23-Nov-91 19:53:45-GMT,14668;000000000001 Received: from athos.rutgers.edu by aramis.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.4/3.08) id AA24940; Sat, 23 Nov 91 14:47:42 EST Received: by athos.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.4/3.08) id AA16987; Sat, 23 Nov 91 14:47:40 EST Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 14:47:40 EST Message-Id: <9111231947.AA16987@athos.rutgers.edu> 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 Subject: ecto #60 ecto, Number 60 Saturday, 23 November 1991 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Something utterly utterly irrelevant... Oh alright, another one... WZRD & kites Today's your birthday friend... This is from about a week ago (I think...) ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1991 02:13 +8:00 From: SVODOPIER@cc.curtin.edu.au Subject: Something utterly utterly irrelevant... Here's a bit from a really funny book I've had for some years : "The Life and Death of Eric Pode of Croydon" >From the back dustjacket (mystery thriller style fake excerpt from inside) : '...It was one of those hot steamy afternoons in late fall. Croydon mopped the sweat off his handkerchief and turned down the thermometer. His face was still sounding fire alarms where Ricky's boys had administered the concrete nose drops, but he could take it. Suddenly he figured out why it was so hot - the fan was going backwards. He poured himself a bar of chocolate and thought back to last night at Rosco's casino. In two hours he'd collected over 3,000 G's. It was the worst game of Scrabble he'd ever played ..." >From inside, a fake newspaper cutting with an ad on it. (I thought this'd be good for all those fans of the Welsh out there..) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- " I T ' S A L L T O O E A S Y " And it is, isn't it? All too often we simply take the sterile comforts of modern medical safety for granted. The picture in most households is frighteningly familiar: Granny upstairs, blissfully comatose on draught valium; father resting peacefully after his recent quickie vasectomy, and wondering how the manicure had got so out of hand; and downstairs, the children playing happily with deadly cholera bacteria after a snack lunch of penicillin-flavoured noodles. And yet complacency can be fatal, because throughout our daily life we are each of us threatened by a menace far more virulent than any microbe: THE WELSH! Everywhere in your house, Welshmen hide. In the sink, round the S-bend and under the rim. Often huge clusters of them can be found growing down the drain. And nine times out of ten they can leap out and be halfway through "Bread of Heaven" before you've had time to lag your eardrums. At the Cliff Morgan Institute for No Known Cure, daily tests are carried out on live Welshmen bred especially on a Petri dish of rabid Max Boyce culture. For one of the most complex problems when dealing with the Welsh is the fact there are fifteen sexes, that reproduce when all fifteen come together in a very specific act of copulation, known as Rugby Union. Diligent efforts are made continually to neutralise the offending organisms by reaching down into the throat and severing the vocal cords with a monkey wrench. These are then delicately bludgeoned with a five-stone sledge-hammer to reduce the danger any so-called "Land of my Fathers" syndrome. But efforts are not always successful, and there are still many factors about the Welsh we do not fully understand. The danger therefore is clear. Unless strong decisive action is taken on a multilateral basis, vast flocks of fat, beetroot-faced taffies will soon be roaming the countryside, eating your children, and burning down your cottage as soon as look at you. We stopped rabies at the Channel: we can do it again. And all it needs is YOUR generous support. ONE POUND will buy a mouth plug for Shirley Bassey. TEN POUNDS will blow up a room with your name in it at the Driver and Vehicle licensing centre, Swansea. FIFTY POUNDS will dry a man's face after a conversation with a Welsh Language Official. --------------------------------------- PLEASE HELP US NOW! | PLEASE ACCEPT THE FOLLOWING INSULT | | AGAINST THE WELSH : .............. | F the W | .................................. | Appeal | I further authorise a welshman to | | be kneed in the balls once a month | | by standing order. [] | | | | Name and address of patella:....... | | | | Return to: THE WELSH APPEAL, | | HARDLY EVER, | | GWYLLFDDDDFFWWFYGLLDN | --------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- heh... that was longer than I expected... There are funnier bits in the book but this one was slightly relevant. Martin ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1991 02:35 +8:00 From: SVODOPIER@cc.curtin.edu.au Subject: Oh alright, another one... Martin here again, with more time than he's got. More Eric Pode of Croydon excerpts... At school, the young Eric Pode of Croydon proved he had an IQ equal to none. He was thrown out at the mental age of six to become a radio sports commentator, but later went to work for the Radio Times, cutting little jagged edges down the side of each page with a pair of nail scissors. It was around this time that he wrote his first short story. He was given six months suspended for two years and the judge ordered the toilet wall to be destroyed. Despite this setback, during his teen years he turned to writing. In this he received no formal training of any sort. Armed only with a pencil and a sheet of paper, in 1939 he attempted his first major work, but ran into difficulties straight away: the paper was too blunt, and the pencil nearly impossible to write on. In desperation he tried it with a small cactus up his nose. The results were little better. Two months later, however, someone suggested he use a typewriter. The effect was dramatic. By rubbing a piece of pencil across a pencil while sitting with a typewriter up his nose, Croydon was immediately able to churn out vast volumes of work. It was during this prolific period that Croydon became impressed by Wilkie Collin's "The Moonstone", which he read from back to front so as not to spoil the beginning. For several months he stayed in Paris with Jean-Paul Sartre, who was at that time Ethel Merman. Merman said he was thinking of changing his name to T.S. Eliot, because it was an anagram of toilets, but Croydon said this had already been done by the English poet T.S. Hihouses. In 1940, Croydon settled in Perreaux- sur-Marne, a suburb of Lyons, next to the cake counter. There of a moonlit evening, he and the great dead divisionist Seurat would laugh and tell each other stories and drink numerous bottles of wine, sometimes without even opening them...." Martin ,---------------------------+----------------------------. _ . | I'm the devil in disguise | Martin Dougiamas. | ~ _r' Ll\ ~ | I'll tell you no lies | sdougiama@cc.curtin.edu.au | | \ ~ | I'm playing in a | Curtin University | ~ \ ._ / ~ | rock and roll band. | Perth, Western Australia --+---> x~ `-' ~ `========== J.J. Cale ======+============================' V ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 22 Nov 91 17:11 CST From: vickie@chinet.chi.il.us (Vickie Ann Mapes) Subject: WZRD & kites Michy the phone number of WZRD is (312) 7942861 Jeff Burka, did you know there's a vote going on for a rec.kites? I just read it in news.groups and I didn't see your name listed as having voted. The vote is still going on, so hurry up! Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 23 Nov 91 02:27 CST From: vickie@chinet.chi.il.us (Vickie Ann Mapes) Subject: Today's your birthday friend... * i * i * i * ******************** ******* HAPPY ******* ********* BIRTHDAY ********* *********** Claudia! *********** ************************************ ***************************************************************************** 17.06.1968 Mon Albert Philipsen 14.07.1952 Mon Mitch Pravatiner 25.07.1966 Mon Tom Johnson 09.08.1965 Mon Happy Rhodes 04.11.1974 Mon Katie Dougiamas 03.01.1967 Tue Jeanne Schreiter 09.01.1962 Tue Greg Bossert 07.02.1956 Tue Gene Sady 14.02.1956 Tue Doug Burks 24.03.1964 Tue John Baker 13.05.1958 Tue Steve Fagg 31.08.1965 Tue Dan Segel 20.09.1960 Tue Chris Williams 14.10.1969 Tue Brian Bloom 17.12.1957 Tue Laura Clifford 07.05.1952 Wed Joe Dembski 28.07.1971 Wed Bob Kollmeyer 30.07.1958 Wed Kate Bush 15.08.1956 Wed Vickie Mapes 20.08.1969 Wed Martin Dougiamas 01.09.1971 Wed Meredith Tarr 29.10.1969 Wed Jessica Dembski 23.11.1960 Wed Claudia Spix 19.03.1970 Thu Barry Wong 24.04.1969 Thu Jeff Burka 06.05.1965 Thu Mark Semich 21.05.1970 Thu Michele Young 05.12.1968 Thu Chip Lueck 02.06.1966 Thu Perttu Yli-Krekola 04.02.1966 Fri Stephen Thomas 13.03.1970 Fri kIrI Hargie 10.04.1953 Fri Art Liestman 22.04.1966 Fri Angelos Kyrlidis 09.07.1971 Fri Courtney Dallas 21.11.1952 Fri Kevin Bartlett 27.11.1964 Fri Justin Bur 29.07.1966 Fri Mark Carroll 20.06.1958 Fri David Lubkin 21.11.1969 Fri Alan Ezust 28.07.1962 Sat John Relph 09.09.1967 Sat David Blank-Edelman 24.10.1959 Sat Dave Steiner 21.04.1956 Sat Harry Foster 10.04.1960 Sun Klaus Kluge 10.04.1966 Sun Steve VanDevender 28.07.1968 Sun Rob Woiccak (woj) 08.10.1961 Sun Dan Riley 32.08.1953 Pez Jorn Barger March 20 ?day Geoff Carre July 25 ?day David Koehler ***************************************************************************** Geoff and David, Klaus can't use his magical WhatDay program on you unless he knows what year you were born. Say, does anyone know that poem(?) that goes something like..Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace...? Just curious. Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1991 13:45 EST From: Generalisimo Llama Subject: This is from about a week ago (I think...) Jeff: If I misinterpreted what you said (I wasn't even sure WHO had said it until you posted your reply) then I offer my most sincere apologies and hope that you'll have me mauled by pit bulls at your soonest convenience. Like I said, I had accidentially axed my old mail messages and was working off of memory, so it is possible that I might have recalled wrong. In response to your question of why I write: the main reason I write is simply because the words and ideas are pent up inside me and NEED to be released, similar to how you described King's motives -- only I don't have the small fortune to support me. I'm definitely not in it for the money, becuase there's little to be found in the field. And I DO have a day job by the way -- or at will have one eventually. That's the whole reason why I'm sitting here in a dorm room at Stevens Institute of *Technology* rather than a nice little liberal arts college where it's a proven fact that 79% of all the professors wear tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows. I'm doing a double degree: English and a yet undecided science. The tech stuff will be my job, but the English and writing will be my career, my life: "You see, I just work there To finance my real life That begins with scribbles on pages And thoughts of how and when." -"Notebook" -- The Innocence Mission (I can never resist a good IM quote, and this one just seemed SO appropriate.) Perhaps it's also an ego trip like you suggest -- I'm really not sure. For me, getting published would basically be a sign that I've made good on my God-given talent, that I've actually achieved something and that people think my work is worth printing. That would be the ultimate rush for me. I don't want to be famous or a best-selling pulpster -- just a writer. Almost as important to me would be to know that my word have somehow connected with a reader, that they had the effect I hoped they'd have, and that the reader has come to better understand me as a result. Like I said, however, the main joy for me lies in the creation. I actually DO have a large body of work that I keep just for myself and which very few people know about. Poems, short stories, a novella or two -- all are there for the happiness they brought to me, not for recognition or money or what- ever else one might hope to gain from his/her writing. This is just me, though. The sad truth is that your point does indeed hold true for a lot of writers out there today. Anyway, I apologize once again if I misread your statement. Sorry... | 'Well I... | I had hopes for my music.' | And imagined their faces said, | Well you can't do that you silly thing... -IM Jim Flynn Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ u95_jflynn@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu P.S. I just got this mail bounced back at me by the Rutgers Postmaster, so I'm not really sure if it got through or not. Just in case, I'm sending it again. If you already got this message before, then consider yourself doubly blessed. ======================================================================== To join ecto, please send electronic mail to the following address: ecto-request@athos.rutgers.edu To have your thoughts included in the next issue, send mail to: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu To subscribe to "Ecto", the printed fanzine, send $8 to: Ecto PO Box 11291 New Brunswick, NJ 08906 Ecto is issued 8 times/year, and will include photos and as much material from non-net members as we can get! Donations above the subscription cost are welcomed - all money goes to bringing you better issues! Your "humble pseudo-moderator" -- jessica (jessica@athos.rutgers.edu)