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___ ___ ___
/\ \ /\ \ /\__\ the glorious hogs of entropy
\:\ \ /::\ \ /:/ _/_ present unto you
\:\ \ /:/\:\ \ /:/ /\__\ issue #173
___ /::\ \ /:/ \:\ \ /:/ /:/ _/_
/\ /:/\:\__\ /:/__/ \:\__\ /:/_/:/ /\__\ >> "dwindle dwindle dwindle" <<
\:\/:/ \/__/ \:\ \ /:/ / \:\/:/ /:/ / by -> cstone
\::/__/ \:\ /:/ / \::/_/:/ / n
\:\ \ o \:\/:/ / \:\/:/ / t oink you, pal.
\:\__\ g \::/ / f \::/ / r
\/__/ s \/__/ \/__/ o p y
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Tae likes his job. LIP pays him well; it pays his bills, is adequate
for his alcohol habit, and it pays for a rather nice one-bedroom,
four-hundred square feet apartment in the lowest level of a block building
in Itasca.
block buildings are Itasca, Illinois's answer to its former surplus
of ghost shopping towns, the remnants of the former booming economy in that
area that frightened all the money elsewhere. they are dark primer-colored
buildings three stories high with four identical four-hundred square feet
apartments seemingly impossibly crammed on each floor.
as Tae walks among the dozens of rows of block buildings to reach his
this evening, he is careful not to trip over the rubber -- and
neoprene-reinforced bundles of coaxial cable run in series from one block
building to another. cuts in the cable are not a significant problem
anymore; there is a SunComm repair team camped in a block building apartment
for every three rows of thirteen buildings each in this area. cuts get
serviced in less than ten minutes.
home entry authentication in august, 2000, in the block buildings,
has advanced to retinal scans. Tae sticks his face close to, but not
touching, the face-shaped mold built into the wall near his door. someone
has drawn a New Age Movers symbol, a reverse swastika, in pencil above the
scanning panel. Tae ignores it.
after Tae enters his apartment, his computer monitor switches on
(his computer is on all the time) while the door automatically closes. Tae
takes a beer from the dirty green exterior, clean white interior
refrigerator and sits down at the computer to read this week's LIP.
LIP is Life In Print, the recently rated #1 webzine of 1999.
subscriptions are only $5 a year, and they have over ten million customers.
their most read column this month is "Grunge Revive Jive," one of the
columns that Tae is in charge of.
Tae's full name is Taema Nonai. he has been on the very
distinguished LIP editorial staff for six years now, even back to the
non-pay non-web days. now Tae's life is good, yes, but as he reads the
reviews for the Paperthins' "life is good," the painfully obvious but not
picked up on subliminal message that life wasn't perfect enters his
subconcious. Tae is good at ignoring his subconcious, though.
Tae turns off the monitor via the manual switch. finds the yellowing
beer -- and coffee-stained pages of laser-printed copies of LIP in a box
near the rarely-used old-style analog television, mixed in with check pay
stubs and hardcopy drafts of old LIP editorials.
december, 1994 -- LIFE IN PRINT -- yeah, so fuck off
1. "smells like he's dead" (finally) -- peoplekiller
2. "can't buy feelings, baby" -- lisa
3. "spit me out, eat me" -- evil_light
(etc.)
Tae carries his beer and the zine to the bed, and sits, back against
the wall, and reads there, for a good two hours. he devours every old LIP
he can find.
reads a method of communication that is not funded by currency but by
motivation, (or the lack of it, in some cases), of a passion that moves
people to express themselves in any way they can.
perhaps the fact that the difference between LIP now and then is so
great carries so many feelings of disillusionment and disappointment is the
reason why Tae has willfully stayed on this long, happy. he was never at
the very apogee of the LIP chain, even in the print days; he was friends
with the original editor, friends with every editor since, even during the
sale.
the emotion that hides behind the words in the zine that Tae is
reading is not hidden or changed like the new LIP; it is still there. Life
In Print is suddenly lively again, to him, the ideas of difference and
observing, criticizing trends instead of setting them are returning. change
returns.
Tae is in charge of the entire music section of Life In Print. he
has live access to the webpages, and he is the one responsible for editing
content.
perhaps (although not incredibly likely) it is the single beer in
Tae's empty stomach, but more likely it is the revival of seeing pure
instead of edited emotion that brings him to his conclusion. everyone else
is going to see how LIP used to be, to see this emotion in the form of
writing.
Tae gets another beer. turns the monitor back on. finds an
old-style floppy disk labeled "LIP9396" and sticks it in the computer.
luckily enough, his label is accurate, and he is now looking at the
december, 1994, issue of Life In Print. Tae opens the beer and takes a
long swig.
Tae logs in to the LIP web server remotely, and takes down the
current articles, deletes them all. quickly substitutes the old issues of
LIP, august-december, 1994. they're out. again. people can see them. Tae
takes another long swig. Tae realizes his happiness now is greater than it
was just three hours ago. Life In Print may not be in print (it never
regularly has been), but it is more lifelike.
of course, this didn't last. the ten million customers of LIP
weren't moved, impressed, the way Tae was. Grunge Revive Jive was gone.
that was the issue.
of course, what appealed to the ten million customers of LIP appealed
to the entire heart of LIP. they didn't even bother to call him, give him
the courtesy call to say that he'd been fired. they locked him out of the
LIP server, and Grunge Revive Jive's friendly-but-sassiness was back, in
less than two hours; the colors, the splashes of light on the screen
welcomed the eager customers; the coldness, worries, passionate, raw text,
the roots, were gone. Taema Nonai was gone.
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* (c) HoE publications. HoE #173 -- written by cstone -- 12/30/97 *