

The coffee's too hot out there.

--Richard Anglada, one of the Jurors who awarded $2.9 million to an
81-year-old given third degree burns by a cup of McDonald's coffee

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
by Crux Ansata

Hello. My name is Ansat. No, I'm a WeatherPerson, a member of the Weather Underground. We aren't 'Weathermen' anymore. Some idiot up the line decided that to allow any women messed up enough to want to die beneath the Pig's clubs alongside us was preferable to having the negative publicity of being "sexist." We weren't "sexist;" let me tell you from experience, seeing a sister crushed or bleeding in the street hurts a hell of a lot more than seeing the same happen to a brother. But I digress.

I've come to speak here to dispel something. I've seen the Weather Underground attacked by Left and Right alike as violent warmongers. Yes, it's true we've gone to protests with clubs and chains. Yes, it's true we've been known to provoke cops with such literary greats as "ONE TWO THREE FOUR WE DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR" or "PIGS EAT SHIT." Perhaps I should start with myself.

I didn't join the Weathers because I like to hurt cops. I don't. Every blow I land hurts, but it needs to get laid. They're humans too, man! Prisoners of the same system. I didn't join due to the ideology. I know people who joined because they are willing to die for what they believe. In my own way, I respect that. I just don't do it myself. I joined because of Bobbi.

Bobbi was perfect. I don't just mean her angel's face, or her body, or how she was in bed. I don't just mean her personality, either, although there was something to that. She was always the one helping whoever needed it. No, the important part is her ideology. When her friends were reading Marx, she was reading Gandhi, and really grokking it.

She was a pacifist. She opposed the war. She really loved people -- all people. She was active opposing the war in the community and all, but when she heard about Chicago, she thought they were on to something. She seemed truly to think that if the world could be told what was wrong, they would stop 'Nam.

I don't know how she scraped together enough to make the trip. Hell, I don't know how I pulled it off, and I had more Materialistic Kipple to liquidate. I'd never had any of those delusions about poverty being good. Anyway, we got it together and went up. She was going to meet up with other pacifists and they were going to set all right with the world. They would overcome. I just wanted to be with her. No one expected Daley's welcoming party.

She met up with her group, and they started chanting. Most of them were TMers, and the others were giving it a go. I guess they figured with the Phil Ochs music and Yippies screwing in the woods there were enough good vibes to meet Nirvana. Then they let the Pigs loose.

It's all chaos after that. There was a lot of running and screaming, and the chanters were all across the park. Bobbi and most of here group just stayed. Then the tear gas began. Protesters of all types were running past by then, and the yellow cloud was chasing them like something out of a nuclear apocalypse flick. The protesters went around the pacifists. The tear gas went right into them. By this point half the group had fled. I was thinking that wasn't so bad an idea, but I wasn't going to desert Bobbi.

'Bout that time I spotted that Concerned Clergymen group. They were singing and praying and handing out water soaked napkins, some sort of low cost chemical warfare defensive gear. I started taking some over to her group.

Needless to say, those napkins didn't work for long, and I was a one man bucket brigade bridging the gap between the groups. That was the only reason I didn't get there in time. I was on about the third or fourth returning trip, about sixty feet from her, when the Pigs hit. And hit. And hit.

It's hard to be forewarned when you can't see for the gas and the tears and you can't hear for the bullhorns and the screams of, and for, fallen comrades. That, and she was in front. She said she wasn't afraid. She couldn't see the cops going after people who were just chanting. The Yippies or the SDS sure, she could see the police arresting a few of them, the leaders and the agitators. But she was doing no wrong. But she was wrong.

Then, though, no one saw Chicago coming. America became a lot less innocent then. The police and Mayor Daley took the Left's Virginity, and laid us waste.

All that aside, though, it still seems in my fuddled memory almost as if they purposely aimed for her. She was without a doubt one of the first to go down. Most of the others were scrambling away, and most of the handful that stayed I'm sure would have fled had they not been felled.

And you know what? No one was protecting them. The girl I loved was lying bloody beneath Chicago's finest, and no one cared. Except the Weathermen. I don't know why the pacifists just deserted her. I suppose if a thug kills you you get good Karma and aren't resurrected as a cockroach or a precious Mao button to be distributed to the poor in the Region of Thud. Either way, they let her go down. Then a Weather unit showed up.

This was before we were so armed. Or I should say "they"; I wasn't one yet. They came out of the mists and put their bodies between the pigs and the wounded, and they pushed back while the Concerned Clergymen dragged off the bodies. I didn't care about their politics, only their actions. They were fighting for the oppressed, against losing odds. They were doing right.

I know I should have stayed with her. I know I should have cradled her head while she died. But I couldn't just kiss her goodbye, just watch her bleed. I was up with the Weathermen, pushing back. We held them back long enough that it took forever to find out where those priests had spirited her off to. After we withdrew, one of the Underground helped me to find her.

So that's why I'm a Weather Person. I do not want to see another boyfriend have to identify a bloody carcass that once was the most beautiful girl to ever float across the ground in a makeshift morgue in an elementary school. I don't want another person to have to notify distraught parents that their Government had clubbed their little girl to death in a defense of their freedom to be drafted, their freedom to see their babies shipped halfway across the world to kill another family's babies.

Think of that next time the news shows angry protesters battling the police. If we are fighting the Pigs, its just because we hope to protect someone who needs it. If we're chanting against the Kops, its so that they beat us and not the pacifists. Not the priests. Not the angels.

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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THE TWiST
compiled by Gore BrainRot

[Editor's note: This document has been left in its original format, since it was originally a grouping of posts on a BBS to keep its raw feel.]

CHAPTER ONE

Unexpectedly the typewriter at Watson's right hand turned into a huge roach with a talking anus for a mouth. "HOLMES!! The owls are not what they seem" hissed the typewriter.

Watson started mooing likea bull in heat and ripped off a whore's face and to everyone's surprise she was really Franz Kafka. William S. Bourroughs walked into the room with a hand gun and proceeded to put a golden apple on Holmes's head.

BLAM! Watson came out of his drug induced hallucination and realized that two things, one was that when Holmes lights that special incense of his strange things happened and secondly that Kafka was really Dr. Moriaty in disguise. His first shot had missed Holmes because Moriaty had a bad crack habit and was in need of a fix and thus his hands were shaking. Holmes still thinking that Moriaty was Kafka says, "Interzone, Internet, Interfuck." Watson stabs Moriaty in the heart with one of Holmes' empty syringes. The air bubble in his heart killed him instantly. Suddenly there is a loud whirring noise from outside the small English residence and the room began filling with Cybermen.

Watson turns to jump out of the only window in the room but comes face to face with Aeon flux standing there gun in hand, but its all right she is already dead in this episode. She was impaled on a coat hook. Watson flies through the side door onto the street and gets into his 1990 jaguar and drives away. He then realizes that cars have not been invented and he is having an opium flashback, and the entire time he thought he was driving away he was standing in the living room making car sounds and hacking the hookers head off.

He then put the bloody axe in Sherlock's dead hands and said, "Solve this one mother fucker!"

Immpossibly, just as those words left his mouth, Holmes jumped up and raped Watson. Holmes screamed into Watson's ear, "SQUEAL LIKE A PIG! BOY, SQUEAL LIKE UH PIG!"

Then Odorous awakens!

Odorous Urungus then came to and realized that dream was the strangest jack off fantasy he had ever had! He felt so ashamed that he cut his penis off, strange thing though, his girlfriend never noticed!

Virgo cried all night when Odorous told her the problem... She didn't cry because he cut his dick off... but she cried because he never told her the truth... and because this was one of the few times a year that he comes over... Then Virgo recovered quickly and decided to seek out this strange Sherlock Holmes that Odorous kept babbling about.

She put on her standard floppy hat, patchwork jacket and bell bottoms headed out for the main street. The rain was cold and blew hard against her shaking body and she trudged through garbage and mud puddles, her glasses were useless and the rain filled them with droplets of blindness.

At once she saw a light.

Silacious Crumb and Peter Pendragon in the Awful Green Rice Rocket. Having been to another raucous party and quite drunk, the two intrepid adventures traveled down the road towards the lonely Virgo. As they rounded the bend, there stood poor unfortunate Virgo, frozen stiff in the light like a stunned opossum.

And then the drunken Peter Pendragon said, "Where the hell are we?"

With a confident smile Silacious turned him and said, "You wanna see something scary?" As the two raced down the road at break neck speeds, our heroin stands in the road stunned and contemplating.

Quickly she exclaims "Where's my compass? I need my compass!" North, East, South, West. N)ever E)at S)hredded W)heat

She remembered the proper way of remembering directions, as taught by JENNEr, just as Aeon flux pushes Virgo out of the way of the Awful Green Rice Rocket at the last instant. But, much to her dismay, Aeon is smashed flat by the Awful Green Rice Rocket. Her automatic resurrection device activates and revives here there on the spot, but as soon as she stands up, a large Little Debbie Snack Cakes van hits her from behind. The van ended up smashing her flatter than before. She gets up again fully healed ( what would she do without her resurrection device?) Little did she know, she had staggered next to the railroad crossing. She was still slightly dazed from the double- resurrection when a train ran off its tracks flies thorough the air, hurtling directly through here upper abdominal area (a record Aeon Flux has died three times in one episode.) And then the screen fades black and a picture of a golden apple fills the screen and a hollow metallic voice says "Enter Universal Access Number now!"

"Enter Universal access number now!" A hollow metallic voice repeated. Virgo, in a frequent but small bout of mental incapacity, screamed into the fog "Is JOHN LENNON THERE?"

By the time she thought about what she had said, and what made her decide to say it, it was too late. Another metallic voice came to here from the nothingness of her mind and said, calmly, but somehow unsure of itself, "The Walrus was Paul"

By that time her small but frequent bout of mental incapacity (usually called a brain fart) ended and she reentered into the faux- reality that was her life.

She decided to ignore (as she always does) her mindless babbling and continue on the search of this Holmes or Watson or Bobbitt guy, whoever had removed (at least what Mr. U calls it) Won Eyed Willy the Wonder Worm (HEY ROCKY! yes Bullwinkle? You wanna see me pull a one eyed purple headed worm out of my pants? NOT AGAIN!), A.K.A. the Paynissssss of Odorous Urungus (NOT THE GWAR GUY, that's the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu).

She crossed the thin line between the not-so-nice-side-of-town and the not-quite-as-nice-as-the-not-so-nice-side-of-town and knew, where she was, there was only one or two other places not-quite-as-nice as where she is so she was relieved that she was not completely at the bottom.

Off in the distance she spots another light through the dark tunnel of buildings and fog. She approaches it (for unlike certain Awful Green Rice Rockets, this light was not hurtling towards her at warp speed) and she discovered (much to her non-dismay) it was Theopholus's Milk Bar/Laundromat/ Convenience Store/Penis Relocation Detective Agency.

She cautiously opens the door and walks into a typical cinderblock building that most junior food stores, cheap bars and crack houses are constructed to resemble (all to the masters plan.) She politely walks up to the girl behind the counter in her best Lisa Loeb walk, or shall I say glide, and says "I am looking for a penis." in slightly confused manner.

The girl straightens the paper cap on her head on says, "Aren't we all honey, but I think I know what you mean."

She gestures to the back room. She walks up to a large wooden door marked private. Sauntering enter the room, her expression changed to the best I have lost a penis and want to find it expression, to match her walk. She sees a large room brightly lit with banks of computers and penis detection equipment lining the walls. A well dressed man sitting behind a large antique desk acknowledges her presence with a almost nonexistent nod. She notices the autographed picture of Lorena Bobbit on the desk and a copy of 'Penis Finders Today' on the desk open to page 25.

In an almost trance like state she says, "I am looking for a penis" She decides that the man sitting behind the resembles "mother" form the avengers.

He says "How can I help you young lady?" Apparently not hearing her previous statement.

Suddenly she feels her face flush and her temperature raise about 10 degrees. "The wall, the walls are...they are stretching and groaning and bending and warping," she thinks outloud to "Mother" behind the desk," and moving in towards me." Her voice was getting higher as she spoke.

She tries to focus on the man in front of her only to see his face is also warping and distorting as if she is in a huge oven.

His warping face manages to make the words float to her, "Dontcha just hate it when this happens! I always have to get my desk revarnished after things like this!"

The woman who showed her in abruptly grabs the back of the chair and Virgo realizes she is in a wheel chair. She is wheeled down a dark hall, voices whisper to her out of the darkness. She hears a hysterical laugh somewhere in the distance, and is comforted by these somehow familiar surroundings.

Instantly all is black. She wakes up in a white room in a white bed very peacefully, though feeling as if a train wreck had taken place in her head.

She starts to get up and leave when the covers fall back and reveal that she is now the proud owner of Odorous......

Virgo for an instant slips into a parallel universe. Well it seemed like an instant to the people from where she left but to her it was a lot longer. How much longer she knows not, just that the events that happened there changed her life and her perceptions of it for ever. She was in a room, a bedroom with a four poster bed. The floor and bed was lined with silk, sheets on the bed, pillows on the floor. Then Aeon Flux enters the room with a risk game and they play for hours.

---

[Compiler's Note: All Copyrighted names appear without permission and are not intended to mislead the reader that these names are licensed for use in the story.

This story is made up of posts from the National Midget Resistance (205)478-5152 and compiled by Gore BrainRot (sysop of the Erisian Liberation Front (205)343-8335) @4120 WWIVnet

I would like to thank the following for allowing this story to be submitted: Bacchus, JENNEr, S'pange, Baphomet (sysop NMR), Virgo, Silacious Crumb, Gore Brainrot (me), Aeon Flux, Hardo, Yellow Pocket Change, >UNKNOWN<

Thanks to one and all.]

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

"If a God has made this world, I should hate to be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart."

--Arthur Schopenhauer

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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THE GRAVE-SiDE POOL
by Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes

Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless, Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless; Little white flowers will never awaken you, Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you, Angels have no thought of ever returning you. Would they be angry if I thought of joining you, Gloomy Sunday!

--From "Gloomy Sunday", by Laszlo Javor, Sam M. Lewis, and Rezso Seress

Catherine had just turned eighteen when Robert was killed. A "freak accident" they called it, an "act of God", but were it an act of God it was an act of a very cruel God indeed, for they were to have been married not a fortnight after Robert died; now, instead of the Bride's white she would be wearing the black of deep mourning, a colour reserved for those thrice her age; instead of tossing a bouquet to her laughing friends she would be tossing one on her fiancee's coffin.

For days after he was interred Catherine was hardly seen but in the cemetery, either praying beside his grave or walking the path which runs the dark pool in the grave-yard's centre, near-blinded by her tears. This pond was an ancient one, fed by cold-water springs somewhere deep below the still surface, existing even in Pagan times when this was rumoured to be a sacrificial spot, re-consecrated for more holy uses by the Christian missions who founded the cemetery. Indeed, a child is said to have found a stone with strange carvings etched by primitive hands while playing along the water's edge, a stone which, when seen by the village Deacon while strolling in the market square, was snatched and ground underfoot with such force so as to frighten the child into fleeing from the kindly man for fear of life and Soul. However, such strange legends and stranger facts are, so as to retain sanity, usually ignored by the villagers in these parts; they who prefer to live the guarded and sane lives lived by their ancestors before them.

On the Sunday after Robert's interring, as Catherine walked her path along the pool's edge, Catherine stopped to gaze into the pool's depths, and suddenly the still waters were disturbed by new-fallen tears for there, gesturing towards her, was Robert, imprisoned beneath the glass-like surface. Upset by the hallucination, Catherine pressed her hands to her eyes until sharp needles of pain went through them and yet, upon opening, there was Robert, still just out of reach beneath the pools surface, crying out to her. His wails, though urgent and insisting, fell silent on her ears, for upon death ties of communication had been severed between them and, despite the love between them, despite her longing to understand, nothing could make this denizen of the Living understand the speech of the Dead.

Day after day she returned to the pool, where she stayed, pining with grief, until it was too dark to see the Shade and his desperate pleading anymore, and day after day she went home her face tear-streaked, her eyes reddened. As the days drew on, with the couple's futile attempts to communicate, the villagers discussed among themselves the dilemma of Catherine's insanity ("Ever since that man o' her's died she's been over at that there pond acryin' away -- 'tain't healthy"), and they mutually decided that, for her own safety, she must be detained. So, on the Friday following Robert's first appearance, Catherine's grieving parents arranged for a twenty-four hour watch on her door. Thus Catherine was left to weep in her room and ponder the tearful spectre's message.

At about one or two o'clock in the morning the Sunday following Robert's appearance, Catherine entered into a purple shrouded dream, sent as if in answer to her tearful ponderings. She dreamt that, as she walked along the side of the pool peering into the depths, Robert suddenly joined her and, whispering into her ear that which she must do to be able to interpret that which in all her vigils she could not and, upon awakening, she determined to carry out that which she now knew she must do. Sneaking past the sleeping guard, she hurried out to the cemetery where, upon making sure there were no observers and no worry of "saving", she cast herself amid the waters of the ancient pool, and never again saw the light of this World.

The following Sunday her bloated body was found by the sexton floating gently upon the surface of the pool as he skimmed Autumnal leaves from the dark surface. She was buried shortly thereafter in the plot beside Robert in the old cemetery, her burial shortly being succeeded by that of the negligent guard who awoke several nights after the finding of the body to the insistent knockings of a masked mob upon his door, a mob carrying a stout hemp rope which would be the last thing he would feel.

They are together now, living in a World of which waking men know nothing, speaking in that language known only to Dreamers, Mystics, and Necromancers, as they are bound by ties which are stronger than marriage, which last longer than "till death do us part."

--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--

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