Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 17:28:47 -0400 From: Sylvia Morscher To: tomj@wps.com Subject: old files [ Part 2: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Wed Sep 8 16:10:22 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 08 Sep 93 23:38:36 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA15679; 8 Sep 93 16:10:22 EDT (Wed) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <101656(3)>; Wed, 8 Sep 1993 15:33:43 -0400 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA03272; Wed, 8 Sep 93 12:33:18 -0700 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9309081933.AA03272@wps.com> Subject: Re: HEY WOW!>? To: max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 08:33:18 -0400 Cc: tomj@fido.wps.com (Tom Jennings) In-Reply-To: from "Sylvia Maxwell" at Aug 30, 93 02:13:11 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 3369 > Now i have > TWO pieces of paper plus envelopes with YOUR actual handwriting > on them. I've been showing off your publications to gay activist > friends, and especially to slightly narrow people who miraculously > tolerate me. I didn't know you had a component car (rover?), and > i LOVE that picture of Jesus with a little friend. THat, plus a dollar (US :-) will buy you a cup of coffee... :-) Many gay activist types disliked HOMOCORE, because it implicitly and sometimes explicitly criticized the assimilationist agenda, and threw darts and the handsome-white-hunk mentality. Tough tootsies for them, I say. I hate disco! My Rambler sometimes annoys me... especially lately. It's a lot of work. Mostly because I keep fucking with it. I added an outboard tank so I can carry 28 gals of fuel. I am having problems with mileage (down to about 14, should be 17). But I'm going on another road trip next week, to New Mexico. I will eventually move there, or close to it. The bejeezus thing, really did come from a x-tian babble book. Amazing! > There's a relic of a burned-out building, shaped like a pit with > rubble in it on the main drag of here, next to the East End > Tavern. We're going to rent some floodlights and hang paintings > in it one evening. The guy from the gallery down the street, Keith, > is planning to get a friend to play classical piano in the bottom > of the pit. I want to walk around in a tuxedo and gloves, or > maybe a thrift-store backless black satin depression era ball > gown with steel stilletto heels, and offer hors d'oeuvres on a tray. My friend Duke and I did a slide show on a burned-out building. There had been a big politially-motivated arson, and so of course everyone though it was related. Nope. It was just slides of funny pictures, skateboarding, etc. We had a boombox playing unrelated music, and we handed out flyers for some show or something. Everyone just assumed signifigance. When we told them no, there was nothing going on except a slide show, no one believed us. It went on until the police came by, asked us what was going on, and I think eventually asked us to move along... it was on a side street so not many people came, but it was fun. I strongly recommend you do your art show in the pit! It will be fun! > That icky conversation about burning bodies was actually a long > debate about how beurocracy does or doesn't whatever. I didn't > get it, it made no sense to me, so i started writing e-mail instead. > i wrote a bit more, like a play, while they were talking, then > showed it to them, and they seemed to like it/be amused....very > wierd scene.... Seems like anything, when taken SERIOUSLY, > becomes impossibly complicated. Hmmm... yes I took it seriously, I guess I should not have, the apparent subject seemed serious... this reminds me of this slideshow we did... :-) > i have to make a painting for you and mail it. If i send it to > 55 Rondel, sf, 94103, will you get it? Mail art. Except i might > not mail it until after an opening, because it has to be a good > one and i want to put the good ones in the pit for a day. And > you could always give it to someone if you don't want it. Yes!!! Wow! I'd be honored to receive one of your paintings!!! -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. [ Part 3: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Sun Dec 19 20:15:31 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 20 Dec 93 06:56:37 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA14087; 19 Dec 93 20:15:31 EST (Sun) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <56066(4)>; Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:59:49 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA07674; Sun, 19 Dec 93 15:59:36 -0800 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312192359.AA07674@wps.com> Subject: mail To: sylvia@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:59:36 -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: 395 Just sent you some archived shit-list stuff. I just started srchiving everything that goes to shit-list. (Some people I work with archive every piece of mail through their system in all areas, and I know they do 100+ per week... ouch!) -- 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 4: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Fri Dec 10 16:10:46 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 10 Dec 93 19:21:08 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA28702; 10 Dec 93 16:10:46 EST (Fri) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <55028(2)>; Fri, 10 Dec 1993 15:51:57 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA00563; Fri, 10 Dec 93 12:50:44 -0800 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312102050.AA00563@wps.com> Subject: RESEND: Pigdog Mailing List DIGEST for 12.8.93 (fwd) To: sylvia@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 15:50:43 -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: 47416 Forwarded message: >From tjames@netcom.com Wed Dec 8 02:36:25 1993 Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 02:34:04 -0800 (PST) From: Tjames Madison Subject: RESEND: Pigdog Mailing List DIGEST for 12.8.93 To: spock@hecubus.pigdog.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII PIGDOG MAILING LIST DIGEST #2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ December 8, 1993 (c)1993 Pigdog Magazine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thirteen years ago on this date, frail, housebroken British singer John Lennon was offed by a crazy guy with ridiculous glasses, which prompted Howard Cosell to burst into tears in front of an audience of millions on ABC-TV's "Monday Night Football" Therefore, this is going to be known as the "Mark David Chapman" issue. DISCONTENTS 1. Science From Beyond the Grave, by RatSnatcher 2. A Day In The Life Of John_-_Winston 3. Crazy From the Heat, by Tjames Madison 4. REVIEW: The Vinnie Vincent Invasion, by Joshus 5. Powerful Copy Machines I Have Used, by TJM 6. Fast Dirty Food, by Flesh 7. Some Guy Gets Excited About Superman 8. Some Vaguely Threatening Babble About Pets 9. Murdock's Crazy Ideas About Cheating 10. LETTERS, WE GET LETTERS Pretty slow week. I think everyone must be out washing their pets or something. I've taken the liberty of digging through the musty Pigdog Morgue to bring you good people most of this stuff. Some of it is even interesting. (Notice that I've attempted to overcome the lack of quality by offering LOTS of crap....) Next week will be better...everyone will send me their most wittiest and cherished love poems that they write to themselves when they're standing in the bathroom, naked, and looking at themselves in a full-length mirror. If you are female, you will be extra-descriptive. And if you don't do me this one little thing that I ask, I must request that you deliver to me a puppy dog, for Christmas, wrapped up in a big red bow. Thank you. 1. The Tesla2 Files, by RatSnatcher (This was originally written for Pigdog Magazine. It got lost somewhere along the way, probably because Zach didn't want to have anything to do with it after awhile. This is possibly owing to the fact that his crazy Uncle kept pounding Tesla into his head for months and months...even trying to lure him into attending a bizarre TeslaCon in Colorado. We must have Zach "explain" his Uncle someday. All I know is that he used to be a world class chef who was Head Chef at one point for the Queen Elizabeth II. He was also a crazy Berkeley hippie, and one day he went WACKO and decided to give up everything to build a Tesla Coil. Well...this is sort of explained in the story. I don't know how much I want to believe...the prospects are too terrifying.) ............................................................................ Science from Beyond the Grave: The Chronicles of Tesla 2 By R. Snatcher Can a ghost scientist possess a living creature, and through that creature, continue scientific research? For some time now, my Uncle has been obsessed with building the lost inventions of a 19th century mad scientist named Nicola Tesla. It didn't seem like a mistake, at the time, to give my Uncle one of my special books about Nicola Tesla. I had no inkling that a book could be a tool of possession, and I had no Idea that my uncle would take it upon himself to carry on Tesla's weird line of research, and eventually become Tesla. But now I know. There isn't much resemblance on the surface. My uncle wears baseball caps and drinks cheap beer, for instance, while Tesla used to wear cheap three piece suits and drink prissy cocktail wine, but it's the determination, and overwhelming will to build bizarre, and sometimes dangerous inventions that makes them one in the same. I realized this was on the return trip from the worst part of Emeryville. I was in the shot-gun seat of my uncles green 1970's Ford LTD sedan, which is a strange car because of its metric measurements on the speedometer and other gauges. Stranger, we were on our way back from picking up a specially designed part for the new Tesla Coil that my uncle is building. I'm not sure why, maybe it's destined to be this way, but when ever he builds these devices, he insists that Special Ed and I come along to document every detail. Ed sat in the back seat videotaping the burned-out ghetto crack homes, and passing traffic with his Sony CCD-FX710 Hi-8 machine. I was holding a $300 piece of PVC pipe. Actually it was the rather expensive main piece of my Uncles new Tesla Coil. He had this part specially built at a machine shop. It took him 2 weeks to find a shop that would take the job because nobody wanted it--it was too weird. As it turned out, it took 3 men on a lathe 6 hours to complete, and when we arrived, the shop boss looked relieved that someone was actually coming in to pay for the thing. Anyone would have to admit that the finished piece is beautiful. Hundreds of feet of pure copper wire was wrapped around a piece of PVC pipe. An equal amount of mono-filament fishing line was wrapped in between each rotation of the copper so that it never touches itself. The finished product gleams like a golden baseball bat. It's someday going to be the main amplifying coil, the part of the Tesla Coil where thousands of volts of electricity will be assembled and finally sent up to a copper toilet-bowel float that will shoot lightening bolts through the air at anything that can conduct electricity. Ed has this on tape. We asked him why in the hell he's building a Tesla Coil. He cocked his Canon Laser baseball cap at us and roared laughter over the throaty Ford engine. "Because I'm fucking CRAZY! That's why." he said. And we knew he was. But then he went into a wide-eyed sort of trance and he told us a bizarre story. You see, my Uncle believes that Nicola Tesla was assassinated--run over with a car--because he was going to give the world plentiful free power. A Tesla coil is a device that looks similar to a Van Der Graf machine, but instead of making your hair defy gravity with static discharges, a Tesla coil flings off electrons in extremely low frequency (ELF) waves. They supposedly can light up fluorescent lights without wires, and be used as electrical weapons to fry people, or just people's brains. Nicola Tesla wanted to light entire cities with a giant ber-coil. He wanted to transmit gobs of power through the air, and he was also developing a way to harness the Earth's electromagnetic field as a source of power. With these technologies he would light up the world, and maybe control it. For that, the power companies came in with their secret police and had him run down in the street. Then his papers were seized by every imaginable secret government agency. Tesla is now operating from beyond the grave, through my Uncle, to continue his research and his quest for free energy. You must realize that my uncle is not a mad-scientist by trade. He started out as a chef, and as far as far as I know, he always was a chef, until late in 1992, right after I gave him my Tesla book. In the fall of 1992 he bought a giant personal computer system. A machine so lavish, that it would make any engineer sweat. Then he loaded it up with CAD programs. Right after that, he signed up for tons of electronics correspondence classes. Nobody understood why. I especially didn't understand. He locked himself away for months with vast amounts of electronic parts and Budweiser. And it was only later that I realized he was building Tesla Coils and other devices. Now his apartment is one giant electronics dump. There are soldering irons, voltage meters, ohm meters, and various other electrical tools laying everywhere. He went from chef to mad-scientist in only four months. "I just feel that theres something terribly wrong," my uncle says as we pull into the parking lot of his favorite bowling Alley/Bar. "We all missed something back there. Tesla's research hasn't been taken advantage of. He had the answer. There's something there, and I'm going to find it." I think he will find it. Tesla 2 is here, and I must document this on-going Tesla ghost story in Pigdog. When he throws the switch on "the big one" I'll be there, and so will Pigdog. When my uncle, Ed, and I (Tesla Team 3) go to clandestine meetings with strange engineers and shadowy government insiders, we'll get it all on hidden camera, and write it down here. ............................................................................ 2. John_-_Winston: A Life (john_-_winston's name is familiar to anyone who's wandered into alt.alien.visitors...he's a crazy guy from Milpitas who claims to have made contact with Giant Aliens who park their ships in craters in Nevada and on top of mountains like Mt. Lassen. "They're not here to hurt us," he soothes us; "they only want to prevent us from destroying ourselves," which is why Winston claims that these Big-Headed Aliens have been in close contact with every president since Harry Truman. Winston gets a lot of his stuff from the "Weekly World News," all of which he reports as science fact. He crossposts HUGE amounts of nonsense all over the net, which invariably results in three or four snapper-headed wannabe net.policemen vowing to get him "kicked off the net" every week. I kind of like him. If I had a crazy uncle like RatSnatcher, I would want him to be john_-_winston. JW can be reached at John_-_Winston@cup.portal.com) ............................................................................ Subject: A Day In The Life Of John Winston. Many years ago, just after the Watts Riot and the so-called Gas Crisis I was on my way just past Redwood City, Calif. to make a record about UFOs when I noticed a person in a car beside the road. Something told me that I should stop and see if the person needed help. The person turned out to be a member of a certain race of people. He turned out to be a man who had been stabbed by his girlfriend a few days before and he had a bandage on his arm. He said that he had been travel- ing on his way to San Francisco with a friend and the person had been stopped by a policeman, found to have had a warrant on him, and had been thrown in jail. This young man had then been in a position that he had to drive on along. The car had run out of gas and wouldn't start. After telling me this I suggested that he come in the car with me. He hopped in and we started in the opposite direction to my house in Milpitas. I then started talking like a person possessed, about UFOs. I mentioned to him that the people in the flying saucers were making themselves known and seen more since 1947 because we had been experi- menting with atomic bombs and were about to start setting off H-bombs which might very well blow up our planet and affect other planets. They were here to try to stop us from doing that because one of our planets that was called Maldek was blown up in ancient history and is now the meteorite belt. I then explained that the space people who are hear are from many places such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter and a bunch more places. Some of them look like us and can walk among without looking any different from other people but most of them have to go through a change in dimension before they can be in the physical form. I told him many other things. I filled him up with food and it just so happened that I had saved away 5 gallons of gasoline. We then went back, put the gas in his car and got it started. He then said, "This is a miracle." I then asked him what he meant. He then explained that as he was stranded on the side of the road he looked up in the sky and said, "Space people, if you are really up there, please send some- one to come and give me some food, get this car going and tell me the truth about UFOs. You then came along." I then explained that this sort of thing happens to me quite a bit since I was given two spiritual masters on the side of Mt. Shasta to give me guidance and I volunteered to let the space people also work through me. He then seemed happy and went on his way. John Winston. ............................................................................ 3. james watt, by Tjames Madison (I'm sensing a trend here, with all these stories about crazy middle-aged men. Perhaps. But the following story really happened. Another reject from Pigdog #3) ............................................................................ When I was 12 years old, an old widower named James Watt (not that one) was having a nice dinner for himself of peas and corned beef on night, watching reruns of "Mayberry RFD," when something essential in his head snapped for good. I don't know if it was Ken Berry's awful acting, or maybe his peas were too mushy, or maybe even he saw a horrific image of his dead wife's clutching, skeletal hands coming out of the tv set toward him: I don't know. Maybe all three. Whatever it was he was gone. He stood up, a small slop of drool clinging to his lower lip. A napkin was tucked neatly into his white undershirt like a bib. He lurched toward the front door of his tiny bachelor's apartment and, maybe pausing to see if he might reclaim his mind from the precarious ledge it was teetering on, maybe not, he reached for the doorknob and shook it open. He fell to the railing outside his second floor apartment. He begin to sing, in a loud, tuneless voice. People, including me, came out of their apartments to stare at him. He continued singing for some time. It was 7:30 p.m. Quite a crowd gathered. After he tired of singing, he began to chant, and mumble, chant and mumble, in dual cacaphony. His rap went something about flies and insects raking out his eyeballs, and his chanting had to do with the Northeast. He seemed to be driving a bus at times, the next minute he was leading his platoon, in his war. Eventually th chanting and the singing and the mumbling just stopped. He gripped the rail and wavered there for a brief instant...in slow motion time he tilted to and fro and you could see from the ground that every vein in his neck was stressed to the limit -- he looked like a hot dog left too long in a microwave. He looked down, at himself, he didn't know anyone was watching him. He noticed that his right hand held a knife. He held it before his face and began to shriek at the universe, naming off a long litany of complaints, too long to list. It wasn't even words he was hollering, his face beet red and sweaty, it was just sounds and fury and construction. I believe he was being tried on another plane. I believe he believed he had been done a great injustice. Hours later, James Watt still stands at the railing. Past midnight now, James Watt still stands, brandishing his butter knife with utter futility. The knife has become his Excalibur. Everyone else has lost interest, wandered back inside on this warm June night in Los Angeles, turned on their televisions loud angainst the angry red man on the railing. I kept peeking through the curtains, mostly wondering if he would fall or jump or try to attack someone with his silly knife. And he wouldn't shut up. Finally I, too, lost interest and closed the curtains for good and went and sat down, and when I did I just...waited. I felt sorry for Mr. Watt, but I was too young to know why. It just seemed like a terrible thing, for a man to snap like that and lose himself. The police eventually came, in the morning, and they pried James Watt's white-knuckled hands from the railing, and from the butter knife. He didn't even notice they had come, and when they led him away from everything that he used to call home, he didn't protest or say a word, except: "gah." I never heard about him, ever again. He drove a bus, that's all I know. "You lose yourself You reappear You suddenly find you've got nothing to fear Yet a question in your nerves is lit And you know there is no answer fit To satisfy Ensure you not to quit That it is not he or she or them or it That you belong to." --Zimmerman ............................................................................ 4. Brushes With Near Greatness! (Okay, so that last one was sort of lame. I must have been listening to Enya when I wrote it. This next one will turn those frowns upside down, however. This is Joshus^H^H^HJoshua, writing about some horrible 70s band I barely remember. I do remember KISS, though. I recall being in Music class in 7th grade and having "Show and Tell Day." Most of us brought things like "The New Mouseketeers" or "Shaun Cassidy." The black kid brought in "Brick House" by the Commodores, and we danced, after a white fashion. But the Bad Kid, he brought "KISS ALIVE II". I think some little girls cried when he put that on. Big scary makeup and platform shoes...Jesus what a bad introduction to "heavy metal." I just remember the first line of the album: "YOU WANT THE BEST YOU GOT THE BEST...THE HOTTEST BAND IN THE WORLD: ***KISS***!!!" And seque into "God of Thunder" or some tripe. I don't remember which song, exactly, because I was busy trying to look up Miss Carter's red dress...oh my. My first teacher crush. She even spoke FRENCH. Years later I bought "KISS DOUBLE PLATINUM" for two bucks at Target. I still feel ripped off.) ............................................................................ >From luriete@nextnet.ccs.csus.edu Tue Dec 7 22:44:57 1993 Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 14:46:50 PST From: joshus lurie-terrell Subject: Vinnie Vincent Invasion VINNIE VINCENT INVASION line up: Marc Slaughter (vocals) Vinnie Vincent (guitar) Dana Strum (bass) Bobby Rock (drums) In 1977, singer (!) and guitarplayer Vinnie Cusano, alias Vinnie Vincent, records with his band Treasure a good, melodic rock album. In '82 this talented guitarplayer joins the mega-band Kiss, he does only stay for two albums. He rather focusses his mind on an own band, in which he will be boss, concerning guitarplay and compositions. He finds some other musicians to join him: bassplayer Dana Strum (ex-Ozzy), singer Robert Fleischman (ex-Journey/Channel) and drummer Bobby Rock. The debut album is a great mid-tempo heavy metal-LP, with beautiful and high vocals of Fleischman, to which Vinnie's guitar waterfalls in style of Joshua Perahia seem a bit uncontrolled. Despite the big amount of money that's invested in the band by their record company, Vinnie Vincent's Invasion doesn't become a major metl band. Robert Fleischman leaves after the first album and is replaced by Marc Slaughter. The second album has a bit more controlled guitarplay and Marc's vocals are in line of Robert's. Again a great album, but it doesn't become the wanted breakthrough. De V.V.Invasion even splits up and it's not shure wether Vinnie tries to create a new line up or not. Anyway, his record company gives him the key of the street. albums: Invasion (Chrysalis '86) All Systems Go (Chrysalis '88) ............................................................................ 5. The Ballad of Johhny 5090 (This is more drivel I wrote about copy machines during a stretch where I worked 11 out of 12 days. I don't know why I bothered. I mean...copy machines? Another REJECT from Pigdog #3) ............................................................................ BUILDING THE BETTER BEAST (Our Expert Rates the New Crop of High Volume Duplicating Machines) Deep in the belly of every Xerox 5090 Photocopier hides a tiny, powerful mini-brain known as an ElectroMobe. This small, but utterly efficient, microchip is the nerve center of the machine that many call the greatest copier ever made. A vast network of recessed sensors deployed inside the copier relay the slightest aberration to the 'Mobe, which then, aping the human mind that conceived of it, sends a termination signal to the main processing unit. A piece of paper gone even 2 degrees askance will shut the machine down instantly, thanks to the ever-vigilant work of the ElectroMobe Brain. There is, quite simply, nothing else like it at work anywhere in the world. Which brings us to the state of copying technology at the present time. After a long stasis, which saw companies like Canon and Kodak bringing belching monsters to the fore time and time again to forge a lead in the stagnant marketplace, Xerox introduced in 1991 the 5090, and has not looked back since. Quite literally, its competitors have been left far behind. The 5090 is the Anvil on which the plain paper revolution of the 1990's is being forged. The 5090's specs are truly terrifying. 170 copies per minute. A reliable duplex tray which can hold up to 200 sheets at a time. A dual finisher/stacker, which can contain up to four "sets" in progress while collating and finishing to send to an automatic stacker tray. An ingenious hot glue binding system that does in one versatile package, almost as an afterthought, what messy, inconvenient machines costing many thousands of dollars once were required for. An ultra-sensitive Automatic Document Handler (ADH) that can hold nearly 300 sheets at once, and can run both extremely heavy (cardstock) and light (thermal) weights of paper. Add to that impressive array a complex-though-simple terminal touch screen, a 3.5 floppy disk drive, and three colossal paper trays with a combined sheet storage capacity of just under 5000, and you have what can only be called the Lamborghini of copiers, the Best of the Best. Many have tried, but few have succeeded, in duplicating Xerox's success with this machine. Late 1992 and so far this year have seen an influx of supposedly "high-volume" competitors from companies such as Konica and Minolta, with impressive national ad campaigns to boost sales. The astute reader will note that Xerox has yet to air an ad for the 5090; it does not need one. So, in the spirit of fairness, this space has been provided to review what the other's have to offer. It is not as a shuck for Xerox that we attempt to portray ourselves, yet the fact remains that Xerox has created something bigger, possibly then themselves; a machine so blindingly perfect that all others are become without value. KODAK Kodak's Ektaprint line was a reliable, workhorse copier, for both high-volume "full-service" work and also for the most menial of small jobs. In it's time which lasted most of the previous decade the Ektaprint 235 stood up to all comers, including Xerox's own 5010 and 5060. Then came the 90's, and the 5090 (and, to a lesser extent, the 5100) have put this fine beast out to a well-deserved pasture. In truth, the Ektaprint line produced only barely passable solids, possessed an ADH constructed like a Polish tank, and had only a paltry array of "special features" for jobs which required extra handling. The method to switch trays was clunky, and few key operators to this date have been able to decipher the secret method to get the 235 to switch from letter to legal stapling. Also, the duplex tray was notoriously unreliable. The "Suicide Run" was a staple of 235 activity. On the other hand, the machine rarely required servicing. In fact, it would run until it ran out of ink, and sometimes not then (the only method to tell if ink was required was a small red switch inside the door, which turned on a tiny light behind the toner container. If you could see the light behind the container, then it was time to replace it.) Still, some thrifty shops still insist on using this machine even today. This is roughly equivalent to choosing an Apple IIe over a Macintosh Quadra solely on the basis of cost. Early last year Kodak introduced a "competitor" to the 5090 in the form of the 535. While still comparitively slow (90 cpm), the 535 does rival the 5090 in terms of sheer size. Kodak seems to have adopted a "bigger is better" philosophy here. With the full finisher installed, the machine is a mammoth 19 feet long, and weighs approximately 17 tons. The controls are still basic, and the copies produced retain the Kodak "grainy" feel, though the solids are a bit more dependable. While it's tempting to call the 535 an enormous failure from start to finish (in that it exceeds the 5090 in no areas at all), there remains a niche for Kodak and it's "pay-for-play" leasing policy. The 635 might be worth watching for, if they can learn their lessons well. (Though a quick scan through the history of Eastman belies this possibility from Ektaprint 90 through 535, they have simply taken a mediocre machine and made it bigger and louder, without actually improving it.) CANON I have never trusted Canon or their machines, color copiers excepted. They are the antithesis of Kodak. Where Eastman machines are solid and armor-plated, Canon's entries have always seemed fragile...high-impact plastic in a world which demands flexibility. Their latest entries are more of the same, and they don't even really try to compete with the 5090, despite their ads' claims. These cheap machines average around 75-90 impressions per minute, and their imaging technology is below even Kodak's par. They are unpopular with service bureaus and offices requiring high-volume work (except in Japan, where even this is changing rapidly; in fact, the 5090 may do there what Ford and GM could not in turning the trade balance around). They seem best suited to a medium office market requiring a few thousand impressions per day. Any idea of Canon challenging Xerox for the high-volume throne is laughable at this time. MINOLTA, KONICA, RICOH See Canon entry, above. XEROX There is no substitute. After a long, woeful string of popular failures (the 5010 was so hated by key operators it became common practice to attach pictures of lemons to their frames), Xerox wised up and unleashed the aforementioned Better Machine upon an unsuspecting public. Actually, the public had some clues to its arrival, namely an extremely heavy and expensive internal publicity blitz. Within three days of its release, all 5090s in existence were booked up for sale or leasing, with a nine-month waiting list). Simply put, here was a machine that did what it promised. But not without problems. The early release models were full of bugs. Software problems were so prevalent in the early days that Xerox retrofitted all 5090s with an extra internal RAM card to prevent this touchy maintenance issue from reoccurring. Even now, shops with 5090s can expect to see their area tech an average of once every 1.7 days. This is not to fault the machine. Most, of not all, of the service problems stem from the amazing productivity of the machine itself. In the store I work in, our two 5090s can expect to see an average of 600,000 impressions each, every month. This exceeds the average count on our Kodak machine by a 10:1 ratio. That works our to something near 7.2 million copies a year, quite impressive indeed. And since Xerox offers total technical support during business hours at no charge, the service issue is a small one when compared to the benefits of the machine. Not long after the introduction of the 5090 came the 5100, smaller, more compact machine not intended as a direct antecedent of the 5090. It can supply apprx. 90cpm, and it's main claim to fame lies in its ability to do internal 11x17 duplexing, through the ADH. It is not an entirely wonderful machine, however, and many shops have abandoned it in favor of the far superior 5090. Then there is the Docutech. This machine carries the 5090 chassis and engine, features four paper trays, and contains a full-powered 486 microprocessor in its brain stem. The most notable feature is its ability to scan in documents and store them to a 230Mb hard drive for later retrieval. The keyop merely punches in the filename and the machine calls up the document and begins printing from the specified tray(s), without the need for lens flash. This can be useful for large corporations which need to print 100,000 copies of the same document each week, or each day, but is almost entirely unnecessary for most shops. In fact, the basic Docutech does not come with an ADH. Collating a 97-page document would require individually hand placing and scanning each page, then setting the page order through the terminal. More evil by far are the goons Xerox has hired to promote this machine. They know little or nothing about the working of the 5090 gut, yet can expound mightily on the hard drive. There are several options currently available to refine the 5090. An 11x17 document handler, for instance, and a booklet maker are among these. With all options installed, the 5090 would stretch some 26 feet long. CONCLUSION You already have discerned it. When in doubt, go with the 5090. It's got a hefty price ($5000/month or so on a fixed 24- or 36-month lease), but it's productivity is unrivaled by anything on the planet. If Spock wanted a copier, he would pick the 5090. -30- COPY MANIA Madison ............................................................................ Quote Of The Week >From ror@netcom.com Tue Dec 7 22:46:18 1993 Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1993 14:16:27 -0800 (PST) From: RatSnatcher To: Tim Madison Subject: Gawd! You *know* you've been hacking too long when you have dreams like this: This is from alt.folklore.computers: ------------------- I've been playing around with fork bombs and similar stuff lately. Yesterday (day before yesterday, if you must know) when my alarm clock went off, I thought it was spawning new alarm clock processes and I had to kill it quickly so it wouldn't fill up the process table and prevent me from doing _anything_ about it. The only problem was, there was a monitor process that I didn't kill, and every time I killed off one of the ring_alarm(x) processes, it would wait 9 minutes then spawn another one. ............................................................................ 6. Fresh Vegetables For Rotting Flesh (I've decided to surprise myself and not even read this one. That Flesh guy...he's...he's CRAZY.) ............................................................................ Them's gud etins, jed! One thing that really pisses me off about ALL food critics, is that they write about places that don't need it. For example; I used to go to New Dawn Cafe, on 16 and Gurerro. Not any more Thanks to the Guardian, we can't even get in there now. The food is great, and is served in huge amounts (if you order a large plate of home fries, you get enough for three people). Now, I can only remember what the food is like. Meanwhile, a few blocks down Mission stood Miz Browns. The used to serve plate sized omlettes for three bucks. I say used to, because they went out of business due lack of customers (even with the bar in the back), and the resturaunt was sold to someone else who drove the place into a tree. My girlfreind and I went there thinking that it was still Miz Browns, looking forward to a huge fantastic breafast. BZZZZT. The food was shitty, the service sucked, and the drinks were horrid (how can anyone fuck up a Tequilla sunrise?) So with this in mind, here's my list of places that no food critic would dare step into, that the food is great... Jim's Cafe. Mission & 22nd Sincere Cafe 16th & Mission Without Reservations- Castro & 18th Chavas- 18th & South Van Ness (This place doesn't need the business. However it makes the list on a default. They only have one waitress that speaks english, and I've never known a food critic to go to a resteraunt where anything other than english and french was spoken). I won't say what the food is like. Hell, I may not eat the same things anyone else would eat (example: when in Without Reservations. I order the half pound cheesburger). You order the food, and check it out for yourself. All I'm doing is listing the places that I've found personally to be a. cheap b. serve good food c. needs the business. ............................................................................ ASCII FUNHOUSE! There were no new submissions, so I'm re-running GARVato. Ed made a FANTASTIC ansi movie of the GARVato-mobile crashing into a brick wall and exploding, but unfortunately that won't work on most terminals. Just imagine that little truck driving across the screen and BLOWING UP upon impact. ____ ____//_]|________ (o _ | -| _ o| `(_)-------(_)--' GARvato! ............................................................................ 7. SuperDork (This was written awhile back by some retarded fanboy on alt.superman. I have no good excuse why I was reading alt.superman. I think the idea of running this is, "Let's make fun of some retarded fanboy," but I could be wrong. This could be poignant to some people. Maybe someone is reading this right now and weeping bitter tears of sorrow mixed with anxious joy. I...don't...know.) ............................................................................ Well, I know that a lot of people think that Superman cannot exist without Clark Kent, he may have to, because although Superman can (obviously) come back to life, Clark cannot. I know that he is only MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD, but he has been missing for so long that people have GOT to piece it together if he comes back. Here it is in black-and-white for you: Superman and Clark Kent first surfaced in Metropolis at the same time. Superman and Clark Kent both "died" at the same time (in the same place). Superman and Clark Kent both REAPPEAR AT THE SAME TIME????? Wouldn't YOU, if you knew these facts, begin to AT LEAST ASSOCIATE the two men in your mind? Would you not then, begin to realize that they look alike? Would you not then, begin to wonder about the possibility that they could be one and the same? Those who say that Clark cannot die are forgetting that Clark IS Superman, and not just a part of his personality. For Superman to exist without Clark, he would have to work hard to establish a new identity, yes, or simply be Superman ALL the time (which, to me, doesn't wash, because then it would be impossible to have a personal life, as it would endanger all of his friends). But, establishing a new identity may not be so hard. It may be much like moving to a new city, where you feel quite alien for a long while, until you build a personal life, and things feel like HOME. The tricky part, of course, is the 'home-sickness', where Superman would constantly be thinking about how much better his former personal life had been, and be tempted to return to that. His relationship with Lois Lane is a tricky part, I do admit. Obviusly, she is very important to him, and interacting with her (other than in secret) as someone other than Clark would be impossible. People would be bound to recognize him as a double for Clark (unless he adopted an ENTIRELY new look, which also doesn't really work without altering the way Superman looks in an equally drastic manner). Anyway, it's all VERY interesting, AND I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE HOW IT TURNS OUT FOR REAL!!!!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ /| / ||\ ____________ _____ THE SODHED is / || \ | | | / /\ \ / Colin S. Reid / || \ | | | | | / / \ \/ Reidcoli@Max.cc.Uregina.ca /____|| \ | | | | |_/ /____\ /\ / || \ | | |--| | \/ \/ \ S.O.D!! S.O.D!! S.O.D!! / || \ | | | | | /\ \ \ \| | | \ Be dangerous and unpredictable, \ and make a lot of noise. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- +++ ............................................................................ 8. CATS...and DOGS....and RATS.... (Small thread from PSP about destroying animals just for no good reason at all. This in no way rivals Murdock's infamous "Sacrifice" thread from a couple years back ("see??? People are standing in LINE to KILL YOUR DOG!"), but it's still fairly amusing. BTW: Zach's family indeed does have such a device. I touched it once. It felt _clammy_.) ............................................................................ >From : Ratsnatcher #1 To : Wisteria #145 Subject: Ha! Date : 23 Sep 93 23:24 (C:\MIB\MSGS\MSG*.BBS #6373) You people think you have macho cats. I used to have a rabbit that after it escaped was brought back by the POLICE because some old guy found it "digging at his foundations." I also have 115 pound doberman pinscher who has bitten so many people that by LAW, I have to walk him with a muzzle. My cats beat the shit out of him and he is constantly terrified. I can kill them all with a remote control device that I keep on my person at all times. [Message Base Beta #4] [23/50] Reading Messages: 45 [45/50] >From : Tjames #3 To : Ratsnatcher #1 Subject: Ha! Date : 28 Sep 93 23:50 (C:\MIB\MSGS\MSG*.BBS #6637) > I can kill them all with a remote control device that I keep on my > person at all times. HahahahAHAHA! But I have the special remote control device that can kill YOU at any time! *Someone* had to have it so they gave it to the person most capable of recognizing the WARNING signs! Don't think I won't use it, either! (I almost had to that time at Specs when you spit the beer all over the flabby charwoman...my fingers actually *twitched* in my pocket over the button. But you were reprieved by an electrical FLUKE. Sometimes I take it out of its special lubricated sheath and just play my fingers lightly across the chrome surface...it's incredibly erotic! I think I want to feel this device, RIGHT NOW!) ............................................................................ 9. Murdock Is a Dirty Rotten Cheat (Doctor Murdock has the crazy idea that he can actually graduate college. He wants to do it by devising strange devices that will implant correct test answers into his head at the appropriate moment in class. In a way, I sense that he's going to eventually become just as BERSERK as Tesla 2. That's okay though...just another Crazy Uncle...to somebody. I also bet he's REAL UNHAPPY that I'm including this post he originally wrote to alt.cyberpunk.tech. Hey...that stuff is PUBLIC DOMAIN, pally!) ............................................................................ Hello, everyone! I'm working on a project that I have quite a bit of enthusiasm invested in and would VERY much like to accomplish, however, I have run into a few small problems, and I need some specialized advice. If anyone could help me out in my venture I would be forever grateful. I want to thank everyone in advance. Now, let me get down to the nitty gritty... Mission Objective: To be able to have information (notes, textbooks, possibly even graphs, etc.) available to me while I take tests in my college courses WITHOUT people even realizing that I am accessing sources of hidden data. Note: This application that I am working on in *NO* way is being developed because I wish to replace my rigorous studying habits, but rather, to give myself an extra "security buffer" when taking tests. There is nothing I hate more than studying hours and hours for a test only to have a problem in front of me and the answer just on the TIP of my memory, but not being able to completely remember the answer. Mission Project: Build a small PC that can fit into a hip pouch (I've done research and this can be accomplished without too much $$$ invested), and have a 5 key chord keyboard underneath my pants on my leg. However... Problem in Development: Although the computer can hold a mass amount of information, and I would eventually learn how to master the 5 key keyboard under my pants, I cannot figure out how to get the information TO ME without other people catching on to the fact that I am cheating. My Theories: I've thought about maybe having a text-to-speech software program output to a device that would broadcast to a little, wireless ear bud. And even though the ear buds would be small enough (I think) the cost in having to develop the card that would send the radio signal would be far too much than what I want to spend on this device. Another way I thought of, was maybe rig up a setup where the PC would output to one of those little LCD displays that you see on pocket spell checkers, or something. The only problem with this is that it is larger and you run the risk of other students noticing what you are doing. An extreme case would be to output to a small electronic signal that would send you morse code signals to any part of your body, but because of the slow transmission rate of data with this scenario, it's better to just spend your time studying your nuts off than bother with inputting your text onto the small hard drive of the PC. Conclusion: What bugs me is the fact that the technology is THERE/HERE and what I want to do CAN be accomplished with a little ingenuity and perseverance. *ANY* help/ideas that you guys/gals could offer would be immensely appreciated in helping me accomplish my task. And please, let me make myself clear here: Even though this application is obviously defined as "cheating", this is not the way I see it. I see it as merely taking my experience with technology and applying it to the incredibly competitive academic structure our system offers to us. Grade Point Averages = Long Term Money. I'm a Business major and I simply see this as a way of competing. For those of you who see this as simply cheating and see absolutely no part of my side to this, please blow me and save your flames. Thanks again! Ciao! -- _============================================================================_ | Chris Murdock ........available at --=> pigdog@netcom.com | | | |"Don't be a Watson. Be a Sherlock Holmes and figure the shit out yourself."| | -- Me | |____________________________________________________________________________| ............................................................................ 10. Clear the Way for the S, the S1Ws.... ............................................................................ Dear Tjames, Blow me, mudracker... Regards, Chris Murdock (_Clinic run out of Prozac again, Chris?_ -- ed.) ............................................................................ Dear Tjames, I have no cigarettes!!!! NONE!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!! Yours Forever, Paul (_I have 39 left_ -- ed.) ............................................................................ (The following letters were all so mean and nasty that I combined all of them into a mini-digest. I may compile this into a file that says hateful things randomly when I log out) Dear Tjames, (1) You said 3 or 4 times a week before. You lied. (2) Looks like Pignet was a total and complete failure. Oh well. Imminent death of Spock expected soon. PS: I was wathcing the Polly (uhura) Klaas thingy news conference. While the FBI guy was talking, his beeper went off ... it made exactly EXACTLY!!! the same sound as those old Bridge Sensors on the old startrek.. the dooh-duing dwing doo sound. Sort of like the communicators, but it came on usually when they were doing a sensor sweep or something. Anyway, he turned around right after he finished talking, and used his cellular phone. COULD IT BE......SPOCK? (3) I floss my teeth with your penis, you pole schmoker. Warmly, Joshua Lurie-Terrell ............................................................................ +++ Once again we reach the end of the ROPE. The bottom of the BUCKET. The DARK CRUSHING SENSATION that invades your chest and may either be a severe, possibly fatal stroke, or just HEARTBURN. WHO KNOWS?!?! ANNOUNCEMENT: Next week's edition will come out on WEDNESDAY. Or, actually THURSDAY morning. (I still consider this Tuesday, even though technically it's not. Isn't that fascinating?) This is because some guy at work just QUIT, and I have to cover his absence on Tuesday. "Kill him! PULL HIS ARMS OFF!" I would like to take a few moments to thank NO ONE for making this edition possible. Except Joshus, who is becoming a great attack dog. Also MUCH thanks to tomj, for helping Flesh and I out with our little "project." Also, Mr. T. Nemet says his list is better than mine because he greets new members with personalized messages in Hungarian. Blow me. PIGDOG OFFICIAL fnord WELCOMING MESSAGE to all seven NEW MEMBERS: WELCOME! ............................................................................ Send all correspondence to: tjames@netcom.com Subject line of: "Pigdog-l" (without the quotes) AUTOMATICALLY goes into this digest. You have been warned. R o R A l u c a r d ............................................................................ "Freedom is a Road Seldom Traveled by the Multitudes...." -- Chuck D. "...or Really Dumb Guys." -- Me -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif. The Little Garden -- admin@admin.tlg.rg.net -- S.F. Bay Area Internetwork ^A^A^A^AFrom tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Fri Dec 10 16:10:49 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 10 Dec 93 19:21:20 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA28707; 10 Dec 93 16:10:49 EST (Fri) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <54821(5)>; Fri, 10 Dec 1993 16:03:46 -0500 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA00602; Fri, 10 Dec 93 13:03:31 -0800 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9312102103.AA00602@wps.com> Subject: wanna be on my SHIT-LIST To: sylvia@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 16:03:31 -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: 577 Hey, heh heh, wanna be on my shitlist? You'll get... shit... in the mail. It's mot hyper sophisticated. Mostly fun stuff, some "serious" if it's [ Part 5: "Attached Text" ] >From tdkcs!uunet.ca!fido.wps.com!tomj Wed Sep 8 16:10:33 1993 remote from exlibris Received: by exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 08 Sep 93 23:38:39 EST for max Received: by tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (smail2.5) id AA15684; 8 Sep 93 16:10:33 EDT (Wed) Received: from fido.wps.com ([140.174.77.1]) by mail.uunet.ca with SMTP id <101849(1)>; Wed, 8 Sep 1993 15:53:12 -0400 Received: by fido.wps.com (5.67/wps.com-hackery) id AA03341; Wed, 8 Sep 93 12:52:45 -0700 From: tomj@wps.com (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <9309081952.AA03341@wps.com> Subject: Re: cgange To: max@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Sylvia Maxwell) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 08:52:45 -0400 Cc: tomj@fido.wps.com (Tom Jennings) In-Reply-To: <54m69B1w165w@exlibris.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca> from "Sylvia Maxwell" at Aug 31, 93 06:17:39 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4036 > What is the rainbow crowd? The Rainbow Family is a giant (10,000+) nomadic cultural thing in North America. They look more or less like "hippies". You don't see to much of them usually. They are genuinely nomadic, and hold various Gatherings, usually a big annual one. Each year in a different US state. About 10,000 people show up, sometimes less. They take advantage of US Federal homesteading laws, much to the chagrin of authorities. Gatherings are free, and everyone pitches in -- or not. They don't worry about it. There are communal meals (pretty minimal though, poverty is an assumption so far in the background it's startling) made up of donated/liberated/dumpster-dived food. They aer not necesseraily vegetarians. They have no or barter or minimal economy. I have an ex-roommate who is a Rainbow person now. They are definitely way far outside the usual channels. They're quite serious. They tend to be vehicle-people, white, babies'n'dogs. They disdain alcohol, smoke lots of pot. Usually quite trsutworthy. They are dirty. Their methodology for gatherings is unique. They have a "welcome committee" up where vehicles come in, who tell you where things are, where to park, etc. They also scope people out; if they have alcohol -- generally the only thing forbidden besides firearms -- instead of a lecture or whatever, they say "got any alcohol? Let's drink it! Here's some of my pot!" and try to get the owner to consume it on the spot. Usually works. Two years back, in Nevada, the Great Circle gave Welcome Committee duty to the Faerie camp (the gay/lez bunch within the Family) because they did an excellent job of (1) defusing a bunch of asshole bigots with fun instead of anger and (2) "took over" a small stage devolving into bland ordinary faux hippy folksy music and turned it into a big open party. It was a great honor, apparently. Too much hippy for me, though the gatherings are definitly worth checking out. They are always the first week in July. A Council of oldtimers (which apparently anyone can attend and provide input, listened to or not I know not) picks the next years site, many months in advance. A few months before, a seed group goes to the site, and chooses a location distractingly near the real site. This draws fire from the locals and authorities, if any trouble arises, and keeps eyes of the actual site. They usually rent an apt or something an have a stable mail address. Word is spread mouth to mouth and hand to hand. No advertising of any sort is generally done, and as far as I can tell, is frowned upon. They deal with legal issues (more and more every year I guess) and all that. About a month before the actual event, another seed group populates the site and starts to prepare it. In Nevada, it took place partly on private land; the worked out a deal with the owner that they would leave it utterly spotless and would install a water system based upon a water-hammer ("free" water pump power). I can attest to the cleanliness thing. In nevada, I was there and left early, so there were only a few thousand people. It was *spotless*. On a mian trail, someone had dropped about a half-dozen cellophane candy wrappers. It was a Big Deal. It was an issue at the Great Circle, and instead of castigation and finger pointing (they the do all this stuff internally of course, at big gatherings they tend to be fairly cool cuz there's fresh faces and fresh energy) they went on about how important it was they left the place clean. Seems to work. It's a retty cool thing, iff you like hippies, eating oatmeal as your main source of nutrition, walking 6 hours into the woods, carrying water, being asked to eat food just cooked as you walk down a trail, LSD, get really dirty, dig shitters, keep damnfools from shitting in the stream, etc etc. There are some christian hippies. There are more queer ones. I hate tie-dye, and mistrust peace and loveism. I own guns and like computers. Oh well. -- Tom Jennings -- tomj@wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif.