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265 lines
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_____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________
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| ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ |
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... The HoHoCon 1993 Experience
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by Count Zero
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>>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<<
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-cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
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____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____
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|____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|
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This was HoHoCon 1993... Austin, Texas.
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All experiences are relative.
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With a sigh of fatigued steel touching down on the tarmac, I was jarred
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into semi-consciousness. A tourist from Japan seated next to me immediately
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passed gas and smiled bemusedly, mumbling something incomprehensible. I
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decided against the quick escape of the Emergency Exit and blinked away tears
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of joy and olfactory irritation... my destination beckoned me. Snatching my
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baggage and fleeing the pursuing odor, I arrived in Austin in the best of
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spirits.
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They grow 'em big in Texas... as I saw the 20 feet tall inflatable Oki 900
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cellular phone anchored on the lawn of the GTE Mobile office, I knew this to be
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true. "Life is made up of moments, and this is one of them," I said to the
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driver of the airport shuttle van. He agreed, and we sat silently in awe.
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Hotels are mini-ecosystems, quietly humming with the caretakers of
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travelling human spirits. The Hilton reminded me of an elegant pueblo, draped
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with pottery and sandstone artifacts. "Smoking or non-smoking?" asked the
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receptionist at the front desk.
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"Smoking," I replied. "Definitely." In my room, I sparked a Camel
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cigarette into life between my teeth.
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The Deth Vegetable met us in the hotel restaurant, bearing gifts. A
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silver cow's skull was pressed into my hand. Pinning it onto my lapel, I felt
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accepted without question. The Spirit of the Dead Cow burned in the metal with
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a bright, hard light. Upon realizing that the waitress had only charged me for
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a fraction of the many screwdrivers I had consumed, I felt a moment of
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confusion. "It's the Cow," Swamp Ratte' muttered as he stared beneath his
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low-brimmed cDc cap. With alcohol-numbed fingertips I fingered the metal talisman on my jacket.
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"Yeah...." Somewhere, a dishwasher dropped a tray of wine glasses.
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More HoHoCon guests arrived, milling around the lobby like cattle on the
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open plains. Nearby on a table was a pottery bowl full of stalks of wild grain
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and strange softball-sized spheres of paper-mache. Without a word, one of the
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hackers plucked a sphere from the setting and placed it into his backpack.
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"Perhaps he has a genuine need for it," I thought, "but *what*?" After an hour
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of pondering this, I decided I needed a drink.
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Somewhere beneath the mound of salsa, cheese, sour cream, and bean dip
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lurked my nachos. I knew they must be in there somewhere, obscured by the
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landslide of Mexican toppings. Louis Cypher and I alternated between chain
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smoking and tugging frantically at the chips. While struggling with a
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particularly testy slab of melted cheddar, we discussed our plans for the first
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night. "6th Street" I offered. "Plenty of clubs and music to sooth our
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souls." Giving up on my nacho excavation, I focused my frustration on my
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drink. It wielded without a whimper.
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Swamp Ratte' steered his truck to the side of the road. "Damn it, we lost
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Hoss's truck" cursed Deth Veggie in the front passenger's seat. "Now we'll
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never find 6th Street." Without our escort, we were hopelessly lost in a stray
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suburb of Austin.
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"Check my map," Swamp Ratte' said. We did. It worked flawlessly. Within
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minutes, we found 6th Street.
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"Cool..." said Deth Veggie, "but I can't seem to fold this map back up."
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"You never can. Some things are like that," intoned Swamp Ratte'.
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Exploring 6th Street, we found ourselves walking among a large field of
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automobile dealerships and antique shops. "This looks wrong," I remarked.
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"Let's call base for guidance." Pulling my handheld cell phone from my
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sportsjacket, I contacted the Hilton front desk and asked for directions to the
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"hot spots" of 6th Street. Within minutes, we were back in the car and in the
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thick of things.
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"You're a gadget freak," Kingpin told me.
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"Be quiet, and give me back my laser pointer," I countered. It returned
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to my sportscoat pocket, nestled comfortably with other smooth, black-matte-
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finished electronic devices of questionable purpose. I'm Batman.
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Emo's was a young crowd of funk and grunge. A Lethal Enforcers game
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eagerly swallowed my handful of quarters as easily as I swallowed my lukewarm
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Rolling Rock. Alcohol and violence mix well. Like vodka and orange juice.
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Wandering, I randomly slapped HoHoCon '93 stickers on every available surface I
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could find. "Like the numerous young of the great sea turtle, only a few of
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these shall survive to maturity," I thought. Natural selection is everywhere.
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Darwin rules.
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"Good place to park," I thought as Swamp Ratte' pulled his truck into a
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space under a tree. Stepping out of the black Chevy Blazer, we noticed a
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brooding flock of hundreds of birds chattering immediately above us in the
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branches. Their spotty droppings covered the heavy steel fence in front of us,
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making the scene in a bizarre pointalistic flair. "Uh, maybe this is a
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disaster waiting to happen," someone suggested. Swamp Ratte' moved the truck
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to an un-defecated zone. We praised him for his foresight.
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"Any club that is named after the universal symbol of resistance has got
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to be cool," I told Kingpin.
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"I just want to meet girlies, yo," he replied. We entered Ohm's and
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grooved to retro-techno 'til our eyes itched with white noise.
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"This town is great... I could live here," said Deth Veggie.
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"At this moment, we do," I grinned, sucking down a gritty Kamakazi.
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Videos on the wall flashed silently, superimposed over dancing silhouettes.
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"You dance very '80s," Veggie told me.
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"Art fags must die," I grunted.
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In the depths of an overstuffed couch, Swamp Ratte' stared at a sparkling
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disco ball. White Knight appeared, enhanced by various narcotics. "I can't
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stop dancing into that damn pole," he commented. As quickly as he had
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appeared, he vanished into the belchings of a fog machine. A payphone suddenly
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rang, but no one answered. Life doesn't accept incoming calls.
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Saturday, the conference proper began. Tedious hours passed in a crowded
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conference room. "You are all part of the cyberspace landscape," said Bruce
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Sterling.
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"Then I am a shrub," I countered. Sterling preached against the ills and
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evils of viruses. "Sounds like the bitter rants of a man who recently lost his
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FAT table to Stoned," I spoke up. Other speakers came and went. Bryan
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O'Blivion (the lawyer) spoke eloquently of the hacker spirit. Captain Crunch
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spoke of the benefits of PGP and raves. Try as I could, I could not imagine
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Crunch raving or trading disks with PGP keys in so-called "chill rooms." "I
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got an idea... how about using blotter as disk labels? Lick my disk and get my
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PGP key as well?" I asked Kingpin. He simply grinned, licking his gold tooth
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suggestively.
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Eventually, Kingpin and I collected ourselves. I donned my shades and
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carefully arranged the Cow Talisman in the center of my suit. We moved to the
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speaker table and practiced our gang hand signals to Drunkfux. I spoke about
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the L0pht and packet radio. Other speakers distributed handouts like confetti.
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The crowds boiled around the table grasping frantically, reminding me of
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mornings on my grandfather's boat... as we chummed for sharks in the dark
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waters.
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"Information not only wants to be free, it wants to be consumed," I
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pondered. LoD members in spiffy matching shirts described their laudable
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project to archive the t-files and message threads of years long past. Items
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of semi-worth were raffled off, and most people went away happy. Small
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acoustic couplers in vinyl pouches still smelling of free monomers finally
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found homes after years of neglect. Throughout it all, Torquinada filmed the
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event for her video project... like an unblinking eye it captured all without
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bias. Video is cool. "The cathode ray tube is the retina of the mind's eye."
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I wish I had said that.
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Kingpin and I presented a packet radio demo after the formal speaking
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broke up. A third person brought his own packet station, and soon we were
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burning up the out-of-band airwaves on 2-meters with 3-way network traffic.
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The demo was stopped when we were informed the police were coming to
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investigate the theft of a telephone handset on a nearby table. Packet
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equipment was quickly squirreled away, and we fled. Law enforcement officials
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dusted the area for prints, but found only cigarette butts and the faint echoes
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of radio traffic in the ether. File this one under "Elusive."
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Back in the Suite of the El1te, I grooved to a CD titled "Sedated in the
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Eighties" that Deth Veggie had offered. "Election Day" by Arcadia mesmerized
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me. I wandered the pool area with Diskman in hand and eXtended bass pulsing in
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my ears. A bubbling hot-tub beckoned to me. Touching the waters, Deth Veggie
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found it was ice cold. "Freaky," I mumbled. The Cow Talisman suddenly felt
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as hot as liquid steel.
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Sunday arrived, and at the last minute I rescheduled my flight for Monday
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afternoon. "I don't feel ready to leave," I told my companions as they left on
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a flight back to Boston. Drunkfux swiped my cellular phone as I napped out by
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the pool where Erik Bloodaxe was being interviewed by Torquie. I didn't have
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to watch... it would all be recorded to video for later viewing. "The ability
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to fastforward any experience... that is my dream," I thought as I woke up,
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frantically patting myself down for the missing equipment. Later, a group of
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us went to the local mall for exploration, finding the usual wasteland of
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pastel and suburban clans. A later trip to Wal-Mart proved more inspiring.
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That night, we vegetated in the hotel bar, where I unsuccessfully tried to
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seize control of the remote TV with my universal remote control watch. "No, it
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really works," I told Crimson Death.
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"Yeah right, now give me that laser pointer." He proceeded to frighten
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our waitress with coherent light.
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"Try these cigs, they're French... they're harsh," said Rambone.
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"I believe you," I replied, eyes watering after sniffing the foil package.
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Torquie polished off more margueritas than I could count. "Hollywood has left
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its hedonistic mark on her," I thought. Back in a room, I noticed that Crimson
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Death had hacked the pay TV box into giving them free access to the soft porn
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channel. "Interesting technique," I said, brushing away the tiny pieces of
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broken plastic under the forcibly-opened case. When in doubt, use more muscle.
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A neverending melange of porn played on their television. Porn wants to be
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free. And so it was.
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The last night, we went back to Emo's. It was strangely quiet and
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abandoned. "Probably because it's 1 A.M. on a Sunday night," said Drunkfux.
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We drank heartily and fed quarters into the jukebox. Crimson Death keyed up
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several Sinatra tunes. The final song played was one of my requests... the
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theme to the "Space Madness" episode of Ren and Stimpy. I felt blessed.
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Blessed by the Cow.
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Back in Crimson Death and Rambone's room, we talked and laughed. Byron's
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tattoos still impressed me. Torquie eventually fled with Drunkfux, escaping
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the steamy porn channel. "Human nature isn't always pretty, but it's always
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fascinating," I thought as I watched the action on the tube. Byron and I
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discussed a particularly nasty GIF he had uploaded to my BBS months ago. We
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succeeded in nauseating ourselves, and eventually went to sleep.
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Final day... woke late. Torquie lost her battery charger. We heard
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stories from the hotel staff of smoke bombs, a compromised UNIX-based hotel
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management system, and bootleg phone extensions run through the hallways with
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reckless abandon... the usual. I couldn't find my friends as I caught the
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shuttle bus to the airport. Disheartened, I rode alone to catch my plane.
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Later, at 30,000 feet, I thought about the con. Life is good. I enjoyed
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myself more than I usually do. Maybe it is the fleeting nature of such
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meetings that make them so significant to me. We never get to speak with
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everyone we want. Several attenders had disappeared before I could say goodbye
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(including Swamp Ratte'), but I still felt satisfied.
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My plane was de-iced in Pittsburgh. A prehistoric-looking crane spewed
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clouds of frothing liquid on the fuselage. Bizarre. Looking down, I saw that
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I was still wearing the Cow Talisman. I closed my eyes and slept.
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Now, finishing this piece in the L0pht, I can relax to music and watch
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mesmerizing fractal patterns on one of my monitors. I think of a con years
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past, where Crimson Death and I were talking with Bruce Sterling standing next
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to a payphone. "I don't need to hack... I have money... I can make that
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payphone do anything I want without hacking," said Bruce. "Yeah Bruce,"
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replied Crimson Death, "but can you make it dance?" I laughed and accidentally
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extinguished my cigarette in Bruce's unfinished beer. Hackers make machines
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dance. Beautiful.
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_______ __________________________________________________________________
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/ _ _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
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((___)) |Cool Beans!..........415/648-PUNK|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
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[ x x ] |Metalland Southwest..713/579-2276|ATDT East...........617/350-STIF|
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\ / |The Works............617/861-8976|Ripco ][............312/528-5020|
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(' ') | Save yourself! Go outside! DO SOMETHING! |
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(U) |==================================================================|
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.ooM |Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Count Zero. |
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\_______/|All Rights Reserved. 05/01/1994-#259|
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