Errors-To: owner-ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu From: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@athos.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@athos.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #177 ecto, Number 177 Thursday, 5 March 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* I'm an honours student and I'm OK... ectofornia dreaming Cavalcade of the last forgotten squib Free Movies in Toronto ecto-light Subscriptions Dear Plastic An Anniversary (belatedly) Weird combos ======================================================================== From: Martin Dougiamas Subject: I'm an honours student and I'm OK... Date: Wed, 4 Mar 92 11:59:28 WST ...I work all night and I sleep all day... Hiya, Martin here. Well, I've moved back to Curtin Uni, and finally I've got an account for doing fancy tricks with my OWN name on it. So this should make things a little easier for you all I hope... Even *I* was getting confused with stuff I'd said being attributed to "N_HAYS" ! Also, I'm now on a decent Unix system so I've been trying to get the 'icb' program to compile so I can join in on KaTe-Talk... No luck yet in getting it to compile, but I'm working on it. On a more Happy note: she really is! -- ,--------------------------+-------------------------------. _ . | Feel the searing heat of | Martin Dougiamas. | ~ _r' L|\ ~ | heightened conciousness. | martin@marsh.cs.curtin.edu.au | | \ ~ | Feel the yearning for | Curtin University | ~ \ ._ / ~ | peace and happiness. | Perth, Western Australia | -->x~ `-' ~ `======= * Happy Rhodes * =+===============================' V ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 4 Mar 92 01:19:57 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu Subject: ectofornia dreaming still haven't gotten a copy of the rhodes newsletter. maybe it got accidentially forwarded to my old roommate. :) not much else happening here right now...couple comments... MTARR@eagle.wesleyan.edu sez: >Funny, the first thing I thought when I heard "Into the Fire" was, Wow, Sarah's >sounding like Sinead. It didn't disgust me, though- I agree with you Jeff, >_The Lion and the Cobra_ is an AMAZING album. _I Don't Want..._ is, in my >opinion, a huge waste of time and money. It's funny- I have Sinead and Tracy >Chapman's first releases on sides of the same tape, and both of their second >albums were imo awful. Weird. :) hmmm...i've listened to _solace_ a few times now and i still don't hear the sinead similarites. at least not too much anyways. it's soooo wonder- fully stark. agreed about sinead's second release being a waste *except* for "standing on your grave" which is a wonderful piece of work. an irish air and a rap beat, who would have known? "black boys omn mopeds" isn't that bad of a tune either for that matter...but in general, not too exciting. did i ever mention the idiot music reviewer at st lawrence university? that bozo claimed, in a review of tracy chapman's second album, that it was artists like tracy who made way for other "folk artists like KaTe bush". i nearly had a conniption. sent a nasty letter to them too...but never got anything back in response. >The above discussion involving dub-tape combos prompts the question: what's >the strangest combination you've ever put on one tape? john zorn's _naked city_ b/w strength in numbers' _the telluride sessions_. and somehow, the combo of hardcore jazz/cartoonish stuff of zorn's *works* with sam bush, nark o'connor and company doing their "new acoustic" schtick in strenght of numbers. don't ask me to explain. kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu sez: >I tend to prefer mixed compilation tapes. They take longer to make but IMO >are fun to listen to. And I get awfully weird when it comes to them... :-) ditto. bad habit of mine making comps for people. ask meredith or court. oh - i saw my bloody valentine last weekend. definite emphasis on the noize aspect of their sound which turned out to be deceptively loud. but a good show despite muddy sound. they swing up your way this weekend greg. go if you can (but bring ear plugs - my ears rang for a half a day afterwards). woj ======================================================================== Date: 4 March 1992 11:00:34 CST From: Subject: Cavalcade of the last forgotten squib I had intended, but forgot (as always) to mention yesterday that Court's sense of foreboding about the end of the world is, IMHO WIVH, probably just a function of her indisposition. I'm still feeling symptoms of my ongoing cold of the past week, and the periodic impact of that on my mood is definitely perceptible to me. But it seems that Court is well on the road to recovery (as I hope I am too). To borrow a lyric from Margie Adam, "the rest will come with time." All of which feeds into the epiphany that I experienced only moments ago: that "ecto" would be a marvelous name for a patent medicine. I have no idea what it could treat, if not what I'm down with (or maybe what Court is down with); but of course the elixir would be blue (I'm at a loss how to make it fuzzy; unless it was something similar to Bromo Seltzer, in which "fizzy blue" would be about as good as it could ever hope to get). We could, in one fell swoop, pay homage both to the record label we're trying to make famous, and to ecto's growing European division (as evidenced by the projected guest list for Klaus' party the night of Happy's concert), by giving the name A.G. FARBEN to our subsidiary for fuzzy blue dyes, fizzy blue patent medicines, _ad nauseam_. (Suppose our nostrum could actually be effective for the latter?) Mitch (BUFU)* Pravatiner A metabolistic cartel; an international walking drugstore** ______________________ *as in BUFU_AM_ILL (cf. somebody's anagrammatic word play in a column last week; as always, I forget exactly whose.) **cf. E.Y. Harburg, "Free and Equal Blues," as included in _Win Stracke: Chicago's Troubadour_ (Old Town School of Folk Music, 1992) ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 4 Mar 92 14:02:13 EST From: Laura Clifford Subject: Free Movies in Toronto Any Toronto Love-Hounds or Ectoians interested in some free movies? I get passes for screenings in Toronto, but as I live in Boston, can't use them. I'd be happy to mail these to someone. Right now I've got a pass for two for this coming Monday to see Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog at the Cineplex Odeon Hyland on Yonge St. Laura ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: ecto-light Date: Wed, 04 Mar 92 14:26:14 EST Hmmmm... This must be a first. I go away for three days and I don't have to spend at least two hours catching up on ecto...:-( Well, Klaus kept me busy though (:-)). Hey folks, TWO WEEKS to go til Albany and TWO WEEKS AND THREE DAYS til Philly! Court the KaT ^..^___ / (:-)) wrote: >when and where and why did VIckie have to go??? at least she'll be back..mew. I too will miss Vickie! And she won't come to Philly either... :-( Talk to you all later, Angelos +=====================================+ |'My ears have parasites'-hApPy RhOdEs| +=====================================+ ======================================================================== From: Jeanne B Schreiter Subject: Subscriptions Date: Wed, 4 Mar 92 13:52:40 CST Just a brief note for Jessica and Vickie.. Jessica, my computer has come to terms again. Could you please put be back on the ecto digest mailing list. (Please please) Vickie...Are you going to be around the week/end of March 19th?? Tom is coming to the midwest...we thought it might be interesting to meet, if both of us could find a meeting time, et al... :) Jeanne ======================================================================== Date: 4-MAR-1992 14:52:15.79 From: MTARR@eagle.wesleyan.edu Subject: Dear Plastic Hi! I've got five minutes before Medieval Latin (don't ask), so a quick note: I figured the jewel-boxes would be shrink-wrapped, which is why I'm completely flabbergasted by the whole thing. Yes, I know plastic wrap is recyclable, but not in all communities, and people generally don't think "recycle" when they look at plastic wrap, where I think they're more apt to when they look at cardboard. So the landfills won't be helped by this much, if at all. Why not just leave them in the jewel boxes and have done with it? Grrr... But ever since I read in the paper this morning that the PBS is under fire for being "too liberal" and "not doing enough to support family values" by airing such "indecent programming" as _Longtime Companion_, I've officially given up on the United States. Happy may think we're waking up, but I know we're not! Court, you havea friend from Maine? Where is she from (former Maine-iacs always jump when they see or hear their home state mentioned :)? Two days until spring break. Two days until spring break. Two days... +----------------------------------------------+ | Meredith A. Tarr | | +++ | | "Oh let me fly, give me something to show | | for my miserable life..." -Kate Bush | | +++ | | mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu | +----------------------------------------------+ ======================================================================== Date: 4 March 1992 14:01:37 CST From: Subject: An Anniversary (belatedly) To paraphrase Garrison Keillor, it's been a quiet week in ecto. As such, it seems like the ideal time to do something I'd been meaning to do today all along, inasmuch as the backlog of things in general precluded my doing it a week and a day ago, when I really wanted to do it. Specifically, I've been wanting to post something commemorating the first anniversary of the event without which I would not be here (i.e., the smallish but happy commonwealth of active Ectoians)--namely, my discovery of the existence of the Internet, or as its adherents typically call it, simply "the net." (As fate would have it, last Tuesday was also the fifteenth anniversary of the day a colleague dragged me, and a bunch of our other colleagues, to the musical her community theater group was putting on, which was based on Erik Erikson's theory of life crises as the defining factor in developmental stages; after which we all went to her apartment, the stereo repeatedly played _Framp- ton Comes Alive_, with emphasis on "Do You Feel Like I Do," which I think was pretty close to the end of the double album; I got high on the joints we were all passing around, stepped out for a breath of air, and had to make more of a conscious effort than usual to locate our host's building; and I finally got home at around 5 AM, wherupon the person I was sharing a ride with observed to me that I should not think of it as the latest I'd ever gotten home, but rather as the earliest. But that's neither here nor there. :-) Just as irrelevant to the ostensible topic of this posting, but perhaps less so to the bulk of the present paragraph, is the suggestion that I now hereby make, that the reader consult the novel _Last Exit to Brooklyn_ to behold what is arguably the longest sentence ever written in the English language and its literature, far longer than any I foresee writing in this posting, or indeed any other. (As I write this, I am listening to WFMT's rebroadcast of the Leap Year Day edition of _The Midnight Special_. They did Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Victoria de los Angeles' rendition of Rossini's "Cat Duet," which has no particular relevance to anything else under discussion here, but which may please the various cat lovers on ecto. More germane, perhaps, to a discuss- ion of anniversaries is their broadcast of a Bob Newhart sketch in commemora- tion of the anniversary of Superman, in which S. sends his suit to the cleaner, only to have it fall through the cracks there. Newhart's monolog has such gems as "How'd you like to have someone leap tall buildings at a single bound and land on top of your place?," and "I fly a lot in that suit--oh, you think I sound like it?," or words to that effect. (The latter _bon mot_ may, at least, have a rational nexus to one of the topics in the previous paragraph. (As fate would also have it, today is both the 155th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Chicago, and the 59th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's first inauguration to the Presidency; so I haven't struck out completely when it comes to observing anniversaries on time. But enough digressions for one afternoon; let's cut to the chase, and finally discuss the anniversary I was going to discuss in the first place.) February 25, 1991 was a Monday. The ground phase of the Gulf War was just about over, and it was the eve of a hotly contested municipal election in Chic- ago. That morning, I happened to be reading the online version of the Computer Center's weekly newsletter, in which the lead article concerned the recent addition of NETNEWS (or Usenet, as it's called at many other installations) to the system. After reading this, I tried out the Netnews command, perused the menu of newsgroups, and looked briefly through a few newsgroups that looked interesting. After concluding that there was too much to digest at one sitting, I pulled out of that session, and the inauspicious beginning was over. After that, I glanced at the newsgroups briefly on occasion, but not much more for a couple of months, until one Friday afternoon about the third week of April, I found myself with the time for a more leisurely perusal of the menus, and did so. Among the groups I was most drawn to were the ones dealing with the mass media and popular culture, among which were the rec.music groups, and their counterparts in the alt. hierarchy. Over the next month-plus, I got to know the different music groups a little better (also many other kinds of groups), and my curiosity was piqued when I noticed rec.music.gaffa on the menu. I looked at one of the online group descriptions, which stated (believe it or not) that it dealt with progressive rock. This interested me; I took a closer look, but didn't notice right away that it was set up as a principally Kate Bush-related group; that took my stumbling onto the monthly FAQ post. I don't remember whether it was in gaffa or in r.m.misc that I first noticed occasional postings eminating from what I later came to recognize as Jorn Barger's account, all with the title "Happy News From Vickie." (If nothing else, this should remind us all of the value of the right title in grabbing the reader's interest.) I no longer remember the specific content of any of these; but I did make a specific effort to determine what they were about, and found out that the "Happy" in the title was not an adjective but a proper noun. My attentions in this area then turned to finding out what Happy Rhodes' specific claim to fame was, on the basis of the posting content. (Ironically, the only posting on this topic I was able to find in my files of saved postings was not one of the HNFV series; I don't remember what its title was, but it was written by someone in Urbana who had tried to buy _Warpaint_.) Meanwhile, I continued to look regularly at a panoply of newsgroups, albeit less extensively than I would eventually. On or about June 10, in what should now be considered an historic event :-), I replied to a posting by Jess- ica soliciting expressions of interest in a Happy Rhodes newsletter, asking to have my lot thrown in with it. While I was rearchiving many of my files the past couple of weeks, I came across my copy of this communication. From small beginnings, and all that. :-) The rest, as they say, is history. (I had thought of expounding at length in this posting on the evolution of ecto, and of my involvement in it, but have decided that that would be more appropriate to do a few months hence, on ecto's actual first birthday.) For better or worse, I was traveling irretrievably down the primrose bangpath :-), and still am. Net-related things have become the computing applications with which I am most involved, between ecto, the comp-academic- freedom-talk mailing list, warmroom, a couple of lesser mailing lists, my film trivia quiz postings, my periodic postings on other topics, the variety of people I've interacted with through the net, the ideas I've encountered in the sundry newsgroups (chiefly in the soc, rec, and alt hierarchies), and--of course--my voluminous files of postings, which I've consumed mucho account units saving and archiving, and am only now getting around to printing and reading a few of in detail (ironically becoming less compulsive in the process about reading the current postings, though feeling as much relative depri- vation as ever when I see the midrange of an interesting thread whose beginning has come and gone). It's been a blast, and worth every minute of it. On to the essay of June 10! :-) Mitch Pravatiner ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 4 Mar 92 22:22:13 CST From: (Jeff "Chip" Lueck) Subject: Weird combos Angelos wrote: >I tend to prefer mixed compilation tapes. They take longer to make but IMO >are fun to listen to. And I get awfully weird when it comes to them... :-) Same here. I recently compiled a tape that has tracks from the following: Nena, Peter Gabriel, Happy, Kate, Kon Kan, Bulgarian Chorus, Paul Simon, Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, Sinead O'Connor, Jane Siberry and more. It's my Monday morning tape - all fast get-your-blood-pumping tracks. The guy I drive to work think I'm bizarre. He's right. :) Jeff "Chip" Lueck Northwestern University chip-l@nwu.edu HRA-Training Division or jlueck@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (708) 467-1897 ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is a README file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me (or leave in the incoming directory, just let me know) things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@athos.rutgers.edu)