Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 14:01:16 -0400 From: Sylvia Morscher To: tom jennings Subject: Re: old files tom jennings wrote: > Sure, I'd love to have old files! Its funny how disk space > doesn't matter at all anymore, and the real problem isn't > storing, but retreiving! > [ Part 2: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Fri Dec 10 06:08:37 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 10 Dec 93 07:43:52 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA10403; 10 Dec 93 06:08:37 EST (Fri) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <54844(5)>; Fri, 10 Dec 1993 05:08:25 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA10193; Fri, 10 Dec 93 02:06:53 -0800 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312101006.AA10193@wps.com> Subject: Alan To: max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 05:06:52 -0500 In-Reply-To: from "Sylvia Maxwell" at Dec 8, 93 03:48:27 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2844 Hi, I'm Alan. Hear me speak! Here is my .plan file: I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a Mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. But I have not yet gone to a Grateful Dead concert. Last update: 12/2/93 Alan B. Clegg (abc@interpath.net) -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork [ Part 3: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!ucscb.UCSC.EDU!sciww Mon Dec 20 22:11:05 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Tue, 21 Dec 93 01:02:10 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA29864; 20 Dec 93 22:11:05 EST (Mon) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <53686(4)>; Mon, 20 Dec 1993 20:33:34 -0500 Received: from ucscb.UCSC.EDU by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA00894; Mon, 20 Dec 93 17:32:52 -0800 Received: by ucscb.UCSC.EDU (5.65/1.34) id AA20914; Mon, 20 Dec 93 17:32:10 -0800 Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 20:32:10 -0500 From: sciww@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Michael-Jay Demarco Conui) Message-Id: <9312210132.AA20914@ucscb.UCSC.EDU> To: shit-list@fido.wps.com, tomj@wps.com Subject: Re: People like this should be KILLED Ooooooh- icky! Tom, that *was* gross. Nasty. It should be taken out back, and put out of our misery!!! Happy Fucken Genocide, --Deke [ Part 4: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Fri Dec 10 18:08:48 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 10 Dec 93 19:21:22 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA01515; 10 Dec 93 18:08:48 EST (Fri) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <54984(2)>; Fri, 10 Dec 1993 16:18:04 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA00725; Fri, 10 Dec 93 13:17:51 -0800 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312102117.AA00725@wps.com> Subject: Re: Cu Digest, #5.89 (fwd) To: max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 16:17:50 -0500 In-Reply-To: from "Sylvia Maxwell" at Dec 8, 93 03:48:27 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2071 > What is CPSR? I like their/its article. Computer Professionals for Social responsibility. A branch of liberalism that actually works. They're OK people, evenif they wear pinstripe shirts. > Have you written an autobiography lately? Even a small one! The > world NEEDS heros. All we've got for heros are politicians and > football players from television. We could get some heroines/heros > from the net instead, and more interesting ones. Heroes are what got us into this mess! People who do things as examples, OK, but hero implies too much reverence... I'm sure even the budha picked his nose and was rude to his guests now and then... > I guess we have some pretty good music idols from the radio. But if > us newbies don't get to hear the anarcho/fag history of the net, we > might think it all comes from Clinton, or Winter! Yes, that is a danger... the people who are fanatical about this history nonsense are the ones that define it! Winter! He's almost funny! Clinton -- he's a scary, friendly fascist. I can't seem to get started on the linear history narrative sorta thing, ficton or otherwise. I keep thinking of writing a "history of FidoNet" as pure fiction. Write it as I'd like to believe it, complete with gross inconsistencies, drifting off, tangents, etc and doing it straight-faced (not without humor though, sick humor) and passing it off as linear history. Those that gets it, will. converse. > I'm sending something else in the mail: > a small book that no-one likes but me. Got it in a thrift store. > i think it's marvellous, it's perfectly grotesque, like my fave > T-pot which is large with purple, green and turquoise snail-shapes > moulded on it. No-one seems to appreciate my T-pot either. Nobody gets my aesthetic either. Not even Josh. I had visual aesthetics trained out of me in public school (like most people) so it's goten more complicated. -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork [ Part 5: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Sat Dec 18 00:10:31 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sat, 18 Dec 93 03:14:35 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA00778; 18 Dec 93 00:10:31 EST (Sat) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <53801(3)>; Sat, 18 Dec 1993 00:01:50 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA00355; Fri, 17 Dec 93 21:01:22 -0800 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312180501.AA00355@wps.com> Subject: Hey! To: sylvia@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 00:01:21 -0500 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2493 Hey! I got your package yesterday. (Turns out -- our doorbell was broken a week ago, and the Postal Service left the little yellow notice. So the doorbell gets fixed, I request redelivery, ad arrives a week late...) I like it a lot! You should sneak out in the middle of the night and paint giant murals on ths sides of buildings to surprise people in the morning. The leafy-smokey-rubble on her right and flamey-leafs tickling her cunt (cunt -- a local columnist sex advice person, Ask Isadora, utterly cool person, had a long-standing request for (new) names for female genitalia, what with all the frat-boy "pussy" etc -- and lo! -- many found 'cunt' to be ... somehow, almost neutral (keep in mind we have lots of uppity dykes saying printing cunt cunt cunt lovingly and harshly both (nearly all in fun)), and it's not a dimimutive-of-a-mans-thing, or an inamimate object, or put-down word (except by (usually) men who say "you cunt!" meaning "you woman!" like calling someone a "girl" etc) -- and found 'cunt' favored over all the revisionist and terminally cute "new" names, none of which I can recall -- cunt) which she is obviously enjoying -- arched plant or oily rainbow behind her -- All my roommates immediately loved it, and said "hey if you dont want it give it to me!" (not knowing it's origins, and assuming I would hate anything art-y) (because I usually hate Art (as in Pretentious Artifice) except my friend Diet's friend Art Debris, he's OK when he remembers to take his drugs)). So I waited a whole day. It looks like it's been hanging there a long time! Certainly it will. Thanks!!! Hey, do you get lots of e-type junk? Wanna be on my SHIT-LIST? It's just stuff along the way my friend Flesh and (mostly) I find, that's deemed worth repeatign... I try to keep it fun, not too techie (except where it has broader interest), sick humor (but not generally tasteless), that sort of thing... might even be editorial or filler fodder... there's only a half dozen people on the list. BTW, try gopher wps.com sometime. Flesh, our new intern here at The Little Garden, has been working on the gopher server. It's actually kinda nice. It's a continuous work in progress. We're gonna do a WorldWideWeb server. I'm moving the TLG stuff onto it's own machine, so mine will be free! free! to do my own thing swith... -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork [ Part 6: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!shitlist Sun Dec 19 20:15:19 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 20 Dec 93 06:56:29 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA14068; 19 Dec 93 20:15:19 EST (Sun) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <56063(5)>; Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:58:43 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA07659; Sun, 19 Dec 93 15:58:18 -0800 From: shitlist@wps.com (Shit List archiver) Message-Id: <9312192358.AA07659@wps.com> Subject: THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS [or, you asked for it...] (fwd) To: sylvia@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:58:17 -0500 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 13443 Forwarded message: >From tomj Fri Dec 17 13:45:23 1993 From: tomj (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312172145.AA22787@wps.com> Subject: THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS [or, you asked for it...] To: shitlist (Shit List archiver) Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 13:45:22 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 13017 Forwarded message: >From tomj Fri Dec 17 13:05:46 1993 From: tomj (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312172105.AA22531@wps.com> Subject: THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS [or, you asked for it...] To: shit-list Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 13:05:39 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 12452 THE PEOPLE WITH HOLES IN THEIR HEADS Amanda Feilding lives in a charming flat looking over London's river with her companion, Joey Mellen, and their infant son, Rock. She is a successful painter, and she and Joey have an art gallery in a fashionable street of the King's Road. Another of her talents is for politics. At the last two General Elections she stood for Parliament in Chelsea, more than doubling her vote on the second occasion from 49 to 139. It does not sound much, but the cause for which she stands is unfamiliar and lacks obvious appeal. Feilding and her voters demand that trepanning operations be made freely available on the National Health. Trepanation means cutting a hole in your skull. The founder of the trepanation movement is a Dutch savant, Dr Bart Hughes. In 1962 he made a discovery which his followers proclaim as the most significant in modern times. One's state and degree of consciousness, he realized, are related to the volume of blood in the brain. According to his theory of evolution, the adoption of an upright stance brought certain benefits to the human race, but it caused the flow of blood through the head to be limited by gravity, thus reducing the range of human consciousness. Certain parts of the brain ceased or reduced their functions while others, particularly those parts relating to speech and reasoning, became emphasized in compensation. One can redress the balance by a number of methods, such as standing on one's head, jumping from a hot bath into a cold one, or the use of drugs; but the wider consciousness thus obtained is only temporary. Bart Hughes shared the common goal of mystics and poets in all ages: he wanted to achieve permanently the higher level of vision, which he associated with an increased volume of blood in the capillaries of the brain. The higher state of mind he sought was that of childhood. Babies are born with skulls unsealed, and it is not until one is an adult that the bony carapace is formed which completely encloses the membranes surrounding the brain and inhibits their pulsations in repsonse to heart-beats. In consequence, the adult loses touch with the dreams, imagination and intense perceptions of the child. His mental balance becomes upset by egoism and neuroses. To cure these problems, first in himself and then for the whole world, Dr Huges returned his cranium to something like the condition of infancy by cutting out a small disc of bone with an electric drill. Experiencing immediate beneficial effects from this operation, he began preaching to anyone who would listen to the doctrine of trepanation. By liberating his brain from its total imprisonment in his skull, he claimed to have restored its pulsations, increased the volume of blood in it and acquired a more complete, satisfying state of consciousness than grown-up people normally enjoy. The medical and legal authorities reacted to Huges's discovery with horror and rewarded him with a spell in a Dutch lunatic asylum. Joseph Mellen met Bart Huges in 1965 in Ibiza and quickly became his leading, or rather one and only, disciple. Years later he wrote a book called _Bore Hole_, the contents of which are summarized in its opening sentence: 'This is the story of how I came to drill a hole in my skull to get permanently high.' ...(a few paragraphs detail Joseph Mellen's early experiments with LSD, and how he finds out about Bart Huges.) The time came when Joey felt he had preached enough and that he now had to act. He did not agree with Holingshead that the third eye was merely a figure of speech, believing in its physical attainment through self-trepanation. Support for this can be found in archaeology. Skulls of ancient people all over the world give evidence that their owners were skillfully trepanned during their lifetimes, and many of these appear to have been of noble or priestly castes. The medical practice of trepanation was continued up to the present century in treatment of madness, the hole in the skull being seen as a way of relieving pressure on the brain or letting out the devils that possessed it. By his scientific explanation of the reasons for the operation, Bart Huges had removed it from the area of superstition, and Joey Mellen proposed to be the second person to perform it on himself in the interest of enlightenment. Bart had become a close friend of Amanda Feilding, and they went off to Amsterdam together while Joey took care of Amanda's flat. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for to bore a hole in his head. The most gripping passages in _Bore Hole_ describe his various attempts to complete the operation. They are also extremely gruesome, and those who lack medical curiosity would do well to read no further. Yet to those who might contemplate trepanation for and by themselves, Joey's experiences are a salutary warning. It should be empahasized that neither he, Bart nor Amanda has ever recommended people to follow their example by performing their own operations. For years they have been looking for doctors who would understand their theories and would agree to trepan volunteer patients as a form of therapy Strangely enough, not one member of the medical profession has been converted. In a surgical store Joey found a trepan instrument, a kind of auger or cork- screw designed to be worked by hand. It was much cheaper and, Joey felt, more sensitive than an electric drill. Its main feature was a metal spike, surrounded by a ring of saw-teeth. The spike was meant to be driven into the skull, holding the trepan steady until the revolving saw made a groove, after which it could be retracted. If all went well, the saw-band should remove a disc of bone and expose the brain. Joey's first attempt at self-trepanation was a fiasco. He had no previous medical experience, and the needles he had bought for administering a local anaesthetic to the crown of his head proved to be too thin and crumpled up or broke. Next day he obtained some stouted needles, took a tab of LSD to steady his nerves and set to in earnest. First he made an incision to the bone, and then applied the trepan to his bared skull. But the first part of the operation, driving the spike into the bone, was impossible to accomplish. Joey described it as like trying to uncork a bottle from the inside. He realized he needed help and telephoned Bart in Amsterdam, who promised he would come over and assist at the next operation. This plan was frustrated by the Home Office, which listed Dr Huges as an undesirable visitor to Britain and barred his entry. Amanda agreed to take his place. Soon after her return to London she helped Joey re-open the wound in his head and, by pressing the trepan with all her might against his skull, managed to get the spike to take hold and the saw- teeth to bite. Joey then took over at cranking the saw. Once again he had swallowed some LSD. After a long period of sawing, just as he was about to break through, he suddenly fainted. Amanda called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital, where horrified doctors told him that he was lucky to be alive and that if he had drilled a fraction of an inch further he would have killed himself. The psychiatrists took a particular interest in his case, and a group of them arranged to examine him. Before this could be done, he had to appear in court on a charge of possessing a small amount of cannabis. The magistrate demanded another psychiatrist's report and demanded him for a week in prison. There followed a period of embarrassment as the rumour went round London that Joey Mellen had trepanned himself, whereas in fact he had failed to do so. As soon as possible, therefore, he prepared for a third attempt. Proceeding as before, but now with the benefit of experience, he soon found the groove from the previous operation and began to saw through the sliver of bone separating him from enlightenment or, as the doctors had predicted, instant death. What followed is best quoted from _Bore Hole_. 'After some time there was an ominous sounding schlurp and the sound of bubbling. I drew the trepan out and the gurgling continued. It sounded like air bubbles running under the skull as they were pressed out. I looked at the trepan and there was a bit of bone in it. At last! On closer inspection I saw that the disc of bone was much deeper on one side than on the other. Obviously the trepan had not been straight and had gone through at one point only, then the piece of bone had snapped off and come out. I was reluctant to start drilling again for fear of damaging the brain membranes with the deeper part while I was cutting through the rest or of breaking off a splinter. If only I had an electric drill it would have been so much simpler. Amanda was sure I was through. There seemed no other explanation for the schlurping noises I decided to call it a day. At the time I thought that any hole would do, no matter what size. I bandaged up my head and cleared away the mess.' There was still doubt in his mind as to whether he had really broken through and, if so, whether the hole was big enough to restore pulsation to his brain. The operation had left him with a feeling of wellbeing, but he realized that it could simply be from relief at having ended it. To put the matter beyond doubt, he decided to bore another hole at a new spot just above the hairline, this time using an electric drill. In the spring of 1970, Amanda was in America and Joey did the operation alone. He applied the drill to his forehead, but after half and hour's work the electric cable burnt out. Once again he was frustrated. An engineer in the flat below him was able to repair the instrument and next day he set out to finish the job. 'This time I was not in any doubt. The drill head went at least an inch deep through the hole. A great gush of blood followed my withdrawal of the drill. In the mirror I could see the blood in the hole rising and falling with the pulsation of the brain.' The result was all he had hoped for. During the next four hours he felt his spirits rising higher until he reached a state of freedom and serenity which he claims, has been with him ever since. For some time now he had been sharing a flat with Amanda, and when she came back from America she immediately noticed the change in him. This encouraged her to join him on the mental plane by doing her own trepanation. The operation was carefully recorded. She had obtained a cine-camera, and Joey stood by, filming, as she attacked her head with an electric drill. The film shows her carefully at work, dressed in a blood-spattered white robe. She shaves her head, makes an incision in her head with a scalpel and calmly starts drilling. Blood spurts as she penetrates the skull. She lays aside the drill and with a triumphant smile advances towards Joey and the camera. Ever since, Joey and amanda have lived and worked together in harmony. From the business of buying old prints to colour and resell, they have progressed to ownership of the Pigeonhole Gallery and seem reasonably prosperous. They have also started a family. There is nothing apparently abnormal about them, and many of their old friends agree in finding them even more pleasant and contented since their operations. There is plenty of leisure in their lives, mingled with the kind of activities they most enjoy. These of course include talking and writing about trepanation. They have lectured widely in Europe and America to groups of doctors and other interested people, showing the film of Amanda's self-operation, entitled _Heartbeat in the Brain_. It is generally received with awe, the sight of blood often causing people to faint. At one showing in London a film critic described the audience 'dropping off their seats one by one like ripe plums'. Yet it was not designed to be gruesome. The soundtrack is of soothing music, and the surgical scenes alternate with some delightful motion studies of Amanda's pet pigeon, Birdie, as a symbol of peace and wisdom." Bill jacobs I've got seven holes in my skull. _______________________________________________________________________ William Jacobs | Someday we'll look back on all this Astronomy Dept., San Diego State and plow into a parked car. bjacobs@ucssun1.sdsu.edu -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork [ Part 7: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!shitlist Sun Dec 19 20:15:29 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 20 Dec 93 06:56:34 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA14082; 19 Dec 93 20:15:29 EST (Sun) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <56068(4)>; Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:59:01 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA07665; Sun, 19 Dec 93 15:58:28 -0800 From: shitlist@wps.com (Shit List archiver) Message-Id: <9312192358.AA07665@wps.com> Subject: Joanna Went! (fwd) To: sylvia@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:58:28 -0500 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 6842 Forwarded message: >From tomj Sat Dec 18 13:56:03 1993 From: tomj (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312182155.AA03156@wps.com> Subject: Joanna Went! To: shit-list Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 13:55:57 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 6486 Wow! Josh found a flyer a few weeks ago that read: 1993 anti-christmas SPECTACULAR! featuring LA performance diva and splatter performance legend JOHANNA WENT international noise combo POO POO BOMB with MATTHEW & REJOICE! PIBLOKTO! and special guest: RODNEY HORROR! NOISE! MESS! RELIGION! At the Purple Onion, north beach, etc 10 pm Friday, December 17th $5 The Purple Onion is an ancient 50's jazz club or something, actually a really neat place; a small stage, with booths and tables around it, and a dance floor in front of the stage. Bar (beer & wine) in one corner. It's in a basement. Very cozy. Piblokto opened. 1982 new wave! Guitarist in a bunny suit, bass player wrapped in wrapping paper (ribbons and all), woman drummer, and woman singer in a sheer brown "doe" costume. She was actually better than her band, which was rather uninspired in spite of the costumes. But it really sounded like the B side of some 7" punk single you'd find fallen down inside the wall of some South of Market warehouse. Matthew and Rejoice were two guys in waiter/religious proseletyzer drag (black pants and shoes, white shirt, slicked back hair, restrained and overly cheerful demeanor, little gold crosses) who did umm, basically one of those Jee-zus gosh-golly stage shows. They went through the audience handing out Chick comics ("THE ANGELS") and giving sincere handshakes. Back on stage, they lip-synced to religous theme songs (sung by children...), gushed about Jesus said to Timothy... then couldn't find their place in the bible... Break out into song (Matthew stepping to the front of the stage to lip-sync the solos by the little religious chilredn on the tape), making numerous references to "lifestyle" blather and normalcy and such, occasionally pointing to Josh and me (the two fags in the place), but never getting in the slightest mean. They didn't drop character the whole time. It was very sick and very funny. Then this woman comes out. She looked like her older sister was Exine Cervenka, and Greta S. her younger sister. Black strech tights, top and skirt, think reddish hair with bangs made her face seem small. An amazing sound track behind her, industrial scary power trance stuff, occasional muffled groans into the mike, she puts on a series of odd hats, bags over her head. We were both thinkign and Josh said, gee, this is very Johanna-like, what an odd choice. It got weirder and weirder. The music got more intense, and I noticed the huge boxes of props. Her props became more demented, and I find it impossible to describe them; they were disturbing mixes and blurs of obvious and non-obvious things with loaded meanings. She had a sign board behind her, with words written on them, that periodically she'd flip over to reveal the next underneath, that gave a sort of check-point, though usually tangential or not-yet-expressed, to the... thing unfolding. She put on a huge ugly single tit, gnawed at the nipple, which extended into a hideous black snake, dangling and shaking, she bit off the end and a gross brownish liquid spread aver her, she rubbed it all over. It became obvious, oh, this *is* Johanna Went! She looks *so* totally different that her pictures in INDUSTRIAL CULTURE! She underwent transformation after transformation, donning funny and sick costumes. There was some sort of narrative or something just under the surface, though I wasn unable to make it explicit. Sex and death and her body and ugliness and giant tampons, mean men who wanted to fuck her, sticky fluids, four quarts of blood, pleasure, craziness, it wound up and up, there was a fascination to it that lrevented you from looking away though that would never ahd occurred to me. She started off somewhat self conscious, and goofy, and ended up in a trance, moving about the stage fluidly but posessed. Her vocal stuff got more distance and scary. The final scene-thing, she flipped the final board, and it read, "He wanted to fuck me in the ass, and beat me up, so I KILLED THEM", she fucked happy boy, the life-size red silky manthing, with a round flat yellow head with a smiley-face-inspired horror, impaled on a stand so that it stood at an uncomfortable-looking angle, after pulling out his stand/pole so he slumped over a table; she had on a huge, hideous, reptilian penis-thing which she was tuggging, stroking, and chewing on the end, over and over, the tip got longer and harder and finally, after chewing the very tip off, it exuded sticky gunk, and in a frenzy, fucked the slumped-over happy boy, screaming, "he wanted to fuck me in th eass, and beat me up, SO I KILLED HIM". Yeow! So Iraya and I went *immediately* and asked, "can we be your fans?" and Iraya asked, are you doing other shows in the area, etc, and Johanna, looking tired, and disassembling some of her props by putting her foot on one part and yanking with two hands, said no, this was the only show, she likes to do clubs because they're small, but she really wants to be able to to her full show (!) and neess more space. She said she's been sick all year, and hasn't performed in years (I think she said). Iraya and I briefly talked about doing a show, the chance I guess is slim, but not impossible, I mena, we've both been involved in such things. It would be an amazing thing. We got her phone number, then she said she was tired, and had to get stuff clean up. Bye! Wow! Next was POO POO BOMB. Two tiny tables with junky electronic doodads, behind each some housey looking person. They noises made were really elementary, sounding like indulgent art-stoont stuff from... 82. The "performance" was by "Nurse Poo Poo", and it was pretty silly. It was deafning too. It was "performance art", ie. boxes of kid's toys, a scarecrow like thing Nruse hacked up w th a saw, etc. Very messy. Very bad choice to follow up Johanna with. But it at least wasn't in the slightest pretentious. In fact, the whole night was fun and goofy. I somehow forgot to say how funny Johanna's thing was. I mean, I laughed thruogh most of it. It was intentionally funny, but almost no one was laughing. Too bad! Special Guest never showed, or we were unable to discern him/her from the background. -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif.