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Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine Volume II, Issue 35, Year AD MCMXCVII Monday, September 1st, 1997 ISSN 1482-0471 ------------------------------------------- "I go to school to muse at what teachers find worthy of regurgitation." -- Colin Barrett Taken from The Globe and Mail. Labour Day, September 2, 1996. ------------------------------------------- FROM WEEKLY TO BY-WEEKLY Here at CoN we decided that with school starting, the pressure from work and other situations, to change CoN's distribution from weekly to bi-weekly. Although it saddens us, since we won't be able to provide our readership the fine material that appears on CoN, we unfortunately need more time for our busy lives. That is, unless some rich corporation decides to hire us full time allowing us to dedicate ourselves completely to CoN. But that will never happen. Hopefully with this reduced number of issues we'll be able to boost the quality (and the grammar) of future releases and perhaps even increase what we offer. We pray, in a not too far distant time in the future, that we'll be able to return to our weekly distribution while still maintaining everything that our readership has grown to like. Please send us any comments or questions you might have regarding this change at con@capnasty.org. CAPITAL OF NASTY STAFF ------------------------------------------- When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago. ------------------------------------------- 1. The Grim Factoids 2. Law School Welcome 3. Random thoughts 4. A new look at spam ------------------------------------------- This week's Golden Testicle award goes to Christian Bikers Riding accross Colorado for the love of Jesus http://www.enol.com/~jyeoman/ ------------------------------------------- 1. The Grim Factoids by Gard E Abrahamsen Ladies and Gentlemen, readers of Spontaneously Combusted Literature, Capital of Nasty, Twilight World and surfers of the Scriba Org web server. Scriba Org's presence on the Internet has so far been possible through the good will of a handful of people in Toronto. The previous Internet connection was, however, of the understanding that it was temporary, and that I'd take the server with me when I moved to Georgia. Now the server has been moved, and through the lack of contacts in the area, the server is now with a commercial ISP in Smyrna (just west of Atlanta, south of Marietta). This, of course, means that like any other non-profit organization, in order to stay online, Scriba Org needs to make money. You are not required to, but asked very kindly, to donate a handfull of money to Scriba Org in order to keep it online. It costs us US$320 per month to stay online, which is not much for the many, but a lot for the one. (Especially when the one doesn't have money to live on) By supporting Scriba Org, you secure the continued presence of fine literature such as Spontaneously Combusted Literature, Capital of Nasty and Twilight World on the Internet, and at the same time give the organization enough time to find new ways of funding its continued existence. You may send US checks or money orders to: Gard E Abrahamsen <gard@scriba.org> 3189 Sasanqua Lane Marietta GA 30008 USA You can also wire funds directly to Gard's account at Bank: Nations Bank Routing: 061000052 Account: 325 934 2683 Canadians may send Canadian checks to: Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro <leandro@scriba.org> 322 Strathmore Blvd. Toronto, ON M4J 1P8 CANADA Please mark your fund transfers "Scriba Org Donation." Thank you. Our continued operation is dependent on your goodwill. You can subscribe to Spontaneously Combusted Literature by sending a message to scl@scriba.org and put the word "subscribe" in the subject line. You can subscribe to Capital of Nasty by sending an empty message to join@capnasty.org. You can subscribe to Twilight World by sending a message to twilight.world@scriba.org and put the word "subscribe" in the subject line. ------------------------------------------- 2. Law School Welcome by Dean W.S. Prosser (For many, school starts tomorrow.. have fun -Ed) The following is a welcoming speech purportedly delivered by Dean William S. Prosser to his freshman law students. It is my duty to welcome you all to the Law School of the University of Minnesota. It has been my custom to greet the entering class by asking each one of you to look at the man on his left, and at the man on his right. I ask you to do that now. Take a good look, and impress the features of each man on your memory. Next year, all three of you will not be here. I always wonder why students come to study law. As I gaze into the faces now before me, that wonder becomes amazement. I do not know what business, what trade, what hard labor your faces suggest to me, but it is not the law. There is nothing legal about them. They fill me with revulsion approaching nausea. Some of you are here because your fathers are willing to spend the money for three more years in the university. That money would be better spent on drink. Some of you are obviously here because you are looking for a place to sleep. This is not the place. There is not a comfortable bench in the building. I have tried them all. Some of you, the female students, are all too evidently here for biological reasons. Of that I most emphatically disapprove. I warn you that no biological activities will be tolerated in this school. Some of you do not even know why you are here. I am sure that I cannot tell you. There are other institutions for morons, for criminals, for alcoholics, and for the mentally deranged. There is still time to seek them out, and I urge you to do so before it is too late. There may be a few of you, perhaps four or five, who are normal human beings and capable of making an intelligent choice, but who have come here through ignorance, or misinformation or aberration or folly. To them I have this to say: Abandon the idea. Go away. Dig ditches. Drive garbage trucks. Clean sewers. Go back into the army. Even teach. But do NOT study law. If you do, you will rue it. You will work long hours of the day and of the night. You will read thousands of incomprensible, written by incompetent judges, and endeavor in vain to understand them. For three years you will get no sleep. You will have no time to eat. Above all you will have no fun. No one has any fun here, not even I. You will slave for three years like the beasts of the field, and in the end you will fail. All of our students fail. If you do not fail in this school, you will fail in the bar examinations. All of our students fail in the bar examinations. And if you do not fail, you will not find employment. There is no employment to be found in the law. The legal profession is saturated. It is crammed. It is overflowing with graduates of this and other law schools--for there are other law schools, for reasons that I do not know--Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Iowa, Arkansas, Idaho, even Yale. Out of 20 men in our last graduating class, seven are now working in filling stations, five are selling popcorn, four are shoveling ashes, two and one-half are in jail, and one man is playing the piano. I have heard him, and he does not play it well. If you try to practice law you will be extremely unhappy. It is a dismal and distressing trade. You will be brought into contact with clients. They are dishonest, corrupt, unrefined, bad-tempered, ill- mannered, disagreeable, and above all unremunerative. You will not be able to earn a living. According to figures complied by Professor Llewellyen, the average income of the lawyers in Minnesota for the last 10 years, that is, before the payment of state and federal income taxes, was sixty-four dollars and eighty-three cents. Your wives--if any of you are ever so foolish to marry, which I sincerely trust that none of you will ever do--your wives will be forced to take in washing, or driven to a life of shame. Your children will starve. The cemetaries of Minnesota are filled today with the emaciated bodies of lawyers' children who have died of starvation. I urge you to consider before it is too late what be your feelings if one of those fragile little bodies should some day be your child? Now we will pause, and there will be soft music while you reflect on what I have said. (Flute: Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground.) I do not mean to be unduly discouraging. In the practice of law, there is always room for a good man at the top. Sometimes even for two good men. But in this school we have not had a good man in the last 31 years. I welcome you to the Law School of the University of Minnesota. My office is open for the cancellation of registrations. Will some of you in the back please carry out the men who have fainted? The assignment for tomorrow will be the first 168 pages of my casebook on real property. ------------------------------------------- 3. Random thoughts by Leandro+ My computers are still acting up. I managed to get the Pentium to work, but now my CD-ROM is "not found". What gives? My 486 on the other hand made it clear: it needs a format and a complete re- installation of everything. Having mentioned that I had formatted my Linux box and installed Windows '95 got quite the response: Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 09:55:18 -0700 (PDT) To: leandro@capnasty.org From: David Welton Subject: capnasty I decided to format my Linux machine and install Windows '95 because I desperately needed a working computer. Errr, your logic is less than straightforward here. Linux works, Windoze does not. Linux is a multiuser, multitasking operating system with advanced features such as protected memory. The Linux box I set up a week ago at work reports this uptime: 9:35am up 7 days, 20:28h, 6 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 In other words, after I set it up, it has not been shut down or crashed. After a week of continuous use with lots of processing and buggy programs such as netscape. This is quite normal - many users report uptimes of weeks, months, and even years, in some cases. Can Windoze do that? And host multiple users? And work as a loaded server? So, knowing you (Leandro) to be a fairly intelligent guy (evidence - you did have a linux box:-), I assume you probably meant 'I needed a computer with certain tools on it'. While Linux has most of the basic tools one would want (WP, spreadsheet, database, financial programs, graphics, etc...), they are more readily available for Windoze. So... use Linux, Windoze, Mac, Amiga, VMS, FreeBSD, SysV UNIX, or whatever, but don't make spurious claims about them. No, Windows can't do that. However Linux doesn't like to connect to Windows NT, the servers that we have at work used for the dial-up. I've been trying for several months now to get it to connect, with the same results: nothing happens. I guess with the fact that I have no more time lately, the luxury of Windows '95 for me is that it connects to the WinNT servers, and although it turned my Pentium into a 8086, it works (kinda) for the time being. Shortly after that I got an e-mail from Robin Miller who pointed out that "Maybe you need a Macintosh??" Maybe. I thought about buying a Mac, since my negative feelings toward the two machines sitting on my desk had grown quite profound. However, what's the difference? Computers are prone to breaking down, no matter if they are a Mac or an IBM compatible. I don't want to start an OS war. I personally prefer IBM compatibles. They're cheaper (price and at times quality as well) and I can run Microsoft software or Linux. I prefer the latter but I can't connect to the Internet, so I'm stuck with Windows '95 which is nothing more than a rip-off of the original X-Windows system. Mac users shouldn't snear at Win users: where do you think your Windows interface came from? Before I leave you, I just wanted to let you know that Colin has updated all of the pages on our site. Although we still have quite a bit of work ahead of us, it looks pretty good. Let us know what you think. ------------------------------------------- 4. A new look at spam by morbus Got a spam in my mail today. Oh, not any old spam. Well, okay, I lied. It was like every other spam from the Internet. "Would you like to make more money." Yeah, sure, we all do. DELETE. Oop, what's this. Some little kid is collecting pen caps? What the hell? He wants my chewed up pen caps? Yeah, right. DELETE. Nice letter from myself saying that I've been online too long... hmm... DELETE. And what's this? More spam! As we all now, unless we have nice filtering software (which AOL really doesn't) then this is what our mail is like everyday. Scan, delete, scan, delete... Sometimes, we get so good with the delete key that we lose our real mail. If only there was some sort of cost to spamming, like snail mail companies have to pay for all that cellophane they use to highlight our mispelled name. Since I know that won't happen, can't spammers at least make it a little more fun? Like maybe instead of offering a better job or "hey! come visit www.more$$.com," maybe they could offer 1000 cats, or a new car if you sell your soul. The least they could do is make their life a little more exciting by making out some weird mail with the subject line "God Wants Your Money." I know I would respond to something like that. And maybe these destitute little kids with their new email program would actually get more friends because of the responses. Who knows? I'm just another "sick and tired holding down the delete key oop there goes my college acceptance letter" person who wishes that things would change. But, hey, I've been wishing for an all marshmallow cereal for a long time and that dream hasn't come true. Maybe I could start a petition through email.... c 1997 disobey - http://www.disobey.com Appeared in The Magnetic Times (07/01/97) This article appears courtesy of morbus