Editorial

Written by capnasty

LAST ISSUE FOR Volume III, and following a typical pattern of tradition, this issue is late also. With the burden of Christmas on our backs, we ask but one gift from the readership, spam this issue to all of the blokes on your address book. Spread the gift of CoN.

The first e-mail is from Arno van Boven:

From: Arno van BovenTo: con@capnasty.orgDate sent: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 15:53:18Subject: Re: Capital of Nasty III.21

Hi,

about the size of CoN: i dont care if its long, i will simply pick some articles that interest me:) (whoops a smiley:) About the lenght of the articles: yes, i usually skip the long ones. I am not interested in the twistedmindedness of some deranged teenager, nor touched by the 'terrible suffering' he or she has to go thru. If ppl want to view the world as if it were a (any, really) Hollywood movie or some inane TV show, fine with me, but i'll skip it, thank you. Well, i can't think of a better example to illustrate my digust over that perception of life than what Willy Clinton did: bombs for a blowjob, live on CNN, and we'll be back after the break. Sex, shootings and commercials. What a fabulous way of living. I say don't impeach him, but drown him in his own cum.

Anyways, I loved Jason's review of ST/Insurrection. It's not out here yet, so i havent seen it:( Good point u have on ST's makers denial of other SciFi. U seen Voyager's Scorpion double episode? Concept was kinda nice, yes, it had the Borg in them, but the idea of an alliance with the Borg was kinda nice and well worked-out imho. But that species 8427 (8??7 whatever), was it just me or did you too expect Sigourney Weaver to jump out of a closet any minute now? Or a jefferies tube, for that matter..

Well, one has to give Berman and co. credit for (re)creating a special feel to the whole ST series, it's not the shameless ripping of ideas like in X-files. Well, of course it is, but i think the 'soap' level is high enough to ensure a laugh or two every episode and justify the -let's say not very inspired- storylines. The technobabble u just got to love, don't u? I mean, what on earth is a multiphasic graviton pulse? Or a polaron beam? I just rotfl when they remodulate the forward shields to a rotating frequency. Again. But then, I may be opinionated due to heavy gravimetric distortion, or perhaps I cant get a lock on my brain due to electromagnetic interference in the planets atmosphere, who knows? Time to realign my plasma coils *grin*

Warp regards & signature,arno

P.S. Don't u just hate it too when toietpaper tears lengthwise?

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Don Fitch also shares with us his thoughts:

From: Don Fitch SDate sent: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 04:23:25To: lansdowne@capnasty.orgSubject: Re: CoN III.21

CoN Editorial would love to hear your input about the SIZE ofthis issue.

If I write: "It's not the SIZE that counts, it's what you do with it" fast enough, maybe it won't sound like a long-dead cliche. When it comes to response, I don't think it's length, number of items, or even quality, so much as "comment hooks". Something can be really great, or highly-enjoyable, and still not drive me to the keyboard to knock out a letter of comment. A really inspired typo (none of your mere misspellings), on the other hand....

I did intend to respond to the (almost all) Gay Issue, though. In retrospect, I realize that I was propositioned by Gays at least three times while in college, but was too naive to realize it. What was memorable, was getting propositioned about 5 years ago, when I was 65, by some guy who must've been about 50. It was in a mixed Gay & Straight neighborhood bar in West Hollywood, where I might expect to be approached by young hustlers (gray hair = money = potential "client" in that neighborhood, though a simple "sorry, I don't Trick" is adequate to get rid of them), but this guy obviously wasn't proposing a commercial transaction, and I really can't imagine a stranger thinking of me as an attractive/physically desirable person, despite my /m/a/n/y/ other virtues. I felt (probably correctly) that he saw me not as a person, but as an object to be used for his gratification, and I was rather disturbed by this, but managed to refuse politely.

It reminded me of an account in a fanzine by a young (20-ish, & Straight) friend about 30 years ago. He'd spent an evening with a mutual (Bi) acquaintance and wrote something like; "He wanted to cuddle, and I didn't. Now I have a better understanding of how girls I've dated felt when I wanted to cuddle and they didn't".

let's take red meat which will slowly harden your arteries and lets infest it with smoke... hmmm lung AND heart damage, all in one meal. Gimme more.

Let's not get Carried Away, here. Red meat -- the tough, not-marbled-with-tasty-fat kind I usually decide to afford -- doesn't harm the arteries (according to my cardiologist), and smoke residue intaken through the stomach doesn't affect the lungs. (There seem to be no good statistics relating it to stomach cancer, either, though I'll try to remember to check with my oncologist about that during the next appointment.)

[...] the toilet is within earshot... [...] you missed... you couldn't just hit the floor... no you had to hit the textured wall paper...

I used to go to Dixieland Jazz Jam Session Parties (with lots of beer, to compound the problem) at the home of a friend who had a bathroom like that. Finally settled for dropping my pants and sitting down to piss.

I know some providers have some sort of program that stops a mail from going through the system if it's riddled with profanity.

I've not heard evidence of any large ISPs reading email, and suspect that even the rumor that AOL has computers that check for Prohibited Words in email (as well as on its internal "bulletin boards" &cet) is an untrue vile canard. (I'm sure there are plenty of _true_ vile canards to be said about AOL, mind you.) The chances of an actual person reading any particular email, en route, is vanishingly small simply because the volume is so great. OTOH, I'm perfectly willing to believe that the US Government (CIA/FBI/BATF) has ways of checking even "private" email for certain words, and uses them. I'm almost tempted to start using a sig.file.

The truth is that we have no-one to blame but ourselves for letting the 'net become a place that any idiot can join.

Gee, you mean I ought to resign? Or is usenet not included? (I hang out mostly in some newsgroups and Lists where many of the participants are people I've known since long before arpanet days, and some are Caballeros ("There's no Cabal, but...") with cancelbots so there's virtually no spam.) Personally, I don't find that the presence of (ever so many) idiots on the 'net/WWW is bad enough to counterbalance the Good Stuff. But then, I don't mind the trash in bookstores, either. It would be nice, though, to have some more dependable Filters and Critics, so the Good Stuff on the 'net could be found more easily.

Send this page to all the people you know by forwarding the URL in e-mail, ICQ, AIM, or any other means at your disposal.

Yeah, I understand there's been talk about declaring "send this to everyone you know" messages "a human-vectored email virus" and taking steps to classify it with spam & unsolicited advertising, but the idea of prohibiting _anything_ is not appealing, so they'll probably try the basic approach of educating everyone to view it as a ridiculously newbie-ish thing, on the theory that ridicule is often an effective social corrective technique.

Jason MacIsaac doesn't seem to have had much success with "The Search for Mr. Muggs" via URLs, but I'll wager there are several usenet newsgroups dealing with children's literature; maybe he should try deja news, or even posting (inaccurate information about it, which is the surest way to elicit responses) in an appropriate newsgroup.

And maybe I should go to bed.

Best wishes to all there for the Holidays & the New Year,

Don Fitch

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alt.con.questionnaire1. Why do you read CoN?2. How do you read CoN?3. Where do you read CoN?4. What do you want in CoN?

OUR NEXT ISSUE will deal about the Y2K bug.Have a skoodly one.

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