*WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* This document may violate your local community standards on obscenity. [Information is sexy, not sexual] Consult your local religious or moral authorities for further instruction. babybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybaby babybaby yba aby byba abyb byba babybaby babybaby bybabyba babybaby byb yba babybaby byb yba ba ba babybaby babybaby yba babybaby yba aby yba ba ba babybaby babybabybabyb yba babybaby byb yba babybaby byb yba ba ba babybaby babybaby yba aby byb yba aby byb yba ba ba babybaby babybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybaby "You are Number Six" February 13, 1993 __________________________________________________________________________ | | | Cyberlicious | Editor : Blade X | The Bamboo Gardens | | PO Box 4510 | bladex@wixer.cactus.org | (512) 385-2941 | | Austin, TX 78765 | Neo-Wobblie Node # 269 | WWIV : 46@5285 | |__________________________________________________________________________| | | INDEX | OUTDEX | Legal Disclaimer | Back Issues | Apartmentopia -- a New Edge Subscriptions | apartment complex \ Ediborial Cyberpunk E-zines \ Q&A : Advice column by Interview David Blair, Wax \ Blade X Lax, the News Agrippa: Book of the Dead \ cyberpunk's cyberpunk. \ Reviews Under Siege __\__________________________ Sin / | Sound Photosynthesis / Either catch a wave or get | Snow Crash / | Lethal Enforcer / a grip, cuz it's only gonna | Gray Areas / | / get buzzier. | Next Issue : SXSW /___________________________________| SOFTWARE LICENSING AGREEMENT "Some people just don't get it" DISCLAIMER Scream Baby Global Headquarters are located in Austin, Texas, USA, and this location shall be considered the site of jurisdiction for any criminal or civil course of action(s) taken by or against the publisher, Cyberlicious . Any statement or statements -- either contained in Scream Baby and/or made by the publisher -- that could possibly be interpreted as libelous, defamatory, or slanderous, is actually *NOT* libel, defamation, or slander, but rather fair commentary and free speech, protected by the First Amendment. By continuing to read any more of this document, you, the home viewer, grant implicit agreement to abide and comply with these regulations. And another thing, any other regulations I may decide to implement in the future. If you do not wish to abide by these restrictions, simply use your system's method-of-choice for discarding documents and go do or read something else instead. People tell me _Wired_ is pretty cool. Contents are copyrighted, 1993, by the most powerful and litiginous nation on the planet. America, you wise guy. __________________________________________________________________ / \ / Statement of Purpose : Gray Areas exists to examine the gray areas \ | of life. We hope to unite poeple involved in all sorts of \ | alternative lifestyles and deviant subcultures. We are everywhere! \ |_________________________________ \ \ -- Fall 1992 Gray Areas, page 5 | \ [see review later in this issue] | \____________________________________| BABY GOT BACK ISSUES There are so many easy and fun ways to get back issues of Scream Baby, there is really no excuse for anyone not to have your very own copy. FTP SITES ftp.eff.org /pub/journals Also, The WEll is setting up an anonymous ftp site ANY DAY NOW, and all of the digital Cyberlicious ! products will eventually be found there, even the stupid ones. PRIVATE BBS SYSTEMS Tejas BBS (512) 467-0663 14.4K modem, fast pick-up site Bamboo Gardens North (512) 385-2941 2400 baud, 800+ textfiles a.k.a. The Home for Wayward Information Junkies STOP BY MY HOUSE when I'm home and copy it DIRECTLY FROM MY COMPUTER SYSTEM. Bring your own 5.25" disks, please. Bring me some food while you are at it. ________________________________________________________________ | | | True Life Story: I buy Tom Maddox's novel, Halo, at Wal-mart | | for 2.36 plus tax. I'm reading on the bus and look up. The | | guy on my left is reading William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch. | | Guy on my right is scanning up and down the pages of a world | | atlas/almanac with lots of interesting facts on the average | | rainfall of Eastern European countries. I'm in the middle, | | reading Halo. | |________________________________________________________________| SUBSCRIPTIONS If you look at back issues of Scream Baby, you will find that there are several methods in order to get a subscription of Scream Baby. Choose the one you like best. Or simply send me e-mail. __________________________________ / \ / Too Much Coffee Man Says: \ / "It's a Fine Line Between \ / Sayings That Make Sense." \ / \ / -- Too Much Coffeeman #2, back cover \ /______________________________________________\ EDIBORIAL : CYBERPUNK E-ZINES I have stumbled across several references lately to the "numerous" cyberpunk electronic publications available on the Net. Huh? My scorecard reads 2 e-zines, 2 FAQs, and 3 mailing lists that provide information on the New Edge intersection of art, science, and pop culture. So someone must be using a different definition of cyberpunk. I say that cyberpunk is a conversation, not a thing. You can't go to the store and buy a six pack of Shiner Bock, some Cheetos, and then say, oh yeah, let me have 2 ounces of cyberpunk. It is not an object, not a commodity. Time magazine is a commodity. An article in Time magazine is an object. But neither is cyberpunk. I'm not a cyberpunk. You're not a cyberpunk. We *can't* be, since identity is a thing as well, and I've already said cyberpunk is not a thing. Cyberpunk is a relationship between the individual and society, the individual and technology. There are several axioms (of which Gareth Brandywn's The Cyberpunk Manifesto is the best) but cyberpunk is not clearly delimited. Nor should it. So the cyberpunk meme has been appropriated and is now represented in movies, literature, music, fashion, television, you name a vehicle for culture and I can name a cyberpunk representation. So the thought of a housewife in New Jersey flipping through a copy of Time while waiting for her hairdresser to be ready and stumbling across the cyberpunk article doesn't upset me like nearly everyone else on alt.cyberpunk and Mainstream people aren't stupid idiots, but potential converts. Is there a cyberpunk movement? Yes, but it's a bowel movement. But back to the topic of the numerous "cyberpunk" e-zines that are allegedly available in the Matrix. After looking around, I conclude that they must be referring to the PHAC cloud of cyberpunk. They must mean Phrack, Narc, Cracked!, and the various computer underground publications that discuss carding, phreaking, computer access, as being "cyberpunk". Well....sorta, but not really. Take out a sheet of paper and draw a large billowous cloud. Oops, let's wait for people who need to find paper and something to write with. Ok, now that you've drawn that cloud, label it cyberpunk. Now draw smaller clouds around the cyberpunk cloud. Label these clouds things like magazines, books, art, film, music, CU, home electronics, DIY, etc. etc. etc. Notice that the Computer Underground is only one cloud among dozens and to call it "cyberpunk" is to disenfranchise and discount all the other clouds. CU is definitely *part* of the cyberpunk conversation, but it is not the whole cloud. While the mediastinum thoracic cavity is part of the human body, no one would ever claim that the mediastinum thoracic cavity *was* the human body. So don't do it! [Note: an excercise left for the home viewer is to create crystalized rain drops falling from these clouds, and label them such things as bOING-bOING, Blade Runner, Beyond Cyberpunk stack, etc. This will help further clarify the distinction] I don't attempt to create a complete map, since that is the purpose of the FutureCulture FAQ. Consider me a tour guide. ________________ [Also note my bias towards the cultural manifestations \ of c-punk, rather than the technological] Fringeware \ Leri-L \ FutureCulture \ AGRIPPA -- BOOK OF THE DEAD \ NOT RELEASED TO THE NET Scream Baby \ Cult of the Dead Cow \ "The book is an art object with weight, smell, \ texture, and the charm and weakness of paper, alt.cyberpunk.faq \ ink, cloth, and composite plastics" FutureCulture FAQ \ \ -- press release as Info Junkies Anonymous \ reported in Project X ____________________________\ Issue 23. Agrippa is a large over-sized book, too large and bulky to read on the bus. Yellow, aged pages with ink whose chemical composition changes when exposed to sunlight so that some writing&images disappear and new ones appear. Words&images Agrippa has a secret space within it's pages that holds a computer disk. A computer disk holding a program which replicates a William Gibson poem....once.....before erasing and eradicating itself. A poem which speaks of loss, the process of reintegration, and completion. _______________________PAIR-O-DOCS_________________________ | | | | To isolate a small section | Nothing happens in | | and claim representation | cyberspace because there | | of the whole is why the | are no things here. | | world is in the trouble | | | that it is today. | Only representations.| |____________________________|______________________________| Agrippa, Book of the Dead, not released to the Net, December 9, 1992. SUPPOSED I ASKED DAVID BLAIR, CREATOR OF _WAX_, TO CONSENT TO AN E-MAIL INTERVIEW WHERE WE WOULD SWAP QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS BACK AND FORTH, BUT THEN I GOT LAZY, AND NEVER RESPONDED PAST HIS ANSWER TO MY QUESTION, YOU'D STILL CALL IT AN INTERVIEW, RIGHT? SB : Scream Baby DB : David Blair SB: Accounts that I have read about Wax act as if you suddenly popped out of no where to create this masterpiece. As if once there was a void, and then there was Wax. Tell me a little about what you did before Wax. What is your intellectual and educational background? DB: Well, I'm a 1956, and didn't get started on WAX until '85, so I have posted to generation x under false pretenses, though of the driver's license kind. My education is a comp lit sort of thing, but I guess what I took most seriously at the time was a failed attempt at guided reading, meant to help illuminate the huge dark valleys in Gravity's Rainbow. After that I left for NY, and, like most video people I know who started at that time, worked as an autodidact for a long time... there being very few ways to find out about video back then (not so long ago... 1979 into the mid- 80's). I did about 6 shorts (Charlemagne Ptomaine, etc), before WAX,a beginner attempting videoart (couldn't get anything into festivals), then started the long tape, which actually began when I tried to cut a 15 minute tape down to 3 minutes. In between there were 2 trailers (for WAX). ________________________________________________________________ | | | "The planet completely vanished, leaving it's weather behind" | | -- Wax | |________________________________________________________________| REVIEW-A-RAMA UNDER SIEGE Take My Pies Out of The Oven My roommate Mehrdad is a connosseiur of B-action-adventure-films. I mean, he's seem them *ALL*. An information diet consisting of Chuck Norris, Claude Van Damme, and Steven Siegal. [So when he asked if I wanted to go see the latest Steven Siegal vehicle (now on videotape), I said no, not really. In his best film ever, Steven Siegal is a former Navy SEAL who gets promoted to *cook* after slugging his superior officer because of "inferior intelligence at the airport" during the raid on Panama. There is a small suggestion that he was intentionally given bad information by CIA operatives in order to have him killed. [Lucky for the viewer, Steven gets to keep all his cool spy stuff!] In Under Siege, we get to witness the extreme personal violence of Steven Siegal in hand-to-hand combat. Armed with the K-factor of SEAL training, he guns down villains, crashes I-beams through chests, rips out Adam's apples, gouges out eyeballs, stabs knives into armpits, throats, chests, and delivers killing blows with a single chop. [He is the good guy.] Opposing Siegal is Tommy Lee Jones, who has commandeered the USS Missouri and is attempting to steal Tomahawk missiles, (including 8 "specials", military jargon for nuclear-tipped warheads). In stark contrast, the violence represented by Tommy Lee Jones is very abstract : the threat of a detonation of a nuclear-tipped missile over Honolulu, Hawaii; the enemy "command center" a collection of screens, computer images, and virtual realities. The Bad Guys launch a missile in one scene, and tracks it's progress as a little blip on the computer screen. It hits; Tommie Lee Jones goes "boom!" Next shot immediately goes to the Naval Admiral Command Center, who start discussing why they would blow up a satellite relay station. We never see any physical evidence of the damage. Towards the end of the film, the viewer is transported into the I-camera! This is a genre of slasher films where you follow the action from the perspective of the killer. In this case, watching from the fins of the nuclear missile as if it were *you* hurtling towards the coastline of Hawaii. [These are the Bad Guys] I mean, it's perfectly *okay* for the military and Pentagon to have control and access over nuclear missile technology. But who knows what would happen if political undesirables gained access. We must defend against this evil threat! [Here's a little Cyberlicious hint: build less bombs. Shh...] Let's hop back to the beginning of the film, where the bad guys gain entry to the ship by masquerading as caterers and entertainers for a surprise birthday party for the captain. Tommy Lee Jones is the band leader and dresses exactly like John Shirley. Black leather jacket, tye died t-shirt, dark sunglasses. [Sound familiar?] [Sound cyberpunk?] SIN magazine The Cyberart Gallery The next time you're in your favorite alternative magazine/book store, look in the music section for a zine called "SIN Magazine". It has a stylish and ghoulish graffitti b-boy on the cover with a gun aimed at his temple. Pick it up and look at the last two pages, which is called The Cyberart Gallery and contains 8 pictures of groovy computer-generated art. From what I remembered, Sin magazine covers underground punk/rap/hip hop sub culture scene, with an emphasis on visual information. Sound Photosynthesis Catalog [free upon request] P.O. Box 2111 Mill Valley CA 94942-2111 415-383-6712 Sound Photosynthesis sells audio and visual cassettes of speeches, lectures, conferences, story tellings, etc. From what I can decipher, 1500+ titles cover major themes of consciousness, Buddhism, psychedelics, philosophy, UFOs, and related explorations of reality. Big-names-that-I-recognize include Robert Anson Wilson, Timothy Leary, Stephen Gaskin, William S. Burroughs, Terence McKenna, the Dalai Lama, Richard Feynman, Colin Andrews, Helen Caldicott, Fritjof Capra, Noam Chomsky, Ram Dass, Rudy Rucker and do I need to go on? There is a *lot* of candy in this store that demands your personal investigation. While there is some variation, prices are $9 per audio tape and $35 for video. On the back of one of the single-page inserts sent is a promise that the complete New Edge 1993 : "Mind at Large" catalog is coming soon. Until then, be satisfied with the 8 pages of hand-outs with densely printed text. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson ISBN 0-553-35192-3 (Tradeback, $10) All I gotta say is Juicy! Unless you were already aware of pooning, the Infocalpyse, Burbclaves, bimbo boxes, Kouriers, Rat Things, CostraNostra Pizza franchise, that Americans excel at only two things : writing software and delivering pizza in less than 30 minutes, freeways designed around your personality type (i.e. one for those who have to get there *NOW* and one for those who like to enjoy the scenery), hopped up skateboards with smart wheels and explosive charges, dendatas, the Black Sun, biological-software viruses that are especially deadly for hackers, the Metaverse, Liquid Knuckles, the Tower of Babel, Sumerian mythology, gargoyles, Central Intelligence Corporation, Clint & Barbie's off-the-shelf avatar sets, General Jim's Defense System, Short Range Chemical Restraint Projectors (loogie guns), and the Deliverator Fast, funny, and furious. Oh look, I'm a fucking blurb writer now! I say we genericize the word snow crash to describe anyone who goes through Info-Shock Overload. So the next time Andy Hawks posts to the Future Culture mailing list some derivative of "fuck it, I can't take it anymore, I gotta take a break, gotta get away from it all" we can just say...oh dude...Andy's snow crashed again. Lethal Enforcer (arcade video game -- $.50 to start and .25 to continue play) You are a police officer in this simulation shooting gallery. More-than-less real-time video imagery shows different shoot-em-up crisis scenes involving bad guys : at a bank, city streets, train station, airport, etc. Bam! Bam! The criminals toss out insulting phrases like, "You'll never take me alive, copper". You get called Pig a lot too. Bam! Bam! Each bad guy who gets hit makes this really loud groaning noise. Bam! Bam! You lose a life for each innocent by-stander and police officer that you shoot. [I still nail the Japanese tourist on the train who pops up with the camera, *every* time.] uh oh, Super Big Bad Guy at the end of each scenario : Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Now, suppose that you're the manufacturer of a video game that displays realistic images where you (essentially) shoots everything that moves. Rather than appreciating the aesthetics of Neo-Violence and the technical prowess and advances made by your designers, many groups will actually be *concerned* or even *upset*. People might complain that it not only desensitizes children to the horrors of violence, but actually *encourages* kids to commit violence in real life. How do you deflect this criticism? You paint the guns BRIGHT PINK and BABY BLUE and make them look like TOY GUNS. This cracks me up. Gray Areas P.O. Box 808 Broomall, PA 19008-0808 ($4.50 cover price per issue) grayarea@well.sf.ca.us Gray Areas has potential to become a *tremendous* magazine, but it's pretty cool as it is right now. Standing in a foundation of Deadhead/tapehead culture, Gray Areas pokes around at the common links and problems between home taping, software piracy, censorship, and pornography. News, essays, comics, interviews, and lots and lots of reviews of books, films, catalogs, zines, live video, audio tapes, and software. This premiere issue features a long interview with John Perry Barlow about copyright, Grateful Dead, computer piracy, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. An interview with Kay Parker, a former porn queen turned spiritual counselor. An interview with Zen Tricksters, a (sorta) Grateful Dead cover band. A list of all known legitmate and illegitimate Grateful Dead video recordings. Not many people know about my irrational and spiteful hatred of deadheads. I can't stand them, especially those too young to have been alive during the 60s who have been duped into mining the 60s as a source of escaping from the 90s. Grrrrrrrrrr So for me to say that a zine saturated with so much deadheadednossity is worth investigating......I hear my friends saying whoooaaaaa already. Final factor: Gray Areas is woefully lacking in the computer scene k-factor. An opportunity exists here for one of you to jump in print and become their computer columnist/reviewer. Or feed them information, at least. SXSW THEME ISSUE Next issue : SXSW special theme issue. Every year Austin hosts the South By Southwest Music Showcase. One pays $30 for a wristband that allows entrance into book-ooze of clubs to watch book-ooze of bands playing hour long sets. Each year is greeted with the same bitchy whiny chorus of the tickets costing too much, there aren't enough cool bands, that it lasts too long, runs too late, that Disney is behind this evil scheme to corrupt the purity of the music festival (???), that the music industry slimebuckets get special treatment over the fans, etc. etc. Start your own damn music festival, then, cuz I'm going and bringing the news direct! tape-delayed! to the Scream Baby masses. Last year I pumped out 20K of text on my own about Helmet, L-7, music, fashion, culture, approval, institutional racism, and, as they say, a whole lot more. Another contributor wrote over 20K on his experience of SXSW as a record executive. Pretty fucking cool. Read all about it in the next issue of Scream Baby, end of March. Scream Baby is the victim of a virus! It has attached itself to the end of this issue and just won't let go. I can't shake it. None of the anti-viral forces have been able to help me. Even "taking responsibility" and "getting back in touch with my inner child" has failed. So here it is. Why, this material is so shameful, so degrading, so not worth your time, that perhaps you should just stop reading now. OUTDEX APARTMENTOPIA The purpose of this project is the creation of a New Edge apartment complex, wired with the highest technological devices and designed so that one never has to leave home.....ever. Living Quarters : Each room comes fully stocked with a fully integrated stereo/CD player/hypodermic needle injection unit/tape deck/HDTV/vcr/your- choice-of-computer (Mac/IBM/Amiga)/dildo/telephone (with or without picturephone option)/refrigerator stocked with colas/electric razor/laser printer/lava lamp. A futon is provided, but residents will need to provide their own linens and pillows. Obsolete windows have been replaced with programmable wall panels. Stills from the movie _Blade Runner_ are a popular choice. Attractive Mexican/Hispanic maids will not only clean your room but also pretend to be your girlfriend in order to impress any geeky friends or family members who might visit. [Note: non-heterosexual and/or fetish maids available upon request] Meal Program : The kitchen is amply stocked with Cheetos, soft drinks, coffee (and any of it's derivative caffeine delivery systems), and Twinkies. A patented meal replacement system permits residents one (but only one) time released capsule a day to recieve all of their nutritional needs. Spacious, well-lit, and most important of all, you don't have to clean up after yourself. Energy Supply : The roof contains an enormous parabolic dish that captures sun and turns it into electrical power. During the night time, each solar cell rotates and the whole dish turns, voila, like the Transformers, into a huge radio satellite aimed at the stars, searching for signs of intelligent life. Cryonic Life Extension Program : at *NO* additional costs to residents, each one will be frozen in a cryonic chamber after death, and periodically revived, in case I have to ask you where you placed a certain tool or if you've seen my car keys. Barn / Dance Hall : behind the complex is an agri-chemo-cultural research complex, where the latest cutting edge research in genetics engineering, hydroponics, and chemical/drug production is performed. Afterwards, the facility is turned into a dance club with different partitions available for raves, orchestras, and speed metal and/or slam dancing. ADVICE COLUMN by Blade X Lax "The Cyberpunk's Cyberpunk" Why hello all my little cyber-buddies. Here I am again to answer all your questions, tell you what to think, set your warped little minds back on track, and act like a smarmy overbearing, know-it-all-asshole. You know you like it. Dear Mr. Lax : Karma Sutra Sez that in order to look important, one should carry a clipboard with you. In Snow Crash, however, Hiro Protaganist points out that you can always spot the franchise managers since they are the ones who carry the three inch binder notebook. How do I handle this conflicting information? Should I carry a binder *and* a clipboard? What do you suggest? The decision over clipboard v. binder depends on the type of expected social interaction. Clipboards are superior in face-to-face confrontations; binders are best for rushing hurriedly past low level clerks or guards while hastily flipping through pages looking for the appropriate reference. As to designing a clipboard-binder I started once to reverse engineer a combination notebook-clipboard-cellular phone-Unix PDA interface, but only managed to get the Krazy Glue all over my hands and ripping off a lot of skin in the process. And hey, if I couldn't get it to work, no sense in anyone else trying. If you are trying to project the proper authoritarian image in a public situation, then nothing screams "management material" more than a .38 snub nosed blue steeled revolver. Experiment for yourself. Local malls are *excellent* laboratories. Mr. Lax : I want to start my own electronic publication, but don't really know what I want to do, or really have any incentive to actually spend the time to work on it. Any suggestions? First off, son, great! I luv ya attitude. We need more people like you on the Nets, but I sense a bit of confusion that maybe I can help clear up. Don't forget that you don't actually want to *create* an e-zine, but that you *want* to create an e-zine. This is a key distinction. You don't actually have to do anything, just talk about stuff you'd like to do someday. I think that when you learn this, you will find those nagging concerns about incentive, work ethic, and compulsion to complete something will go away. Also, don't forget that you need to *SLAG* *UNMERCILESSLY* those m0es who actually make the mistake of actually creating something. No matter what it is *YOU* can do better, if ya wanted. Remember that it's beneath you to actually accomplish anything. Now that's cyberpunk!