Friday, April 8, 1994 From: chrisp@ Subject: Re: my mail Date: Fri, 8 Apr 1994 08:37:07 -0400 (EDT) > Got a message from you, but it was all header. > Subject: hi-tech art > but no body... Woops, I forgot how to include a prepared file in a mail message. Once I figure it out again, I'll send it to you. I am working for the Duke Databank this week, and I can log on from here. I'm not yet sure what the Databank is. I have been working on providing reimbursements to doctors who attended a conference in Beaver Creek, MI that I think had to do with cardiology--we are definitely Med Center related, but we are essentially administrative as opposed to clinical. So, let me update you on my life. My roommate Scott is moving to Atlanta at the end of the month. At that time I will be going home for a week or two and then heading back to Ft. Worth, TX at least for the summer, longer if there is the opportunity. If not, I will most likely move to NY or LA or CHI or TOR. I am also investigating whether I can work with the great Polish director Jerzy Grotowski in Pontedera, Italy or with mime Lacaq (sp?) in France--he's more comedia oriented and less commercial than his great pupil Marcel Marceau. Last night was my debut as a modern dancer. It was scary because we haven't quite gotten the piece--choreographed by our great teacher Clay Taliafero, who lived in Boston in the 60's, incidentally--down, but it went by really fast and we got through it and got the most applause of the night. We have great comeraderie, and that has been the best part. I can still get much much better but I am proud of the improvement I have made since January. I have made a number of new female friends this year but my immenent departure has kept my from being the least bit agressive, which has probably contributed to my success. It will be a shame not to be able to get to know some of them better, but I am dying to get to Texas, and the days seem to go by so slowly. You havn't been posting as much lately. Have you been doing other things? Has your situation worsened? How are you and Cynthia getting along? I'll be logged on as much as I can today, so if you log on, check for me and maybe we can talk. - chris "This is hell. This is hell, I am sorry to tell. It never gets better or worse. This is hell, this is hell, I am sorry to tell, because heaven is hell in reverse." - Elvis Costello, "This is Hell" from "Brutal Youth" To: chrisp@acpub.duke.edu Subject: stuff Date: Fri, 08 Apr 94 12:53:48 EDT Well, things are definitely much better between me and CC. But I also am mak- ing more money at the moment. The two things do seem to be related. During January and February I worked on US First. There's a file and you can get a copy by asking. Pretty intense. There will also be some digitized photos, eventually... Last night I had a long dream about moving back to Cody, Wyoming, my old home- town. There was this sense of trying to find a place for myself there and to decide about staying. But it was a dream with lots of frustration as nothing could be clearly decided. Lots of driving around and viewing fantastic land- scapes--which abound in the area. But the dream versions never quite fit the reality from my memory. There are lots of mountains. They are always very close and in my face. Some days ago I found Cheyenne at an Internet address. My message to her has not been answered. The plan says she's never logged on. There was this idea to send an anonymous postcard to her snailmail address with a message like this: A senior in college and never logged onto your Internet account? But my wariness got the best of me. It could be her messages get routed to another account and she has seen my message, but hasn't responded for the tra- ditional reasons. From: chrisp@ Subject: Re: your mail Date: Fri, 8 Apr 1994 16:16:14 -0400 (EDT) > Can I still use your mail to me in The Cambridge Chronicles? > Did you mean to send me the gopher.faq & yanoff list? yes you can and yes i did! today is my first day exploring gopher and i am in love! Saturday, April 9, 1994 FACTSHEET FIVE, a publication that reviews zines, is including a review of my book VARIOUS... in a soon-to-be-published issue. And the review says: If it's no bigger than 8.5 by 11 inches and can be bound, Mr. Gardner will include it in VARIOUS.... Zines, junk mail, flyers, office humor faxes, whatever. Send in those hundred extra copies of your zine. This edition has lots of Joe Bob juxtaposed with leftist zines. Ironic or random, you decide. The pomo coffee table book for all you pomo espresso drinkers. The writer sits here at a terminal typing, and wearing the new baseball cap from his mom. It is white with black pin strips. Yankee style? Can one of you baseball fans answer that? And pinned on it is a button from Cynthia. The button shows a sort of guilty looking chubby cat with a Jackson Pollack- like painting, with colorful paint everywhere, and the cat explaining: I am not MESSY. I'm CREATIVE. It says Cody on the front with an odd font. And then there's the Cody, Wyoming, t-shirt, green, with purple, brown, gold, yellow, blue, white scenes of nature and wild animals from Wyoming. Plus half a dozen white handkerchiefs. The season's first ant war. Union Street in Watertown. Right in the mid- dle of where the public sidewalk is at a right angle to the sidewalk leading to someone's house. In fact, the combatants are streaming from either side of exactly the crack, the line, delineating the public's property from the private property, and a big smudge right in the middle of that line. The big smudge is, on closer inspection, hundreds of ants doing battle. Two groups that are growing and expanding their territory, have encountered each other. Ants use some kind of chemical signal to distinguish self from other. Then they go to war to determine which genetic variant is superior. A tiny difference, re- peated thousands of times, will eventually make a big difference in the outcome of the battle. Sometimes one group will simply have more bodies to throw into the fight. And that will be more decisive. This reminds me of wars going on around the world. But there are two differences with humans. The first dif- ference is that the corpses are larger. Phew! Stinky. The second difference is that humans can create more explanations about just why this war is being fought. And that's about it. Walking down Harvard Street in Cambridge, right where it intersects Inman Street, is the house where Meredith lives. And she just happened to be sitting on her steps. She tells about the recent end of her seven years of celibacy. He lives a bit farther down Harvard Street. She decides to accompany me down to Tech Square. Her reason has to do with the three and a half week old rela- tionship having gone a bit sour two days ago, Thursday. They talked on the phone. He was a bit distant. She decides to take advantage of me, and give him a poke, by walking by his house with me. She hopes he will see us and be tweaked by that. My response to this is to demonstrate someone sticking in a knife--and then twisting it. Isn't that a bit hurtful, I ask. She explains that she wouldn't do it if she thought it would hurt him. Now let me see if I've got this straight... Well, of course she can't see herself as hurting him. That would make her seem vengeful. She considers herself to be a reli- gious person. But there is no admitting of how he might see and feel it. I remark that sometimes when a person sees something, they see more than they saw. People can make a lot more of a thing they saw than is really there. I think she wants to poke this man, to cause him some discomfort, at the very least. And old game, that I know from my own history. There is talk about Liz. Oh, we had dinner at M&A's a couple of weeks ago I tell her. Turns out Meredith knows M&A. She had dinner there some weeks ago herself. A invited her to stay overnight with him and M. But Meredith is not attracted to A. She goes on and tells me about S. Two years ago she came to Meredith with a story about a wonderful new man she'd met. There was one small problem. A was direct in telling her he had a relationship with another woman. This caused S some distress, and Meredith warned her about this. She didn't think this was something S could do. But the latter went ahead and before long the former proved to be right. It started with fights about who- knows-what, but probably had their origins in A's spending some number of nights each week with M, and the rests of the week's nights with S. A asks S to leave when it got bad enough. So she did. Now A lives with M and not(A). But this doesn't seem to be another threesome (Harvard Square movie--about which more to be said later). That was before. Now is later. Church Street movie sign: Schindler's List, Threesome, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bell Epoque, Sirens. Three of these movies are about men who get to do it with three or more gals (but not necessarily at the same time). One is about a gal who gets two guys--but not the REAL (read: WILD) Thing! And one is about a group of people who decide to make their doing of it legal in the style of those well known, zany, 30's and 40's Hollywood sex comedies. And what does this say about our times? The shortage of good men is approaching a crisis stage. Speaking of which, my good friend L is returning to Boston to serve as a blessed sacrament and possible succulent feast for one or more of the local gals. He is rapidly rising in the legal world via his newly acquired position. Gals reading this may forward marriage proposals--which will be passed on to L--unless they look good enough for me. The smell of the dead animal has nearly disappeared from my office. The people downstairs noticed something crawling around their space and leaving a trace here and there. Once they saw a small claw reach under a door. So the super brought in a kind hearted trap and poison bait. The poison got it. It was a small creature and evaporated quickly. Imagine if that had been a human sized critter. You would be smelling it even as you read this page. Within half an hour of death, dead things begin generating putricene and cadaverine. Nature has a marvelous use for these two things. Flies are attracted. They use it as a trail to a place to lay their eggs. The eggs hatch and have a sup- ply of food. Their offspring are maggots. Later they mature and metamorphize into flies. And now you know the origin of that childhood ditty: The worms crawl in the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle on your snout. Sunday, April 10, 1994 A restaurant review. Saturday morning breakfast at SoundBites. Located in Ball Square (?), Somerville. Small place. Run by Lucy & her husband. She has an Internet account. Sent her the EAACP via the net. I now list events there. An opening reception for a local artist on April 30, 1994. Free food. Music by the artist, who has paintings currently hanging on the walls. Be sure to play with the mechanical paper dog set on top of the cash register. We take a table against the wall. Cynthia orders two things--a scone and a muffin. I've given some copies of the dead tree EAACP to the boss and she's placed them on a shelf near the entrance. Meanwhile, back at our table, Cynthia has some coffee. At this point I point out how a woman sitting at another table has brought coffee for her and the man she is sitting with, coffee. Now there is an example of a good little woman, I point out to Cynthia. She is apologetic and offers to get me some coffee. No way. She never puts the right amount of cream or milk in it for me. I do it myself. Looking around, Cynthia imagines the three middle-aged women in the middle aisle and right next to us, are all divorced. Can't tell for sure since they are all heavily clothed. On to the beautiful, but sad, tall, red-haired, cowboy-booted, reddish-orange pants and jacketed young woman also sit- ting in the middle aisle, but a bit behind me, who looks more than sad. She sits perfectly still and stares straight ahead from time to time. It looks as though she has just lost the great love of her life, I suggest to Cynthia--who remarks on thinking exactly the same. She later walks out with the same heavy-hearted bogged down in molasses look on her face and gait/posture. Anyway, the cream is creme de la creme. Seems to be straight from the cow. Sinks to the bottom of my coffee. Returning to my seat with the cup, it appears as though the surface has scales. My order is sausage, homefries, the multimedia 3-or-more-berry pancakes. Plus syrup. My last shot is to... no, that was the first time we were there. Some kind of muffin, lite variety, with almonds, like angelfood cake. Well, eating the pancakes and stuff, three blonde bimbos walk in with their rockstar keeper. They are all tall and thin. Dressed in running shoes, sweat pants and sweat shirt. He's in jean, running shoes, t-shirt, open shirt, base- ball cap, and, the clincher, sunglasses, which he carries in his mouth by one of the curved rods that fit over your ear. That seems to me to be a sure sign of somebody important. They order takeout. I tell Cynthia of wanting to follow them with a video camera to see what hap- pens next. Well maybe he isn't a rock star, but just somebody with the money to pay for his company. And the best part of the whole ad- venture, short of my fantasies about the three blondes, was the in- credible check! $10 plus change. To sum it up: Food: **** Intrigue: ***+ Cost: **** Monday, April 11, 1994 A reader has asked: >How much money does one have to have in order to officially be "rich". What's >the difference between rich and financially stable. Where is the boundary >between middle class, working class, and poor? Well, let me define the bottom part of the rich part of the spectrum as follows: you have enough money invested to live off the interest with a middle class family income. Everything above that would be rich plus. The top end of poor might be earning just enough money to be able to pay expenses while living with other people and sharing those expenses. That would be me. No invest- ments or income or interest or property of any sort. Earning about $600 a month at the moment. One of my relatives might leave me a few 10's of thou- sands of dollars--but I won't be holding my breath on that one. From there you can make definitions of middle class. Working class might be to have a job from which you earn enough to support a family and minimal goods purchases, but no investments. And so on. The poor will eventually be living off only their social security and medicare. Newspapers and other media are reporting still more horrendous events of slicing and dicing of our species around the world. This causes me to go into violent revenge fantasies of bombing and straffing the offending parties, even though said parties would need to be divided with tweezers and a microscope. Then there are my aliens-land-and-save-us fantasies. The movie, The Day The Earth Stood Still, is my favorite in this genre. So a recent one of these fan- tasies involved dinosaurs. The aliens have created replicas of the dinosaurs, but manufactured from silicon and titanium. They are REAL tough. They are REAL fast. They are programmed with a high level of intelligence. The aliens drop about a million of them over a battlefield. Just drop'em. They hit the ground running. They catch cheetas for fun. The big ones take about 10 seconds to rip open a tank and pull out the softies inside. The little ones, the size of cats, bite, and break ankles and wrists of anyone using a weapon. Then they go find another one. One of these creatures who finds a human as- saulting another human rakes the clothes off the body of the offender. But then it occurred to me that those kinds of people need to experience some pain to cause a behavioral change. Burns, I thought. Burnt flesh. Oozing, pain- ful to move or even be conscious burns. So a million weapons that would seek out aggressive behavior and administer burns proportional to the violence being wrecked on another human. Burn'em again, but worse, if they show up to do more harm. Before long everyone would be working in hospitals taking care of the wounded. It would take a long time to heal. Burns would give them a long time to think about whether or not mayhem was more important than being free from the pain of burns. And the smell would convince nearly everyone else. The flies, and consequent maggots, attracted to the rotting flesh, would convince a lot more that war was not a good career move. But then I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea for most of the people in the world to kill each other, either through war or spreading disease. That means there would be a lot more stuff for me. Saturday, April 16, 1994 Another early morning breakfast at the SoundBites Restaurant. There was no disappointment on all counts. More great food at an insignificant price. A reader has reminded me to describe last week's "rock star" as short and chubby. More intrigue this week, but of a different nature. Two "older" couples came with their children and sat right near us. Later, two familiar faces appear in the window. Gray and Race out for a walk. We are nearly done and they come in to chat. Then we walk to Davis Square. But back to the other intrigue... She was tall, blonde, athletic, with a big smile, and made eye contact with me a number of times. Yes, I have thought of her a number of times since this morning. Was the eye contact my imagination? Am I too short for her? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of SoundBites Restaurant! A random encounter with Meredith in Harvard Square leads me to learn that her and the new beau are getting along just FINE now. All the misunderstand- ings have been cleared up and she doesn't need me to walk by his house with her to teach him a lesson. An opening reception at the List Gallery at MIT. Liz works just across the street. We went to the gallery from her office. Coincidentally, she wore a white jacket and black skirt. Cynthia wore the same combination today. The latter had dinner Friday evening with her old friend Lois. Carl and Renee were also there. Cynthia, Carl, Renee, and I last had dinner together 5 years ago. Carl was a guidance counselor at Brookline High, and may still be, and asked about my daughter, Cheyenne. She was a junior or senior at Brookline 5 years ago. Now she is in her last year of college. He asked about me because I've continued to send him stamps from my foreign correspondents over the years. I get a lot of odd things that people really use for postage. These stamps are channelled from all over the world to me, then to Carl. Readers are encouraged to send me letters and postcards during their world travels in order to keep those stamps going to Carl. Anyway, the gallery was filled with lousy art. But the food was fabulous! I couldn't get enough of the sausage and figs. You wonder, what kind of combination is that? Me too. But it tastes terrific. It was seasoned with orange sauce and oranges and a number of other spices that were not familiar to me. The Focaccia was also good. Two kinds of grapes, 3 kinds of cheese, all sorts of vegetables and blue cheese dip. Then there were these small leaves from the sort of inside of lettuce. Sort of tube-like, and about 3 inches long. On one end of the tube would be a tablespoon of some sort of sauce, or soft stuff, and on top of it... a little shrip or piece of who- knows-what. They were also not bad. And then I had more of the figs and sau- sage. And who should show, after a week back from his looking-for-sex-tour of Germany, but Edwin. And the inevitable Rudy was there. The four of us also met on New Year's Eve. Me, Liz, Edwin, Rudy. Some hotel near Copley Square. That Rudy--like always, insists on kissing my gals. We have to have a little talk about that some day. But it was time for me to have some more of the figs and sausage. KK and what's-her-name from Lincoln were also there. They didn't think the art was so great. It was also time for me to have some more of those great figs and sausages. While I was off having more figs and sausages Liz told Edwin the story of how she and Ann ended their long friendship. It had something to do with these two egg shaped stones Ann was given by a guru. They were to be inserted inside one of her more private body cavities with the idea that this would help her become pregnant. One day Ann accused Liz of taking the eggs from her. Then, supposedly, Liz place them in her corresponding body cavity--whose name shall go unmentioned. Gross! Anyway, that is the most sense this writer could make of the story. By then, however, I was hungry again and had more figs and sausage. Well, the thing only lasted till 7pm and Liz wanted to go home. So we left. But not before some more figs and you- know-what. Later Liz decided not to come back to MIT to participate in Tim's niche milieu soiree. It was left to me to report on the goings on there. It was an event without figs and sausage. However, there were the usual Fig New- tons from our own local factory. Tim's parents were there. His dad read some of the best poetry ever heard by this listener and usual dispiser of verse. I think of most poetry as goose-stepping prose. And the gymnist/dancer who at- taches lights to his body was also very good. He dances in complete darkness. But there are lights attached to his body in a way that produces sheets of light that result in light lines on the walls of the room in which he is danc- ing. With eight lights on the results looked like a Daddy-Long Legs spider made of light. He also showed video of being dressed in an outfit made of hun- dreds of tiny mirrors. Nearly his entire body was covered with these tiny mir- rors. Assistants would shine spotlights on him as he moved around. Wednesday, April 20, 1994 Today was the big day for my lecture/presentation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. And the topic... The Internet, UNIX, technology, and art. Or something like that. Here's what one person (who wasn't there) had to say about my effort: >>>>>>>>>> congratulations on your first teaching experience to the next generation of artists at a topdraw Boston art school! How does it look to the administration (I keep forgetting to watch the length of a line) to have some creative nutcake who never went to art school presented as an authority in the artistic manipulations of the "new" media . What kind of an example is that to set to show the value of an art school education? I hope this is only th beginning of a whole new source of income. Forget all the personal satisfaction. You've had satisfaction all your life. It's time to suffer and make money! Love and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cc >>>>>>>>>> And the congratulations continue to pour in! There are rumors of a parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City. David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Arsenio Hall (the latter telling me some bigshot will be rescheduled so that he is way sure of getting me on before his last show), have all called. Someone from the White House called about lunch with the President. Yes, it has all been more than grand. In fact, it has been an experience far beyond the realms of my puny imagination to comprehend and imagine. My God! Just a moment ago, there was a call from Oprah, and just a moment later, Phil. Whoops, there goes the phone again. Hold on... Would you believe Time Magazine? Hey, I'm going to have to do this more often. Ron bought us ice cream at Toscanini's, MIT branch, today, about 1pm. My last visit there was a disappointment. No Mango. This time there were about 4 scoops left. Ron asked for 4 flavors--a quart all together. What kind, the waitperson asked. You pick'em, he said. And so it was. He finished his four cups about one minute after my three scoops! Then he starts to shiver. The bus is nowhere in sight. There is the possibility of being late for my presen- tation at the MFA. Let me write one of your postcards, I say to Ron. Oh, you will get started, and that will cause the bus to come, he says. Exactly. And it works. A postcard with Fall colors, for the secretary in his office. And I write: Here we sit, in front of the main entrance to MIT. This postcard is being started so that a bus will come along and make it impossible to finish. Or something like that. It should be in the mail by now. The bus is here. So time to go. Ron will ride his motorcycle over to the Rhinoceros. The later is the art guard for the school. And this, fresh off the net: >>>>>>>>>> Subject: RLG announces its World Wide Web server On April 8, 1994, RLG announced the availability of a World Wide Web server as an access point for information about its purpose, collaborative activities, and user services. Our web server currently provides information about RLG and its Membership, descriptions of RLG's bibliographic, authority, special database, and article-citation (CitaDel) files, details about the Eureka search service and the Zephyr Z39.50 service, and information about Ariel, the document transmission software for the Internet. RLG's web server can be reached via the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) http://www-rlg.stanford.edu/welcome.html Our web server was announced in the April 1994 "What's New" page on the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) web server, and RLG will be registering our server in other lists of World Wide Web sites. We'd like to hear your comments and suggestions about how our web server can be improved. Please let me know via email (bl.btw@rlg.stanford.edu). Our web server also includes a list of RLG member libraries that are operating web servers, or have web servers available for their institution. If you'd like your web server added to this list, or have ideas on how we can more effectively make these links to other web sites available from our web server, please let me know. >>>>>>>>>> Tuesday, April 26, 1994 There is an abandoned railroad track running down the middle of Somer- ville. It is parallel to, and between Highland Avenue and Broadway. All this last 6 months or so I've been seeing lights on a building where the tracks and Cedar Street intersect. At first it seemed as though they might be some sort of Christmas light exhibit. But I was never able to find the building which looked like it must be between Cedar Street and Davis Square. The lights would twinkle. There were white and red ones. Recently, on returning to that point while it was still light out... the mystery has been solved! The lights are from cars on Route 2 as they pass over the hill in Belmont. The red ones are cars going the opposite direction, over the hill, but away from Boston. No wonder it was impossible to find that building with the lights. Watertown Square. Two young boys are looking at an advertisement on the side of a bus. They are about 11-13 years old. The ad is of a naked woman. She looks directly at you. There is a hint of a breast. She is about 10 feet tall, or long, depending on how you measure. She reclines. Her head is on the right side of the ad. One can see the beginning of her ass, rising like the bottom of a ski slope, on the left. Comment from one of the two boys to the other: its a good thing they didn't move the camera back any more. Some words from Harvard Square, overheard, and spoken by a young person with metallic raspberry colored hair and eyebrows, kneehigh, laced, black boots (walking with a gal wearing what could be a combination of black under- wear or just a current fashion): you are a crazy, fucking, asshole!