THE SITUATIONISTS AT LARGE

Originally published on November 12, 1997

I haven't been keeping up with these dudes since it became a book selling booth and then something's screwed up where I'm on the list twice (get everything twice) but can't respond or unsubscribe because of unexplained cosmic glitch. However, I decided to peek and see you getting mutilated by some humanoid. I can't say if I agree or disagree because I don't have the whole story but the hostility is acidic. I know, however, that you can take it and I'm sure you're just laughing on this.

Landry, I've thought about your newsgroup problem. How does this sound? Pick out what you find pertinent, disregarding the rest. Spud really doesn't monitor the newsgroup. It's automated. You signed up beaucoup months ago when you had another address. In order to UNSUBSCRIBE, you have to UNSUBSCRIBE with that same address. You get duplicates sometimes because I forward you stuff and the newsgroup forwards you the same stuff because you are still on the list. Your company E-mail server still accepts mail from your old address. Unsubscribe twice using both your current E-mail address and your former, then SUBSCRIBE afresh should you still be interested in receiving the list. Other than that I'm clueless. Yes, I am laughing, saddened by this sorry state of affairs, but laughing nevertheless. It's my only refuge.

I want to note that I believe that a lot of the people on this list or graduate students or something and am disappointed at the thin intellectual conversation spewing from their lip-fingers. How sad. I would love to get paid to spew. They don't know what they possess. Looks like academia is nothing more than a booksellers guild where they reshape sentences of sentences written about thinkers of the past. Who's doing the original thinking?

Not this crew. That is certain. I think I am wiggling towards the next wave of logic, but I can't get a word in edgewise. It's funny because I never mention g-o-d, but these people truly run for cover whenever I quote anything remotely Hebrew, even though I've tried to point out over and over again the wholesale ransacking and theft of the literature by Marx and Debord. Dead silence or the petty voice you quoted below is all these "great thinkers" can manage. Strange, I didn't receive that unsigned text. Maybe Spud has indeed axed me from the group.

Was Marx the highest point intellectual thought could attain? I keep waiting for the next thing, the next evolution on the food chain of an attempt to organize the human condition but I see only rehash rehash rehash. Art is rehashing cubism with slightly different variations. Literature is dancing around the macabre Faulkneresque trip into the dark side of family life with modern therapy heavy judgment thrown in. Music is nothing but push button computer masturbation.

Well, the "next" thing was Debord. Of this I am positive. A very good starting block for this clearinghouse of competing ideologies swarming around like angry hornets with an endless supply of stingers. However I seek not to clarify but to modify Debord, present a plan of action (or action by inaction) for which we stand. But of course these yahoos are too busy worshipping at the altar of Debord to ever "say" anything much less something of substance. It's the same numbing stagnation of thought they claim the spectacle creates and holds the world as hostage, that they practice. Duh, what a waste of fine godfodder, oops, I finally used the word.

Your text above describes what Debord was howling against. He was aware of the rehash, and wanted to "revolutionize" everyday life, but I believe he failed rather miserably*, just as Jesus** did in his own revolutionary pose (although his effects are as well-documented as this modern messiah***), but GODSEAK on the other hand IS very much alive conducting his press upon the stage of HISTORICAL TIME, a very very very Debordian phrase that seems to have only one meaning for all that I can uncover: the spark that leads to the Len Bracken generation's own personal civil war. Debord was an athiest; Bracken confesses the same.

Civil war is the great god they worship. Capitalism the devil. Their own historical time, their own dirty war in the name of the zeroworker theory interlaced with an abrupt dismissal of all things proprietary, a ridiculous idea of course betrayed by their own hypocrisies. I say, like Zachariah, the great and terrible day is coming in nuclear spades but woe to those who would wish for its arrival, especially to those by whose hands it is accelerated. Of course I am dismissed as a mere fool and a preposterous godlover. It seems to me they actualize, accentuate, and love the Great and Terrible Lord of Theosplatz more than I do, but that's just my opinion, uncouth, unhip as it is. The mark of the beast. The fall of mercantilism. No copyrights. No work. Hot BOG & BOR topics****, but all these wankers can do is strut about in their task to mark me as declasse. They claim a desire to elevate the man without quality but when I present a self-portrait of that very man without quality they attack me with strange wordy affairs contrary to the schematic of universal understanding, and sink into the abyss, well-deserved victims of their own quality.

Aaah, the wonders of the intellect . . .

A few notes:
* in his exclusionary practices
** in his inclusionary practices
*** in this case I see Debord as Barrabas, and still no messiah on the horizon.
**** BOG (Book of Genesis), BOR (Book of Revelation)

GT

"I see pieces of men marching trying to take heaven by force . . ."
-Bob Dylan

NUMBER THEORY

Originally published pn January 14, 1997

Thanks Landry for the personal update. Been swamped with Bracken's biography of Guy Debord, that Situationist International revolutionary Frenchy fellow I've namedropped a few times in your direction. A decent book I must say, if only because it is the first so-called biography in ANY language of this rather famous dialectician, according to its author, although Greil Marcus writes about him extensively in LIPSTICK TRACES, a book with which I believe you are somewhat familiar.

Still haven't even begun to compose the New Year's Day, the Day After Massacre tale of Tim, Julianna, Steve and all the 1980s throwbacks, but it's right there waiting for me when I get my breath back from Bracken. Ninety-nine photos have been scanned, 400 pages of text converted from Windows to Mac, and all laid carefully into PageMaker.

Currently busy proofreading with an interested eye; although I loathe the man's politics, his philosophical insights are pure poetry. Beaucoup typos, misspellings, missing words, et cetera, so gotta keep my eye on the ball. I also designed the cover. Bracken's hip to it, so all things are hunky dorey. Will get paid (underpaid but satisfied) and appropriate acknowledgements.The publisher is Feral Books, currently of Portland, Oregon soon to be moving to sunny LA. Whew! Be glad when all this REAL WORK is behind me...

GT

WHEW! IT'S OVER!

Originally published on January 22, 1997

Well, it's finally finished. The Debord book is packed off to Portland. Took data to service bureau to have my Syquest media converted to Zip, and printed out a color proof of the cover. Nearly a month's worth of work is in the can. Now I can address what happened over New Year's, settle back into my own themes, but first I need to awaken afresh. I am tired, needing a night's rest. Tomorrow I shall begin the prologue promised those long brackenish weeks ago. The details will no doubt seem shallow now, since most of you no doubt have struck conversations of some sort or another with the exiled in the meantime, but I am urged by inner demons and outer banks of fair recoil to capture the essence of my own perspectives. Thus I presume all of you are still interested in hearing these details, despite their tardiness, free from kneejerk but far from the thunder of that distant hour.

GT

ONE FLU OUT (WHEN IN ROAM...)

Originally published on December 27, 1996

Read your incredulous note in the wee hours this morning after a full day of Bracken's breath yesterday, finishing up his Debord photoscanning. Ninety-nine pictures of Frenchy fried brains in all...today we work on converting his text to Mac format, and probably some PageMaker work will do us until after the New Year.

I will be busy with work, guests, and doctor's appointments until after the new year so I guess I'll see you down the road in 1997. Had enough of this say anything, do nothing camp for one year, if not a lifetime. In other words, try these on for size SAST. Stay Away Steve Taylor. Sick And Steve Tired. And between the two of us, you won't be missing anything you haven't already mastered.

Our limosine plans are now quite iffy. Our friend, the owner, was rushed to the hospital Christmas Eve, spent the whole next day having tests run to no conclusive end. He was released sometime yesterday. Still no solid lead on a driver, but Sue has a maybe up her sleeve. Since you cannot resist playing coy with details on your end, I think we should simply disengage. In Dollhouse vernacular, I am pulling a Blumstein of 1986 (sic) by disinviting you for that holiday drive in the jingle jungle jangle which may not even happen anywaze, and ALL activities sandwiching the wild duck. You deal with the consequences on your end. I'll deal with them on this end. Hey, that's the way we've been playing the game all this time anyway, right? Very little teamwork, a whole lotta garbage mouth, promises, vows, big plans, narcissistic meanderings, hip to hop to hap flap we go, to ground zero where nothing ever happens but an effort to cheat the chatter of reality. Can't play that man. That seems to be your game, and I just can't deal with it for the next few weeks, hey even months. As for you seeing Jennifer, if she wants, she can meet you elsewhere, but I am commandeering control of the Dollhouse at this point in time, and as SAST, you simply can't seem to commit to anything but the moment, and then the moment's gone...

You want me to toss the ball around with you in the coming months before Howrey hits the diamond in the rough? Well, I will honor that commitment even as you struggle with pecking order on your side of the moral equation. Meanwhile I am still GT. Yesterday I invited Bracken to join us at the cage. Len's quite the sportsman himself, although I think his game of choice is the game of hoops. But now you hint that you may not even break spring training wind as you may spin off to web wonderland in the taunting twists of fate we both can appreciate for its razzle and its dazzle, but only one of us will be worn to a frazzle chasing the dreams of the other. And I think we know who that person is. Good luck, and get well, Steve, of winter aches and gains, and this enfilading brain seizure gripping your soul, a hellava ride, but one always threatening to spin outa control...

Sometimes friendship is only a foul investment in the trickle down nonsense of time's ruthless monopoly. Sometimes it is GOD.

I drugged up last night with a handful of pills and a swallowful of green death as I too felt the oncoming freight train of disease approacheth. This morning I am groggy but clear minded on the issues. Read this note twice, read it five times if you must, but read it clearly. Gabriel is marking SAST up for insubordination, NOT FOR SPILLING BEER TWICE, NOT FOR ALL THE FAIR ARGUMENTS YOU PLACE UPON MY NECK, HEY, NOT FOR ANYTHING YOU HAVE OVERTLY ACHIEVED, BUT, BUT, BUT, FOR WHAT YOU HAVE COVERTLY IGNORED IN THIS SHORT AFTERMATH OF THE PLANNING STAGES OF THIS, THAT, AND THE OTHER THING...

Sorry we won't have the opportunity to meet Della, but then, DID WE EVER?

I too am resolved to take better care of myself, starting RIGHT now. Hence all these doctor's appointments. Hosting the Steve Taylor Straight Past Sunday Show at the Dollhouse DOES NOT improve my chances for achieving this goal. Sorry my take on world events differs so much from your own; the harsh dovetones of this note are not easy for me, because you are very dear to me, but fact is stronger than fiction, and fiction is what we seemingly feast upon to help ourselves get through another speeding mist of mindswirl. So please, do me this favor, leave me alone. Let ME play it by ear, hearing nothing and all things simultaneously in damned well due time to prove whether or not I can survive your toying serpentlike silences. Bracken will soon be gone, as well may Shipman in the beckoning future of Dollhouse fates. Needless to say, there are plots and counterplots already in the works. Meanwhile I will light a candle to wedge into my ass for all eternity for each of my adversarial friends, each who believe in their deepest of competitive souls that they possess something of vigorously vital interest to me. That's just not so. I cannot sustain the conflicting desires of conflicted minds without losing my own endowments to the howling winds of inconstancy. I might even boast that I have history on my side in these abrupt appraisals, my friend. You play it by ear, so now hear this: STAY AWAY STEVE TAYLOR BECAUSE GT IS SICK AND STEVE TIRED! Is that enough SAST for you? Maybe these are my fevers making themselves known in words today. Test them as I know you shall, but be aware, not a line on this page is bogus.

EQUALITY BUM

Originally published on April 30, 1996

Yo Steve, your gnat is gnawing at my forehead. Was too depressed, especially after reading your notes yesterday to respond to anything much. Did get back to Tom Howell. He's a practicing HTML author now, quite proud in his jest, and sent his brag to "Gabriel" just like family. He always brings a smile.

Your job as literary justice in moaning is taking its toll on me however. A small toll, but one I recognize and simply weather, and also moan about afterwards, just to show you I know what I'm talking about despite any argument you or they would bring to your defense, or mine. But that's we price we pay for being ourselves. So here's the grease. High gear, Friday stew, stem, and glabe discharged to slow gear by Monday and on into Tuesday. But I'm feeling better now. Timside brought a puff to a gruff, and the clearly grown clown is clue-driven again.

Wish I could help you in your status search, but this, appropriately, is evidence that I have failed in this department, particularly as I must state emphatically, as it concerns you. Maybe it will take seven years to thaw or two months to germinate, as each thought bares itself in time, and then comes the moment when we all put in a call for mercy. The messianic skids uncoil as we try to separate the body from the mind, or the mind from its redeemer, accompanied by the same long list of equivocating characteristics we've known about ourselves from the earliest years of our precocious lives, characteristics and traits we called them by different names then, or at least, most of them.

A very conservative idea must come to pass. This is the genetic or scientific approach. We know this path, or rather we stumble across it, and figure we don't have a chance to evoke ourselves. This sudden opinion of ourselves reads itself to the world in word and picture, skin and tragedy, speed and oblivion. We clutch for hope that our highest aspiration remains our surest fallback position as we dally with the fires of our own heated disputes with a strengthening opposition.

My own most vicious excitement of the day was Sue allowing, even offering to keep the whole house cool today with air conditioning. Man, what a bosslady, although yesterday there is still some confusion in my head whether she knew her spanky new luggage was due at the house yesterday. It came, but was delivered across the street to 110. Don't even know those people, which hurled me into a mild rage (5.2 on the GT Richter) before whimpering down to a sigh.

Thus, baking in the raw configurations of cause and effect seeking motives & derivations of man, and god, and country I had to face the repeated crisis of being home yet again, just upstairs with only a small fan compensating for repeated delivery failures posting an argument against me. My half-deafness may also contribute. More than likely the air was blasting at that point. I turned it on around 1:30 yesterday in the computer room, and around eight last night as I nodded out with QUE's Netscape 2.0 in the sofa shortly before Sue bounced into the room and removed my glasses. I slept another few hours there in the royal chair before sliding myself into bed just after midnight. A long & heavy dream sequence followed me after I pounced up slightly dazed at seven oh nine. Still depressed. Alienated by having to growl in sweat past the courier's light knocking on my door, yet once more again.

Missing a delivery irks me enough. Knowing that I didn't even know to expect a package that day had me twisted in knotnumbing speeches to myself. She surprisingly got on the phone and gave that piece of mind that almighty customers are supposed to inspire. But knowing a delivery was coming hasn't kept me from missing eight to a dozen deliveries over the past few years. Ah, but what is missing from this picture? Sue must have known it was coming but she neglected to tell me, or remind me because this transaction was initiated on her order. Yes, she surprised me by harrassing UPS (it turns out; I mistakenly thought it was a JC Penney's direct delivery with a glance at the delivery paper. UPS is not mentioned anywhere, but Sue obviously called with knowledge.) Anyway, I've let go of that issue until it pops up again. Her luggage is sassy, and bless baby with baboon oils, it's obvious her Carribbean cruise is shaping and tidying up in her mind as the calendar drills onward.

That brings us full circle back to you. I can't respond to your unSETled or UNsetLING loops except by running it back onto you. I figure you figure Tim, Sue, and I are your set. But while each of us chagrin in general challenges to what appears to be each of our individual, and better or worse for it, our collective fate we are surfing from day to day realizing the overall will take care of itself one way or the other just like you do, you seem bitten by the biggest bug of all of us.

All we are saying is not give peace a chance (although that too), but just face up to the fact that "life" ain't gonna like us if we don't like it. So now let's figure to solve in the equation: Life=x, where x is whatever ONE can achieve. A second equation: (Good)Life=(Good)x may first appear redundant, and needs to be reduced to its simplest form, the linguist feeling unserved by pure mathematics would insist words are self-modifiers, and not to its own finite standards decipherable like numbers in a numbers racket. Seeing goods in stores one once lusted after but which now seem plastic and faraway does not change the relative value of the goods, or does it?

Has x changed, or has the quality quotient changed? What caused us to change?

This is a mystery I suggest the philosophers, the mathmeticians, the psychologists, the theologians, the aarTvarks, the united we piss paragons, and the warbugles get together to solve, but then again, the word fails us also. Until the word can mend as well as melt flesh, we cannot rest as advocates of full knowledge, and replicated consciousness in those who would be anybody's avengers. Do we ever avenge past failures? Agreement, however fragile an agreement, to accept one's bland experimental kinetic placement in this whistling dixie of a world is the only path I can recommend. It's a role. A puzzle. An almighty gig just as big as anything one can't quite figure in aces right now.

To actually have done this over here ain't much different from having done that over there. To achieve anything without factoring in this finer evidence stoolpigeoned up against our biases and our prides is to fool ourselves of our misplaced recognitions. It's not about value or unvalue. It's about both, and there is no separation of state and status. Would Colin Powell really think he would be any different a man whether he is president of the United States or simply a retired soldier, a self-confessed Republican, a busy and influential party member at that, good husband and father, and distinguished symbol for an amazingly broad spectrum of people?

Life=xyz/abc

And communication boils, hot springs
we flock against in hordes still wet behind the ears
from our last visit to the sources of good

riddance and circumstance
lockjaws rifled by the word
timed riddles still waters

flooding our echoes
flames filled and felled
as the woods the would nots

and the teachers resort to tears
comic fears basic hogwash
mister to clean our stripping

canons of doubt
figures in between the couch
the clue and the closet

salvaged for memories
lost pretension
segregated ifs

or something else entirely.

GT

TWO GUYS AND A BOWL OF FUZZY SNITS

Originally published on September 18, 1996

Thanks Landry for appreciating. Just what this discussion was originally supposed to be about is still up for debate! Go figure!

Derrida & Schrodinger's cat, not chickens, somebody else piped in, but for my money I don't know why these people think a topic can't or won't stray a few fuzzy threads away from the barrowness of whatever it is they think THEY are ranting on about. After all, these snits aren't even in charge of the group. I simply jumped in where I had something to say after being bombarded with a bunch of notes yesterday from a this Derrida group I guess I joined a few weeks ago because I haven't joined one recently...

How's it going? My back between my shoulder blades has been bothering me the past few days. Tonight Sue & I are traipsing out past Bailey's Crossroads to Borders to catch the Guy Kawasaki booksigning. Guy is the official MacEvangelist, again working for Apple. Hope to get a snapshot of the Mac Guy & yours truly. Later we'll stop for dinner, then cruise back into town for one of Guy Debord's Situationist International flicks, from the 1960s, I would suppose. Len Bracken issued the invite. Tonight in the WPA artspace...whoopee! He breathed his signature Bracken's breath over the phone with a hint of desperation at Gabriel's indifference, "Uh, nine o'clock's probably a little too late for you, right?" But I said that this time he was in luck. We were going to be out, and would certainly try to swing by to catch his idol philosopher in action.

And yes I noticed that this would be a two Guy (actually a GYE & a GUEE, but who's counting these days?) evening...

GT

"Create like a God, Command like a King, and Work like a Slave..."
—Brancusi

JUST ANOTHER JESUIT POSEUR

Originally published on October 3, 1996

Notes is a bust, but I guess before I'll ever get around to affording Director 5, Avid VideoShop is a decent start, so again, rather than webbing I was reading this afternoon. Like Tom Howell said to me one time, "Any fool can spend money...."Most interesting concept. Little green apples, uh, Macintosh apples...

What I'm talking about is the olfactory packaging assault. Hardware and literature needs no sniffing, but aromatically introduces itself with gusto to the nostrils as soon as the box and ever more powerfully when the plastic wrapping is unfurled...

Absolutely cool. The absence of the 1710AV display undercuts what would surely be some sort of full frontal euphoria though. A call to Apple just now netted me nothing more than what I already knew. Two more weeks may pass before all the backorders are filled. Or then again it may show up tomorrow. Credit card is billed as each portion of the order is shipped.

According to the set-up manual the 8500 is shipped with voice recognition software enabling user-scripted commands to perform tasks as well as rendering responsive feedback from the Mac itself. Uhmmm...

When at Microcenter I did ogle over a 200mhz Performa that spoke the application names when the mouse passed over them, but I was completely ignorant that the Mac had voice recognition capabilities already out on the 8500/120...

I do believe I'm gonna get a kick out of wearing the QuickTime movie producer's cap. All that video footage collecting dustbunnies will finally serve a purpose as I push to integrate multimedia into the iMote core premise: the cult of personality exposed for what it truly is, nothing more than reality itself. Understatement and pomposity explored from the historical and futuristic prespectives. The perilous dichotomy explained as the everbroadening gulf between inexplicable social aloofness and seamless integration into the fabric of worldly imperative.

From Jesus to Debord (did I mention Bracken confessed last week when forced into the corner of my argument that among some dissenters Debord is ridiculed as just another Jesuit poseur?) I wish to stake a claim for what ails the world in general and will use the tracks of classicism to upbraid the apostles of the classes. I believe I have been laying in the groundwork, and now I have nearly all the tools of production.

Is premature death or irrepressible riotous living the only two acts separating me from my destiny, or am I merely a hollow shell of a pretender? That is the test I have always dared to wait while all the pieces are gathered onto the board (bored?). I have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us, to borrow a phrase. Like I have said to Bracken in several a lucid moment, revolutions are a dime a dozen. If it ain't the bum on the street asking for a dime, it's me asking for a dollar twenty. We are exactly the same, me and that bum. We are both messed up because we cannot control the nature of need nor the nature of corruption. Life is the mathematical ratio of one to the other.

So to quote YAST, of course ripe in a rebellion of his own with SAST...

Let's Mac on! dudes and dudettes! Or is that more properly put, LET'S MAC ON DISKS AND DISKETTES?

GT

PRELUDE TO MAX STIRNER

Originally published on February 4, 2003

Dear Gabriel Thy,

Thanks for replying so thoughtfully to my post. I would like to comment on what you wrote.

Your comments pique my interest on just what kind of disagreements might have been responsible for the group's demise. "Noisy self-interest" covers a lot of ground. It seems to me that in the aftermath of the fall of communism disagreements on the left compounded. 1938 brought a similar crisis to the left. For or against Stalin. Three years earlier Breton's Surrealists experienced a similar debacle. There was no bridging the gap between the poet's investigation into experience and the Party's requirements of practical administration. But it arguably brought to light an irreducible toggle at the very core of the revolutionary project: does the collective or the individual have the ultimate say in charting direction of the revolution? The Surrealists never satisfactorily resolved this problem, and even as late as 1952, Breton indicated that his answer to the question "does the revolution require that social liberation must occur before individual liberation can?" was yes. I don't believe he really thought out all the possible implications that attend to this issue. If social liberation is primary, doesn't it follow that individuals are reduced to an instrumental role? This question goes to the core of the entire Marxist project.

My reference to your manifesto being "a little too sweeping" should be explained, I suppose. What I meant was that to assert that nothing of note has happened since the, what? The 1947 International Surrealist Exhibition perhaps? Was going a bit too far. Personally, I find some of Matta's 1960's works a real extension of the Surrealist outlook. Even Pop has a role in furthering our ideas of personal liberation. Of course, I look at the best of Pop as being heavily laced with irony, so that it can be read as a critique of commodity capitalism. I agree with you the the "balkanization of the universal" is something we need to transcend.

I too am an autodidact, to a large degree. I do have 24 semester hours' credit from Roosevelt University in Chicago dating from 1972-74. My first great epiphany came at attending the Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago in March 1974. His work and life showed me that formal education provided more obstacles than opportunities. I find academia to be one of the principal obstacles to both individual and social transformation. My second great epiphany came from understanding the intimate connection between Duchamp and Max Stirner in 1989. My course has been set ever since. The bulk of the fruits of my interest in this connection is forthcoming, but it won't be too long now.

You really shouldn't lift whole sections of material from the Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Stirner and present it as your own thought, although you chose a reputable source. George Woodcock, although prone to some of the same collectivist biases as so many other commentators on Stirner, did do a pretty good job at characterizing his thought.

I guess you're already surmising that I vehemently disagree with your characterization of Stirner as "yet another status quo philosopher". Your evaluation sound a lot like Karl Marx's ideas on the subject, and I am painfully aware that the situationists used Marx as their basic philosophical substrate. Do you know a book that came out in 2002 by Kristin Ross called "May '68 and its Afterlives"? She, too, decries the "creeping individualism" that has seeped into the discourse on May '68 and related phenomena. But that is material for another post.

The thing that is important now is to indicate just why Stirner is not just another apologist for the small-time shopkeeper. The key point has to do with the irreducible toggle in the individualism/collectivism question: can I keep my own prerogatives intact if I allow a collective entity to be primary in my own mind and, by extension, in the world? The answer, I'm afraid, is no, and if this is true, then my own instrumentalism at the hand of the collectivity is inevitable. This engenders what Stanley Milgram (yes, that Milgram) calls the "agentic state", in which I sign away my right of decision in favor of one "in authority". I presume you are aware of the infamous Milgram experiments of 1960. One look at the results of these experiments should be enough to convince that ours is not a world in which "enlightened" egoism rules, only the debased kind, the infantile kind. Where vulgar egoism leaves off, Stirner begins. It is possible to trace a trajectory of an increase in "affective individualism" (as the historian Lawrence Stone terms it), beginning in the late 17th century and continuing up to the present time. Kinship ties have weakened, and individual prerogatives strengthened, in a fairly unbroken progression ever since this began. One of the main problems, in my opinion, is that this process has only gone halfway through its cycle.

Individual empowerment is what we all need, not a centralized plan of forced income redistribution. This will only result in endless counterrevolution. It is moralism run wild, what confounded the French Revolution and the communist one as well. Collectives that legislate what's good for the others against their consent is no good. Self-directed anarchism could avoid these problems if brutality could be expunged form the consciousness of the millions. That if is so big you can drive a truck through it, I know. But the revolution is impossible without it. Start small, get bigger. Revolution from below.

I believe we are not so very far apart philosophically. Breton, as well as Picabia, Max Ernst and Duchamp, all found Stirner to be quite compelling. It is only a question of continuing to resolve all the inconsistencies attending to the implementation of collectively constituted projects that keeps us from moving forward. Only.

We are not talking small-time stuff here, n'est ce-pas? Please respond if you care to.

Regards,

David Westling
_____________

Apologies to Mr. Westling for re-publishing our short tet-a-tet without his expressed permission. But I find our brief work here worthwhile in pointing up a few crucial ideas central to any thriving philosophy which, by definition, must thoroughly engage the contemporary situation in both leaping tall buildings like storied men of action and crawling upon hands and knees thorough the filthy sewers of a collpasing infrastructure like rodents of an unrepentant generation, if we are to move beyond the fine words of old heroes and other remarkable curvatures of the spine.

BACK WHEN PRETENTIOUSNESS WAS GOD

Originally written to a young American cohort I had visited in Paris a few months before with my wife, dated February 5, 2001.

Cheerio my friend. Welcome back to the Gabriel of old. . .

FTP INFO: Your web site is ready and already has a default page loaded, and this works during testing. Note that the default page must be named "index.html" to match 'XusNET webserver configurations. You have full FTP privileges. You can create new directories, read from, write to, and download anything from your domain's directory. The following information should be entered into your FTP client so that you can access your web site.

HOST: ftp.siftology.org
USER ID: siftology.org
PASSWORD: cleverjones
Directory: /

Your new web account is configured. Check it out mon frere! Let me know if you have any troubles or questions.

Look forward as always to your cheerful voice once you return to France from the land of Joyce. Me, I'm still properly sick with the flu, no day better than the next, a week now of fever, scorched throat, pain in both ears driven with ice pick precision, the usual sinus stuffiness and upchuck too. But I am as inspired as I've been in years to focus on our global critique, but tire easily and return to bed often.

Rebunk has sparked a flame under me to—once and for all—draw the lines of where I stand on this Debord crescendo. Of course, it looks as if I'm going to have to torch his own Aussie canopy with a direct hit of GT phlegm since, as Kubhlai pointed out recently, he has never ever really put his own two cents on the line, but continues to hide in silence or behind the SI bulk of work he has archived. It's time to quit pussyfooting around. The imperative that I slash away this fog that's been hovering over me for some three years now has reached illuminating proportions.

The Jappe book on Debord is helping pin the Frenchman down for me, and as I suspected, there is so much that I find self-contradicting, just as I find much of the Christian outlook self-contradicting, that I must keep good notes and finally put my own sorry self to the test of my fellow sworgsters. I will start with that very last fragment Zizek (a new name to me, but a piece full of typical dishonest extrapolation) Bunkee sent over the SWILL. I know Kubhlai and I are on the same page, whatever that happens to be, and I think you are there as well. But Rebunk and Crash have shown us nothing but bookmarks from the past, and no clear definition on who in the hell they are as individual credits to their race for humanity’s sake.

I cannot help but believe that within the common parallels nee inconsistencies (notwithstanding some quite distinctive divergences) I find in the comparative Situationist-Christianity creeds lies the answer to my own special dilemma as to which spectacular point along the political scale I stand or AM SUPPOSED TO STAND (according to my own nature, and self-interests).

We can make metaphor and we can mix metaphor, poorly or insightfully, forever my friend, but sooner or later, and NOW is MY time, I just have to know what IT IS I KNOW. And there is much I've soaked up in pieces that Debord (the braggart who said he learned nothing from scouring books, but everything by dallying along the streets) touted that I do not believe is true, sweeping generalizations absurb on the face of all things self-evident (relying on dubious constructions such as nearly everybody else’s false consciousness while touting the reality of his own desire to make his every point), and even more absurd considering his call to action, knowing the chain of corruptibility people everywhere will die to protect.

You and I have agreed on this point before. But what we must do, or perhaps this is my own chore, is prepare a solid critique of Debord, taking agreement where we can, and marking void those points of fantasy we find impossible to swallow, given that our own cultural bias will never be his, and therefore quite interestingly enough, absent the francophilian and xenophobic texture of many of his assumptions.

While France has its immigrants, America is worshipped by the hordes and hated by another substantial group as well. Paris, well, it's merely a city of glamour, now mostly in the past, for better or worse. However, I suspect that this heady investigation will lead me to suggest that Debordism is very close to Nazaritism (the words and praxis of Jesus) and that any rejection of Debord is a rejection of Jesus on the very terms that I have long been availing the old prophet and dismissing the more recent one. But I must know where I stand with both men.

Debord writes often about the essence of humanity, while ignoring the general corruptibility of that same humanity. This was the point Kubhlai tried to make in his most recent post trying to draw Rebunk into the ring. Yes, a lot of this teasing might sound like retrograde religiosity. Perhaps it is, perhaps it ain't when brought up to date in modern terms we wish to introduce, perhaps with very different social schematics, although we'd be hard pressed to suggest a singular Christian scheme given the complexity of the Catholic-Protestant fillibuster. Your recent remark that originality is not the aim, but rather, relevance is the cornerstone of our endeavor.

Remembering our own initial urgency in SWORG terms to embrace the man in the street, Debord fails this universal test, a victim of his own cultural inheritance. His patented exaggerations and smug dishonesty hardly qualify him as the honorable man of action he had aimed to be. He was a man of books and eloquence, staged harrumph and star egotism, and could not feign ignorance, or even virtue long enough to save his own life. Considering he didn't consider writing or contemplation worthy of the name—action—his greatest action was putting a gun to his heart. That greatness rests solely in its finality. Deborg boasted that almost everyone he met wanted to follow him; well, I seriously suggest one cannot comprehend the truth of an intrinsic vision without feeling the floodwaters of petty and trifling rejection.

So after I get the Paris Summit site fully completed and uploaded, I would hope that we might collaborate on a few nails in staking Debord to the cross side by side with the praxis of Jesus, not Pauline Christianity mind you, or at least not until summarizing the similarities and disparities between the two primary men in focus. This exploratory surgery may not interest you at all. But nothing less than this exacting sort of critical analysis will set me free of my own confusion and foster the next step towards defining ourselves as AMIST, SIFTOLOGIST, GEOSOPHIST, in that order. I await your response.

By the way, I ordered two copies of Miller's The Cosmological Eye a couple of days ago, one to replace my ragged copy, and the other to toss into your care package. You should return in person to the VV and request a refund, pocket the francs, and think of the sad state of business affairs some find acceptable in a world seething with shoddy co-operation. Uh, long live the revolution. Don't you just despise us impatient Americans!!!! Unfortunately I tossed the receipt in a momentary lapse of judgement just days before your recent call, not that you had anything to do with me tossing or not tossing the receipt. I was supposed to be saving ALL those receipts, and have most of them, but alas.

Yet, I was stillllllllll thinking. . .

PURPOSE, STRATA, CONFORMITY

Originally published on the SWORG SWILL LISTSERV on December 14, 1998

Crash writes—Sorry for splitting this up but it seemed like it may run kind of long with the replies.

Gabriel wrote—Crash, I found something on the Alt-x site that struck a chord with me. It was a Ginsberg quote: "The Beat Movement was never meant to be a rebellion. It was meant to bring in a new consciousness. The middle-class, who were rebelling against Mother Nature by destroying her ecologically, made us out to be rebellious." And also, when remarking on how Laura Miller had trashed his GRAMMATRON in the NYTBR, Mark Amerika complained that she had set up a "false binary" and "unnecessary either/or oppositions", and then proposed that we simply open our minds to a variety of styles and possibilities within any given framework. So to answer your question lemme say that I too am weary of this plethora of binary constructs that attack the imagination in exactly the same way the media controls operate. In the US, the race issue, for one, is always put to the people in binary form, but everybody knows (except those on the hot button payroll) the issue is both simultaneously more simple and more complex than it's presented in the media, but the media elite and the political hacks milk the same anachronistic cow day after day, and very little ever changes except this, we lose perspective with this increasing concentration of the THEM VERSUS THEM dichotomy.

Crash writes—I'm with you on this—it has always been a quite useful method of control to set up artificial binary conflicts to keep people angry at each other and to keep them blind to the true problems—WS Burroughs always stated that in order to truly challenge a system you have to move outside the constructs of language which is grounded in the binary system of control—of course this also leaves out most people who are unable or unwilling to approach a work such as any Burroughs book—so where should we go? I think a very effective means of challenging systems is to attack the discourse upon which they rest—language for me is the key to power—not just the spoken or written language per se, but also the language of images which are broadcast and plastered everywhere. Levi-Strauss pointed out how in primitive myths the mispronounciation of words and the misuse of language were considered to be very dangerous and very powerful methods of disrupting the system and the coded language that they used as their base of understanding/power. Is this not even more true today—when it seems that we are ever so more dependent on words/images to define our perceptions? Is not the mass media almost a form of magic in most peoples lives—turn the TV on and the tribal stories are broadcast from the hearth of your living room and the smoke signals of info are distributed to the family—turn on the computer and miraculously we can fly to any part of the world—just among our small group—when was the last time one of us spent a whole day in which we didn’t receive some kind of mediated input (books, magazines, radio, tv, film, internet, etc). What power is there in producing transgressive materials that seek to wreck havoc on the codes of the dominant culture? I don’t know, but I wonder if the many people who have pointed out that when we engage in straight binary resistance to the system we are only reinforcing that system, I wonder if they have a point—that is to say, that in resisting the dominant culture straight on we help them to define themselves and to point at easily recognizable, definable, and soon to be specularized deviants who can be set up as the new boogeyman. I know I’m rambling a bit here—but what do you all think?

Gabriel wrote— It's a blood given that corporate giants and political hacks are ruthless sluts. But why should that stop anyone with enough guts and stamina to be different, to risk it all, to tear down the walls of a slum, and build afresh, a new way of thinking; no matter how we cut the ideological cake, stone cold trailblazers can't afford to be whiners (see Henry Miller's Cosmological Eye). Of course, everyone wants to be the hot new thing (notice how hot and cool mean the same thing in the popular venacular), if only to themselves, and if they fail, they usually become grumpy old whiners accusing the system of foul play. But then Cobain and Steinbeck chose very different paths to avoid the pains of their success. Ghandi could have been a very rich man, he declined. What's wrong with making money, if one spends it well. Bill Gates is a fucking liar as his testimony before the US Department of Justice in his anti-trust litigation is proving, but he has frequently said that he doesn't believe in leaving amassed fortunes to heirs. If he spent enough millions on truly changing the landscape of certain depressed areas of renewable or reconstituted life, why would not his taxations of those peoples and organizations that COULD afford it, be forgivable? You see, there are so many complex choices presented to us, but we stumble around and usually end up either goofing along picking up a few addictions which insult our biology and agenda for happiness, or else we keep nosing the grindstone such a slave to production that we also pick up a few addictions that insult our biology and agenda for happiness on the same or the total opposite end of the scale. The key, as a few savvy Greeks agreed, was moderation in all things. But few of us (and I ain't one of 'em, unfortunately) can learn to implement stellar moderation in our lives because we are ruled by addictive personalties, and as Tolstoy emphasized, it does us no good to beat ourselves up over one addiction only to have another two or three rush in to take its place. Whether we're talking substance abuse, laziness, addiction to work, sex, well hell, you know what I mean, it's all the same problem child within us. Good news is that when faced with a ruthless giant, nature seems to sponsor us a giant killer. Not too long ago the Internet founders (a cluster of old hippies and nerds) threatened to bring the world together in a non-commercialized free-spirited community. Then Mammon got a whiff of what was happening, and started pissing in the pond. Well, we can't stymie that but we can work like hell to keep the original spirit alive, and do what we can to advocate the world we want, never flinching, but rather calling for a cease-fire to all this whining. I don't mean lay down your intellectual arms and join the enemy, but simply to accept the challenge of David & Goliath, forge partnerships, or lessen one's sights at directly competing with, but perhaps hindering the bullies by carving out a solid niche. More books are being published than ever before. But who reads anymore? It’s always a moving target or a deadly threat.

Crash writes—niche carving is a very good method of slicing into mediated realms (hey Matt im starting to sound like one of those video game players) and setting up zones of operation (much like Gabriel has started here).

Gabriel wrote—Writers have never had more freedom (despite all the Internet porn busts smelling up the coffeehouse) in history. Recall Voltaire, Rousseau, running for their lives, hiding in exile, poverty, and scorn, forgotten—save the intellectual and financial graces of the few. We artists (if indeed we are artists, and not simply poseurs seeking escape from responsibility) in the west now have such an accelerated vision of freedom, we think we are living in especially perilous times, and in the supertechnological/superpolitical sense we perhaps are, but we have also never been more free to express ourselves (no artist was born guaranteed fame, riches, or readers). I personally find Dinesh D'Sousa a very refreshing and levelheaded writer who presses the conservative argument into civility without oppression. Despite my own yearning to burst out of my skin to trumpet the last charge on a world corrupted by its own sense of infallibility whether originating from the right or the left, capitalism or marxism, I am convicted by my own sense of limitation, now always imposed from the outside, but often enough a consequence of my own choices, and those of my genetic bearing. How can I blame someone else for that?

Crash writes—yes, more books than ever are being published—but what kind of books—I have no problem with the consumption of brain candy—as Matt knows when I just told him about the Joe Lansdale thrillers. But there is no need to pursue dangerous writer/artists anymore—because they are drowned out in the flood of product that dominates the market. And who is controlling what is published? What books are advertised—open up any advertisement for a book store and peruse what is put before consumers—walk through your Barnes and Nobles/Borders. In the 1960s there were more than a hundred substantial publishers in NY, by 1980 there were only 70, by 1995 the number had dropped down to 15, presently through further merging there is only 5!!!!!! major publishers and these are also tied in with the producers of other mass mediums. Now I don’t mean to sound like I’m crying that the sky is falling down—but this must be disturbing in some way. True, the market is flooded with books like never before (as well as other forms of info) but what are these texts? Of course once again this is also a benefit to us and others who seek difference—as the mainstream producers continue to narrow their fields of interest and seek to the common denominator it opens up the possibility for very viable and strong niches of operation for smaller more specialized organizations—so perhaps this is a mixed blessing. I mean, are we ourselves cultivating some form of sub-cultural capital—as we ask ourselves these days exactly what are our true goals in these efforts. Do we intend to do something to challenge the hierarchal stratification of society—this mind-numbing mediatized comformity?

Gabriel wrote—Again Crash, when I look around these here parts I don't see this world as one straitjacketed by conformity (although I surely hear and read a lot of noise to the contrary). In the greater populations (putting aside the corporate merger trend which is just the opposite to what is happening in the neighborhoods and streets, but I guess we have Debord to explain this cause and effect to us) I nevertheless see cat fights and dog bones between warring factions along every corridor I care to explore as soldiers of each faction scrawl hard lines of demarcation to help solidify a turf. [Your] Australia may be very different from America, but when I see a group of folks working and playing in harmony I marvel at how the group has conformed to an ideal so often missing on the street, in the universities, on certain ballclubs, in art snot piss fights, no one simply content to be differenthanging on the same street corner or intellectual counterpoint but everyone bucking for superiority status. Competition ain't dead, and if competition is not dead, how can we also be lost on the mind-numbing mediatized comformity rap? Debord had it right when he said the Spectacle tosses out two opposite claims and watches the skirmish in glee, knowing that the debate will roll on forever, and the social structure remains the same. Superiority, that's what straw leaders are after. That ain't just a white man thing anymore, if it ever was (and I doubt that very seriously, the Euros just won a few wars at a strategic time in history, have gained and lost as a result). I know I'm guilty of thinking no one is my superior, and will fight like mad to prove how wrong I can be. The point is, the stratification of society is just something we're going to have to accept because it is a rather natural phenomenon despite its excesses and inherent unfairness. I agree with Matt's proclamation of a couple of posts back: ". . . abolishing hierarchies is as impossible as abolishing the state. Let's face it—anarchy without hierarchy just ain’t never gunna happen, that's my opinion anyway." As for "sub-cultural capital", methinks I'd like to see some elaboration on the concept. I'm not sure what you're suggesting. And since I've ranted enough today I'd rather not go barking down a cold trail.

Crash writes—I don’t know—I see a lot more conformity than you do—maybe its because I view the system (in the US) as encouraging a cultivated form of difference and that its ability to immediately suck up and spit out a clean, sanitized version of anything that may challenge its operations—a simplified example would be punk's howl of rage, its short time of challenge and fear from the populace—by 1977 we see punk fashion on fashion runways, London newspapers printing articles on how punks are just part of the family, punk is cleaned, sanitized and marketed—dead before it gets started—it is now just another acceptable means of conforming, albeit leaving the troubled youth a bit of dignity in believing that he may in some way be giving some challenge to the system that he feels excluded from. As for sub-cultural capital—it was an off-hand remark actually questioning my own purpose and intents (I believe we must question ourselves); and tossed out to everyone else—wondering if I may not be somehow cultivating a form of sub-cultural capital, a sanitized and safe form of alternative "cultural capital" (cultural capital: cultivated artistic and intellectual capabilities that leads to one being valued by the elites). As I said, just questioning my own intent. I have a very good friend from eastern Europe who understands resistance to a system in a way that I never could (having grownup in the states were, although they will and do kill people for the worng reasons, its not quite as harrowing and prevalent as the former soviet system). She constantly keeps me on my toes about some of my *resistance* stances and leads me to question my intent (or as I think she may see it my overly romantic/idealistic views). So I guess this was a moment of self-doubt on my part. What do we see as the problem that we should be devoting our attentions to—we seem to be attempting to come up with plans of attack without really thinking upon what we want to change or what we could best effect with our efforts.

Gabriel wrote—What we call elitism can be a major problem, but hucksterism is its whoring stepsister. They hate each other, plot behind each other's arched back, spit in each other's intellectual food, kick each other's namby ankles, and attempt to steal each other's cultural graces without even bothering to shed its skin until it's absolutely forced upon them. Both exist across every social and economical class. Both breed mistrust and greed. Acknowledging their relationship to each other however they will bond together to thwart any and all those who stand in their way, that is to say, the vocal non-elitists and the few trailblazers committed to absolute (not to be confused with pre-conceived) integrity. And they often win their battles against the non-elitists and integriters because they appeal with flattery and spectacular powers in their search for allies among the spectacularized populations in order to defeat these enemies, these straight shooters, these few honest constituents of a better world once taught them in childhood mythos as sacred and worthy but ushered away as the real world ruled by this beast we have just described becomes clearly the prince of all that worships it, and reality replaces mythos as the battleground upon which we shed our blood. How do we attack this world of theirs, if we declare ourselves enemies of elitism and hucksterism, you ask? We practice an implemented form of warfare by putting one’s personal spin on the solution, that is, we must know who and what we are, playing the humble idiot if we must, the loud-mouthed brute if we dare, but always, always keeping to the mark when it comes to personal honesty (read Henry Miller, enemies hate it when you've already laid all your own dirty laundry on the table, and they can't hose you with it in an ambush) and candor (without the elitism & hucksterism, we must define them next) but I am still nagged by something Matt wrote, which follows:

Matt wrote: As I am being my honest self here, I must declare that I could give a fuck about 1) audience 2) viral politics or 3) allies until we here at SWORG have something to show for ourselves, namely, a unified schtick (as GT initially proposed) that gives us a raison d'etre as an active GROUP. My logic is irrefutable when I say that causticness is a necessary perquisite to egotism and a necessary perquisite to ANY activity in this warlock of cyberspace, and that we should not only solidify our reasons for existing, but assure ourselves that, yes, a bit of caustic bite really is the necessary fuel for lighting the fire of collaboration between ourselves, and initiating any engagements with OTHERS.

Gabriel wrote—Agree with the whole of Matt's statement, so I guess I am still fomenting the idea of caustic abruptness (as Landry will testify I'm no rookie rabblerouser) as it is magnified in relationship to my sensibilities concerning elitism and hucksterism in the SWORG groupthink arena. But I still think the whole concern is rather premature since we have mucho mucho work to do in the chainthinking section of the site particularly since, uh, wait a minute, uh since, in fact, no one but Matt is privy to those earlier discussions which initially brought him into the Scenewash Project. Truth is I'm aware of no one but Matt who has actually signed onto anything but the SWORG-talk list, and believe me I'm far too jaded with past failed collaborations to presume ANYTHING about who is committed to what at present.

Crash writes—i like your ideas on what we need to do as far as moving past the abuses of huckesterism and elitism. And I truly believe in the need to hone and develop a true system of personal honesty—nothing could be higher on my list—because I believe that is the key in my development and that it is also vital in my dealing with others (both my personal honesty and hopefully theirs). As for other efforts need here on the website—you are correct in your statement that I haven’t contributed to the Scenewash Project—because:

A) I'm trying to get my thesis finished so I can get the fuck out of this college

B) I'm trying to set up employment so that I don't starve when I do leave.

C) These are extremely important to me, because I do not have a wife who will support me (this is what you stated Gabriel?) or Matt's very important network of comrades or Lynn's admirable corporate job or Rebunk's art gig.

D) So since I will be no good to no one living on the streets (least of all myself—trust me I’ve been there, and while fascinating I don't really have a desire to do it again, I must concentrate on this in order to become more valuable.

E) But what do you need? I write constantly. Ask me. I will write and contribute in any way—will research what needs to be found.

I hope that this is not a problem, but you must understand the situation that I'm in and that while willing to contribute, I must keep a check on the very real concerns of food and shelter. Should we attempt to delve into what we see as a problem in our societies and then use that as a base for organizing a plan for change?

Gabriel wrote— I think once we have ripped past the communist manifesto negation phase of these chats, and accept the fact that capitalism with all its excesses is still a rather young pup and has a ways to go (fifty? a hundred? 200 years?) unless raped by a burst of nuclear holocaust gangbangers before imminent global collapse, we should indeed strive to reveal to the group as a whole just what it is we as individuals strung across the marble as we are, find fascinating about dancing on the fringe with the faith that we among millions who don't give a damn, might be selected by history, fate, or hard work to make a big enough difference in the world we find so challenging, repugnant, lovable, just plain here, while so many try and fail (saving the Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life argument for a later discussion), and how we plan to organize that plan. I hope that we are now at that point, but I am not sure. Despite my desires to share my resources with a few good minds who just happen to appreciate said resources, I am not a communist, and have never been a communist sympathizer, except when it comes to a personal sharing of my own good plenty with those who have crossed my path. Unfortunately, I have been far too vigorous in displaying myself as an easy touch for hucksters and abusers of my time and generosity, and as a result, I began to grow bitter and abusive in return, groping for anything I could exploit with fingertips and gutfire since little in my opinion (and I'm talking about a 12-year stretch of woeful friendships) was being funneled my way in any kind of usable quid pro quo. After finally divesting myself of these dead-in social relationships one at a time I am only just now attempting to harden my resolve against these "communistic" tendencies of mine.

As mentioned earlier in a note to Matt, I seek to wed theory with action. Until I change my mind I must admitt I find intellectual masterbation a bit too boring, and need the grounding praxis of social purpose to give it that reality kick I need to sustain my interest at this point in my life (having no academic training since highschool graduation in 1973). That's why I in my panic to achieve something real right now rather than chase after publishing contracts which may never materialize, cannot return to the unreadable 900 page novel lost on my Macintosh. Being a child of inertia (body in motion tends to remain in motion, body at rest tends to remain at rest) my spectacle-thwarted psychology keeps requiring a return to the real sticks and stones I find out my back door, and I explode in a furious desire to help influence a change, make that unproven splash that requires the powers that be to grant us not only an audience but to recognize that we speak the truth and must act now, not later.

Crash wrote—As has been voiced by others, I too am heartened by our attempts to think these things out and it appears that perhaps we can form a communal sense of bonding that will allow us to combine our forces, perhaps leading to a cohesiveness and strength that we lack as individuals.

Gabriel wrote—Sipping Samson agonistes, I agree to a tee, hey Crash, you've arrived!

Crash writes—I seek the chance to develop a community with others who are seeking change and are willing to go about it. ’m sorry if my situation is not exactly key for mass involvement, but as I stated above I will contribute in any manner that I can. Hopefully this is enough. If not so be it—but thanks for the encouragement Gabriel and keep me posted. December—what a pissy time of year...

Editor's Note: Crash was living and going to school in Illinois at the time of this exchange. Somewhere in this swill, I referred to Australia as though Crash was living there. This exchange was our initial communication, and I had wrongly located Crash. It was Rebunk, who was in Australia. Our group was soon to include "kubhlai" from Nottingham, England, and Matt, then going to school in Austin, TX, and Rebunk. A few others did pass through the SWILL, but this crew of five was to remain its core collaboration until the group disbanded rather informally, in May, 2001.