NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/prose/1673

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Subject: [././.]  the undiscovered country, volume 1 [././.]
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Organization: Pomona College
Date: 28 Dec 92 13:03:02 PST

&~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~%
%                                                                             &
&             T H E   U N D I S C O V E R E D   C O U N T R Y                 %
%                                                                             &
&       Published by SDI, Inc.            Submissions to:                     %
%                      07NOV92            [e-mail]         &
&     After The End of History            [e-mail]              %
%                                                                             &
&                                                                             %
%                 "Hell is other people." - Sartre                            &
&                                                                             %
%  PARENTAL WARNING:  Even though you are most probably one of the majority,  &
&  a single-parent household leader with little responsibility, we feel the   %
%  need to warn you so that in case you decide to supervise your delinquent   &
&  brats, you will know that we, conservative Christian moralist freaks, have %
%  determined with our infinite mental powers that the material in this       &
&  netzine is not only obscene, lewd, lascivious, provocative, ambitious,     %
%  cynical, destructive, stimulating, and creative, but it is also (we have   &
&  real proof somewhere) obviously a missive straight from Satan, commanding  %
%  Amerika's youth to turn to communism, sodomy, Satanism, and, of course,    &
&  drugs and voting Libertarian.                                              %
%                                                                             &
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

1.  Greetings from the Editors

    Greetings!  This is what our previous publication (which is now
a section of this one) started out doing, and now we've just expanded
the concept enough to be somewhat interesting to a wider range of
people, spread more information, and possibly get something done,
although I wouldn't bet on that, as we're dangerous slackers.  Enjoy.


                                La Bete Noire
                                S.R. Prozak

2.  Facing The Cradle

This work
It lags behind the others
Yet is ahead of the rest

It seems dead to the touch
But the life is underneath
It feels pain and regret
Yet it knows no emotions
Save for one

I deface it
for its repulsiveness
I enter the scars
onto its surface
I can not penetrate
beyond that

They can not be touched
But they are
constantly in sight

It tries to continue
this glass facade
Where is the reality in it?
Its reality is lost,
alone and empty

I despise it for existing
I despise it for being created
I despise those that created it
I despise it for being alive
I despise it for haunting my dreams

Despite all of this
I still love it

                -- La Bete Noire

3.  Procrastination Song, vols. I-II

I.

White and fluffy, warm and deep,
Wish I had another sheep.
Cloven hooves and beady eyes,
I'd like to be between their thighs.
Tripped out on testosterone,
I'll find a sheep to call my own,
They pant and gasp and buck in fear,
When I ram it in their rear.
I woo them and then tie them down,
Then check to see who is around,
My blood runs hot at this juncture,
Fresh sheep anus, ripe for puncture,
To some this poem may seem quite rude,
I wrote it for our good friend Jude,
'Cause during work, when we are bored,
We talk about the sheep we've scored.

        - Manfred, Lord Genital

II.

From "The Memoirs of Ronald Reagan," page 72:

as the daylight begins to fade,
I'm looking for a flock to raid,
finding ewes well in their prime,
what a delightful hobby, mine!
grabbing each delighful creature,
to sample pleasures they must feature,
the zipper opens up this scene,
before entering caverns so serene,
that I must lubricate before I dive,
and hope the sheep remains alive,
because there's nothing better for me,
than warm sheep flesh around my peewee,
so every night as life slows down,
check out a pasture, I'm around.

        - Samuel Taylor Cholera

    (But honestly, why shouldn't there be more sheep dating?  You go
to a bar, you pick up some member of your target sex, take them back to
your/their apartment, fuck, and then depart...meaning?  value?  Pomona
College dating seems to be this find-fellatio-fuck-forget system, which
is pretty valueless beyond the simple sensual pleasure...but this is to
be expected in a country where most families are shattered.  So what's
that different about doing a sheep?  Remember, all sheep are inherently
consenting - Ed.)

4.  Now

it's the time
for responsibility
for repose
for regress

beckoning in futility
no emotions
no regret
i'll still cry
my tears
to make the pain
disappear again

it's not there
yet you dance
so close
too close
to touch

i misunderstood
and thought i knew
complexity of
our interactions

i dare not say
that word again
to curse myself
but why not?
let us dance again
into the fire
so we both may burn

i can't turn my back
on all i've learned
and forget what it meant
at one pleasant time
so i may find the hope
to try again
one more time
before i
sleep

        - La Bete Noire

5.  The Moralistic Conundrum:  Problems of an Unethical Moral Society

From:   POMONA::CBLANC       "Spinoza Ray Prozak, HAQR/SDI" 29-OCT-1992 01:58:26.66
To:     HCAULFIELD
CC:     CBLANC
Subj:   your note


Okay, I had the following on my door:  "What's a moral?  What is an ethic?  Have
you either, and if so what are they?  Should I have some?  Please do not reply
while under the influence of drugs."

The difference between moral and ethic is shaky to me, but as I understand it
moral is part of some greater system, usually religious or societal.  Ethics
are simply a code for acting correctly, however that may be defined.  Is this
making sense?

I have no morals, but I have my own code of ethics I developed at about age 12.
How would I explain it?  It basically relies on not hurting anyone or doing
anything incorrect.  It states that I should gratify the wishes of my animal
soul and treat people like people instead of the way I have been treated by too
many for my fucking years.  Grounded in self control, it is basically opposed
to violence without cause (cause is pretty fucking narrow, also) either verbal
or physical.  It's doing the right thing as I see it, acting correctly.  I can
give you examples, but I can't explain it, because it is a product of my animal
soul, and only that and my logic can judge each instance...I don't fuck
casually not only because I don't like it but also because it objectifies
humans too much...something like that.  I have no problem doing drugs, but
would never subject someone to them without consent.  I have no problem with my
own death, but would not kill unless inevitable because of threatening behavior
toward people I care about or (less so, now) myself.  Is this making any sense?

Should you have one...if you so choose.  What a cop-out answer!  Yeah, but this
is the only way you can deal with it.  If you feel it within yourself -- if you
feel a need to act correctly and at least loosely codify what is correct, then
do it.  I would recommend an ethical code as opposed to a moral one, whatever
the definitions are.  I haven't gotten into the ethics/morals bullshit far
enough in philosophy to be super knowledgeable about this.  Some derive morals
from logical constructs, but I derive it from the presence of an active animal
intuitive center of realization within myself that wishes to do right because
wrong hurts.  Simply.

I hope this helps.  Before I read your note, I had one beer, and I've had two
sips from the open one on the desk.  This sobriety thing is kind of a
drag.

take care,

S.R. Prozak

6. Stoner Adventures, vol. III

        Calm springs days unnerve me, giving me this feel of
restlessness, this sense that all is not as quiet as it seems in
Nietzsche's raging universe.  Such was this day, southern California
cool, as I sat on the small porch some distance from my room, hoping no
one would recognize the super-fat jay I'd rolled with two pieces of
zigzag.  I knew I shouldn't smoke the whole thing myself, but as I had
no obligations and needed to kill that horrible restlessness, that
searching feeling which has brought me despondent to many sealed doors,
I sucked the whole thing down, finishing with the aid of my keys, which
served as a faithful roach clip.  I got up, leaving my copy of
Zarathustra on the seat.
        Back into my now-incredibly-dark room, I staggered around the
piles of paper and cigarette butts, finally groping to my screen.  I
stared at it for some time, wondering what I should be doing.  I was
pretty well stoned, as that jay must have had five grams of dope in it,
good home-grown Berkeley Turbo Zonk, but my tolerance betrayed me, and
so when Spike came in the door with a huge box and a wide grin, I was
receptive.
        "Hey, man...look what came in the mail."
        "Is this the 'art project' you were telling me about?"
        "Yeah, check it out.  Took quite a bit in shipping and all, but
now it's here, and I just bought a bag, so let's break it in."
        "Agreed." (enthusiastically; I refuse to use the ! on a routine
basis & especially not in situations such as that, as it is overused as
hell by most of this country, especially teenaged girls, who can't seem
to convey anything of any importance at all without at least six !
trailing their sentence like a vicious tracer)
        Spike pulled open the top of the box and lifted out the object
inside with some difficulty.  I couldn't believe my eyes, as he appeared
to be pulling out the most unlikely object ever to be bongified,
something that appeared to be a large explosive device.  With the usual
slender tapered shape of a dangerous weapon, it sloped not into fins but
the large mouth of some form of bottle, transplanted.  Spike propped it
against the wall and pulled out a small stand designed to fit under the
detonator end and then rested the bomg (for such was it to be called) in
it.  The bowl was literally huge -- he must have found some oddball
place to do this work -- and the entire thing seemed to be sealed tight
as a drum.
        "Spike...what?...how?...who?"
        "My brother works on a five-silo site in North Dakota, and since
they're stationed way up there and some local growers produce prime
dope, they smoke a lot.  He gets stoned more than I do, and he will even
more now, since they've coopted the mess department, who've promised to
requisition more funds for 'morale-boosting holiday dinners' and
munchies.  I think they sold some equipment or something, because
they're not living off of their salaries -- anyway, he found one of
these lying around, and converted it into a bong with some help from the
machine department they have as part of their post-nuclear survival
plan."
        "What was it?"
        "A Mk62 nuclear device, with option for cluster munitions, nerve
gas and herbicidal devices."
        "Oh."
        As he said this, Spike was busily loading the bowl from the
fattest, greenest bag of dope I've seen in some time.  "I got this from
my brother, too -- they apparently got rid of a missile or something,
because they have a whole silo now to grow dope in.  I think the
radioactive residue helps or something.  Here, take this--"
        It was a brilliant hit.  More subtle than Camus, more potent
than Sartre, more brainshocking than Nietzsche...brilliant.  As I sort
of wobbled in the corner, Spike took another.  "Damn, there almost is a
gOD," he said when finally able.
        So here I was, restless, sort of ambling for something more in a
giant intellectual space I had no control over.  It's not the
restlessness itself that's so bad, I guess, but the feel of the reason
behind the restlessness, that maybe it's all foolish and damnable and I
might as well go smoke a giant fat one because there isn't much point in
anything else -- all about the same, which transforms this into the kind
of positive thought that weed sometimes helps slip into your mind.  Or
maybe it is the restlessness.  While Spike loaded the bowl again, I was
itching to go, but I wasn't that sure that I could move.  Nevertheless
another bomg hit did me well, I think.
        Once again on the street.  Spike and I dodged cars, spoke to
strangers and fed fifty pennies into a Coke machine (it spat them all
out).  We walked past a man preaching from his sidewalk can about the
world ending & the value of money to him, helping save souls, but we
didn't give him our fifty pennies.
        We came to a fountain.  Spike was pretty much nonfunctional,
having whipped out a similar joint to mine and smoked it with me,
putting him well "under the influence."  I was holding a handful of
useless pennies, shiny, bright things that reminded me of spring days in
childhood, innocent foolish thoughts of how pretty they were & better
than gold.  I threw them into the fountain, where they engendered a
brief & lasting (on the backs of my eyes) rainfall.  Spike asked me why
I did that & I replied that it was for good luck, although it never had
brought it to me, and he asked me why I did it then, & I said it was a
product of hope, 'cuz otherwise it was too cold to see.
        Seven men spoke to us about politics, but I don't think I heard
much of what they were saying; we went back our way, skipping rocks down
the gutter.

7.  A Tribute To Yog Sothoth

even in the tranquil dark
beyond the thumbéd visages of the day
and their complaints of no demise:
safety eludes, now,
from that which plagues me (now only)
remembrances of past freedom & delight
desire under love's command
lurking thoughts of beauty
drifting like the wind.

showing my flattened cheeks & widely eyes
two flames stretch to fill the room
smaller & larger, they brightly dance
for a future, on shades of wax.

nothing could save this moment
from my mournful sacred eyes,
caught in both and catching all
too much to forget --

when what you want is gone,
can we want anything?

enchanted solitude & memory
and forests of placid dreams
cherished by another, younger
standing next to me.

when I once fell from a plastic bike
and then returned to find it gone
my eyes turned inward, bitter shield
something not the first. fucking. time.
i'd ever lurk in there, living in
a hairshirt.

sometime in a spring like this
the fakest spring of fading fall
i fell in love & learned that bliss
covers not vengeful withal.

when digging for my veins of gold
they asked me what I thought of this
if it were me, if I were sane,
my reply could only be
that simple thoughts refreshing once
had formed me in another way
that path destroyed, that countenance
leads me to another sense
that somehow here in this great land
pits of time and death do dwell
leaving forgotten our enchanted hopes
something to sustain us, nothing more
second stage brings sordid thoughts
cynical complaints, and hatless wanderings
then we come to this great door
and left beyond in only minds
bereft we stagger to the frame,
and seek our solitude inside.

                - S.R. Prozak

8.  Adrenalin & Serotonin

     DRI!  These letters stood for the band that would wander
onstage during the early eighties, shout 1-2-3-4 and suddenly
become an entirely separate entity from the rest of the universe,
with Spike Cassidy flailing away like a recently released demon on
his large guitar, Kurt Brecht shouting out vocals like a drill
sergeant on PCP, and two anonymous guys (usually changing with every album)
pounding on bass and drums at high speed.  One of the genre's
first, DRI helped define what thrash was to be:  hardcore punk
crossed over with metal, played at high speed, top volume, and full
rage.  Taking the simplicity and rage of hardcore and the heaviness
and intellectual approach of metal, thrash produced short and fast
songs with the stopping power of a .45 hollowpoint.
     Their first album clocked in at 23 minutes with 28 songs on
it.  DRI's second wasn't much different, having the same half-
minute-kill approach to many of the album's classic cuts.  Shortly
after this, DRI slowed down.  Whether it was the times, age, or an
impulse for popularity, we'll never know.  I think it was
confusion, born of popularity, the demise of thrash, and
experimentation.  Three more albums passed that way, and then DRI
all but disappeared.
     Having been absent for a while, DRI have come back in with
more fanfare for their sixth album, produced through their own
Rotten Records label, located in Montclair.  Coming up to this
album, DRI had several options.  They could opt for their former
sound, continue the slower, near-speed metalish path they were
following, or try something unprecedented.  Their newest album,
"Definition," waffles. The essential character is the continuation
of the style of their last album, with some improvements that
appear to be mainly the result of personnel changes and experience.
     The music to "Definition" most resembles the style of their
album "Crossover," which was a slowed but vicious guitar shadowed
by bass and synchronized to incessant full-on drumming.  In this
effort the smoother tempo changes and bridges learned in later
albums come to demonstrate greater musical prowess, something
thrash never aspired to.
     Unlike Suicidal Tendencies and Cryptic Slaughter and Corrosion
of Conformity, thrash bands which changed fairly drastically and
became light speed metal acts without much distinctiveness or any
of their former emotional or lyrical brilliance, DRI changed but
did so without falling out of character.  Their new music was as
caustic as their earlier stuff, only on a less-intense, more
cynical basis.
     New aspects of the music and lyrics come with this release.
Rob Rampy IV takes over the chore of drumming, and adds more of a
metallic touch, including double bass drumming and harder, more
driving drum patterns.  Bass guitar, supplied by John Menor, has
taken the route followed by much of hardcore, with more interesting
fills and interludes, although the basic riff-following tendency
remains.  Spike Cassidy's powerful guitar takes to somewhat more
complicated riffs and bridges but still retains its power with
minimalistic but authentic riffs.  This album isn't as messy as
earlier efforts, which makes for a slicker listening experience but
often detracts from this genre.
     "Definition" takes the new DRI sound and does respectably with
it, given all factors.  There are changes like a non-distorted
lead-in to a song, more of a reliance on repetitive, chanted
choruses, and a general slickness, but I wouldn't class this album
with the efforts of so many bands to earn money.  Call it aging,
call it changing opinions, call it a change for the worse but call
it authentic - there doesn't seem to be any hypocrisy in this, any
commercial drive.  It's not their best by far, but for a 1992
album, it's much better than average.  And expected:  nothing that
energetic could last forever.

9.  The Coming of The Apocalypse

        Amerika, land of many useless things, most of which float about
like those plastic statuette of liberty tokens that people bought in
flocks some years ago.  Amerika's future remains uncertain, but with a
new president, there's at least some false optimism floating around and
influencing the rest of us to idiotic levels; hope can be a dreadful
thing, especially when used as a pair of blinders, much as Amerikans use
it.
        But there's something to be said for Amerikans as survivors in
an empty way of life; the meaning, whatever could once have been gleaned
from this existence, has been totally excluded, and we now survive with
brave hearts & faces in a land of opportunity squandered.
Relationships, shattered -- we're left objectivizing each other, chasing
after poon or penis, or, in the case of some suppressed minorities such
as the gay community, fucking in fear & dodging the nigh-impossible
longterm relationship.  Too much permissiveness on one end, too much
reluctance on another.  Jobs are things we swap when bosses rage or
companies fail, searching in almost total futility for a comfortable
place to work, shifting ourselves into functional yet unenlightening
careers -- what is there in our personal spaces, what we call our lives,
beyond the illusory?
        Some fill this void with religion, others drugs, others causes
with the intellectual nutrition of white bread but the conviction of
desperation.  We see the abortion issue going from the fundamentalist
podium to the streets in anger; is it really worth this much to these
people, or is this the desolation of loneliness & emptiness at work,
driving them toward something -- even a something hollow like a desert
bone -- to hold on to and defend more than life?  Is this what we seek
when life becomes an echo, the something worth more at least temporally
to us?  Moscow's celebrated problem with the collection of frozen
corpses of passed-out vodka escapees mirrors only our own.  Reality in
the sixties was something to be obliterated to reach out from, but in
the eighties (and continuing into the nineties) reality is something to
be obliterated so that we may survive in it.
        So we can blame it all on Nietzsche, and strive for what's next.
If solutions are to be found it is doubtful they will be within the
pages of this essay.  Like the rest of life, this is essentially a
useless activity: lamenting the givens of our existence.  Or perhaps it
is just procrastination on the part of the author, something to keep him
from falling into the same pit he describes.  More likely this is just
another futile & dangerous attempt on the part of SDI, Inc. to foster
thought, no matter how depressing, dangerous or seductive it may be.
        Or maybe Nietzsche is correct, and this is just another step
toward the time of silence, that dubiously mythical time of the last
human being.
                        - S.R. Prozak

10.  How To Access All of Our Neat Stuff

        SDI, Inc. has a pseudo-ftp site set up for anyone at all to
peruse, ramble, explore and enjoy.  Access is easy:

I.  If you're at Pomona college,

type:

$ set def po_1995:[cblanc.angst]

and you should be in a directory from which you can read and copy files.

II.  If you're elsewhere,

FTP to POMONA.CLAREMONT.EDU

type:

POMONA.CLAREMONT.EDU>login anonymous <here type in your address>
POMONA.CLAREMONT.EDU>cd po_1995:[cblanc.angst]

        We have back issues, interesting tidbits, conspiracy theories,
and other publications as well as a large collection of ouphiliac
paraphrenalia.  If there is something you wish to have kept at this
site, please email "[e-mail]."

11.  This Is The End

        Thus we come to an end to this, our first issue.  Please
distribute this & contribute anything you have that you feel is
valuable; we have minimal editorial requirements, and almost no topical
or linguistic ones.
        Let the struggle continue...

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
\                                                                             /
/                  Self - Destructive Initiative, Inc.                        \
\                          November, 1992                                     /
/                                                                             \
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