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            $$$ $$$                                doomed to obscurity
            


   $ $    $sssssssss  .s%&$$""$&%s.        issue twenty-nine
  .s%&$$""$....$ $....$           


    $  $    `$         october 6, 1999
  $......$  $::::$ $::::$  $$$$ $.....$  $.....$
  $::::::$  $::::$ $::::$  $......$ $:::::$  $:::::$   "Liquor and guns, the
  $||||||$  $||||$ $||||$  $::::::$ $|||||$  $|||||$  sign says quite plain;
  $iiiiii$  $iiii$ $iiii$  $||||||$ $iiiii$  $iiiii$    somehow life goes on
  $$$$  $!!!!$ $!!!!$  $iiiiii$ $!!!!!$  $!!!!!$  in a place so insane."
  `"Y$$$ss$$$ `"Y$$ss$$$Y"' `"Y$$ss$$Y"'          - Uncle Tupelo

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 "dto is back"
 by Murmur and Jamesy

        Just like back in the good old days, we had to go through hell to get
 this issue out, just to make our readers happy.  And a lot of our readers
 are brand-new readers!  So we wanted to make this an extra-special issue.

        We're not sure if it's really extra-special, but we do think it's a
 pretty good representation of what doomed to obscurity has been for a long
 time.  And not been for a long time - this is our first new issue in almost
 eighteen months.  What the hell took us so long?

        We both wrote pieces this month that hopefully speak for themselves.
 "Writer's Block" is a little different from "I'm a Big Fag", but the
 sentiment is, well, similar.  The fact is, it was time for some of us to
 write again, even if we weren't quite sure what we were going to write
 about.  It might be time for some others to write again.  We hope so,
 because we've missed dto.  We've felt there was something special there, and
 we think it's high time it came back.

        You'll notice that there doesn't seem to be all that many pieces this
 issues.  There's two reasons for that.  First, we're trying to keep the size
 of the issues down in the 70-80k range, which seemed to be fairly ideal for
 dto in the past.  Second, the submissions we did get this month have been
 exceptionally long.  The writers will be familiar to a lot of you:  Oregano,
 D. McDaniel, and Sweeney Erect.  And Murmur and Jamesy.  It would have been
 bad if we didn't write for the first issue back, right?

        dto has been a lot of things over its existence.  At the beginning we
 can sum up dto as angst central, and then it sort of slid into a post-angst
 pissiness, and then we don't know what the hell it was.  But most of the
 way, we thought we had something pretty good to offer people.

        We also feel that, for the benefit of our new readers, we should
 explain just why it is that entities like dto need to exist.  dto's format
 is much different than zines such as, say, cDc or hoe.  Instead of just
 churning out text files issue-by-issue, dto (and zines like it) attempt to
 put together a set of submissions that go well together; some humorous, some
 serious; some fiction, some editorial; some realistic, and some absurd.  In
 effect, it creates more of a zine feel.

        This format also more readily leads to some sort of a community
 environment.  Some people assume that this leads to pretentiousness, but in
 the days where dto was producing most effectively, doomed to obscurity
 issues would be followed by newsletters nearly the size of the issues
 themselves, full of huge amounts of feedback and constructive criticism.
 This was part of the process, and made writing for dto an overall more
 worthwhile endeavor.  So, if you have any stories or essays and you're
 curious what others might think about them, zines like dto are a good
 choice.  They produce far more feedback than text file groups.  And, believe
 us, we know - we've been involved in more than our fair share of
 single-release text file groups.

        We don't know how far the resurrected dto will go.  We don't know
 what it will become.  We might have poetry at some point.  We might include
 political commentary at some point.  We might bring back the beloved ascii
 stoopid strips (if anyone's willing and able to do them!)  Or we might just
 bitch and moan and disappear again because we're a bunch of egotistical
 fuckheads.  But we think this is a solid issue and hope it's just the first
 of many more to come.

                                     ____
                                  ___|  |_ _
                               ___|  |  _______
                               |     |  |     |
 dto #29 table of contents     |  |  |  |  |  |     dto #29 table of contents
 ----------------------------- |  |  |  |  |  | -----------------------------
 ----------------------------- |  |  |  |  |  | -----------------------------
                               |  |  |  |  |  |
                               |  |  |  |  |  |
                               |_____|  |_____|
                                     |___ _

 "dto is back"                                    by Murmur and Jamesy
 dto #29 table of contents

 "Writer's Block"                                 by Murmur
 "A Candid Look at the Yeti Question, Part One"   by D. McDaniel
 "Coffee:  Into the Pit of Heck"                  by Oregano
 From the Obloid Sphere BBS
 "Condiments Chapter 299:  Black Leaves"          by Murmur
 "A Candid Look at the Yeti Question, Part Two"   by D. McDaniel
 "I'm a Big Fag"                                  by Jamesy
 "Julian Simmons and the Boatful of Pussy"        by Sweeney Erect

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 "Writer's Block"
 by Murmur

        I suppose that writer's block can suggest a lot of different things
 to a lot of different people.  On the one hand, you could genuinely run out
 of things to write about, which isn't exactly good if you're a professional
 writer, especially one with weekly deadlines.  But there might be a lot more
 to it than simple uncertainty over what to write.

        I haven't really written in a year and a half.  Sure, technically
 speaking, I've written plenty.  I've probably written 200 pages of history
 papers in the last year, and I've certainly written thousands of emails, and
 an uncountable number of other little things.  But sitting down and writing
 something serious for an audience other than history professors - that's
 another story.  When this writer's block started, I genuinely thought that
 it was simply a case of having nothing to write about.  So many months
 later, I know that that's simply not the case.

        The past eighteen months have been astoundingly busy.  Eighteen is
 more a rough figure than anything else, I suppose, but it fits.  It takes me
 back to about February 1998.  Since then I've graduated college, moved to
 Ohio, brought my girlfriend with me to Ohio, started graduate school, and
 gotten engaged.  I even bought a car for the first time and got a dog.  In
 the grand scheme of things, those are all pretty damn big deals, so it's
 really strange that I would think I haven't had anything to write about.

        Of course, one piece of advice you can always count on hearing when
 you sit down to write is "Write what you know."  I don't know if it's cruel
 irony or not, but writing about not writing seems natural right now.
 There's a lot of thoughts that careen across my brain thinking about not
 writing.  One of the more preeminent thoughts is that anyone reading this is
 probably pretty goddamn tired of me writing the word "write".

        Naturally, this brings me to an obvious question and a possible
 answer.  Why haven't I been writing?  Maybe it's the audience.  The tumult
 of the last year and a half of my life has, among other things, effectively
 distanced me from all of my friends (with the one obvious exception).  My
 lifestyle has changed a great deal accordingly.  I might still spend hours
 on end in front of a computer, but I'm doing different things.  What used to
 be hours of chatting was replaced by mostly email and a lot more writing of
 papers.  Acquaintances vanished from my periphery and close friends were far
 less immediate; there seemed noone left to share anything with.

        It's simple enough to refute that, though.  It's really a classic
 chicken and egg argument:  did I stop writing first, or did I lose touch
 with people first?  It feels more like the two went hand in hand.  I've
 found myself lamenting not writing and lamenting losing contact with people,
 often in the same moment of mental mumbling.  But the two don't simply feed
 off of each other.

        Somehow, in the last year, I've been confronted with the cruel
 reality of facing the future.  My future, on paper, looks exceedingly
 promising:  I'm engaged to a wonderful woman, I'm a college graduate, the
 sky's the limit!  No, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life ten
 years ago or five years ago or two years ago, but I knew I was going to go
 to college and then to graduate school and then go get a job.  The vaguities
 of "going to graduate school" and "going and getting a job" are a hell of a
 lot different, though.

        So here I am, twenty-two, basically financially stable, engaged, the
 sky's the limit, and I'm utterly frustrated.  I'm frustrated by my graduate
 program, I'm frustrated by my lack of direction, I'm frustrated by the
 future.  Usually such frustration would be good writing material.  But only
 now do I finally sit down and get things off of my chest.

        I've felt for a while now that a writer has to be cognizant of his or
 her audience.  That was probably taught to me in junior high school.  No,
 actually, it probably wasn't, because nobody teaches you jack in junior high
 school.  A lot of people I've encountered don't really seem to think in
 those terms, though.  A lot of people I know who write (things other than
 history papers!) look at writing as a personal thing, something they do just
 for themselves, leaving the audience as little more than an afterthought, an
 added bonus at best.  To me, writing isn't about the act of expression, it's
 about the art of interaction.  A lot of my frustration with my department
 comes from this, because these goddamn history books I've been force-fed are
 never going to be read by anybody who's not a historian or graduate student
 in history.  If scientists had such an internal focus to their fields and
 general spiteful apathy to "the rest of the world" then Americans would
 still be dropping dead at 55 - except for the scientists.  Writing history
 books is in a lot of respects no different to me than writing fiction;
 whatever message you're trying to convey is only as valuable as the people
 it can be conveyed to.  When confronted with my own personal feelings, it's
 not hard to understand how I can be turned off by the field of history even
 while embracing the study of history.  Of course, it's also not hard to
 understand how other people might have no clue what the hell I was talking
 about and wouldn't give a royal damn even if they understood me completely.

        I don't know who the hell is going to read this.  I mean, I have a
 pretty good idea about who the fifteen or twenty or so of you who are almost
 assuredly going to read this are, but I don't know if anyone else is going
 to read it or who they might be.  It impacts my writing immensely, because I
 wind up aiming it more at a select group of people, not at this theoretical
 group of people who might one day read this.  But I still don't want to
 write this as though only eight people will ever read it, because then it
 doesn't feel like "expression".  I don't know what it feels like.

        I like to think that you, or whoever you forward this to, or whoever
 the hell else that you don't know and don't care to know, will read this and
 be able to relate to it.  I like to think that you can understand - not so
 much to sympathize or empathize or super size, but just to get the juices
 flowing.  If you can relate, if we're in the same boat, then maybe we've got
 something to offer each other.  Is it pompous for me to think that I have
 something to offer you?  I hope not.  Is it asinine for me to think that you
 have something to offer me?  I hope not.

        This piece has gone through a few revisions now, and in the process
 of those revisions, the person most readily accessible to read it has been
 Barb.  For some reason, this has always been a blessing and a curse to me; I
 can't help but wonder if this writer's block wasn't in some way perpetuated
 by my own irrational fears of opening up or simply speaking my mind and
 saying something I wouldn't want her to hear.  She hates it when I say
 things like this.  My insecurities drive her nuts, yet I've found them to be
 incredibly difficult to vanquish.  So many times she's told me to just
 figure things out, to take charge, to confront situations.  I don't feel
 like I'm an inherently wishy-washy, weak-spined person, but I can't help but
 wonder sometimes, especially when it comes to simply speaking my mind to the
 woman I love.  Naturally, my unwillingness to be confrontational is what
 drives her the craziest about me.

        I really hate using expressions like "the woman I love", because that
 sounds so trite, so mushy, so... wrong.  It's so much more like me to refer
 to her as "my baby" or something equally trite and mushy but with some sort
 of insipid, greasy swagger.  But I write things like "the woman I love" to
 sound more serious.  And then I think about the audience, and you're all
 saying, hey, jackass, shut the fuck up already!

        For better or for worse, since I was young, I've known that I am
 special.  I was correcting my mother's math mistakes when I was 5!  I had a
 better command of navigating through my home city than my mother when I was
 10!  I used to add up the grocery total in advance for my dad when I was 7!
 And I was always right!  I was a motherfucking genius, I tell you.  How much
 of the hype did I believe?  I didn't go on a date until I was 17.  How does
 the young prodigy balance such failure with such accomplishment?  I guess I
 could just subtract from 17 my 7 state championships in various things and
 then it doesn't sound so bad!  Yeah!  Creative revisionism!

        What a bizarre feeling to feel exceptional and to have no self-
 confidence at the same time.  How odd to go to school in sixth grade and be
 acutely aware of your classmates' disdain for you but to mentally shrug it
 off, knowing that you had your multiplication table down before you entered
 first grade, proving that you were better than they are.  And what better
 proof could there be?  I might have been slower than some on the playground,
 shorter than some, less cool than most, but being smarter was always my
 ticket out, what reassured me that I was not inferior - in fact, I was
 better.  A lot better.

        And, of course, it's all bullshit, straight down the line, but not
 bullshit that's easily dismissible.  Maybe this is why I enjoy watching
 Frasier so much, because the show is in so many respects a parody of a
 mindset that has been mine for so long.  Frasier is not only about people
 who think they're the upper crust of society but also a critique of society
 in general (on good nights, at least!)  Perhaps one of the Doctors Crane
 could explain away my contempt for the upper class and my latent aura of
 superiority.

        Lately, that aura of superiority has been pretty effectively dashed,
 thanks to so many things but primarily the sense that I don't know where I'm
 going.  The superior mind should have a clue what he/she intends to do with
 their life, right?  Aiding this ego deflation has been a sense of utter
 clumsiness I've managed to dissatisfyingly embrace.  I'm told girls used to
 go for me (after age 17, of course) because I was kind of cute but also kind
 of clumsy, like a puppy that can give affection but needs it back along with
 a little of whatever else the hell a clumsy puppy needs.  My coping
 mechanism for dealing with this damned superiority complex, then, has been
 to gain weight, grow less attractive, and generally behave even more like a
 hopeless mutt.  What possible sense does that make?

        Which brings us back to my writer's block and my newfound sense of
 inferiority.  I'm not sure what I feel inferior towards, but I do definitely
 feel inferior, or at least, less superior.  My inability to write has merely
 compounded this even as it has reflected it.  Instead of simply feeling that
 I'm not writing for some reason, I've grown to feel that I am unable to
 write, no doubt because I am incompetent and have always been too arrogant
 to realize it.  Of course, I have enough of that superior being in me to
 tell me I am being too harsh on myself, even as I chastise myself for
 thinking too highly of myself.

        What seems to be most sorely missing is direction.  It's not like
 that's a surprise at this point, nor is it like some sort of unique precious
 feeling I'm experiencing that nobody else is.  But when I think of
 direction, I invariably drift back to audience, to this sense that I should
 be doing something that impacts people.  Selling insurance doesn't impact
 people.  The way I know I'm impacting people is when they're impacting me.
 Maybe that's why my relationship is so strong and why I'm getting married.

        If I think of my "audience" more as a bidirectional entity than as
 the people I'm writing to, it starts to make more sense to me.  If
 interaction truly constitutes progress, then maybe I should stop trying to
 think in abstract terms and should simply think in terms of who I can
 converse with, how I can impact people, how I can put myself in situations
 for people to impact me.  It's not as easy as it seems; being into
 "interaction" sure as hell doesn't qualify me to be a social worker.  It
 might give me a little more insight into this niche I'm looking for, though.

        So it's high time I stopped beating myself up and sat down and wrote
 something.  No excuses, no restraints.  The audience feasts, and hopefully
 leaves me something to digest too.  Maybe all of the incessant rambling,
 bitching, complaining... maybe the secret is to just look this writer's
 block square in the eye and tell it to fuck off.

        I feel better already.

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 "A Candid Look at the Yeti Question, Part One"
 by D. McDaniel

        A wee man came into my yard today and insisted that I discuss the
 Yeti situation with him.  Which is all fine and good.  I think the issue
 warrants a plethora of intelligent dialogue.  It is a much neglected topic,
 and the large majority of Yeti debate today is swathed with mysticism and
 sensation.  Coherence and logic are sadly absent in the research and most of
 the gifted minds of our time have skirted the field entirely.  So it was
 with some trepidation that I told the little creep to get lost.  I
 sympathized with his intentions, but I was very busy polishing the trees.
 And it's not like you can just stop right in the middle of a spring
 tree-polishing gig and launch into some formal diatribe concerning the Yeti.
 The luster will definitely suffer and it is pure hell trying to buff chunks
 of Treeshine out of the bark.

        But the sinister troll refused to leave.  He spat upon my sidewalk.
 He plucked at my sleeve unmercifully, whining out rare Yeti statistics in a
 low perverse mumble.  He picked my flowers then threw them aside after one
 sniff.  He went into my house and drank my last beer and pissed on the
 toilet seat and squirreled away my coolest pornography under his jacket.  He
 was a rotten hyena of the worst sort, and it was obvious that I would have
 to deal with him personally.  So I gave the trees one last remorseful swipe
 and trudged into the house.

        He was frying up steak and eggs as I entered and it smelled
 wonderful.  I made a mental note to ask about his seasoning mixture then I
 hit him.  Not too hard, just enough to gain a little attention and remind
 him that, Yeti or no, this was my home.  Besides, I rather wanted him to
 finish up with the cooking.  He gave me this big surprised wounded look, but
 I could tell right off it wasn't the first time he had been punched for
 taking a few too many liberties.  He wiped the blood from his lip and
 informed me that the average life span for Yeti was 54.3 years.  Then he
 asked me how I liked my eggs.  Sunny-side up, of course.

        He was a horrid obnoxious gnome, but he sure knew his shit when it
 came to Yeti and steak and eggs.  And he had big bucks.  I know because I
 shook down his clothes while he was taking a bubble bath.  Lots of large
 bills plus assorted change and a collection of weird Lawrence Welk zodiac
 talismans.  So after I put my tit magazines back on the shelf I skimmed a
 fifty and stocked up on more beer.  Zipzip, 7-11 and home while he was still
 splashing around and making strange Tibetan monk noises.  I don't think he
 even knew.  Or maybe he did and just kept a straight face.  But it didn't
 matter at that point.  There was a bizarre man in my home talking knowingly
 about Yeti activity and a large beer stash seemed very necessary.

        According to Hank, (he finally tells me his name as he emerges from
 the bathtub, still dirty, rubbing ancient grime on the towels Mom got me for
 Christmas last year) there is a general feeling of unrest and discontent
 among the Yeti nowadays.  The wilderness is shrinking at an alarming rate
 and the old traditions are slowly being discarded by the so-called "upstart"
 generation.  There is a ground swell movement among the Yeti youth to come
 out of the closet and it is causing mucho anxiety among the elders.  I had
 heard rumors of this ilk for quite a while.  The word on the street has
 hinted about some dark trouble brewing with the Yeti and most of the
 "in-the-know" cats seem to think that something is gonna give in the near
 future.

        But upheaval is not a new thing in Yeti society.  There have been
 various radical shifts on and off for years.  Documentation concerning these
 events, however, is scanty at best.  Your average hotshot reporter does not
 really relish the idea of trooping out into a harsh wilderness to
 investigate every Yeti scoop that comes down the wire.  And likewise, the
 world of academia has been loath to dedicate funds for adequate research.
 In the complex and trouble-laden world of homo sapiens, there is just not
 much interest in digging out the hard facts on a mostly invisible species.

        There is much disparity within the Yeti crowd and crackpot opinions
 abound, but most of the serious scholars tend to place the first hints of
 youthful rebellion somewhere around 1930.  The proliferation of whiskey
 stills coupled with the onset of moving film during the Depression era had a
 major impact on the inner workings of the Yeti nuclear family.  Intelligent
 and bored and enamored with the high romantic excitement of the Hollywood
 gangster, younger Yeti began emerging ghost-like from the deep woods in
 search of cheap thrills.

        As early as 1928 there are stories of a fad that later came to be
 called "cinema crashing" or "cine-crashing" or just plain "crashing"
 depending on regional dialect.  This activity, wild and loose initially,
 soon became very ritualized among the Yeti-boppers.  A typical "crashing"
 usually began as an all-out raid on a local whiskey still.  Basically the
 perfect crime.  Bootleggers are not apt to report this kind of thing to the
 officials, and even if the unfortunate distiller happened upon the raid in
 progress, well... it is just not likely that anybody is going to take some
 pop-eyed backwoods hillbilly seriously when the topic is a group of hideous
 apes swilling his cornmash.

        After getting stoked to the gills on moonshine the young Yeti would
 make their way to a movie set.  Initially only the rural shoots were
 targeted but, as "crashing" became more the rage, urban locales were visited
 as well.  There they would take turns slinking onto the set and, therefore,
 onto film.  There is not much evidence of earlier "crashing" episodes
 because the tremulous youth were usually almost completely hidden and
 attempted very little movement.  But as the mania grew the more brazen Yeti
 bucks were known to walk completely across a movie set within plain view of
 a sharp-eyed observer.

        The typical successful "crash" consisted of getting noticeably into a
 film scene, escaping the editor's knife and winding up in the finished
 movie.  There were many variations, of course, but these were the main goals
 of a "crash".  The more daring "crashers" usually tried to catch the eye of
 at least one person during the course of their amble.  Nothing major, but
 just enough of a glimpse to cause a double take and some finger-pointing.
 There are even tales of a young Yeti named Dargst who actually got hired on
 as an extra, but this report has never been substantiated.  There is,
 however, approximately one hundred vintage gangster films from the late
 1920's and early 1930's that contain Yeti in one or more scenes.  The
 classic _Bad Boy Buster_ (MGM, 1932) has twelve such scenes.

        But the actual details of "crashing" are not really relevant in this
 day and age, and they are only included here as historical background.  It
 was youthful prankish fun along the lines of stuffing telephone booths and
 swallowing gold fish and pissing off the fogies.  "Crashing" is important in
 that it marked the genesis of a sociological shift among young Yeti.  For
 the first time in history this shy and hidden species began making overtures
 towards a more public existence.  "Crashing" pretty much died out by 1940,
 but by then it had introduced a whole generation of Yeti to life outside the
 forest and their world would never be the same again...

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 "Coffee:  Into the Pit of Heck"
 by Oregano

        A hint of wood smoke was in the air and declared it autumn. This
 meant the students were back in town and the coffee machines again geared up
 to their highest pressure settings.  Three years ago I attempted to write an
 insiders view of Evanston's coffeehouses, but failed for various reasons
 all stemming from some irrational fear of waitstaff.

        I was threatened on my last trip and similar to those who have
 investigated the coca fields of Colombia, I decided that putting myself on
 the line for the true story -- in this case coffeehouses -- would only put
 me in danger far beyond the possible rewards.  But after time my anxieties
 have mellowed and now as a free-going devil-may-care journalist who has been
 in the trenches of the national media, I felt that the revival of DTO was a
 good time to write the story I meant to write in the first place.  This is
 my tale.

 [ ---- ]

        We all have heard of Kaffein.  The stories are always bad, really
 bad.  If logical thought is put to it, you'd ask yourself "Would people
 continue going to Kaffein if it were so horrible?"  Here is what I found.

        I had part of the Chicago Tribune with me, Chicago's preeminent
 newspaper.  On the way to Kaffein I illegally threw most of the paper into
 a gravel-filled dumpster and only kept the section with the comics.  I find
 that it is best to not flaunt your higher learning in front of coffeehouse
 crowds.  The natives go there to be pretentious -- yet none of them read the
 paper.  Shoving it in their faces only antagonizes them.  And, as mentioned
 earlier, I did not want trouble.  I wanted to blend in and be as
 inconspicuous as possible.

        Most of the seats in Kaffein have signs on them, "Reserved for
 parties of three or more after 8:00 p.m."  I was there at 8:30 p.m. and
 though the place was mostly empty, I had trouble finding a suitable seat.  I
 settled on one near, but with my back to, the door.  The waitress brought me
 a menu.  "coffeehouse" does not mean coffee.  It means menus with lots of
 things that are not coffee.  I decided then that I'd only order non-coffee
 items at each coffeehouse.  I chose the malted mocha.  The waitress was
 delighted at my choice and quickly offered to put whipped cream on top of
 it. I accepted, again for not wanting to antagonize the waitstaff.

        I started to read my comics but was distracted by the loud music.
 Strange underground stuff with lots of odd instruments. The music made even
 a simple comic like "Baby Blues" difficult to understand.  There is no way
 anyone could come here and successfully study.  Thus coffee myth number one
 is shot down.

        While I was on the second page of the comics the place suddenly
 filled up.  People came in in twos and threes, separate groups, but
 seemingly all at once and suddenly there were only a couple seats on couches
 near the main counter and a few seats for singles in the window.  The window
 is a lonely place and I question why the seating for single people is there,
 and not more in the middle of things.

        Odd posters were on the wall with coffee in various drug settings.
 Rocks of coffee in a crack vial, lines of ground coffee on a mirror with a
 razor blade nearby, and lastly a syringe injecting brewed coffee into a cup.

        Two high schoolers, dressed and coiffed like Ani DiFranco, saw a
 schoolyard enemy and stood up to leave, not able to share the same roof with
 the dastardly person.  But they settled down, choosing a new booth where
 they did not need to lay eyes on the scholastic foe.  I didn't turn my head
 to see the foe enter the door to my back; does this mean I chose sides?  Was
 I complicitous in this act of dislike?

        I didn't use the long, narrow spoon which came with my malted mocha
 except to remove the whipped cream.  For the record, a malted mocha is a
 sort of thick milkshake, which comes with both a straw and a spoon.  The
 whipped cream was so unmemorable that by the time I thought to take notes on
 it, I had already forgotten what it tasted like.  There was plenty of
 caffeine in the malted mocha and my heart pounded for the rest of the
 evening.

        Lots of people were dressed in black.  I suspect they all came from a
 funeral and chose Kaffein to talk over the sadness of the untimely passing
 of a friend or co-worker.  The flaw in the theory is that everyone was
 speaking lively.

        I felt need to get out of there; I took my check and I got up to pay.

 [ ---- ]

        This was home.  At the Unicorn Cafe I ordered a fresh lemonade
 (emphasizing "fresh" when I ordered it, as the wall menu emphasized it in
 the price listing.)  It was nice and cool inside and the whole place was
 full of adults, or at least graduate students.  Kaffein had a young crowd,
 all trying to be hip and cool.  The decor at the Unicorn is bright and the
 music is mellow, folksy, without being sappy -- I think it was Emmylou
 Harris -- for my too brief stay.  The art on the walls is tasteful though
 the lemonade was not quite right.  Perhaps here in mid- September lemons are
 not in season.  These "fresh" lemons must have been transported from a
 special off-season grove in the war- torn African nation of Sudan.  Millions
 died to give me this wrong-tasting lemonade.

        I picked up a copy of the Onion in the three block trip from Kaffein
 and I read as I sipped lemonade.

        The crowd thinned out; those left were mostly people catching up on
 events.  I bet all of them listen to Public Radio and don't own TVs.  The
 atmosphere was pleasant and I dreaded heading into Cafe Ambiance with its
 yelling kids, but I had to slay all my dragons and thus I finished the Onion
 and drained my lemonade and headed out the door.

 [ ---- ]

        At this point I was on the verge of puking.  I took a Pepcid before I
 started, but malted mocha does not mix with off-season lemonade.  At Cafe
 Ambiance I added a zombie flavored Smoothie.

        There was a gang of angry New Trier teens outside the front door of
 Cafe Ambiance, which I had to push my way through.  The same as three years
 ago.

        Cafe Ambiance is owned and run -- to my surprise -- by Koreans who
 don't speak English that well.  When I walked in, I decided to forgo looking
 at the wall menu and (like a knowing hipster) just ask if they served
 lemonade.  Well, in the mix of languages, the Koreans thought "lemonade"
 meant "iced tea" and after a bit of a struggle I went to my fallback
 position of not angering waitstaff and I changed my order to a Smoothie.
 The wall menu listed about seven flavors and I chose Zombie and now I know
 what Zombies taste like, about exactly like Nestle Quik strawberry.

        Of all the coffeehouses this was the only one which allowed smoking.
 I must not have been in places that allow smoking in a few years since I
 don't remember having a bad reaction to cigarette smoke -- perhaps my lungs
 are nice and pink now due to all the smoking regulations of the past few
 years.  But this place was a test of lung quality, and my lungs are
 apparently now sensitive to smoke.

        The owners were chatty and I thought that the male owner was going to
 come to my table and ask me how the smoothie was.  I would have been tempted
 to answer "strawberririffic," though the humor would be lost on him.  To be
 fair, this drink was by far the best of all the coffeehouses.

        The music was loud, way too loud, the loudest in Evanston, and really
 bad smooth jazz.  This surprised me, since (and I am being charitable here)
 everyone was a high school student, though many looked even younger.

        On each table was exactly one magazine, all different.  Mine was
 Sport Magazine, three months expired.  The ceilings were nice; I would not
 have noticed that but the light above my table was flashing intermittently.
 This only added to the horrible ambiance.

        I wished I were done with the smoothie -- I really wanted to get out
 of there.  I needed to take a dump and this was not the place for such
 activities.

        If I left right then with half the smoothie left I could never
 return.  The crazed Koreans would stop me at the entrance and yell at me in
 Korean to take my business elsewhere.

        The need to flee was too strong and I took a giant pull on the straw
 and drained over half of the smoothie till there was nothing left.  My deed
 was done.

 [ ---- ]

        The reportage ended up with a Cuba Libre at the Coaches Cafe, a
 little bar that used to belong to the traitorous ex- Northwestern football
 coach Gary Barnett.  This drink is essentially rum and Coke with a little
 lime.  The drink was mixed a little strong.  Let's go over the beverages
 again to guess how long I could last before a gullet purge.

 1) Very rich malted mocha, topped with whipped cream.
 2) A large lemonade with off flavoring.
 3) A giant zombie-flavored fruit smoothie, complete with real fruit; half of
    this drink gulped quick to not offend the Koreans (we have a treaty
    coming up with them, right? Doing my part for the National interests)
 4) An overly strong Cuba Libre.

        I made it home without puking, stopping at Borders bookstore to hang
 out for a little bit.  I ran into some friends at Borders and had a good
 rest of the evening.  There is a coffeehouse for every type of coffee
 drinker in Evanston and bookstores for every type of reader.  We all have
 our niches in life.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 From the Obloid Sphere BBS (www.obloidsphere.com)

 Issues                                                            294 of 312
 By: Quarex                                                        Replies: 1
 To: skora
 Subj: BocaBurger
 Date: 09/28/99 23:56:07

 > Try Boca. Boca is soy and very good for you...fat free, also, which is
 > cool.

 I had a vegetarian roommate this summer (well, two, but one who this story
 is about) who bought Boca burgers once, and he could not stop talking about
 how cool it was that they tasted like actual hamburger.

 I, however, just kept flashing back to my 486/33DX with its 14.4 Boca modem,
 and every time I looked at the Boca Burger, I heard a connect tone.

 Quarex
 Your Best Friend.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 "Condiments Chapter 299:  Black Leaves"
 by Murmur

        Roger didn't really care for the opera, or for much of anything.
 Roger's grandmother had died many years before and left Roger everything she
 had, which wasn't much:  the trailer, the old recliner, the broken
 television, the antiquated phonograph, and a couple of dozen opera 78s.
 Roger couldn't even find anybody who would give him money for the opera 78s,
 and since he owned so little, he figured he might as well keep them, and
 since he kept them, he figured he might as well listen to them, even though
 he didn't really care for the opera, or for much of anything.  Roger was a
 poor man who never finished high school.  He made enough to get by at the
 old paint store, but not much more than that.  One day when he was leaving
 the old paint store he went through the old downtown area and saw that the
 opera house was bringing a production to town.  He couldn't quite pronounce
 the Italian words, but he figured he'd go see the opera, since his
 grandmother would have wanted to, and his television set was still broken,
 even though he didn't really care for the opera, or for much of anything.
 The opera was on a Tuesday night, which was usually the night Roger went
 down to the bar to see the late baseball game, but it was November anyway,
 so there was just going to be some sort of strange sport Roger didn't
 understand on ESPN anyway.  Roger put on his best clothes, which weren't
 that great, and went to the opera house on Tuesday night.  He got some funny
 looks from some folks who thought Roger didn't belong at the opera - Roger
 thought they could tell he didn't really care for the opera, but they were
 really snubbing him for his eight dollar shoes and thrift store dress pants.
 Roger figured that if he was going to go see the opera, he might as well sit
 in the front row, so when he walked in the opera house, he headed straight
 for the front and found a seat on the end of the first row behind the
 orchestra pit on the right side of the stage.  The next seat over was empty,
 too, and Roger was surprised that nobody ever sat in it, since he always
 thought the front row was supposed to be the best place to see anything, and
 there were people way back in the balcony who he figured couldn't see a damn
 thing, especially with those little binocular things.  Roger never seemed to
 realize that his ticket was for the last row in the opera house, because the
 people whose seat Roger was sitting in and whose seat Roger was wondering
 about were unable to make the opera at the last minute because of an
 unfortunate contact incident.  Anyway, Roger settled in and tried to enjoy
 the opera, but they weren't singing in English or anything, which didn't
 surprise Roger, since that was one of the main reasons he didn't really care
 for the opera, but he tried his damndest to enjoy himself, and he clapped
 heartily when the rest of the crowd clapped, even if his claps started a
 couple of seconds later than most and ended a couple of seconds later than
 most.  He never quite realized that a translation was being played on a
 screen above the stage, perhaps because he was in the first row behind the
 orchestra pit and his eyes had to dodge the tuba the entire time.  Roger
 also unfortunately coughed a lot, sometimes at very poor moments, which made
 the very big man playing the tuba audibly grimace, but Roger never noticed.
 Toward the end of the opera there was a rather dramatic scene where a lady
 was singing from a balcony and a man was on the ground below looking all
 distraught.  Roger didn't know exactly what was going on, but he understood
 that it was supposed to be high drama, so he sat in his seat and tried to
 act all full of suspense.  Then the lady pulled out a knife, and Roger
 cringed, because he saw a lot of people in the audience cringe, especially
 the ladies, and he figured his grandmother would probably have cringed.  And
 that lady let out a horrible shriek, held the knife high in the air, turned
 and looked straight at Roger, and Roger screamed "Oh fuck no, don't kill
 me!" right as she plunged the knife into her protected left breast,
 simulating deth on stage, a deth nobody noticed because they had all turned
 to look at Roger, sweating, shaking, and mumbling incoherently.  Roger was
 not thinking about how much he did not really care for the opera now, though
 it might have been appropriate, as the irate tuba player lunged out of the
 orchestra pit and started beating the holy shit out of Roger.  A broken
 nose, two broken ribs, and a dash of internal bleeding later, the tuba
 player decided Roger had had enough, and the shows both on stage and in the
 front row were over.  Roger had already used all of his sick days for the
 year so he got up slowly, left the opera house, made his way home ravished
 in pain, slept what little he could sleep, got up the next day to go to the
 paint store, smashed his opera 78s, smashed his antiquated phonograph, and
 vowed never to go to the opera ever again.

 Moral:  Don't fuck with the tuba player.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 "A Candid Look at the Yeti Question, Part Two"
 by D. McDaniel

        Hank has broken a string on my guitar now.  And it would be alright
 if he had broken it in the midst of a fabulous gypsy love song or something.
 And it would be a bit better if it wasn't a D string.  I have millions of
 extra guitar strings laying around in semi-packages, but the D strings have
 all been robbed because that is the string that I happen to abuse most for
 some reason.  And now Hank has sproinged a D smack dab in the middle of a
 tortured half-remembered version of "Blow The Man Down".

        It is enough to make me smack him again, but about that time he lays
 the instrument down and begins to speak in that dark gutterfreak rhythm of
 his.  My trees are half-polished, there is spit on my sidewalk and dead
 flowers in my yard.  The bathroom is a nasty mess, the kitchen is greasy and
 my bath towels are grimed.  There is a broken D string on my guitar.  But
 then again, the icebox is full of free beer, my gut is full of really decent
 steak and eggs, and sinister knowledge is at hand.

 [ Author's Note:  The following is a ballpark paraphrase transcription of
   our conversation.  I was familiar with the history of "crashing" and
   other youthful trends, and I was decently on top of the current
   situation.  But Hank had obviously done his homework and a bit more.  I
   knew, for example, that Yeti youth have been dabbling in human society
   for a long time and that it was beginning to be a sore subject with the
   traditionalists, but I had no idea how much of a riptide their society
   has undergone in the last fifty-odd years.

   And, until a few weeks ago, I had no idea how close the Big Bang really
   is.  So excuse the prose if it looks like me ranting along.  I despise
   the labor of writing conversation...all those quotation marks and
   indentions and commas and whatnot.  It is a massive hassle and I refuse
   to deal with it.  Just keep it in the back of your head that we
   interrupted each other from time to time, that there were beers swilled,
   etc., but mainly it was Hank and I groveling down into this way heavy
   Yeti trip.                                                               ]

        The Yeti are screwed for the moment, and it is mainly a fear thing.
 I mean, we are approaching the year 2000 AD and various members of the human
 race are still murdering each other over things like skin color, spiritual
 belief and preference in government.  It surely follows that the appearance
 of a hairy eight foot forest being in your living room would not go over
 very well.  The average citizen is going to pull out an automatic weapon of
 some sort and start blazing away.

        The Yeti are a gentle fun-loving breed and they have much to offer
 our society, but wretched Fate has chosen to give them bodies that cause
 nightmares in humans.  If you met a Yeti spirit inhabiting a teddy bear, you
 would probably become instant lifetime friends.  But reality is reality,
 unfortunately.  Facts are facts and fear of the unknown is a basic human
 trait.  In other words, some kind of natural assimilation of the Yeti into
 mainstream society is a theoretical and practical no-go in this day and age.

        The Yeti, at this time, are split into three main factions.  It
 should be noted, I think, that the dividing lines here are surprisingly (or
 maybe not surprisingly), eerily human-like.  On one hand are the Old Ones,
 the stalwarts, the twilight folk who have had good lives on this planet and
 see no reason to go bungling things up.  Then there is the youth, and they
 are a clever lot.  For the record, the large majority of young Yeti see the
 day when integration into human society is a real and happening endeavor.
 In their minds, it is a foregone conclusion.  But they are a divisive bunch,
 and the clamor/animosity between the two youthful schools of thought has
 basically relegated the hard-line fogies to a position of poli-social
 inertia.  Change is in the air, much like it is in China or Cuba or even
 Yugoslavia for that matter, and it will take place.  But the manner and pace
 of change is a hot topic indeed...

        ...Hank has begun to blur.  His monotonous lecture flees down and
 away through the tunnel, swirling.  I am zoning now, traveling back,
 remembering.  Dark and hairy hands upon me, strong, insistent, but gentle, a
 rapid hell-bent ride through the forest.  I am terrified but, in a strange
 way, peaceful.  I feel threatened by this unknown and, at the same time,
 there is a powerful feeling of safety, protectiveness, a strong warm scent,
 musky, sweet, alarming yet somehow comfortable.  The hands have multiplied
 now, but I am handled carefully and there is pungent food awaiting and a
 soft bed and gentle captors who serenade the night with a haunting melody,
 strange coos and breathy chanting barely audible as I drift off to frenetic
 dreams...

        I lived with the Yeti for a week.  In some ways it was hellish and
 escape was constantly on my mind.  It is an alien and sometimes sinister
 society, and there are many things that put me off.  Surprisingly, it was
 the familiarity that was most disturbing, the multitude of human quirks
 displayed so casually by big hairy monsters.  Nothing I can really put my
 finger on; hand gestures, head postures, routine chores, routine
 interactions.  Like having your collie walk in the door, hang up his coat,
 grab a beer out of the fridge, kick back in the La-Z-Boy and start operating
 the remote.  Normal well-known actions, to be sure, but there is a weird
 vertigo that descends when they are performed by a life form that is not
 supposed to be doing these things.

        In some dark fashion, however, my stay with the Yeti was one of the
 high points of my life.  The first instinct was self-survival with a side
 order of panic.  But shortly thereafter I was fairly wallowing in the kinky
 excitement of discovery, of being a witness to wondrous and previously
 unknown things.  I was treated well, never threatened, never even bothered
 for that matter.  It was obvious that young and old alike harbored a rampant
 curiosity about me, but it was held in check throughout.  They were polite,
 for God's sake.  And, after the initial shock wore off, I was able to view
 them with some objectivity, and I soon grew to appreciate them as an
 intelligent race of beings, a civilized ethnic group with goals, hopes,
 dreams.

        Zax is the hellion.  Extremely smart, outgoing, funny, boisterous but
 not over-bearing.  As such he is the natural leader of the young
 progressives who argue for active integration efforts.  I spent much time
 with him, but it was not until the day of my departure that he pulled me
 aside and shyly unfolded a grimy magazine picture of Malcolm X.  After much
 gesticulation and a few spoken words, he made me to understand that he
 idolizes the civil rights leader and is much influenced by his teachings.
 And it dawned on me, as the youngster pointed back and forth between himself
 and the picture, that the word "Zax" is not a real name.  "Zax" is what
 comes out when a Yeti attempts to say "X".

        There are differences between the two, of course.  First, the Yeti
 are not Islamic.  They practice a form of worship that resembles some of the
 Native American practices; spiritual kinship with the earth, symbols and
 talismans that tie in with nature, rituals that coincide with the seasons,
 etc.  A Sioux Indian would have little trouble adapting to the Yeti
 "religion".  Secondly, the Yeti are not a violent species.  There laws are
 simple, courtship and mating are strictly defined, and material ownership is
 mainly communal.  Basically, they have no reason to fight each other.  Yeti
 do not hunt.  They are mainly vegetarian, but I believe that fish are eaten
 on occasion.  Not a bad comment, really, if catching trout is about the
 meanest thing your society does on a regular basis.

        But parallels do exist between Zax and his unknowing mentor.  The
 progressive Yeti are impatient, unsatisfied with the status quo, un-willing
 to rely on established means for gaining inclusion; they believe that they
 are oppressed and, like Malcolm, they are willing to push the envelope, so
 to speak, to step outside business as usual and pursue their aim on their
 own terms.  The movement is embryonic, to be sure, but the groundswell is
 there.  If the present situation continues, it is only a matter of time
 before Zax and his followers launch an overt campaign for global acceptance.
 To them, integration is not a prize that must be earned.  It is a right that
 is being denied.

        Mah is the diametric opposite of Zax.  Soft-spoken, shy, mysterious,
 but with a hidden strength that tends to clear decks when it is exposed.
 She spends much of her time meditating in the forest and seems to cherish
 her role as loner, outsider.  I would liken her to a medicine woman or
 priestess.  Mah participates very little in day-to-day events, but she holds
 a position of respect and power among the Yeti, and her words carry much
 weight.  Whereas Zax is sharp, articulate, brilliant at times, Mah is
 weighty, thoughtful, bearer of a slow and deliberate wisdom.  Mah has the
 ability to see the big picture, to examine all angles equally.  She
 understands Zax's position as well, or better, than he does.  On the other
 hand, she is a traditionalist in many ways, and she kens the worries of the
 Old Ones.

        Mah, unlike the elders, realizes that entrance into mainstream human
 society is inevitable.  But, unlike Zax and the progressives, she worries
 about the overall long-term impact upon her tribe.  There are hundreds of
 examples of indigenous peoples being thrown into the pot with more
 "advanced" races, and the outcomes have never been pretty.  Mah sees her
 people through Native American eyes, and she is not hip to the idea of her
 collective entering society as filthy savages best confined to outback
 reservations.  To Zax, the big brass ring is a goal unto itself,
 consequences be damned.  To Mah, the consequences are all-important.

        It is a poser.  Societal evolution has never really listed "comfort"
 as a big priority.  The Yeti are a people on the brink of major change and
 it is an anxious situation.  There is no right and wrong methods, no tried
 and true solutions, no pat answers.  Movements such as these always produce
 casualties, and changes for the better usually go hand-in-hand with changes
 for the worse.  All the professors and all the experts and all the king's
 horses and all the king's men cannot hope to pave an easy path for the Yeti.
 It will be a strange psychotic ride and about all we can count on for sure
 is that the historians will explain it away nicely when the deal is done.

        My last night with the Yeti was spent with Mohk.  He is the eldest of
 The Elders, the sage, the patriarch, the great-grandfather of Mah.  There
 are many similarities between the two.  He does not really believe that
 integration is a necessity or even a remote likelihood, but he is a good
 leader and he understands that the question of co-habitation with the human
 population has produced a new and previously unknown angst among his people.
 Mohk is easily the most verbal of the Yeti, and he possesses a shrewd and
 agile mind despite his great age.  And it was Mohk who issued the command to
 bring me among the Yeti.

        We talked of many things that night; the beauty of the forest, the
 relative strengths and weaknesses of the emerging Yeti leadership, the
 health of our planet, the constantly interesting topic of weather
 trends...it is always a joy to experience the tales and learnings of the
 ancient and wise, and this was no different.  I was mesmerized, and it was
 not until dawn was upon us that I was made aware of the crux, the real nut
 of my visit.  As the sun blew beams across the land and the fire died for
 good and the others began to stir, Mohk leaned over, pressed his face very
 close to mine and said this, "You write...".

        And then he was gone.  And then I was gone.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 "I'm a Big Fag"
 by Jamesy

        He flicked his cigarette as he stared up at the night sky.  The stars
 were out, and he could see his favorite constellation, Orion.  No, actually,
 he didn't smoke.  Why does smoking have to always be a mood setting in
 fiction?  Don't authors realize they're just adding to a perception of
 smoking that needs to be completely erased from our culture's mind?

        No, no, that's not the job of an author, so nevermind.

        Regardless, he was not smoking.  No.  There was no cigarette to be
 flicked.

        And there were no stars out in the sky tonight.  There were never
 stars out.  There seem to never really be stars out to me.  It's because I'm
 near sighted, I just never see them.

        So, since a writer is supposed to write what he knows, let's just
 envision a scene in which a young man is looking up at a night sky that is
 clearly illuminated by the moon.  Not a full moon.  A full moon would make
 it seem a little weird.

        He stared up at the night sky.  The Moon was Waning Gibbous (99% of
 Full).

        That doesn't work either.  Forget about the moon.

        The night sky was vacant, much like his soul.  He watched his warm
 breath escape his lips as he fucking FUCK SHIT FUCK

        I've always found writing to be incredibly hard to force, which makes
 it very difficult to escape writer's block when it comes.  Part of me really
 wants to just write a rant about my life like I have every single time I've
 sat down the last two years and tried to write.  But, you know what?  It
 doesn't really help.  I wake up the next morning and I'm the same person.
 The letting out of emotions for an audience really isn't fixing my life for
 me.

        The moon was Waning Gibbous (99% of full), much like his soul.  He
 watched his breath escape his lips as he thought about the last hour.  What
 was he thinking?  What was he doing?  Why the hell don't I know?  I'm
 supposed to be the fucking author, and I don't have a fucking clue who the
 fuck my character is.  What the hell am I thinking?  I can't write worth
 shit.

        Either I'm too self-conscious now, because I really feel like I don't
 have anything to contribute to the realm of literature right now, or I just
 have been so out of the loop as far as writing goes for so long that I have
 almost forgotten how to start.  I mean, really, how many writers out there
 *really* have anything worthwhile to say?  Isn't it just how they say it
 that matters?

        No, I'm lying and obviously don't believe that.

        The DARK, BLACK SKY was VACANT, MUCH LIKE HIS DARK, BLACK SOUL. HIS
 SOUL WAS BLACK BECAUSE HE WAS A FUCKING VAMPIRE.

        "What are you doing out here?" called a voice out to him.

        "None of your business.  I'm a vampire," he yelled back to the
 darkness.

        "No you're not.  You're Scott Zibble.  You sit around by yourself all
 night.  You like video games too much.  You think too highly of yourself,
 and judge others too easily, when in fact you are incredibly uncertain of
 yourself.  You believe you can achieve great things, but you can't get past
 your unwillingness to like yourself.  You fell in love with a girl who can't
 seem to love you back the way you want to be loved, or need to be loved. You
 are outright abrasive to anyone who opposes your world view."

        "Who are you, then?"

        "I'm Ash.  I'm going to be the world's greatest Pokemon trainer.
 CHARMANDER, I CHOOSE YOU!"

        "Char!" said Charmander.

        Obviously, I am my own worst critic.  Since I am so self-absorbed,
 even if everyone else hated what I wrote but I liked it, I would be happy.
 But no, I am very doomed to never really *love* anything I write.  The stuff
 I think that I did an OK or good job on aren't really fiction, they're just
 me.  Me in my own roles.  So yeah, maybe I'm good at writing my exact life,
 but that doesn't really take much talent, does it?  Can't nearly anyone sit
 down and type out what happens to them if they practice a few times? It gets
 rather boring, too.  I mean, I know what happened.  I was there.

        I'd like to write pure fiction.  Fiction that has parts of me in it,
 but is distant enough from myself that it isn't so obviously me anymore.
 Maybe I can't take myself seriously when I write because I'm such a bad
 editor.  Maybe everyone's first draft when they do fiction sucks, and they
 just keep molding it until it works.  Maybe.

        "Char!" said Charmander.

        Or maybe it's just me.

        I guess I always wanted to escape with my writing.  Instead of
 chronicling my own world, one which I already have a lot of issues with, I
 wanted to make one in which I could be master.  One where I painted
 beautiful pictures (or horrifying acts), one where I was able to throw
 myself into and be so very proud of what I've created.

        Instead, I write about night skies.  I look up at the sky a lot, and
 I think it's artsy to think about the sky, so I write about it a lot.  I
 should probably try to start off with a scene that I only see in my head.

        The vague, non-descript spaceship landed in the forest-that-I've-
 never-been-to.  The lights went off, and the hatch opened, and lots of
 little space-people flooded out.  But they weren't really little, the view
 was just far away and made them look little.  In fact they were twice as big
 as humans, and they were vampires from the planet X, and they have come for
 our women.

        Oh, and they were insects, too, since all aliens are apparently
 insectoid in nature.

        Space Vampire Insects.

        That monday morning the Space Vampire Insects invaded the quiet city
 of Columbus, Ohio.  Nobody really noticed, though, because who the hell
 cares about Ohio?  But Phil Huckelberry noticed.  He sent out a message on
 the internet.

 <murmur> HOLY SHIT THERE ARE BIG FUCKING BUGS SUCKING EVERYONE'S BLOOD OUT
 <Mogel> hehe!@

        Since it was obvious that the Space Vampire Insects were at least
 mildly intelligent, Phil was worried.  He did not want to see his new puppy
 ripped limb from limb and then milked for her blood.  That would be sad :(.
 So, Phil did the only thing that a man protecting his dog could do; he tied
 up his fiancee as bait.

        "This is not good!" Barb said.

        "I never wanted to marry you, anyway, bitch!" Phil replied.

        Barb, tied up and covered in cow blood, was placed on top of a really
 big net that was tied to a tree.  Then Phil waited for the Space Vampire
 Insects to come.

        The Space Vampire Insects came and ate Phil, and took Barb back to
 the planet X to make a new species of Human Space Vampire Insects.

        Luckily for the Space Vampire Insects, Barb was quite fertile.

        For some reason, it's a lot easier to write awful fiction if you know
 you're being blatantly offensive to some person or group.  But that's not
 what I'm after.  Maybe I'm delusional, but I always thought being a creative
 writer would fulfill me in some way.  Maybe having "nothing to say" anymore
 is just part of growing up.  I basically assume that a lot of people have
 the same views as me, and I usually don't feel like I have anything overly
 insightful or useful to add to most conversations.

        "Char!"  Charmander agreed.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 "Julian Simmons and the Boatful of Pussy"
 by Sweeney Erect

 [ Editor's Note:  Sweeney Erect submitted this piece with the express
   instruction not to fuck with his style.  He says that the way this piece
   is presented is as intended.  We were able to get him to okay aligning
   it to margins, but he insisted on keeping punctuation mistakes in place,
   and called us a bunch of dirty names, and expressed utter contempt for
   anyone who might read this piece.  So we decided to use it.  Oh, if only
   the Telecom Legends had more of a spine...                               ]

 [ ---- ]

        the two weeks julian simmons spent vacationing in england passed like
 a kidney stone.  the food was inedible, the weather miserable, and the
 company intolerable.  as he went into heathrow, julian shook the dust from
 his shoes.

        waiting on his flight, julian ran into a british customs agent, who
 was complaining bitterly to anybody who would listen that some woman had
 tried to bring in 5 cats from paris.

        "you don't like cats, sport?"

        "no, no, the cats as such aren't the problem.  it's only that we have
 to quarantine them all you see, and give them these bloody tests to see if
 they are carrying any diseases or anything of the like.  shuts down our
 whole operation for hours to deal with that many cats."

        julian thanked the man for his nice story and went off to his plane,
 glad to finally be on his way out of england.

        later in the week, julian was reclining on his couch with a
 girlfriend laying on him, rubbing his chest, when a commercial for the
 humane society came on, urging people to adopt kittens and puppies.

        there was a thud as julian pushed the girl off of him and the couch
 and sat bolt upright.

        "hey, what the fuck?" came an angry squawk from below.

        "shh...i'm thinking and you were draining my intellectual energy."

        the girl looked confused and then said "i think i should go."

        "you beat me to it, babe."

        "if i go now i am NOT coming back."

        "good.  then if you leave anything behind i will sell it."

        "FUCK YOU!"  and with that she stormed out the door.

        julian quickly looked up the number for a local kennel.

        the line was picked up.  "yeah hey, is this where you can get kittens
 and take them home?"

        "yes sir."

        "do you have a limit?"

        "excuse me sir?"

        "are you daft?  a limit, a maximum number of fluffy cute little
 kittens i can take home with me."

        "well, sir, they aren't very *marketable* if that is what you are
 thinking - i mean some people do try to sell them but people won't usually
 pay for kittens unless they are in a pet store... you don't run a pet store,
 do you?"

        "no, i am independently wealthy."

        "oh, what's that like, sir?"

        "it's nice work, if you can get it.  anyway i just really love cats,
 and i'm wondering how many i can get."

        "you're not going to experiment on them?"

        "no, not as such."

        "i can give you 10."

        "i need more.  i have a very big place you know."

        "i can give you 15.  but no more."

        "hmm...how many shelters would you say are in the city?"

        "100 maybe, sir?"

        "that's not so bad then.  hey, listen, can you ship the kittens to me
 or do i have to come pick them up?"

        SHIT said Julian as the line went dead.  he called back immediately.

        "hey look, i was only kidding.  i am going to come down right now and
 get the kittens, okay?"

        "you will give them a good home?"

        "i will treat them like i would a girlfriend."

        "well okay, it's almost closing time, so hurry."

        over the course of the next 10 days, julian scored between 15 and 20
 kittens at 87 different kennels.  the problem of kitten storage became
 almost intractable.  his apartment could house, at most, 17 kittens.  none
 of his friends would take in more than 5.  an ex-girlfriend with whom he was
 still in contact was now refusing to speak to him because one kitten, an
 orange and white ball of fur he called 'snookums' and was especially fond
 of, had shredded a chanel dress that she (the ex) was fond of.

        she had brought the kitten to julian's place at 3 in the afternoon
 and began to weep.  "he tore up my favourite dress and i hate him and i hate
 you now take him away."

        julian had taken snookums and said 'well, you should have been more
 careful with your dress. snookums here is a force of nature, you can't hold
 *him* accountable for what he does.'

        'i had the dress in a LOCKED CLOSET in my LOCKED BEDROOM and in a
 plastic bag.'

        'wow, snookums still got to it.'

        as she was answering, julian held the kitty up to his face and said
 happily 'DID YA SNOOKUMS?  DID YA?'

        so that was the last dealing julian had with that ex, which was okay.

        eventually, he ended up simply spending a fortune to have 1447
 kitties stored in pet storage facilities, while he kept snookums in his
 apartment.  when julian had the cats boarded, he set about to try to find a
 way to ship them.

        sitting in a bar late one night with his old friend aleister
 kidridge, julian brought up his problem.

        'oh,' said aleister happily, 'tell you what.  i inherited a couple of
 big ass boats from my grandpa along with the import/export company i sold
 off, but nobody ever wanted the boats.  they're from like the 1930's--really
 pretty useless.  just costing me money to store them.  if you buy me a
 drink, i will give you one.'

        and so for the cost of a martini, julian simmons had a boat and now
 lacked only a pilot.  happily, finding a pilot was merely a matter of
 stumbling over a bum in the street.

        'hey, watch it,' said the bum as julian stumbled over him on the way
 out to his car.

        'you're pretty lippy for a vagrant,' noted julian.

        'hey, fuck you man.  i flew helicopters in vietnam.'

        'hey wow, i've never met a REAL VIETNAM VET on the STREETS OF NEW
 YORK,' said julian.

        'oh just fuck off you privileged fucking fuck.'

        'he has a way with words,' said aleister.

        'hey,' said julian, 'if you can pilot a helicopter, do you figure you
 can sail a big boat, if i gave you a big boat and some money and some very
 special cargo?'  and so the bum, who was named herman, became the pilot of
 the ship, which turned out to be named 'allison'.  julian thought that a
 female name suited the cumbersome, utterly non-sentient boat wonderfully.

        and so, on a crisp autumn morning, julian, herman, and an army of
 herman's street person buddies loaded 1447 kittens into a huge, 1930's style
 freight ship, and julian said 'do you think you can find england, herman?'

        'hell yeah you privileged son of a bitching fuck.'

        'well, when you arrive in london, there will be a check waiting for
 you from me, and the boat will be yours.'

        and with that, julian went home to play with snookums and call up the
 brits.

        the line picked up.  'british customs.'

        'yes, hi.  i'd just like to let you know that i recently shipped 1500
 kittens to england, so you should be on the lookout for a 1930's style
 freighter.'

        'haha, sir, we do enjoy a good joke here, but we *are* quite busy
 just now i'm afraid.'

        'oh, it's no joke.'

        'i see.  sir, *why* did you send 1500 kittens here? to whom are they
 to be delivered?'

        'why, to her majesty the queen of course.  they are a present.'

        'a present, sir?  couldn't you have sent an afghan or a hat?  she is
 very fond of hats.'

        'no, i wanted to send her kittens, lots and lots and lots of kittens.
 doesn't she *like* kittens?'

        'well sir no, the queen is quite fond of kittens in fact, it's just
 that we will have to quarantine and test all the kittens of course, and so
 it will shut down customs for quite some time and you know how that could
 muck up the whole system.'

        'oh, american kittens are all diseased?'

        'well no, sir, it's just that it is protocol to quarantine all
 animals coming into the country.  i'm afraid that, well i'm afraid that the
 last time we had such a huge number of animals come in KLM decided simply to
 run them through a shredder...'

        'you are going to SHRED the kittens i sent for the queen?'

        'well no, not as such, i am just saying that we are in a very unusual
 situation right now.'

        'i do need to go right now.  i was only letting you know about the
 kittens, so you could tell the queen about them.'

        'well yes sir but...'

        and julian hung up.

        eventually, word of the kitten crisis was leaked to british tabloids,
 who speculated that the kittens *might* actually be sex toys for certain
 tory members of parliament who had recently been caught inserting rodents
 into their assholes and then taping over the assholes.  headlines read
 'KITTY PORN'

        CNN dispatched a helicopter to follow the long, lumbering, and
 swerving journey of the good ship 'allison' and her now celebrity captain
 'herman'.  the kittens were all fine, he reported to an interviewer
 airlifted onto the boat, and he was sure the queen would get many hours of
 enjoyment from playing with them.

        when the ship finally landed, customs was shut down for 3 solid days
 trying to deal with the kitties without using a shredder.  all of question
 time for the next 2 weeks was spent dealing with the issue of discretionary
 powers to civil servants, and when a backbencher from sussex uncovered a
 memo recommending that the ship 'be discretely sunk before reaching port'
 sent from one powerful civil servant to another, all hell broke loose.
 there was a confidence call in parliament and the labour government very
 nearly fell.

        meanwhile, julian had quite accidentally become a darling of the
 media, who felt that his 'non-violent means of affecting a political change'
 was the best thing they had seen since gandhi.  one day, coming out of his
 apartment, a crowd of reporters chased julian down the street yelling
 'julian, julian' as he panted and sprinted.  suddenly, a huge black
 limousine with plates that read 'hawkish' pulled up to the curb.  the back
 door opened and there was a buxom redhead in thigh high leather boots and a
 short skirt was sitting next to a small, pudgy, wrinkly old man with crinkly
 hair.

        'DR. KISSINGER?' shouted julian.

        'yes... and you must be julian simmons.'

        'yes.'

        the reporters were closing in.

        'i am a big fan of your recent stunt.  sheer brilliance.  i
 recommended a similar course of action while serving under richard nixon,
 but it was lost in all the paperwork.  the press can be such a bear... would
 you like to disappear for awhile?'

        'yeah, dr. kissinger.'

        'call me hank, and get in.'

        'but hank, who is this bitch taking up my seat?  can *three* really
 sit comfortably back there?' he asked staring at the cavernous interior,
 clearly designed for more like 8 people.

        'an excellent point, julian.'

        and at that point the girl, named coincidentally enough allison, who
 was a graduate student in international relations at the JFK school, felt a
 size 8 and a half balley tassel loafer strike her in the ass as she spilled
 onto the concrete.  julian skillfully hurdled the girl, leapt into the limo
 and said 'can we go and pick up my cat snookums?'

        'of course.  i will send somebody up for her.'

        and so julian and henry kissinger went back to kissinger's place in
 connecticut for a week of women, booze, and very much debauchery.

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